A Research On Foucault's Thought Of Body

This dissertation is a research of the problem of body in Michel Foucault's thought.Foucault's thought has a obvious inclination which belittles consciousness and attaches importance to body,his analyses on the modernity of the body are subtle,however,those analyses are lack of practical measures for body resistance,that makes Foucault faced a lot of criticism and censure.Some of these criticisms are pertinent,but some are due to misreading or partial interpretation.Therefore,it is necessary to take a holistic grasp of Foucault's body thought.Foucault does not leave a special book on the body,his discussion of body scattered in his works,interviews and lectures in different periods,but if we pay a little attention,we will find Foucault was always concerned with the body in every important works.The reason is that Foucault still want to pursue freedom,but it is clear that the "Man" and the conscious subject can not take up the basis of his freedom.In Foucault's thought,there is no such freedom for metaphysical man and conscious subject,only the materialized body can provide the foundation for the circumstances of freedom.So,in the vision of freedom,the importance of the body is highlighted by Foucault,and become the potential and basic role of archaeology,genealogy and ethics,without this premise,the dimensions of knowledge,power and ethical can not be carried out in Foucault's thought,nor as a whole.Therefore,the interpretation of Foucault's thought of body in fact is related to the understanding of his whole thought.Foucault's thought of body is discussed in five aspects in this dissertation.Although Foucault doesn't want to be called as a philosopher,but if his body analyses are divorced from the history of philosophy will be difficult to understand.In view of this,this dissertation combs Foucault's body thought from the history of philosophy firstly,in order to clarify Foucault's basic body attitudes,methods and the objects which are resisted by body.After reviewing and locating Foucault from the intellectual history,it is necessary to sort out his body thought.As Foucault said,his thought has three dimensions which are knowledge,power and ethics,so it is necessary to interpret and analyze his thought of body from the three dimensions.The analysis of knowledge is the basic premise and the philosophical foundation of Foucault's thought of body,it is the important stage for Foucault to form the body attitude,and it is also a necessary preparation for the other two dimensions,but the body in the dimension of knowledge is not coherent and significant,so make it more clearly is the basic task of this part.Genealogy is the most important part in Foucault's thought of body,in the knowledge dimension,body is mainly seemed as negative and passive,this characteristic is explained in detail in the power analysis,in this dimension,the analysis which put body in the relationship between the force become a typical and successful model,it is the main reason why Foucault's thought of body is widely concerned and welcomed.The interpretation of this model is mainly by the discussion of Discipline and Punish and The Will of Knowledge.In the dimension of ethics,the subjectivation has become a core issue,the body's resistance plays an important and basic role in Foucault's aesthetics of existence,although the body keeps the negative and passive characteristics in the two dimensions before,it also showed a very personal and limited positivity in ethics,but it still lack of a convincing persuasion for the realistic resistance of body,that's why Foucault's thought of body suffered a lot of criticism and censure.Therefore,how to interpret the relation between Foucault's logic of freedom and resistance of body is the main content of this part.Although Foucault does not provide a realistic path to escape for the modern body,his delicate analyses of body influenced the trend of body research which after him.So,in the end,this article will discuss the philosophical effect of Foucault by compare Foucault's body thought and Deleuze's thought of body and discuss the absorption and criticism of feminism towards Foucault.