The influences upon Foucault

pp. 21-53

in: James D. Marshall, Michel Foucault, Berlin, Springer, 1996

Abstract

In this first main chapter we will look at some of the background influences upon Michel Foucault's development as a thinker. This introduction will be divided into two main sections — which will be entitled respectively "philosophers of the enlightenment" and the "voices of the others". These sections deal with contemporary philosophical positions when Foucault began his advanced studies — essentially they were Enlightenment thinkers — and the thinkers who took him out of these more traditional positions. Of course they overlap for, as Foucault admitted, it was reading the others, for example, Bataille and Blanchot, against Sartre that permitted him to reject Sartre.