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福柯的生死爱欲
我为何活着？当代倍受关注、争议的思想家米歇尔·福柯通过在死亡边缘疯狂试探来回答这个问题。北大高毅教授精修译文，作序推荐
730 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
James Miller
12 books31 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
James Miller is a professor of politics and the chair of liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of Examined Lives, The Passion of Michel Foucault, and Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock & Roll, 1947–1977, among other books. He lives in New York City.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/jamesm...
James Miller is a professor of politics and the chair of liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of Examined Lives, The Passion of Michel Foucault, and Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock & Roll, 1947–1977, among other books. He lives in New York City.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/jamesm...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
December 25, 2025
(2012)
An intellectual biography that is absolutely first-rate..., intelligent, intriguing... for anyone who want to understand not just Foucault (who turns out to be a far more intricate and sympathetic figure than I would have thought), but the whole nature of the postwar postmodernist scene: Nietzschean, Heideggerian, Surrealists...
There is one telling and amusing anecdote that Miller recounts. Habermas spent a short time in the Winter of 1983 at the Collège France, and though the two had many philosophical differences, they had several interesting meetings, one of which in particular Habermas shared with the Miller, and which Foucault himself had written about. Habermas explained how Foucault had told him that he (Foucault) had broken with Phenomenalogy ("that meant Husserl, Sartre, and so on...") via Structuralism and Heidegger; while he, Habermas, had come under the saw of Heidegger and freed himself from this once he realized the political implications of Heidegger's work, "or at least the particular thrust" of it in the early 1930's... But Foucault remembered once finding that one of his professors, who was a great Kantian and very well known in the 30's, had written texts from around 1934 that were "thoroughly Nazi in orientation", and then deciding that it meant nothing..., and that Habermas' critique was thus "one-sided".
A debate we are still conducting....
A thoroughly marvelous book!
An intellectual biography that is absolutely first-rate..., intelligent, intriguing... for anyone who want to understand not just Foucault (who turns out to be a far more intricate and sympathetic figure than I would have thought), but the whole nature of the postwar postmodernist scene: Nietzschean, Heideggerian, Surrealists...
There is one telling and amusing anecdote that Miller recounts. Habermas spent a short time in the Winter of 1983 at the Collège France, and though the two had many philosophical differences, they had several interesting meetings, one of which in particular Habermas shared with the Miller, and which Foucault himself had written about. Habermas explained how Foucault had told him that he (Foucault) had broken with Phenomenalogy ("that meant Husserl, Sartre, and so on...") via Structuralism and Heidegger; while he, Habermas, had come under the saw of Heidegger and freed himself from this once he realized the political implications of Heidegger's work, "or at least the particular thrust" of it in the early 1930's... But Foucault remembered once finding that one of his professors, who was a great Kantian and very well known in the 30's, had written texts from around 1934 that were "thoroughly Nazi in orientation", and then deciding that it meant nothing..., and that Habermas' critique was thus "one-sided".
A debate we are still conducting....
A thoroughly marvelous book!
December 14, 2020
there were several moments reading this where my jaw dropped. among them:
-foucault, having insinuated himself into an underground group of insurrectionary maoists--less for their maoism than for their willingness to engage in street fights with the police--travels to a small town where a group of maoists are demanding the release of a man who is imprisoned for the murder of a young girl, so that a mob of local villagers can torture and murder the man themselves. at this time in his life, foucault is wrapped up with the (confusingly awful) romanticization of cruelty and violence amongst 20th century french philosophers trying to combine nietzsche and marx. he is writing and dreaming about how great it would be to overcome bourgeois morality and enact a bloody populist revolution that would democratize violence through "popular justice." he arrives at the village, inspects the evidence, and concludes that the accused man is guilty of the murder. but he can't bring himself to lend his support to the mob. he has a moment of moral crisis, after which he decides that he is no longer a revolutionary leftist, abandons marxism, and begins warning others of the dangers of falling into "micro-fascist" leftist terrorism.
-like in his earlier debate with chomsky, foucault insists in his debate with habermas that reason is impossible because truth and knowledge are deceptive manifestations of the will to power, and that one should be suspicious of any claims to normative values. habermas points out the obvious--that foucault's critique of normative reason is itself motivated by normative and rational values. foucault admits that he had never considered that. :O
these moments interest me because they indicate a dawning of self-consciousness, and concomitantly, a previous weakness of critical reflection which seems glaringly obvious from the outside and after the fact. the way that miller describes foucault, he's so wrapped up with his desire to be the anti-sartrean militant intellectual that he obstinately refused to entertain any doubts which could be raised against his projects. you can see it in his debate with chomsky--he doesn't so much argue when chomsky raises notions of individualism, freedom, morality, and reason as much as he laugh and sneers at what he sees as chomsky's naivete. but chomsky's and habermas' liberal kantianism demand a response. it's just that foucault was apparently, for much of his life, in no position to give one. miller locates his resistance in a passionate and extimate "desire to be free of oneself," a kind of dionysian death drive which manifested itself in his love of the intense limit-experiences in which his consciousness was ruptured, disintegrated, and transcended through BDSM, LSD, madness, and criminality. in any case, it's not until his later life that he finally realizes that his passionate yearnings are coming from a subjective position which is guided by ethical and aesthetic norms. he begins reading classical liberals, then early christian mystics, then ancient greeks. he begins writing about how to nurture an authentic relation to oneself through care and discipline. it's surprising that it took nearly two decades since the publication of madness and civilization for him to stop evading his self-consciousness and begin to acknowledge himself. but perhaps it seemed necessary, after the excesses of sartre's entirely free and heroic individualist humanism, to go in the opposite direction. imbalances can be fruitful. at the very least they are interesting and ineradicable, synonymous with individuality itself, and the particular truth that an individual life secretes, even, perhaps, unknown to itself for a very long time.
-foucault, having insinuated himself into an underground group of insurrectionary maoists--less for their maoism than for their willingness to engage in street fights with the police--travels to a small town where a group of maoists are demanding the release of a man who is imprisoned for the murder of a young girl, so that a mob of local villagers can torture and murder the man themselves. at this time in his life, foucault is wrapped up with the (confusingly awful) romanticization of cruelty and violence amongst 20th century french philosophers trying to combine nietzsche and marx. he is writing and dreaming about how great it would be to overcome bourgeois morality and enact a bloody populist revolution that would democratize violence through "popular justice." he arrives at the village, inspects the evidence, and concludes that the accused man is guilty of the murder. but he can't bring himself to lend his support to the mob. he has a moment of moral crisis, after which he decides that he is no longer a revolutionary leftist, abandons marxism, and begins warning others of the dangers of falling into "micro-fascist" leftist terrorism.
-like in his earlier debate with chomsky, foucault insists in his debate with habermas that reason is impossible because truth and knowledge are deceptive manifestations of the will to power, and that one should be suspicious of any claims to normative values. habermas points out the obvious--that foucault's critique of normative reason is itself motivated by normative and rational values. foucault admits that he had never considered that. :O
these moments interest me because they indicate a dawning of self-consciousness, and concomitantly, a previous weakness of critical reflection which seems glaringly obvious from the outside and after the fact. the way that miller describes foucault, he's so wrapped up with his desire to be the anti-sartrean militant intellectual that he obstinately refused to entertain any doubts which could be raised against his projects. you can see it in his debate with chomsky--he doesn't so much argue when chomsky raises notions of individualism, freedom, morality, and reason as much as he laugh and sneers at what he sees as chomsky's naivete. but chomsky's and habermas' liberal kantianism demand a response. it's just that foucault was apparently, for much of his life, in no position to give one. miller locates his resistance in a passionate and extimate "desire to be free of oneself," a kind of dionysian death drive which manifested itself in his love of the intense limit-experiences in which his consciousness was ruptured, disintegrated, and transcended through BDSM, LSD, madness, and criminality. in any case, it's not until his later life that he finally realizes that his passionate yearnings are coming from a subjective position which is guided by ethical and aesthetic norms. he begins reading classical liberals, then early christian mystics, then ancient greeks. he begins writing about how to nurture an authentic relation to oneself through care and discipline. it's surprising that it took nearly two decades since the publication of madness and civilization for him to stop evading his self-consciousness and begin to acknowledge himself. but perhaps it seemed necessary, after the excesses of sartre's entirely free and heroic individualist humanism, to go in the opposite direction. imbalances can be fruitful. at the very least they are interesting and ineradicable, synonymous with individuality itself, and the particular truth that an individual life secretes, even, perhaps, unknown to itself for a very long time.
September 4, 2009
Not bad as far as biographies go, though I think ol' Baldy is deserving of a more intellectual-biography-type approach. Not that the Rolling Stone reporter who wrote this is a slouch. The facts of Michel Foucault's life are a lot less interesting than the product he put out.
This focuses largely on his early- and mid-period work rather than his later work which contains traces of liberalism, such as the last two volumes of History of Sexuality and his late lectures at UC-Berkeley. It discusses at length Foucault's place in and reaction to a lot of the historical events of the time, particularly the student riots of 1968 and the death of Big Daddy Walleye, Jean-Paul Sartre. There's a slight tendency to extrapolate familial psychosexual drama based on thin evidence; the writer also intellectualizes Foucault's taste for bathhouses a little more than I think even Foucault probably did. Can't a guy just like getting laid in public? It's not that uncommon, and not every pervert out there is a Diogenes in the off hours.
I've run into a couple Foucault aficionados in my time (hell, you can't throw a stone in or near a graduate institution in America without hitting one), and more than a few have told me that Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things lose their lustre after awhile, while the less straightforward The Use of Pleasure and Care of the Self continue to be a source of insight; they attempt to establish the social underpinnings of selfhood and its origins in the writings of the Greeks (and to a lesser extent Romans). Unfortunately, a good intellectual bio of Foucault will probably never see the light of day, assuming that anyone who spends enough time reading His Prolixity will end up being infected by his prose style.
