雖然有些學者已研究過基督宗教中告解做為戒律的意義，但並沒有適當的研究以戒律學的各個面向探討佛教出家眾關於懺悔的戒律。本研究由傅柯的著作中，用批判的觀點探討佛教的懺悔。傅柯雖然沒有研究過戒律學或者佛教，但是仍可由他的著作中推斷出家眾如何被機構化的實踐所形塑，以及推斷這些出家眾如何形塑自己的內在生活，使自己能合乎於機構化的自律模式。

While some scholarship has considered the significance of confession as a disciplinary measure in the Christian context, there is no appropriate analysis of the disciplinary aspects of confession as regards the rules of Buddhist monks. This article offers a critique of “Buddhist confession” in the light of Foucault’s writings on confession. While Foucault did not consider the Vinaya, or for that matter Buddhism in general, his writings may be used to infer how monastics may have been molded by institutional practices and to infer how monastics shaped their own inner life to form their own mode of institutionalized self-discipline.