The Two Faces of Michel Foucault

This chapter examines the extensive influence of the thought of Michel Foucault on the development of the anthropology of ethics. In doing so it treats a classic question that has preoccupied biographers of Foucault and chroniclers of his philosophy, as well as both advocates and critics of the anthropology of ethics, namely the nature of the relationship between power and freedom. Siding with those who have seen more continuity than rupture in the shifts of emphasis within Foucault’s oeuvre, it argues that we should as far as possible seek to understand the different stages of Foucault’s work as complementary, rather than contradictory: as providing us with different viewpoints from which to view a context or question, rather than mutually exclusive descriptions.