This seminar is a general introduction to Foucault’s thought. Our guiding thread will be the emergence and development of his views about subjectivity, personhood and rationality over the course of his career, from the first publications in the early 1950s, through what are generally conceived as its three main periods: the analysis of knowledge and discursive practices, the analysis of power and political institutions, and the so-called ‘return to the subject’ or ‘ethical turn.’ An additional important theme of the course will be Foucault’s readings of various aspects of Descartes’ philosophy, with an emphasis on the debate between Foucault and Derrida about the Meditations of First Philosophy, and on Foucault’s discussion of ‘the Cartesian moment’ in The Hermeneutics of the Subject.