Thinking Spirituality Differently: Michel Foucault on Spiritual Self-Practices, Counter-Conducts, and Power-Knowledge Constellations (original) (raw)
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Rupture and Transformation: Foucault’s Concept of Spirituality Reconsidered
Foucault Studies, 2013
Using Foucault’s conceptual frame from The Archaeology of Knowledge to read Foucault’s late deployment of “spirituality,” this article argues that Foucault’s enigmatic gesture in using this concept reveals a refusal of “rupture” from the Christian pre-modern discourse of “spirit.” Despite attempts to alter the “field of use,” Foucault’s genealogical commitment ensures a Christian continuity in modern discourses of transformation. In a detailed examination of the 1982 Collège de France lectures, the article returns Foucault’s use of “spirituality” to the Alexandrian joining of philosophy and theology and the specificity of Christian practice and belief.
Truth in Practice: Foucault’s Procedural Approach to Spirituality
Philosophy of Spirituality, ed. Heather Salazar & Roderick Nicholls, Brill, 2018 , 2018
Truth in Practice: Foucault’s Procedural Approach to Spirituality The main goal of the present study is to propose an appropriate criterion for differentiating between philosophical and spiritual enterprises. To this end, I first criticize what I call the “substantivist” conception of spirituality, which typically starts with certain fundamental presumptions about human nature and focuses primarily on the theoretical content of spiritual undertakings. Then I argue that the alternative “procedural” approach, which may be found in Michel Foucault’s later writings, leads to a better grasp of the discrepancy between philosophy and spirituality, since it gives the practical dimensions of both activities their due consideration. Here, I focus mainly on the way Foucault describes the scope and nature of the transformation inherent to spiritual and philosophical enquiries. Following Foucault, I put forth the argument that the transformation incited by spirituality stems from the material quality of the discursive (as well as other kinds of) activity, whereas this level of materiality is not an intrinsic element of philosophy. Keywords: philosophy, spirituality, Michel Foucault, John Haldane, materiality, practice, transformation
The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences , 2022
Prompted by scholarship which has proposed that Western selfhood beginning in the nineteenth century was largely defined as a stable and static form of selfidentity, this chapter turns to the late writings and lectures of Michel Foucault and his account of "spirituality," or the ethical practices of conversion and transformation. While Foucault posits that spirituality was a hallmark of ancient ethical traditions, he proposes nonetheless that vestiges of a self-transformative ethics continue to be evident in two particular post-eighteenth-century doctrines of thoughtnamely, Marxism and psychoanalysis, which tacitly espoused a political and medical form of spirituality, respectively. This chapter considers the modern perseverance of the notion of spirituality in the context of radical political and medical doctrines.
Foucault’s “Spirituality” and the Critique of Modern Morality
Since the last quarter of the 20th century, “morality” as a theoretical enterprise revolving around the notions of “law,” “obligation” and “universality” has been severely criticized in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially by the proponents of virtue ethics. However, with the exception of some remarkable figures -such as Alasdair MacIntyre- critics stayed reluctant to focus on the intricate relationship between the modern paradigm of morality and the cultural and political context in which it functions. In this paper, I will argue that Michel Foucault’s work provides us highly valuable conceptual tools through which “code-based morality” can be analyzed primarily as a central “dispositif” that regulates the modalities in which the self relates to the world, to others and to herself. To this end, I will mainly focus on the historical narrative that Foucault develops in his later lectures and show the extent to which certain key aspects of this genealogy may contribute to a criticism of the modern enterprise of morality. A prominent question will be whether the relatively neglected dichotomy between “philosophy” and “spirituality” that Foucault offers in his Hermeneutics of the Subject can be given a key place in this critical project. Keywords: ethics, morality, philosophy, spirituality, self, ascesis, Hermeneutics of the Subject
Foucault Studies, 2015
This review locates the 1980 lectures within the context of the wider discussions of Foucault and religion; highlighting the influence of George Dumézil on the comparative and structural analysis. Assessing the problem of the historical accuracy of Christian history in Foucault’s work and the nature of the archaeological approach, the review explores what would be fair to ask of Foucault’s 1980 lectures on Christianity. The review focuses on the internal consistency, selections and theoretical tensions. While acknowledging that Foucault picks up the important shift towards external ritual performance of early Christian life, the review questions Foucault’s lack of appreciation of the notion of “sacramentum,” which informs the central interpretative framework of “truth acts.” The review suggests that Foucault’s thinking is shaped by an “expressionist theology” and operates on a false binary distinction between faith and practice. It shows the problematic reading of Tertullian and the...
