The Use of Pleasure (The History of Sexuality: Volume 2)

About this book

In this sequel to The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction the brilliantly original French thinker who died in 1984 gives an analysis of how the ancient Greeks perceived sexuality. Throughout The Uses of Pleasure Foucault analyzes an irresistible array of ancient Greek texts on eroticism as he tries to answer basic questions: How in the West did sexual experience become a moral issue? And why were other appetites of the body such as hunger and collective concerns such as civic duty not subjected to the numberless rules and regulations and judgments that have defined if not confined sexual behavior?