As a pretty hardcore right-winger, I want to open myself up to left-wing texts because I don't like living in an echo-chamber.
I have picked up Madness and Civilisation by Michel Foucault, and I am enjoying it so far even though I'm not very far into it, and it's a bit complex and hard to follow since I'm very new to Philosophy.
So, is it worth it to continue on buying Foucault's books and exposing myself to Leftist theories that way or what? Does he provide solid arguments?
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Foucault is as left wing as nietzsche is
Foucault was basically an Anarcho-Communist, which is about as hard Left as you can get.
if you're Christian right-wing you might try Belloc
Well, I'm not a Christian, but I'll check him out.
I think you'll like him, Foucault's politics in many ways exist outside of the left/right spectrum and form more of a surveillance (lol) of the system and its construction. regardless of your political views I imagine they'll be bolstered and informed by his tracts, but also offer you a more nuanced ideology, persevere imo
Kropotkin, Deleuze, Baidou, Rawls, Paine, Rousseau, Debord, Bakunin, Dewey, Habermas...
Edward Said
Oh yeah I forgot Fanon
If you want something more contemporary, try Paul Krugman. Foucault's theories are obviously hugely important and influential, but have limited relevance to modern leftist politics.
oh, then you'll hate him.
Thanks, user.
I sometimes feel like I have to bust open a dictionary whenever I read Madness and Civilisation, but I will certainly persevere.
I've never understood why he couldn't have just used simpler language to get his point across. I'm certainly not dumb by any stretch of the word, but Foucault pushes me mentally a bit, which I like.
I thought Krugman was purely an economist? I mean, I'm pretty set in my ways economically. Capitalism is empirically the best system.
It's politics and social theories I want a different perspective on.
But if Krugman is more than just an economist, sure, I might try him out.
>Foucault's politics in many ways exist outside of the left/right spectrum
I don't understand why people say this, It's quite obvious to anybody with normative political views where he stands.
i think in his personal life sure but in his works (and he himself would prefer that we focus our attention on them) but he's not coming at issues from a stance other than post-structural incisions -- which means rejecting positions of left (marxism, freudian marxism) and other Leftist strategies and apparatuses in favour of an entirely freshly-fabricated system of thought
Read Deleuze and Guattari so you can properly understand the greatest right-wing thinker alive.
Strongly recommend you try the Frankfurt School, suggest you start with Fromm's Escape from Freedom then Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment.
If you want more up to date leftist opinion try The New Left Review, The Monthly Review or Jacobin.
Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the foundational text of modern feminism. It's a block of a thing, minimally I'd recommend you read excepts to get a grasp on how the movement sees itself, at least in 1949.
Victor Serge was a revolutionary Marxist who wrote about his experiences as an insurrectionist in Spain and Russia. As well as his memoirs he's known for his fiction, which carries a libertarian tendency, critical of State Socialism. Necessary reading to see the relation between theory and practice from a critical perspective. I'd recommend The Case of Comrade Tulayev.
For economics you might be interested in David Schweickart's theories of market socialism or Geoffrey M. Hodgson's book Economics and Institutions which directly challenges the assumptions of Milton Friedman
God bless Agent J.
He's /pol/'s lad till the very end.
>Capitalism is empirically the best system
i guess we'll also need some books to clean up your mind of cold war propaganda
>Capitalism is empirically the best system
Well Krugman is a capitalist. By leftist do you mean socially leftist (liberal) or economically leftist? Because liberals are capitalists (although some of them don't realize it).
Foucault's writings were more or less anti-political. You can call him an anarcho-communist or Nietzsche a radical aristocratic reactionary but those terms just don't fucking mean anything at a certain point. Both are about power much more than some moraline notion of what is right or wrong. Right and wrong are incredibly flexible things across time and space which is core to both of their philosophies.
I mean in his personal life it's obvious he was a socialist just as it was obvious that Nietzsche was virulently anti-socialist but their bodies of work doesn't necessarily suggest a political stance in and of itself but rather focus on deconstructing and subverting extant stances and ideologies. It's not really right to call his work left wing any more than it is to call Nietzsche's right.
>Capitalism is empirically the best system.
what's it like to go all in on american ideology bozo?
