Michel Foucault

Known for

Power/knowledge, Discipline and Punish

Thought

Foucault argued that power in modern societies operates less through open force than through institutions — prisons, hospitals, schools, the sciences — that produce accepted "knowledge" about normal and deviant people, and discipline individuals into policing themselves. He treated power and knowledge as inseparable ("power/knowledge"), meaning what counts as truth in any era is itself shaped by the power relations of that era.

Biography

French philosopher and social theorist whose historical studies of prisons, mental illness and sexuality reshaped how power is understood across the humanities and social sciences.

CSS Philosophy paper topics

Major works

• Discipline and Punish
• Madness and Civilization