Michel Foucault
Also known as Michel Foucalt, Foucault, Michael Foucault, Mišel Fuko, Paul-Michel Foucault
French philosopher (1926–1984)
AI overview
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher who fundamentally changed how we understand power, knowledge, and human institutions by showing how they work together to shape society in ways we often don't recognize. His ideas matter because they've influenced thinking across multiple fields—from sociology and history to medicine and criminology—by revealing the hidden patterns and assumptions underlying systems we take for granted.
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Person · Open Library
- Born
- 15 October 1926
- Died
- 25 June 1984
- Works
- 614
Top works
- 知識的考掘
- Mikrophysik der Macht
- 임상의학의탄생
- 规训与惩罚
- History of Madness (11) Modern French Philosophy series (Korean edition)
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 929
- Total plays
- 4,371
Works in European collections
1 object attributed to Michel Foucault, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana
Article
Paul-Michel Foucault ( UK: /ˈfuːkoʊ/ FOO-koh, US: /fuːˈkoʊ/ foo-KOH; French: [pɔl miʃɛl fuko]; 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French historian of ideas and philosopher, who was also an author, literary critic, political activist, and teacher. Foucault's theories primarily addressed the relationships between power, knowledge and liberty, and he analyzed how they are used as a form of social control through multiple institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels and sought to critique authority without limits on himself. His thought has influenced academics within a large number of contrasting areas of study, with this especially including those working in anthropology, communication studies, criminology, cultural studies, feminism, literary theory, psychology, and sociology. His efforts against homophobia and racial prejudice as well as against other ideological doctrines have also shaped research into critical theory and Marxism–Leninism alongside other topics.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing, which he called "archaeology".
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1926 births1984 deaths20th-century French anthropologists20th-century French historians20th-century French male writers20th-century French philosophers20th-century French writersAcademic staff of Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-DenisAcademic staff of the Collège de FranceAcademic staff of the University of Lille Nord de FranceAcademic staff of the University of Warsaw