The Order of Things

The book comes in very good condition. Paper quality is good, print is good. Good for price. About the content, it's difficult to grasp if you don't have prior knowledge about the subject.

The best book written in the last century.

Good book

Very good book. Nicely packed and original book. Most read for sociology, philosophy and anthropology student. It will give you great analysing perspectives as how by obscuring the ordering one creates order.

Great.......!!!!

The book is foucault's classic work, but quality of covers and pages are so poor that u may even think its a pirated copy.......and its sad that it wont last much....

There are some books that carve out a small niche of reality and then devote themselves to explaining that particular bit as free from error as humanly possible. There are other books that aim at a sweeping reformulation— or even a new beginning—to a larger realm of human thought.Most of these gain little traction as this sweeping view turns out to be based on facile analogies that do little to actually further the arts and sciences. Foucault’s Order of Things, agree with it or not, is one of the most successful modern examples of such a magnum opus. The work attempts to explain the path of Western thought from the fall of the Renaissance and beginning of the Classical age up to the twentieth century while simultaneously illuminating the subconscious notions that undergird the sciences.An Amazon review is not the place for a sophisticated discussion of Foucault’s success or lack thereof. However, while enriched with an incredible erudition I found Foucault’s postmodern take on empirical sciences more asserted than proven.But it was a joy to wind through the labyrinth of modern Western thought with Foucault as a guide. Whether he has truly discovered the unconscious roots of the sciences and whether his corresponding call for a metaphysics of language to serve as the foundation of human thought is the right path or not, his vast influence, especially in the academy, means that he cannot be overlooked.One should also note that few people have the knowledge or the ambition to attempt Foucault’s project of an archaeology of ideas. If, ultimately, his thought has had somewhat of a pernicious effect on academic life it is not the result of a failure of heart or imagination. It is simply that Foucault’s archaeology is such a vast undertaking that being a pioneer he was bound to mix error and truth.Perhaps the best recommendaton I can make of this book is that I plan to read the Archaeology of Knowledge. A strong, but cautious, recommendation to all intellectuals.

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It is an offer for my daughter.

Foucault is essential reading for anyone interested in analyses of representation. It was recommended to me to develop the theoretical side of my dissertation.

Though a difficult text to manage and ridden with complexity, points of internal anxiety, and even requiring some knowledge derived from elsewhere, Foucault's text is an excavation on the order of symbols and the categories of thought which the Classical era brought, especially to Western Europe. Rather than a direct, localised understanding of human history, Foucault's text serves to abstract and dissolve certain concrete concepts which are established within social convention and structure. By looking at several means of symbolism including the meaning implied by Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Foucault gives his archaeology of thought a certain cultural relevance, and a certain sense of humanity trying to reach beyond itself, into new symbols which defy the physical restrictions before it. His impetus, a certain undisclosed work by Jorge Luis Borges, is also very curious. A Spanish poet and novelist inspired by latent depth and complexity, and the work of the earliest and most pivotal philosopher of the enlightenment, Benedict de Spinoza, the intention running beneath the challenging text is quite clear: Foucault seeks like one of his several inspirations, Friedrich Nietzsche (the champion of freethinking in the nineteenth century), to uncover certain latent potentials underlying the rigid organisation of human thought.The text does not represent hypothesis as much as it does represent discovery, and Foucault keeps a consistent academic tone within his writing. His purpose is clear: to create a set of instruments and precise tools of criticism and thought for certain modes of thinking about knowledge as containment, knowledge as something quite distinct from actual human thought and understanding. Though Foucault's book is academic in tone, it's focus and aim are clearly social and in the interests of releasing certain folds of thought which are currently hidden by the apparent limitations of knowledge. As Foucault says, knowledge isn't for knowing, it is for cutting. The suggestion of the book is clear: that knowledge itself is not the relevant objective, or the categorisation or ordering of knowledge. Rather, Foucault desires to point to the origin of human thought, and the hidden areas of perspective, which he highlights in the field of psycho-analysis and ethnography. This book is of incredible value for people interested in understanding the underpinnings of knowledge and the way in which it is structured, and a good complement would perhaps be the work of Jorge Luis Borges, or even Gilles Deleuze who was a friend with similar objectives to Michel Foucault. Deleuze's texts, written with Felix Guattari, "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" are further insights into problems in scholarship, knowledge structuring, etc.