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Essential Works of Foucault (1954-1984) #1
Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984
The definitive edition of Foucault's articles, interviews, and seminars.
Few philosophers have had as strong an influence on the twentieth century as Michel Foucault. His work has affected the teaching of any number of disciplines and remains, twenty years after his death, critically important. This newly available edition is drawn from the complete collection of all of Foucault's courses, articles, and interviews, and brings his most important work to a new generation of readers.
Edited by Paul Rabinow, Ethics contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, paired with key writings and interviews on friendship, sexuality, and the care of the self and others.
Few philosophers have had as strong an influence on the twentieth century as Michel Foucault. His work has affected the teaching of any number of disciplines and remains, twenty years after his death, critically important. This newly available edition is drawn from the complete collection of all of Foucault's courses, articles, and interviews, and brings his most important work to a new generation of readers.
Edited by Paul Rabinow, Ethics contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, paired with key writings and interviews on friendship, sexuality, and the care of the self and others.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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2330 people want to read
About the author
Michel Foucault
763 books6,482 followersPaul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
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August 27, 2015This thematically-focused compendium of lectures, essays, and interviews is too disparate to be reviewed systematically, but its variety is one of its chief attractions. I'll focus on a few elements that intrigued me most.
Foucault, like Nietzsche, was a profound student of the classical world. His scope of knowledge is breathtaking. As he said in one of his interviews, this was attributable to the fact that he worked like a dog. (Others, like Solzhenitsyn and Kant, were just as assiduous in researching and analyzing things that intrigued them; all they did was work. And so, too, almost, Foucault.) I found his observations on the care of the self in the classical world most compelling. He argued convincingly that from Socrates to Seneca to Marcus Aurelius various forms of self-contemplation were disciplines like sitting zazen. Seneca, for instance, would devote hours to the solitary contemplation of his death. He also carried on epistolary relations in which he regarded understanding his own ethics and motivations as crucial to his existence. The Socrates we receive from Plato did the same thing but right out on the streets of Athens, challenging acquaintances with the question: What are you doing to know yourself?
What's intriguing here is that self-preoccupation, narcissistic behavior, is both commonplace and criticized today. We think we ought to think about others, not ourselves. This may be a Christian corruption of human possibility, for how can we think about others if we do not first think about ourselves? Ethics, Foucault contended, are the foundation of freedom, or its prerequisite, and ethics in the classical world meant self-knowledge, self-mastery, a refined sense of judgment about what one ought to do to play one's responsible role in one's home and city. Without perfecting oneself (an impossible task) one could not be free (an impossible condition), one would always be hostage to the darker corners of one's soul.
Foucault's interest in homosexuality has proven prophetic. He argued that real progress for homosexuals, like himself, would be to move beyond the chance, passionate encounter to more enduring forms of friendship energized by the erotic but not chattel to it. This year in America we have fully entered the realm of gay marriage. Foucault understood that that was where gays really wanted to go, deeply wanted and needed to go--perhaps not to marriage, per se, but to unchallenged lasting relationships, not subject to unjust laws and social opprobrium. And here we are, with so many homosexuals coming not out of the closet as homosexuals but as pairs and partners who have been hidden away sometimes for decades.
Foucault's mode of thought is difficult to grasp unless one accepts it as interested in the dynamic and the relational. In other words, he was an historian/philosopher of transformations, not truths. Thus, there is no fixed point in his work; in fact, he rejected fixed points. To Foucault knowledge was not static. All knowledge was relative but within hard won frameworks of understanding. This was not "anything goes." Far from it: it hinged on assiduous examination and deep reflection. Truth might be mutable--had to be mutable--but it was not accidental or capricious.
I realize this comment is exceedingly abstract, but so was Foucault, who warrants continuing attention.
Foucault, like Nietzsche, was a profound student of the classical world. His scope of knowledge is breathtaking. As he said in one of his interviews, this was attributable to the fact that he worked like a dog. (Others, like Solzhenitsyn and Kant, were just as assiduous in researching and analyzing things that intrigued them; all they did was work. And so, too, almost, Foucault.) I found his observations on the care of the self in the classical world most compelling. He argued convincingly that from Socrates to Seneca to Marcus Aurelius various forms of self-contemplation were disciplines like sitting zazen. Seneca, for instance, would devote hours to the solitary contemplation of his death. He also carried on epistolary relations in which he regarded understanding his own ethics and motivations as crucial to his existence. The Socrates we receive from Plato did the same thing but right out on the streets of Athens, challenging acquaintances with the question: What are you doing to know yourself?
What's intriguing here is that self-preoccupation, narcissistic behavior, is both commonplace and criticized today. We think we ought to think about others, not ourselves. This may be a Christian corruption of human possibility, for how can we think about others if we do not first think about ourselves? Ethics, Foucault contended, are the foundation of freedom, or its prerequisite, and ethics in the classical world meant self-knowledge, self-mastery, a refined sense of judgment about what one ought to do to play one's responsible role in one's home and city. Without perfecting oneself (an impossible task) one could not be free (an impossible condition), one would always be hostage to the darker corners of one's soul.
