The History of Sexuality: 2: The Use of Pleasure

Description

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.

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.

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 *