DOCSLIB.ORG

The Hermeneutics of the Subject

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Hermeneutics of the Subject The Hermeneutics of the Subject M ICHEL F OUCAULT The Hermeneutics of the Subject L ECTURES AT THE C OLLÈGE DE F RANCE, 1981–82 Edited by Frédéric Gros General Editors: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana English Series Editor: Arnold I. Davidson TRANSLATED BY GRAHAM BURCHELL THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE SUBJECT © 2001 by Éditions de Seuil/Gallimard. Edition established, under the direction of François Ewald and Allessandro Fontana, by Frédéric Gros. Translation © Graham Burchell, 2005. Introduction © Arnold I. Davidson, 2005. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-0-312-20326-9 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in the United States 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-61772-2 ISBN 978-1-137-09483-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-09483-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foucault, Michel. [Herméneutique du sujet. English] The hermeneutics of the subject : lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982 / Michel Foucault ; edited by Frédéric Gros ; general editors, François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana ; translated by Graham Burchell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Self (Philosophy)—History. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. I. Gros, Frédéric. II. Ewald, François. III. Fontana, Alessandro. IV. Title. B2430.F723H4713 2004 194—dc22 2004049020 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2005 10987654321 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2012 contents Foreword: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana xiii Introduction: Arnold I. Davidson xix Translator’s Note xxxi one 6 January 1982: First hour 1 Reminder of the general problematic: subjectivity and truth. New theoretical point of departure: the care of the self. Interpretations of the Delphic precept “know yourself.” Socrates as man of care of the self: analysis of three extracts from The Apology. Care of the self as precept of ancient philosophical and moral life. Care of the self in the first Christian texts. Care of the self as general standpoint, relationship to the self and set of practices. Reasons for the modern elimination of care of the self in favor of self-knowledge: modern morality; the Cartesian moment. The Gnostic exception. Philosophy and spirituality. two 6 January 1982: Second hour 25 Presence of conflicting requirements of spirituality: science and theology before Descartes; classical and modern philosophy; Marxism and psychoanalysis. Analysis of a Lacedaemonian maxim: the care of the self as statutory privilege. First analysis of Plato’s Alcibiades. Alcibiades’ political expectations and Socrates’ vi contents intervention. The education of Alcibiades compared with that of young Spartans and Persian Princes. Contextualization of the first appearance of the requirement of care of the self in Alcibiades: political expectation and pedagogical deficiency; critical age; absence The indeterminate nature of the ف .(of political knowledge (savoir self and its political implications. three 13 January 1982: First hour 43 Contexts of appearance of the Socratic requirement of care of the self: the political ability of young men from good families; the (academic and erotic) limits of Athenian pedagogy; the ignorance of which one is ف .unaware. Practices of transformation of the self in archaic Greece ف .Preparation for dreaming and testing techniques in Pythagoreanism Techniques of the self in Plato’s Phaedo. Their importance in Hellenistic philosophy. The question of the being of the self one must ف .take care of in the Alcibiades. Definition of the self as soul Definition of the soul as subject of action. The care of the self in relation to dietetics, economics, and erotics. The need for a master of the care. four 13 January 1982: Second hour 65 Determination of care of the self as self-knowledge in the Alcibiades: conflict between the two requirements in Plato’s work. The metaphor of the eye: source of vision and divine element. End of the dialogue: the concern for justice. Problems of the dialogue’s authenticity and its general relation to Platonism. Care of the self in the Alcibiades in its relation to political action, pedagogy, and the erotics of boys. Anticipation in the Alcibiades of the fate of care of the self in Platonism. Neo-Platonist descendants of Alcibiades. The paradox of Platonism. five 20 January 1982: First hour 81 The care of the self from Alcibiades to the first two centuries A.D.: ف .general evolution. Lexical study around the epimeleia A constellation of expressions. Generalization of the care of Contents vii the self: principle that it is coextensive with the whole of life. Reading of texts: Epicurus, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, Philo of Alexandria, Lucian. Ethical consequences of this generalization: care of the self as axis of training and correction; convergence of medical and philosophical activity (common concepts and therapeutic objective). six 20 January 1982: Second hour 107 The privileged status of old age (positive goal and ideal point of existence). Generalization of the principle of care of the self (with universal vocation) and connection with sectarian phenomena. Social spectrum involved: from the popular religious milieu to Roman aristocratic networks of friendship. Two other examples: Epicurean circles and the Therapeutae group. Rejection of the paradigm of the law. Structural principle of double articulation: universality of appeal and rarity of election. The form of salvation. seven 27 January 1982: First hour 125 Reminder of the general characteristics of practices of the self in the first and second centuries. The question of the Other: three types of mastership in Plato’s dialogues. Hellenistic and Roman period: the mastership of subjectivation. Analysis of stultitia in Seneca. The figure of the philosopher as master of subjectivation. The Hellenic institutional form: the Epicurean school