Foucault's interest in homosexuality has proven prophetic. He argued that real progress for homosexuals, like himself, would be to move beyond the chance, passionate encounter to more enduring forms of friendship energized by the erotic but not chattel to it. This year in America we have fully entered the realm of gay marriage. Foucault understood that that was where gays really wanted to go, deeply wanted and needed to go--perhaps not to marriage, per se, but to unchallenged lasting relationships, not subject to unjust laws and social opprobrium. And here we are, with so many homosexuals coming not out of the closet as homosexuals but as pairs and partners who have been hidden away sometimes for decades.
Foucault's mode of thought is difficult to grasp unless one accepts it as interested in the dynamic and the relational. In other words, he was an historian/philosopher of transformations, not truths. Thus, there is no fixed point in his work; in fact, he rejected fixed points. To Foucault knowledge was not static. All knowledge was relative but within hard won frameworks of understanding. This was not "anything goes." Far from it: it hinged on assiduous examination and deep reflection. Truth might be mutable--had to be mutable--but it was not accidental or capricious.
I realize this comment is exceedingly abstract, but so was Foucault, who warrants continuing attention.
July 22, 2008
"What is Enlightenment?" remains, some twenty-five years after it was first written and presented, one of the most compelling short accounts of our present.
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June 12, 2007read the article on technologies of the self-- especially important
November 22, 2025
This was one of the hardest books to read in recent memory, not because of the subject matter, but because it is a compilation of an already long-winded French philosopher that had to be translated into English. I don't know if it is as confusing in its mother tongue as it was in my own, but best guess is that the language barrier did not simplify anything.
Foucoult is most well known for his writing on power and knowledge- how they are integrated into our societies, how that integration has changed and evolved over the years, and what in means for the individuals living within these societies. He spoke about incarceration, sexuality, crime, and justice. He saw the complicated interconnectivity of our world and the people that are pushed to the fringes of our society or are caught in it's mechanisms.
While his meditations on power and knowledge are his most well known (and hard to understand), the pieces that I liked the most were on the technology of the self. How we determine right from wrong, how we justify action, how we educate ourselves and others. Perhaps it's because I just read a lot about the Greeks and Romans and was thus more primed to actually digest knowledge on the topic.
Overall, I think that the biggest thing I learned in the reading of this book is that human culture is not set in stone. Not only is our society man-made, it has also changed over the last ten thousand years. Things that are seen as evil today may have been commonplace in the past, and vice-versa. The social and ethical codes binding us now are not ironclad, which is why we shouldn't just accept them without thought.
Interesting book, but still one that I don't think I really understood.
Foucoult is most well known for his writing on power and knowledge- how they are integrated into our societies, how that integration has changed and evolved over the years, and what in means for the individuals living within these societies. He spoke about incarceration, sexuality, crime, and justice. He saw the complicated interconnectivity of our world and the people that are pushed to the fringes of our society or are caught in it's mechanisms.
While his meditations on power and knowledge are his most well known (and hard to understand), the pieces that I liked the most were on the technology of the self. How we determine right from wrong, how we justify action, how we educate ourselves and others. Perhaps it's because I just read a lot about the Greeks and Romans and was thus more primed to actually digest knowledge on the topic.
Overall, I think that the biggest thing I learned in the reading of this book is that human culture is not set in stone. Not only is our society man-made, it has also changed over the last ten thousand years. Things that are seen as evil today may have been commonplace in the past, and vice-versa. The social and ethical codes binding us now are not ironclad, which is why we shouldn't just accept them without thought.
Interesting book, but still one that I don't think I really understood.
May 30, 2009
George Canguillhem once said that once Michel Foucault's Lectures at the College de France were published, only then would the public know the depth of Foucault's critique of psychoanalysis. This book comprises of sections from each of his Lectures, spanning from the early 1970's (Birth of the Clinic, Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish era) until the early 1980's (when Foucault toiled for almost a decade writing History of Sexuality volume 1-4, until his death).
What we see here is an intellectual at the height of his powers, at the apogee of his ability, teaching at an avant-garde college that gave him the freedom to pursue whatever research topics interested him. In short, we see a disciplined French intellectual living a monastic life, spending 18 hours a day, seven days a week with his nose in thousands of books, opening up his workshop for public scrutiny.
For each class, each chapter in the book, he would only give 12 one hour lectures per year in an attempt to let the public know what he was working on. It's fascinating to see how the French culture actually gave status to their intellectuals at the time. Foucault was a public celebrity of sorts. Literally thousands of people turned up to listen to his lectures. They needed 2 auditoriums filled to capacity to accommodate the entire crowd. Each one hour lecture has anywhere between 50-90 footnotes! Talk about rigor!
