Michel Foucault's landmark account explores our evolving attitudes to sex, and shows how are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase in pleasure.

Autorentext
Michel Foucalt (1926-1984) was one of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century and the most prominent thinker in postwar France. Foucault's work influenced disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, philosophy, sociology and literary criticism.

Klappentext

'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