Description

The Courage of the Truth is the last course that Michel Foucault delivered in a series of lectures from 1970 to 1984 at the Collège de France.

Here, Foucault continues the theme of the previous year's lectures in exploring the notion of "truth-telling" in politics to establish a number of ethically irreducible conditions based on courage and conviction. His death, on June 25th, 1984, tempts us to detect the philosophical testament in these lectures, especially in view of the prominence they give to the themes of life and death.

About the Author

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.

Graham Burchell (Translator) is the translator, and has written essays on Michel Foucault. He is an Editor of The Foucault Effect.

Arnold I. Davidson (Editor) is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, and Professor of the History of Political Philosophy at the University of Pisa. He is co-editor of the volume Michel Foucault: Philosophie. He lives in Chicago.

Praise For…

“[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

“Foucault is quite central to our sense of where we are.” —The Nation

“These lectures offer important insights into the evolution of the primary focus of Foucault's later work--the relationship between power and knowledge.” —Library Journal

“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