and the Stoic meeting. The Roman institutional form: the private counselor of life. eight 27 January 1982: Second hour 149 The professional philosopher of the first and second centuries and his political choices. Euphrates in Pliny’s Letters: an anti-Cynic. Philosophy as social practice outside the school: the example of Seneca. The correspondence between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius: systematization of dietetics, economics, and erotics in the guidance of existence. Examination of conscience. viii contents nine 3 February 1982: First hour 169 Neo-Platonist commentaries on the Alcibiades: Proclus and Olympiodorus, The Neo-Platonist separation of the political and the cathartic. Study of the link between care of the self and care for others in Plato: purpose, reciprocity, and essential implication. Situation in the first and second centuries: self-finalization of the self. Consequences: a philosophical art of living according to the principle of conversion; the development of a culture of the self. Religious meaning of the idea of salvation. Meanings of sdtbria and of salus. ten 3 February 1982: Second hour 187 Questions from the public concerning subjectivity and truth. Care of the self and care of others: a reversal of relationships. The Epicurean conception of friendship. The Stoic conception of man as a communal being. The false exception of the Prince. eleven 10 February 1982: First hour 205 Reminder of the double opening up of care of the self with regard to pedagogy and political activity. The metaphors of the self-finalization of the self. The invention of a practical schema: conversion to the self. Platonic epistrophb and its relation to conversion to the self. Christian metanoia and its relation to conversion to the self. The classical Greek meaning of metanoia. Defense of a third way, between Platonic epistrophb Conversion of the gaze: criticism of ف .and Christian metanoia curiosity. Athletic concentration. twelve 10 February 1982: Second hour 229 General theoretical framework: veridiction and subjectivation. Knowledge (savoir) of the world and practice of the self in the Cynics: the example of Demetrius. Description of useful knowledge ف .(connaissances) in Demetrius. Ethopoetic knowledge (savoir) Physiological knowledge (connaissance) in Epicurus. The parrhbsia of Epicurean physiologists. Contents ix thirteen 17 February 1982: First hour 247 Conversion to self as successfully accomplished form of care of the self. The metaphor of navigation. The pilot’s technique as paradigm of governmentality. The idea of an ethic of return to the self: Christian refusal and abortive attempts of the modern epoch. Conversion to self without the principle of a knowledge of the self. Two eclipsing models: Platonic recollection and Christian exegesis. The hidden model: Hellenistic conversion to self. Knowledge of the world and self-knowledge in Stoic thought. The example of Seneca:
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Curriculum Vitae Arnold I. Davidson Home Address 5720 South
    Curriculum Vitae Arnold I. Davidson Home Address 5720 South Kenwood Avenue, Apt. 3 via Romana, 12 Chicago, Illinois 60637 50125 Firenze USA Italia Current Academic Positions: USA Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor The University of Chicago Department of Philosophy Divinity School (Philosophy of Religions and History of Judaism) Department of Comparative Literature Department of Romance Languages and Literatures (Italian) Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine Center for Jewish Studies Director, France-Chicago Center European Editor, Critical Inquiry Business Address Department of Philosophy The University of Chicago 1115 East, 58th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 Telephone: (773) 702-8513 Educational Background Entered College of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown University, 1973. Accepted to Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown University, 1974. M.A. with distinction in Philosophy, Georgetown University, 1975. Ph.D. in Philosophy, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, 1981. Thesis title: Morality. Religion and Our Basis in the World: Problems Around Kant (under the direction of John Rawls and Stanley Cavell). Languages English - native language French - reading, speaking, writing 2 Italian - reading, speaking, writing Portuguese - reading, speaking Catalan - reading, speaking Spanish - reading, speaking German - reading Medieval Latin - reading Biblical Hebrew
    [Show full text]
  • The University of Chicago Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Division O
    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO POWER AND FREEDOM IN THE SPACE OF REASONS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY TUOMO TIISALA CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2016 © 2016 Tuomo Tiisala All rights reserved “The ‘flybottle’ was shaped by prehistory, and only archaeology can display its shape.” — Ian Hacking Table of Contents Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 1. The Regress of Rules and the Concept of Autonomy 7 1. The Regress of Rules 8 2. Norms Implicit in a Social Practice 13 3. Training 19 4. Pattern-governed Behavior 26 5. Second Nature 28 6. Conclusion 32 2. Keeping It Implicit: A Defense of Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge 34 1. The Charge of “Regularities Which Regulate Themselves” 36 2. Implicitness and Efficaciousness 38 3. Foucault’s Pragmatist Turn 42 4. The Charge of a “Structuralist Move” 48 6. Foucault’s Kantian Pragmatism 50 7. Discursive and Nondiscursive 52 8. Archaeology of Knowledge As a Diagnostic Project 56 9. Conclusion 59 !iv 3. Essential Heteronomy 62 1. Subject and Truth 63 2. Analytics of Power 65 3. External History of Truth 71 4. Power and Knowledge: The Dual Character of Speech Acts 77 5. What Happens to the Subject? 82 6. Hegel on the Habitual 86 7. Conclusion 92 4. The Force of the Habitual 94 1. The Present Limits of the Necessary 96 2. Foucault on the Habitual 98 3. Ethics of Obviousness 104 4. Genealogy 112 5. Conclusion 114 5. Approaching Autonomy 120 1.
