Distinguished for being one of the greatest thinkers of the last century, Michel Foucault has touched on numerous relevant themes throughout his career. From the world of bureaucracies, to prisons and social organizations without forgetting sexuality and self-care.
We then discover his life path and the development of his academic career.
Who was Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (Poitiers, October 15, 1926 – Paris, June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher. It grows together with the middle-class family composed of the two brothers and parents both from generations of surgeons. He received an elite education studying at the prestigious Lycéè Henri-IV in Paris followed by admission to the Ecole Normale Supérieure where he received the philosophy degree.
However, excellence in school does not make his life perfect.
In fact, one lives during the course of adolescence severe depression which often leads him to abuse alcohol and attempt suicide. He begins a path of therapy that helps him to accept and live his homosexuality in a more natural way.
Michel Foucault and the beginning of his career
In 1954 it becomes French teacher in some foreign universities including Uppsala, Hamburg and Warsaw. After 4 years in this profession he devotes himself to writing and so in 1961 he published “History of madness in the classical age” and “Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology”. In the same period he also meets Daniel Defert, the man who will accompany him for the next 25 years of his life. He moves with him to Tunis, where the young man is called for draft, giving up a prestigious position as a university professor in Japan.
In the second half of the 1960s his texts are universally recognized. “The words and things”, from 1966 becomes a real one best seller and on his return to France he was called to head the philosophy department at the University of Vincennes. In the meantime it supports the student movement of ’68 and he founded, together with some young people, the Information Group on Prisons which aims to investigate the conditions of prisons.
The success of Michel Foucault
In 1970 he was awarded the chair of History of Thought Systems at the Collège de France. Here will end his access path as he will carry on this assignment until his death. He is remembered for having held seminars on interesting topics such as the concept of biopolitics with “We must defend society” or “Sovergliare e punire”. This latest work is remembered as one of his most important and influential projects.
They also follow “History of sexuality” and “The will to know” made in 1976. These will then be followed several years later by “The use of pleasures” and “La cura di sè”. Of these dynamics Foucaut states:
“We must understand that with our desires, through our desires, new forms of relationship are created, new forms of love, new forms of creation. Sex is not a fatality; it is the possibility of a creative life “
Two years later he touches on new themes and also tells the Iranian revolution in the Corriere della Sera trying to always maintain an emotional and personal detachment from events.
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