Ethics, Self-Formation and Truth: The Art of Living and Contemporary Lifestyles.

Patrick Burke Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. K1S-5B6 popcultureca@yahoo.ca Phone: 416-482-3682. April 5, 2003.

I. Introduction: In this paper I will attempt to explore Foucaults notions of ethics, self-formation, and truth, as they may relate to his use of the term art of living. I will start with an overview of how Foucault conceived of the self - the problem of freedom, adaptive technologies, and the role of subjectifying knowledge. I will then consider how one ought to conduct themselves, as an ethical subject, paying attention to differences in behavior that are rule driven and conformist (with greater external influence), and actions which are more enthusiastically engaged in (of greater self motivation). Foucaults reference to artful conduct under the regimes of economics, dietics, and erotics, will then be considered, before reviewing his technologies of the self, including parhessia (free speech or speaking freely). In the final section of this paper the focus will shift to exploring some contemporary possibilities for an art of living. Foucaults own musings on the necessity of developing a gay ethic and style will be considered, before assessing three other possible dimensions of the late modern personality - the reflexive, healthy, and academic lifestyles.

i. Foucaults Positioning of the Self: Ethics, subjectivity, and truth are significant notions in Foucaults analysis of the self. Ethics emerge out of the problem of freedom - the very basic social necessity 1

to satisfy human needs. Foucault has spoken of the historically specific and variable nature of this form of social orientation, experienced individually as a preferred style of existence. It is, in other words, a social ethics of the self, a subjective constitution, and one, which Foucault has placed variably in every civilization, and in all cultures in different forms.1 It is an incipient form of power, a force suggested or prescribed to individuals in order to determine their identity, maintain it, or transform it in terms of certain ends.2 In a general sense, how the subject has been (re)created within the context of some social problematic is an important part of Foucaults work. One that he has linked to a history of thought, an analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience becomes a problem, raises discussions and debate, incites new reactions, and induces crisis in the previously silent behaviour, habits, practices, and institutions.3 Particular periods, such as classical Greek (450-200BC), Hellenistic/ Roman (200BC-200AD), early Christian (200-400), early modern (1500-1800) and modern (1800-1900), each represent a formative period of change in this schema. In the translation of freedom into productive activities Foucault has emphasized four adaptive technologies, all linking claims to truthful knowledge with identifiable practices. These are: technologies of production, involved in the production, transformation and manipulation of things, technologies of sign systems, used for 2

signification and equivalency, technologies of power, used in the disciplining and submitting people to certain wills or ends, and technologies of the self, techniques that facilitate or direct an individuals desire or capacity to transform themselves.4 The last two represent significant dimensions of Foucaults work: The study of how people are made into subjects of power, and hence governed, through anatomo and bio-political knowledge and practices; and how people make themselves the subject of formative attention, as targets of self-governance. The possibility of forming persuasive bodies of knowledge, however, is an incipient feature of all four technologies, with power available in each as a colonization of popular interests. All four, that is, and the forms of insight and analysis they may imply, could be thought of as an invention, behind which there is something quite distinct from it: an interplay of instincts, impulses, desires, fear, and the will to appropriation.5 It is here, with this mix of impulse, insight and emotion that knowledge comes into being. Behind historical practices of subjectification and self-formation, are highly adapted knowledge claims, invented, but nevertheless functional. Even technologies of the self are not merely examples of self-governance, as they may also be imbedded within disciplinary regimes, and medical or other bodies of collected knowledge. Alternatively, since colonized knowledge is only as powerful 3

as its potential to affect or predict human action, technologies of power, as with technologies of production, and sign systems, depend on sympathetic practices of the self to both help constitute and perpetuate desired norms. While these actions may be ethical bounded, they may also be artful, in the sense that someone could critically observe and then incrementally change themselves in accordance with some telos of a desired end.

