The 75 best phrases and reflections of Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault, better known simply as Michel Foucault, was born in Poitiers (France) in 1926.
He was a French historian, psychologist, social theorist, and philosopher who, throughout his life, served as a teacher at various French and American universities and was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. His thinking is influenced by great philosophers such as Karl Marx or Friedrich Nietzsche.
Michel Foucault phrases to understand his thinking
Michel Foucault passed away on June 25, 1984, but he left numerous appointments to remember. Then We present you a list with the best phrases, reflections and quotes of this famous character of postmodern philosophy.
1. Knowing is the only space of freedom of being.
Foucault expresses with this thought that knowledge is the way to get freedom.
2. Do not ask me who I am, or ask me to remain the same.
People evolve over the years, we are not static beings. We adapt and change as our life progresses.
3. Man and vanity move the world.
Man moves the world, just like vanity. However, pride and arrogance they move the world through manipulation and personal gain.
4. The most disarmed tenderness, as well as the bloodiest of powers, need confession.
A phrase by Michel Foucault that Compare tenderness to the bloodiest of powers.
5. Language is, as you know, the murmur of everything that is spoken, and it is at the same time that transparent system that makes us understand when we speak; In short, language is both the whole fact of the accumulated speech in history and also the system of language itself.
The language we speak is the result of many years of human communication and allows us to express our thoughts.
6. Madness cannot be found in the wild. Madness does not exist except in a society, it does not exist outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it and the forms of repulsion that exclude or capture it.
Madness is meaningless if there are no values and social norms that we must follow. Everything that is not considered normal in society is considered madness.
7. For the State to function as it does, it is necessary for there to be from man to woman or from adult child very specific domination relations that have their own configuration and their relative autonomy.
Another thought of Foucault on power and submission. This character was always passionate about politics.
8. Discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but rather that for which, and through which one fights, that power that one wants to seize.
Again, another phrase about power and dominance. But this time, the author relates it to language and speech.
9. What is it that makes literature literature? What is it that makes the language that is written there on a book literature? It is that kind of prior ritual that traces its space of consecration in words. Therefore, since the blank page begins to fill in, since the words begin to transcribe on this surface that is still virgin, it is that moment every word is in a way absolutely disappointing in relation to literature, because there is no word that belongs by essence, by right of nature to the literature.
Language is a construction of the human being to be able to communicate. Foucault reflects on literature and written language.
10. Man is an invention whose recent date easily shows the archeology of our thinking.
A phrase that speaks of modern man and our way of thinking.
11. Any education system is a political way of maintaining or modifying the adequacy of discourses, with the knowledge and powers that they imply.
Education is, after all, a form of socialization. Foucault also relates it to politics.
12. True reason is not free from all commitment to madness; on the contrary, he must follow the paths that it points out to him.
Foucault reflecting on reason. He does not understand it without the concept of madness.
13. If genealogy raises, for its part, the question of the soil that has seen us born, of the language we speak or of the laws that govern us, is to highlight the heterogeneous systems, which, under the mask of our self, prohibit us from all identity.
Our thinking and our culture are a reflection of our ancestors and previous generations.
14. Multiple power relations cross, characterize, constitute the social body; and these cannot be dissociated, nor established, nor function without a production, an accumulation, a circulation, a functioning of the discourse
Foucault expresses his idea of power relations, and how these cannot be understood separately.
15. It is ugly to be worthy of punishment, but inglorious to punish
Doing things wrong is not right, but neither is punishing, as Foucault explains.
16. The characteristic of knowing is neither seeing nor demonstrating, but interpreting
Another phrase by Michel Foucault about knowledge. For the author, this manifests itself in the interpretation.
17. Between each point of the social body, between a man and a woman, in a family, between a teacher and his student, between whom he knows and he who does not know, there are relations of power that are not the pure and simple projection of the great power of the sovereign over the individuals; rather, they are the moving and concrete ground on which that power is embedded, the conditions of possibility of its functioning
A reflection that could well be expressed by any author of systemic psychology. Interpersonal relationships are dynamic and changing.
18. Each individual must lead his life in such a way that others can respect and admire it.
Others will only admire and respect those people who really lead the life they want.
19. Prisons, hospitals and schools have similarities because they serve the primary intention of civilization: coercion.
A phrase that tells us about the coalition between human beings. Namely. a pact or union between individuals or social groups.
20. When the confession is not spontaneous or imposed by some inner imperative, it is torn away; it is discovered in the soul or it is torn from the body
A stark reflection on sincerity.
21. I am happy with my life, but not so much with myself
Foucault confessing some of his deepest thoughts.
22. When a judgment cannot be stated in terms of good and bad, it is expressed in terms of normal and abnormal. And when it comes to justifying this last distinction, considerations are made about what is good or bad for the individual. They are expressions of a constitutive dualism of Western consciousness
A reflection on how we usually use dualism when judging other people or situations.
23. You have to be a hero to face the morality of the time
In this life you have to be brave and face situations They are presented without fear. Although sometimes it is complicated.
