Re: Foucault and Heidegger

I've posted most of this before at some point:-

On Foucault and Heidegger, one of the principal sources is Hubert Dreyfus &
Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (though
most of the references to Heidegger were removed just before
publication, hence Foucault's rather puzzling endorsement).

Dreyfus wrote an article on Being & Power in Timothy Armstrong (ed.) Michel
Foucault Philosopher.

See also Rabinow in the Cambridge Companion (ed Gutting) and his
introduction to Essential Works I (which show why Dreyfus & Rabinow now
disagree).

Also useful is Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity; Charles Scott, A
Question of
Ethics; Neil Levy, `The Prehistory of Archaeology: Foucault and Heidegger'
_The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology_ May 1996; Michael
Schwartz, "Critical Reproblemization: Foucault and the Task of Modern
Philosophy", _Radical Philosophy_, No 91, Sept/Oct 1998.

Heidegger wrote an enormous amount, and some of it shows the influence he
had on Foucault. See, inter alia, Being and Time (1927), Nietzsche (1961),
and the collection Basic Writings.

I don't agree with Chiang's suggestion that "Foucault sometimes did fall
into a Heideggerian circle, but he always made a conscious effort to break
away". It's much more complicated than that, and is tied up in the debates
about the role of Heidegger in French thought. Heidegger's Letter on
Humanism (1947) allowed Foucault, Althusser, etc. etc. to break from the
humanist, existentialist interpretation of Heidegger by Sartre, freeing them
up to appropriate Heidegger in a number of ways.

Heidegger is central to understanding Foucault.

Best wishes

Stuart


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