Subjectivity and Truth: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1980-1981
This volume captures Michel Foucault's decisive 1981 lecture series that marked a fundamental reorientation in his philosophical project and The History of Sexuality. These lectures represent the moment when Foucault shifted his focus to arts of living as the central framework for understanding subjectivity, establishing a new approach to ethics as the deliberate cultivation of one's relationship to oneself.
Key Philosophical Contributions
In these lectures, Foucault examines the Greek subordination of gender differences to the opposition between active and passive roles. He traces the development of Imperial stoicism's model of the conjugal bond, which emphasized unwavering fidelity and shared feelings while leading to the disqualification of homosexuality. This analysis directly foreshadows his later works The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self.
Historical and Intellectual Context
Delivered at the prestigious Collège de France, these 1980-1981 lectures demonstrate Foucault's methodology of examining how individuals constitute themselves as subjects through ethical practices. The course material explores ancient philosophical traditions and their influence on Western concepts of selfhood, sexuality, and moral conduct.
Critical Reception
"Foucault must be reckoned with." --The New York Times Book Review
Praise for Foucault's Lectures at the Collège de France Series
"Ideas spark off nearly every page...The words may have been spoken in [the 1970s] but they seem as alive and relevant as if they had been written yesterday." --Bookforum
"[Foucault] has an alert and sensitive mind that can ignore the familiar surfaces of established intellectual codes and ask new questions...[He] gives dramatic quality to the movement of culture." --The New York Review of Books
About Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was acknowledged as the preeminent philosopher of France in the 1970s and 1980s, and continues to have enormous impact throughout the world in many disciplines. His books include The Government of Self and Others, The Courage of Truth, The Birth of Biopolitics, and The Punitive Society.
