Michel Foucault, Critique and Ethics Care of the Self and The Will to Freedom: Michel Foucault, Critique and Ethics Stephanie M Batters

Who was Michel Foucault? This question is easier asked than answered. In his work, Foucault preferred to avoid revealing biographical information as a means of illustrating his theories, and because he believed that, in much of modern Western writing, “the being of language only appears for itself with the disappearance of the subject” (425, The Essential Foucault). Here, he refers to the “subject” as the speaker within the piece, though he has an alternative, much more complicated concept of “the subject” that I will introduce later. “We are standing at the edge of an abyss that had long been invisible: the being of language only appears for itself with the disappearance of the subject.”

Institutions Critique Power Truth Subjectivity “The Thought of the Outside” Critique “So Is it Important to Think?” Power “What is Enlightenment?” Truth Subjectivity “The Ethics of the Concern for the Self as a Practice of Freedom” “Technologies of the Self”

What is Normativity? Subjectivity Power TRuth

What is Care of the Self? “In the Platonic current of thought…the problem for the subject or the individual soul is to turn its gaze upon itself, to recognize itself in what it is and, recognizing itself in what it is, to recall the truths that issue from it and that it has been able to contemplate” According to Foucault, the ancient Greeks concerned themselves greatly with freedom, both from oppressive outside forces as well as one’s own self. Practicing care of the self is a means by which individuals may alter their relationships to power, truth, and other people in their midst.

Why Care of the Self? Subjectivity Power TRuth Foucault examines freedom in terms of being the ability to alter one’s relationship to power and discourses of truth. Power – power relations and absolute power Subjectivity – relation of self to social institutions in which the institutions dominate some part of an individual’s sense of self and ethics Truth –discourses of truth & games of truth “In the abuse of power, one exceeds the legitimate exercise of one’s power and imposes one’s fantasies, appetites and desires on others…But one can see…that such a man is the slave of his appetites. And the good ruler is precisely the one who exercises his power as it ought to be exercised, that is, simultaneously exercising his power over himself”

How Do We Care for the Self? Politics of Self Ethos ETHOS – cultivation of one’s soul as a means of an ethical relationship to oneself and others ASKESIS – the exercises one practices that aid in the cultivation of an ethical self, particularly (but not limited to) acts of self-deprivation and introspection ASKESIS “Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.”

Alter Self  Alter Power  Examine Truth What is Critique? “But above all, one sees that the focus of critique is essentially the cluster of relations that bind the one to the other, or the one to the two others, power, truth and the subject. And if governmentalization is really this movement concerned with subjugating individuals in the very reality of a social practice by mechanisms of power that appeal to a truth, I will say that critique is the movement through which the subject gives itself the right to question truth concerning its power effects and to question power about its discourses of truth. Critique will be the art of voluntary inservitude, of reflective indocility.” Alter Self  Alter Power  Examine Truth

What is Enlightenment? “The critical ontology of ourselves must be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits imposed upon us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.”

“In the Apology, one sees Socrates presenting himself to his judges as the teacher of self-concern. He is the man who accosts passersby and says to them:” “You concern yourself with your wealth, your reputation, and with honors, but you don’t worry about your virtue and your soul.”

“And now I can put my philosophy of the free soul into operation” Very Special Thanks to Stephen Barber “I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.” -Michel Foucault “And now I can put my philosophy of the free soul into operation” -Virginia Woolf

Works Cited Foucault, Michel. “The Thought of the Outside” The Essential Foucault. New York: The New Press, 1994. 423-441. Foucault, Michel. “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: The New Press, 1994. 281-301. Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of Self” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: The New Press, 1994. 221-251. Foucault, Michel. “What Is Critique?” The Essential Foucault. New York: The New Press, 1994. 263-278. Foucault, Michel. “What is Enlightenment?” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: The New Press, 1994. 303-319. Foucault, Michel. “Hermeneutic of the Subject” The Essential Foucault. New York: The New Press, 1994. 93-106.