《瘋顛與文明》一書，時間跨度有六百年。話題是從"瘋人"在歷史舞臺上的出現談起，即中世紀末隨着麻風病的消退，瘋人開始取代麻風病患者，成為社會排斥和隔離的新對象。然後是歷述這種排斥/隔離機製的各種變形：文藝復興時期（十四--十六世紀）是用"愚人船"放逐他們（就像舜投兇頑於四裔）；古典時期（十七世紀）是把他們當"社會垃圾"和罪犯，盲流一起關進收容所，叫"大禁閉"；啓蒙時期（十八世紀）是他們當"瘟疫"來隔離，叫"大恐懼"；終點是十九世紀，即把瘋人與罪犯分開，當病人看待，與"正常人"隔離，實行"治病救人"的"人道主義"。這樣纔形成現代的精神病院。
Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, the practice of sending mad people away in ships. However, during the Renaissance, madness was regarded as an all-abundant phenomenon because humans could not come close to the Reason of God. As Cervantes' Don Quixote, all humans are weak to desires and dissimulation. Therefore, the insane, understood as those who had come too close to God's Reason, were accepted in the middle of society. It is not before the 17th century, in a movement which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, that "unreasonable" members of the population systematically were locked away and institutionalized. In the 18th century, madness came to be seen as the obverse of Reason, that is, as having lost what made them human and become animal-like and therefore treated as such. It is not before 19th century that madness was regarded as a mental illness that should be cured, e.g. Philippe Pinel, Freud. A few professional historians have argued that the large increase in confinement did not happen in 17th but in the 19th century. Critics argue that this undermines the central argument of Foucault, notably the link between the Age of Enlightenment and the suppression of the insane.
However, Foucault scholars have shown that Foucault was not talking about medical institutions designed specifically for the insane but about the creation of houses of confinement for social outsiders, including not only the insane but also vagrants, unemployed, impoverished, and orphaned, and what effect those general houses of confinement had on the insane and perceptions of Madness in western society. Furthermore, Foucault goes to great lengths to demonstrate that while this "confinement" of social outcasts was a generally European phenomenon, it had a unique development in France and distinct developments in the other countries that the confinement took place in, such as Germany and England, disproving complaints that Foucault takes French events to generalize the history of madness in the West. A few of the historians critical of its historiography, such as Roy Porter, also began to concur with these refutations and discarded their own past criticisms to acknowledge the revolutionary nature of Foucault's book.
Foucault begins his history in the Middle Ages, noting the social and physical exclusion of lepers. He argues that with the gradual disappearance of leprosy, madness came to occupy this excluded position. The ship of fools in the 15th century is a literary version of one such exclusionary practice, the practice of sending mad people away in ships. However, during the Renaissance, madness was regarded as an all-abundant phenomenon because humans could not come close to the Reason of God. As Cervantes' Don Quixote, all humans are weak to desires and dissimulation. Therefore, the insane, understood as those who had come too close to God's Reason, were accepted in the middle of society. It is not before the 17th century, in a movement which Foucault famously describes as the Great Confinement, that "unreasonable" members of the population systematically were locked away and institutionalized. In the 18th century, madness came to be seen as the obverse of Reason, that is, as having lost what made them human and become animal-like and therefore treated as such. It is not before 19th century that madness was regarded as a mental illness that should be cured, e.g. Philippe Pinel, Freud. A few professional historians have argued that the large increase in confinement did not happen in 17th but in the 19th century. Critics argue that this undermines the central argument of Foucault, notably the link between the Age of Enlightenment and the suppression of the insane.
