The problem of humanism in Michel Foucault

Foucault, who defined humanism as a set of themes that have been reintroduced many times in European societies in certain periods of history and are often associated with value judgments, stated that this thematics, which he described as too flexible and inconsistent to put forward a system of thought itself, was based on and legitimized some human ideas compiled from religion, science and politics. He said that what worries him most about these polar humanist themes, which are often at opposite poles as an expression of critical differentiation, is the limitation of man as a result of the fact that each of these humanisms presents a certain form of morality as the universal model of all freedoms. However, for Foucault, the fact that the humanist theme is expressed by such diverse and diverse schools of thought that it cannot be put together means that man cannot be limited. For this reason, Foucault, in his early work, took a critical approach to humanisms that saw rational human nature as the universal necessity of man's existence, thus positioning him as an epistemic point of departure, a practical agent at the center of historical progress (in fact, he said that he "constructs man as the object of a certain knowledge"). However, it is seen that the thinker has abandoned the idea of the subject, which he conceived in his recent works as a passive product of discourse or power, and reorients himself to subjectivity. In his personal ethics, which he identified as the focus of his philosophy and political action, it is clear that the thinker's critique of humanism, which demands the change and construction of the free subject through the "critical ontology of ourselves" and the "arts of living," is made for another figure who will realize unlimited freedom and social transformation. Foucault therefore proposes a new definition of humanism and man. In this context, it is seen that man, who constructs truth, meaning and reality through epistemic discourses, is transformed into an irrational desire entity that ignores truth, meaning and value with unlimited choice and unlimited pleasure with the humanism put forward by Foucault in the context of self-realization where he is defined by modern secular humanism as the existence of reason.