Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy |  | | Name | Michel Foucault | | Birth | 15 October 1926
Poitiers, France | | Death | 25 June 1984
Paris, France | | School/tradition | Continental philosophy
Structuralism · Post-structuralism | | Main interests | History of ideas · Epistemology
Ethics · Political philosophy | | Notable ideas | "Power" · "Archaeology"
"Genealogy" · "Episteme"
"Biopower" · "Governmentality"
"Disciplinary institution" | | Influenced by | Nietzsche, Deleuze, Althusser, Kant, Wittgenstein, Canguilhem, Heidegger, Bataille, Levi-Strauss, Blanchot, Sollers, Bachelard, Hyppolite, Dumézil, Marx, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Borges | | Influenced | Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Homi K. Bhabha, Hamid Dabashi, Arnold Davidson, Gilles Deleuze, Hubert Dreyfus, Didier Eribon, Ian Hacking, Guy Hocquenghem, Antonio Negri, Paul Rabinow, Jacques Rancière, Edward Said, Hans Sluga, Michael Taussig, Chuck Palahniuk, Jules Vuillemin | Michel Foucault (pronounced [miʃɛl fu'ko]) (15 October 1926–25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian, critic and sociologist. He held a chair at the Collège de France, giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the University of California, Berkeley. It has been suggested that Contemporary philosophy be merged into this article or section. ...
For other uses, see Interview (disambiguation). ...
is the 288th day of the year (289th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Location within France Poitiers (population 85,000) is a small city located in west central France. ...
is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
This article is about the year. ...
This article is about the capital of France. ...
Continental philosophy is a term used in philosophy to designate one of two major traditions of modern Western philosophy. ...
Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ...
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The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. ...
Theory of knowledge redirects here: for other uses, see theory of knowledge (disambiguation) Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, knowledge + λόγος, logos) or theory of knowledge is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. ...
For other uses, see Ethics (disambiguation). ...
The Politics series Politics Portal This box: Political philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what...
As distinguished from techne, the Greek word episteme (literally: science) is often translated as knowledge. ...
Biopower was a term originally coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations. Foucault first used it in his...
Disciplinary institutions (French Institution disciplinaire) is a concept proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975). ...
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: ) was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and philologist. ...
Gilles Deleuze (IPA: ), (January 18, 1925 – November 4, 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. ...
Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seÊ) (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ...
Kant redirects here. ...
Wittgenstein redirects here. ...
Georges Canguilhem (Castelnaudary, June 4, 1904 – September 11, 1995 in Marly-le-Roi) was a French philosopher who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science (in particular, biology). ...
Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) (IPA ) was a highly influential German philosopher. ...
This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
Claude L vi-Strauss (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who became one of the twentieth centurys greatest intellectuals by developing structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture Biography Claude L vi-Strauss was born in Brussels and studied law and philosophy at the...
Maurice Blanchot (September 27, 1907-February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. ...
Philippe Sollers (b. ...
Gaston Bachelard (June 27, 1884 – October 16, 1962) was a French philosopher and poet who rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the French academy. ...
Jean Hyppolite (Jonzac 1907 - Paris 1968) was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of Frances most prominent post-war thinkers. ...
Georges Dumézil (March 4, 1898 - October 11, 1986) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Indo-European religion and society. ...
Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ...
Hegel redirects here. ...
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (March 14, 1908 – May 4, 1961) was a French phenomenologist philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl. ...
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980), normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced: ), was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. ...
Borges redirects here. ...
Giorgio Agamben (born 1942) is an Italian philosopher who teaches at the Università IUAV di Venezia. ...
Image:J Butler. ...
Homi K. Bhabha (born 1949) is an Indian-American postcolonial theorist. ...
Hamid Dabashi (Persian: ) is an Iranian-American historian, cultural and literary critic who has made important contributions to the study of Iran, World cinema and Shia Islam from a postcolonial perspective. ...
Arnold I. Davidson Ph. ...
Gilles Deleuze (IPA: ), (January 18, 1925 – November 4, 1995) was a French philosopher of the late 20th century. ...
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus (born October 15, 1929 in Terre Haute, Indiana to Stanley S. and Irene Lederer Dreyfus), is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. ...
Didier Eribon is a French author, a philosopher and a historian of French intellectual life. ...
Ian Hacking, CC (born 1936 in Vancouver) is a philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science. ...
Guy Hocquenghem was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1944 and was educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. ...
Antonio (Toni) Negri (born August 1, 1933) is an Italian Marxist political philosopher. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Jacques Rancière (born 1940) is a French philosopher. ...
Edward Wadie Saïd, Arabic: , , (1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and Palestinian activist. ...
Hans Sluga is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. ...
