Nietzschean, but (or therefore?) rather nice. However, I don't think F was a
particularly fine stylist. My French is not exactly fluent, but in either
English or French F always strikes me as a workmanlike writer who can
occasionally rise to flashes of eloquence--rather like Merleau Ponty,
thought not so dense. Given the opacity of most post-war French
philosophical prose, of course, that marks him as a literary master, but
only in the sense of the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind (sorry,
Marta). You want glorious French prose, read Rousseau, Montaigne, Flaubert.
In the 20th century, maybe Genet. Or Beckett's novels, originally written in
French.--jks
> > Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > >Why then Foucault's fight againt Marxism?
> >
> > He had his disagreements with Marxism, but he frequently expressed
> > his debt to the Old Man, too. To wax Bloomian for a minute, I think
> > he had a real anxiety of influence issue.
> >
> > And so what? So what if MF didn't meet the Marxian purity assay?
> > Doesn't he deserve being taken seriously anyway? There aren't many
> > writers of the last century in his league as both thinker and
>stylist.
> >
> > Doug
>==========
>
>"After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it
>resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one
>way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower's straying
>afield of himself? There are times in life when the question of
>knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive
>differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on
>looking and reflecting at all. People will say, perhaps, that these
>games with oneself would better be left backstage; or, at best, that
>they might properly form part of those preliminary exercises that are
>forgotten once they have served their purpose. But, then, what is
>philosophy today--philosophical activity, I mean--if it is not the
>critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it
>consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it
>might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what
>is already known?" [MF--"The Use of Pleasure"]
>
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