In reflecting on Foucault’s methodology, it strikes me that the historical turn in philosophy may have been somewhat misguided. I am a casual student of history and, in getting a more thorough introduction into his work, I was struck by Foucault’s selective use of examples, sweeping generalizations, and seeming ignorance of trends which precede his subject. His line of argument is very plausible in many places but the method he uses to get there very often begs the question. He has clearly already determined that he will get to a specific destination and he fills in just enough to make that picture complete. The problem this raises for Foucault is that by referring to historical methods — archaeology and genealogy specifically — he opens himself up to critique on historical grounds, and unfortunately his historiography is very sloppy. He has done enough to get past people who do not read history and his philosophy flows well enough that historians remind themselves that after all, he’s not really a historian. That doesn’t mean that his method is best, however.
I call myself an anti-Nietzschean but I must be fair. To begin in being fair, I’ll be fair to Foucault and many others in that I did need this pointed out to me (I can’t recall from where). Now to be fair to Nietzsche: in On the Genealogy of Morals he is not doing a genealogy and is not claiming to do one, he is in fact making fun of the idea of doing a genealogy of morals; he attributes the making of these genealogies to the English moralists who he rags on at the start. Now, I will admit that I suspect that Foucault (though I don’t think he makes this clear) read Nietzsche almost entirely in a spirit like Derrida’s erasure. He mined Nietzsche rather than learned from him. That said, if it was obvious to Nietzsche that genealogy had flaws as a philosophical method, we should question what profit it can really provide for us.
While they are thematically interesting, I don’t think I will adopt either of Foucault’s methods for myself. At present, I am not doing the kind of trans-discipline work that requires me to lay out a specific kind of approach in a way that would be similar. Basic philosophical interpretation, perhaps. When I need a more precise tool, I will find what I need for that moment.
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