Not only do these lectures reveal Foucualt's critique of psychoanalysis, a discourse that the world can most likely do without, but we see Foucault dealing with a range of issues centering around the discursive nature of (what he called) Power/Knowledge. What we see is an intellectual, typically type-casted as a Philosopher, outraged with 2,000 years of self-indulgent Western Philosophy, inspired by the radicalism of the 1960's, becoming more radical than even Karl Marx, revealing the breadth and depth of how power immerses us all within its grasp, "down to our capillaries," as he so famously said. Mind, Body, soul, there may be no outside to the physics of Power, that is, the Power/Resistance vicious circle that comprises the dialectical nature of Western Society.
All power creates a "bounce-back," in the sense that every physical force creates an equal an opposite counter-force. Power can only be understood in its material forms. Alas, more work to be done as the questions grow deeper and deeper. If only Foucault was still alive. :(
What we see here is an intellectual at the height of his powers, at the apogee of his ability, teaching at an avant-garde college that gave him the freedom to pursue whatever research topics interested him. In short, we see a disciplined French intellectual living a monastic life, spending 18 hours a day, seven days a week with his nose in thousands of books, opening up his workshop for public scrutiny.
For each class, each chapter in the book, he would only give 12 one hour lectures per year in an attempt to let the public know what he was working on. It's fascinating to see how the French culture actually gave status to their intellectuals at the time. Foucault was a public celebrity of sorts. Literally thousands of people turned up to listen to his lectures. They needed 2 auditoriums filled to capacity to accommodate the entire crowd. Each one hour lecture has anywhere between 50-90 footnotes! Talk about rigor!
Not only do these lectures reveal Foucualt's critique of psychoanalysis, a discourse that the world can most likely do without, but we see Foucault dealing with a range of issues centering around the discursive nature of (what he called) Power/Knowledge. What we see is an intellectual, typically type-casted as a Philosopher, outraged with 2,000 years of self-indulgent Western Philosophy, inspired by the radicalism of the 1960's, becoming more radical than even Karl Marx, revealing the breadth and depth of how power immerses us all within its grasp, "down to our capillaries," as he so famously said. Mind, Body, soul, there may be no outside to the physics of Power, that is, the Power/Resistance vicious circle that comprises the dialectical nature of Western Society.
All power creates a "bounce-back," in the sense that every physical force creates an equal an opposite counter-force. Power can only be understood in its material forms. Alas, more work to be done as the questions grow deeper and deeper. If only Foucault was still alive. :(
August 16, 2023
Mi è capitato qualche volta che durante la lettura di questo libro qualcuno mi chiedesse "Ma di che parla?" Oppure "Foucault... Ma qual è la sua filosofia?". A queste domande mi è venuto particolarmente difficile dare una risposta concisa e puntuale. Piuttosto mi sono trovato ad elencare una serie di temi trattati: potere, sessualità, etica... E a descrivere il metodo: genealogico ed archeologico.
Una lettura ricchissima di spunti di riflessione, che mi ha spesso dato l'impressione che queste cose sarebbero benissimo potute essere scritte da un autore dei giorni nostri. Vorrei fare un piccolo appunto sulla struttura di questo tomo, che ho trovato un po' mancante in quanto a unità. Ho avuto spesso la sensazione che mancasse una gestalt che tenga insieme i vari saggi che compongono questo libro, anche se non è necessariamente una nota negativa. Ciò considerato, credo che questa raccolta funzioni meglio come un punto di partenza per la lettura di questo incredibile filosofo che come compendio per averne una panoramica.
Una lettura ricchissima di spunti di riflessione, che mi ha spesso dato l'impressione che queste cose sarebbero benissimo potute essere scritte da un autore dei giorni nostri. Vorrei fare un piccolo appunto sulla struttura di questo tomo, che ho trovato un po' mancante in quanto a unità. Ho avuto spesso la sensazione che mancasse una gestalt che tenga insieme i vari saggi che compongono questo libro, anche se non è necessariamente una nota negativa. Ciò considerato, credo che questa raccolta funzioni meglio come un punto di partenza per la lettura di questo incredibile filosofo che come compendio per averne una panoramica.
October 17, 2024
THE FIRST VOLUME OF AN EXCELLENT COLLECTION OF FOUCAULT’S MAJOR WORKS
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, and social theorist and activist; openly gay [see the James Miller biography, The Passion of Michel Foucault], he died of AIDS---the first “public figure” in France to die of the virus.
The “Series Preface” explains, “Though he intended his books to be the core of his intellectual production, he is also well known for having made strategic use of a number of genres---the book and the article to be sure, but also the lecture and the interview… In this light, our aim in this series is to assemble a compelling and representative collection of Foucault’s written and spoken words outside those included in his books.”
The Introduction states, “He refused to join in this vogue of condemning ‘intellectuals,’ which was sweeping Paris as a part of rejection of the media and its supposed destructive influence on French political and intellectual culture: ‘I’ve never met any intellectuals. I have met people who write novels, and others who treat the sick; people who work in economics and others who compose electronic music. I’ve met people who teach, people who paint and people of whom I have never really understood what they do. But intellectuals? Never.” (Pg. xx)
He said of penal institutions, “The working hypothesis is this: power relations… do not simply play a facilitating or obstructing role with respect to knowledge; they do not merely encourage or stimulate it, distort or restrict it; power and knowledge are not bound to each other solely through the action of interests and ideologies; so the problem is not just to determine how power subordinates knowledge and makes it serve its ends or how it superimposes itself on it, imposing ideological contents and limitations.
