Foucault’s Philosophy: Archaeology with Genealogy

Doing philosophy allows for many possibilities, and philosophers differ from one another. For Foucault, it is a critique and reflection on what we think, what we do, and what we are today—a fundamental questioning: What are we? and What is our thought?

Starting from History of Madness, passing through The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge to The Use of Pleasure, Foucault lays out sinuous thinking paths and lines of problem. These run through the histories of madness, sexuality, the prison, power relations, and technologies of the self. Paradoxical propositions—the archaeology of silence, the loquacity of sexuality, the thought of the unthought, the birth and death of man—trigger the transposition of thought and the transformation of problems. Each of his own books or essays can be a case study of Foucault’s philosophy; no single work can define Foucault on its own, yet each reflects a facet of his fecund thought, flashing a radical appearance of writing and transgression.

Foucault regards philosophy as a diagnosis of the present, aiming to inaugurate a future of difference, and realizing the essence of philosophy through the adventure of thought and transgression of the self. This book treats archaeology and genealogy as the singular methods of Foucault’s philosophy; by analyzing Foucault's works, it attempts to construct the reflexivity and criticality of Foucault’s thought, as well as his insights regarding modernity.