This focuses largely on his early- and mid-period work rather than his later work which contains traces of liberalism, such as the last two volumes of History of Sexuality and his late lectures at UC-Berkeley. It discusses at length Foucault's place in and reaction to a lot of the historical events of the time, particularly the student riots of 1968 and the death of Big Daddy Walleye, Jean-Paul Sartre. There's a slight tendency to extrapolate familial psychosexual drama based on thin evidence; the writer also intellectualizes Foucault's taste for bathhouses a little more than I think even Foucault probably did. Can't a guy just like getting laid in public? It's not that uncommon, and not every pervert out there is a Diogenes in the off hours.
I've run into a couple Foucault aficionados in my time (hell, you can't throw a stone in or near a graduate institution in America without hitting one), and more than a few have told me that Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things lose their lustre after awhile, while the less straightforward The Use of Pleasure and Care of the Self continue to be a source of insight; they attempt to establish the social underpinnings of selfhood and its origins in the writings of the Greeks (and to a lesser extent Romans). Unfortunately, a good intellectual bio of Foucault will probably never see the light of day, assuming that anyone who spends enough time reading His Prolixity will end up being infected by his prose style.
March 28, 2016
I can still quite vividly recall reading this glorious hagiography of Michel Foucault – O Thine Blessed Paraclete of Self-Mutilating Onanism! – for the first time a few years ago by some lumpen and decidedly sickly-looking devotee of its subject, one Mr Miller. Overall, this volume persisted in my memory by virtue of the intrepid rigor with which its author pursued the twists and turns of the astonishing psychosexual dialectical series to which M. Foucault resorted in a lifelong quest to engorge his desperately flaccid – and, one imagines, frequently injured – penis. (Well, this is not entirely accurate, for in the book we find that, with time, Foucault heroically liberated himself from phallocentricity by sublimating the frustrated longings of his limpid dong into increasingly elaborate rituals of torture.) In this respect, such revelatory and delectable passages as the one on “fisting” (which the author has, for some reason, buried deep in the book’s back end) offer the reader what can most appropriately be described as a series of ‘limit-experiences’ which effectively raise this study to the status of literature in itself. And though I've noticed that there has been vociferous resistance to the exigent thrust of this book, I have little doubt that, given time and steady critical force, it will come to be firmly inserted between such well-rounded classics of the biographical genre as Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and Richard Ellman’s book on Joyce.
There can be no doubt that Miller has provided future generations with a monument of scholarship nonpareil both in its occasional fine-grained miniaturism and in its nearly omniscient grasp of the large-scale consequences of Foucault’s geneologico-archeological researches – consequences that have non-trivially impacted both academic philosophy in strictu senso and, even more impressively, the often intertwined and state-subsidized ideopraxes of Western psychiatry and jurisprudence; nevertheless, it is all but impossible to overemphasize the book’s strictly literary or experiential appeal. Indeed, several times the effect of Miller’s passages left me literally eck-static – that is, beside myself, and what’s more, only very barely suppressing the urge to throw my public library’s copy through an open window! Since I have been accused of hyperbole in the past, allow me to dispel any such suspicions by turning to the text itself. For instance, on page 262, note how prolonged exposure to the hypertextual blast furnace of Miller’s prose transforms even the humblest and most habitual accouterments of our prestigious chair-holder so that they reappear to us with a startling, jewel-like radiance:
"For the dedicated masochist “who likes to be reminded of his status,” there are “leather cockrings with pinpricks inside” – as the penis becomes erect, the prongs cut into its flesh. A similar device, also attached to the cock, is the “very popular English Cage Harness,” a toy made of leather with metal rings, which can be used “as a modest genital torture device” by hanging weights from the rings, thus pulling on the testicles."
One may be forgiven for smacking oneself in the face with wonder: indeed, rings of comparable dignity or such paradoxical weight as these are to be found only in the frail, radiant ellipses painted over the heads of tormented saints. Arguably even more astonishing, in the paragraph immediately following we are provided with a comprehensive overview of the practicably inexhaustible pleasures of “tit torture” – a feat of descriptive-cum-cum-cum-prescriptive intellectual synthesis that I, for one, wouldn’t have thought possible prior to witnessing Miller’s linguistic miracle work. But then, I suppose it is precisely this spontaneous sense of dilated Possibility (a sense inseparable from the libratory pathos animating it) that is the truly decisive thing here. My assumption is that any properly sensitive reader of Miller’s Passion is sure to experience that sublime shock of novelty ex nihilo which attends any truly radical achievement of art, intellect, or anal insertion. Moreover, having returned to this book year after year, I’ve found that this initial, vertigo-inducing “shock” has a tendency, over the course of multiple readings, to shade smoothly into languid stretches of life-affirming reverie whose characteristic symptom may best be read in the periodic appearance of ‘gooseflesh’ which envelops the reader’s body at irregular intervals in a spontaneous rash of nonsensical Braille.
Finally, let us return to this principle of expanded possibility from a more comprehensive vantage point in an attempt to assess the historical-emblematic import of Miller’s Passion. It is evident that Foucault’s authorship (woefully foreshortened by our philosophe’s untimely illness and death) is remarkable and unique for successfully having realized Nietzsche’s dream-genre of the “micro-history” all while (for the most part) situating his researches within a contemporary post-epistemological framework. In the latter case this simply means that, like Heidegger and his one-time teacher, Merleau-Ponty, he granted methodological primacy to the evolution of embodied social practices rather than to the disembodied history of ideas. One may also add that this approach has made it possible for even the least sincere of humanities students – and even the dimmest of journalistic hacks (and similar sectaries of mass coprophagia) – to put in their slovenly and bizarrely self-serious bids to the mantle of Greco-Germanic philosophy: something which they have, through self-election and without further ado, swathed themselves in while nonetheless lacking the sort of dialectical agility or cerebral askesis that might render so outrageous a costume choice in any way believable. Yes, yes, in the acute twilight hour of our pomo pax Americana (whose cross-purposed tenets are Surveillance, false Democracy and the absolute reign of profit-motivated McFreedoms [HAVE IT *OUR WAY!]) Miller provides compelling, if unintentional, proof that Foucault himself contributed in no mean measure to the relentless contemporary leveling of culture; I would aver that such a result was an unintentional byproduct of creating a philosophy neither of nor for the mind (“mind” here being something which only a few unfortunates [like Foucault himself, with his gleaming, tell-tale egg-shaped braincase] are chronically afflicted by: those ridiculous semi-cripples who truly merit the pitiful Linnaean distinction “homo sapiens”), but of the Big Dumb Body.
Finally, I would be falling short in my small work here as a reviewer if I failed to point out to all potential readers that — following the thrust of Mr. Miller’s own logic — this is a book sooner to be shoved up one’s ass than read.(less)
There can be no doubt that Miller has provided future generations with a monument of scholarship nonpareil both in its occasional fine-grained miniaturism and in its nearly omniscient grasp of the large-scale consequences of Foucault’s geneologico-archeological researches – consequences that have non-trivially impacted both academic philosophy in strictu senso and, even more impressively, the often intertwined and state-subsidized ideopraxes of Western psychiatry and jurisprudence; nevertheless, it is all but impossible to overemphasize the book’s strictly literary or experiential appeal. Indeed, several times the effect of Miller’s passages left me literally eck-static – that is, beside myself, and what’s more, only very barely suppressing the urge to throw my public library’s copy through an open window! Since I have been accused of hyperbole in the past, allow me to dispel any such suspicions by turning to the text itself. For instance, on page 262, note how prolonged exposure to the hypertextual blast furnace of Miller’s prose transforms even the humblest and most habitual accouterments of our prestigious chair-holder so that they reappear to us with a startling, jewel-like radiance:
"For the dedicated masochist “who likes to be reminded of his status,” there are “leather cockrings with pinpricks inside” – as the penis becomes erect, the prongs cut into its flesh. A similar device, also attached to the cock, is the “very popular English Cage Harness,” a toy made of leather with metal rings, which can be used “as a modest genital torture device” by hanging weights from the rings, thus pulling on the testicles."
One may be forgiven for smacking oneself in the face with wonder: indeed, rings of comparable dignity or such paradoxical weight as these are to be found only in the frail, radiant ellipses painted over the heads of tormented saints. Arguably even more astonishing, in the paragraph immediately following we are provided with a comprehensive overview of the practicably inexhaustible pleasures of “tit torture” – a feat of descriptive-cum-cum-cum-prescriptive intellectual synthesis that I, for one, wouldn’t have thought possible prior to witnessing Miller’s linguistic miracle work. But then, I suppose it is precisely this spontaneous sense of dilated Possibility (a sense inseparable from the libratory pathos animating it) that is the truly decisive thing here. My assumption is that any properly sensitive reader of Miller’s Passion is sure to experience that sublime shock of novelty ex nihilo which attends any truly radical achievement of art, intellect, or anal insertion. Moreover, having returned to this book year after year, I’ve found that this initial, vertigo-inducing “shock” has a tendency, over the course of multiple readings, to shade smoothly into languid stretches of life-affirming reverie whose characteristic symptom may best be read in the periodic appearance of ‘gooseflesh’ which envelops the reader’s body at irregular intervals in a spontaneous rash of nonsensical Braille.
Finally, let us return to this principle of expanded possibility from a more comprehensive vantage point in an attempt to assess the historical-emblematic import of Miller’s Passion. It is evident that Foucault’s authorship (woefully foreshortened by our philosophe’s untimely illness and death) is remarkable and unique for successfully having realized Nietzsche’s dream-genre of the “micro-history” all while (for the most part) situating his researches within a contemporary post-epistemological framework. In the latter case this simply means that, like Heidegger and his one-time teacher, Merleau-Ponty, he granted methodological primacy to the evolution of embodied social practices rather than to the disembodied history of ideas. One may also add that this approach has made it possible for even the least sincere of humanities students – and even the dimmest of journalistic hacks (and similar sectaries of mass coprophagia) – to put in their slovenly and bizarrely self-serious bids to the mantle of Greco-Germanic philosophy: something which they have, through self-election and without further ado, swathed themselves in while nonetheless lacking the sort of dialectical agility or cerebral askesis that might render so outrageous a costume choice in any way believable. Yes, yes, in the acute twilight hour of our pomo pax Americana (whose cross-purposed tenets are Surveillance, false Democracy and the absolute reign of profit-motivated McFreedoms [HAVE IT *OUR WAY!]) Miller provides compelling, if unintentional, proof that Foucault himself contributed in no mean measure to the relentless contemporary leveling of culture; I would aver that such a result was an unintentional byproduct of creating a philosophy neither of nor for the mind (“mind” here being something which only a few unfortunates [like Foucault himself, with his gleaming, tell-tale egg-shaped braincase] are chronically afflicted by: those ridiculous semi-cripples who truly merit the pitiful Linnaean distinction “homo sapiens”), but of the Big Dumb Body.
