Georges Canguilhem

"As the work of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Francois Jacob, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu demonstrates, Georges Canguilhem exerted tremendous influence on the philosophy of science and French philosophy more generally. In Knowledge of Life, a book that spans twenty years of his essays and lectures, Canguilhem offers a series of epistemological histories that seek to establish and clarify the stakes, ambiguities, and emergence of philosophical and biological concepts that defined the rise of modern biology." "How do transformations in biology and modern medicine shape conceptions of life? How do philosophical concepts feed into biological ideas and experimental practices, and how are they themselves transformed? How does knowledge "undo the experience of life so as to help man remake what life has made without him, in him, or outside of him?" Knowledge of Life is Canguilhem's effort to explain how the movements of knowledge and life come to rest upon each other."--book jacket.

Michael Foucault's intellectual journeys carried him across many different disciplines and often into uncharted lands. His astonishing discoveries and claims have been received with both unbridled enthusiasm and vehement dissent. This collection of essays is the first to bring together major criticisms of Foucault by other writers with their own visions. From the perspective of philosophy, the history of science, intellectual history, sociology, political science, and literary criticism, the distinguished contributors to this book discuss forthrightly and fairly the difficulties and dangers of Foucault's explorations. Whether they attack or defend him, his texts are closely examined and carefully interpreted.