Apart from the focus on the self, Foucault's ethics has another dimension: critical responding to one's time. Critical work encompasses the subject's personal work on him/herself, and also a critique of society, power relations and structures. While I have argued that to criticize Foucault's late work for a lack of normative guidelines misses the point of his effort to rethink ethics, the need for a normative grounding becomes more pressing in connection with politics. The subject's ethical work on him/herself may be based on unthematized values and experiences of liberation, but a shared conception of freedom seems necessary in emancipatory politics. Concepts empower, they incite discussions, arguments, dialogues. Normative ideals such as freedom, equality and justice articulate Utopian possibilities and give imaginations a concrete form that can be communicated and shared as a common political ideal and goal.

The connection between philosophy and politics in Foucault's thought is, to say the least, ambiguous. David Couzens Hoy (1998, 18–20), for example, argues that, although Foucault's writings seem to be politically engaged, exactly how they generate this effect is not clear.