ii. Ethical self-formation: In The Use of Pleasure Foucault considers at some length the question of how one ought to conduct oneself.. as an ethical subject, or in a 1983 interview as how the individual is supposed to constitute himself as a moral subject of his own actions.6 Technologies of the self are expressive practices that should not be reducible to an act or a series of acts conforming to a rule, law, or a value.7 Selfformation as an ethical subject involves a process in which the individual delimits that part of himself that will form the object of his moral practice, defines his position relative to the precept he will follow, and decides on a certain mode of being that will serve as his moral goal.8 This process requires the interlocutor to act upon himself, to monitor, test, improve and transform himself.9 There is the implication here that with any discursive field there is going to be, of reproductive necessity, 4

both prescriptions for individual relatedness (contained within knowledge claims), and some desire (or need) on the part of an individual to make representative aspects of these discourses a part of themselves. Foucault notes, every morality, in the broad sense, comprises the two elements.. codes of behaviour and forms of subjectification.10 Although it is true that they can never be entirely disassociated, though they may develop in relative independence from one another.. we should not be surprised to find that in certain moralities the main emphasis is placed on the code, on its systematicity, its richness, its capacity to adjust to every possible case and to embrace every area of behavior.11 Indeed, with this type of morality the subjectivization occurs basically in a quasi-juridical form, where the ethical subject refers his conduct to a law, or set of laws, to which he must submit at the risk of committing offenses that may make him liable to punishment.12 This presents a possible difference then, between conduct that is enthusiastically engaged in, and conduct that is merely an expression of conformity. Implying a distinction between forms of subjectification that are either within, or outside ones control. It is not clear, however, what happens with mixed varieties of these predicaments, or if a person could move from one realm to the other, as when someone is initially obliged to act out of fear of reprisals, may come to agree with certain prescriptions. 5

iii. Ethical characteristics and artful conduct: In Foucaults analysis, the self is ethically constituted through practices of the mind and body. In The Use of Pleasure, he outlines four characteristics with which we could understand the realization of this ethical interest occurring. The first is the ontological concern of ethical substance, that part of the self highlighted for moral action. The second is related to deontology, what Foucault called the mode of subjection. That is, the way in which people are invited or incited to recognize their moral obligations.13 The third is the ascetical concern of self-forming activities, the dynamics of a domination of oneself by oneself and to the effort that this demands.14 The fourth characteristic is the telos of a desired end form, the kind of being we aspire when we behave in a moral way.15 After introducing these four ethical characteristics in The Use of Pleasure, Foucault devotes the balance of the book to exploring three great arts of selfconduct, the three major techniques of the self, dietics, economics and erotics.16 Three ways, that is, for an ethics of sexual conduct to be understood as problematic, and requiring some particular redress. While never made expressly clear by Foucault, each stylization could be understood in terms of the ethical characteristics he outlines: Each realm as having some desired end persona, some element of the self to work on, some range of techniques to do so, and some form of subjectification in the 6

act of self-formation. Still, all three of these arts, could be thought of as converging on an overlapping subject, helping to form a particular style of sexual conduct. Under dietics Foucault explains that there are regimens to be followed as part of an art of living, an attempt to balance diet with effort, season, and age. Sex, a violent expenditure of male vitality, yet pleasurable and enticing, and linked to self-kin immortality, was a form of effort in need of regulation and possible enhancement for the Greeks. Through diet and seasonal considerations this energy could be focussed on the creation of legitimate progeny. From the economic perspective a man should remain faithful to his wife and exhibit mastery over his corporeal desires. He should govern his household with the same reasoned restraint and wisdom he would apply to himself. Under erotics the problem was not so much with the choice of partners (man or woman), but with the types of desire and pleasure one should receive (or give) to one another. There was some resolution to this problematic in an ethics that rendered homosexual relations between men of differing ages shameful if it was only a question of money, but honourable if it involved training for manhood, social connections for the future, or a lasting relationship.17 Foucault introduces in the first part of The Care of the Self, an additional technique of existence, the analysis of dreams as a life practice.18 He describes Artemidorus The Interpretation of Dreams as both directed at experts in the field, 7

and to the general reader who needs basic instruction, .. a manual of living, a tool that can be used over the course of ones existence and adapted to lifes changing circumstances.19 A significant portion of The Care of the Self, is devoted to exploring modulations in these techniques of existence, and the truth claims they have embodied from the classical Greek, into the early Christian periods. He notes that marriage, for instance, as a symbolic and legal act, became more common, voluntary, and public. A greater emphasis was placed on the relational role between husband and wife, the mutual recognition of dependence, and a shared responsibility in lifes difficulties, obligations, benefits, and pleasures.20 There were also changes in the in the nature of political organization, a shift in the role of cities in the post Alexandra, Hellenistic period: A transition to a vaster, much more discontinuous, much less closed society than must have been the case for the small city states.21 Recruitment for a Hellenistic or Roman managerial aristocracy became of pre-eminent importance. It is in this new political space where the political structure of the city and the laws .. have .. lost some of their importance, .. and where the decisive elements reside more and more in men, in their decisions, in the manner in which they bring their authority to bear, in the wisdom they manifest, .. it appears that the art of governing oneself becomes a crucial political factor, requiring the careful practice of personal virtues 8