"No knowledge is formed without a system of communication, registration, accumulation, and displacement that is in itself a form of power, linked in its existence and its functioning to other forms of power. No power, on the other hand, is exercised without the extraction, appropriation, distribution, or restraint of a knowledge. At this level there is not knowledge on one side and society on the other, or science and the state, but the basic forms of ‘power-knowledge.’’” (Pg. 17)
He observes, “One sees how far one is from a history of sexuality organized around the good old repressive hypothesis and its customary questions (how and why is desire repressed?). It is a matter of acts and pleasures, not of desire. It is a matter of the formation of the self through techniques of living, not of repression through prohibition and law. We shall try to show not only how sex was kept in check but how that long history began which, in our societies, binds together sex and the subject.” (Pg. 89)
He says in an interview, “I like discussions, and when I am asked questions, I try to answer them. It’s true that I don’t like to get involved in polemics. If I open a book and see that the author is accusing an adversary of ‘infantile leftism,’ I shut it again right away. That’s not my way of doing things; I don’t belong to the world of people who do things that way. I insist on this difference as something essential: a whole morality is at stake, the morality that concerns the search for the truth and the relation to the other.” (Pg. 111)
In another interview, he says, “We have to reverse things a bit. Rather than saying what we said at one time, ‘Let’s try to re-introduce homosexuality into the general norm of social relations,’ let’s say the reverse---‘No! Let’s escape as much as possible from the type of relations that society proposes for us and try to create in the empty space where we are new relational possibilities.’ By proposing a new relational RIGHT, we will see that nonhomosexual people can enrich their lives by changing their own schema of relations.” (Pg. 160)
He notes, “There are several reasons why ‘Know yourself’ has obscured ‘Take care of yourself.’ First, there has been a profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society. We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality, as a means of escape from all possible rules. We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was, paradoxically, a means of self-renunciation.” (Pg. 228)
A 1983 interview states, “Q: ‘The first volume of “The History of Sexuality” was published in 1976, and none has appeared since. So you still think that understanding sexuality is central for understanding who we are?’ M.F.: I must confess that I am much more interested in problems about techniques of the self and things like that than sex… sex is boring.” (Pg. 253)
He says about HOS and his other books, “Three domains of genealogy are possible. First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents. So, three axes are possible for genealogy. All three were present, albeit in a somewhat confused fashion, in ‘Madness in Civilization.’ The truth axis was studied in ‘The Birth of the Clinic’ and ‘The Order of Things.’ The power axis was studied in ‘Discipline and Punish,’ and the ethical axis in ‘’The History of Sexuality.’” (Pg. 262-263)
This volume collects writings and interviews, and will be “must reading” for anyone studying Foucault’s thought and its development.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, and social theorist and activist; openly gay [see the James Miller biography, The Passion of Michel Foucault], he died of AIDS---the first “public figure” in France to die of the virus.
The “Series Preface” explains, “Though he intended his books to be the core of his intellectual production, he is also well known for having made strategic use of a number of genres---the book and the article to be sure, but also the lecture and the interview… In this light, our aim in this series is to assemble a compelling and representative collection of Foucault’s written and spoken words outside those included in his books.”
The Introduction states, “He refused to join in this vogue of condemning ‘intellectuals,’ which was sweeping Paris as a part of rejection of the media and its supposed destructive influence on French political and intellectual culture: ‘I’ve never met any intellectuals. I have met people who write novels, and others who treat the sick; people who work in economics and others who compose electronic music. I’ve met people who teach, people who paint and people of whom I have never really understood what they do. But intellectuals? Never.” (Pg. xx)
He said of penal institutions, “The working hypothesis is this: power relations… do not simply play a facilitating or obstructing role with respect to knowledge; they do not merely encourage or stimulate it, distort or restrict it; power and knowledge are not bound to each other solely through the action of interests and ideologies; so the problem is not just to determine how power subordinates knowledge and makes it serve its ends or how it superimposes itself on it, imposing ideological contents and limitations.
