Michel Foucault is remembered as a thinker who tried to show that the basic ideas which people normally believe to be permanent truths about human nature and society actually change throughout the course of history. He regularly tested long-held assumptions, especially about mental illness, prisons, police, insurance, care of the mentally ill, sexuality, gay rights, welfare, and the effects of power.

Born in Poitiers, France, Foucault studied philosophy and psychology at the elite École Normale Superieure in Paris. During the 1960s, he served as head of the philosophy departments at the University of Clermont-Ferrand and the University of Vincennes. In 1970, he was elected to the highest academic post in France, the College de France, where he took the title, Professor of the History of Systems of Thought. During the 1970s and 1980s his international reputation grew as he lectured around the world.

German philosophers Frederick Nietzsche and...