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Charles Michael Chuck Palahniuk (pronounced )[1] (born February 21, 1962) is an American satirical novelist and freelance journalist of Ukrainian ancestry born in Pasco, Washington. ...
is the 288th day of the year (289th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
This article is about the year. ...
French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in French language, has been extremely diverse, and influential to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from René Descartes through Voltaire and Henri Bergson to 20th century Existentialism and Post-structuralism. ...
For other uses, see Historian (disambiguation). ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ...
Courtyard of the Collège de France. ...
Sather Tower (the Campanile) looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais. ...
Michel Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. Foucault's work on power, and the relationships among power, knowledge, and discourse, has been widely discussed and applied. Sometimes described as postmodernist or post-structuralist, in the 1960s he was more often associated with the structuralist movement. Foucault later distanced himself from structuralism and always rejected the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels. In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. ...
A social institution is any institution in a socity that works to socialize the groups or people in it. ...
An MRI scan of a human brain and head. ...
For the chemical substances known as medicines, see medication. ...
This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ...
Much of the recent sociological debate on power revolves around the issue of the constraining and/or enabling nature of power. ...
For other uses, see Knowledge (disambiguation). ...
Discourse is a term used in semantics as in discourse analysis, but it also refers to a social conception of discourse, often linked with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jürgen Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action (1985). ...
Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Po-mo[1]) is a term originating in architecture, literally after the modern, denoting a style that is more ornamental than modernism, and which borrows from previous architectural styles, often in a playful or ironic fashion. ...
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Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ...
Biography
Early life Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in Poitiers as Paul-Michel Foucault to a notable provincial family. His father, Paul Foucault, was an eminent surgeon and hoped his son would join him in the profession. His early education was a mix of success and mediocrity until he attended the Jesuit Collège Saint-Stanislas, where he excelled. During this period, Poitiers was part of Vichy France and later came under German occupation. After World War II, Foucault gained entry to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm), the traditional gateway to an academic career in the humanities in France. is the 288th day of the year (289th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Location within France Poitiers (population 85,000) is a small city located in west central France. ...
This article is about the medical specialty. ...
Seal of the Society of Jesus. ...
Motto Travail, famille, patrie French: Unoccupied zone of Vichy France (until November 1942) Capital Vichy Capital-in-exile Sigmaringen (1944-1945) Language(s) French Religion Roman Catholic Government Dictatorship Chief of state - 1940 — 1944 Philippe Pétain President of the Council - 1940 — 1942 Philippe Pétain - 1942 — 1944 Pierre Laval...
Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...
The École normale supérieure (also known as Normale Sup, Normale, ENS, ENS-Paris, ENS-Ulm or Ulm) is a prestigious French grande école, possibly the most prestigious. ...
Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
For other uses, see Humanities (disambiguation). ...
The École Normale Supérieure Foucault's personal life during the École Normale was difficult—he suffered from acute depression. He was taken to see a psychiatrist. During this time, Foucault became fascinated with psychology. He earned a license (degree) in psychology, a very new qualification in France at the time, in addition to a degree in philosophy, in 1952. He was involved in the clinical arm of psychology, which exposed him to thinkers such as Ludwig Binswanger. On the Threshold of Eternity. ...
{redirect|Psychological science|the journal|Psychological Science (journal)}} Not to be confused with Phycology. ...
To licence or grant licence is to give permission. ...
Ludwig Binswanger (April 13, 1881 – February 5, 1966) was a Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology. ...
Like many 'normaliens' , Foucault joined the French Communist Party from 1950 to 1953. He was inducted into the party by his mentor Louis Althusser. He left due to concerns about what was happening in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Various people, such as historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, have reported that Foucault never actively participated in his cell, unlike many of his fellow party members. The École normale supérieure (also known as Normale Sup, Normale, ENS, ENS-Paris, ENS-Ulm or Ulm) is a prestigious French grande école, possibly the most prestigious. ...
This does not cite any references or sources. ...
Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation: altuË¡seÊ) (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. ...
Iosif (usually anglicized as Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 1879[1] – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union. ...
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (born 1929) is a noted French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ancien regime, focusing on the history of the peasantry. ...
Early career Foucault failed at the agrégation in 1950 but took it again and succeeded the following year. After a brief period lecturing at the École Normale, he took up a position at the University of Lille, where from 1953 to 1954 he taught psychology. In 1954 Foucault published his first book, Maladie mentale et personnalité, a work which he would later disavow. It soon became apparent that Foucault was not interested in a teaching career, and he undertook a lengthy exile from France. In 1954 Foucault served France as a cultural delegate to the University of Uppsala in Sweden (a position arranged for him by Georges Dumézil, who was to become a friend and mentor). In 1958 Foucault left Uppsala for briefly held positions at Warsaw University and at the University of Hamburg. In France, the agrégation is a civil service competitive examination for some positions in the public education system. ...