"No knowledge is formed without a system of communication, registration, accumulation, and displacement that is in itself a form of power, linked in its existence and its functioning to other forms of power. No power, on the other hand, is exercised without the extraction, appropriation, distribution, or restraint of a knowledge. At this level there is not knowledge on one side and society on the other, or science and the state, but the basic forms of ‘power-knowledge.’’” (Pg. 17)
He observes, “One sees how far one is from a history of sexuality organized around the good old repressive hypothesis and its customary questions (how and why is desire repressed?). It is a matter of acts and pleasures, not of desire. It is a matter of the formation of the self through techniques of living, not of repression through prohibition and law. We shall try to show not only how sex was kept in check but how that long history began which, in our societies, binds together sex and the subject.” (Pg. 89)
He says in an interview, “I like discussions, and when I am asked questions, I try to answer them. It’s true that I don’t like to get involved in polemics. If I open a book and see that the author is accusing an adversary of ‘infantile leftism,’ I shut it again right away. That’s not my way of doing things; I don’t belong to the world of people who do things that way. I insist on this difference as something essential: a whole morality is at stake, the morality that concerns the search for the truth and the relation to the other.” (Pg. 111)
In another interview, he says, “We have to reverse things a bit. Rather than saying what we said at one time, ‘Let’s try to re-introduce homosexuality into the general norm of social relations,’ let’s say the reverse---‘No! Let’s escape as much as possible from the type of relations that society proposes for us and try to create in the empty space where we are new relational possibilities.’ By proposing a new relational RIGHT, we will see that nonhomosexual people can enrich their lives by changing their own schema of relations.” (Pg. 160)
He notes, “There are several reasons why ‘Know yourself’ has obscured ‘Take care of yourself.’ First, there has been a profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society. We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality, as a means of escape from all possible rules. We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was, paradoxically, a means of self-renunciation.” (Pg. 228)
A 1983 interview states, “Q: ‘The first volume of “The History of Sexuality” was published in 1976, and none has appeared since. So you still think that understanding sexuality is central for understanding who we are?’ M.F.: I must confess that I am much more interested in problems about techniques of the self and things like that than sex… sex is boring.” (Pg. 253)
He says about HOS and his other books, “Three domains of genealogy are possible. First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents. So, three axes are possible for genealogy. All three were present, albeit in a somewhat confused fashion, in ‘Madness in Civilization.’ The truth axis was studied in ‘The Birth of the Clinic’ and ‘The Order of Things.’ The power axis was studied in ‘Discipline and Punish,’ and the ethical axis in ‘’The History of Sexuality.’” (Pg. 262-263)
This volume collects writings and interviews, and will be “must reading” for anyone studying Foucault’s thought and its development.
April 13, 2024
I think that one essay—'Technologies of the self', should be a must-read for all post-modernists. That we should analyse every thought that goes through our head. Like they did in ancient times. Like analysing the quality of the drachmas. There's no right and wrong in post-modernism, right? It's all relative. There are no ethical principles to guide us. I think that's why Foucault wrote 'Technologies of the self'. We should be able to act on emotion and intuition. But they're not letting us. But that doesn't mean we should murder other people in rage/emotion. We should scrutinize our thoughts and put the quality of our thoughts into question.
December 26, 2018
Ethics by Foucault is a series of interviews, lectures, and excerpts, following the ethical aspects of Michel Foucault’s philosophy. I managed to pick up three concepts by Foucault, which the book accentuates the most: (1) the distinction between polemics and problematics, (2) Foucault’s analysis of what it means to “know yourself” and, lastly, (3) his reflections on sexuality. I read this as a tool to write an essay about his distinction between polemics and problematics. I also managed to get more information than I expected at first, as it became clearer (when I came near the end of this book) that his philosophical concepts can be tied, associated and used together, to form an understanding of the subject.
The book is written in a difficult language and uses a lot of academic words, which I had to search the definition of. This does not mean that I had a hard time because I learned a lot throughout the reading. I didn’t only learn about Foucault’s concepts, but also about Foucault himself. And I’ve learned to admire this academic character a lot since his strategy of approaching concepts is very productive and nuanced.
I also would like to share a quote from one of the first lectures presented in the book, about “the will to knowledge”, where he says:
“These principles of exclusion and selection – whose presence is multifarious, whose efficacy is concretely demonstrated in practices, and whose transformations are relatively autonomous – do not refer to a (historical or transcendental) subject of knowledge that would invent them on after another or would found them at an original level; they point, rather, to an anonymous and polymorphous will to knowledge, capable of regular transformations and caught up in an identifiable play of dependence.”
To sum it up, I found this book utterly informative for me who is very interested in the ideas and concepts of Michel Foucault. But in contrast to being so fun and informative, I would only recommend the book to those who want to get to know Foucault on a more specific, nuanced and deeper level. The chronology was very thought through and the last two excerpts were quite inspirational on both an intellectual and personal level. (Especially the last interview – it was very beautiful.) The only thing I can say something against is the print itself: it contains so small letters that one can get a headache of reading it for too long.
The book is written in a difficult language and uses a lot of academic words, which I had to search the definition of. This does not mean that I had a hard time because I learned a lot throughout the reading. I didn’t only learn about Foucault’s concepts, but also about Foucault himself. And I’ve learned to admire this academic character a lot since his strategy of approaching concepts is very productive and nuanced.
I also would like to share a quote from one of the first lectures presented in the book, about “the will to knowledge”, where he says:
“These principles of exclusion and selection – whose presence is multifarious, whose efficacy is concretely demonstrated in practices, and whose transformations are relatively autonomous – do not refer to a (historical or transcendental) subject of knowledge that would invent them on after another or would found them at an original level; they point, rather, to an anonymous and polymorphous will to knowledge, capable of regular transformations and caught up in an identifiable play of dependence.”
