Michel Foucault was a French social scientist, philosopher, and historian. He studied at Ecole Normale Superieure and was inspired by Marxism, existentialism, and the work of Georges Canguilhem. Foucault became a professor at College de France and was politically active, advocating for marginalized groups. His work focused on the connection between knowledge and power, warning that social control by authorities often masquerades as scientific knowledge. His influential books include Madness and Civilization, History of Sexuality, and Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison.
Michel Foucault was an original and influential thinker born on June 15, 1926 in Poitiers, France. He was known as a social scientist, philosopher and historian.
Like many French philosophers, Foucault’s academic training was at the Ecole Normale Superieure, which he entered at the age of 20 in 1946. Foucault was impressed by Marxism and existentialism during this period, having been exposed to the philosophy of both Hegel that of Marx, but was later to change his position on both of these philosophical approaches.
Foucault, in keeping with the French tradition, studied the history and philosophy of science and the work of Georges Canguilhem greatly inspired him. Through Canguilhem, Foucault became aware of and interested in the incongruities of scientific history. His work was also inspired by the structural linguistic approach of Ferdinand de Saussure, as well as the psychological studies of Jacques Lacan and the proto-structuralist examination of comparative religion presented by Georges Dumezil.
A brilliant scholar, Foucault worked at various French universities before being elected, at the age of 43, to the position of professor of the history of systems thought at the prestigious College de France. Foucault was politically active and became a strong voice for marginalized groups such as the “mentally ill”, which was a term he despised, homosexuals and prisoners. He co-founded the Groupe d’information sur les prisons and has continued to lecture at universities around the world. A year before his death in Paris from AIDS in 1984, Foucault had decided to accept a one-year teaching position at the University of California at Berkeley.
Although the postmodernist Foucault categorically separated himself from the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, both of these Frenchmen despised the power of the bourgeoisie and championed the political causes of marginalized bourgeois groups.
Madness and Civilization, History of Sexuality, and Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison are considered by many to be among Foucault’s most influential books. He combined philosophy with historical retrospective.
Knowledge, power and the connection between them form the crux of all of Foucault’s work. Foucault believed that mind control was more powerful than physical punishment in establishing social control. Foucault pointed out that social control by authorities often masquerades as the solid reasoning of scientific knowledge.
Foucault’s work warns that what we may consider knowledge may instead be nothing more than powerful concepts perpetuated by authorities, and those concepts could change our understanding of ourselves and our world.
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