Michel Foucault: A philosopher for all seasons?

Abstract

On the 25 June 1984, at the age of 58, Michel Foucault, philosopher, historian, social critic and Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the College de France, died after a serious illness. Like Jean Paul Sartre, who he outlived by such a short time despite his relative youth, Foucault fitted somewhat uneasily into the confines of French philosophy. Throughout his career he practised, like Sartre before him, an ironic detachment from a philosophical culture that manages simultaneously to be intensely esoteric and at the same time selfconsciously motivated by its public currency and political efficacy. Despite his life long attempt to distance himself from professional philosophy, he has been recognised as one of France’s leading social philosophers. In this paper I examine Foucault’s complex relation to philosophy. ‘Nothing is rarer among philosophers’, Nietzsche reminds us, ‘than intellectual integrity: a condition of their entire occupation is that only certain truths are admitted; they know what they have to prove; that they are one over these ‘truths’ is virtually their means of recognising one another as philosophers’.’ Towards the end of his life Foucault makes the plea that his historical work be adjuged to have constituted a ‘philosophical exercise’.’ Do we recognise Foucault as a philosopher?