303
The 19th century saw a revolution in
anatomy, as shown in this illustration
from a medical text book. Foucault
believes that our modern concept of
man dates from this period.See also: Immanuel Kant 164–71 ■ Friedrich Nietzsche 214–21 ■ Martin Heidegger 252–55 ■
Maurice Merleau-Ponty 274–75 ■ Daniel Dennett 339
CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
need is a “history of ideas” to trace
their genealogy. For Foucault, it is
simply wrong to assume that our
current ideas can be usefully
applied to any previous point in
history. The ways in which we use
the words “man”, “mankind”, and
“human nature”, Foucault believes,
are examples of this.
The roots of this idea lie firmly
in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant,
who turned philosophy on its head
by abandoning the old question
“Why is the world the way it is?”
and asking “Why do we see the
world the way we do?” We take our
idea of what it is to be human as
fundamental and unchanging, but
it is in fact only a recent invention.
Foucault locates the beginning of
our particular idea of “man” at the
beginning of the 19th century,
around the time of the birth of the
natural sciences. This idea of “man”
is, Foucault considers, paradoxical:
we see ourselves both as objects in
the world, and so as objects of study,
and as subjects who experience and
study the world—strange creatures
that look in two directions at once.The human self-image
Foucault suggests that not only is
this idea of “man” an invention of
recent date, it is also an invention
that may be close to coming to itsMichel Foucault Foucault was born in Poitiers,
France, in 1926 to a family of
doctors. After World War II, he
entered the École Normale
Supérieure, where he studied
philosophy under Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. In 1954 he spent
time in Uppsala, Sweden, and
then lived for a time both in
Poland and Germany, only
returning to France in 1960.
He received a PhD in 1961 for
his study A History of Madness,
which argued that the distinction
between madness and sanity is
not real, but a social construct.
After the month-long studentstrikes in Paris of 1968, he
became involved in political
activism, and continued to
work both as a lecturer and an
activist for the rest of his life.Key works1961 A History of Madness
1963 The Birth of the Clinic:
An Archaeology of Medical
Perception
1966 The Order of Things:
An Archaeology of the
Human Sciences
1975 Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the PrisonMan is neither the oldest nor
the most constant problem
that has been posed for
human knowledge.
Michel Foucaultend—one that may soon be erased
“like a face drawn in the sand at
the edge of the sea.”
Is Foucault right? In a time of
rapid advances in computing and
human-machine interfaces, and
when philosophers informed by
cognitive science, such as Daniel
Dennett and Dan Wegner, are
questioning the very nature of
subjectivity, it is hard not to feel
that, even if the face in the sand is
not about to be erased, the tide is
lapping alarmingly at its edges. ■