However, Foucault scholars have shown that Foucault was not talking about medical institutions designed specifically for the insane but about the creation of houses of confinement for social outsiders, including not only the insane but also vagrants, unemployed, impoverished, and orphaned, and what effect those general houses of confinement had on the insane and perceptions of Madness in western society. Furthermore, Foucault goes to great lengths to demonstrate that while this "confinement" of social outcasts was a generally European phenomenon, it had a unique development in France and distinct developments in the other countries that the confinement took place in, such as Germany and England, disproving complaints that Foucault takes French events to generalize the history of madness in the West. A few of the historians critical of its historiography, such as Roy Porter, also began to concur with these refutations and discarded their own past criticisms to acknowledge the revolutionary nature of Foucault's book.
這大概是福柯寫過的最接近"完美"的著作，冷峻的描寫與熱烈的"抒情核心"，細緻的分析與透闢的理論反省以充滿張力的方式冶於一爐。對比最初臺灣版的翻譯，譯者又做了精心的修改，使現在這個譯本無論準確性還是流暢性，都堪稱佳譯。當然翻譯的質量是建立在作者對福柯思想的全面研究的基礎上的，這一點恰恰是現在許多翻譯所缺乏的。不過，將discipline譯為"規訓"，仍有"造字"之嫌，而現有的"紀律"一詞卻似乎更貼切。畢竟在尼采和韋伯那裏，這個詞都譯做"紀律"（所以這個概念也並非如譯者所言，是福柯的"獨創"）。
Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists, although he does not deny those. He does so by meticulously tracing out the shifts in culture that led to the prison's dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc. The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline and prison.
Torture
Foucault begins the book by contrasting two forms of penalty: the violent and chaotic public torture of Robert-François Damiens who was convicted of attempted regicide in the late 18th century, and the highly regimented daily schedule for inmates from an early 19th century prison. These examples provide a picture of just how profound the change in western penal systems were after less than a century. Foucault wants the reader to consider what led to these changes. How did western culture shift so radically?
To answer this question, he begins by examining public torture itself. He argues that the public spectacle of torture was a theatrical forum that served several intended and unintended purposes for society. The intended purposes were:
* Reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the convict's body for all to see.
* Enacting the revenge upon the convict's body, which the sovereign seeks for having been injured by the crime. Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension of the sovereign's body, and so the revenge must take the form of harming the convict's body.
Some unintended consequences were:
* Providing a forum for the convict's body to become a focus of sympathy and admiration.
* Creating a site of conflict between the masses and the sovereign at the convict's body. Foucault notes that public executions often led to riots in support of the prisoner.
Thus, he argues, the public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body, qualified as non-economical. As well, it was applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Hence, its political cost was too high. It was the antithesis of the more modern concerns of the state: order and generalization.
Punishment
The switch to prison was not immediate. There was a more graded change, though it ran its course rapidly. Prison was preceded by a different form of public spectacle. The theater of public torture gave way to public chain gangs. Punishment became "gentle", though not for humanitarian reasons, Foucault suggests. He argues that reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable, unevenly distributed nature of the violence the sovereign would inflict on the convict. The sovereign's right to punish was so disproportionate that it was ineffective and uncontrolled. Reformists felt the power to punish and judge should become more evenly distributed, the state's power must be a form of public power. This, according to Foucault, was of more concern to reformists than humanitarian arguments.
Out of this movement towards generalized punishment, a thousand "mini-theatres" of punishment would have been created wherein the convicts' bodies would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous, controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have been forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions. This would have allowed the public to see the convicts' bodies enacting their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But these experiments lasted less than twenty years.
Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But he suggests that the shift towards prison that followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine."
Discipline
The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.
The individuality that discipline constructs (for the bodies it controls) has four characteristics, namely it makes individuality which is:
* Cellular—determining the spatial distribution of the bodies
* Organic—ensuring that the activities required of the bodies are "natural" for them
* Genetic—controlling the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies
* Combinatory—allowing for the combination of the force of many bodies into a single massive force
Foucault suggests this individuality can be implemented in systems that are officially egalitarian, but use discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations:
Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. (222)
Foucault's argument is that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern industrial age—bodies that function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to a) constantly observe and record the bodies they control, b) ensure the internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must come about without excessive force through careful observation, and molding of the bodies into the correct form through this observation. This requires a particular form of institution, which Foucault argues, was exemplified by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was never actually built.