24. For two decades I have lived in a state of passion with a person; It is something that is beyond love, reason, everything; I can only call it passion
Romantic love invades our lives and can tie us to another person because of the emotions it awakens in us.
25. Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics; but ethics is the reflective form that freedom takes
There is a relationship between ethics and freedom, as expressed by Michel Foucault.
26. As for disciplinary power, it is exercised by making itself invisible; instead he imposes on those to whom he submits a mandatory principle of visibility
Undoubtedly, Michel Foucault was very interested in human relations and power relations. This is another reflection on political hegemonies and how they are blurred with cultural consensus.
27. Actually, there are two kinds of utopias: the socialist proletarian utopias that enjoy the property of not never be realized, and capitalist utopias that, unfortunately, tend to be realized very frequently.
Possibly this reflection has its influence on Marxist thought. Foucault always had a great sympathy for socialist ideology.
28. The history of the struggles for power, and consequently the real conditions of its exercise and its maintenance, remains almost totally hidden. Knowledge does not enter into it: that should not be known.
Power struggles remain hidden from the majority of society, as there are interests to do so.
29. Social practices can lead to engender domains of knowing that not only make new objects appear, concepts and techniques, but also make appear entirely new forms of subjects and subjects of knowledge. The same subject of knowledge has a history.
Social practices have a great impact on our knowledge, thinking and our way of doing things.
30. All modern thought is permeated by the idea of thinking the impossible.
Irrational beliefs and, in many cases, the desire to achieve little possible things are normal in modern individuals.
31. Literature is not the general form of any work of language, nor is it the universal place where the work of language is situated. It is somehow a third term, the vertex of a triangle through which the relationship of language with the work and of the work with language passes. I believe that a relationship of this kind is what is designated by the word literature.
Literature and language are closely related. The word, literature and human thought go hand in hand, and this is how the French philosopher reflects in this abstruse quote.
32. For the State to function as it does, it is necessary that there be from the man to the woman or from the adult to the child very specific domination relations that have their own configuration and their relative autonomy.
The state cannot be understood without well-defined norms for members of society.
33. Truth does not belong to the order of power and instead has an original kinship with freedom: many other traditional themes in philosophy, to which a history The politics of truth should turn around showing that truth is not free by nature, nor is error a slave, but that its entire production is traversed by relations of can. Confession is an example.
A curious reflection of the image that the author has about what freedom is and how power influences it. It again affects the idea of society as a set of protocols and laws established by the hegemonic power of the moment.
34. The old power of death, in which sovereign power was symbolized, is now carefully covered by the administration of bodies and the calculating management of life.
A prayer, expressed by Michel Foucault, that speaks of death and sovereign power.
35. Prison is the only place where power can manifest itself nakedly, in its most excessive dimensions, and justify itself as moral power.
Prison is a place where the freedom of the prisoners disappears. Here it is possible to exercise power and justify it as moral power. An idea related to your panopticon.
36. The moment in which it is perceived that it was according to the economy of power, more effective and more profitable to monitor than to punish. This moment corresponds to the formation, both fast and slow, of a new type of exercise of power in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Another of the thoughts on the power of Michel Foucault, who refers to the evolution of power in modern times.
37. Between marks and words there is no difference of observation and accepted authority, or of verifiable and tradition. Everywhere there is the same game, that of the sign and the similar, and therefore nature and the verb can intertwine infinitely, forming, for those who can read, a great unique text.
Foucault speaks, with this thought, of the interpretation of texts.
38. Crime, with the hidden agents that it seeks, but also with the generalized raking that it authorizes, constitutes a means perpetual surveillance of the population: an apparatus that allows the control, through the criminals themselves, of the entire countryside Social.
In these words it is possible to read the message of this author, who explains how laws are made to control the population.
39. Language is, from one end to another, discourse, thanks to this singular power of a word that makes the system of signs pass towards the being of what is signified.
Words become speech thanks to the meaning we give them.
40. Structuralism is not a new method; it is the awake and restless conscience of modern knowledge.
Michel Foucault giving his opinion on structuralism, a linguistic theory that considers language as a structure or a system of relationships.
41. Things and words are going to separate. The eye will be destined to see and only to see; the ear just to hear. The discourse will of course have the task of saying what it is, but it will only be what it says.
A phrase by Michel Foucault about the word and the speech that invites reflection.
42. The doctrine binds individuals to certain types of enunciation and as a consequence prohibits any other; but it uses, in reciprocity, certain types of enunciation to link individuals among themselves, and thereby differentiate them from the rest.
Although doctrine can serve to bind people, It also refers to the limits to freedom of expression.
43. There is no power relationship without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor of knowing that does not suppose and does not constitute power relations at the same time.
The relationship between knowledge and power is a reciprocal relationship, as Foucault expresses in this sentence.
44. Is it any wonder that the prison resembles factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, all of which resemble prisons?
Foucault exposes a question that undoubtedly leads many people to reflect on prisons.
45. We need strategic maps, combat maps, because we are in permanent war, and peace is, in that sense, the worst of battles, the most sneaky and the meanest.
