What about Michel Foucault? 'Discipline and Punish', 'History of Sexuality', 'Archeology of Knowledge.' That french dude was way influential.

As interesting as I find Foucault, and, even more so, his opposite, Derrida, I'm not sure how influential I think either have been. Although I think a small number of intellectuals have toyed with both structuralism and deconstructionism, I'm not sure how either set of ideas have influenced society at large. In what way do you think Foucault's influence is felt?

Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva....Post-Modernism will pass, its influence will dissipate, and few will mourn its key ideas.
Among them being the conceit that all opinions are equal, that there is no stratification of critique.
When people say things like, 'its my opinion' I silently fume.
The sooner the US, France and some other nations, ones most in thrall to the P-M fashions, shake off the shackles of this relativist mode of thinking, the better.
But thats just my opinion.....

God Bless ya, mate. Yer back! I needed yuz here to help me take slackers to task for bringin' up people like Foucault without the PoMo chops to back it up!

I don't know. I've always had a soft spot for deconstruction.

Don't get me wrong. I like Derrida. In fact, my bachelor's thesis was a deconstruction of comparative religion. But I'm afraid the young Padewan up there brought up Foucault frivolously, and then never returned to back up his claim that Foucault deserves inclusion in the list of the 100 most influential books.

And I stand by my question of how. I find him interesting, but don't see how his influence is felt outside of a relatively narrow circle of intellectuals.

Sorry, i had trouble getting my password and stuff organised...it's been really fustrating checking this and not being able to reply...
Foucault doesn't actually consider himself a deconstructionist...and that's not why he should be on the list. look in any recent humanities textbook and he is there. his ideas are quoted, referenced, taken up again by a lot of people. i think there's something in the wikipedia entry about it.
the idea of discourse and episteme as we use it now is foucault's idea....the idea of the panopticon, alternative histories, half of everything judith butler says....

quote:

Originally posted by Ishmaels coffin:
Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva....Post-Modernism will pass, its influence will dissipate, and few will mourn its key ideas.
Among them being the conceit that all opinions are equal, that there is no stratification of critique.
When people say things like, 'its my opinion' I silently fume.
The sooner the US, France and some other nations, ones most in thrall to the P-M fashions, shake off the shackles of this relativist mode of thinking, the better.
But thats just my opinion.....

?
1. Post-modernism is a period classification, of course it will pass.... well,
2.what's your definition of post-modernism?

Nice to have you back Treefloats, I thought you was a poseur.

Foucault was, of course, a structuralist, not a deconstructionist. In fact, despite his later disavowal of it, I think structuralism undergirds all of his writing. The concept of the episteme, in particular, suggests a series of broad underlying linkages in all human intellectual endeavor. They are the invisible assumptions that are universally shared, and without which no knowledge is possible.

Deconstruction takes off from the same place, namely that we share a series of unconscious assumptions which color our acquisition of knowledge, but then suggests that meanings and significance shift as the assumptions are revealed. Shining a light on the assumption strips it of absolute meaning. Eg., pointing out the patriarchal subtext in early christian writing changes your relationship to the text, and thereby to the meaning of the text.

Truthfully, I think Derrida's view is more influential that Foucault's, but maybe that just reflects my preconceived notions!

But i mean, Foucault, to me, is influential because he came up with a multitude of ideas and possible positions.
In later years he distanced himself from the concept of the episteme and never returned to it...
his work on heriotopias, the modern hospital system, his short essay rebuking Barthes claim for the death of the author, his work on human sexuality, the way he constanly redessed the singular notions of the world and the self that have had weight in western climes and times since forever....his is of a completely different world view...not simply intellectual, but practical and reaching to the way a person may live and think each day...
he considered his works not as the word of universal law, but a toolbox from which you can apply to the practical world...he called himself a nietzschean
and he is of equal footing with at least chomsky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbUYsQR3Mes
but seriously, if you find him interesting, read his stuff

The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli and either/or are the most correct entries you've made (aside from the obvious ie bible, etc). you've mentioned not one book from Dickens or Conrad? is that really fair? :S And not one Nietzsche title?

quote:

Originally posted by ilikemusik:
The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli and either/or are the most correct entries you've made (aside from the obvious ie bible, etc). you've mentioned not one book from Dickens or Conrad? is that really fair? :S And not one Nietzsche title?

ilm, I think you need to go back and look at the first page a bit more closely. None of us wrote this list. It was written by someone in the Barnes and Noble organization. And we spent a couple of posts there discussing the relative absence of fiction.

quote:

...seriously, if you find him interesting, read his stuff

As far as Foucault, we'll agree to disagree. And, I have read him.

fair call. thats what i get for not bothering to read all posts with care.

The list has some very important books in it so I'm not going to comment on each choice just say that most of the books there are certainly worth reading.

http://www.mynexttopmodel.com/

I think that Foucault has been one of the most influential thinkers in anthropology in the last fifty years. Both "Discipline and Punish" and "Madness and Civilization" were landmark texts at the time of publication and have had incredible influence in the philosophy of capital punishment/prison reform and the anti-psychiatry movement respectively. Foucault, more than Derrida or Habermas, has been able to extend his influence through many disciplines and therefore has made quite an imprint in the academic world.

However, minor disagreements aside, this is a very good list. Great to see that key philosophical figures like Maimonides and Spinoza made the list, as they are often overlooked. I might have included Hannah Arent's "Origins of Totalitarianism" and Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time" but overall a very solid list.