Most overrated and underrated political philosophers?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

so instead I'll mention Theodor W. Adorno, who has some good insights but whose crass misogyny and bizarrely doctrinaire elitism have gotten a free pass in capital-L Leftist (or "Left"-as-an-adjective) circles for way too long.

A wonderful anecdote of Richard Taruskin's, that may be relevant:

When I vented a rather vehement anti-Adornian position, somewhat along the lines of what will follow here, before a German audience in Berlin last year and encountered surprisingly little resistance, I asked one of my hosts about it and was told, "Oh my dear, Adorno is your problem now."

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Foucault was a lunatic with extremely distasteful politics and moral attitudes, but his strange, addled brain did produce on occasion some very important insights that, most probably, would not have occurred to anyone else. Where a lot of academics go wrong is to try to use him as a substitute for the fallen Marx; as a man who created and propagated a total system of thought that can be usefully applied to any possible scholarly problem.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Foucault was a lunatic with extremely distasteful politics and moral attitudes, but his strange, addled brain did produce on occasion some very important insights that, most probably, would not have occurred to anyone else. Where a lot of academics go wrong is to try to use him as a substitute for the fallen Marx; as a man who created and propagated a total system of thought that can be usefully applied to any possible scholarly problem.

Just out of curiosity, how does applying Foucaultvian thought to any scholarly problem work?

At best, impenetrable word-salads. At worst... an example of that disturbing phenomenon when 'Theory' is placed into an intellectual ecosystem it does not belong in and functions like an invasive species.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I made the mistake of reading about Foucault & his views on the age of consent....

Yeeees... you see, I was not exaggerating when I mentioned 'extremely distasteful politics and moral attitudes'.