(simplicity, goodness, purity, dignity, lack of affection, justice, piety, kindliness, graciousness and strength).22

iv. Parhessia: To Foucault, the period of Greco-Roman history, dating from the fifth century B.C. into the second century A.D., was a period of cultural development in which the formative efforts directed upon the self became problematic. What was a type of folk virtue, embodied by small estate farmers, became increasingly tied to cities, and the intellectual discourses and informed practices that developed there. This emergent democratic and elitist form of self regard is clearly related to what Foucault has referred to as parhessia, free speech or speaking freely. In the transcription of a lecture series given in Berkeley in 1983, Foucault identifies three forms of parhessia: personal - honest disclosures of the self, political - the freedom of (male) citizens to speak openly at assemblies, and philosophical the ability to speak a reasoned and objective truth.23 Clearly, political parhessia, and the parhessiates who expressed it were linked to Greek notions of democracy. While such people were necessary as a possible limit to tyranny, Foucault notes that free speech became somewhat problematic in the late fifth century B.C. when it appeared that everyone did not use it wisely.24 Some could abuse this right by 9

speaking falsely, or as a flatterer, potentially inciting a crowd to make popular but otherwise unwise decisions. There was, in other words, a growing need to differentiate between the good kind of parhessia, in which one courageously spoke some reasoned truth, and a bad kind, where people could be appealed to, or persuaded through an emotional, but otherwise empty and unsound rhetoric. With the introduction of a new style of philosophical parhessia, Socrates ushered in a new technology of power. For Plato (as Socrates), the problem of free speech, became tied to the choice of ones existence. To some extent, Socratic or philosophical parhessia addressed the growing conflict between users of the political form, helping to distinguish between good or bad educations, and the truthfulmoral relativity of statements and actions. Socrates was something of a basanos, or touchstone of reasoned insight, a position from which others could reflect upon their own ignorance. While political parhessia stressed an accord between logos (truth), nomos (law), and courage, the new form of Socratic parhessia was much more concerned with the agreement between logos and bios (life), with the emphasis on forming a harmonious (Dorian) lifestyle.25 As we follow Foucault out of the fifth century B.C., and into the later Epicurean, Stoic, and Cynic philosophical traditions, there were modulations in these techniques, in the size of the groups that may be appealed to, and in the relation of 10

some interlocutor to truth. There were also commonalities between them, they all depended on free speech, utilized some form of interpersonal pedagogical technique, with a master leading by example, and all espoused a contiguous set of virtues ( moral quality): civic responsibility, outspokenness, honesty, self-mastery, courage, and modesty. They also contributed variably to the development of contiguous aesthetical techniques, through which one could take themselves as the subject and object of (trans)formative attention. It is in this period then, that we can see the beginning of a new technique of self-stylisation emerging, one that could more openly lead and direct social development, rather than merely reproducing traditional forms of behaviour. With the invention of more philosophically inspired ethical practices, what starts to happen in effect, is that the relation between truth and action becomes freed to some extent. They become open that is, to a discursive constitution, potentially outside the confines of monarchical or religious institutions. This is the evolutionary principle that seems to emerge here, a move that facilitated the contravention of tradition through a mobile use of reason and informed judgement - a technique of power in itself, with effects quite apart from the ethical (aesthetical) prescriptions they may have influenced.

