Foucault Explained Simply

Foucault Explained! Michel Foucault's philosophy is difficult. It's hard to read. It's hard to understand. This video is intended to provide you with help understanding Foucault. What does Foucault mean by Power? What is "The Subject" for Foucault? We'll talk about all of this here. In a 1982 essay entitled "The Subject and Power," Foucault tried to make his whole philosophical project clear. He explained the focus of his research, what questions he was trying to answer them and how he was trying to answer them. Foucault is an extremely influential thinker, so understanding his work can be very helpful. I hope this video is of some use. ❤️📚
If you'd like to learn more about Foucault, watch these videos:
📖 Foucault -- Power and Knowledge👇
kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKPUdKd-iNGUd7M
📖 Foucault: Discipline & Punish👇
kzbin.info/www/bejne/ooOliXydja10b5I
📖 Foucault's Panopticon: Rise of the Surveillance State👇
kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJPPnXijrZWKhrc
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[@GreatBooksProf]

Next, learn about Foucault's theory of the PANOPTICON 📚👉kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJPPnXijrZWKhrc

[@TheDylls]

As a parent of a 4yr old that's really coming into her own as a person, every single day is full of power struggles! And I think it's important we stay firm to teach where lines are

[@mrlolmw2]

Criminally underrated KZbin channel

[@GreatBooksProf]

Lock them up! Lock them up!

[@TheDylls]

I think that Foucault was pretty much spot on. No one gets it 100%, but guy nailed a lot of it

[@hijodelsoldeoriente]

Watched for philosophy, subbed for Snorlax. Great work sir!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Gotta catch ‘em all!

[@ImAliveAndYouAreDead]

French native speaker here. Everything I read and heard from Foucault was crystal clear to me... Contrary to (deliberately) abstruse thinkers like Heidegger, Derrida or Lacan, I've always found Foucault's French fluid, elegant and easy to understand. Go figure.

[@alexanderskye9013]

So why don’t you tell us clearly what you understand from Foucault?

[@avesillasday]

I thought about the definition of Focault about power, and I felt as well as the physics concept of heat, "heat is the thermal energy transferred between systems due to a temperature difference", heat modifies bodies, etc It's just a thought.

[@vap0rtranz]

Ah yea I could see that view of "power" but Foucault would probably choke on that analogy. The thermodynamic equations allow us to understand that "thought" about the observed world and apply it. Pushing electrons through an electric cooktop will fry an egg, transferring heat energy to the yolk via power, and do it each time. Foucault is saying we were taught physics by those of social power over us, and its not objective. The idea or thought of power in thermodynamics isn't an observation of the world but just a manifestation of a socially constructed ideas. It could change; the idea isn't the same each time. Maybe pushing electrons around could change the weather, if those in social power just constructed that thought. In other words, the power described by thermodynamics doesn't really exist and could be anything. It's unconvincing because: why gain social power to indoctrinate people into thinking the world operates on science? To manipulate us ... for what purpose? Because scientific thought enables those in power to stay in power, and having power of others is the best we can achieve? His ideas become pessimistic and nihilistic. I think Foucault never got out of believing monsters were under his bed.

[@whatshername612]

LOVE THIS! I´m doing a PhD and using Foucault for my analysis and there were some terms that were difficult for me to get. This video helped a lot. Thank you so so much!

[@HegemonicMarxism]

This is one of the most explanatory videos on Foucault's theory of power and subjectivity (especially for the uninitiated)

[@MartijnvanDuivenboden]

Love your video’s. I feel your enthusiasm. Keep up the good work!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks for watching!

[@etziowingeler3173]

Great stuff, highly appreciated, thanks!

[@Revolutionist513]

What a brilliant way of grasping such nuanced ideas of Foucault, wonderful work. Waiting for more videos coming from you ❤

[@azizboutayeb4611]

Very informative.. Great job! Keep it up dude

[@resul8777]

Perfect!! So helpful, thank you✨️🫶

[@GreatBooksProf]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching!

