With these lectures Foucault inaugurates his investigations of truth-telling in the ethical domain of practices of techniques of the self. How and why, he asks, does the government of men require those subject to power to be subjects who must tell the truth about themselves?

Foreword: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana Translator's Note Abbreviations 1. 9 January 1980 2. 16 January 1980 3. 23 January 1980 4. 30 January 1980 5. 6 February 1980 6. 13 February 1980 7. 20 February 1980 8. 27 February 1980 9. 5 March 1980 10. 12 March 1980 11. 19 March 1980 12. 16 March 1980 Course Summary Course Context Index of Greek Terms Index of Notions Index of Names

“It shows us Foucault in 1980 mapping out a major new phase in his work in terms that complicate our existing understanding of his unfinished project.  … the volume editor, Michel Senellart and the translator, Graham Burchell have done an outstanding job in delivering this work to us in a form that perfectly serves its intent and its content.” (Colin Gordon, Foucault Studies, Issue 20, December, 2015)"[Foucault] must be reckoned with." The New York Times Book Review "Ideas spark off nearly every page of this book, as Foucault manages to reinvigorate questions of power and violence that might have seemed well-worn. The words may have been spoken in 1976, but they seem as alive and relevant as if they had been written yesterday." Bookforum "Foucault is quite central to our sense of where we are..." The Nation "[Foucault] has an alert and sensitive mind that can ignore the familiar surfaces of established intellectual coded and ask new questions...[He]gives dramatic quality to the movement of culture." The New York Review of Books "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

In these lectures delivered in 1980, Michel Foucault gives an important new inflection to his history of 'regimes of truth, and examines governments’ exercise of power Offers an analysis of 'truth acts' in early Christian practices of baptism, penance, and spiritual direction in which believers are called upon to manifest the truth of themselves as subjects always danger of falling into sin Essential reading for scholars of Foucault, philosophy, criminology and law