Abstract

In this article we propose to characterize the paradoxical and eccentric mode of philosophical inquiry proper of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. This will be done in three moments: in the first, the place occupied by power, subjectivity and truth in the intellectu al journey of this author is formulated. In this sense, the philosophical task of the French thinker is, on the one hand, to understand how our concrete ways of living, believing and thinking have been produced and, on the other, to cre ate ourselves as a w ork of art ; in the second, paradox and rarity are proposed as characteristic features of his research, and the image that most exemplifies is that of the crab. To illustrate this paradoxical character, both the research exercise of the historian Paul Veyne and the singular style of the painter René Magritte are illustrative. Finally, and in the third, the praise is expressed for the frankness carried out by Michel Foucault, whose emblematic figure is that of the parrhesiastes . For that reason, a paradoxical characteristic of Foucault's personality can be analyzed in one of the terms he coined: that of parrhesiastes , because such a notion entails the risk for himself that implies saying "this", "that" or "the other ", Because it is a frank, free saying that t akes the form of criticism towards oneself and towards others. In sum, the paradoxical and "rare" research of the French thinker that comes from ruptures and discontinuities leads us to understand our present and what we are within a critical perspective t hat asks about the technologies and political devices of power that historically have contributed to forge our subjectivity. .