Mogens Chrom Jacobsen

'foucauldian Features in the History of Human Rights' and Other Essays on Michel Foucault Mogens Chrom Jacobsen

This volume unites four papers about Michel Foucault or inspired by him. I came to Foucault a bit by accident being entrusted with the translation into Danish of a large number of his published works. This has been a fascinating task and I have learned much from working with his texts, but I am not quite sure that Foucault would have valued as highly as me much of what I appreciate in his works. This is also the reason why some of these papers are quite critical of Foucault even though they are also based on some essential insights of his. The first paper, Foucauldian Features in the History of Human Rights, has never been published before. It was produced for the International Conference "Michel Foucault and the Problems of Contemporary Society," Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia. The second paper, Foucault, Relativism, and Political Action, was published in Ingerid S. Straume and J. F. Humphrey (eds.), Depoliticization, The Political Imaginary of Global Capitalism, Malmö NSU-Press: 209-228. This paper was presented for the winter session of the Nordic Summer University, Oslo, Norway, in 2004. It is also available at https: //www.academia.edu/336404/ DEPOLITICIZATION_The_Political_Imaginary_of_Global_Capitalism The third paper, Utilitarianism and the Devices of Power, has been published in Swedish as Utilitarismen och maktens verktyg. Res publica. No. 64. 2004: 32-51. I am here publishing the English original which were translated into Swedish. This paper was presented for the summer session of the Nordic Summer University, Hämeenlinna, Finland, in 2002. The last paper, Reason and Unreason, Or Michel Foucault as Historian of Ideas, has never been published before. This paper was presented for the summer session of the Nordic Summer University, Brandbjerg, Denmark, in 2012.