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Kim, Seong-woo

Foucault's conception of critique is not an analytics of truth like a Kantian

epistemology by and a Habermasian linguistic communicative theory, but a

historical ontology. Therefore, he calls his way of it a historico-critical

ontology. This is neither a Kantian metaphysical grounding nor a Hegelian

philosophy of history.In his short essay "Subject and Power", Foucault says that over the past 20 years,

the purpose of his work has been to write not the history of power, but one of

the different modes of subjectification of man in the modern Western culture. In

other words, his studies have dealt with three ways of objectification which

transform human beings into subjects. These ways are related to three axes of

truth, power, and ethics respectively. Therefore, his genealogy is merely not one

of power, but only one of subjects linked to truth, power, and ethics.The purpose of this essay is to show that the history written by Foucault

succeeds a Nietzschean genealogy, and tries to resolve the dilemma between

phenomenology and marxism, between humanism and scientism, between

philosophical anthropology and historical positivism. It also is to reveal that

by dong so, he unfolds his philosophically and politically critical activities in

oder to realize the possibilities of Nietzschean genealogy. Therefore, this

treatise is trying to investigate mainly the transition of the axis of truth into

the one of power among the threefold axis of truth, power, and ethics, namely

one of early Foucault's archeology of knowledge into middle Foucault's

genealogy of power. The previous studies have explained this transition by

dealing with the complexity of power-knowledge with a special focus on the

history of prisons. But this study is trying to present the descent and efficacy

of genealogy in relation to psychiatry by analyzing the history of psychiatry as

a complexity of power-knowledge described in the works of his middle years.

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This genealogy of psychiatry has not only a distinct relationship with the

histories of madness and deceases written by early Foucault, but also the more

close one with later Foucault's history of sexuality dealt with the problem of

ethics. This essay is trying to show a non-systematic and still methodological

consistency(that is, genealogy of subjects as a historico-critical ontology) of

Foucault's seemingly complicated thought by focusing on a genealogy of

psychiatry.Key Words: Foucault, History of Systems of Thought, Genealogy, Psychiatry,

Power-knowledge