Abstract
In view of the discussion in the previous chapter, the question inevitably arises as to how Michel Foucault understands the relation between the private and the public realm. The two books published shortly before his death, L’Usage des plaisirs and Le Souci de soi (both in 1984), are particularly valuable in this context. As far as I can see, Rorty never discussed these later texts in his writings. The notion of self-creation was of the utmost importance for the later Foucault. In “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,” an interview with Paul Rabinow and Hubert Dreyfus, he calls attention to the fact that the arts of existence seem no longer to play any role in today’s society. In a by now famous statement he formulates this as follows:
What strikes me is the fact that, in our society, art has become something that is related only to objects and not to individuals or to life. That art is something which is specialized or done by experts who are artists. But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object but not our life? (1983: 261)
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Notes
For a discussion of Foucault’s notion of ethics, see Arnold Davidson, “Ethics as Ascetics: Foucault, the History of Ethics, and Ancient Thought,” The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, ed. Gary Gutting (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 115–40;
Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998);
John Rajchman, “Ethics after Foucault,” Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments, Volume III, ed. Barry Smart (London: Routledge, 1994), 190–207;
Wilhelm Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst: Die Frage nach dem Grund und die Neubegründung der Ethik bei Foucault (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000);
and Kritik der Lebenskunst, ed. Wolfgang Kersting and Claus Langbehn (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007).
See also Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2005).
See Michel Foucault, “Intellectuals in Power,” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. D.F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977).
In this context, see Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
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© 2015 Ulf Schulenberg
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Schulenberg, U. (2015). “Soucie-toi de toi-même”: Michel Foucault and Etho-Poetics. In: Romanticism and Pragmatism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474193_13
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