Finally, I would be falling short in my small work here as a reviewer if I failed to point out to all potential readers that — following the thrust of Mr. Miller’s own logic — this is a book sooner to be shoved up one’s ass than read.(less)
Read
July 15, 2016I knew I liked this, and then I knew that I would probably not much care to be in a room with Michel Foucault, no matter how much I liked his books. Jim Miller focuses primarily on the relationship of Foucault to all those acronyms that would define him (LSD, BDSM, HIV), as a counterpoint to Sartre as the previous dark lord of French philosophy, and the role of Nietzsche in the development of Foucault's thought. Now, there's not very much of Foucault's thought in and of itself. We get a brief overview of his research program in both The Order of Things and in his later, more genealogy-of-knowledge work, but mostly we get Foucault l'homme. And while it has become trendy to conflate the personal and political, I would hazard the notion that his interest in power structures was directly caused by his enjoyment of a good fisting.
July 13, 2015
This book has provoked passionate denunciation. See this rather amusing review from the New Criterion:
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles....
More surprisingly, perhaps, the occasional gay, left-wing intellectual also had a bone to pick. David Halperin devoted the better part of his book Saint Foucault to attacking this biography, but in essence he seems to be complaining that the biographer, James Miller, is not himself a gay man.
People get highly territorial when it comes to Foucault.
It's a shame, because this is a terrific book. It will inspire you to drop acid, listen to serial music, correspond with prisoners, read philosophy, get spanked, and visit California. Foucault really was obsessed with madness, death, and the farthest limits of sexual experience... What's wrong with that? I personally think it'd be a better world if more academics led adventurous lives and more orgy participants cared about philosophy.
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles....
More surprisingly, perhaps, the occasional gay, left-wing intellectual also had a bone to pick. David Halperin devoted the better part of his book Saint Foucault to attacking this biography, but in essence he seems to be complaining that the biographer, James Miller, is not himself a gay man.
People get highly territorial when it comes to Foucault.
It's a shame, because this is a terrific book. It will inspire you to drop acid, listen to serial music, correspond with prisoners, read philosophy, get spanked, and visit California. Foucault really was obsessed with madness, death, and the farthest limits of sexual experience... What's wrong with that? I personally think it'd be a better world if more academics led adventurous lives and more orgy participants cared about philosophy.
January 5, 2015
James Miller's "The Passion of Michel Foucault" seemed to me more like two books than one in a certain sense. The first book would involve chapters one through seven and if I were to rate this section of the work by itself then I would give it two stars. The author gives all too little information about Foucault in these pages and it is in fact quite difficult in many places to follow any sort of temporal narrative in relation to Foucault's life as one reads these chapters. In these chapters, Miller primarily attempts to tie Foucault's life and work to the lives and work of various other literary, philosophical, artistic, political, scientific, historical, and psychological figures. This is typically done by way of wild speculations about how Foucault viewed the lives and/or work of these other figures. Quotes from Foucault and often these other figures are sometimes provided without enough context to assess whether or not the link that Miller is attempting to make is a compelling or sensible one. The main thesis of these section of the book appears to be Miller's belief that Foucault was obsessed with death and that all of his intellectual and artistic influences and his response to them point in this direction. Because of the incoherent and highly speculative way in which these chapters are written, I did not feel as if I was in a position to intelligently agree or disagree with this thesis.
Chapters eight through eleven, however, are in contrast far easier to follow, compelling to read, and make a far stronger case for the author's thesis. By interviewing those who knew Foucault well but had not necessarily been interviewed before about their relationships with him in other forums, Miller seems to bring to light some interesting and important new information about the life and work of the philosopher. By focusing on Foucault's experiences in the San Francisco gay sadomasochistic community of the 1970s and 1980s, his relationship with the writer Herve Guibert during his last days on earth while Foucault was dying of AIDS, interviews with those who knew Foucault in California during the last two decades of his life, interviews in which Foucault discussed his three volume History of Sexuality, Foucault's experience with LSD in Death Valley and his subsequent reflection on that experience, and Foucault's near death experience after being hit by a car, Miller is able to offer revealing new insights into Foucault's life and work and enough context that the reader can begin to assess whether or not this information logically entails the accuracy of conclusions about Foucault's character which Millers seems to want to draw. While the first part of the book seemed to me as if it was primarily about finding as many odds and ends as possible to tie together in the service of a somewhat specious thesis ("FOUCAULT HAD A DEATH WISH!"), the second part of the book presents credible information in a way that invites the reader to use this information in order to think deeply about the subject matter at hand, ask questions of their own, and maybe draw their own conclusions. I am glad that I stuck with the book during its frustrating first seven chapter in order to get to this part of Miller's work. Had the first seven chapters of the book been condensed into one chapter and more attention been devoted to Foucault's work and life during the 1970s and 1980s then this could have been a truly great work of biography and analysis concerning the life and work of a great philosopher.
Chapters eight through eleven, however, are in contrast far easier to follow, compelling to read, and make a far stronger case for the author's thesis. By interviewing those who knew Foucault well but had not necessarily been interviewed before about their relationships with him in other forums, Miller seems to bring to light some interesting and important new information about the life and work of the philosopher. By focusing on Foucault's experiences in the San Francisco gay sadomasochistic community of the 1970s and 1980s, his relationship with the writer Herve Guibert during his last days on earth while Foucault was dying of AIDS, interviews with those who knew Foucault in California during the last two decades of his life, interviews in which Foucault discussed his three volume History of Sexuality, Foucault's experience with LSD in Death Valley and his subsequent reflection on that experience, and Foucault's near death experience after being hit by a car, Miller is able to offer revealing new insights into Foucault's life and work and enough context that the reader can begin to assess whether or not this information logically entails the accuracy of conclusions about Foucault's character which Millers seems to want to draw. While the first part of the book seemed to me as if it was primarily about finding as many odds and ends as possible to tie together in the service of a somewhat specious thesis ("FOUCAULT HAD A DEATH WISH!"), the second part of the book presents credible information in a way that invites the reader to use this information in order to think deeply about the subject matter at hand, ask questions of their own, and maybe draw their own conclusions. I am glad that I stuck with the book during its frustrating first seven chapter in order to get to this part of Miller's work. Had the first seven chapters of the book been condensed into one chapter and more attention been devoted to Foucault's work and life during the 1970s and 1980s then this could have been a truly great work of biography and analysis concerning the life and work of a great philosopher.
August 11, 2021
I really enjoyed the author's compassionate overview of Foucault's life. Plus, the examination of Foucault' work clarified a lot of my thinking about this important philosopher. I would recommend this biography as informative and even beautiful.
April 13, 2020
Well. I'm a lot more skeptical about Foucault and his theories after reading this. His draw towards death, torture, limit-experiences, sado-masochism and violence was, well, if true (and it seems to match other accounts) disturbing, as are many of his actions and statements. It's not the consensual sado-masochistic sex in San Francisco bath houses that upsets me (although statements he made that suggest he knew he had HIV while continuing to have unprotected sex are worrying, but who knows) it's his lust for violent revolution, his arguments for violence instead of law during said revolution, his arguments that adults should be allowed to have sex with 12-year-olds because of the children's right to autonomy, his hiring of his lover instead of a better-qualified woman because "we don't like old maids" or his argument that being raped is no worse than being punched in the face. I mean, I read and was shocked at but also sort of philosophically moved by those awful descriptions of torture in Discipline and Punish, but this man also taught a whole university course on a murderer who brutally killed his own mother and siblings to "set his father free". There is literally no way I would be able to think the way Foucault thought. And that confuses me since I've read and enjoyed much of his work since I was an undergrad, and I still use his ideas in my own research. Should I? Maybe not. I'm glad I've read this book but not entirely sure what I'll do with my new knowledge about the researcher who is LITERALLY the most cited man in the world.
November 26, 2023
OK, we have to talk about Foucault. Foucault was an infamously elusive man. How do you write a biography about someone like him? It was only late in his life that Foucault really opened up about himself, and even then, only gradually and partially. He was a man of contradictions: a seeker of "limit experiences" and yet a self-described "ascetic," a follower of structuralist anti-humanism and yet an ardent fan of self-experimentation, a follower of inegalitarian thinkers like Heidegger and Nietzsche and yet a champion of progressive and leftist causes (for the most part). He was the consecrated king of the French intellectuals whose books were the Parisians' favourite causes célèbre, and yet he preferred to spend his last years writing about ancient Greece and Roman philosophers (when not writing about neoliberal economists like Gary Becker and Milton Friedman), while spending more and more of his time in Californian gay bathhouses and leather clubs (when not dropping acid in Death Valley to the tune of Karlheinz Stockhausen!).
"Passion of Michel Foucault" is one of the best philosophical biographies ever written. It is fun, engaging, provocative, exciting, and a little bit dangerous - just like Foucault himself! But what makes the book work is that it is written as a detective story: the narrative is as much about the bold conjectures and interpretations of James Miller as it is about the "real" Foucault. Miller is fascinated by what he (mis?)perceives as Foucault's morbid fascination with death as a pleasurable limit experience. He recounts Foucault's experiences with self-mortification, experiments with drugs, homosexuality, artistic escapades, religious experiences (Christianity, Buddhism, and even Islam), harsh discipline, fascination with BDSM, endless philosophical experimentation, and, ultimately, his final struggle with AIDS. Back when the book was originally written (1993), such a shocking exposé of a famous philosopher - even one as scandalous as Foucault - was deemed a bit of a faux pas. But in retrospect, it was precisely the sort of bomb shell that was needed. Indeed, in the spirit of Nietzsche, De Sade, and Artaud - who are some of Foucault's biggest influences - there really could not be a better biography of Foucault than one that dives deep into the seediest secrets of life, without, however, thereby trying to "pathologize" him in order to "normalize" him. It takes the Foucauldian-Nietzschean quest of living dangerously in order to think and act anew at its face value: as the sometimes reckless but often worthwhile arena of death-defying experiments, stunts, and (mis)adventures. The only real misfire of the book is when it tries to impute a conscious "death drive" to Foucault in relation to his experiments in anonymous sex as a precursor to his contracting AIDS in the United States. More likely, Foucault was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I doubt he really wanted to catch a disease; rather, he refused to believe in it until it was too late. But even here, Miller's psychologizing style is rather charming and interesting. It reveals something about Foucault's fascination with danger, violence, death, and limit experiences - even if it also reveals something about the intrepid inquisitor (and the public sentiment) obsessed about the topic.
