The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984

Power

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'Who since Weber, or perhaps even Hobbes, has done as much to show why power is such a profound, elusive and treacherous presence throughout our experience?' The Times Higher Education 
 
The third and final volume of the Essential Works of Foucault series, Power brings together his writings on the issues that he helped make the core agenda of Western political culture: medicine, prisons, psychiatry, government and sexuality, in particular showing his concerns with human rights, discrimination and exclusion. It also includes articles and open letters published directly in response to the issues of the time, calling for reform in abortion, asylum and the death penalty. All the pieces here bring a new sense of Foucault's huge influence on the politics of personal freedom. 
 
Edited by James D. Faubion 
Translated by Robert Hurley and Others

Who since Weber, or perhaps even Hobbes, has done as much to show why power is such a profound, elusive and treacherous presence throughout our experience?

The third and final volume of the Essential Works of Foucault series, Power brings together his writings on the issues that he helped make the core agenda of Western political culture: medicine, prisons, psychiatry, government and sexuality, in particular showing his concerns with human rights, discrimination and exclusion. It also includes articles and open letters published directly in response to the issues of the time, calling for reform in abortion, asylum and the death penalty. All the pieces here bring a new sense of Foucault's huge influence on the politics of personal freedom.

Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984

Ethics

'A fabulous journey through thirty years of political and intellectual ferment ... will reorient our reading of Foucault's major works' Didier Eribon 
 
The Essential Works of Michel Foucault offers the definitive collection of his articles, interviews and seminars from across thirty years of his extraordinary career. This first volume, Ethics, contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, as well as key writings and candid interviews on ethical matters: from the role of the intellectual and philosopher in society to friendship, sexuality and the care of the self and others. 
 
Edited by Paul Rabinow 
Translated by Robert Hurley and Others

A fabulous journey through thirty years of political and intellectual ferment that shows that Foucault's work is as alive and contemporary as ever

The Essential Works of Michel Foucault offers the definitive collection of his articles, interviews and seminars from across thirty years of his extraordinary career. This first volume, Ethics, contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, as well as key writings and candid interviews on ethical matters: from the role of the intellectual and philosopher in society to friendship, sexuality and the care of the self and others.

Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984

Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology

'Foucault leaves no reader untouched or unchanged' Edward Said 
 
Aesthetics, the second volume of the complete collection of Michel Foucault's courses, articles and interviews, focuses on the philosophy, literature and art which informed his engagement with ethics and power, including brilliant commentaries on the work of de Sade, Rousseau, Marx, Magritte, Nietzsche, Freud and Wagner. He also explores a number of avant-garde authors who challenge our traditional notions of humanism, extends his theories on power relations and looks back over the whole of his extraordinary 'critical history of thought'. 
 
Edited by James D. Faubion 
Translated by Robert Hurley and Others

Aesthetics offers a focused study on the philosophy, literature and art which informed Foucault's engagement with ethics and power, including brilliant commentaries on the work of de Sade, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Wagner.

The Foucault Reader

'The most innovative and influential French thinker of the contemporary era' Guardian 
 
This is the ideal introduction to one of the most significant and radical philosophers of the past century. It includes detailed excerpts from all of Foucault's major works, including Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, as well as many of his most revealing interviews, covering subjects from madness to desire, art to the nature of truth. No other writer has made us think more about the structures of power and control in our society, both past and present. 
 
'Scarcely any philosopher working on the history of philosophy or historian working on the history of institutions, social science or sexuality can avoid confronting the challenge of Foucault's books' Michael Ignatieff 
 
Edited by Paul Rabinow

The Foucault Reader is the ideal introduction to one the most stimulating and influential writers of the past century. It includes detailed excerpts from all his richly textured historical studies - including Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality - as well as many of his best interviews.

Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76

Society Must Be Defended

'Foucault must be reckoned with by humanists, social scientists, and political activists' The New York Times Book Review 
 
Society Must Be Defended is Michel Foucault's devastating critique of the systems of power and control inherent in civilization. Taken from a series of lectures given by Foucault at the Collége de France in 1975-76, it reveals how war is the foundation of all power relations, and politics ultimately a continuation of battlefield violence. He offers a politically charged re-reading of history, with examples ranging from the Trojan myth to Nazi Germany, to show a continual, 'silent war' between the powerful and the powerless. 
 
'A timely and prescient book, mainly because of what it says about the way in which war is necessary as a means of control' New Statesman 
 
Translated by David Macey

Society Must Be Defended is taken from a series of lectures given by Foucault at the Collége de France in 1975-76. Using war to analyse power relations, he contends that politics is ultimately a continuation of battlefield violence, and that ingrained ideas of sovereignty and individual rights are attempts to refute the fact that all power relations are based on domination. Coloured with brilliant historical examples, Foucault draws from many periods in both England and France, with wonderful digressions into subjects as diverse as classical French tragedy and the gothic novel.

The Birth of the Prison

Discipline and Punish

'Imaginative, illuminating and innovative' The New York Times Book Review 
 
The grisly spectacle of public executions and torture of centuries ago has been replaced by the penal system in western society - but has anything really changed? 
 
