Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: A conversation with Mark Pennington

Jonathan Fortier and Mark Pennington discuss whether Michel Foucault’s work shares commonalities with the liberal tradition. In a conversation that covers theories of knowledge, human identity, and social and political thought, Pennington argues that Foucault’s concerns about abusive power and its effects on individual liberty open his work to productive consideration for classical liberals and libertarians. While the young Foucault was hostile to liberal understandings of liberty, his later work can be understood as increasingly sympathetic to the principles and methodologies of the classical liberal tradition.

You can buy his new book Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom available now on Amazon.

About our guest:

Mark Pennington is a British political economist and professor of political economy and public policy at King’s College London. His research focuses on classical liberalism, public choice theory, institutional economics, and the role of markets in addressing social and environmental challenges. Pennington is known for exploring how decentralized decision-making and spontaneous order can outperform centralized planning in complex societies.

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