Michel Foucault: Power, knowledge, and the ‘critical ontology of ourselves’

The general aim of this paper is to introduce the ideas of one of the most important post-modern philosophers, Michel Foucault. The relevance of his thought has been pointed out by many authors. In the first part, the interpretation that Foucault makes of Kant’s concept of Enlightenment will be used as a point of departure, and as a framework to understand what philosophy means for Foucault. Foucault’s project, ‘the critial ontology of ourselves’, will then be discussed, leading towards Foucault’s general method of analysis, what Dreyfus and Rabinow call ‘Interpretive Analytics’, and its main components: archaeology and genealogy. In this context, the concept of ‘space of experience’ will be introduced, as the three-dimensional framework which provides the necessary tools for the analysis of any historical experience. Next, Foucault’s relationship between power and knowledge will be discussed. Finally, some conclusions will be presented in terms of the practical implications of Foucault’s work.