Lille, a city in France, has two universities: The Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille (USTL) or Université de Lille I The Université du Droit et de la Santé de Lille or Université de Lille II Categories: Disambiguation ...
Uppsala University Uppsala University (Swedish Uppsala universitet) is a public university in Uppsala, Sweden. ...
Georges Dumézil (March 4, 1898 - October 11, 1986) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Indo-European religion and society. ...
Warsaw University (Polish: ) is one of the largest universities in Poland. ...
The University of Hamburg was founded on the 1 April 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. ...
Foucault returned to France in 1960 to complete his doctorate and take up a post in philosophy at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. There he met Daniel Defert, with whom he lived in a non-monogamous partnership for the rest of his life. In 1961 he earned his doctorate by submitting two theses (as is customary in France): a "major" thesis entitled Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique (Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age) and a 'secondary' thesis which involved a translation of, and commentary on Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Folie et déraison (Madness and Insanity — published in an abridged edition in English as Madness and Civilization and finally published unabridged as "History of Madness" by Routledge in 2006) was extremely well-received. Foucault continued a vigorous publishing schedule. In 1963 he published Naissance de la Clinique (Birth of the Clinic), Raymond Roussel, and a reissue of his 1954 volume (now entitled Maladie mentale et psychologie or, in English, "Mental Illness and Psychology") which he would again disavow. For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ...
Clermont-Ferrand is a city of France, in the Auvergne region, with a population of approximately 140,000. ...
Daniel Defert is a prominent French AIDS activist and the founding president (1984-1991) of the first AIDS awareness organization in France, Aides. ...
Kant redirects here. ...
Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault...
Raymond Roussel (Paris, January 20, 1877–Palermo, July 14, 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, chess enthusiast, neurasthenic, homosexual, drug addict, and probable suicide. ...
After Defert was posted to Tunisia for his military service, Foucault moved to a position at the University of Tunis in 1965. In 1966 he published Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things), which was enormously popular despite its length and difficulty. This was during the height of interest in structuralism and Foucault was quickly grouped with scholars such as Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes as the newest, latest wave of thinkers set to topple the existentialism popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre. Foucault made a number of skeptical comments about Marxism, which outraged a number of Left wing critics, but he quickly tired of being labeled a 'structuralist'. He was still in Tunis during the May 1968 student riots, where he was profoundly affected by a local student revolt earlier in the same year. In the fall of 1968 he returned to France, where he published L'archéologie du savoir (The Archaeology of Knowledge) — a methodological response to his critics — in 1969. For military service in the meaning of an army as a military defense organization, see armed forces. ...
The Tunis University is a university located in Tunis, Tunisia. ...
The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1966. ...
Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ...
Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French pronounced ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. ...
This article is about the anthropologist. ...
Roland Barthes Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced ) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. ...
Existentialism is a philosophical movement that posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to deities or authorities creating it for them. ...
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980), normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced: ), was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. ...
A May 1968 poster: Be young and shut up, with stereotypical silhouette of General de Gaulle. ...
The Archaeology of Knowledge (LArchéologie du Savoir) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1969. ...
Post-1968: Foucault the activist In the aftermath of 1968, the French government created a new experimental university, Paris VIII, at Vincennes. Foucault became the first head of its philosophy department in December of that year and appointed mostly young leftist academics (such as Judith Miller) whose radicalism provoked the Ministry of Education to withdraw the department's accreditation. Foucault notoriously also joined students in occupying administration buildings and fighting with police. The University of Paris VIII was founded in 1969 as a direct response to events of May 1968. ...
This article is about the city in France. ...
Judith Miller was prominent for two reasons: Firstly, as the daughter of Jacques Lacan, radical French psychoanalyst, and wife to prominent Lacanian Jacques-Alain Miller. ...
Foucault's tenure at Vincennes was short-lived, as in 1970 he was elected to France's most prestigious academic body, the Collège de France, as Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. His political involvement increased, and his partner Defert joined the ultra-Maoist Gauche Proletarienne (GP). Foucault helped found the Prison Information Group (in French: Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons or GIP) to provide a way for prisoners to voice their concerns. This fed into a marked politicization of Foucault's work, with a book, Surveiller et Punir (Discipline and Punish), which "narrates" the micro-power structures that developed in Western societies since the eighteenth century, with a special focus on prisons and schools. Courtyard of the Collège de France. ...
Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: 毛澤東思想, pinyin: Máo Zédōng Sīxiǎng), also called Marxism-Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM), is a variant of communism derived from the teachings of Mao Zedong (1893–1976). ...
