The Hermeneutics of the Subject is the third volume in the collection of Michel Foucault's lectures at the College de France, where faculty give public lectures on any topic of their choosing. Attended by thousands, Foucault's lectures were seminal events in the world of French letters, and his ideas expressed there remain benchmarks of contemporary critical inquiry.

Foucault's wide-ranging lectures at this school, delivered throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, clearly influenced his groundbreaking books, especially The History of Sexuality and Discipline and...