Foucault Reading Group
The Courage of Truth
Manchester University
10am – 12 noon in Geoffrey Manton Room 333, fortnightly, commencing 24th February 2012
This reading group will focus on the last lectures given by Michel Foucault at The Collège de France in February-March 1984, a few months before his death. Continuing the theme of the government of the self introduced in 1982-1983 lectures, this series is more precisely centred on the notion of Greek parrhesia and on the changes it undergoes from the figure of Socrates through that of the Cynic to pre-Christianity.
Questioning the effects of specific relations established between truth, self and life, Foucault endeavours to show how Western metaphysics proceeds from an ethical problematic which deals with these three notions altogether.
The following edition will be used: Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth: The Government of the Self and Others II”, Lectures at The Collège de France 1983-1984, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Foucault News 