An analysis of Michel Foucault's thought and Jean Baudrillard's thought

The history of philosophy, especially in the second half of the 20th century contemporary French thought, has a very complex structure, and at the beginning of this complexity is undoubtedly the new state of "non-departmental" thought of philosophy. The humanist notion, which refers to a subject-centered thought and which we can say that it continued especially until Jean Paul Sartre, began to collapse in the second half of the 20th century and thus, whether a new era was entered in philosophy was problematized. In order to understand more clearly the thoughts of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard, two of the leading thinkers of these problematizations, the thought in the first part of the study; It is the formation of modern thought that continued until the period in which Foucault and Baudrillard grew up. Especially for Foucault and Baudrillard, the importance of the modern period, which represents an important turning point / threshold, in order to understand the actuality, how knowledge and power that determine our actions as subjects form a spiral of our present experiences and with which networks of knowledge and power, and how subjects can open up to experiences other than these experiences. It is due to the fact that it is the place where the answers of the questions should be sought. In this respect, the importance of the modern period in terms of subjectivity is mentioned in the first part of the study. In the second chapter, the position of Foucault and Baudrillard's thoughts in contemporary French thought, what the analysis styles of Foucault and Baudrillard are, are discussed, and what are the similar and divergent aspects of the analysis styles used by both thinkers in making the ontology of actuality are investigated. Although the difference of the sources and research areas of the two thinkers seems to be a handicap in comparing these two thinkers, the benefits of these thinkers' analysis in understanding today are also discussed. In the third and last chapter, the similarities and differences between Michel Foucault's existing analysis of the modern threshold, which he thinks constitute the present, and Baudrillard's thoughts, which focus more on understanding today, and his efforts to analyze the present, are included. Key Words: Modern French Thought, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Postmodernism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism