Volume 17, Number 2 · August 12, 1971
Good-by Man
By D.W. Harding
The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (A translation of Les Mots et les choses)
by Michel Foucault
Pantheon, 411 pp., $10.00
Attempting to bring order into the chaos of psychiatric diagnosis in the nineteenth century, Henry Maudsley took as his aim 'to clear the ground by endeavoring to think the subject into simplicity and to set forth the results in as plain language as possible.' To assume that this would be the aim of any writer would be to forget how foreign it is to some of the intellectual traditions of the continent. To Foucault, obviously, it would be flouting all the rules of the game, rather like arguing that because the matador intends to kill the bull in the end he should take a big-game rifle and use it at the earliest opportunity. Having worked hard for his erudition, his insights, his subtle deviations from more ordinary ways of thinking, Foucault sees no reason why his reader should reap the results without sharing the toil.
Review, 2799 words
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