In popularizing the term ‘speaking truth to power’, now widely used throughout the world, Michel Foucault established the basis upon which a new ethics can be constructed. This is the thesis that Mark Olssen advances in Constructing Foucault’s ethics. Olssen not only ‘speaks truth’ to existing moral and ethical theories that have dominated western philosophy since Plato, but also shows how, by using Foucault’s insights, an alternative ethical and moral theory can be established that both avoids the pitfalls of postmodern relativism and simultaneously grounds ethical, moral, and political discourse for the present age. Taking the late ‘ethical turn’ in the philosopher’s thought as its starting point, this ambitious study seeks to construct an ethics beyond anything Foucault ever attempted while remaining consistent with his core postulates. In doing so it advances the concept of ‘life continuance’, which expresses a normative orientation to the future in terms of the quest for survival and well-being, giving rise to irreducible normative values as part of the discursive order of events. This approach is explored in contrast with a range of other, established systems, from the Kantian to the Marxist to contract ethics and utilitarianism.

This 2005 book is a critical examination of Michel Foucault's relation to ancient Greek thought, in particular his famous analysis of Greek history of sexuality. Wolfgang Detel offers an understanding of Foucault's theories of power and knowledge based on modern analytical theories of science and concepts of power. He offers a complex reading of the texts which Foucault discusses, covering topics such as Aristotle's ethics and theory of sex, Hippocratic dietetics, the earliest treatises on economics, and Plato's theory of love. The result is a philosophically rich and probing critique of Foucault's later writings, and a persuasive account of the relation between ethics, power and knowledge in classical antiquity. His book will have a wide appeal to readers interested in Foucault and in Greek thought and culture.

Aesthetics offers a focused study on the philosophy, literature and art which informed Foucault's engagement with ethics and power, including brilliant commentaries on the work of de Sade, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Wagner.

Heyes' monograph in feminist philosophy is on the connection between the idea of "normalization"--which per Foucault is a mode or force of control that homogenizes a population--and the gendered body. Drawing on Foucault and Wittgenstein, she argues that the predominant picture of the self--a picture that presupposes an "inner" core of the self that is expressed, accurately or not, by the outer body--obscures the connection between contemporary discourses and practices of self-transformation and the forces of normalization. In other words, pictures of the self can hold us captive when they are being read from the outer self--the body--rather than the inner self, and we can express our inner self by working on our outer body to conform. Articulating this idea with a mix of the theoretical and the practical, she looks at case studies involving transgender people, weight-loss dieting, and cosmetic surgery. Her concluding chapters look at the difficult issue of how to distinguish non-normalizing practices of the self from normalizing ones, and makes suggestions about how feminists might conceive of subjects as embodied and enmeshed in power relations yet also capable of self-transformation. The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.

In his works on ethics, Foucault turned towards an examination of one's relationship with oneself and others. This differs from the modern approaches that explore the relationship between and the responsibilities of actors to each other by adopting criteria. Ethical criteria engender assumptions about the actors by focusing on their responsibilities. Instead of relying on criteria, Foucault's writing and lectures contributed to an awareness of the activities we take upon ourselves as ethical subjects. His reconstruction of the Greco-Roman ethics seeks to examine the possibilities of the reconstitution and transformation of subjectivity. Through this, he offers an avenue of understanding the formation of ethical subjects in their educational interrelationships.

The central thesis of Foucault’s Critical Ethics is that Foucault’s account of power does not foreclose the possibility of ethics; on the contrary, it provides a framework within which ethics becomes possible. Tracing the evolution of Foucault’s analysis of power from his early articulations of disciplinary power to his theorizations of biopower and governmentality, Richard A. Lynch shows how Foucault’s ethical project emerged through two interwoven trajectories: analysis of classical practices of the care of the self, and engaged practice in and reflection upon the limits of sexuality and the development of friendship in gay communities. These strands of experience and inquiry allowed Foucault to develop contrasting yet interwoven aspects of his ethics; they also underscored how ethical practice emerges within and from contexts of power relations. The gay community’s response to AIDS and its parallels with the feminist ethics of care serve to illustrate the resources of a Foucauldian ethic—a fundamentally critical attitude, with substantive (but revisable) values and norms grounded in a practice of freedom.

Foucault and Philosophy presents a collection of essays fromleading international philosophers and Foucault scholars thatexplore Foucault’s work as a philosopher in relation tophilosophers who were important to him and in the context ofimportant themes and problems in contemporary philosophy Represents the only volume to explore in detailFoucault’s relation with key figures and movements in thehistory of philosophy Explores Foucault's influence upon contemporary and futuredirections in philosophy Brings together a group of outstanding scholars in the fieldand allows them to explore their topic at a high level ofsophistication