>only America practices capitalism
>right winger
>new to philosophy
sounds about right
We adapted it and now we export it
>left-wingers
>not strongly anti-philosophy because of the prevalence and popularity of white male philosophers
no you're thinking of mental retardation
Fuck off man. The guy is just trying to expand his world view.
>liberal=leftist
Falling for the memes
and I'm just trying to ruin everything. live and let die amirite?
...
>Nietzsche
>left wing
>this entire post
>Foucault (who was French and therefore despicable) belongs to many of the bad traditions in philosophy. Madness and Civilization, by far his best and most accessible book, is of far greater historical value than philosophical. But his critiques of modernity are confined to the narrowness of a primarily historical perspective, and this limits the extent of his ability to explicate, for instance, the phenomena of mental illness, homosexuality, and madness. The physiological and gestative aspects of these are beyond his purview. Schopenhauer's definition of madness as a corruption of memory and the faculty of recollection is much more valuable both in theory and in practice. Many of Schopenhauer's observations and conclusions about the human mind have straightforward application in modern neurology and neuropsychiatry, such as his double aspect theory. Foucault’s attempt to explain various mental aberrations as the product of internal or external power struggles, or the historical prevalence of these, has few such worthwhile applications.
if English is your native language you should be ashamed right now rt
the fuck are you on about lad
do you know what sarcasm is? you can be forgiven for not recognizing it if English isn't your first language. but if it is and you don't know that the dude you responded to was saying that Foucault and Fred were both right wingers.......well shit idk meng.
most philosophy is right wing though
>most philosophy is right wing
Uhhhhh
equality is a modern disease
gey
I swear if Corbym walked on water today, dailymail will be calling it an affront to gravity and demand he apologize to physicists
Read Adorno
Name two things wrong with it
(you can't)
Literally "Please poz my neg boipucci - The Philosopher"
What would you recommend?
What kind of books should right-wingers read?
I've only read For My Legionaires and Redwall.
E D G Y
Foucault's philosophy is apolitical. Murray Bookchin is apparently good but I never read him.
Well, Krugman is a capitalist, and there is tonnes of variation within capitalism. Give him a read.
To be honest most leftists these days are capitalists, there are very few real socialists any more.
Didn't he go full neoliberal in the end?
He is right though. He didn't say capitalism is the best system. He said capitalism is empirically the best system. As long as no other system has been implemented in real life his point stands.
>implying I'm American
I'm Irish
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I don't know about that. A lot of the youth nowadays are self-identified Socialists or Communists, even; especially middle class college students, ironically.
...
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Read a bit about young hegelians
It's where some or many modern left ideas might have started, so Hegel and what happens after him, go get into the beginnings
Maybe some Orwell or Brecht for dramas
And you might want to check this out
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Economically Leftist.
Lenin. We could learn a lot from his views of how to organize a revolution and a party.
Kek. You have no idea what you are talking about.
OP, try Frankfurt School. Horkheimer + Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Maybe also Situationist marxism a la Guy Debord.
Jesus, no way. I'm willing to try others, but all Lenin was was a Communist whose policies led to mass famine and civil unrest.
Economics and social theories are not so distinct. Ha-Joon Chang identifies nine economic theories, the majority would fall under the capitalist umbrella.
Wouldn't bother with Krugman, try Paul Mason's PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future
in the end Nietzsche is a revolutionary lefty.
just because he acknowledges differences doesn't mean he is right wing.
he's is fucking anarchist. last time i checked that was pretty left wing
Still worth reading. You don't have to like him.
Camel through the eye of a needle m80.
State and Revolution - analysis of the origins of the state and how it's apparatus must be used by worker's to defend the revolution. He also challenges the theories of Anarchists and Social Democrats.
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Nietzsche would despise the average leftist views. It is basically the perfect political embodiment of ressentiment. Thus slave morality.
If it is to be argued that Nietzsche was an 'anarchist' he would be a very different kind of anarchist than the standard revo-lefty one.
Michel Foucault was accused of being a right-winger more than once.
OP here.