    [Show full text]
  • THE TEETH of TIME: PIERRE HADOT on MEANING and MISUNDERSTANDING in the HISTORY of IDEAS Pierre Force Columbia University [Forthc
    THE TEETH OF TIME: PIERRE HADOT ON MEANING AND MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS1 Pierre Force Columbia University [Forthcoming in the February 2011 issue of History and Theory–Do not quote without the author’s permission] The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) became known in the United States thanks to Arnold Davidson who introduced him to the English-speaking public in a 1990 Critical Inquiry article and called him the single most important influence behind the later Foucault and his concept of the care of the self.2 His fame in his own country came a few years later, with the publication of a book entitled Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?3 In it Hadot developed an opinion he had held for a long time, namely that ancient philosophy was primarily a set of concrete practices aimed at shaping the soul, and that ancient philosophers were much more interested in pursuing this goal than they were in achieving doctrinal coherence. Very few studies of Hadot’s work have been published so far, aside from Davidson’s articles and prefaces.4 1 Thanks to Sandra Laugier, Samuel Moyn, Melvin Richter and Dorothea von Mücke for comments and suggestions. 2 Arnold Davidson, “Spiritual Exercises and Ancient Philosophy: an Introduction to Pierre Hadot,” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990) 475-82. See Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, translated by Robert Hurtley, New York: Vintage Books, 1988-1990, vol. 3. 3 Pierre Hadot, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique? Paris: Gallimard, Folio Essais, 1995. 4 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, edited with an introduction by Arnold I.
    [Show full text]
  • ARTICLE Foucault Among the Classicists, Again Brendan Boyle, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
    Brendan Boyle 2012 ISSN: 1832-5203 Foucault Studies, No. 13, pp. 138-156, May 2012 ARTICLE Foucault Among the Classicists, Again Brendan Boyle, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ABSTRACT: Foucault’s posthumously-published late work on epimeleia heautou might inau- gurate a new partnership between classicists and Foucault. This work, however, has been misconstrued in recent classical scholarship, an important instance of which I consider here. I remedy the errors of one of Foucault’s classical interpreters; diagnose the reasons for the er- rors; and briefly suggest the transformative potential of Foucault’s work for students of anti- quity. Keywords: Foucault, antiquity, care of the self; classics; ancient philosophy. 1. Arnold Davidson has lamented philosophers’ and classicists’ failure to embrace the “trans- formative potential” of Foucault’s late work on the “care of the self:” …this transformative potential has been obscured for philosophy by a way of thinking about and writing the history of ethics that passes over the very domain that Foucault demarcated as ethics…and this potential has been further darkened in the discussions of some classicists who, to give only a partial caricature, have been so taken with tired and tiresome debates about whether Foucault knew enough Greek and Latin to legitimize his readings of the texts of classical and late antiquity that they have lost sight of his most basic aims.1 There are exceptions to this indictment, to be sure, and Davidson’s lament concedes as much. In Anglophone classical scholarship David Halperin, Martha Nussbaum, and Paul Allen Mil- ler—to name but three—have all shown what wonderfully productive results can follow from a critical but sympathetic reading of Foucault.
    [Show full text]
  • Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality Author(S): Arnold I. Davidson Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol
    Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality Author(s): Arnold I. Davidson Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 16-48 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343570 Accessed: 13/08/2009 21:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical Inquiry. http://www.jstor.org Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality Arnold I.