Discipline and Punish (subtitled The Birth of the Prison) is a book written by the philosopher Michel Foucault. ...
(17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ...
Students in Rome, Italy. ...
The late Foucault In the late 1970s, political activism in France tailed off with the disillusionment of many left wing militants. A number of young Maoists abandoned their beliefs to become the so-called New Philosophers, often citing Foucault as their major influence, a status about which Foucault had mixed feelings. Foucault in this period embarked on a six-volume project The History of Sexuality, which he was never to complete. Its first volume, The Will to Knowledge, was published in 1976. The second and third volumes did not appear for another eight years, and they surprised readers by their subject matter (classical Greek and Latin texts), approach and style, particularly Foucault's focus on the subject, a concept he had previously neglected. The New Philosophers (French nouveaux philosophes) were a group of French philosophers (for example, André Glucksmann and Bernard Henri-Lévy) who appeared in the early 1970s, as critics of the previously-fashionable philosophers (roughly speaking, the post-structuralists). ...
The History of Sexuality is the title of a three-volume series of books by Michel Foucault written in 1976. ...
Foucault began to spend more time in the United States, at the University at Buffalo (where he had lectured on his first ever visit to the United States in 1970) and especially at UC Berkeley. In 1975 he took LSD at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park, later calling it the best experience of his life.[1] In 1979 Foucault made two tours of Iran, undertaking extensive interviews with political protagonists in support of the new interim government established soon after the Iranian Revolution. His many essays on Iran, published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, only appeared in French in 1994 and then in English in 2005. These essays caused some controversy, with some commentators arguing that Foucault was insufficiently critical of the new regime. State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly known as University at Buffalo (UB) is a coeducational public research university, which has multiple campuses located in Buffalo and Amherst, New York, USA. Offering 84 bachelors, 184 masters and 78 doctoral degrees, it is one of the four comprehensive...
The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, UCB, or simply Berkeley) is a prestigious, public, coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate and its bridge. ...
Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly called LSD, LSD-25, or acid. ...
This article refers to the natural feature Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Monument. ...
Death Valley National Park is a mostly arid United States National Park located east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in southern Inyo County and northern San Bernardino County in California with a small extension into southwestern Nye County and extreme southern Esmeralda County in Nevada. ...
The Interim Government of Iran (1979-1980) was the first government established in Iran after the Islamic Revolution. ...
This article is about the 1979 revolution in Iran. ...
Foucault died of an AIDS-related illness in Paris on 25 June 1984. He was the first high profile French personality who was reported to have AIDS. Little was known about the disease at the time[2] and the event was mired in controversy.[3] In the front-page article of Le Monde announcing his death, there was no mention of AIDS, although it was implied that he died from a massive infection. Prior to his death, Foucault had destroyed most of his manuscripts and in his will prohibited the publication of what he might have overlooked.[4] For other uses, see AIDS (disambiguation). ...
is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
This article is about the year. ...
For the song by the Thievery Corporation, see Le Monde (song). ...
Works
Madness and Civilization (1961) -
The English edition of Madness and Civilization is an abridged version of Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, originally published in 1961. (A full translation titled The History of Madness has been published by Routledge : ISBN 0-415-27701-9) This was Foucault's first major book, written while he was the Director of the Maison de France in Sweden. It examines ideas, practices, institutions, art and literature relating to madness in Western history. Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault...
Routledge is an imprint for books in the humanities part of the Taylor & Francis Group, which also has Brunner-Routledge, RoutledgeCurzon and RoutledgeFalmer divisions. ...
‹ The template below (Expand) is being considered for deletion. ...
Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, namely that of sending mad people away in ships. In 17th-century Europe, in a movement which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, "unreasonable" members of the population were locked away and institutionalised. In the eighteenth century, madness came to be seen as the reverse of Reason, and, finally, in the nineteenth century as mental illness. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...
For the malady found in the Hebrew Bible, see Tzaraath. ...
The ship of fools, depicted in a 1549 German woodcut The ship of fools is an old allegory that has long been used in Western culture in literature and paintings. ...
A mental illness or mental disorder refers to one of many mental health conditions characterized by distress, impaired cognitive functioning, atypical behavior, emotional dysregulation, and/or maladaptive behavior. ...
Foucault also argues that madness was silenced by Reason, losing its power to signify the limits of social order and to point to the truth. He examines the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane, notably at the hands of Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke. He claims that these new treatments were in fact no less controlling than previous methods. Tuke's country retreat for the mad consisted of punishing the madmen until they learned to act "reasonably". Similarly, Pinel's treatment of the mad amounted to an extended aversion therapy, including such treatments as freezing showers and use of a straitjacket. In Foucault's view, this treatment amounted to repeated brutality until the pattern of judgment and punishment was internalized by the patient. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Samuel Tuke (July 31, 1784 - October 14, 1857), son of Henry Tuke was born at York. ...
