Michel Foucault?

[Honest]

I'm wondering if anyone can summarize the basic philosophy of Foucault?

I know his writings are pretty much interlinked and overlaped and touch many different fields, but any general idea he is famous of and could be found in all of his writings?!

[Uberzensch]

Do a search for Foucault. There was a recent discussion about him that links to a past thread that contains a FANTASTIC discussion of his thought.

[Jozanny]

Honest:

I cannot give you a standard encyclopedia entry on Foucault. I am still studying his thought (in translation) and trying to understand him myself. I also started a thread on him last year, which, as Uber directed you, you can search this forum for it and take a look; but, one thing I think I can say in non-formal terms (I am not a professional and barely passed logic by the skin of my chiny-chin-chin) is that he defined most every social relationship through power knowledge.

For instance: I know you are new to this forum; I know you did not employ search before you asked to have Foucault explained, and I can reason thereby that I have read more of his concerns than you, and so this knowledge, under his thesis, gives me a degree of dominance to your subordinate state. He treated nearly every study he wrote in this manner. The warden and prisoner had a power-knowledge dynamic; the psychiatrist and the mentally ill had a power-knowledge dynamic, the state on the human body, and so on, so forth. Before he died of AIDS (he was one of the earliest Europeans diagnosed) he had something going with the Greeks and sex that I've only gotten second-hand from some TNR contributors. It will probably take the rest of my life span to come close to grasping his movement toward ideology fully.

[Honest]

Do a search for Foucault. There was a recent discussion about him that links to a past thread that contains a FANTASTIC discussion of his thought.

I will, thank you.

[Honest]

Honest:

I cannot give you a standard encyclopedia entry on Foucault. I am still studying his thought (in translation) and trying to understand him myself. I also started a thread on him last year, which, as Uber directed you, you can search this forum for it and take a look; but, one thing I think I can say in non-formal terms (I am not a professional and barely passed logic by the skin of my chiny-chin-chin) is that he defined most every social relationship through power knowledge.

For instance: I know you are new to this forum; I know you did not employ search before you asked to have Foucault explained, and I can reason thereby that I have read more of his concerns than you, and so this knowledge, under his thesis, gives me a degree of dominance to your subordinate state. He treated nearly every study he wrote in this manner. The warden and prisoner had a power-knowledge dynamic; the psychiatrist and the mentally ill had a power-knowledge dynamic, the state on the human body, and so on, so forth. Before he died of AIDS (he was one of the earliest Europeans diagnosed) he had something going with the Greeks and sex that I've only gotten second-hand from some TNR contributors. It will probably take the rest of my life span to come close to grasping his movement toward ideology fully.


Wow! I understand what you're saying. Can I say in brief: The knowledge is a power, therefore, anyone has it, can have power over the other? If so, where is power-knowledge relation in "the warden and prisoner"? Does the physical power consider to be sort of power-knowledge?