The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether s/he was being observed. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prison, and specifically those that follow the model of the Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural.
Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of the book to examining its precise form and function in our society, to lay bare the reasons for its continued use, and question the assumed results of its use.
Prison
In examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger “carceral system” that has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates “disciplinary careers” (Discipline and Punish, 300) for those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority of medicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it operates according to principles that ensure that it “cannot fail to produce delinquents.” (Discipline and Punish, 266). Delinquency, indeed, is produced when social petty crime (such as taking wood in the lord's lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class of specialized "delinquents" acting as the police's proxy in surveillance of society.
The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry)—all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlands were perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits Foucault was searching for. They showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging.
Foucault challenges the commonly accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists, although he does not deny those. He does so by meticulously tracing out the shifts in culture that led to the prison's dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc. The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline and prison.
Torture
Foucault begins the book by contrasting two forms of penalty: the violent and chaotic public torture of Robert-François Damiens who was convicted of attempted regicide in the late 18th century, and the highly regimented daily schedule for inmates from an early 19th century prison. These examples provide a picture of just how profound the change in western penal systems were after less than a century. Foucault wants the reader to consider what led to these changes. How did western culture shift so radically?
To answer this question, he begins by examining public torture itself. He argues that the public spectacle of torture was a theatrical forum that served several intended and unintended purposes for society. The intended purposes were:
* Reflecting the violence of the original crime onto the convict's body for all to see.
* Enacting the revenge upon the convict's body, which the sovereign seeks for having been injured by the crime. Foucault argues that the law was considered an extension of the sovereign's body, and so the revenge must take the form of harming the convict's body.
Some unintended consequences were:
* Providing a forum for the convict's body to become a focus of sympathy and admiration.
* Creating a site of conflict between the masses and the sovereign at the convict's body. Foucault notes that public executions often led to riots in support of the prisoner.
Thus, he argues, the public execution was ultimately an ineffective use of the body, qualified as non-economical. As well, it was applied non-uniformly and haphazardly. Hence, its political cost was too high. It was the antithesis of the more modern concerns of the state: order and generalization.
Punishment
The switch to prison was not immediate. There was a more graded change, though it ran its course rapidly. Prison was preceded by a different form of public spectacle. The theater of public torture gave way to public chain gangs. Punishment became "gentle", though not for humanitarian reasons, Foucault suggests. He argues that reformists were unhappy with the unpredictable, unevenly distributed nature of the violence the sovereign would inflict on the convict. The sovereign's right to punish was so disproportionate that it was ineffective and uncontrolled. Reformists felt the power to punish and judge should become more evenly distributed, the state's power must be a form of public power. This, according to Foucault, was of more concern to reformists than humanitarian arguments.
Out of this movement towards generalized punishment, a thousand "mini-theatres" of punishment would have been created wherein the convicts' bodies would have been put on display in a more ubiquitous, controlled, and effective spectacle. Prisoners would have been forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions. This would have allowed the public to see the convicts' bodies enacting their punishment, and thus to reflect on the crime. But these experiments lasted less than twenty years.
Foucault argues that this theory of "gentle" punishment represented the first step away from the excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. But he suggests that the shift towards prison that followed was the result of a new "technology" and ontology for the body being developed in the 18th century, the "technology" of discipline, and the ontology of "man as machine."
Discipline
The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline, of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person's body. Discipline, he suggests, developed a new economy and politics for bodies. Modern institutions required that bodies must be individuated according to their tasks, as well as for training, observation, and control. Therefore, he argues, discipline created a whole new form of individuality for bodies, which enabled them to perform their duty within the new forms of economic, political, and military organizations emerging in the modern age and continuing to today.
