Research On Three Important Categories Of Foucault’s Epistemology

Michel·Foucault(Michael·Foucault, 1926-1984) is a very important thinker and philosopher in the second half of the 20 th century in France. As an important scholar of modernism and his thought involves many aspects, in the numerous theory of Foucault’s, his epistemology is the important content, especially the study of category of his epistemology, that is more worth of us to explore.In Foucault’s epistemology, there are three very important categories: knowledge, power and discourse. So this paper will use three major categories to constitute Foucault epistemological framework and use the framework as the starting point to analyze the Foucault’s epistemology. First, to analyze the knowledge categories in the epistemology of Foucault. In this chapter, the author will divide Foucault’s epistemology into two major periods respectively to expound: 1. The period of knowledge archaeology. In knowledge archaeology period,it focus on the basis of knowledge, and then expound the main content of the knowledge archaeology in detail. 2. The power genealogy period. To expound the reason and processes that the archaeology turn to the genealogy intensively and on the basis the power genealogy to expound method and strategy. The author thinks that the installment, more can help us to grasp Foucault’s epistemology. Second, to sort out the power categories in the epistemology of Foucault. This paper expounds the question about the main body of Foucault firstly, because this is potential key issues that the process of power theory development. Then expounds Foucault’s traditional concept of "body" and theoretical criticism of "own" in detail. Finally explains the main content about Foucault’s cognition of himself. Third, to analyze the discourse categories in the epistemology of Foucault. First of all, defines the concept of the discourse categories. Then clarify what is discourse,discourse structure and the principle of discourse analysis. Finally expounds the two main functions of discourse: the political functions of discourse and the truth functions of discourse. Fourth, firstly analyze Foucault’s influence on the postmodernism in the epilogue. And then evaluates the theoretical association between Foucault and Marx’s. Finally explores the mutual relationship among the three important categories of Foucault’s epistemology and gives brief comments on Foucault’s epistemology.