This chapter expands on Richard Bernstein's observation that no conception of phronesis can be adequate today unless it confronts the analysis of power. In addition it considers the question of why power is important to contemporary social science. The chapter achieves this by analyzing how Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas each deal with issues of power in their thinking. In the following chapter, we then tease out the implications of Foucault's power analytics for a phronesis–power approach to the study of social and political phenomena.

The works of Habermas and Foucault highlight an essential tension in thinking about power. This is the tension between consensus and conflict. With a point of departure in Kant, Habermas is the philosopher of Moralität (morality) based on consensus. Foucault, following Nietzsche, is the philosopher of wirkliche Historie (real history) told in terms of conflict and power. This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the issue of power. We will ask whether solutions to problems of power are best understood in terms of consensus, or whether conflict is a more suitable frame of reference.