Was Foucault really a philosopher?

First of all we need to define what makes someone philosopher to get answer this question. The philosopher is the lover of wisdom, who are seeking the truth. Then let’s see what Foucault had done through his conclusions.

Foucault strongly criticized the power of the modern bourgeois capitalist state, including its police, law courts, prisons, doctors and psychiatrists. According to his theory, everything in modern society was infected by this bourgeois capitalism and he wanted to transform it into a Marxist-anarchist utopia. He was in conflict with the convention and accepted norms of the age in virtually everything. Public execution seemed more brutal but was in fact much more humane than today’s hypocritical penal system. In ancient times, the mad may have been philosophers. He denied that we live in the freest sexual age of all time.

Although he had real philosophical insights, most of his theories are based on superficial and arbitrarily defined interpretations of history, as the academic historians pointed out. Foucault didn’t care about the critics, for him both the truth and history were a storehouse from where he picks up what he likes.

And we have also reached the point where Foucault’s philosophical nature becomes questionable. Although it is the philosopher’s job to challenge dogmas and break taboos, he cannot do so arbitrarily. The philosophy is about exploring the truth and not about creating truth.

Creating anything new characterizes the ideologies in field of truth. Anyone can create ideology, but no one can create truth. In other words, even the philosopher is not an author of truth, because the truth is an author, the philosopher is only the voice of truth.

The philosophy is for serving the truth to make truth serve us, and not for serving ego, vanity, narcissism, power addiction, megalomania and lust. Cherry picking from truth is a pure narcissism. You can be either philosopher or ideologiest, but you can’t be both at the same time, because one must dominate. And in Foucault’s case, hedonism, decadence, and deviance dominated.

Becoming true philosopher is about overcoming ego and vanity, and self-disciplining. Becoming ideologist is nothing but about idolizing yourself, and corrupting your honest nature to nourish ego and vanity. The first task you have to fulfill in order to become true philosopher, artist, scholar, or anything is sacrificing not only ego and vanity but overcoming lust and any harmful addiction.

Feeding lust does not make you philosopher but nor even a human. And we can observe the same personal deformation on cult leaders and dictators. The sexual pleasure is an illusion, but what you sacrifice for it is a real loss.

There’s no difference between dystopia and actualized utopia, they are at both side of the same coin. While the philosopher sees dystopia in utopia the ideologist sees utopia in dystopia. And Fucault’s utopia about a classless society in total anarchy, where’s no bourgeois authority, is a dystopian future.

And it’s not about being at error, thus Foucault is not even in same category with Noam Chomsky or Friedrich Nietzsche, but who still considers Foucault philosopher that one must consider Gaddafi as philosopher either.

Being aware of these facts it can be said Foucault was more ideologiest than philosopher even though he had some true philosophical realizations. In his case not merely ego, vanity, and narcissism we’re talking about but lust, which eventually destroyed him.

Thanks for reading me!