A Study On Foucault's Historical Philosophy

Michel Foucault is the most important thinker and philosopher of the France in the latter half of the 20^th century. His influence on the entire France and the western thought field of the contemporary is so huge that contemporary each kind of thought school and various discipline of the field of humane and sociological science almost can't avoid his thought shining. As a representative of the post-modernism, Foucault always tries his best to criticize traditional western philosophical humanity-centerism . So he is called "France's Nietzsche of the 20th century".Foucault's philosophy is a unique philosophy. He does not talk about ideology of the historical great philosophers unlike other philosophers, nor discusses traditional philosophical concepts, but he analyses philosophical questions through historical observation of some of the marginal areas that have never obtained philosophic attention such as crazy, disease, crime, sex etc. So Foucault brings the themes of philosophy into history like this, the surface is historical analysis and the deep is philosophical thought, and it contains a particular historical philosophy and methodology in the study of philosophy. Foucault uses the methods of archaeology and pedigree severely criticizing the traditional history, breaking the historical myth and remolding the effective history. He challenges the traditional historical issues such as the reason, the subject, the progress, the totality etc, and collapses the foundation of traditional historical concepts. That gives us a new way of thinking for our study of history and philosophy. Thus, it creates unparalleled charm of Foucault's philosophy, too.