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  • Published: 14 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141991351
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

The History of Sexuality: 1

The Will to Knowledge




The second volume of Foucault's pioneering analysis of sexuality and power relations, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics

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.

  • Published: 14 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141991351
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

About the author

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world. Social scientist and historian of ideas, Foucault was Profesor of History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. He wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews, and edited Critique. Among his many publications are Madness and Civilisation (1961); The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972); The Birth of the Clinic (1973); Discipline and Punish (1975); and three volumes of The History of Sexuality: Volume One, The Will To Knowledge (1976); Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure (1984); and Volume Three: The Care of the Self (1984). Many of his books are published by Penguin. Ethics and Aesthetics, the first and second parts of a three volume Essential Works of Michael Foucault, were recently published by Penguin. Power, part three, was recently published by Allen Lane. Professor Foucault died in 1994.

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Praise for The History of Sexuality: 1

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

New York Review of Books

'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'

Richard Gott, Guardian

Always provocative, needling, disconcerting

Washington Times