The Passion of Michel FoucaultShortly before his death in 1984, Michel Foucault defended his career as one of the most controversial thinkers of our time. "The philosophical life", he declared, "is the animality of being human, renewed as a challenge, practiced as an exercise - and thrown in the face of others as a scandal". Now, for the first time, here is a book that explores the true challenge - and "scandal" - of Foucault's life and work. Based on extensive new research and a bold reinterpretation of the man and his texts, The Passion of Michel Foucault is a startling look at one of this century's most influential philosophers. It chronicles every stage of Foucault's personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity. Exploring the wider context of his work, it conjures up the heyday of structuralism in Paris and the electrifying chaos of the strikes in May 1968. It recounts Foucault's debates with Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida, and his encounters with Noam Chomsky and Jurgen Habermas. And in revelations as fascinating as they may be shocking to some readers, The Passion of Michel Foucault provides the first detailed account of Foucault's lifelong obsession with death, suicide, drugs, and sadomasochistic eroticism - even under the mounting threat of AIDS in the 1980s. With the subtlety and sure grasp of history, politics, and philosophy that have marked his earlier books, James Miller has written a landmark study sure to provoke debate among readers everywhere. |
From inside the book
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Page 67
... Nietzsche , I had become a stranger to all that . " 2 In the preface he published to Madness and Civilization in 1961 , Foucault summarized his projected lifework in terms that suggest the profundity of Nietzsche's impact on him in ...
... Nietzsche , I had become a stranger to all that . " 2 In the preface he published to Madness and Civilization in 1961 , Foucault summarized his projected lifework in terms that suggest the profundity of Nietzsche's impact on him in ...
Page 72
... Nietzsche's thinking with the hermetic abstractness of Heidegger's style of writing . Far from being an atavism from a remote era of dark superstition , the " Demon , " Foucault suggests , is " something strange and unsettling that ...
... Nietzsche's thinking with the hermetic abstractness of Heidegger's style of writing . Far from being an atavism from a remote era of dark superstition , the " Demon , " Foucault suggests , is " something strange and unsettling that ...
Page 432
... Nietzsche's theory of knowledge , in May 1973 , in Brazil : see the first of four lectures given under the title “ La verité et les formes juridiques . " Here his starting point is the opening sentence of Nietzsche's early essay , “ On ...
... Nietzsche's theory of knowledge , in May 1973 , in Brazil : see the first of four lectures given under the title “ La verité et les formes juridiques . " Here his starting point is the opening sentence of Nietzsche's early essay , “ On ...
Contents
Preface | 5 |
THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR | 13 |
WAITING FOR GODOT | 37 |
Copyright | |
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