Genealogy of Modernity

Foucault’s work is transdisciplinary in nature, ranging across the concerns of the disciplines of history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. In the first decade of the 21st century, Foucault is the author most frequently cited in the humanities in general. In the field of philosophy, this is not so, despite philosophy being the primary discipline in which he was educated, and with which he ultimately identified. This relative neglect is because Foucault’s conception of philosophy, in which the study of truth is inseparable from the study of history, is thoroughly at odds with the prevailing conception of what philosophy is.

Now it is clear that Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is one of the most important thinkers of our time. This edition contains most of Foucault's significant short texts. Written and spoken for twenty years, they concern the main themes of his work - language, authority, subject, the limits of philosophy, dimensions of freedom.