To sum it up, I found this book utterly informative for me who is very interested in the ideas and concepts of Michel Foucault. But in contrast to being so fun and informative, I would only recommend the book to those who want to get to know Foucault on a more specific, nuanced and deeper level. The chronology was very thought through and the last two excerpts were quite inspirational on both an intellectual and personal level. (Especially the last interview – it was very beautiful.) The only thing I can say something against is the print itself: it contains so small letters that one can get a headache of reading it for too long.
March 11, 2024
Foucault’s lectures allow us to see there is no sudden “ethical” turn and a retreat from politics as some “Foucauldians” and Marxists alike would have us believe.
Rather, the turn to “ascesis”, or ethical self-formation, is intricately bound up with the studies Foucault undertakes of governmentality beginning in the late 70s. These studies increasingly take him backward, first toward Christian antiquity and then to Greek antiquity itself, finding lines of convergence as well as divergence from our present.
But the unifying thread here is still the critical ontology of ourselves, and if the “subject” returns as a theme, it’s because, for Foucault, the subject is intricately bound up with its own subjectivation within mechanisms of power.
Power as governmentality is only exercised on free subjects, that is, its a subtle mechanism which tries to condition the possibilities of action of the subject and have them freely choose the option most compatible with the prevailing order of things.
As also pointed out, ethics is also nothing new here, as a careful reading of Foucault’s work reveals, as Marcello Tari has pointed out, that the bourgeoisie, to establish its hegemony, also needs to perform an ethical colonization, or as mentioned before, produce its own mode of being. Thus, the “care of the self” delineates both the modes through which the subject comes to voluntarily govern themselves into the dominant mode of governmentality but also other ways to relating to the world that either contest the mode of governmentality in existence, or sometimes even point to the ungovernable.
In the end, perhaps the final testament to Foucault’s project can be provided by his own words, from a late period piece known as “The Subject and Power”: “the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state.
We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.”
Rather, the turn to “ascesis”, or ethical self-formation, is intricately bound up with the studies Foucault undertakes of governmentality beginning in the late 70s. These studies increasingly take him backward, first toward Christian antiquity and then to Greek antiquity itself, finding lines of convergence as well as divergence from our present.
But the unifying thread here is still the critical ontology of ourselves, and if the “subject” returns as a theme, it’s because, for Foucault, the subject is intricately bound up with its own subjectivation within mechanisms of power.
Power as governmentality is only exercised on free subjects, that is, its a subtle mechanism which tries to condition the possibilities of action of the subject and have them freely choose the option most compatible with the prevailing order of things.
As also pointed out, ethics is also nothing new here, as a careful reading of Foucault’s work reveals, as Marcello Tari has pointed out, that the bourgeoisie, to establish its hegemony, also needs to perform an ethical colonization, or as mentioned before, produce its own mode of being. Thus, the “care of the self” delineates both the modes through which the subject comes to voluntarily govern themselves into the dominant mode of governmentality but also other ways to relating to the world that either contest the mode of governmentality in existence, or sometimes even point to the ungovernable.
In the end, perhaps the final testament to Foucault’s project can be provided by his own words, from a late period piece known as “The Subject and Power”: “the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state.
We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.”
September 2, 2024
Foucault makes some really nice arguments in this - some of which I connected with more compared to others. I think for example the majority of the section on sexuality I could have skipped as I didn’t have too much a connection and it feels rather outdated now. His work on Ancient Greek and Roman ways of being - particularly the essay ‘Self-Writing’ makes for a really nice piece of personal philosophy and life is really interesting though and really makes the connection to how we should ‘live’ today!
Foucault certainly has a lot of views I disagree with, but in this collection - I rarely saw much and you really are able to see the influence of Althusser on him as opposed to some of his other works.
Foucault certainly has a lot of views I disagree with, but in this collection - I rarely saw much and you really are able to see the influence of Althusser on him as opposed to some of his other works.
July 26, 2021
This collection of course summaries, essays, and interviews provides clarity about many of Foucault’s goals and terms. For my money, the essay “Self Writing” (207ff) is worth the price of admission.
I wish that Christian theologians would be more appreciative of his work—it seems to me that there is much beauty and truth in Foucault which might help make the Gospel intelligible to a late-capitalist milieu like that of the Global North.
Though he seems deeply respectful of women, I think his work would be stronger if his sources had included women-colleagues in greater number and prominence.
I wish that Christian theologians would be more appreciative of his work—it seems to me that there is much beauty and truth in Foucault which might help make the Gospel intelligible to a late-capitalist milieu like that of the Global North.
Though he seems deeply respectful of women, I think his work would be stronger if his sources had included women-colleagues in greater number and prominence.