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v. Technologies of the self: Although never made clear by Foucault, the good political or philosophical forms of parhessia could be thought of as adjuncts, and necessary precursors to the three Stoic technologies he considered: letters to friends and disclosure of self; examination of self and conscience, including a review of what was done, of what should have been done and the techniques of askesis, not a disclosure of the secret self but a remembering.26 The interpretation of dreams, advanced in The Care of the Self as a fourth technique of existence (along with dietetics, economics, and erotics), is presented in this seminar as a fourth technology of the self - alluding to the overlap between these differing conceptions of the self. In considering Foucaults techniques of existence, there is a difference in the level of abstraction between these, and his technologies of the self - with the former possibly involving the latter in the constitution of desired behaviour. There is also the implication that these technologies, including parhessia, are closely related to the ethical characteristic of self-forming activities he spoke of, with the proviso that they could also be thought of as involving other ethical features. That is, each of his technologies involve attempts to influence some part of the self, ethical substance, with different ways of becoming a subject, modes of subjection, different techniques to modify the self, self-forming activities, and a desired end result, telos. 12

In Writing the Self, Foucault elaborates on his first technology of the self, referring to the emergent popularity of two distinctive styles of writing.27 The first is hupomnemata, or personal notebooks, used to record thoughts, maxims, and notes from readings. Their content could form the object of later reflection, and constituted an important source of self-formation. The second style of writing Foucault refers to is that of correspondence, the reflective examination or description of subjective conditions, and the giving of advice: While the practice of hupomnemata represented something of an absent master or teacher, with correspondence there is an immediate social relationship and a form of social expression. Letters could be written between a spiritual advisor and his apprentice, or between friends and lovers to counsel .. admonish .. console and are for the writer a manner of training, .. a manner of expressing oneself to others.28 In the writing, reading, correcting and rewriting of ones own correspondence, there is a formative element of self-constitution, that is comparable to the sort of advice giving a parhessiates may offer. Self-examination, Foucaults second technology of the self, was a process whereby one could measure the distinction between what has been done and what should have been done, to take account, in other words, of a bad adjustment between aims and means,or words and deeds.29 In the Socratic /Platonic tradition, Foucault mentions that the contemplation of the self is related to the care of self 13

through dialogue, largely in the form of realizing faults or shortcomings. In the imperial period, however, we have the theories of on one side, the obligation of listening to the truth and, on the other side, of looking and listening to the self for the truth within.30 For the Pythagoreans the examination of conscious had to do with purification .. to purify oneself before going to sleep.31 Seneca espouses a similar practice, do good things, have a good examination of the self, and a good sleep follows with good dreams.32 The examination of oneself is not a problem of discovering the truth in the subject, but of remembering truth, .. rules of conduct, what one ought to have done.33 Foucault introduces the notion of askesis in The Use of Pleasure under the more general rubric of exercises and training as a significant self forming activity: As a basic instrument used in the direction of souls, involving meditation, tests of thinking, examination of conscience, control of representations.34 He differentiates between the exercises that enable one to govern oneself and the learning of what was necessary in order to govern others.35 In the course summary The Hermeneutics of the Subject, while askisis is still used as a general technique in self cultivation, Foucault distinguishes here between those exercises carried out in a real situation .. and those which constitute training in thought by mens of thought.36 In Technologies of the Self, Foucault further differentiates these two poles of activity, 14

now referred to as melete (or medatio), the meditation on imaginary situations, and gymnasia (or exercitatio in The Hermeneutics of The Self) the training in real situations, with intermediate possibilities, or activities that provide a blend of these characteristics.37 Thought based practices, melete (or medatio) are techniques of askesis that include thinking over useful terms and arguments .. of memorizing responses, and imagining the worst things that could happen, to persuade oneself they are not in any sense real troubles, ..that only the opinion we have of them lets them be taken for true misfortunes.38 At the opposite pole are activities centred on physical-bodily rigours, referred to as gymnasia; and involve sexual abstinence, physical privation, and other rituals of purification.39 Foucault mentions a technique advanced by Plutarch, for instance, in which after engaging in some rigorous athletic activity, the participant, presumably an affluent Greek male, would wilfully exchanges some savoury meal prepared for him, with that of his servants. In another example, this one by Seneca, the participant wears a coarse cloak and sleeps on a pallet to establish both that poverty is not an evil and that he is fully capable of bearing it.40

