future thought.
VI  IN CONCLUSION

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area

European culture since the sixteenth century - one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it. It is not around him and his secrets that knowledge prowled for so long in the darkness. In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the knowledge of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words - in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that profound history of the Same - only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear.

386

THE HUMAN SCIENCES

And that appearance was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the tran­sition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that had long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrange­ments of knowledge. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility -without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises - were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

 

387

books  BY

michel     foucault

"The brilliance of his style, his irony, and his ease of paradox endear Foucault's writing to sophisticated readers."

—Washington Post Book World

THE ORDER OF THINGS

AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES

With vast erudition, Foucault cuts across disciplines and reaches back into the seventeenth century to trace the great rift that separates classical systems of knowledge from their modern counterparts.

"An extraordinary range of information and imagination, and its theses ought to be taken note of and learned from."                         —New Republic

Philosophy/Hiscory/0-679-75335-4

THE BIRTH OF THE CLINIC

AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEDICAL PERCEPTION

In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault shows how our definition of pure science is shaped by social and cultural attitudes, and he sheds new light on the origins of our current notions of health and sickness, life and death.

"Learned [and] rewarding."                 —The Ness York Times Book Review Philosophy/History/0-679-75334-6

MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION

A HISTORY OF INSANITY IN THE AGE OF REASON

What does it mean to be mad? In Madness and Civilization, Foucault examines the archaeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800—from the Middle Ages, when insanity was considered part of everyday life, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat.

"Superb scholarship rendered with artistry."                      —The Nation History/Psychology/0-6 79-72110-X

THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, VOLUME 1

AN INTRODUCTION

The dazzling, iconoclastic exploration of modern sexual history that has become required reading for students of philosophy, psychology, and cultural history.

"A disconcerting but ultimately compelling reversal of accepted ideas."

—Richard Poirier, The New York Times Book Review

Philosophy/0-679-72469-9

THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, VOLUME II

THE USE OF PLEASURE

Foucault's brilliant sequel to The History of Sexuality, Volume I, analyzes the way sexuality was perceived in ancient Greece and discusses why sexual experience became a moral issue in the West.

"Breathtaking throughout...a tour de force."                    —Boston Globe Philosophy/0-679-75122-1

HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, VOLUME III

THE CARE OF THE SELF

The third and final volume of Michel Foucault's widely acclaimed examination of "the experience of sexuality in Western society."

"A monument to the audacity and ambition of modern French scholarship and philosophy. He leaves us in his debt."              —San Francisco Chronicle

History/Psychology/0-394-74115-2

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH

THE BIRTH OF THE PRISON

In this brilliant study, Foucault sweeps aside centuries of sterile debate about prison reform and gives a highly provocative account of how penal institutions and the power to punish became a part of our lives.

"Must be reckoned with by humanists, social scientists and political activists."

—The New York Times Book Review

Philosophy/Criminology/0-394-72767-3