The individuality that discipline constructs (for the bodies it controls) has four characteristics, namely it makes individuality which is:
* Cellular—determining the spatial distribution of the bodies
* Organic—ensuring that the activities required of the bodies are "natural" for them
* Genetic—controlling the evolution over time of the activities of the bodies
* Combinatory—allowing for the combination of the force of many bodies into a single massive force
Foucault suggests this individuality can be implemented in systems that are officially egalitarian, but use discipline to construct non-egalitarian power relations:
Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. (222)
Foucault's argument is that discipline creates "docile bodies", ideal for the new economics, politics and warfare of the modern industrial age—bodies that function in factories, ordered military regiments, and school classrooms. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to a) constantly observe and record the bodies they control, b) ensure the internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. That is, discipline must come about without excessive force through careful observation, and molding of the bodies into the correct form through this observation. This requires a particular form of institution, which Foucault argues, was exemplified by Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, which was never actually built.
The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether s/he was being observed. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prison, and specifically those that follow the model of the Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural.
Having laid out the emergence of the prison as the dominant form of punishment, Foucault devotes the rest of the book to examining its precise form and function in our society, to lay bare the reasons for its continued use, and question the assumed results of its use.
Prison
In examining the construction of the prison as the central means of criminal punishment, Foucault builds a case for the idea that prison became part of a larger “carceral system” that has become an all-encompassing sovereign institution in modern society. Prison is one part of a vast network, including schools, military institutions, hospitals, and factories, which build a panoptic society for its members. This system creates “disciplinary careers” (Discipline and Punish, 300) for those locked within its corridors. It is operated under the scientific authority of medicine, psychology, and criminology. Moreover, it operates according to principles that ensure that it “cannot fail to produce delinquents.” (Discipline and Punish, 266). Delinquency, indeed, is produced when social petty crime (such as taking wood in the lord's lands) is no longer tolerated, creating a class of specialized "delinquents" acting as the police's proxy in surveillance of society.
The structures Foucault chooses to use as his starting positions help highlight his conclusions. In particular, his choice as a perfect prison of the penal institution at Mettray helps personify the carceral system. Within it is included the Prison, the School, the Church, and the work-house (industry)—all of which feature heavily in his argument. The prisons at Neufchatel, Mettray, and Mettray Netherlands were perfect examples for Foucault, because they, even in their original state, began to show the traits Foucault was searching for. They showed the body of knowledge being developed about the prisoners, the creation of the 'delinquent' class, and the disciplinary careers emerging.
福柯給網民們的一封電子郵件
親愛的中國的網友：
大傢好！
首先我對有這樣一個機會能夠和大傢對話表示萬分榮幸。最近聽說我的著作在貴國翻譯出版了很多，儘管我不能再享受由此而帶來的版權利潤，而且有很大一部分還屬於盜版，但對於一個死去的人來說，名字能夠為更多的人所知曉，畢竟也是一件好事。
有朋友說我的著作文字晦澀，影響了閱讀，這點我要說明一下：因為我講的性，權力，政治等等話題，一講大傢都明白。我衹是東拉西扯，把能找到的，能想到的都扯上，號稱"知識考古學"，以顯得來頭大，也能多混些稿費，無形中就把簡單的事情給搞復雜了，在此先嚮大傢緻歉。
說句良心話，我的著作還是挺有追求的。我的追求就是想為天下一嚮讓人瞧不起的弱者們，比如同性戀、瘋子什麽的討個公道，讓歷史說話，揭一揭那些所謂"正常人"的老底，讓大傢剝開他們的畫皮看一看，同時也不再自卑，從此快樂地生活。