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II. The Art of Living in Late Modernity. Although Foucault argued that the Greeks, Romans, and Christians all participated in ascetic practices of ethical self-formation, he placed those of the Hellenistic and Roman periods as approaching an art. It was a style of living that Foucault argued would not reappear in any substantial way until the Renaissance, and then again briefly in the nineteenth century with dandyism. Besides the possibility of a gay lifestyle, Foucault does not provide much insight into the possibility of there being an art of living today. Which is not to say that other possibilities could not exist, only that he never wrote about them. Nevertheless, there are three areas besides a gay ethics in which we could look for some indication of an art of living - the reflexive, healthy, and scholarly lifestyles. Although each could be considered in line with Foucaults four ethical characteristics, my analysis, like his own on the possibility of a gay art of living, will treat these ethical features more implicitly than explicitly. His reasoning for not (explicitly) extending his own ethical framework, centres on his desire not to limit the creative possibilities a gay style of living could take. In my case, the apparent lack of theoretical continuity is more related to the almost infinitely nuanced ways each lifestyle, whether gay, reflexive, healthy, or academic could take, and the difficulty in trying to delimit specific and representative examples of ethical characteristics or technologies of the self. 16

i. The gay lifestyle. In a number of interviews conducted between 1981-82, Foucault introduces the notion of a gay lifestyle, alluding to the need for a new art of living centred on the development of a gay culture. He argues that one could perhaps say there is a gay style, or at least that there is an ongoing attempt to recreate a certain style of existence, a form of existence or art of living, which might be called gay.41 In Friendship as a Way of Life, Foucault mentions that what is troubling with homosexuality is not the sexual relations between same sex partners, but the possibility of their being affection, tenderness, friendship, fidelity, camaraderie, and companionship.42 He speaks of a way of living that could yield a culture and an ethics, a homosexual ascetics that would make us work on ourselves and invent, .. a manner of being that is still improbable.43 What we must work on, he suggests, is not so much to liberate our desires but to make ourselves infinitely more susceptible to pleasure.44 To develop relationships, in other words, that extends the immediate gratification of sexual pleasure, to include more affective, emotive connections between people: An ethics that could appeal to both hetero- and homosexuals. He writes in Sexual Choice, Sexual Act, that the concept gay contributes to a positive .. appreciation of the type of consciousness in which affection, love, desire, sexual rapport with people have a positive significance.45 He adds that a 17

homosexual movement could adopt the objective of posing the question of the place in a given society which sexual choice, sexual behaviour, and the effects of sexual relations between people could have with regard to the individual.46 Indeed, Foucault argues that unlike heterosexuals, who have benefited from at least five hundred years of romantic literature and practices, homosexuals were not allowed to elaborate a system of courtship because the cultural expression necessary for such an elaboration was denied them.47 Indeed, while classical Greek writers provided some elaboration of homosexual love, most often couched in pedagogical relationships, it was a form of affection that became increasingly problematised in later Greek and Roman imperial periods and into early Christianity. As a result of this avoidance/ ignorance, the sexual act became the focus of gay practices; when a homosexual culture and literature began to develop it was natural for it to focus on the most ardent and heated aspects of homosexual relations.48 The ethical practices needed to develop this cultural style, however, are different for men than they are for women, who typically have greater access to each others bodies, mans body has been forbidden to other men in a much more drastic way.49 For relations between same-sex partners, Foucault challenges the progress that could be made by reproducing the marriage bond, noting that rather than arguing that rights are fundamental and natural to the individual, we should try to imagine and create a 18

new relational right that permits all possible types of relations to exist and not be prevented, blocked, or annulled by impoverished relational institutions.50 What is needed is a gay culture, a culture that invents ways of relating, types of existence, types of values, types of exchanges between individuals which are really new, .. and would create relations that are, at certain points, transferable to heterosexuals.51

ii. The reflexive lifestyle. A second lifestyle, which has garnished much attention recently within the sociological literature, is that of the reflexive self. The individual who feels compelled to take themselves as the subject of some reflexive project of enhancement - of talents, competencies, knowledge, and virtues (such as honesty, reliability). To keep up to date, so to speak, not only in ones professional field, but also in terms of significant social events, and new technologies or procedures. It is a process that was no stranger in antiquity, it only appears as a amore generally applicable concern today, with a greater range of performative options available, and an accelerated change in popularly applicable technologies and skills. This new dominant culture of reflexive self-adjustment represents an ethical style, a constant, but often-minuscule adjustment of the self to changing social/ material conditions. The fundamental problem, however, is ultimately the same as it was with the ancient 19