    [Show full text]
  • Foucault's Failure of Nerve
    Foucault's Failure of Nerve: From Genealogy to Ethics A thesis submitted to the Department of Philosophy in confomiity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Queen's University Kingston, Cntario, Canada October, 1998 Copyright Q 1998 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 ofCânâda du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Weilington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ûN4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, Ioan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film. de reproduction sur papier ou sur fomat électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Michel Foucault described his work as "re-examination of knowledge, the conditions of knowledge and the knowing subject."' Foucault's work is commonly divided into three periods: archeology, genealogy and ethics. This thesis examines Foucault's transition fiom genealogy to ethics in an atternpt to determine whether Foucauidian ethics are a logical consequeme of genealogy.
    [Show full text]
  • Buddhist Spiritual Practices
    Buddhist Spiritual Practices Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path Edited by David V. Fiordalis Mangalam Press Berkeley, CA Mangalam Press 2018 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA USA www.mangalampress.org Copyright © 2018 by Mangalam Press. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, published, distributed, or stored electronically, photographically, or optically in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-89800-117-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930282 Mangalam Press is an imprint of Dharma Publishing. The cover image depicts a contemporary example of Tibetan Buddhist instructional art: the nine stages on the path of “calming” (śamatha) meditation. Courtesy of Exotic India, www.exoticindia.com. Used with permission. ♾ Printed on acid-free paper. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Printed in the USA by Dharma Press, Cazadero, CA 95421 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 David V. Fiordalis Comparisons with Buddhism Some Remarks on Hadot, Foucault, and 21 Steven Collins Schools, Schools, Schools—Or, Must a Philosopher be Like a Fish? 71 Sara L. McClintock The Spiritual Exercises of the Middle Way: Madhyamakopadeśa with Hadot Reading Atiśa’s 105 James B. Apple Spiritual Exercises and the Buddhist Path: An Exercise in Thinking with and against Hadot 147 Pierre-Julien Harter the Philosophy of “Incompletion” The “Fecundity of Dialogue” and 181 Maria Heim Philosophy as a Way to Die: Meditation, Memory, and Rebirth in Greece and Tibet 217 Davey K.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Reviews Height of Stalin's Repressive Policies
    Book Reviews height of Stalin's repressive policies. The of Michel Foucault's writings. However, increased persecution of homosexuals following familiarity with many of the essays published in de-Stalinization is also puzzling given the The emergence ofsexuality should not encourage generally more liberal climate that existed in the contempt. Davidson's work is one of the most country under Khrushchev. significant applications ofFoucault's (and in part As the author himself recognizes, much work Georges Canguilhem's) "historical still needs to be done to further our understanding epistemology" to the development ofpsychiatric of sexual politics and the treatment of sexual thinking about sexuality. Not only are the dissent in the Soviet Union, as well as their chapters written with style and wit, but they implications forunderstanding Soviet experience explicate some of the most important problems in general. For example, if one can accept, with faced by any historian of medical knowledge, some reservations, the author's arguments about particularly historians of psychiatry. Davidson's the reasons for decriminalizing homosexuality essays in CriticalInquiry in the late 1980s and his under the early Soviet regime (this reader at least commentaries on Foucault elsewhere are by no was not entirely convinced by the author's use of means old hat: they can be appreciated fully only evidence related to the German Social when read in conjunction with one another. And, Democratic Party to illustrate the attitudes furthermore, the remaining chapters of the book towards homosexuality among the Bolsheviks; provide the missing elements from an overall or by his inferences about Lenin's views on the system.
