Abstract

This dissertation finds in Foucault's idea of 'radical autonomy' a master key that unlocks a comprehensive understanding of his works. This analysis challenges not only many interpretations of Foucault's works but also some of Foucault's own understandings about his enterprise. The general meaning of 'autonomy' is delineated by examining its historical lineage to Kantian 'maturity' and Baudelairian 'modern man'. To clarify its critical stance to the humanism of an essentialist and universalist kind, I compare it with Max Stirner's, Nietzsche's, and Heidegger's criticisms on humanism. Then, I theoretically elaborate how 'autonomy' can be conceived without falling into universalism and essentialism. Subsequently, I show how Foucault problematized 'autonomy' in each work to formulate subject matters, key concepts, and methodological strategies. ;On the basis of the above elucidations, I examine the criticisms by Habermas, Richard Bernstein and Nancy Fraser, and reveal that their shortcomings are due largely to their lack of proper appreciation of the Foucauldian 'autonomy'. Next, I turn what Foucault did in his works against what he claimed they were. First, Foucault openly stated his whole project was set against the twin, "humanism and anthropology." But his overall enterprise---"a historical ontology of ourselves today," as he described it---is best understood using the idea of 'autonomy'. This reveals, however, his own anthropological and humanistic agenda. Second, though he himself nails down his discourse on "ourselves" and "today," he fails to provide an adequate understanding of "we" and "present." The agonistic conception of 'self' presumed in the Foucauldian autonomy makes it difficult to conceive "we" on the basis of sharing values and affections. And all his research examined the time periods before the late nineteenth century, thus leaving wide open the question of the present. ;Though his works in general undertake not so much positive attempts to establish autonomy as deconstructive campaigns against traditional humanism and anthropologism, they are better to be understood as enriching the humanist sprit and anthropological way of thinking by radicalizing them