Aversion therapy is a form of psychiatric or psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. ...
To internalize is to put something inside of borders where it did not originally belong. ...
The Birth of the Clinic Foucault's second major book, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical) was published in 1963 in France, and translated to English in 1973. Picking up from Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic traces the development of the medical profession, and specifically the institution of the clinique (translated as "clinic", but here largely referring to teaching hospitals). Its motif is the concept of the medical regard (a concept which has garnered a lot of attention from English-language readers, due to Alan Sheridan's unusual translation, "medical gaze"). The medical gaze is a term coined by French philosopher and critic, Michel Foucault in his 1976 book, The Birth of the Clinic, to denote the often-dehumanizing method by which medical professionals separate the body from the person (see mind-body dualism). ...
The Order of Things -
Foucault's Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines was published in 1966. It was translated into English and published by Pantheon Books in 1970 under the title The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Foucault had preferred L'Ordre des Choses for the original French title, but changed the title as there was already another book of this title. The book opens with an extended discussion of Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas[5] and its complex arrangement of sight-lines, hiddenness and appearance. Then it develops its central claim: that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as, for example, scientific discourse. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts, from one period's episteme to another. The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1966. ...
Pantheon Books was an American publishing company that was acquired by Random House in 1961. ...
For others named Velázquez, see Velazquez (disambiguation). ...
Las Meninas (also known as The Maids of Honour) is a painting by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. ...
For the scientific journal named Science, see Science (journal). ...
As distinguished from techne, the Greek word episteme (literally: science) is often translated as knowledge. ...
Foucault's critique of Renaissance values in Les mots et les choses has been very influential to cultural history. The various consciousness shifts that he points out in the first chapters of the book have led several scholars to scrutinize the bases for knowledge in our present day as well as critiquing the projection of modern categories of knowledge onto subjects that remain intrinsically unintelligible, in spite of historical knowledge.
The Order of Things brought Foucault to prominence as an intellectual figure in France.
The Archaeology of Knowledge -
Published in 1969, this volume was Foucault's main excursion into methodology. He wrote it in order to deal with the reception of Les Mots et les choses. It makes references to Anglo-American analytical philosophy, particularly speech act theory. The Archaeology of Knowledge (LArchéologie du Savoir) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1969. ...
Analytic philosophy is the dominant philosophical movement of English-speaking countries. ...
The notion speech act is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language. ...
Foucault directs his analysis toward the "statement", the basic unit of discourse that he believes has been ignored up to this point. "Statement" is the English translation from French énoncé (that which is enunciated or expressed), which has a peculiar meaning for Foucault. "Énoncé" for Foucault means that which makes propositions, utterances, or speech acts meaningful. In this understanding, statements themselves are not propositions, utterances, or speech acts. Rather, statements create a network of rules establishing what is meaningful, and it is these rules that are the preconditions for propositions, utterances, or speech acts to have meaning. Statements are also 'events'. Depending on whether or not they comply with the rules of meaning, a grammatically correct sentence may still lack meaning and inversely, an incorrect sentence may still be meaningful. Statements depend on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse. It is huge collections of statements, called discursive formations, toward which Foucault aims his analysis. It is important to note that Foucault reiterates that the analysis he is outlining is only one possible tactic, and that he is not seeking to displace other ways of analysing discourse or render them as invalid. Discourse is a term used in semantics as in discourse analysis, but it also refers to a social conception of discourse, often linked with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jürgen Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action (1985). ...
This article is about the word proposition as it is used in logic, philosophy, and linguistics. ...
An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by silence. ...
A speech act is an action performed by means of language, such as describing something (), asking a question (Is it snowing?), making a request or order (Could you pass the salt?, Drop your weapon or Ill shoot you!), or making a promise () For much of the history of linguistics...
This article is about the word proposition as it is used in logic, philosophy, and linguistics. ...
An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by silence. ...
A speech act is an action performed by means of language, such as describing something (), asking a question (Is it snowing?), making a request or order (Could you pass the salt?, Drop your weapon or Ill shoot you!), or making a promise () For much of the history of linguistics...
This article is about the word proposition as it is used in logic, philosophy, and linguistics. ...
An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by silence. ...
A speech act is an action performed by means of language, such as describing something (), asking a question (Is it snowing?), making a request or order (Could you pass the salt?, Drop your weapon or Ill shoot you!), or making a promise () For much of the history of linguistics...