While many would consider Anarchism purely Left-wing, it is in fact a spectrum, ranging from Anarcho-Communism on the far Libertarian Left to Anarcho-Capitalism on the far Libertarian Right.
he is not conservative or reactionary at all.
he fights establishment and religion
just because he doesn't indulge in identity politics, self-pity and ressentiment like parts of the modern left he doenst automatically become right winged
>left - right
spooked desu
Many Anarchists would contest the ideology is more then just being anti-state authority.
yeah i know.
it all depends an whether you think people would cooperate or compete if one would leave them to themselves. in the end its ofc both
>false dichotomy
tell me about it
no, he does not automatically become conservative right wing. I would never claim Nietzsche to be conservative and I never did.
But he is not a lefty. Actually reading Nietzsche would make that quite apparent to you.
I'm a Neo-Reactionary, so this isn't coming from an Anarchist when I say this, but Anarchism really isn't more than being extremely anti-state. That's really all it is in the end, just the advocacy of the abolition of the state.
>just the advocacy of the abolition of the state
If you conveniently ignore It's historic roots and a vast majority of self-described Anarchists.
There's more to it. Most of the theoretical writings, from Proudhon onwards, are concerned with what to do after the state has been abolished. In Anarchist territories such as Catalonia, The Free Territory or Makhnovia or the Shinmin autonomous region in Manchuria have operated worker controlled syndicates rather then individual corporations. If it was just a matter of being anti-state regions where the state has failed or fragile states would be to some degree anarchist.
have read beyond good and evil and On the Genealogy of Morality in German
butt thx
>(No Marx)
also
>right winger
>new to philosophy
checks out
T I P S F E D O R A
(you)
Most philosophers had a wing on their right shoulder. They're dead now but they used to be alive and they sang, had sex, ate dinner, etc. What's my point? Just like art and life and science, there is no point.
Yeah, no Marx because his theories have ended in failure and are empirically wrong.
>Most philosophers had a wing on their right shoulder
To be fair, a vast majority of people who have ever lived were right-ring.
proof pls
please read his lectures on governmentality. In no way an argument I think will turn you, I just sincerely think it will have the most stuff you might be interested. They're the only lectures of his I've heard of refferred too, so I they might not be hard to find, I'm p sure they won't. Can you upload pdfs to this site?
Maybe unorthodox, but I also reccomend Susan Stryker's My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamioux (sp?). If you can get past the performance art aspect (only on the first page in a half) and the poem (short, in the middle, and good imo) there's some really engaging thought. All about considerations of the unnatural and the monstrous, especially the idea that creatures entails 'created being', which people tend to position themselves in opposition or above, and of the historical connotation of 'monsters' as heralds of the extraordinary, supernatural, etc.
Anyway, staunch leftist here. Any good recs for right wing lit? I'm about playin Pokemon Go (and reading Beyond Good & Evil while my phone charges) but I'd look stuff up when I get home
>proof pls
The U.S.S.R.
Cambodia
Venezuela
North Korea
North Vietnam
China
Cuba
>inb4 "b-but that wasn't true Communism!"
...
me again
Homi K. Bhabha's "Culture's In-Between" I'd consider essential too, but I like to bring a lot of linguistic theory, especially translation theory, and literary theory into my critical theory/cultural theory/political considerations
But his concept of 'doubleness by which I do not mean duality or binarism' has been a guiding light in my life and I have not known peace since
Negating the material and historical stance of those states I'd say they were an application of his theories in part. But you'd have to read his work to see where they differed.
I know this is going to sound like a meme recommendation, but if you want Radical Right literature, Mein Kampf is okay (just skip the Jew parts and you'll get an all right read).
For more moderate Right-wing lit, I really can't help you. But I'm sure another user can.
wasn't actual communism, stop being gay dude.
No but the state wouldn't exist, under communism there would be no state to commit atrocities, or to excercise power at all, since there'd be no power to form a regime around. Everyone communist whose ever been a head of state is a cunt. I want that t-shirt that says 'full communism now' but I'd shoot Stalin as readily as I'd shoot Hitler
If that's moderate for ya,
I'll try it. Anyone got a pdf?
Well, I mean, Mein Kampf is hardly moderate. It's pretty extremist.
They haven't said what they found distasteful about this list of states. Nothing wrong with most of them.
>Any good recs for right wing lit?
You usually begin with Evola or Guenon.