Foucault, Michel

Michel Paul Foucault (1926–1984), social historian, philosopher, psychologist, and political activist, was one of the most original of the post–World War II French social theorists. Though Foucault is commonly considered a post-modern or poststructuralist, he was an independent thinker, whose writings cannot be easily classified. He was, for example, indifferent to the term postmodern. If there is justification for such a label, it is because Foucault's thinking has been fundamental to the reassessment of modernity's most cherished principles. His 15 books and hundreds of essays and interviews contribute significantly to such familiar, if disturbing, trends as the critique of the Subject as a foundation of epistemology and moral philosophy; the transformation of historical method toward a postpositivist method of genealogical research; the early development of ...