The Courage of the Truth is the last course that Michel Foucault delivered at the Collège de France. Here, he continues the theme of the previous year's lectures in exploring the notion of "truth-telling" in politics to establish a number of ethically irreducible conditions based on courage and conviction. His death, on June 25th, 1984, tempts us to detect the philosophical testament in these lectures, especially in view of the prominence they give to the themes of life and death.

Michel Foucault, acknowledged as the preeminent philosopher of France in the 1970s and 1980s, continues to have enormous impact throughout the world in many disciplines. He died in 1984.

Arnold I. Davidson is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicagoand professor of the History of Political Philosophy at the University of Pisa. He is coeditor of the volume Michel Foucault: Philosophie.

GrahamBurchell is a Translator, and has written essays on Michel Foucault. He is an editor of The Foucault Effect.