When I was in college, postmodernism was the religion of many social science majors, and Michel Foucault was their patron saint. So many students were dropping words like discourse, metanarrative, and contingency. I had the sense so many were enamored with postmodern ideas without really understanding what modernity was and why it was worth reacting against. I had always felt uneasy with ethical relativism and anti-foundationalist thought especially if it was unclear to the interlocutors what exactly constituted the foundation.
Here I am, a middle manager in a global company working in the outsourcing industry and spending my lunch break reviewing a book on philosophy. I will not claim I have mastered the foundations: there is still so much to read with so little time. Reading Foucault did make me more wary about Enlightenment ideas of inevitable progress and understand how particular ways of thinking are likely to be determined by history rather than necessary consequences of progress.
Still, I keep the skeptical attitude of a conservative. Foucault has contributed to a richer historical understanding of punishment, sexuality, and knowledge, but I will reserve judgment about the value of postmodern thought. It is yet unclear to me whether shaking the foundations of thought has done much to increase our wisdom.
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