An Animated Introduction to Michel Foucault, “Philosopher of Power”

Do you still need a work­ing knowl­edge of the ideas of Michel Fou­cault to hold your own on the cock­tail par­ty cir­cuit? Prob­a­bly not, but the ideas them­selves, should you bring them up there, remain as fas­ci­nat­ing as ever. But how, apart from enter­ing (or re-enter­ing) grad school, to get start­ed learn­ing about them? Just look above: Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life has pro­duced a handy eight-minute primer on the life and thought of the con­tro­ver­sial “20th-cen­tu­ry French philoso­pher and his­to­ri­an who spent his career foren­si­cal­ly crit­i­ciz­ing the pow­er of the mod­ern bour­geois cap­i­tal­ist state.”

Per­haps that sounds like a par­o­dy of the activ­i­ty of a French philoso­pher, but if you watch, you’ll find high­light­ed ele­ments of Fou­cault’s grand intel­lec­tu­al project still rel­e­vant to us today. “His goal was noth­ing less than to fig­ure out how pow­er worked,” as de Bot­ton puts it, “and then to change it in the direc­tion of a Marx­ist-anar­chist utopia.” Even if you have no inter­est in Marx­ist-anar­chist utopias, you’ll find much to think about in Fou­cault’s crit­i­cisms, summed up in the video, of insti­tu­tions of pow­er hav­ing to do with med­i­cine, men­tal health, crim­i­nal jus­tice, and sex­u­al­i­ty — under which we all, in some form or anoth­er, still live today.

Once the School of Life has got you briefed on this wealthy altar boy (!) turned wide­ly-polar­iz­ing, sex­u­al­ly avant-garde intel­lec­tu­al, you can get into more depth on Fou­cault right here on Open Cul­ture. We’ve got his UC Berke­ley lec­tures (in Eng­lish) on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” and “The Cul­ture of the Self,;” an inter­view with him long thought lost; a 40-minute doc­u­men­tary on him, and the TIME arti­cle and fanzine that got his name spread­ing around Amer­i­ca. You’ll find that, though Fou­cault him­self passed away more than thir­ty years ago, his obser­va­tions of mod­ern soci­ety still have an impact — and they’ll sure­ly raise an eye­brow or two at the next office par­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

The 1981 TIME Mag­a­zine Pro­file That Intro­duced Michel Fou­cault to Amer­i­ca

Hear Michel Fou­cault Deliv­er His Lec­ture on “Truth and Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty” at UC Berke­ley, In Eng­lish (1980)

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Watch a “Lost Inter­view” With Michel Fou­cault: Miss­ing for 30 Years But Now Recov­ered

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

Alain de Botton’s School of Life Presents Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Hei­deg­ger, The Sto­ics & Epi­cu­rus

Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein & Sartre Explained with Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tions by The School of Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.