Foucault

This book is an introduction to Foucault written by Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, for Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions series. The Chinese edition, translated by Wang Yuping and published by Yilin Press, belongs to the Oxford Very Short Introductions series, and Liu Beicheng, a Foucault scholar at Tsinghua University, contributes a preface to the new edition. Foucault is one of the most influential French thinkers of the late twentieth century; his work spans aesthetics, literature, politics, history, and philosophy. From Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things to Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, his inquiries into knowledge, power, and subjectivity profoundly changed how the modern humanities and social sciences frame their questions. Yet Foucault's writing is known for dense terminology and leaps of thought, and newcomers often struggle to find a way in. Rather than summarizing each book in turn, Gutting traces the problematic throughlines of Foucault's thought: how he moved from literary experimentation to archaeological investigations of knowledge, and then turned to genealogy, directing his attention to concrete domains such as the prison, the clinic, and sexuality. Identity, knowledge, and power in modern society are the threads running through the book. The author also presents Foucault's self-concealing stance as a philosopher in a mask, explaining why his thought resists assignment to any single school. Concise and bilingual, with an index and the original English text, the book serves as an entry point and roadmap for systematic reading of Foucault's own works.