Foucault the teacher: the coherence of his career path and its place within his body of work

Moderator: Aurèle Méthivier

Abstract

The lectures Michel Foucault delivered at the Collège de France have, for over ten years, constituted a body of work in their own right, complementing the books published by the philosopher during his lifetime and the collection of his ‘spoken and written works’ (published in 1994). In his talk, Philippe Sabot will propose exploring this body of work as a series of shifts rather than as the continuous development of a single programme (such as a history of truth). Rereading the lectures from this perspective therefore amounts to identifying a series of focal points of problematisation around which Michel Foucault’s thought was patiently developed and transformed, and to linking them to the context—sometimes intellectual, sometimes political—that enables us to understand both their emergence and their reconfiguration.

Elisabetta Basso’s presentation will aim to analyse Foucault’s thought at a time when the philosopher was primarily focused on teaching. The questions we shall address are as follows: what is the role of the lectures in relation to his developing thought? How do the lectures pave the way for certain publications? We shall focus in particular on the themes of madness and psychiatry.

Philippe Sabot

Philippe Sabot is a professor of contemporary philosophy at the University of Lille, a member of UMR 8163 Savoirs, textes, langage, a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France, and president of the Michel Foucault Centre. Following a series of studies on the relationship between philosophy and literature, he turned his attention to the thought of Michel Foucault, focusing in particular on its contemporary applications in epistemology, gender studies and political and social philosophy. Philippe Sabot has published works on *The Order of Things* ( Reading Michel Foucault’s *The Order of Things*, PUF, 2006; *The Same and Order: Foucault and Knowledge in the Classical Age* , ENS Éditions, 2015) and contributed to the edition of Foucault’s *Œuvres* in the Pléiade series (Gallimard, 2015). He has also contributed to the edition of Foucault’s lectures and works prior to his appointment at the Collège de France ( Phenomenology and Psychology , Seuil, 2021; Archaeology of the Human Sciences: São Paulo Lectures (1965) , Seuil, 2025) and is currently preparing a critical edition of a series of preparatory texts for The Archaeology of Knowledge ( Discourse, Enunciation, Knowledge , Vrin, 2027).

Elisabetta Basso

Elisabetta Basso is an associate professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Pavia (Italy) and an associate member of UAR 3610 CAPHÉS (ENS, PSL). She is a member of the scientific committee responsible for the series ‘Cours et travaux de Michel Foucault avant le Collège de France’ (Paris: Seuil, Gallimard, EHESS), for which she edited the volume *Binswanger et l’analyse existentielle* (2021). Her publications include: *Young Foucault. The Lille Manuscripts on Psychopathology, Phenomenology, and Anthropology, 1952–1955 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022); Foucault in Münsterlingen. The Origins of *The History of Madness* , with J.-F. Bert (eds.) (Paris: EHESS).