[@kerravon2527]

Splendid stuff as always - thank you!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks for watching!

[@jeffreynolds9772]

Exceptionally well done synopsis.

[@Edmonddantes123]

Fantastic video, thank you!

[@GreatBooksProf]

You’re welcome! Thanks for watching!

[@clairebrierley6658]

Very useful video. Thank you. I am using Foucault to analyse school curriculum design in the UK.

[@gray-stans-chihiro]

Love the vid! Keep up the good work!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks!

[@centercannothold9760]

Yes you can go through life and allow circumstances to make you a subject. But what it means to be human is to think for yourself and make yourself into a moral being.

[@AngryChristian1]

I find Foucault's approach to power to be very convincing. He considered power to be decentralized and within social networks. This explains why collective power exists and why power is not contained within institutions. The fact that we can always draw on collective power, but also the fact that institutions use power, both evidence his ideas about power. Sociologically speaking, it seems pretty valid to identify power as being identifiable through outward behavior and actions effecting actions. Power being possessable isn't true because you can't really possess anything abstract.

[@GreatBooksProf]

Well put.

[@ineslms6933]

Thank you for this video, helped me a lot for my University class. - Watching from Belgium

[@jorgesolis7891]

Well, we all know is what pop culture says, power is not very welll distributed.... however under its light, we all shine on....

[@jluke6861]

Thank you for your informative videos. Very fun to watch. Would you please make some about Friedrich Nietzsche. Thank you.

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks for watching. I’ll get to Nietzsche eventually. 😅

[@matthiasduguey2131]

Currently studing it in my founding degree in France. Your video came up handy !!

[@GreatBooksProf]

Happy to hear that!

[@diannelouisy7326]

Enjoyed how you crystallized this

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks!

[@Su-xd5dd]

THANK YOU

[@samiraschuette]

thank you.

[@beuller7]

I gotta say - present company excluded, but the college professors I had absolutely ZERO respect for were all Foucault disciples. To a person. They were constantly pushing him and his particular brand of postmodernism.

[@jorgesolis7891]

Power, swings....

[@SardorKarimov-bd2df]

Great man

[@BatTaz19]

He was a Nonce.

[@joaoboechat7637]

Great video

[@GreatBooksProf]

Thanks!

[@The_Original_Default_Username]

I share Foucault's skepticism about "collective power". "Felt experience" informs sentiment and nothing else. Even when two people share the same perspective with "felt experience", it only serves to bolster their sentiments further. It ignores instituted biases (like those Foucault was critical of) and serves little value in understanding the broader reality. It's purely qualitative, in the worst possible way.

[@kernel1kadafi]

Can you do a video on Foucault and neoliberalism please as I’m doing a dissertation on how socially harmful neoliberalism is so in my lit review i am writing on foucaults views on neoliberalism

[@javansmith7469]

read The Last Man Does LSD. It’s about Foucault’s political opinions.

[@gk10101]

he totally missed it with one word: secrecy. without acknowledging how people rule governments and institutions through secrecy, without acknowledging how control is a very serious game, he's just part of the problem. he perpetuates his own brand of illusions.

[@Book-Mark]

I'm with Snorlax. I found his argument very persuasive. He told me not to tell anyone what he told me, sorry...

[@TheDylls]

Power feels fluid WHEN A SOCIETY IS THRIVING... Give that one a - scary - thought lol

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

Subject as in, person subject to state power.

[@user-dk7od1zf8f]

Hello! Some of your videos are very well done! Can I repost them on China’s bilibili? I want more people to see it. The original author and website will be marked clearly! Thanks

[@GreatBooksProf]

I don’t think so. Thanks for checking.

[@user-dk7od1zf8f]

@@GreatBooksProf ok，thanks！

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

How to be a domesticated human: Rewards, difficulties and what you can expect if you go wild.

