Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Amusing diversion July 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
More a curiosity and an exploration in the mental discipline of standing rigor up to total relativism. Read this classic if you're (a) interested in the roots of the nascent deconstruction movement (b) thick skinned enough not to be distracted by the author's biases.
I read it out of a desire to see my suppositions challenged; it succeeded well for that.
 Review specific to Random House / Vintage printing only July 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The 1994 Random House / Vintage edition astonishingly does not include an index. Without an index, the text is virtually useless for students and academics. One is forced to rely on Google Books in order to find terms in the text. If you intend to use this book for anything more than casual reading, avoid this edition.
 read it July 11, 2006
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book has dramatically changed the way I conceptualize reality. It is hard to follow but incredibly insightful. It will hurt to get through but once you do, you might consider practising your best Mr.Universe pose and claiming -- in the words of the the "Governator" -- "No pain, no gain."
I recommend the following steps to understanding this book:
1) read once;
2) see a psychiatrist;
3) read again;
4) think;
5) read again
6) understand.
Im only considering step two. I might just skip it and go strait to step 3.
Good luck.
Difficult but worth it April 5, 2004
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book is one of the most important philosophy texts of the 20th century, if for no other reason than as an eye-opener. The text is a difficult read (although nowhere near as opaque as Derrida). The section on how our culture and, hence, our world-view has been "set" by accepted taxonomies is worth the read all by itself. I have come back to these comments again and again. Taxonomies are useful, but we need to understand the constraints on understanding imposed by such
 Obtuse but Sharp February 25, 2003
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
Foucault's stuff is hardly pleasure reading, but it rewards in other ways, more subtly. If you don't read Foucault without coming away with a deeper sense of the world around you, how power and knowledge is diffuse and not central, you would be a rare person. This book isn't so much concerned with power as it is the history of ideas, though.
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