5 impressive quotes by Michel Foucault

Almost all of Michel Foucault’s phrases are profound and disconcerting. It is no wonder if we take into account that he was one of the great French philosophers of contemporary times. His thoughts marked a before and after.

Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers (France) in 1926. He became a philosopher in Paris and lived in that city until his death in 1984. Found the main inspiration for his reflections on Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. He also drank avidly from the theory of Sigmund Freud.

Foucault made himself known to the world with his work “Words and Things.” However, other works were very impressive his later ones, such as “Discipline and Punish”, “History of Madness in the Classical Era” and “The history of sexuality.” From his work we have extracted five interesting phrases that we will share with you immediately.

1. One of Michel Foucault’s phrases about knowledge and power

The relationship between knowledge and power is a theme that appears in many phrases by Michel Foucault. This is one of the most emblematic: “The history of the struggles for power, and consequently the real conditions of its exercise and its maintenance, continues to be almost completely hidden. Knowledge does not enter into it: that should not be known”.

What Foucault means with this reflection is that knowledge serves power. The main service it provides is to hide the way in which it is exercised, obtained and sustained. As he indicates: “that should not be known.” That is why we talk about the great figures of power and their works, but little is mentioned about the set of actions, manipulations and, many times, abuses that lie behind this.

2. The education system, according to Foucault

The theme of the educational system appears in several phrases by Michel Foucault. For this French philosopher, it is an area that is closely related to power. That is why he states: “All education system It is a political way of maintaining or modifying the adequacy of discourses, with the knowledge and powers that they imply.”.

Note that he does not talk about education in general, but rather about the educational system. There is a big difference between one and the other. The educational system seeks to subordinate the sphere of speech, knowledge and power to systems of domination.. His role, according to Foucault, is, in one way or another, to “domesticate” the individual so that he serves said system.

3. Morality, a form of power

Foucault denounces morality as another discourse of power that seeks to perpetuate relations of domination. In fact, it could be considered a form of power even more fierce and implacable than others. From a moral point of view, everything that is consistent with what fits its parameters is judged and sanctioned, with rejection or exclusion.

Hence one of Michel Foucault’s phrases says: “You have to be a hero to confront the morality of the time”. From the morality of an era you can destroy an individual. Examples abound in history. They prove that Foucault is right. In fact, many times over time, intolerance against what a society considers “immoral” has been taken to the extreme.

4. Prison and its analogies

For Foucault there is an obvious analogy between areas that seem very dissimilar to each other. In this regard, this impressive philosopher asks an interesting question. He says like this: “Is it any wonder that the prison is similar to factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, all of which are similar to prisons?”

Not only in this question, but in much of his work, Foucault states that There are three areas in which power is more naked than ever: the prison, the hospital and the barracks.. In these three spaces the human being is completely at the mercy of the domination that is exercised over him. However, the same thing is also reproduced in other areas: in the factory and in the classroom. The only difference is that in these last two the manifestation is more subtle.

5. Power and its exercise

As we see, many of Michel Foucault’s phrases seek to denounce the coordinates of contemporary power. These reflections show that domination is now exercised above all from the ideological level., which includes morals, education and values ​​or anti-values. This does not exclude the fact that power is also exercised over the body, not so much as physical punishment, but as ideological orders.

One of Michel Foucault’s phrases summarizes his vision of power: “Power, in short, is exercised rather than possessed.”. By this he means that power is not simply defined by a position or condition. What makes it power is its effective exercise.

Michel Foucault is one of those great thinkers who revolutionized the way we see reality.. His was an incomparable contribution. He managed to capture very subtle logics that are present in everyday situations. Foucault’s philosophy is a discourse of freedom.

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