Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy

"In an insightful way, Cerrato's Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy proves that if the event of Foucault's thought continues to reverberate today into new critical questions, it is because he practiced philosophy not only as discourse but also as a radical activity interrogating not only what we can know about history but also about ourselves and the truths that set our limits." — James Martell, Professor of French, Lyon College

"In the wake of the translation into English of Michel Foucault's courses at the Collège de France, Maddalena Cerrato's book, Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy, is an urgent and necessary attempt to read the entirety of Foucault's work, problematizing his contemporary reception. Cerrato not only questions readings that emphasize an ethical turn in the work of the 'Late Foucault,' not to mention the postulation of a neoliberal Foucault, but she inscribes Foucault's thought in the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy. From this tradition, Foucault's analyses of the processes of subjectivation, the function of truth, and the configuration of the government of the self and others acquire new traction. In other words, Cerrato elaborates a vivid interpretation of Foucault related to the anarchic and aprincipal dimension of thought, in the line that goes from Aristotle to Martin Heidegger and Reiner Schürmann, which runs counter the normative and oppressive demands that have fueled the Western ontopolitical tradition. In short, we are faced with a book that presents a careful reading of Michel Foucault's oeuvre and of its persistent relevance to critically confront our present." — Sergio Villalobos Ruminott, University of Michigan