Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology (Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 2) by Michel Foucault

Few philosophers have had as strong an influence on the twentieth century as Michel Foucault. His work has affected the teaching of any number of disciplines and remains, twenty years after his death, critically important. This newly available edition is drawn from the complete collection of all of Foucault’s courses, articles, and interviews, and brings his most important work to a new generation of readers. Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology (edited by James D. Faubion) surveys Foucault’s diverse but sustained address of the historical forms and interplay of passion, experience, and truth.

Review:

From Library Journal
The second of three volumes (following Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, LJ 3/15/97) to be excerpted from the Gallimard collection of Foucault's oeuvre, this work provides American readers with diverse lectures, literary and film reviews, and interviews concerning language, literature, authorship, imagination, psychology, order, and history. At midpoint in the volume, the lecture "What is an author?" fairly describes the project of this series: "Writing unfolds like a game that invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits." Each of these pieces is thoroughly self-contained but significant to a greater understanding of both its subject and its author. Wittily, one piece included here is Foucault's pseudonymously authored biographical dictionary entry on himself. For all scholars and many lay readers familiar with Foucault.? – Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.