"Tracking the development of Foucault's key concepts Lemke offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of Michel Foucault's work on power and government from 1970 until his death in 1984. He convincingly argues, using material that has only partly been translated into English, that Foucault's concern with ethics and forms of subjectivation is always already integrated into his political concerns and his analytics of power. The book also shows how the concept of government was taken up in different lines of research in France before it gave rise to "governmentality studies" in the Anglophone world. A Critique of Political Reason provides a clear and well-structured exposition that is theoretically challenging but also accessible for a wider audience. Thus, the book can beread both as an original examination of Foucault's concept of government and as a general introduction to his "genealogy of power""--;pt. I. The microphysics of power. From the archaeology of knowledge to the problem of power -- The genealogy of power -- Discipline: the political anatomy of the body -- Nietzsche's hypothesis -- The 'disciplination' of power analysis -- pt. II. Governmentality. From discipline to government -- The genealogy of the modern state -- The government of society: the invention of the social -- The government of individuals: neoliberalism -- pt. III. Politics and ethics. From the history of sexuality to the genealogy of ethics -- The genealogy of the modern subject -- Subjectivity and power -- The problem of truth -- An answer to the question: what is critique?