In his revolutionary work on control and power relations in our public institutions, Michel Foucault argues that the development of prisons, police organizations and legal hierarchies has merely changed the focus of domination from our bodies to our souls. Even schools, factories, barracks and hospitals, in which an individual's time is controlled hour by hour, are part of a disciplinary society. 
 
'Foucault's genius is called forth into the eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book' Washington Post

Discipline and Punish is clearly a tour de force ... that rare kind of book whose methods and conclusions must be reckoned with by humanists, social scientists and political activists

Foucault's genius is called forth into eloquent clarity of his passions ... his best book

'The main line of the thesis is enormously appealing and the range of historical sources and, even more, the analytical skill with which they are made to yield up their secrets, is quite dazzling'

International Journal of Criminology and Penology

In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. In this provocative work, Michel Foucault argues that the development of the Western system of prisons, police and legal hierarchies have merely shifted the focus of social control from our bodies to our souls.

The Will to Knowledge

The History of Sexuality: 1

'A brilliant display of fireworks, attacking the widespread and banal notion that "in the beginning" sexual activity was guilt-free and delicious, being repressed and blighted only by the gloom of Victorianism' Spectator 
 
We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated? The first part of Michel Foucault's landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppressing sexuality, led to an explosion of discussion about sex as a separate sphere of life for study and examination. As a result, he argues, we are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure. 
 
'A wealth of insights, original conceptualizations and provocative ideas' The Times Literary Supplement

A wealth of insights, original conceptualizations and provocative ideas

A brilliant display of fireworks, attacking the widespread and banal notion that 'in the beginning' sexual activity was guilt-free and delicious, being repressed and blighted only by the gloom of Victorianism

Foucault is at his polemical best. He brilliantly succeeds in turning commonplaces on their heads

We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated? 
 
The first part of Michel Foucault's landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppressing sexuality, led to an explosion of discussion about sex as a separate sphere of life for study and examination. As a result, he argues, we are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.

The Use of Pleasure

The History of Sexuality: 2

'No brief survey can do justice to the richness, complexity and detail of Foucault's discussion' New York Review of Books 
 
The second volume of Michel Foucault's pioneering analysis of the changing nature of desire explores how sexuality was perceived in classical Greek culture. 
 
From the stranger byways of Greek medicine (with its advice on the healthiest season for sex, as well as exercise and diet) to the role of women, The Use of Pleasure is full of extraordinary insights into the differences - and the continuities - between the Ancient, Christian and Modern worlds, showing how sex became a moral issue in the west. 
 
'Required reading for those who cling to stereotyped ideas about our difference from the Greeks in terms of pagan license versus Christian austerity' Los Angeles Times Book Review

No brief survey can do justice to the richness, complexity, and detail of Foucault's discussion ... subtle and penetrating

'A man of the same era and Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, he was, in his writings and his life, the most accessible of them all, as well as the most beguiling'

Always provocative, needling, disconcerting

The second volume of Michel Foucault's pioneering analysis of the changing nature of desire explores how sexuality was perceived in classical Greek culture. From the stranger byways of Greek medicine (with its advice on the healthiest season for sex, as well as exercise and diet) to the role of women, The Use of Pleasure is full of extraordinary insights into the differences - and the continuities - between the Ancient, Christian and Modern worlds, showing how sex became a moral issue in the west.

The Care of the Self

The History of Sexuality: 3

'Bristles with provocative insights into the tangled liaisons of sex and self' Times Higher Education 
 
In the third volume of his acclaimed examination of sexuality in modern Western society, Foucault investigates the Golden Age of Rome to reveal a decisive break from the classical Greek version of sexual pleasure. Exploring the moral reflections of philosophers and physicians of the era, he identifies a growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences. At the core of this transformation Foucault found the principles of the 'care of the self': the belief that the self is an object of knowledge to be cultivated over time, and the implications this has for ethics and behaviour. 
 
'Magnificent ... Foucault's great achievement is to illuminate an entire and cohesive body of thought. It is brilliantly done' Daily Telegraph

'A magnificent treasure-trove ... Foucault's great achievement is to illuminate an entire and cohesive body of thought. It is brilliantly done'

In the third volume of his acclaimed examination of sexuality in modern Western society, Foucault investigates the Golden Age of Rome to reveal a decisive break from the classical Greek version of sexual pleasure. Exploring the moral reflections of philosophers and physicians of the era, he identifies a growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences. At the core of this transformation Foucault found the principles of the 'care of the self': the belief that the self is an object of knowledge to be cultivated over time, and the implications this has for ethics and behaviour.

Michel Foucault

Robert  Hurley

The most innovative and influential French thinker of the contemporary era

Nearly 35 years after his death, Foucault remains a vital reference point, and his History of Sexuality remains required reading ... The appearance of the fourth volume is itself the most significant event in the world of Foucault scholarship in 20 years ... Essential

Michel Foucault

Praise for The History of Sexuality: 4

The most innovative and influential French thinker of the contemporary era

Nearly 35 years after his death, Foucault remains a vital reference point, and his History of Sexuality remains required reading ... The appearance of the fourth volume is itself the most significant event in ...

Books by Michel Foucault

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