Greeks, the question of free survival in densely populated groups: Here (and now) the solution just appears more manic. In many ways our current ethic of the productive, consumer-citizen, is an inversion of some earlier Christian practices, with the willingness to renounce the self, and the theme of (Christs) sacrifice, becoming, at least in North America, a willingness to give the self unconditionally to a fast-paced reflexive lifestyle. The avoidance of sensate pleasures, has given way to a controlled indulgence of the self. There are of course hegemonic forces at work here, used in part to justify systemic disparities in the access to wealth and power, and in part to placate people for the sacrifices that are made in labouring for survival. In this quintessentially modern lifestyle, desire is used instrumentally, as a motivation to work above basic material needs. During the modern period the reflexive self has become increasingly tied to a machine aesthetic. The extensive, everyday use of scientific technologies, for instance, has had the effect of turning us into cyborgs, linking our reflexivity (and our agency) to complex manufactured systems. At the same time, there is a rhythm and reliability to machine operation that has become something of an ethical virtue in itself. Ours is a world of scheduled, repeated actions, where food becomes fuel, rest, downtime, and training, a productive enhancement. 20

Whether such examples of reflexive social orientation could be considered an art of living or not, however, is highly debatable. For most people the intention of these practices is not to cultivate a more beautiful life, but to subsist, or realize a more dynamic, informed self. Still, the reflexive lifestyle is so endemic, generalized and fragmented within western countries; it would have to be further differentiated to be of any comparative use. That is, we would need to specify a more coherent sub-set of ethical practices to better understand how they may be working within this realm of social articulation.

iii. The healthy lifestyle. The healthy lifestyle, which could imbue reflexive attitudes, is another general dimension of the (late) modern personality. According to Foucault, ethics have long involved a medical orientation, an informed analysis of a persons health with the determination and prescription of practices to follow. For the ancient Greeks governing ones sexual activity took the form of dietary or physical regimes. With the Christian gospels came the idea of miraculous healing and self-sacrifice. Our current era appears to be something of a mix of these impulses, with medical practices and pharmaceuticals providing most of our miracle cures. The same process of informed observation and self-constitution used to ensure 21

ones sustained productivity is apparent in current psychological and medical practices. While there has been a at least a partial (re)appropriation of medical knowledge by laypeople, as Giddens has observed, there is also the possibility that the healthy life-style is a transference of risk, existing at the functional limits of capitalism.52 While medical and psychological professions claim definitive knowledge in many areas, there are risks that lie outside their ability to influence, such as many forms of cancer, depression or schizophrenia. If professional medical practices have developed in part to offset industrial risks, and thus facilitate commercial expansion, there is an increasing acknowledgement that this potential balance has been fatally breached. The significance of personal involvement in reducing risk - not smoking, regular exercise, vegetarian diets, or engaging in selfhelp projects, shifts the responsibility from maladaptive industrial-consumer activities, to those areas of individual life that are within ones control. In this way, food could still be fuel, and rest, downtime, with health-consciousness appearing as a controllable adjunct to this incipiently realized machine aesthetic. Indeed, such health conscious measures could appear as refinements, helping to perfect ones life, making it run smother, more predictably and reliably. The problem is that such activities give the impression that we are in charge of our lives, when really, to a large extent we are not. 22

Besides the transformation and embracing of risk, the ethic of a healthy lifestyle has been bolstered by the current scepticism with salvational religions. If an afterlife becomes less assured, healthy living gains a sort of existential urgency, as it is becomes this life which must be the focus of ones attentions. In a way this is perhaps similar to the ancient Greeks, where eternity was approximated through ones friends, family, and deeds. To extend ones life is to be a sensitive and responsible manger of the mind and body, of activities and pleasures. At the same time, however, giving too much attention to the self has long been problematic. Plato notes in the Republic, for instance, under the role of physicians and judges, that it is disgraceful to need doctoring, and then relays the story of Herodicus, a master gymnast who after losing his health, combined training and doctoring in such a way to become a plague to himself, ...and many others, .. by lingering out his death.53 Plutarch, quoted in Foucaults Fearless Speech states that it is because of this self-love that everybody is himself his own foremost and greatest flatter, .. for the flatterer always takes a position over against the maxim Know Thyself.54 Parhessia becomes necessary to determine the truthfulness of statements, and to overcome self-delusion. For the Christians, personal sacrifice was an important motif, with paying too much attention to the self-becoming a sign or cause of spiritual weakness. In a 1983 lecture, Foucault notes at a certain point 23