According to Dreyfus & Rabinow, Foucault not only brackets out issues of truth[6] (cf. Husserl) he also brackets out issues of meaning. Rather than looking for a deeper meaning underneath discourse or looking for the source of meaning in some transcendental subject, Foucault analyzes the discursive and practical conditions of the existence for truth and meaning. In order to show the principles of meaning and truth production in various discursive formations he details how truth claims emerge during various epochs on the basis of what was actually said and written during these periods of time. He particularly describes the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, and the 20th century. He strives to avoid all interpretation and to depart from the goals of hermeneutics. This does not mean that Foucault denounces truth and meaning, but just that truth and meaning depend on the historical discursive and practical means of truth and meaning production. For instance, although they were radically different during Enlightenment as opposed to Modernity, there were indeed meaning, truth and correct treatment of madness during both epochs (Madness and Civilization). This posture allows Foucault to move away from an anthropological standpoint, denouncing a priori concepts of the nature of the human subject, and focus on the role of discursive practices in constituting subjectivity. Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, François Lemoyne, 1737 For other uses, see Truth (disambiguation). ...
Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859 - April 26, 1938), philosopher, was born into a Jewish family in Prossnitz, Moravia (Prostejov, Czech Republic), Empire of Austria-Hungary. ...
This article is about the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries. ...
The word Enlightment redirects here. ...
Hermeneutics may be described as the development and study of theories of the interpretation and understanding of texts. ...
Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy, François Lemoyne, 1737 For other uses, see Truth (disambiguation). ...
Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault...
Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος = human) consists of the study of humankind (see genus Homo). ...
Dispensing with finding a deeper meaning behind discourse would appear to lead Foucault toward structuralism. However, whereas structuralists search for homogeneity in a discursive entity, Foucault focuses on differences. Instead of asking what constitutes the specificity of European thought he asks what differences develop within it over time. Therefore, he refuses to examine statements outside of their role in the discursive formation, and he never examines possible statements that could have emerged from such a formation. His identity as a historian emerges here, as he is only interested in analysing statements in their historical context. The whole of the system and its discursive rules determine the identity of the statement. But, a discursive formation continually generates new statements, and some of these usher in changes in the discursive formation that may or may not be realized. Therefore, to describe a discursive formation, Foucault also focuses on expelled and forgotten discourses that never happen to change the discursive formation. Their difference to the dominant discourse also describe it. In this way one can describe specific systems that determine which types of statements emerge. Structuralism as a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored. ...
Discipline and Punish -
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison was translated into English in 1977, from the French Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, published in 1975. Discipline and Punish (subtitled The Birth of the Prison) is a book written by the philosopher Michel Foucault. ...
The book opens with a graphic description of the brutal public execution in 1757 of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill Louis XV. Against this it juxtaposes a colourless prison timetable from just over 80 years later. Foucault then inquires how such a change in French society's punishment of convicts could have developed in such a short time. These are snapshots of two contrasting types of Foucault's "Technologies of Punishment". The first type, "Monarchical Punishment", involves the repression of the populace through brutal public displays of executions and torture. The second, "Disciplinary Punishment," is what Foucault says is practiced in the modern era. Disciplinary punishment gives "professionals" (psychologists, programme facilitators, parole officers, etc.) power over the prisoner, most notably in that the prisoner's length of stay depends on the professionals' judgment. Robert-François Damiens Robert-François Damiens (1715-1757) was a Frenchman who attained notoriety by unsuccessfully attempting the assassination of Louis XV of France in 1757. ...
Louis XV (February 15, 1710 – May 10, 1774), ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1715 until his death. ...
Death Penalty World Map Color Key: Blue: Abolished for all crimes Green: Abolished for crimes not committed in exceptional circumstances (such as crimes committed in time of war) Orange: Abolished in Practice Red: Legal Form of Punishment Execution of a soldier of the 8th Infantry at Prescott, Arizona, 1877 Execution...
For other uses, see Torture (disambiguation). ...
Foucault also compares modern society with Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon" design for prisons (which was unrealized in its original form, but nonetheless influential): in the Panopticon, a single guard can watch over many prisoners while the guard remains unseen. The dark dungeon of pre-modernity has been replaced with the bright modern prison, but Foucault cautions that "visibility is a trap". It is through this visibility, Foucault writes, that modern society exercises its controlling systems of power and knowledge (terms which Foucault believed to be so fundamentally connected that he often combined them in a single hyphenated concept, "power-knowledge"). Increasing visibility leads to power located on an increasingly individualized level, shown by the possibility for institutions to track individuals throughout their lives. Foucault suggests that a "carceral continuum" runs through modern society, from the maximum security prison, through secure accommodation, probation, social workers, police, and teachers, to our everyday working and domestic lives. All are connected by the (witting or unwitting) supervision (surveillance, application of norms of acceptable behaviour) of some humans by others. Jeremy Bentham (IPA: ) (26 February [O.S. 15 February 15] 1748) – June 6, 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. ...
