San Antonio College Library

Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 - 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, social theorist, historian of ideas, and literary critic. His philosophical theories addressed what power is and how it works, the manner in which it controls knowledge and vice versa, and how it is used as a form of social control.

This is a thorough guide to modern French philosophical thought, providing authoritative accounts of famous philosophers whilst also highlighting lesser-known figures. It introduces the major works of each philosopher, explaining their impact on their peers and on the wider world. This is a thorough and balanced guide to modern French philosophical thought, providing lucid, authoritative accounts of famous philosophers whilst also highlighting lesser-known...

During her lifetime, Weil was only known to relatively narrow circles; even in France her essays were mostly read only by those interested in radical politics. Yet during the first decade after her death, Weil rapidly became famous, attracting attention throughout the West. For the 3rd quarter of the twentieth century, she was widely regarded as the most influential person in the world on new work concerning religious and spiritual matters. Her philosophical,...

"Simone Weil is one of the most challenging and yet beguiling thinkers of the twentieth century. There is a highly charged mystical current that runs through her life and works that seems almost timeless. And yet Weil was a keen observer of the modern condition, coming of age as she did during the 1930s. Amid the recurrent indignities and inhumanities of modern life, she wondered what is to become of the precious space we have for grace, for friendship,...

"The late 20th century saw a remarkable flourishing of philosophy in France. The work of French philosophers is wide ranging, historically informed, often reaching out beyond the boundaries of philosophy; they are public intellectuals, taken seriously as contributors to debates outside the academy. Gary Gutting tells the story of the development of a distinctively French philosophy in the last four decades of the 20th century. His aim is to arrive...

"Portraits (Situations IV) brings together Sartre's most important writings on literature and artists in one of his most productive periods. It includes his preface to Sarraute's Portrait of a Man Unknown and his homages to Andre Gide, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Albert Camus. The Merleau-Ponty essay casts considerable light on the recent history of French philosophy, particularly with regard to dominant post-war political conceptions, and the lengthy...

This book includes chapters on the most representative structuralists (in anthropology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, literature, and history) as well as on their opponents (in Marxism, hermeneutics, and sociology), so that this book about structuralism also put structuralism in its intellectual and political milieu.

What would it be like to be privy to the mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers? John Gerassi had just this opportunity; as a child, his mother and father were very close friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and the couple became for him like surrogate parents. Authorized by Sartre to write his biography, Gerassi conducted a long series of interviews between 1970 and 1974, which he has now edited to produce this...