"The different pieces of evidence did not constitute so many neutral elements, until such time as they could be gathered together into a single body of evidence that would bring the final certainty of guilt. Each piece of evidence aroused a particular degree of abomination. Guilt did not begin when all the evidence was gathered together; piece by piece, it was constituted by each of the elements that made it possible to recognize a guilty person. Thus a semi-proof did not leave the suspect innocent until such time as it was completed; it made him semi-guilty; slight evidence of a serious crime marked someone as slightly criminal. In short, penal demonstration did not obey a dualistic system: true or false; but a principle of continuous gradation; a degree reached in the demonstration already formed a degree of guilt and consequently involved a degree of punishment."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Atheists from FranceAcademics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceHistorians from FranceSociologists from France
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter One, The body of the condemned, pp.23
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Michel Foucault
1926 – 1984
französischer Philosoph
192 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Michel Foucault →
Related Quotes
"Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has a…"
"Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else."
"Quand j’étudie les mécanismes de pouvoir, j’essaie d’étudier leur spécificité… Je n’admets ni la notion de maîtrise n…"
"We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by …"
"[L]'âme, prison du corps."
"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our …"
"Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"
"[T]ruly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It a…"
"The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one's sex, but, rather, to use one's sexuality henceforth to a…"
"I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone …"