The documentary, Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil, explores the philosopher and his complex and controversial life through interviews with Foucault's ex-colleagues. The film itself, which seems a bit bizarre to the modern viewer due to too accurate cutting and other outdated techniques, with its color scheme vaguely resembles the acidic cover of Wade Simeon's book "Foucault in Death Valley" by Heyday publishing house.
This biopic follows Michel Foucault, whose work focused on insanity, sexual deviance, drug use, and other behaviors with a touch of marginality and extreme. These tools were in the arsenal of Foucault, with which he studied how culture shapes and limits patterns of "normal" behavior. And what is normal in the modern world in general? In the end, he wondered if civilization really made people more civilized and if technical progress meant we were getting better. At the time of his death in 1984 from AIDS, Foucault was one of the most famous intellectuals in the world, and his lifelong criticism of power continues to influence modern perceptions of inequality, sexuality, and human rights.
This biopic follows Michel Foucault, whose work focused on insanity, sexual deviance, drug use, and other behaviors with a touch of marginality and extreme. These tools were in the arsenal of Foucault, with which he studied how culture shapes and limits patterns of "normal" behavior. And what is normal in the modern world in general? In the end, he wondered if civilization really made people more civilized and if technical progress meant we were getting better. At the time of his death in 1984 from AIDS, Foucault was one of the most famous intellectuals in the world, and his lifelong criticism of power continues to influence modern perceptions of inequality, sexuality, and human rights.
Foucault "was preoccupied with exploring states that go beyond ordinary everyday experience ... drugs, certain forms of eroticism" as a way to "reconfigure the world and his place in it"
The first commentator to appear in the film, biographer James Miller, notes that Foucault "was preoccupied with exploring conditions outside the ordinary everyday experience ... drugs, certain forms of eroticism" as a way to "reconfigure the world and his place in it."
According to anthropologist Paul Rabinow, Foucault endeavor to resurrect questions that analytical philosophy has largely abandoned: questions about what it means to be human, beyond the social categories that we accept as natural and given, and what it really means to be human in the 20th century? In this regard, in particular, in his recent works, he reasoned about the states through which a person can become what he wants to be, create what he wants to be.
Born into a family of surgeons, Foucault was also involved in dissection, only the object of his work was not human bodies. He went much deeper - into human beliefs, morality.
Michel Foucault provoked his contemporaries with the idea that all sorts of forms and types of deviation (recognized as a deviation by European society) are an integral part of this society. The power of the norm, according to the philosopher, is a force that has been distorted strangely in society. Most of the punishments practiced in society are not for a crime, but a departure from the established norm.
In the last years of his life, Foucault tried to answer several questions, while he looked for answers in borderline states, and sometimes in states that put him on the line between life and death. His comments that this experience was one of the most enjoyable in his life fueled a discussion in society about his person and, of course, about his judgments.
Michel Foucault can be called a philosopher of contradictions: he was called both a madman and a genius; he turned his beliefs about good and bad as he wished.
Michel Foucault's colorful life and hugely influential work was a struggle against constraints - the constraints of language, social structures, and mind-numbing historical identity. Thus, he managed to evoke a reaction from scientists of all possible beliefs, from conservative to liberal humanistic. Yet systems, social institutions of power, and domination, according to Foucault, were the problem. He tried to draw attention to this problem throughout his adult life, playing with the norms and showing their absurdity. And if many thinkers, writers, poets strove to be creators without a biography, so that their works would speak for them, then Foucault, by the way he was living and acting, on the contrary, confirmed his views and beliefs.
According to anthropologist Paul Rabinow, Foucault endeavor to resurrect questions that analytical philosophy has largely abandoned: questions about what it means to be human, beyond the social categories that we accept as natural and given, and what it really means to be human in the 20th century? In this regard, in particular, in his recent works, he reasoned about the states through which a person can become what he wants to be, create what he wants to be.
Born into a family of surgeons, Foucault was also involved in dissection, only the object of his work was not human bodies. He went much deeper - into human beliefs, morality.
Michel Foucault provoked his contemporaries with the idea that all sorts of forms and types of deviation (recognized as a deviation by European society) are an integral part of this society. The power of the norm, according to the philosopher, is a force that has been distorted strangely in society. Most of the punishments practiced in society are not for a crime, but a departure from the established norm.
In the last years of his life, Foucault tried to answer several questions, while he looked for answers in borderline states, and sometimes in states that put him on the line between life and death. His comments that this experience was one of the most enjoyable in his life fueled a discussion in society about his person and, of course, about his judgments.
Michel Foucault can be called a philosopher of contradictions: he was called both a madman and a genius; he turned his beliefs about good and bad as he wished.
Michel Foucault's colorful life and hugely influential work was a struggle against constraints - the constraints of language, social structures, and mind-numbing historical identity. Thus, he managed to evoke a reaction from scientists of all possible beliefs, from conservative to liberal humanistic. Yet systems, social institutions of power, and domination, according to Foucault, were the problem. He tried to draw attention to this problem throughout his adult life, playing with the norms and showing their absurdity. And if many thinkers, writers, poets strove to be creators without a biography, so that their works would speak for them, then Foucault, by the way he was living and acting, on the contrary, confirmed his views and beliefs.
