History of Sexuality: Confessions of the Flesh (Vol. 4)

The unprecedented volume of the monumental history of sexuality.

Throughout the 1970s, Michel Foucault dedicated his work at the Collège de France to analyzing the place of sexuality in Western society, which gave rise to the four-volume History of Sexuality . His reflections found sex and sexuality to be the cause of all events in social life. The philosopher undertook historical research, establishing an anthropology and discourse analysis of this topic so fundamental to the human condition.

The fourth volume of the History of Sexuality , The Confessions of the Flesh, previously unpublished, analyzes the Christian experience of sex from the second to the fifth centuries. It is important for clarifying the relationships between the first centuries of Christianity, Antiquity, and Modernity in terms of how people thought about sex. It also highlights how the History of Sexuality, which began by prioritizing mechanisms of subjection, became a historical-philosophical study of modes of subjectivation.

“This book is important because it explains the relationships between the first centuries of Christianity, Antiquity, and Modernity in terms of how people think about sex.” - Roberto Machado, philosopher and organizer of the Philosophy Library Collection

“Foucault diagnoses our present.” - Alexis Lacroix, L'Express

“If the publication of an unpublished work by Michel Foucault [...] would always be a major editorial event, this launch is [...] also due to the tension caused by the fact that it is public knowledge that the author, shortly before his death in 1984 [...], left a letter expressly stating that he did not want posthumous editions.” - Público

“The fourth volume of the philosophy classic History of Sexuality [...], the unfinished book is an investigation into sexuality during the early days of the Christian value system.” - O Globo