An unpublished work by Michel Foucault published in May

This essay will allow you to read an almost completed manuscript that the philosopher began in 1966 and never published, for an unspecified reason.

This book is edited by two academics, Orazio Irrera from Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis and Daniele Lorenzini from the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States.

The first devoted a semester of classes to it in Paris 8 at the end of 2022. The second had published the table of contents on Twitter in February.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984), prolix author, had written in his will that he refused to be the subject of posthumous publications.

However, his last companion and legatee, Daniel Defert, who died on Tuesday, and Foucault's former assistant, François Ewald, wanted writings that shed light on his thoughts to see the light of day all the same.

They have been numerous over the past 30 years, including the four volumes of his "Dits et Écrits".

Foucault, considered one of the great thinkers of "French Theory", a movement for the renewal of philosophy from the 1960s, remains known for his work on psychiatry and medicine, sexuality, political power and repression.

"The Philosophical Discourse", according to the publisher's presentation, offers an "archaeological analysis" of philosophy, with "its historical mutations, from a metaphysics of representation (Descartes) to an anthropology (Kant), up to the return of a language coming to occupy the void left by the obliteration of man (Nietzsche)".

© 2023 AFP