Aside from the author's brazenness, I am also impressed by his prose. The imagery is supremely picturesque and sumptuous. The text is constructed meticulously to tickle the pleasure centres in the brain of the reader. The text is smartly punctuated with carefully extracted citations from Foucault and other writers that relentlessly illustrate Foucault's influences, obsessions, preoccupations, and aesthetic sensibilities. I cannot imagine that this kind of lyrical, almost phantasmagorical aesthetic style will appeal to everyone - in fact, I know that a lot of people (especially those unfamiliar with continental philosophy) will hate it - but I found it extremely engaging and appropriate to the study of Foucault. The text is broken down into short, bite-sized, easily digestible fragments, so that the book never gets boring. It has that "just one more page" quality to it. Impressively, these segments still manage to cohere into a larger narrative about Foucault's life: its many bits craftily collated into a mad bricolage. His life appears kaleidoscopically vibrant and interesting. This is a strange illusion. After all, we know that he spent most of his life researching in libraries!
James Miller's evocative book succeeds because the reader is left even more impressed by the breadth and depth of Foucault's scholarly contributions than he is titillated by the shocking and scandalous details of his life. It should be clear to any halfwit reader that Foucault was more than just a scandalous bane of the bourgeois world. He was a deep thinker, a philosopher's philosopher, who saw self-experimentation as a serious way to gain access to ways of thinking and doing differently, including the Nietzschean revaluation of all values. Indeed, although I was familiar with him from before, I was left deeply impressed by the range of Foucault's interests, the seriousness of his intellectual endeavours, and the open potential that still remains in his contributions to science and philosophy. Indeed, much like Nietzsche came to define the 20th century even more than he affected the 19th, Foucault might end up defining the 21st century even more than the 20th. Although there are some signs that his direct influence has been waning recently, the resurgence of interest into his Collège de France lectures (especially neoliberalism and care of the self), and the growing recognition of the importance of issues of power and knowledge in society, almost guarantee that future generations will have to tackle with Foucault for a long time to come. Personally, I believe that today's "identity politics" (which some people attribute to Foucault's influence) has very little to with Foucault. In my view, people in various liberation movements and minority practices, concerned with different kinds of emancipation and interested in new ways of unshackling human bodies and minds, should go back to Foucault (and Nietzsche) to ask: "What am I doing today that expands the boundaries of intellectual danger? How can I reconcile the desire for general emancipation with the disciplinary constraints of institutional self-cultivation?" I can recommend Miller's book to anybody interested in good intellectual biographies. And I can recommend Foucault to anybody interested in "not so good" intellectual role models.
PS. People who want to learn more about Foucault should read Miller's book in conjunction with two other fun, weird, and eminently readable biographies of Foucault - Simeon Wade's Foucault in California A True Story—Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death and The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution. The former gives more context to the brief episode of Foucault's LSD trip. The latter provides more context to (late) Foucault's deep interest in neoliberalism, self-care, and anti-Communist left governmentality. It also develops some harsh criticisms of Foucault's turn away from traditional left politics - criticisms that seem, to me, wholly misguided. Indeed, it was precisely Foucault's anti-authoritarianism that makes his philosophy so worthwhile today for the development of new forms of experimental ethos and the pursuit of anti-statist governmentality. His willingness to question everything made him an agile thinker capable of appreciating and unearthing the diverse emancipatory potential in movements as diverse as Marxism, liberalism, anarchism, Nietzscheanism, Greco-Roman ethics, and the bondage scene in San Francisco. And there is nothing "flimsy" about self-cultivation. Indeed, taking the pursuit of pleasure (and novelty) seriously is the central ethical task faced by philosophers of the future (or, as Nietzsche called them, "gay scientists"). We have barely began to explore our bodies and minds. Once we do, we may discover new types of self-care and discipline beneath the endless, unbounded chaos.
"Passion of Michel Foucault" is one of the best philosophical biographies ever written. It is fun, engaging, provocative, exciting, and a little bit dangerous - just like Foucault himself! But what makes the book work is that it is written as a detective story: the narrative is as much about the bold conjectures and interpretations of James Miller as it is about the "real" Foucault. Miller is fascinated by what he (mis?)perceives as Foucault's morbid fascination with death as a pleasurable limit experience. He recounts Foucault's experiences with self-mortification, experiments with drugs, homosexuality, artistic escapades, religious experiences (Christianity, Buddhism, and even Islam), harsh discipline, fascination with BDSM, endless philosophical experimentation, and, ultimately, his final struggle with AIDS. Back when the book was originally written (1993), such a shocking exposé of a famous philosopher - even one as scandalous as Foucault - was deemed a bit of a faux pas. But in retrospect, it was precisely the sort of bomb shell that was needed. Indeed, in the spirit of Nietzsche, De Sade, and Artaud - who are some of Foucault's biggest influences - there really could not be a better biography of Foucault than one that dives deep into the seediest secrets of life, without, however, thereby trying to "pathologize" him in order to "normalize" him. It takes the Foucauldian-Nietzschean quest of living dangerously in order to think and act anew at its face value: as the sometimes reckless but often worthwhile arena of death-defying experiments, stunts, and (mis)adventures. The only real misfire of the book is when it tries to impute a conscious "death drive" to Foucault in relation to his experiments in anonymous sex as a precursor to his contracting AIDS in the United States. More likely, Foucault was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I doubt he really wanted to catch a disease; rather, he refused to believe in it until it was too late. But even here, Miller's psychologizing style is rather charming and interesting. It reveals something about Foucault's fascination with danger, violence, death, and limit experiences - even if it also reveals something about the intrepid inquisitor (and the public sentiment) obsessed about the topic.
Aside from the author's brazenness, I am also impressed by his prose. The imagery is supremely picturesque and sumptuous. The text is constructed meticulously to tickle the pleasure centres in the brain of the reader. The text is smartly punctuated with carefully extracted citations from Foucault and other writers that relentlessly illustrate Foucault's influences, obsessions, preoccupations, and aesthetic sensibilities. I cannot imagine that this kind of lyrical, almost phantasmagorical aesthetic style will appeal to everyone - in fact, I know that a lot of people (especially those unfamiliar with continental philosophy) will hate it - but I found it extremely engaging and appropriate to the study of Foucault. The text is broken down into short, bite-sized, easily digestible fragments, so that the book never gets boring. It has that "just one more page" quality to it. Impressively, these segments still manage to cohere into a larger narrative about Foucault's life: its many bits craftily collated into a mad bricolage. His life appears kaleidoscopically vibrant and interesting. This is a strange illusion. After all, we know that he spent most of his life researching in libraries!
James Miller's evocative book succeeds because the reader is left even more impressed by the breadth and depth of Foucault's scholarly contributions than he is titillated by the shocking and scandalous details of his life. It should be clear to any halfwit reader that Foucault was more than just a scandalous bane of the bourgeois world. He was a deep thinker, a philosopher's philosopher, who saw self-experimentation as a serious way to gain access to ways of thinking and doing differently, including the Nietzschean revaluation of all values. Indeed, although I was familiar with him from before, I was left deeply impressed by the range of Foucault's interests, the seriousness of his intellectual endeavours, and the open potential that still remains in his contributions to science and philosophy. Indeed, much like Nietzsche came to define the 20th century even more than he affected the 19th, Foucault might end up defining the 21st century even more than the 20th. Although there are some signs that his direct influence has been waning recently, the resurgence of interest into his Collège de France lectures (especially neoliberalism and care of the self), and the growing recognition of the importance of issues of power and knowledge in society, almost guarantee that future generations will have to tackle with Foucault for a long time to come. Personally, I believe that today's "identity politics" (which some people attribute to Foucault's influence) has very little to with Foucault. In my view, people in various liberation movements and minority practices, concerned with different kinds of emancipation and interested in new ways of unshackling human bodies and minds, should go back to Foucault (and Nietzsche) to ask: "What am I doing today that expands the boundaries of intellectual danger? How can I reconcile the desire for general emancipation with the disciplinary constraints of institutional self-cultivation?" I can recommend Miller's book to anybody interested in good intellectual biographies. And I can recommend Foucault to anybody interested in "not so good" intellectual role models.
PS. People who want to learn more about Foucault should read Miller's book in conjunction with two other fun, weird, and eminently readable biographies of Foucault - Simeon Wade's Foucault in California A True Story—Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death and The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution. The former gives more context to the brief episode of Foucault's LSD trip. The latter provides more context to (late) Foucault's deep interest in neoliberalism, self-care, and anti-Communist left governmentality. It also develops some harsh criticisms of Foucault's turn away from traditional left politics - criticisms that seem, to me, wholly misguided. Indeed, it was precisely Foucault's anti-authoritarianism that makes his philosophy so worthwhile today for the development of new forms of experimental ethos and the pursuit of anti-statist governmentality. His willingness to question everything made him an agile thinker capable of appreciating and unearthing the diverse emancipatory potential in movements as diverse as Marxism, liberalism, anarchism, Nietzscheanism, Greco-Roman ethics, and the bondage scene in San Francisco. And there is nothing "flimsy" about self-cultivation. Indeed, taking the pursuit of pleasure (and novelty) seriously is the central ethical task faced by philosophers of the future (or, as Nietzsche called them, "gay scientists"). We have barely began to explore our bodies and minds. Once we do, we may discover new types of self-care and discipline beneath the endless, unbounded chaos.