November 15, 2021
This collection covers very similar ground to his main work. In that sense, it can be quite repetitive but there are many interesting points and new perspectives which are found in this book which make it well worth reading. It gives great context to Foucault’s broader project.
September 5, 2023
All the technology of the self stuff was particularly valuable to me. More interviews than I expected, not necessarily a bad thing, always nice to see another, more straight talking side of a philosopher regarded for being obtuse, but personally I would have appreciated more academic essays.
December 16, 2017
Reading these shorter articles and interviews helped make Foucault's thinking process a little clearer to me, and see the various changes his thinking went through over the course of his career.
October 12, 2018
Astounding. True, it's a bit disjointed--which is to be expected given that it's a compilation--but the ideas offered up are delightful, surprising, and wide-ranging.
August 16, 2023
Fantastic and thought-provoking.
September 19, 2023
It seems a little sadistic to put all 100+ pages of Foucault's course summaries in a block at the beginning of the collection.
September 28, 2024
Secondary text
shelved
September 8, 2011(adapted from "What Is Enlightenment?" and "The Masked Philosopher")
How is it that one may think otherwise, do something else, become other than what one is? For Foucault, this growth always requires reflecting on the ways that economic, scientific, religious, and political principles have determined what we take for granted as normal or assume to be obvious. We must grasp the forms of power that are being exercised upon us, the ways that discipline and normalization in the educational system and family life, for example, have pre-determined our expectations, also the ways that we contribute to those traditions by exercising or submitting to these power relations as individuals. Only then will we experience a natural and authentic growth of capabilities disconnected from the intensification of these systems of control and oppression.
This is not about conditions that supposedly determine us without our knowledge -- social, spiritual, or otherwise. We must in fact refuse everything that might present itself as simplistic and authoritarian. Instead we must realize how we participate in the various forms of rationality that organize our ways of doing things. Such a focus on what we do and the way we do it reveals the freedom with which one acts within these practical systems. The realization of this freedom is at the heart of growth and change. To find our own paths to freedom, we must therefore not attempt to determine what is true and false, but rather we must reflect on our relationship to what we think of as truth.
This work involves a critical change of focus. We must no longer search for formal structures with universal value. No longer seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action. We have to give up hope of ever acquiring a complete and definitive point of view of history. Instead we must analyze and respond to questions of general import by identifying their historically unique aspects. As individuals, this involves a personal genealogical and archaeological investigation that will treat what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. Investigating the limits of ourselves in order to grasp where change is possible and desirable.
The ways that we experience our limits and the possibility of moving beyond them are invariably pre-determined by our upbringing and indoctrination into a particular culture. Rather than assuming what we are and concluding what is impossible for us to do or know, we must investigate the events that have led us to define ourselves as we have. For everything that is presented to us as universal, necessary, and obligatory, we must ask what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints?
Foucault dreams of a new age of curiosity, a sharpened sense of reality, a readiness to find what surrounds us strange and odd. A lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies of what is important and fundamental. A movement by which one detaches from received values and seeks other rules. The heroic courage of uncertainty. A determination to throw off familiar ways of thought and look at the same things in a different way. Finding a new tone, a new way of looking, a new way of doing. A kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring a book or an idea to life, that would multiply signs of existence. The life of philosophy. A philosophical life. Mature adulthood.
We have to move beyond rejection -- the alternatives of being inside or outside -- we have to be at the frontiers. Instead of postulating necessary limitations, we must form the basis of a possible crossing-over. This will mean, for example, exploring our assumptions about the relationship between sanity and insanity, sickness and health, crime and the law, the role of sexual relations, etc. A way of interrogating ourselves that takes the form of an open series of questions, an indefinite number of inquiries, which may be multiplied and specified as much as we like. This is work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings. Experimental, often involving scintillating leaps of the imagination.
This pursuit is not transcendental or metaphysical. In fact we must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical, intended to produce another society, culture, or vision of the world. Instead, the project outlined here involves personal work and effort that results in actual changes in behavior, in people's real conduct, their way of being. These persons will never need to lament that the world is error, that history is filled with people of no consequence. They will have a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is disappearing. The approach is a philosophical attitude that will give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the as-yet-undefined work of freedom.
How is it that one may think otherwise, do something else, become other than what one is? For Foucault, this growth always requires reflecting on the ways that economic, scientific, religious, and political principles have determined what we take for granted as normal or assume to be obvious. We must grasp the forms of power that are being exercised upon us, the ways that discipline and normalization in the educational system and family life, for example, have pre-determined our expectations, also the ways that we contribute to those traditions by exercising or submitting to these power relations as individuals. Only then will we experience a natural and authentic growth of capabilities disconnected from the intensification of these systems of control and oppression.
This is not about conditions that supposedly determine us without our knowledge -- social, spiritual, or otherwise. We must in fact refuse everything that might present itself as simplistic and authoritarian. Instead we must realize how we participate in the various forms of rationality that organize our ways of doing things. Such a focus on what we do and the way we do it reveals the freedom with which one acts within these practical systems. The realization of this freedom is at the heart of growth and change. To find our own paths to freedom, we must therefore not attempt to determine what is true and false, but rather we must reflect on our relationship to what we think of as truth.