    [Show full text]
  • Self Or Cosmos: Foucault Versus Hadot
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Royal Holloway - Pure Self or Cosmos: Foucault versus Hadot JOHN SELLARS This chapter discusses the relationship between the late work of Michel Foucault and that of his colleague at the Collège de France, Pierre Hadot.1 Foucault referred to Hadot’s work as a key point of reference for his own work on ancient practices of the self, and Hadot recounted that they also spoke on a number of occasions.2 Arnold Davidson, who knew both men and played a key role in introducing Hadot’s work to the English-speaking world, noted that Foucault had been “a careful reader of Hadot’s work” (Davidson 1990, 481), and has commented on Foucault’s “enthusiasm” for Hadot’s work (Davidson 1995, 1). Foucault’s interest in what he called “technologies of the self” (techniques de soi) drew in part on Hadot’s accounts of ancient “spiritual exercises” (exercices spirituels). Hadot would later comment on Foucault’s use of his work, noting their common ground but also suggesting some distance between them on certain key points, and arguing that in some respects Foucault’s account of ancient practices was misleading. In particular, Hadot claimed that Foucault’s stress on an aesthetic cultivation of the self placed too much stress on the self and downplayed the cosmological aspects of Stoic ethics. This chapter will assess whether Hadot’s criticisms of Foucault are fair, and what, if any, criticisms might be raised against Hadot’s own stress on dissolution of the self in his accounts of ancient philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Foucault Studies © Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, 2005 ISSN: 1832-5203 Foucault Studies, No 2, Pp
    foucault studies © Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, 2005 ISSN: 1832-5203 Foucault Studies, No 2, pp. 159-164, May 2005 REVIEW Arnold Davidson, The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) ISBN: 0674013700 This seemingly eclectic but actually interrelated collection of essays presents an epistemological analysis of the history of sexuality through an exploration of the form and function of sexuality in the history of psychiatric discourse. In attempting to stage a productive confrontation between Michel Foucault’s methodology of conceptual analysis and Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Davidson makes a valuable contribution to the epistemological debate about the history of knowledge, one that will prove to be of interest to epistemologists and historians, as well as to those generally engaged with Foucault’s work. The book is divided into two distinct but mutually supporting sections. The first five essays are historical in focus and examine the discursive practices unique to the history of sexuality in the nineteenth century. Through a close study of the emergence of concepts such as ‘perversion’, ‘hermaphroditism’, and ‘homosexuality’, Davidson provides a detailed and compelling account of the conditions under which various statements about sexuality become comprehensible in the development of medical discourse. The core historical argument of this first section is set forth in the opening essay in which Davidson charts the conceptual changes in the history of sexual perversion, from the anatomical-pathological understanding of sexual perversion as a disease of the reproductive or genital organs to the more psychosomatic, affective and relational understanding of sexual perversion as a ‘pure functional deviation’.
    [Show full text]
  • The Emergence of Desire: Notes Toward a Political History of the Will
    The Emergence of Desire: Notes Toward a Political History of the Will Daniele Lorenzini Desire as a Historical Transcendental In the foreword to the French edition of The Emergence of Sexuality, Arnold Davidson writes: “We are our sexuality,” or at least we have been told so over and over. In a sense, there is no doubt that this goes without saying; we would not be able to think of ourselves, of our most fundamental psychologi- cal identity, without thinking of our sexuality, of this often deep and se- cret layer of our desires that reveals the type of individual that we are.1 This hardly questionable remark was also the starting point of La volonté de savoir (The Will to Know), the first volume of Michel Foucault’s His- tory of Sexuality.2 “At the bottom of sex, there is truth,” our truth.3 It is re- Versions of this essay were given as talks at the International Conference “Foucault and Religion” at the University of Chicago (10–11 March 2017), the International Conference “Re- ligion(s) et Politique(s)” at the Royal Academy of Science, Letters, and Fine Arts of Belgium (14–16 September 2017), and the Research Seminar in Post-Kantian European Philosophy at the University of Warwick (6 February 2018). I am indebted to Miguel de Beistegui, Steven Collins, David Halperin, Dawn Herrera Helphand, Stephen Houlgate, Jean Leclercq, and Sabina Vaccarino Bremner for their generous and helpful comments. This essay is dedicated to Arnold Davidson, without whom the scholar and person that I am today would have never existed.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Second Edition Edited by Gary Gutting Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 0521840821 - The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, Second Edition Edited by Gary Gutting Frontmatter More information the cambridge companion to FOUCAULT Second Edition Each volume of this series of companions to major philoso- phers contains specially commissioned essays by an interna- tional team of scholars together with a substantial bibliogra- phy. One aim of the series is to make the work of a difficult and challenging thinker accessible to students and nonspe- cialists. For Michel Foucault, philosophy was a way of question- ing the allegedly necessary truths that underpin the prac- tices and institutions of modern society. Unlike Kant, who tried to determine the a priori boundaries of human knowl- edge, Foucault aimed at revealing the historical contingency of ideas that present themselves as necessary, unsurpassable truths. He carried out this project in a series of deeply original and strikingly controversial studies on the origins of modern medical and social scientific disciplines. These studies have raised fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of human knowledge and its relation to power structures, and have become major topics of discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences. The essays in this volume provide a systematic and com- prehensive overview of Foucault’s major themes and texts, from his early work on madness through his history of sex- uality. Special attention is also paid to thinkers and move- ments, from Kant through current feminist theory, that are particularly important for understanding his work and its impact. This revised edition contains five new essays and revisions of many others. The extensive bibliography of pri- mary and secondary sources has been updated.
    [Show full text]