April 8, 2011
I haven't read some of the other standard biographies of Foucault, so I can't really write a comparative review. But I think in as much as I tend to gravitate towards Foucault's later work on ethics, I found Miller's choice to orient his biography around Foucault's work and statements from later in life, and also his death, to be a satisfying choice.
I'm interested in the controversy that this book seemed to stir up, and the strong feelings exhibited by many reviewers towards it. Many of these seem to be about Miller's focus on parts of Foucault's personal life, especially his sex life, and the drawing of any connections between that and his philosophy. This seems to me almost a laughable critique, in that I think asking why a person is led to write about certain things a perfectly legitimate biographical question, and possibly one of the most interesting. I mean, how can we possibly think that what someone chooses to write about is not connected to their personal experience? And for some people, sex may be one of the crucial experiences that influences their intellectual thought. Is it sensationalist? I suppose that depends on whether you think anything discussing a person's sex life is sensationalist.
I also have sympathy for Miller's attempt to overcome his own initial shock over S/M practices, as he comes to understand the possible place they took in Foucault's life, and to make S/M both intelligible and potentially legitimate to a broad public audience. There are plenty of folks who seem to think that he failed in this attempt. But I think I have compassion for someone who will upfront admit their difficulty with a topic, who then tries to lay out the process by which their views have changed, especially if they are doing so to peers and a general public likely to quickly come to moral judgments on the subject at hand. And in this I think the audience and era of the book are also important to remember (published, as it was, in the middle of the ridiculous discourse around Don't Ask Don't Tell. And something like Savage Love is an entirely new phenomenon at this point!)
In general, I like biographies where the author portrays a little of their own struggle to understand their subject, and with biographies of intellectuals, how the engagement with their work changes their own perspective, and in this case, their own understanding of philosophy. And in that way, I found the book quite enjoyable.
I'm interested in the controversy that this book seemed to stir up, and the strong feelings exhibited by many reviewers towards it. Many of these seem to be about Miller's focus on parts of Foucault's personal life, especially his sex life, and the drawing of any connections between that and his philosophy. This seems to me almost a laughable critique, in that I think asking why a person is led to write about certain things a perfectly legitimate biographical question, and possibly one of the most interesting. I mean, how can we possibly think that what someone chooses to write about is not connected to their personal experience? And for some people, sex may be one of the crucial experiences that influences their intellectual thought. Is it sensationalist? I suppose that depends on whether you think anything discussing a person's sex life is sensationalist.
I also have sympathy for Miller's attempt to overcome his own initial shock over S/M practices, as he comes to understand the possible place they took in Foucault's life, and to make S/M both intelligible and potentially legitimate to a broad public audience. There are plenty of folks who seem to think that he failed in this attempt. But I think I have compassion for someone who will upfront admit their difficulty with a topic, who then tries to lay out the process by which their views have changed, especially if they are doing so to peers and a general public likely to quickly come to moral judgments on the subject at hand. And in this I think the audience and era of the book are also important to remember (published, as it was, in the middle of the ridiculous discourse around Don't Ask Don't Tell. And something like Savage Love is an entirely new phenomenon at this point!)
In general, I like biographies where the author portrays a little of their own struggle to understand their subject, and with biographies of intellectuals, how the engagement with their work changes their own perspective, and in this case, their own understanding of philosophy. And in that way, I found the book quite enjoyable.
Read
July 31, 2011I feel profoundly ambivalent about this book. I could not help but think as I read it that Miller's biography was a willfull violation of everything the philosopher stood for and, as Miller's text itself proclaims, saught to escape from his whole life.
Perhaps, as Miller suggests in his final pages, Foucault's philsophical texts form a collective, autobiographical riddle. But should those that admire Foucault not then leave him to the opaque shadows he so cherished? In reducing the thinker to a Brave Man on (as Miller mercillessly recites it) "a great Nietzean quest" does Miller not seek to negate Foucault's attempt to proclaim the Death of Man and the end of a self that could be historicized and indexically "surveyed" by social power?
Having raised all of these objections, I must say that I enjoyed this "standard" narrative immensely. For the character that Miller creates is a fascinating (and beautifully drawn) anti-hero. Miller's discussions of the intellectual content of Foucault's works, his intellectual "journey", are pithy, well-written, and, as far as I can say, accurate.
The book's most original contribution to Foucault studies, its philosophical examination of Foucoult's embracement of S & M, is compelling reading.
What I didn't appreciate, even on the level of conventional biography, was the way Miller let his own liberal humanist politics color the way he reported Foucault's political flirtations and the book's suggestion that in abandoning radicalism for liberalism, Foucault had somehow "saw the light."
One thing that struck me as I read Miller's synopsi of Foucault's books is how much MF's concept of fascism as something grafted into the body of the subject mirrors George Jackson's concept of fascism. The ultimate fascist society, for both thinkers, would have all the trappings of "representational" democracy because authentic, violent rebellion against corporate Power-Knowledge would be so against all that was trained into the body of the populace that any "popular" movement would accept this power over it as a given.
Perhaps, as Miller suggests in his final pages, Foucault's philsophical texts form a collective, autobiographical riddle. But should those that admire Foucault not then leave him to the opaque shadows he so cherished? In reducing the thinker to a Brave Man on (as Miller mercillessly recites it) "a great Nietzean quest" does Miller not seek to negate Foucault's attempt to proclaim the Death of Man and the end of a self that could be historicized and indexically "surveyed" by social power?
Having raised all of these objections, I must say that I enjoyed this "standard" narrative immensely. For the character that Miller creates is a fascinating (and beautifully drawn) anti-hero. Miller's discussions of the intellectual content of Foucault's works, his intellectual "journey", are pithy, well-written, and, as far as I can say, accurate.
The book's most original contribution to Foucault studies, its philosophical examination of Foucoult's embracement of S & M, is compelling reading.
What I didn't appreciate, even on the level of conventional biography, was the way Miller let his own liberal humanist politics color the way he reported Foucault's political flirtations and the book's suggestion that in abandoning radicalism for liberalism, Foucault had somehow "saw the light."
One thing that struck me as I read Miller's synopsi of Foucault's books is how much MF's concept of fascism as something grafted into the body of the subject mirrors George Jackson's concept of fascism. The ultimate fascist society, for both thinkers, would have all the trappings of "representational" democracy because authentic, violent rebellion against corporate Power-Knowledge would be so against all that was trained into the body of the populace that any "popular" movement would accept this power over it as a given.
March 15, 2024
One of the finest biographies I have ever had the pleasure of reading, even more so in the realm of intellectual biography. Miller takes many digressions describing Foucault's philosophical influences and rivals in a masterfully succinct way and is one of the finest secondary philosophy writers I have encountered in this regard.
His description of the life and intellectual development of Foucault himself is of course where this work shines the most. Foucault, ironically very much like his muse Nietzche, is deeply misunderstood by the public at large. Perhaps the only group that misunderstands the key figure of modern humanities/social science more than his detractors are his fans. How this openly Nietzchean philosopher became the patron saint of progressive academics I still do not fully understand, even after reading this 400-page biography of the man. Neither does Miller, who remarks on this phenomenon in his postscript:
"Unfortunately, Foucault’s lifework, as I have come to understand it, is far more unconventional, and far more discomforting than some of his progressive admirers seem ready to admit. Foucault issued a brave and basic challenge to nearly everything that passes for ‘right’ in Western culture.” Understanding Foucault in this regard makes him an infinitely more interesting and compelling character, as this modern-day Nietzche fundamentally altered the perception of truth and "human nature"(a term of course that Foucault famously rejected.)
Particularly good was the section when Foucault drew back from the abyss of the French ultraleft's spiral into violence and terrorism for the sake of it, and his begrudging and tepid embrace of liberalism in his final years, somewhat coinciding with his study of Greek, Roman, and early Chrisitan figures.
His description of the life and intellectual development of Foucault himself is of course where this work shines the most. Foucault, ironically very much like his muse Nietzche, is deeply misunderstood by the public at large. Perhaps the only group that misunderstands the key figure of modern humanities/social science more than his detractors are his fans. How this openly Nietzchean philosopher became the patron saint of progressive academics I still do not fully understand, even after reading this 400-page biography of the man. Neither does Miller, who remarks on this phenomenon in his postscript:
"Unfortunately, Foucault’s lifework, as I have come to understand it, is far more unconventional, and far more discomforting than some of his progressive admirers seem ready to admit. Foucault issued a brave and basic challenge to nearly everything that passes for ‘right’ in Western culture.” Understanding Foucault in this regard makes him an infinitely more interesting and compelling character, as this modern-day Nietzche fundamentally altered the perception of truth and "human nature"(a term of course that Foucault famously rejected.)
Particularly good was the section when Foucault drew back from the abyss of the French ultraleft's spiral into violence and terrorism for the sake of it, and his begrudging and tepid embrace of liberalism in his final years, somewhat coinciding with his study of Greek, Roman, and early Chrisitan figures.
May 5, 2012
Being a neophyte Foucault researcher, a Professor at my university recommended this book as a good frame for viewing the rest of his work. Context is always valuable, but I am starting to feel that for few is this more the case than for Foucault.
A lovingly crafted book, the passion with which Miller views the subject is immediately apparent, and the book certainly doesn't suffer for it in the same way that some academic books do. Whilst the author has taken a particular viewpoint of the life of Foucault, one must not forget that this is always the case in a biography - the only difference is how honest the writer is in how much information he has at his disposal, and how much he feels he has taken license. Miller has done well in this respect, being extensively well read on the subject; my personal feeling is that given the information at his disposal, his interpretation was more than fair.
A wonderful balance of academia and art, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone captivated by Foucault's works. I cannot wait to emerse myself in yet more. Furthermore, I have found my "to read" list rapidly expanding as I discover who really did impact his writing and theoretical leanings - Georges Bataille, Frederick Nietszche and many more have been illuminated for me by this wonderful book, which I see as the beginning, as opposed to the end.
