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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_... More or less the en

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_... More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time for "the decriminalization of all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen". While I agree that seems extremely stupid, it is based on a morally tenable argument that people under that age could give consent. That may be incorrect but if accepted as a premise would justify their position. So if Foucault believed this and his moral arguments derived from that, it would seem unwise to dismiss all his moral authority just because you believe he was wrong on this point. I personally think he is totally wrong and that even people at the age of eighteen struggle to know their own minds clearly with regard to consent. However I do not as a result think Foucault is impossible to take a moral lead from.

watwut 6y ago
> More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time Then the question is, how does one become intellectual establishement. Sounds like dissenters were somehow excluded from that nebulous subjective category.
- scandox 6y ago
  Well I just meant that the roll call of names that signed the petition is fairly extraordinary: Louis Aragon, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Leiris, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard, Francis Ponge, Bernard Besret
lldbg 6y ago
That was indeed what I was referring to. Rather than interpreting your first paragraph as a pardon of Foucault, I consider it a condemnation of the group entire. If your (or their, the french intellectual elite's/literati's) philosophy is so morally vacuous that it fails to recognize the sexual exploitation of children and young teenagers as reprehensible, then it is worth less than nothing. It is an evil. Consent is not enough, is the common modern view. Power structures and actual power matters too. In some sense, surely advocating (almost successfully, if I recall correctly) for a repeal of age of consent laws must be worse than the crime itself. That is, if we are of the opinion that pedophilia is wrong. Consider the difference between orchestrating many murders and a single murder as an analogy. No, Foucault (and the others on that list) have been let off the hook for too long. The aesthetician in me is horrified, youth is beauty and they want it defiled? And a disclaimer; I am of course a conservative in every sense of the word, and this is my perspective.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  > Power structures and actual power matters too Talking about power structures while criticizing Foucault is pretty rich.
  - siltpotato 6y ago
    Why? Does F have a monopoly on speaking of power structures?
  - lldbg 6y ago
    I don't think so. A philosophy should be self-consistent, so if I can use Foucaults own words to critique his position on pedophilia, all the better.

watwut 6y ago

> More or less the entire French Intellectual establishment argued at that time Then the question is, how does one become intellectual establishement. Sounds like dissenters were somehow excluded from that nebulous subjective category.

scandox 6y ago
Well I just meant that the roll call of names that signed the petition is fairly extraordinary: Louis Aragon, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Leiris, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Rancière, Jean-François Lyotard, Francis Ponge, Bernard Besret

lldbg 6y ago

That was indeed what I was referring to. Rather than interpreting your first paragraph as a pardon of Foucault, I consider it a condemnation of the group entire. If your (or their, the french intellectual elite's/literati's) philosophy is so morally vacuous that it fails to recognize the sexual exploitation of children and young teenagers as reprehensible, then it is worth less than nothing. It is an evil. Consent is not enough, is the common modern view. Power structures and actual power matters too. In some sense, surely advocating (almost successfully, if I recall correctly) for a repeal of age of consent laws must be worse than the crime itself. That is, if we are of the opinion that pedophilia is wrong. Consider the difference between orchestrating many murders and a single murder as an analogy. No, Foucault (and the others on that list) have been let off the hook for too long. The aesthetician in me is horrified, youth is beauty and they want it defiled? And a disclaimer; I am of course a conservative in every sense of the word, and this is my perspective.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> Power structures and actual power matters too Talking about power structures while criticizing Foucault is pretty rich.
- siltpotato 6y ago
  Why? Does F have a monopoly on speaking of power structures?
- lldbg 6y ago
  I don't think so. A philosophy should be self-consistent, so if I can use Foucaults own words to critique his position on pedophilia, all the better.