For other uses, see Panopticon (disambiguation). ...
Power-knowledge is a concept coined by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. ...
The History of Sexuality -
Three volumes of The History of Sexuality were published before Foucault's death in 1984. The first and most referenced volume, The Will to Knowledge (previously known as An Introduction in English — Histoire de la sexualité, 1: la volonté de savoir in French) was published in France in 1976, and translated in 1977, focusing primarily on the last two centuries, and the functioning of sexuality as an analytics of power related to the emergence of a science of sexuality (scientia sexualis) and the emergence of biopower in the West. In this volume he attacks the "repressive hypothesis," the widespread belief that we have, particularly since the nineteenth century, "repressed" our natural sexual drives. He shows that what we think of as "repression" of sexuality actually constituted sexuality as a core feature of our identities, and produced a proliferation of discourse on the subject. The History of Sexuality is the title of a three-volume series of books by Michel Foucault written in 1976. ...
The History of Sexuality is the title of a three-volume series of books by Michel Foucault written in 1976. ...
The History of Sexuality is the title of a three-volume series of books by Michel Foucault written in 1976. ...
Biopower was a term originally coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations. Foucault first used it in his...
The second two volumes, The Use of Pleasure (Histoire de la sexualite, II: l'usage des plaisirs) and The Care of the Self (Histoire de la sexualité, III: le souci de soi) dealt with the role of sex in Greek and Roman antiquity. Both were published in 1984, the year of Foucault's death, with the second volume being translated in 1985, and the third in 1986. In his lecture series from 1979 to 1980 Foucault extended his analysis of government to its 'wider sense of techniques and procedures designed to direct the behaviour of men', which involved a new consideration of the 'examination of conscience' and confession in early Christian literature. These themes of early Christian literature seemed to dominate Foucault's work, alongside his study of Greek and Roman literature, until the end of his life. However, Foucault's death left the work incomplete, and the planned fourth volume of his History of Sexuality on Christianity was never published. The fourth volume was to be entitled Confessions of the Flesh (Les aveux de la chair). The volume was almost complete before Foucault's death and a copy of it is privately held in the Foucault archive. It cannot be published under the restrictions of Foucault's estate.[7] For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ...
Lectures From 1970 until his death in 1984, from January to March of each year except 1977, Foucault gave a course of public lectures and seminars weekly at the Collège de France as the condition of his tenure as professor there. All these lectures were tape-recorded, and Foucault's transcripts also survive. In 1997 these lectures began to be published in French with six volumes having appeared so far. So far, five sets of lectures have appeared in English: Psychiatric Power 1973–1974, Abnormal 1974–1975, Society Must Be Defended 1975–1976, Security, Territory, Population 1977–1978 and The Hermeneutics of the Subject 1981–1982. Notes of Foucault's lectures from UC Berkeley has also appeared as Fearless Speech. Courtyard of the Collège de France. ...
- Society Must Be Defended (1975–1976)
In this course, Foucault analyzes the historical and political discourse of "race struggle". - Security, Territory, Population (1977-1978)
In this course, Foucault outlines his theory of governmentality, and demonstrates the distinction between sovereignty, discipline, and governmentality as distinct modalities of state power. He argues that governmental state power can be genealogically linked to the 17th century state philosophy of raison d'etat and, ultimately, to the medieval Christian 'pastoral' concept of power. His overriding goal in this lecture series is to argue that the state does not have as much salience as an analytical category as we all seem to think it does.
Terminology Terms coined or largely redefined by Foucault, as translated into English: Biopower was a term originally coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations. Foucault first used it in his...
A neologism invented by Michel Foucault, the term Biopolitics or Biopolitical can refer to several different yet not incompatible concepts: In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through biopower. ...
Disciplinary institutions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
As distinguished from techne, the Greek word episteme (literally: science) is often translated as knowledge. ...
Michel Foucaults concept of genealogy is the history of the position of the subject which traces the development of people and society through history. ...
Governmentality was a concept developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1979 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time. ...
Parrhesia, loosely defined, can mean free speech, or to speak everything. ...
Much of the recent sociological debate on power revolves around the issue of the constraining and/or enabling nature of power. ...
State racism is a concept used by French philosopher Michel Foucault to designate the reappropriation of the historical and political discourse of race struggle, In the late seventeenth century. ...
The medical gaze is a term coined by French philosopher and critic, Michel Foucault in his 1976 book, The Birth of the Clinic, to denote the often-dehumanizing method by which medical professionals separate the body from the person (see mind-body dualism). ...