A lovingly crafted book, the passion with which Miller views the subject is immediately apparent, and the book certainly doesn't suffer for it in the same way that some academic books do. Whilst the author has taken a particular viewpoint of the life of Foucault, one must not forget that this is always the case in a biography - the only difference is how honest the writer is in how much information he has at his disposal, and how much he feels he has taken license. Miller has done well in this respect, being extensively well read on the subject; my personal feeling is that given the information at his disposal, his interpretation was more than fair.
A wonderful balance of academia and art, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone captivated by Foucault's works. I cannot wait to emerse myself in yet more. Furthermore, I have found my "to read" list rapidly expanding as I discover who really did impact his writing and theoretical leanings - Georges Bataille, Frederick Nietszche and many more have been illuminated for me by this wonderful book, which I see as the beginning, as opposed to the end.
February 17, 2012
Every semester when finals roll around, I sigh and reach for my Foucault shelf, which is what I deserve for being a grad student studying mental illness and institutional power. But after a few years of cursing his name, I figured it was time to find out who this Foucault guy was, and if his life could shed any insight on his work.
In that regard, James Miller makes a heroic attempt to contextualize the events of Foucault's life with his scholarship. I say heroic, because Foucault was an evasive man who deliberately sought the death of the author in his public statements, and because his texts are legendarily dense. Miller more or less succeeds, finding in Foucault an attempt to fulfill the Nietzschean quest to "become oneself" through the practice of "limit-experiences" in radical politics, physical pleasure/pain, intellectual rigor, and ultimately death.
So why only four stars? Well, first, I only half buy it. I'm not an expert in Foucault scholarship by any means, but somehow it seems a little pat. And second, this is a dense book, and took me several weeks to trudge through. Someone with a lesser interest in Foucault might give up. Somebody with greater knowledge might through the book through a window.
In that regard, James Miller makes a heroic attempt to contextualize the events of Foucault's life with his scholarship. I say heroic, because Foucault was an evasive man who deliberately sought the death of the author in his public statements, and because his texts are legendarily dense. Miller more or less succeeds, finding in Foucault an attempt to fulfill the Nietzschean quest to "become oneself" through the practice of "limit-experiences" in radical politics, physical pleasure/pain, intellectual rigor, and ultimately death.
So why only four stars? Well, first, I only half buy it. I'm not an expert in Foucault scholarship by any means, but somehow it seems a little pat. And second, this is a dense book, and took me several weeks to trudge through. Someone with a lesser interest in Foucault might give up. Somebody with greater knowledge might through the book through a window.
January 11, 2025
The book is a full-scale look at Foucault’s philosophical career. I give the book a high rating, not because of Foucault’s philosophical views, but because of the quality of Miller’s book - the amount of research that went into it and the thoroughness of his effort to probe into all sides of the life and thought of this philosopher.
Throughout the book, Miller pulls out snippets of Foucault's writing to illustrate his points, but these were cryptic and hard to absorb. Foucault’s writing style - and the philosophy it expressed - had a wide appeal according to Miller, which turned Foucault into somewhat of a philosophical celebrity in the 1970s until his death in the 1980s. That being said, it was hard for me to discern what exactly was being said.
Right off, I’d say that Foucault's argument is that culture represses the innermost impulses of people, and then that energy finds other outlets that come out in harmful ways. The finger pointing for blame is toward culture and its power to repress, and not toward the self wanting to express its harmful energies. This seems to be the thrust of Foucault’s writing about criminal systems that
locked up individuals for what is, in essence according to Foucault, culture’s fault.
Unlike Sartre, Foucault did not believe that human nature was benign.* There are troubling aspects to who we are as humans, and unless we find healthy outlets, these repressed energies explode in ways that are harmful to society and ourselves. But like Sartre, and especially, Nietzsche, Foucault argued that we should affirm ourselves, in all of our good and bad impulses, and break free of cultural restraints by embracing healthy vehicles for some of these negative tendencies.
This is where Miller adds apparently new insights into Foucault’s philosophical perspective. In spite of some strong push back from Foucault’s defenders, Miller does this by emphasizing the centrality - maybe even the absolute centrality - of Foucault’s sexuality as a gay man, particularly his attraction to and participation in the sado-machistic lifestyle. The underlying argument Miller makes is that for much of Foucault’s life, he kept his gay lifestyle under wraps except among close friends, suggesting the possibility that this contributed to his notion that society - cultural pressures - engage in guilt-shaming, thus oppressing him at the deepest level. That observation is of course largely true. That Foucault was strongly involved with S-M provides another peak into his philosophical development. Inflicting pain on others within a gay man context, may have led to Foucault’s view of humans in a less, non-Sartrean, savory light. But the S-M pleasure-pain dynamic was also the release of such energies, thereby preventing more dangerous expressions of repressed sexual energy.
This is the focal point of Foucault’s rebellion against oppressive cultural pressures against gay people in general, and against de Sadean sexual practices that many find amoral or disgusting. According to Miller, Foucault put his philosophical spin on the S-M lifestyle, arguing that it was a Nietzschean shoving culture aside in favor of self affirmation. It was a coming out of “Truth,” for oneself and about cultural oppression. What does it matter that pain is involved when both parties consent to the various sexual practices involved? There are lines - implicit rules - in the S-M world, including respecting the pain-victim if S-M practices become too much. (Miller had to push through some of the S-M practices Foucault was drawn to.) But S-M was also more for Foucault. Like an LSD or other drug-induced trip, the S-M pleasure-pain dynamic could reach great heights, so much so that a transcendence of sort was achieved that allowed one to see the world in new ways.
In this account of Foucault, I found it a not-appealing philosophy. I think he reads too much into Nietzsche who, in my view, urged us to escape our cultural chains, thereby allowing our true selves to emerge and flower. Just as the Nazis used Nietzsche to justify violence against others, it could be argued that Foucault used Nietzsche to advance a libertine argument against cultural and government oppression, without giving due attention to the responsibilities of individuals to regulate their own behavior. It’s very likely the case that a good many in the criminal system are there, for example, not because culture didn’t allow for their violent or extreme self-serving impulses to find a suitable outlet. Rather, culture, and government, is needed for at least a modicum of rules and regulations that harm the lives of “law-abiding” citizens.
Early on, Miller states that Foucault was one of the last centuries greatest philosophers based, in part, I suppose, in the wide public attention given to what he was putting forward. In reading Miller’s account of Foucault, though, this seems like an overreach. Foucault touches a real issue - social oppression - but then uses it as a cudgel against any and all responsibility for individuals to regulate their own behavior. I’d also argue, especially, that Foucault (and the way he interprets Nietzsche) is overly sweeping in scope. Foucault takes himself, and his deepest (sexual) energies, and applies such to human nature in general, whereas I’d say that Foucault - “The Passion of Michel Foucault” - is (per Darwinian variation) a (minor) subset of humanity that is not reflective of people in general.
*”[T]he violence of the Dionysian philosopher…is…aimed outward, taking joy in destroying whatever mutilates life, and a malicious delight in translating ‘man back into nature’ - an animal ‘nature’ characterized, among other things, by cruelty: the primordial pleasure to be found in inflicting, and suffering, pain.”
Throughout the book, Miller pulls out snippets of Foucault's writing to illustrate his points, but these were cryptic and hard to absorb. Foucault’s writing style - and the philosophy it expressed - had a wide appeal according to Miller, which turned Foucault into somewhat of a philosophical celebrity in the 1970s until his death in the 1980s. That being said, it was hard for me to discern what exactly was being said.
Right off, I’d say that Foucault's argument is that culture represses the innermost impulses of people, and then that energy finds other outlets that come out in harmful ways. The finger pointing for blame is toward culture and its power to repress, and not toward the self wanting to express its harmful energies. This seems to be the thrust of Foucault’s writing about criminal systems that
locked up individuals for what is, in essence according to Foucault, culture’s fault.
Unlike Sartre, Foucault did not believe that human nature was benign.* There are troubling aspects to who we are as humans, and unless we find healthy outlets, these repressed energies explode in ways that are harmful to society and ourselves. But like Sartre, and especially, Nietzsche, Foucault argued that we should affirm ourselves, in all of our good and bad impulses, and break free of cultural restraints by embracing healthy vehicles for some of these negative tendencies.
This is where Miller adds apparently new insights into Foucault’s philosophical perspective. In spite of some strong push back from Foucault’s defenders, Miller does this by emphasizing the centrality - maybe even the absolute centrality - of Foucault’s sexuality as a gay man, particularly his attraction to and participation in the sado-machistic lifestyle. The underlying argument Miller makes is that for much of Foucault’s life, he kept his gay lifestyle under wraps except among close friends, suggesting the possibility that this contributed to his notion that society - cultural pressures - engage in guilt-shaming, thus oppressing him at the deepest level. That observation is of course largely true. That Foucault was strongly involved with S-M provides another peak into his philosophical development. Inflicting pain on others within a gay man context, may have led to Foucault’s view of humans in a less, non-Sartrean, savory light. But the S-M pleasure-pain dynamic was also the release of such energies, thereby preventing more dangerous expressions of repressed sexual energy.
This is the focal point of Foucault’s rebellion against oppressive cultural pressures against gay people in general, and against de Sadean sexual practices that many find amoral or disgusting. According to Miller, Foucault put his philosophical spin on the S-M lifestyle, arguing that it was a Nietzschean shoving culture aside in favor of self affirmation. It was a coming out of “Truth,” for oneself and about cultural oppression. What does it matter that pain is involved when both parties consent to the various sexual practices involved? There are lines - implicit rules - in the S-M world, including respecting the pain-victim if S-M practices become too much. (Miller had to push through some of the S-M practices Foucault was drawn to.) But S-M was also more for Foucault. Like an LSD or other drug-induced trip, the S-M pleasure-pain dynamic could reach great heights, so much so that a transcendence of sort was achieved that allowed one to see the world in new ways.
In this account of Foucault, I found it a not-appealing philosophy. I think he reads too much into Nietzsche who, in my view, urged us to escape our cultural chains, thereby allowing our true selves to emerge and flower. Just as the Nazis used Nietzsche to justify violence against others, it could be argued that Foucault used Nietzsche to advance a libertine argument against cultural and government oppression, without giving due attention to the responsibilities of individuals to regulate their own behavior. It’s very likely the case that a good many in the criminal system are there, for example, not because culture didn’t allow for their violent or extreme self-serving impulses to find a suitable outlet. Rather, culture, and government, is needed for at least a modicum of rules and regulations that harm the lives of “law-abiding” citizens.