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology
It has often been argued that Foucault's turn to antique and early Christian care of the self, spiritual self-.practices and truth-telling (parrhesia) results from inquiries into the confession practices and pastoral power structures in the context of a genealogy of the desiring subject. This line of reasoning is in itself not incorrect, butthis article claimsneeds to be complemented with an account of Foucault's philosophical quest for freedom and for conditions, possibilities and modes of thinking and acting differently vis-à-vis the normalizing regimes of power in science and, hence, in philosophy as an academic discipline. In this context a first turn to antique philosophy seen as a 'way of life' constructed through ascetic practices can be detected already writings from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although indeed the project of the history of sexuality moved in a direction than Foucault had foreseen in the first volume published in 1976, earlier reflections on the need for free and critical philosophical thought relative to scientific 'disciplines' already prelude the later inquiries into care of the self, selfpractices and parrhesia as productive for a critical philosophical attitude.
On Foucault’s Concept of Political Spirituality
Revista Internacional de Filosofía Hodós (Ὁδός), 2021
In this essay, I will argue the relationship between Foucault's concept of political spirituality and the Iranian Revolution. Regarding Foucault's concept of political spirituality‖, what must be stressed is that spirituality is combined with politics. For him, spirituality is a desire to liberate the body from the prison of the soul. He regarded spirituality as nothing to do with a religious doctrine, while he did not reject that Shi'i Islam was the source of political spirituality. Therefore, it would be necessary to ask what kind of politics can be realized through spiritual practice. I contend that this question is about the rationale of Foucault's intervention into the Iranian Revolution. Unlike mischievous Western propaganda, the establishment of theocracy was a realistic solution to the limit of liberal democracy. The disjunctive dualism of political Islamism, affirming a difference between the representative democracy and God's decision, suggests an alternative to Schmitt's answer to the question concerning liberal democracy. I argue that God is nothing else than the void of sovereign power, prohibiting any human tyrant who would occupy the place of absolute authority. Only divine violence can be possessing the authority to suspend the legal system and declare a state of exception. Foucault's concept of political spirituality should be grasped with this concept of political Islamism to solve the problem of liberalism.
The Religion of Power - Between Nietzsche and Foucault
Rosenberg, A & Westfall, J: Foucault and Nietzsche: A Critical Encounter (London: Bloomsbury Academic), 2018
Nietzsche and Foucault offer radical articulations of the ‘death of God’ in its critical-negative import for religion. However, the resources their thought contains for the elaboration of a positive conception of the nature of religion premised on the same epochal development has received less attention. This piece sketches a nascent conception of such a post-theistic account of the nature of religion by bringing into dialogue aspects of Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s respective ontologies of power and critical interrogations of religion (particularly Christianity). Drawing on aspects of both philosopher’s thought an emerging hybrid – an immanent religion of power itself – will be outlined. The perspective sketched cross-fertilizes aspects of both Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s genealogies of religion to propose an affirmative conception of the relation between religion and power that contests both notions of the infinite power of the transcendent and anthropocentric analyses of the power of specific religious institutions, values and practices. Focusing on Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s respective genealogies of Christian values and practice, as elaborated in their accounts of the ‘ascetic priest’ and ‘pastoral power’ respectively, a possible turn from the socio-political ‘reduction’ of religions of the transcendent to the emergence of the immanent religion of power itself is proposed.
Political Theology, Vol. 22/1, pp. 60-67 (special section on "Foucault and "Religion), 2021
In Michel Foucault’s original formulation of the concept, governmentality is intrinsically linked to religious practices and institutions. Although Christian practices associated with the pastorate and monasticism feature prominently as precursors of modern administration and statecraft in his oeuvre, later works that employ the concept have overwhelmingly focused on the secular, and rational-scientific side of governmentality. This essay argues that by transposing governmentality to a non-European context, and by fleshing out a comparative perspectives beyond Christianity and the secular, it might be possible to recover some of the original religious implications of the concept. With reference to Theravāda Buddhism in Southeast Asia, the essay briefly discusses the potential role of monks and monasteries in establishing religious and monastic governmentality. Although there are obviously vast differences between Christianity and Buddhism, the essay concludes that exploring these ‘alternative governmentalities’ comparatively allows for novel interpretations beyond the secular religion divide and alleged Western rationality.