說句實話，我是個同性戀，這你們也都有所耳聞。如果讓我看到一個美眉，我是一點兒感覺都沒有。可要是看到一個漂亮的小夥兒，我立刻就會激動起來。像我這樣的人，在整個人類社會中所占的比例還不小。有人說，同性戀是"社會醜惡現象"，這簡直是不負責任的瞎扯。你們知道嗎，這同性戀是天生的，不是後天學出來的。這就跟你們生下來是男的，就是男的；是女的，那就是女的一樣。而且，誰規定了男的必須找女的，女的必須找男的？如果我們兩個男人真心相愛，那就是我們倆人的事兒，又礙着誰了？他們喜歡女人我們管過嗎？那他們又憑什麽來管我們呢？他們喜歡女人，就讓我們也喜歡女人，這也太霸道了吧！我們明明不喜歡女人，偏讓我們去跟女人好，這不是自己找罪受嗎？說我們同性戀傳染艾滋病，這倒是事實，我自己就是因為得了艾滋病死的嘛。可他們跟女人不是也搞出性病來了嗎？怎麽就不說了？我在書中曾經闡釋過，不允許兩個男人結婚的文明，就不算是真正的文明。聽說美國公僕剋林頓上任後發佈的第一項法令，不是關於國際經濟的，也不是關於世界和平的，而是關於美軍人同性戀合法化的。這個小剋還是蠻理解我們這些思想傢的。
最近聽說，中國也有着悠久的同性戀歷史，流傳已久的如斷袖、分桃等美麗的同性戀傳說，在貴國的名著《紅樓夢》中，也有描寫幾對少年可歌可泣的同性戀故事的。所以我相信，你們當中也有許多像我這樣的人。朋友們，如果你們在生活中遇到嘲諷和打擊，切莫灰心，別失意，要知道，這不是什麽丟臉的事，古往今來有多少英雄豪傑，都是和我們一樣的人。而且，要記得，有個福哥，在天上為你們鼓勁，為你們加油。
另外我還研究瘋子。日常生活裏，老有人說別人："哼，瘋子！神經病！"這也是不講道理的廢話。不合他們意的就是瘋子？就是神經病？他們說什麽就是什麽？哪兒有那事兒啊！比如他們說尼采先生是瘋子，把他送進了瘋人院，可是請看一看，有誰敢說比尼采先生更清醒，對世界看得更透？貴國有本小說叫《狂人日記》，裏邊就是講一個瘋子的故事，可後來別人都說這瘋子是"反封建的鬥士"。所以，別以為"正常"就是什麽好事兒，我說過了，所謂"正常"，不過就是另一種形式的瘋癲。說白了，大夥兒都是瘋子，誰也別說誰。你們說我是瘋子，從另一個角度說，你們還是瘋子呢！咱們這些瘋子們活在這個世界上，和平共處就成了。不過當然話不能說絶對了。有些瘋子也討厭，藉着瘋勁兒瞎折騰，把他們關起來還是對的。我的朋友阿爾都塞瘋了之後，把自己老婆給掐死了，後來他被關在瘋人院裏一直到死，想起來痛心啊，一個天才就這樣……。至少我心裏一塊石頭落了地：他連老婆都掐死了，朋友更何足道哉？要是一不留神，讓他給掐死了，還不給償命，那纔叫虧呢！
除了以上說的，我還提倡"巔峰體驗"，也有稱作"極端體驗"的。說白了，就是要"爽呆了"！不過這個"爽"倒不一定是指平常的那些享受。比如，你來個蹦極，那就是嘗到恐懼的爽，你受個虐待，那就是痛苦的爽。俄羅斯有個寫小說的老哥叫陀思妥耶夫斯基，他說他最爽的時候就是他抽羊角瘋的時候。我自己呢，一生都在追求極緻的爽，什麽方式都成，衹要高興就行，衹要爽就行。活着的時候，我有時有節制地吸點兒毒，勁兒上來的時候，就有點飄飄然，很爽的；有一回我出門讓車給撞了，人傢把我送進醫院，有幾分鐘我覺得自己要死了，哎呀，那種感覺好爽耶！至於我真死的時候，那份兒爽可就更甭提了！常言道"欲仙欲死"，真是很有道理的咧！
當然我不提倡大傢全跟我學：追求吸毒的爽，上了癮得傾傢蕩産，那就變成窮爽了，這種爽不嘗也罷。太追求性愛的爽，不小心得了性病艾滋什麽的，對健康不利；去成心挨汽車撞更是吃飽了撐的，這種爽可遇而不可求。不過大傢夥兒要追求爽呢，也是挺容易的：衹要礙不着別人的事兒，講究點兒個人衛生，不損害別人的健康和自己的健康，不違法，不損害安定團结，那就行了。怎麽覺得爽就怎麽來，同性戀也好，讓別人說是"瘋子"也罷，走自己的路，讓別人說去。畢竟，人生苦短，要盡所有可能的爽，纔是更具意義的啊！
朋友們，讓我們共勉吧！
你們最虔誠的
米歇爾·福柯
順便說一下，陳陂找到我，要我給中國網友發封"伊妹兒"。我不懂中文，有點猶豫，可陳陂拍着胸脯說他負責翻譯。我瞅他的法語水平，有點兒二把刀，可他在我這死磨硬泡，我拗不過，衹好寫了上面的話。如果網友們瞅着不對勁兒，那都是陳陂的餿主意，可千萬別找我！
米歇爾·福柯
又及
親愛的中國的網友：
大傢好！
首先我對有這樣一個機會能夠和大傢對話表示萬分榮幸。最近聽說我的著作在貴國翻譯出版了很多，儘管我不能再享受由此而帶來的版權利潤，而且有很大一部分還屬於盜版，但對於一個死去的人來說，名字能夠為更多的人所知曉，畢竟也是一件好事。
