A Companion to Foucault comprises a collection of essays from established and emerging scholars that represent the most extensive treatment of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s works currently available. Comprises a comprehensive collection of authors and topics, with both established and emerging scholars represented Includes chapters that survey Foucault’s major works and others that approach his work from a range of thematic angles Engages extensively with Foucault's recently published lecture courses from the Collège de France Contains the first translation of the extensive ‘Chronology’ of Foucault’s life and works written by Foucault’s life-partner Daniel Defert Includes a bibliography of Foucault’s shorter works in English, cross-referenced to the standard French edition Dits et Ecrits

A comprehensive guide to Foucault, from his early work on madness to his history of sexuality.

The central thesis of Foucault’s Critical Ethics is that Foucault’s account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. Tracing the evolution of Foucault’s analysis of power from his early articulations of disciplinary power to his theorizations of biopower and governmentality, Richard A. Lynch shows how Foucault’s ethical project emerged through two interwoven trajectories: analysis of classical practices of the care of the self, and engaged practice in and reflection upon the limits of sexuality and the development of friendship in gay communities. These strands of experience and inquiry allowed Foucault to develop contrasting yet interwoven aspects of his ethics; they also underscored how ethical practice emerges within and from contexts of power relations. The gay community’s response to AIDS and its parallels with the feminist ethics of care serve to illustrate the resources of a Foucauldian ethic—a fundamentally critical attitude, with substantive (but revisable) values and norms grounded in a practice of freedom.

The affinities between Pierre Hadot’s and Michel Foucault’s interpretations of ancient philosophy, as well as their impact, are well-known. However, these interpretations have been criticized in several crucial points. This book provides the first extensive critical assessment of these interpretations. It brings together specialists in ancient philosophy, as well as Hadot and Foucault scholars, in order both to explore criticisms and clarify Hadot’s and Foucault’s accounts. In doing so, it not only offers an overview of the main trends in Philosophy as a Way of Life, but also recasts the debate and opens new paths of inquiry in the field.

This book compares John Searle and Michel Foucault's radically opposed views on truth in order to demonstrate the need for invigorating cross-fertilization between the analytic and Continental philosophical traditions. By pressing beyond familiar clichés about analytic philosophy and postmodernism, a surprising convergence of Searle and Foucault's thought on truth emerge. Prado rebuts the analytic impression of Michel Foucault as a radical relativist and shows that Foucault not only is a realist, but also is much closer than many imagine to John Searle and Donald Davidson, both model analytic thinkers

Derrida and Foucault offers a major contribution to the interpretation of these two highly influential thinkers. By tracing the moments where Derrida and Foucault’s arguments converge but also where they deviate, this book fundamentally recasts our understanding not only of these two philosophers, but of the political more broadly. Organised thematically around questions of epistemology, ethics, and politics, this is the only work to bring Derrida and Foucault’s whole oeuvres into dialogue with one another. This book frames a dialogue not only between their works of the 1960s and 1970s but also their works that deal with political questions around liberalism, capitalism and democracy. This book offers the first substantial critical assessment of Derrida and Foucault’s political work and also situates these crucial thinkers in contemporary debates in political theory.

In Foucault Versus Freud, Jerome C. Wakefield offers a novel analysis of one of the great intellectual clashes of our times, the attack on Sigmund Freud's influential sexual theories by the eminent French philosopher and historian of ideas Michel Foucault. Starting from Foucault's question, "What makes the psychoanalytic theory of incest acceptable to the bourgeois family?", and drawing on Foucault's relatively unexplored published lectures as well as his celebrated History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Wakefield evaluates Foucault's argument that there is a continuity between the two-century medical anti-masturbation crusade and Freud's theory, providing the reader with an accessible introduction to Foucault's conceptual innovations including power/knowledge, the deployment of sexuality, and the use of surveillance and confession as tactics in medicalizing sexuality and reshaping family life. Rather than allowing the argument to stay at the evidentially uncertain level one often finds in Foucault's writings, Wakefield undertakes close readings of both Freud's "seduction-theory" texts and later Oedipal-period texts to test whether Foucault's provocative arguments find support or disconfirmation. Despite identifying weaknesses in Foucault's position, Wakefield argues that a careful look at Freud's sexual theories through Foucault's theoretical lens changes forever the way one sees Freud's theory—and has the potential to help psychoanalysis move forward in a constructive way. This book is written to be understandable for those who are not steeped in philosophy or familiar with Foucault's philosophy, offering a lucid introduction to Foucault's ideas and his clash with Freud that will be of interest to clinicians, students, and scholars alike.

Foucault and Animals is the first collection of its kind to explore the relevance of Michel Foucault’s thought for the question of the animal. Chrulew and Wadiwel bring together essays from emerging and established scholars that illuminate the place of animals and animality within Foucault’s texts, and open up his highly influential range of concepts and methods to different domains of human-animal relations including experimentation, training, zoological gardens, pet-keeping, agriculture, and consumption. Touching on themes such as madness and discourse, power and biopolitics, government and ethics, and sexuality and friendship, the volume takes the fields of Foucault studies and human-animal studies into promising new directions.

As one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Michel Foucault’s reputation today rests on his political philosophy in relation to the contemporary subject in a neo-liberal and globalized society. This book offers insight into the role of the arts in Foucault’s thought as a means to better understanding his contribution to larger debates concerning contemporary existence. Visual culture, literary, film and performance studies have all engaged with Foucauldian theories, but a full examination of Foucault’s significance for aesthetic discourse has been lacking until now. This book argues that Foucault’s particular approach to philosophy as a way of thinking the self through the work of art provides significant grounds for rethinking his impact today. The volume moves across as many disciplinary boundaries as Foucault himself did, demonstrating the value of Foucault’s approach to aesthetic discourse for our understanding of how the arts and humanities reflect upon contemporary existence in a globalized society.

The most comprehensive introduction to the greatest political thinkers written by a team of international experts.