Dear Chetan,
Canguilhem was integral to Foucault's work on madness. For one, he sponsored the presentation of "Histoire de la folie"for the degree of /Doctorat/. But more than that he was both a friend and a mentor to Foucault.
I suspect if you poke around with Google you will find much more on this relationship, but the best place to start is in a book edited by Armold Davidson called /"Foucault and his interlocutors"/ (check out the Amazon page at: http://www.amazon.com/Foucault-His-Interlocutors-Arnold-Davidson/dp/0226137147 , sadly not available through Google Books).
Davidson dedicates the first part of the book precisely to the relationship between both authors, centred around the study of madness. This includes a useful introductory chapter, briefly contextualizing their relationship (institutional and intellectual) by Davidson himself (pp. 21-23), followed by a /"report from Mr. Canguilhem on the manuscript filed by Mr. Michel Foucault (...) in order to obtain permission to print his principal thesis for the doctor of letters"/ (pp. 23-28). This is followed by two other texts by Canguilhem on /Histoire de la Folie/, both assessing the relevance of the text very positively. If you cannot easily access the book itself, you can find some extracts of these texts here: http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v21/v21n2.canguilhem.html
It may also be interesting for you to read Foucault's introduction to the 1978 English translation/edition of Canguilhem's doctoral thesis "The normal and the pathological", and/or Canguilhem's piece in the /Cambridge companion to Foucault/ (pp. 75-94, 2nd ed) entitled: "The death of man, or exhaustion of the cogito?"
Other sources you might look at that discuss the relation between Canguilhem's and Foucault's work are:
A short article by Arthur Goldhammer on Canguilhem's engagement of the French epistemological tradition, online at http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~agoldham/articles/Canguilhem.htm
Gary Gutting's treatment in his /Michel Foucault's archaeology of scientific reason /(the first chapter is dedicated to discussion of Foucault's work in light of Bachelard and Canguilhem). You can find it on Google Books, I guess you'll be most interested in pp. 32-54.
Also, you just need to use the index at the end of the /Cambridge companion/ to find a wealth of references to Canguilhem's influence on Foucault's ideas.
Hope this helps
Daniel Pineu
Chetan Vemuri wrote:
Canguilhem was integral to Foucault's work on madness. For one, he sponsored the presentation of "Histoire de la folie"for the degree of /Doctorat/. But more than that he was both a friend and a mentor to Foucault.
I suspect if you poke around with Google you will find much more on this relationship, but the best place to start is in a book edited by Armold Davidson called /"Foucault and his interlocutors"/ (check out the Amazon page at: http://www.amazon.com/Foucault-His-Interlocutors-Arnold-Davidson/dp/0226137147 , sadly not available through Google Books).
Davidson dedicates the first part of the book precisely to the relationship between both authors, centred around the study of madness. This includes a useful introductory chapter, briefly contextualizing their relationship (institutional and intellectual) by Davidson himself (pp. 21-23), followed by a /"report from Mr. Canguilhem on the manuscript filed by Mr. Michel Foucault (...) in order to obtain permission to print his principal thesis for the doctor of letters"/ (pp. 23-28). This is followed by two other texts by Canguilhem on /Histoire de la Folie/, both assessing the relevance of the text very positively. If you cannot easily access the book itself, you can find some extracts of these texts here: http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v21/v21n2.canguilhem.html
It may also be interesting for you to read Foucault's introduction to the 1978 English translation/edition of Canguilhem's doctoral thesis "The normal and the pathological", and/or Canguilhem's piece in the /Cambridge companion to Foucault/ (pp. 75-94, 2nd ed) entitled: "The death of man, or exhaustion of the cogito?"
Other sources you might look at that discuss the relation between Canguilhem's and Foucault's work are:
A short article by Arthur Goldhammer on Canguilhem's engagement of the French epistemological tradition, online at http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~agoldham/articles/Canguilhem.htm
Gary Gutting's treatment in his /Michel Foucault's archaeology of scientific reason /(the first chapter is dedicated to discussion of Foucault's work in light of Bachelard and Canguilhem). You can find it on Google Books, I guess you'll be most interested in pp. 32-54.
Also, you just need to use the index at the end of the /Cambridge companion/ to find a wealth of references to Canguilhem's influence on Foucault's ideas.
Hope this helps
Daniel Pineu
Chetan Vemuri wrote:
Hey,
does anybody here know what Canguilhem's approach to the "History of
Madness" was? Did he speak approvingly of it? Or was critical of it?