Discourse is a term used in semantics as in discourse analysis, but it also refers to a social conception of discourse, often linked with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jürgen Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action (1985). ...
Dispositif - French word for device. ...
Criticisms of Foucault Many thinkers have criticized Foucault, including Charles Taylor, Noam Chomsky,[8] Ivan Illich, Camille Paglia, Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Nancy Fraser, Pierre Bourdieu, Alasdair MacIntyre (1990), Richard Rorty, Slavoj Žižek, William Irwin Thompson, and historian Hayden White, among others. While each of these thinkers takes issue with different aspects of Foucault's work, most share the orientation that Foucault rejects the values and philosophy associated with the Enlightenment while simultaneously secretly relying on them.[9] This criticism is developed, for example, in Derrida (1978). It is claimed that this failure either makes him dangerously nihilistic, or that he cannot be taken seriously in his disavowal of normative values because in fact his work ultimately presupposes them. Charles Margrave Taylor, CC, BA, MA, Ph. ...
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. ...
This article is about the Austrian philosopher. ...
Camille Anna Paglia (born April 2, 1947 in Endicott, New York) is an American social critic, author and teacher. ...
Jürgen Habermas (IPA: ; born June 18, 1929) is a German philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and American pragmatism. ...
Jacques Derrida (IPA: in French [1], in English ) (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. ...
Jean Baudrillard (July 29, 1929 – March 6, 2007) (IPA pronunciation: [1]) was a French cultural theorist, philosopher, political commentator, and photographer. ...
Nancy Fraser is currently the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at the Graduate Faculty of New School University in New York City. ...
Pierre Bourdieu (August 1, 1930 – January 23, 2002) was an acclaimed French sociologist whose work employed methods drawn from a wide range of disciplines: from philosophy and literary theory to sociology and anthropology. ...
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (born January 12, 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology. ...
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 - June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. ...
Slavoj Žižek (pronounced: ) (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher, and cultural critic. ...
William Irwin Thompson (1938- ) is a writer, social critic, and visionary, especially interested in keeping alive the esoteric, most profound, human and spiritual traditions of mankind, as he sees it. ...
Insert non-formatted text hereHayden White(1928-3012) is an historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973). ...
The word Enlightment redirects here. ...
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher of Jewish descent, considered the first to develop deconstruction. Positioning Derridas thought Derrida had a significant effect on continental philosophy and on literary theory, particularly through his long-time association...
This article is about the philosophical position. ...
Foucault's use of historical information has also been criticized, with claims that he frequently misrepresented things, got his facts wrong, extrapolated from insufficient data, or simply made them up entirely. For example, some historians argue that what Foucault called the "Great Confinement" in Madness and Civilization did not in fact occur during the 17th century, but rather in the 19th century.[10] Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault...
Sociologist Andrew Scull argued that thousands of previously untranslated footnotes in Madness and Civilization reveal a very lax standard of scholarship in Foucault's work, "It is as though nearly a century of scholarly work had produced nothing of interest or value for Foucault’s project. What interested him, or shielded him, was selectively mined nineteenth-century sources of dubious provenance. Inevitably, this means that elaborate intellectual constructions are built on the shakiest of empirical foundations, and, not surprisingly, many turn out to be wrong."[11] Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault...
Madness and Civilization was also famously criticized by Jacques Derrida who took issue with Foucault's reading of René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. Derrida's criticism led to a break in their friendship and marked the beginning of a fifteen-year–long feud between the two. (At one point, in a 1983 interview with Paul Rabinow, Foucault seemed to criticize Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus in Dissemination, considering the writing/speech distinction unimportant.) They eventually reconciled in the early 1980s.[citation needed] Jacques Derrida (IPA: in French [1], in English ) (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. ...
Descartes redirects here. ...
The title page of the Meditations Meditations on First Philosophy (subtitled In which the existence of God and the real distinction of mind and body, are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise written by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641 . ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ...
The Phaedrus, written by Plato, is a dialogue between Platos main protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. ...
There are also notable exchanges with Lawrence Stone and George Steiner on the subject of Foucault's historical accuracy, as well as a discussion with historian Jacques Leonard concerning Discipline and Punish. Sociologist Richard Hamilton also argues against Discipline and Punish, suggesting that large portions of the book are incoherent or invalid. For example, Foucault places great emphasis on Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, suggesting it is a model for the modern prison, but Hamilton notes that the panopticon was never built and only one extant prison uses that model. In the book, however, Foucault did not suggest that the Bentham's panopticon had been constructed, and did not suggest that prisons explicitly modeled themselves after it. He also expounds the relevant dangers associated with the abstract concept of the panopticon in his discussion of what he calls the "disciplinary society."[citation needed] Lawr
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