Early on, Miller states that Foucault was one of the last centuries greatest philosophers based, in part, I suppose, in the wide public attention given to what he was putting forward. In reading Miller’s account of Foucault, though, this seems like an overreach. Foucault touches a real issue - social oppression - but then uses it as a cudgel against any and all responsibility for individuals to regulate their own behavior. I’d also argue, especially, that Foucault (and the way he interprets Nietzsche) is overly sweeping in scope. Foucault takes himself, and his deepest (sexual) energies, and applies such to human nature in general, whereas I’d say that Foucault - “The Passion of Michel Foucault” - is (per Darwinian variation) a (minor) subset of humanity that is not reflective of people in general.
*”[T]he violence of the Dionysian philosopher…is…aimed outward, taking joy in destroying whatever mutilates life, and a malicious delight in translating ‘man back into nature’ - an animal ‘nature’ characterized, among other things, by cruelty: the primordial pleasure to be found in inflicting, and suffering, pain.”
November 12, 2007
A very interesting study and biography on one of the great French Historians. Foucault's interest in a subject for instance medical care or prisons - and like a fine knife going through soft butter he digs out certain aspects of that culture and gives it a bit of light.
October 11, 2024
A GRAPHIC, SOMETIMES SHOCKING, YET QUITE ENLIGHTENING BIOGRAPHY
James Miller (born 1947) is Chair of Liberal Studies and Professor of Politics at The New School. He has written other books such as 'Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche,' 'Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1993 book, “This book is not a biography… rather, it is a narrative account of one man’s lifelong struggle to honor Nietzsche’s gnomic injunction, ‘to become what one is.’ … I have approached Foucault’s writing as if it expressed a powerful desire to realize a certain form of life; and his life as if it embodied a sustained and partially successful effort to turn this desire into a reality… I have gathered information about various aspects of Foucault’s life that have been hitherto undocumented and, therefore, largely unexamined…
"[T]he crux of what is most original and challenging about Foucault’s way of thinking … is his unrelenting, deeply ambiguous and profoundly problematic preoccupation with death, which he explored not only in the exoteric form of his writing, but also, and I believe critically, in the esoteric form of sado-masochistic eroticism… To make matters worse, AIDS entered the story… The fact that my book was written … in the shadow of a plague, makes it all too easy to discount the possibility that Foucault, in his radical approach to the body and its pleasures, was in fact a kind of visionary… I have gone ahead, and tried to tell the whole truth, as best I could.”
He notes in the first chapter, “the circumstances of Foucault’s death are still not entirely clear… Exactly when the doctors made their diagnosis is unknown; Foucault’s death came relatively early in the epidemic, before a blood test for the presence of antibodies to the virus was widely available… by the fall of 1983, if not earlier, he had begun to worry that he might have AIDS. Still, it seems that a definite diagnosis was made only belatedly, probably at the end of 1983 or the beginning of 1984… Foucault’s death put [his long-time partner] Daniel Defert in a difficult position… But now, he realized, no one---neither the doctor, nor Foucault, if he knew---had told him the truth. In private… Defert was furious. After all, his longtime lover had perhaps deceived him.” (Pg. 23)
He explains, “But perhaps there was a still deeper and much darker reason for Foucault’s silence… about AIDS. Over the summer of 1983, the philosopher had developed a scratchy dry cough, doubtless raising fears that he might have contracted the disorder… Defert thinks that ‘it is quite possible’ Foucault in these months ‘had a real knowledge’ that he was ‘near death.’ … within the North American gay community… efforts were underway to change sexual behaviors. In the previous months, some of Foucault’s closest friends… had urged him … to watch what he was doing. But Foucault had ignored their entreaties. Keeping a check on himself---particularly when he was in San Francisco---was not his style.” (Pg. 26)
He goes on, “the possibility of what Foucault elsewhere called a ‘suicide-orgy’ exerted an unusual fascination over him… That fall… he returned to the bathhouses of San Francisco. Accepting the new level of risk, he joined again in the orgies of torture… But why was Foucault there? If he already had the virus, as he perhaps suspected, then he might be endangering one of his partners…. [or else] he might be wagering his own life… What exactly Foucault did in San Francisco in the fall of 1983---and why---may never be known… Still, there seems little doubt that Foucault on his last visit to San Francisco was preoccupied by AIDS, and by his own possible death from it… ‘He took AIDS very seriously,’ says Defert. ‘When he went to San Francisco for the last time, he took it as a “limit-experience.”’” (Pg. 28-29)
In the Postscript to the book, Miller reveals, “My research began with a rumor---one that I now believe to be essentially false. One evening in the spring of 1987, an old friend … relayed a shocking piece of gossip: knowing that he was dying of AIDS, Michel Foucault in 1983 had gone to gay bathhouses in America, and deliberately tried to infect other people with the disease.” (Pg. 375)
He continues, “I had become convinced that the rumor … was false. For one thing… all my informants were straight. Furthermore, I had already gathered a great deal of evidence indicating that Foucault himself was never told that he in fact had AIDS. If this was true, then the notion that he had been some kind of ‘AIDS guerrilla,’ intent on killing others, seemed farfetched.” (Pg. 380)
But after interviewing Defert [including his comment about the “limit-experience”], “Given the circumstances in San Francisco in the fall of 1983… to have taken AIDS as a ‘limit-experience’… would have involved engaging in potentially suicidal acts of passion with consenting partners, most of them likely to be infected already… Foucault and these men were wagering their lives together…” (Pg. 381)
This is an excellent, and very informative semi-biography of Foucault. But the “esoteric” sources Miller also consults (e.g., gay S/M periodicals) make this book---while at times shocking, and controversial---“must reading” for anyone who wants to know more about Foucault.
James Miller (born 1947) is Chair of Liberal Studies and Professor of Politics at The New School. He has written other books such as 'Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche,' 'Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1993 book, “This book is not a biography… rather, it is a narrative account of one man’s lifelong struggle to honor Nietzsche’s gnomic injunction, ‘to become what one is.’ … I have approached Foucault’s writing as if it expressed a powerful desire to realize a certain form of life; and his life as if it embodied a sustained and partially successful effort to turn this desire into a reality… I have gathered information about various aspects of Foucault’s life that have been hitherto undocumented and, therefore, largely unexamined…
"[T]he crux of what is most original and challenging about Foucault’s way of thinking … is his unrelenting, deeply ambiguous and profoundly problematic preoccupation with death, which he explored not only in the exoteric form of his writing, but also, and I believe critically, in the esoteric form of sado-masochistic eroticism… To make matters worse, AIDS entered the story… The fact that my book was written … in the shadow of a plague, makes it all too easy to discount the possibility that Foucault, in his radical approach to the body and its pleasures, was in fact a kind of visionary… I have gone ahead, and tried to tell the whole truth, as best I could.”
He notes in the first chapter, “the circumstances of Foucault’s death are still not entirely clear… Exactly when the doctors made their diagnosis is unknown; Foucault’s death came relatively early in the epidemic, before a blood test for the presence of antibodies to the virus was widely available… by the fall of 1983, if not earlier, he had begun to worry that he might have AIDS. Still, it seems that a definite diagnosis was made only belatedly, probably at the end of 1983 or the beginning of 1984… Foucault’s death put [his long-time partner] Daniel Defert in a difficult position… But now, he realized, no one---neither the doctor, nor Foucault, if he knew---had told him the truth. In private… Defert was furious. After all, his longtime lover had perhaps deceived him.” (Pg. 23)
He explains, “But perhaps there was a still deeper and much darker reason for Foucault’s silence… about AIDS. Over the summer of 1983, the philosopher had developed a scratchy dry cough, doubtless raising fears that he might have contracted the disorder… Defert thinks that ‘it is quite possible’ Foucault in these months ‘had a real knowledge’ that he was ‘near death.’ … within the North American gay community… efforts were underway to change sexual behaviors. In the previous months, some of Foucault’s closest friends… had urged him … to watch what he was doing. But Foucault had ignored their entreaties. Keeping a check on himself---particularly when he was in San Francisco---was not his style.” (Pg. 26)
He goes on, “the possibility of what Foucault elsewhere called a ‘suicide-orgy’ exerted an unusual fascination over him… That fall… he returned to the bathhouses of San Francisco. Accepting the new level of risk, he joined again in the orgies of torture… But why was Foucault there? If he already had the virus, as he perhaps suspected, then he might be endangering one of his partners…. [or else] he might be wagering his own life… What exactly Foucault did in San Francisco in the fall of 1983---and why---may never be known… Still, there seems little doubt that Foucault on his last visit to San Francisco was preoccupied by AIDS, and by his own possible death from it… ‘He took AIDS very seriously,’ says Defert. ‘When he went to San Francisco for the last time, he took it as a “limit-experience.”’” (Pg. 28-29)
In the Postscript to the book, Miller reveals, “My research began with a rumor---one that I now believe to be essentially false. One evening in the spring of 1987, an old friend … relayed a shocking piece of gossip: knowing that he was dying of AIDS, Michel Foucault in 1983 had gone to gay bathhouses in America, and deliberately tried to infect other people with the disease.” (Pg. 375)
He continues, “I had become convinced that the rumor … was false. For one thing… all my informants were straight. Furthermore, I had already gathered a great deal of evidence indicating that Foucault himself was never told that he in fact had AIDS. If this was true, then the notion that he had been some kind of ‘AIDS guerrilla,’ intent on killing others, seemed farfetched.” (Pg. 380)
But after interviewing Defert [including his comment about the “limit-experience”], “Given the circumstances in San Francisco in the fall of 1983… to have taken AIDS as a ‘limit-experience’… would have involved engaging in potentially suicidal acts of passion with consenting partners, most of them likely to be infected already… Foucault and these men were wagering their lives together…” (Pg. 381)
This is an excellent, and very informative semi-biography of Foucault. But the “esoteric” sources Miller also consults (e.g., gay S/M periodicals) make this book---while at times shocking, and controversial---“must reading” for anyone who wants to know more about Foucault.