One of the worst practices that human beings can carry out is war. We should devote all our efforts to living in peace and harmony.
46. All analytical knowledge is, therefore, invincibly linked to a practice, to this strangulation of the relationship between two individuals, in which one listens to the other's language, thus releasing his desire for the object he has lost (making him understand that he has lost it) and freeing him from the ever-repeated neighborhood of death (making him understand that one day will die).
A thought by Michel Foucault about analytical knowledge and how it is linked to practice.
47. The comment conjures up the chance of the speech when taking it into account: it allows saying something else apart from the text itself, but on the condition that it is the same text that is said, and in a certain way, the one that is perform.
Comments can be another version of the text. The comment without the text is meaningless.
48. It is customary to believe that the prison was a kind of depot for criminals, a depot whose drawbacks would have been manifested with the use in such a way that it would be said it was necessary to reform the prisons, make them an instrument of transformation of the individuals.
Prisons should serve to enable people to reform. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
49. In all times, and probably in all cultures, bodily intimacy has been integrated into a system of coercion; but only in ours, and from a relatively recent date, has it been distributed in such a rigorous way between Reason and Unreason, and, very soon, by way of consequence and degradation, between health and disease, between normal and abnormal.
Bodily intimacy has always sparked a great debate between reason and unreason.
50. The important thing is that bodily intimacy has not only been a matter of sensation and pleasure, of law or prohibition, but also of truth and falsehood, that the truth of the union between the bodies has become something essential, useful or dangerous, precious or fearsome; in short, that bodily intimacy has been constituted as a gamble in the game of truth.
Intimate relationships are a great source of sensations, where not only two bodies are undressed. Foucault, beyond his works of sociological and philosophical content, he also thoroughly studied human sexuality.
51. The body interrogated in the torture is both the point of application of the punishment and the place of obtaining the truth. And in the same way that the presumption is jointly and severally an element of investigation and a fragment of guilt, for its part the regulated suffering of torment is both a measure to punish and an act of information.
Another reflection on the truth and its obtaining, and how the torment resulting from the lie is the worst punishment.
52. The signature system reverses the relationship between the visible and the invisible. The resemblance was the invisible form of what, deep down in the world, made things visible; However, for this form to come to light in turn, a visible figure is necessary to lift it out of its profound invisibility.
A sentence that highlights similarity and how it is related to invisibility.
53. Discipline is a principle of control of the production of discourse. She sets his limits for her by playing an identity that takes the form of a permanent updating of the rules.
Discipline is a way of exercising control. Thus, it sets limits and rules and stifles the free will and creativity of human beings.
54. The author is the one who gives the haunting language of fiction its units, its knots of coherence, its insertion into reality.
The author ensures that the reader feels the sensations and emotions in works of fiction.
55. The example was sought not only by raising awareness that the slightest infraction ran the risk of be punished, but by provoking an effect of terror by the spectacle of power falling on the guilty.
In this excerpt it is said that rules that are violated are not only punished, but the idea of breaking them causes fear.
56. Where there is power, there is resistance
Foucault establishes a dialectic between opposing forces.
57. I am not a prophet, my job is to build windows where before there was only wall
There is no revealed truth, but indications that exist in the present
58. Perhaps today the goal is not to discover what we are, but to reject it
This philosopher talks about our troubled relationship with our self-image.
59. The Enlightenment, which discovered freedoms, also invented discipline
New forms of liberation bring with them other control alternatives.
60. Don't ask me who I am and or ask me to always stay the same
People are a constant flow of change.
61. The individual is the product of power
The clashes of forces define where one entity begins and another begins.
62. The language of psychiatry is a monologue of reason on madness
One of Foucault's phrases that criticizes the use of rationality as circular explanation of reality.
63. Unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, the soul is not born from sin and is subject to punishment, but is born from punishment and supervisory mechanisms
Subjectivities appear with the awareness of danger.
64. I think there is no need to know exactly what I am
Foucault rejected essentialisms.
65. There is no glory in punishing
Punishment only serves an instrumental function.
66. What I want to communicate is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous
This philosopher strips value judgments his descriptions of power dynamics.
67. The man is a recent invention, and the date of his disappearance may be close
Knowing ourselves small in history is necessary to relativize our vision of reality.
68. We are entering the age of mandatory objectification
The new ways of life lead us to treat everything as an object available in the market.
69. The game will still be worth it as long as we don't know how it ends
Uncertainty adds meaning to projects.
70. Power and pleasure are not annulled; are pursued and reactivated
Both elements form a symbiosis.
71. Everything is dangerous, nothing is innocent
For Fuocault, reality is full of unpredictable edges.
72. Power, in short, is exercised more than it is possessed
Power is not an object, but a relational dynamic.
73. It is fascinating to what extent people like to judge
Project fears and mistrust It is a constant in life in society.
74. From the point of view of wealth, there is no distinction between need, comfort and pleasure
In good living conditions, well-being forms a unit with comfort.
75. Discourse is not life; their time is not yours
The explanations about what happens are part of a logic different from reality.