This work involves a critical change of focus. We must no longer search for formal structures with universal value. No longer seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action. We have to give up hope of ever acquiring a complete and definitive point of view of history. Instead we must analyze and respond to questions of general import by identifying their historically unique aspects. As individuals, this involves a personal genealogical and archaeological investigation that will treat what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. Investigating the limits of ourselves in order to grasp where change is possible and desirable.
The ways that we experience our limits and the possibility of moving beyond them are invariably pre-determined by our upbringing and indoctrination into a particular culture. Rather than assuming what we are and concluding what is impossible for us to do or know, we must investigate the events that have led us to define ourselves as we have. For everything that is presented to us as universal, necessary, and obligatory, we must ask what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints?
Foucault dreams of a new age of curiosity, a sharpened sense of reality, a readiness to find what surrounds us strange and odd. A lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies of what is important and fundamental. A movement by which one detaches from received values and seeks other rules. The heroic courage of uncertainty. A determination to throw off familiar ways of thought and look at the same things in a different way. Finding a new tone, a new way of looking, a new way of doing. A kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring a book or an idea to life, that would multiply signs of existence. The life of philosophy. A philosophical life. Mature adulthood.
We have to move beyond rejection -- the alternatives of being inside or outside -- we have to be at the frontiers. Instead of postulating necessary limitations, we must form the basis of a possible crossing-over. This will mean, for example, exploring our assumptions about the relationship between sanity and insanity, sickness and health, crime and the law, the role of sexual relations, etc. A way of interrogating ourselves that takes the form of an open series of questions, an indefinite number of inquiries, which may be multiplied and specified as much as we like. This is work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings. Experimental, often involving scintillating leaps of the imagination.
This pursuit is not transcendental or metaphysical. In fact we must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical, intended to produce another society, culture, or vision of the world. Instead, the project outlined here involves personal work and effort that results in actual changes in behavior, in people's real conduct, their way of being. These persons will never need to lament that the world is error, that history is filled with people of no consequence. They will have a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is disappearing. The approach is a philosophical attitude that will give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the as-yet-undefined work of freedom.
August 3, 2011
overall, this book seems only useful as a supplement to a rather complete foucault library. a good deal of the chapters are summary remarks on the lectures delivered at the college de france from 1974 to 1982. these summaries are useful, in that they give the reader a sense of what is covered in the lectures, for more targeted reading. however, they are brief remarks and not really substantial enough to read on their own. there are other essays in here, like 'What Is Enlightenment?' and 'Technologies of the Self" that are part of other edited collections. the interview, 'The Ethics of Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom' is esp. helpful, in that foucault clarifies his thoughts, connecting his early work with his later work. additionally, he answers some criticisms that arise from misreading his work. it's a great interview and very useful to people studying foucault--however, i am not sure that it's so useful that it warrants buying the book...
April 30, 2011
"Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth", A collection of Michel Foucault's writings—all manner from lectures, papers to articles to interviews—on the topic of ethics gathered into one handy anthology. This is one volume of a three-volume set: the others are on "Power" and "Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology". The latter volume I found to be most interesting but the Ethics one is superb in its coverage and depth. There's so much on and by Foucault that these three volumes make a good way to read a variety of his core writings and to reference these writings as needed. The organization and presentation of these book is superb, with sparse yet pleasing graphic design. They have the weighty feel you'd expect to match the author they contain. The editor, Paul Rabinow, did a great job in selecting and contexting these writings, too.
January 2, 2016
How does this book hold up for those that have not studied philosophy, you ask? I'm a science university student with a reasonable enough attention span, so bear that in mind - but I do find that the insight within this book makes it well worth the slog. It's not a light read. The writing sometimes strikes me as unnecessarily academic - but hey, you can pick this book up at any chapter that takes your fancy and you'll be sure to find something quotable. This book has opened my eyes, especially on the topic of the place of prison in society. If you don't think you can make it, fear not - you can always Google some Foucault quotes, which is how most students deal with these subjects anyway... right?
March 30, 2015
The first section contains summaries of the courses Foucault have given in the College de France, in a chronological and thematic order; the second section contains a series of important interviews with Foucault during which he elaborates his thinking and intellectual pursuits (i.e. questions and concerns) rather directly.
January 9, 2012
Think I'll put this aside for now. Read Part I ("The Courses"), and I've read pieces of Part 2 before but would like to take a slower pace in reconsidering essays like "Technology of the Self" and "What is Enlightenment?"
October 23, 2013
I LOVE this two-volume collection, I really do (especially the second one, focusing on aesthetics). But I still prefer the structure of Foucault's full books to these compilations.
to-keep-reference
October 18, 2016Discutido en Imperio Pág.64 y Pág.139-140
March 21, 2023
Interesting but so godamn long
Read
August 13, 2007a collection of short papers -mostly have been alecture- on Foucaudian concepts.
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