[@TheDylls]

So "Power" is almost like "Cold"... Cold doesn't exist, it's an absence of heat. Power doesn't exist, it's relative to groups you're discussing

[@alexanderskye9013]

Good vid. My feelings are that Foucault is correct and your own thoughts are incorrect. Allow me to elaborate. When we, the subjugated, operate, we operate from given assumptions that mostly have never been tested, I.e we operate within rules without them ever been proved. Most ppl don’t break laws, the small group that does and does so repeatedly may find what those laws are actually about ; the relationships between institutions and subjects and why and how those operate; there is power, a need to control something within those dynamics; Without that interplay you are merely dealing with the idea of power, and one does a poor job of understanding it without the interplay. Foucault is saying that we understand Power only in the interplay; the veil comes away when we resist in the relationship as it were; where we come face to face with the rule, the rule maker etc From afar, with and under all of our assumptions, we don’t really understand power for what it is. We assign an idea of it to institutions generally. But that idea doesn’t exist in a certain reality; meaning an institution isn’t a living real thing , it’s an idea. But in the interplay you see the motivations behind that idea, and that’s the attempt at power and subjugation of its subjects as it were. It’s not easy to explain. As you know. But I suspect you don’t fully dig Foucault, and I don’t mean to say that’s a shortcoming on your part. You simply haven’t rattled against our societal limits enough, which isn’t a bad thing in a way. Survival machines aren’t naturally inclined to hit repeatedly danger zones as it were.

[@thegreatresearcher1681]

That is a weberian definition of power.

[@0bviouspoetry]

re - the critiques of foucault, you mention that his idea that power is fluid feels untrue, and that for most people power feels concentrated within the hands of the few (hard agree). you also covered how he is skeptical of people having power when they act collectively, but you counter that social movements *have* actually changed things - then isn't that an example of power being fluid? power is imbued into what we collectively choose to believe in, and has moved from institutions of white colonial male power to more democratic and diverse ways forward as seen with suffrage, civil rights and pride. also foucault foucaulted himself with that one, if he thought power was fluid but social movements have none.

[@joyfulmindstudio]

“Subjects” are not “people” and “objects” are not “things” in Foucault’s system of thought, as you incorrectly stated at the start of this video. Foucault is using the language of existentialism in a social context, but he is using words like “subject” with fidelity to the sense in which the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre used the term. The subject is the separate self, or even more to the point, the illusion of the separate self. Foucault argues that subject-making institutions oppress us precisely to the degree that they indoctrinate us to accept the notion that each of us is reducible to an individual subject. At that scale, each individual subject by itself lacks the power to resist the objects or institutions that define each of us down to a single, isolated point. Against the existential threat posed by anonymous institutions and their seemingly vast resources, subjects relinquish their subjectivity, without so much as a single philosophical shot having been fired. And that’s how an individual is effectively oppressed by the state or the corporation. We volunteer for it, because we have been trained to be afraid of ghosts.

[@GreatBooksProf]

@@joyfulmindstudio Thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to write this out. I think people will find this helpful.

[@jackhargreaves1911]

Are we just ignoring the elephant in the room?

[@lukestevenson6465]

You have to go back further, like the bramens did, I will try to give you an example. The way you identify with knowledge and language, becomes the next generations historical inheritance, this has gone on for thousands of years, it has become autonomous, when we are born it creates an identity you call you. It is the entirety of man's thoughts Feelings and experiences past down from generations for the status quo of society, I say this is me, I use knowledge in the form of a language, I have no other way of saying this is me, in the same way I say I am thinking, but when I think all that you see there in your thoughts that is this same knowledge, this knowledge controls every aspect of my life. These thoughts this knowledge, is made of words, that's how I know what those thoughts are, I must use that language to know what I am looking at, these words are not mine, there a copy borrowed from somebody else, and I have to use them to know I exist. There's no end to this type of thing, I tried to put it in context, but it just comes out as gibba jabbo, because it's outside of the experiencing structure.

[@BatTaz19]

He was a Nonce.

[@charlesthe2nd1]

I am not impressed at all--.