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In this paper, I confront a paradox at the center of Foucault's philosophy. On the one hand, Foucault's is a philosophy of freedom par excellence: it both presupposes that we are free agents and aims to expose actual patterns of thinking and states of affairs as contingent so as to allow for more such freedom. 1 On the other hand, certain of Foucault's central claims, if true, would seem to entail that human freedom is nothing more than an illusion. 2 In particular, Foucault's claim about the omnipresence and inescapability of power relations might be thought to rule out the possibility that we could ever be free agents. I will argue briefly at the outset of this paper that it does not. A second set of claims by Foucault is much more troubling for belief in free agency. These claims emerge from his anti-humanist "death of man" position, which rejects traditional conceptions of the human subject. This position raises certain key questions: is not subjectivity a necessary condition for freedom? If so, can Foucault's rejection of the traditional subject be consistent with his belief in freedom? Or is freedom only salvageable in light of the return to subjectivity and selfhood in his later writings? And does this mean that the return to subjectivity in Foucault's late work amounts to a repudiation of his own earlier anti-humanism?My underlying assumption is that the whole question of the relation between freedom and subjectivity requires removing ambiguities surrounding rival notions of the subject. I begin with a generic concept of the subject and then go on to distinguish four conceptions that either add to or subtract from features central to the generic concept. I glean the first three of these conceptions from Foucault's writings. Two of these, the "epiphenomenal" and "relay" models, are, I argue, incompatible with the view that we are free. To the extent that Foucault adopts these models, he cannot consistently be the philosopher of freedom that he wants to be. The third, "artifactual," model of subjectivity, which emerges in Foucault's later work, does give us a viable and interesting model of subjectivity that is not only compatible with belief in free agency but even a stimulant to it. I will explain how it differs from the humanist conception of subjectivity (the fourth conception) and thus coheres with the core tenets of his anti-humanism.Foucault's paradox, as I have identified it, is a central problem in poststructuralist and poststructuralist-influenced feminist theory. It typically arises whenever one abandons traditional conceptions of subjectivity, yet declares one's commitment to freedom, responsibility, and the ethical dimension. In the last part of

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Peter Geach and others suppose that change in an object's relational properties absent any change in its intrinsic properties (relational change) is not a genuine change in that object but only a "mere Cambridge change." I explain and reject two strategies challenging Geach's position. I then present my own argument against Geach which depends on the recognition of entities identified in terms of their emergent properties, i.e. properties not reducible to physical properties. I provide some examples of such entities (social phenomena, historical events, artworks) and address the problem of finding a criterion for distinguishing genuine from nongenuine change.