有朋友說我的著作文字晦澀，影響了閱讀，這點我要說明一下：因為我講的性，權力，政治等等話題，一講大傢都明白。我衹是東拉西扯，把能找到的，能想到的都扯上，號稱"知識考古學"，以顯得來頭大，也能多混些稿費，無形中就把簡單的事情給搞復雜了，在此先嚮大傢緻歉。
說句良心話，我的著作還是挺有追求的。我的追求就是想為天下一嚮讓人瞧不起的弱者們，比如同性戀、瘋子什麽的討個公道，讓歷史說話，揭一揭那些所謂"正常人"的老底，讓大傢剝開他們的畫皮看一看，同時也不再自卑，從此快樂地生活。
說句實話，我是個同性戀，這你們也都有所耳聞。如果讓我看到一個美眉，我是一點兒感覺都沒有。可要是看到一個漂亮的小夥兒，我立刻就會激動起來。像我這樣的人，在整個人類社會中所占的比例還不小。有人說，同性戀是"社會醜惡現象"，這簡直是不負責任的瞎扯。你們知道嗎，這同性戀是天生的，不是後天學出來的。這就跟你們生下來是男的，就是男的；是女的，那就是女的一樣。而且，誰規定了男的必須找女的，女的必須找男的？如果我們兩個男人真心相愛，那就是我們倆人的事兒，又礙着誰了？他們喜歡女人我們管過嗎？那他們又憑什麽來管我們呢？他們喜歡女人，就讓我們也喜歡女人，這也太霸道了吧！我們明明不喜歡女人，偏讓我們去跟女人好，這不是自己找罪受嗎？說我們同性戀傳染艾滋病，這倒是事實，我自己就是因為得了艾滋病死的嘛。可他們跟女人不是也搞出性病來了嗎？怎麽就不說了？我在書中曾經闡釋過，不允許兩個男人結婚的文明，就不算是真正的文明。聽說美國公僕剋林頓上任後發佈的第一項法令，不是關於國際經濟的，也不是關於世界和平的，而是關於美軍人同性戀合法化的。這個小剋還是蠻理解我們這些思想傢的。
最近聽說，中國也有着悠久的同性戀歷史，流傳已久的如斷袖、分桃等美麗的同性戀傳說，在貴國的名著《紅樓夢》中，也有描寫幾對少年可歌可泣的同性戀故事的。所以我相信，你們當中也有許多像我這樣的人。朋友們，如果你們在生活中遇到嘲諷和打擊，切莫灰心，別失意，要知道，這不是什麽丟臉的事，古往今來有多少英雄豪傑，都是和我們一樣的人。而且，要記得，有個福哥，在天上為你們鼓勁，為你們加油。
另外我還研究瘋子。日常生活裏，老有人說別人："哼，瘋子！神經病！"這也是不講道理的廢話。不合他們意的就是瘋子？就是神經病？他們說什麽就是什麽？哪兒有那事兒啊！比如他們說尼采先生是瘋子，把他送進了瘋人院，可是請看一看，有誰敢說比尼采先生更清醒，對世界看得更透？貴國有本小說叫《狂人日記》，裏邊就是講一個瘋子的故事，可後來別人都說這瘋子是"反封建的鬥士"。所以，別以為"正常"就是什麽好事兒，我說過了，所謂"正常"，不過就是另一種形式的瘋癲。說白了，大夥兒都是瘋子，誰也別說誰。你們說我是瘋子，從另一個角度說，你們還是瘋子呢！咱們這些瘋子們活在這個世界上，和平共處就成了。不過當然話不能說絶對了。有些瘋子也討厭，藉着瘋勁兒瞎折騰，把他們關起來還是對的。我的朋友阿爾都塞瘋了之後，把自己老婆給掐死了，後來他被關在瘋人院裏一直到死，想起來痛心啊，一個天才就這樣……。至少我心裏一塊石頭落了地：他連老婆都掐死了，朋友更何足道哉？要是一不留神，讓他給掐死了，還不給償命，那纔叫虧呢！
除了以上說的，我還提倡"巔峰體驗"，也有稱作"極端體驗"的。說白了，就是要"爽呆了"！不過這個"爽"倒不一定是指平常的那些享受。比如，你來個蹦極，那就是嘗到恐懼的爽，你受個虐待，那就是痛苦的爽。俄羅斯有個寫小說的老哥叫陀思妥耶夫斯基，他說他最爽的時候就是他抽羊角瘋的時候。我自己呢，一生都在追求極緻的爽，什麽方式都成，衹要高興就行，衹要爽就行。活着的時候，我有時有節制地吸點兒毒，勁兒上來的時候，就有點飄飄然，很爽的；有一回我出門讓車給撞了，人傢把我送進醫院，有幾分鐘我覺得自己要死了，哎呀，那種感覺好爽耶！至於我真死的時候，那份兒爽可就更甭提了！常言道"欲仙欲死"，真是很有道理的咧！
當然我不提倡大傢全跟我學：追求吸毒的爽，上了癮得傾傢蕩産，那就變成窮爽了，這種爽不嘗也罷。太追求性愛的爽，不小心得了性病艾滋什麽的，對健康不利；去成心挨汽車撞更是吃飽了撐的，這種爽可遇而不可求。不過大傢夥兒要追求爽呢，也是挺容易的：衹要礙不着別人的事兒，講究點兒個人衛生，不損害別人的健康和自己的健康，不違法，不損害安定團结，那就行了。怎麽覺得爽就怎麽來，同性戀也好，讓別人說是"瘋子"也罷，走自己的路，讓別人說去。畢竟，人生苦短，要盡所有可能的爽，纔是更具意義的啊！
朋友們，讓我們共勉吧！
你們最虔誠的
米歇爾·福柯
順便說一下，陳陂找到我，要我給中國網友發封"伊妹兒"。我不懂中文，有點猶豫，可陳陂拍着胸脯說他負責翻譯。我瞅他的法語水平，有點兒二把刀，可他在我這死磨硬泡，我拗不過，衹好寫了上面的話。如果網友們瞅着不對勁兒，那都是陳陂的餿主意，可千萬別找我！
米歇爾·福柯
又及