early in the Christian era being concerned with oneself was readily denounced as a form of self-love, a form of selfishness or self-interest in contradiction with the interest to be shown in others or in the self-sacrifice required.55 He qualifies that he is not simply saying that Christianity is responsible for it, but could be seen as intensifying its problematization.56 During the last century, excessive self-love has become equated with personality disorders, such as narcissism. To the ancient Greeks and Romans Narcissus was the subject of popular mythology, a beautiful young man who falls in love with his own image, and in most accounts, such as Ovids Metamorphoses it is an infatuation that leads to his premature death. For Freud, narcissism was a developmental issue; the result of a dysfunctioning in the shift of a childs erotic focus from the self (ego), to the corresponding opposite sexed parent (object).57 Narcissism while remaining a popular diagnostic category, has clearly shifted in character from being predominantly a developmental issue, to one more generally reflective of an inflexible and maladaptive personality.58 For Christopher Lasch, narcissism is endemic of a way of life that is dying - the culture of competitive individualism, which in its decadence has carried the logic of individualism to the extreme of a war of all against all, the pursuit of happiness to the dead end of a narcissistic preoccupation with the self.59 Clearly, the obsessive or maladaptive personality 24

appears in a negative space, defining the outward boundaries for the more desirable, ethically oriented, reflexively adaptable, productive consumer citizen. iv. The academic lifestyle. The fourth and final ethical style I will consider is that of the academic scholar - the critically informed, reflexive observer of social life. Such a subject position implies an ongoing reference to the self, and the positioning of this subject relative to fields of explanatory knowledge. It is a life that Foucault himself exemplified, as a modest but intensely penetrating social philosopher. In An Ethics of Pleasure, for instance, an interviewer tells Foucault that: One of the things about you which is most impressive is the sort of monarchal austerity in which you live; your apartment in Paris is almost completely white, you also avoid all objects dart that decorate so many French homes.60 Adding that while in Toronto for the past month you have on several occasions worn clothes as simple as white pants, a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket.61 For his part, Foucault mentions a little later in the interview that for me intellectual work is related to what you could call aestheticism, meaning transforming yourself. He admits that, I know that knowledge can transform us, that truth is not only a way of deciphering the world .. but that if I know the truth I will be changed.62 In relating to his own work ethic, Foucault explains that he has worked like a dog all his life, but that he was not interested in the academic status 25

of what I am doing, because my problem is my own transformation.63 Truth then, is not used to uncover essential differences, or expressly for financial gain or status, but to enable a reasoned and penetrating understanding of social reality, and in so-doing to irreversibly change the self, and the experience of subject positions. That such an analysis could help illuminate power relations, Foucault makes clear in The Subject and Power, where he suggests another way to go further towards a new economy of power relations, .. more directly related to our present situation.64 This would consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point.65 There are a number of oppositions which have developed over the last few years: opposition to the power of men over women, of parents over children, of psychiatry over the mentally ill, of medicine over the population, of administration over the ways people live.66 These varied struggles have had some features in common. They have been transversal or pan-regional/ national in scope and orientation, and they have had as their aim the effects of power on some population, and how it is linked with certain knowledge, competencies and qualifications. In other words, a critically informed understanding of power as Foucault explored it, could influence projects of resistance, and could be used as part of a truthful discourse in itself. It could be an ethics of the self which shares with the Greeks and Romans, self-examination, 26

writing and speaking of the self, modesty, a valorization of intellectual insight, and a mobile use of reason. Conclusion: Although Greek, Roman, and early Christian practices all involved ethical prescriptions that could be expressed sincerely, Foucault argued that it is was with the Greeks and Romans that they came to fruition as personally embraced aesthetics or arts. The self became something to be made up as a subject of formative attention, with an eye to functional excellence and the accord between logos (reasoned truth) and bios (life). With Christianity, while a mobile use of reason (rooted in the bible) was still possible, truth was not to be discovered through an application of reason, but through divine revelation. In this, truth superseded what could be detected by the senses, and hence was difficult to refute logically without risking religious censure. The invention that the early Greeks popularised was the use of reason to potentially substantiate any number of civil (non-state or religious) functions, such as educational regimes and institutions, that could in turn influence state and religious authority. In other words, with the possibility of formulating movable truth claims based on informed observations, civil society appears to emerge in this period; empowered to analyse and critique dominant social structures. It would not, however, be until after the Reformation, leading into the Renaissance and the modern 27