November 24, 2007
If you want to understand Michel Foucault, this biography is the place to start. Read this and THEN read Foucault. It will give you perspective on his philosophy.
June 8, 2018
I detest Foucauldian discourse analysis, but this account of a life, was very well written. Episodes were linked so succinctly to ideas and their movement. Much style and care of self.
March 31, 2025
Book Review: The Passion of Michel Foucault by James Miller
I have been a passive observer of Michel Foucault, primarily via the love that Maggie Nelson, whom I deeply love and revere, has for him throughout all her thoughts and books (especially most recently on her book “On Freedom”).
Over the years, I would visit bookstores, and think I’d get some of his work and finally start reading it - yet flipping through them, I got the sense they were deeply dense and challenging (which this book highlights as well). However, the tides have turned, and I was drawn to this book - which isn’t a biography, more explorations of Foucault’s work (and their inspirations), his peers, and the general landscape that all of it existed.
This book is a version from the year 1995, someone gifted it to a friend back then (with a handwritten note) - amazing to have it on my palms - in 2025. The book is endlessly readable - which is no small feat given how much James has to sift through to make sense of Michel Foucault and all his complexities- thoughts, what he read, etc. James can be at times tentative - especially around Foucault’s deep interest with death as an all encompassing goal of life - yet, for most of the other things - James is deeply curious and endlessly giving in this book to Foucault.
I’ll admit, I still don’t fully understand all that Foucault explored in his book, and unfortunately James doesn’t fully explain them as well as I’d like - I am assuming James hoped the readers already knew what he is talking about, but still, whatever I got - it was inspiring. Michel’s lifelong obsessions with wanting to understand struggles with deep want for power, body politics, queer fantasies and death drive, and many other issues that plagued him - not everything clicks or resonates but what a gift to have had in this world. To have someone like Foucault who wasn’t afraid to lay down his thoughts and inner most obsessions for us all to examine - and as Maggie Nelson said - take what helps, leave the rest.
I’ll definitely explore some of Michel Foucault’s actual work from here onwards. This was a fantastic introduction to Michel Foucault. Loved it.
I have been a passive observer of Michel Foucault, primarily via the love that Maggie Nelson, whom I deeply love and revere, has for him throughout all her thoughts and books (especially most recently on her book “On Freedom”).
Over the years, I would visit bookstores, and think I’d get some of his work and finally start reading it - yet flipping through them, I got the sense they were deeply dense and challenging (which this book highlights as well). However, the tides have turned, and I was drawn to this book - which isn’t a biography, more explorations of Foucault’s work (and their inspirations), his peers, and the general landscape that all of it existed.
This book is a version from the year 1995, someone gifted it to a friend back then (with a handwritten note) - amazing to have it on my palms - in 2025. The book is endlessly readable - which is no small feat given how much James has to sift through to make sense of Michel Foucault and all his complexities- thoughts, what he read, etc. James can be at times tentative - especially around Foucault’s deep interest with death as an all encompassing goal of life - yet, for most of the other things - James is deeply curious and endlessly giving in this book to Foucault.
I’ll admit, I still don’t fully understand all that Foucault explored in his book, and unfortunately James doesn’t fully explain them as well as I’d like - I am assuming James hoped the readers already knew what he is talking about, but still, whatever I got - it was inspiring. Michel’s lifelong obsessions with wanting to understand struggles with deep want for power, body politics, queer fantasies and death drive, and many other issues that plagued him - not everything clicks or resonates but what a gift to have had in this world. To have someone like Foucault who wasn’t afraid to lay down his thoughts and inner most obsessions for us all to examine - and as Maggie Nelson said - take what helps, leave the rest.
I’ll definitely explore some of Michel Foucault’s actual work from here onwards. This was a fantastic introduction to Michel Foucault. Loved it.
July 10, 2020
Please read my complete review here. A sample:
As Miller's use of "totalitarian" suggests, Foucault in this period adopted anti-communism, famously attending a rally for Vietnamese refugees alongside Sartre and championing the proto-neoconservative nouveaux philosophes. Miller could not have known this in 1993, but a document declassified in 2011 reveals that these developments were not lost on the CIA. The Agency veritably gloats, in this 1985 research paper, that "Michel Foucault, France's most profound and influential thinker" had come to the conclusion that "'bloody' consequences…have flowed from the rationalist social theory of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the Revolutionary era." But isn't this what Foucault had been saying all along? How could the scourge of humane mental hospitals and reformist prisons believe in the enlightened state promised by socialism? Wouldn't such a total state just be another normalizing institution? According to Miller, Foucault advocated liberalism, particularly in its Anglo-American variant, because it promised a minimal state that would leave people alone, let us be in our Nietzschean quests to become who we are.Read more...
November 18, 2025
An excellent book, and a good biography. Intellectual history is on the rise again; with someone like Quentin Skinner genuinely transforming the way large figures like Machiavelli are thought of. It is beginning to reclaim its rightful place in many of the most important specialist fields as it deserves. Miller’s biography seems to be one of the classics in Foucault studies, and rightfully so; it is intricately researched for the time. It is a good reference work with simple and learned (yet somewhat outdated modes of interpretation flood it) summaries of Foucault’s major works. There is a very touching and profound sensitivity for Foucault’s aging, from the beginning with the first chapter which is a profound reflection on Foucault’s death, Foucault appears under Millers pen to have been a world worn and wise man. Foucault becomes a genuine philosopher in a very Socratic sense, indeed the Socratic ghost is ever present and beautiful. A very good but outdated book, very valuable.
July 2, 2020
This book is very smart!
It follows the mind of Michael Foucault, the evolution of his ideas as a "great Nietzschean quest". It gives a lot of biographical context behind his most ground-breaking ideas, shining light on Foucault's homosexuality and obsession with S/M practices. I loved that this is not a biography at all, you won't read how baby Michael (actually, Paul-Michael) was shitting his pants in kindergarten or any other similar things without meaning. This shit is about ideas!
Foucault's ideas were made simple and explained in simple terms. Luckily, he managed to cover a lot of topics in his works - it's so easy to pick a favourite one. It is really an intellectual feast! For example, I loved the idea of " Develop your legitimate strangeness". Or now I'm obsessed with "limit-experiences".
So thank you, James. My world was shattered.
It follows the mind of Michael Foucault, the evolution of his ideas as a "great Nietzschean quest". It gives a lot of biographical context behind his most ground-breaking ideas, shining light on Foucault's homosexuality and obsession with S/M practices. I loved that this is not a biography at all, you won't read how baby Michael (actually, Paul-Michael) was shitting his pants in kindergarten or any other similar things without meaning. This shit is about ideas!
Foucault's ideas were made simple and explained in simple terms. Luckily, he managed to cover a lot of topics in his works - it's so easy to pick a favourite one. It is really an intellectual feast! For example, I loved the idea of " Develop your legitimate strangeness". Or now I'm obsessed with "limit-experiences".
So thank you, James. My world was shattered.
November 20, 2021
This is so, so Euro.... so European... almost painfully European, especially the early half of the book with its dizzying array of mid-century Euro intellectuals and their very Continental emissions.
I grabbed a book on Foucault after hearing Thad Russell drop his name here and there... I was considering picking up Madness and Civilization, who knows I still might, but I'd have to realize where I'm going.
It may sadly be the case that I'm years beyond being able to absorb this kind of philosophy. Given events of the last few years I've been digging more into political philosophy and still will.
None of this is to disparage Mr Miller, who clearly has a love of the subject
I grabbed a book on Foucault after hearing Thad Russell drop his name here and there... I was considering picking up Madness and Civilization, who knows I still might, but I'd have to realize where I'm going.
It may sadly be the case that I'm years beyond being able to absorb this kind of philosophy. Given events of the last few years I've been digging more into political philosophy and still will.
None of this is to disparage Mr Miller, who clearly has a love of the subject
September 23, 2022
There are books that are important even if they are flawed.
I am not sure, to be honest, if this book is flawed, but it is surely important.
It brings back the philosopher where it should be, not (only) in a University classroom , but at the center of life.
This seems to have been Foucault’s desire, to make life a central part of a philosophical experience.
The effort of describing the evolution of Foucault’s thought, in its complexity, is remarkable .
I think it invites to reread Foucault’s books, and this is the highest achievement the author could aspire to.
I am not sure, to be honest, if this book is flawed, but it is surely important.
It brings back the philosopher where it should be, not (only) in a University classroom , but at the center of life.
This seems to have been Foucault’s desire, to make life a central part of a philosophical experience.
The effort of describing the evolution of Foucault’s thought, in its complexity, is remarkable .
I think it invites to reread Foucault’s books, and this is the highest achievement the author could aspire to.
January 3, 2026
Great biography—more of an intellectual history of Les Trentes Glorieuses at its best than a typical, conservative 'Life and Death.' And that suits its subject quite well.
Ultimately Foucault, like most of the philosophes of that era, was a kind of professional amateur, given full permission by unprecedented public wealth and splendour to perfume their own farts.
Very cool book.
Ultimately Foucault, like most of the philosophes of that era, was a kind of professional amateur, given full permission by unprecedented public wealth and splendour to perfume their own farts.
Very cool book.
December 15, 2021
This biography of Foucault came out in 1993 and really focuses on his engagement in BDSM in San Francisco's gay community. Or rather it reads Foucault's philosophy through that lens.
That makes the biography seem more sensationalist than it really is. Mostly, Miller is trying to piece together Foucault's disparate projects (prisons, clinics, madness) and his life (politics, sex) into the "philosophical life" that he--and Nietzsche--advocate for. It mostly works though the early 90s-ness of discussions of Foucault being gay may turn off some readers.
That makes the biography seem more sensationalist than it really is. Mostly, Miller is trying to piece together Foucault's disparate projects (prisons, clinics, madness) and his life (politics, sex) into the "philosophical life" that he--and Nietzsche--advocate for. It mostly works though the early 90s-ness of discussions of Foucault being gay may turn off some readers.
June 21, 2022
I really liked this book, it is a great introduction to Michel Foucault
Read
July 1, 2023DNF
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