This third volume of Foucault's highly acclaimed examination of the experience of sexuality in modern Western society, investigates the Golden Age of Rome, to reveal a subtle but decisive break from the classical Greek version of sexual pleasure.

Foucault explores the whole corpus of moral reflection among philosophers and physicians of the era to reveal an increasing mistrust of pleasure and a growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences. At the core of this transformation Foucault found the principles of the 'care of the self'. He shows how the self is transformed into an object of knowledge and field of actions so as to control, correct, transform, purify and thus find salvation. His graphic and perceptive depiction of this crucial shift in sexual attitudes deepens our understanding of the modern experience of sexuality.

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