Publisher's Synopsis
Owing to the recent publication of Foucault's Lectures at the Collège de France, in French and more recently in English, in this paper I re-evaluate Foucault's complicated relationship to the concepts Aufklärung in relation to Immanuel Kant, avoiding common pitfalls other scholars have made in associating Foucault and his works within the larger philosophical discourse of "Enlightenment". Clarifications and explanations Foucault made regarding his complex understanding of "Enlightenment" in his lectures at the Collège de France entitled On the of Government of the Self and Others (1982-1983) substantially alter the historian's interpretation of Foucault's intellectual thought, and allay some of the charges of incoherence that have been levelled against him in the development of his academic project. In his lectures, Foucault's flowing exegesis presents subtle nuances and points of clarification and explication surrounding his overarching intellectual approach, which have largely been overlooked by historians and philosophers who privilege Foucault's more well-known, earlier works such as The Order of Things among others, as the crucial, key aspects of his scholarly work. By re-evaluating Foucault's thought in light of his lectures at the Collège de France, a more sympathetic Foucault emerges in relation to Kant's philosophy.