era, that non-ethereal, material based truth claims would explode in number and variety. The four lifestyles I illustrated, the gay, reflexive, healthy and academic, all valorize a contiguous dimension - the mobile use of reason in constituting the self. This does not mean that they are all artful in their expression, only that they are a means of subjectification, assisting in the formulation of personal attributes. The reflexive and healthy lifestyles, by providing an ethic of the up-to-date, dependable, and risk sharing, consumer-citizen, serve the (moral) demands of a fast paced, almost manic style of existence. This is not to say that these lifestyles could not both be artfully applied, but that this potential is not as clear as it is in the gay or academic lifestyles, where enhancements are an end in themselves, with effects apart from any instrumental purpose they may serve. By being both gay and an academic Foucault illustrated through his words and deeds a telos of what such artful possibilities might entail.

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Endnotes: 1. Michel Foucault, Subjectivity and Truth, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), 87. Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress, in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rainbow (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983b), 250. 2. Foucault, Subjectivity and Truth, 87. 3. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (New York: Semiotext(e), 2001), 74. 4. Michel Foucault, About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self, in Religion and Culture, ed. Jeremy Carrette (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999 [1980]), 161-2. Michel Foucault, The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (NY: The New Press, 1997h [1982]), 225. 5. Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (NY: The New Press, 1997b), 14. 6. Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, 238. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume Two, The Use of Peasure, (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 238. 7. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: Volume Two, 28. 8. Ibid, 28. 9. Ibid, 28. 10. Ibid, 29. 11. Ibid, 29. 12. Ibid, 30.

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13. Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, 239. 14. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: Volume Two, 65. 15. Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, 239. 16. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: Volume Two, 36. 17. Ibid, 224. 18. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume Three, The Care of the Self, (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 5. 19. Ibid, 5. 20. Ibid, 79. 21. Ibid, 82. 22. Ibid, 89-90. 23. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, 9-25. 24. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, 73. 25. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, 100-104. 26. Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (NY: The New Press, 1997e [1982]), 238. 27. Michel Foucault, Writing the Self, in Foucault and His Interlocutors, ed. Arnold Davidson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997a), 237. 28. Ibid, 241. 29. Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, 237. Michel Foucault, About the Beginning, 165. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, 101-2. 30. Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, 236. 31. Ibid, 236. 30

32. Ibid, 237. 33. Ibid, 237. 34. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: Volume Two, 74. 35. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: Volume Two, 77. 36. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (NY: The New Press, 1997d), 102. 37. Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, 240-241. 38. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 103. 39. Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, 240. 40. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 103. 41. Michel Foucault, Sexual Choice, Sexual Act, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (NY: The New Press, 1997f [1983]), 146. 42. Michel Foucault, Friendship as a Way of Life, in Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (NY: The New Press, 1997g), 136. 43. Ibid, 137-8. 44. Ibid, 137. 45. Michel Foucault, Sexual Choice, Sexual Act, 142. 46. Ibid, 143. 47. Ibid, 150. 48. Ibid, 150. 49. Michel Foucault, Friendship as a Way of Life,139.

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50. Michel Foucault, The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will, 158. 51. Ibid, 160. 52. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 53. Plato, Republic, in The Republic of Plato, ed., Francis Cornford (London: Oxford University Press, 1980 [approx. 400BC]), iii. 406. 54. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, 134. 55. Michel Foucault, The Ethics of the Concern for the Self, in Foucault Live: Interviews 1961-1984, ed., Sylvere Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 1996d [1984]), 435. 56. Ibid, 435. 57. Sigmund Freud, On Narcissism: An Introduction, in A General Selection From the Works of Sigmund Freud, ed., John Rickman (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957 [1914]), 104-123. 58. American Psychological Association, DSM IV, in Abnormal Psychology, Gerald Davidson, and John Neale (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1990), 67.

59. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in the Age of Declining Expectations (New York: Warner Books, 1979), 21. 60. Michel Foucault, An Ethics of Pleasure,in Foucault Live: Interviews 19611984, ed., Sylvere Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 1996b), 377. 61. Ibid, 377. 62. Ibid, 379. 63. Ibid, 379. 64. Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, in Michel Foucault: Beyond 32

Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rainbow (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983a), 211. 65. Ibid, 211. 66. Ibid, 211.

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