Paul Allen Miller, Foucault’s Seminars on Antiquity: Learning to Speak the Truth. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Pp. 232 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Foucault Studies, 2017
This introductory chapter situates the Classical within Foucault’s philosophical work and summarizes the complex reaction of Classical scholars to Foucault’s work. To do so, it considers the issue of freedom of the self in society as explored by Foucault. This issue is, we suggest, the axis around which the Classical works operate: we argue that Foucault’s Classical turn was an encounter with the problematics and possibilities of freedom for and in the self. The possibility of discovering in the antique (and especially the Roman) not just a philosophy of freedom but a praxis of freedom that might be reformulated within the modern gives political and philosophical importance to Foucault’s Rome. Consequently, and as a first step in assessing the viability of Foucault’s project, it becomes crucial to understand whether these ethical practices could provide a measure of freedom in Imperial Rome itself, and secondarily, whether those ethics are desirable modes for modern life.
Foucault Studies, 2016
In presenting twelve contemporary treatises on Foucault from both European and American philosophers, this volume edited by James D. Faubion augurs well as a landmark work. In the words of Faubion, it does not claim to be "a topical compendium," nor "a mere sampler," acknowledging "its limits," while extolling its "enduring focus"an elaboration on Foucault's project-the "historical ontology of ourselves" (1). The editor proudly presents this as the distinguishing feature of this volume, rendering it unique from the innumerable collections on Foucault being published at the moment. And indeed, the publication does build on this "historical ontology" in a different manner and by various means, touching on various concepts of Foucault, without, obviously, exhausting his list. In this review, I set out to present the main arguments of each chapter, with my writing serving as an appetizer, taking potential readers through all the chapters, exposing the main concepts these Foucauldian philosophers chose to share with us. The Use of Foucault by Faubion, which serves as an introduction, does exactly what it purports to do-it eases the reader into this compendium of contemporary Foucauldian studies. Although clearly not intended for someone unfamiliar with Foucauldian theories, the editor carefully leads us through the winding paths followed by Foucault's works, moving on to "receptions and applications" (7) of these same works, which the great philosopher himself defined as "tracks of research, ideas, schemas, stipples, instruments: do with them what you want." 1 And this is what the twelve contributors do, introduced briefly to us by Faubion, before we come to read their individual works. This introduction ends with a postscript-giving suggestions for further reading, for those who would like to follow up on the concepts addressed in this book-offering the potential for an ongoing dialogue and debate. This volume is divided in two sections, with the first six chapters constituting Part 1: Object Lessons, dealing with Foucauldian theories, while Part 2: Cases in Point, relate to applications in diverse fields. According to Faubion, the essays constituting Part 1 address the question of "the use-and abuse-of Foucault" in general terms (15), while Part 2 1 Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, as cited in book under review, 7.
Symploke 30.1-2, 2023
Critical discussion of Foucault's views of antiquity
Foucault, Philosophy, and Literature
Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 2012
This article focuses on Foucault's ''archeological'' books: Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things. It addresses two issues in particular: first, Foucault's criticism of modern philosophical and scientific knowledge about man, showing how this knowledge is based on Nietzsche's criticism of humanism in modernity; second, Foucault's thoughts about modern literary language, contending that it is an affirmative counterpoint to the historic-philosophical analyses of knowledge about man he carried out during this archeological phase. In addition, the objective is to situate Foucault's views on literature during this period of genealogies of power and subjectivity.
Care of the Self and Politics: Michel Foucault, Heir of a Forgotten Plato?
Platonism: Ficino to Foucault, 2021
In the last years of his life Michel Foucault devoted himself to the study of classical antiquity, focusing on what he called the ‘technologies of the self’, i.e., a system of therapeutic and ethical practices that constructed the ancient subject within a horizon of freedom. The motivations that led Foucault to undertake this study are still an object of debate today. The present study endorses the approach of those authors (such as Arnold Davidson and Judith Revel) who identify a continuity in the development of Foucault’s oeuvre. In this respect, I share Davidson’s and Revel’s views and do not interpret Foucault’s return to antiquity as a moment of self-absorption, an abandonment of politics or a way out from the pessimism characterizing the previous period of his work, as pointed out by Alexander Nehamas. Arguably, by studying the ancients, Foucault intended to elaborate possibilities of action for the present, without however searching in the past for solutions to problems which characterised a different age. In other words, for Foucault the study of classical thought enables to historicise our point of view and to conceive the possibility of other forms of life. It does not seek a ready-made model requiring implementation, but entails a perspectival exercise which aims at engendering effective forms of resistance and production. The critical posture of the intellectual is thus conjugated with a practice of self-transformation which enables the wider context in which the subject acts/reacts to be changed. From this perspective, Foucault emphasises the relation between government of the self and government of others, historicising philosophy and demonstrating how it encompassed a knowledge which was indissolubly bound to praxis. Mario Vegetti has criticized Foucault for reducing antiquity to a pacified form of Platonism or Neoplatonism, incapable of capturing the conflict and political tensions of the period. The present analysis intends to demonstrate that this is not the case, and it highlights how much Foucault drew from the notion of ergon that he learned from a very Socratic Plato for developing an account of transformative philosophy as mode of life embedded in the power dynamics.
Continental Thought and Theory (CT&T), 2022
Foucault was first and foremost a historian and insists that the past enables the present to exist, to think about and to occur. It is at this conjuncture that Foucault presents a demand on all who follow in his wake: we have to know history, engage in and with history, critique, wrestle with and rethink history in order to make sense of the present. One cannot follow or properly draw upon Foucault if history is bypassed or dismissed – which is perhaps why Foucault is often so mis-used today? This issue reads Foucault (who, if alive today would be 96) from the present and asks what do contemporary readings of Foucault offer to thinking via those political, subjective, and social issues relevant today? Reading Foucault from within the 21st century is not only to engage with Foucault from a distance (that is, the aftermath of the rise and fall of Foucault in the academy) but also to remind ourselves of how the 21st century is itself as series of power discourses continuing into the new century. The contributions in this issue all put to work not only Foucault’s methods of politics, genealogy and historicity as specific readings of social and subjective phenomenon but also read him across and alongside other authors, some recent such as Dean and Zamora’s controversial reading of Foucault and neoliberalism, and other provocative intellectual interlocutors, such as Guartarri, Jameson, Baudrillard, Allouch, Zupancic, Canguilhem, Lacan, Kant, Freud and Illouz. What is also put to work is the interdisciplinary nexus of Foucault’s thinking relating to philosophy, biology, history, sex, autoethnography, technology, Christianity, and politics. The authors all take up Foucault’s work not as a legacy of the past, but rather as a modality of contemporaneity: How can his praxis be thought today via his reconsideration of parrhesia? What might be Foucault’s reception to Greek and Roman philosophies? What are the implications and effects of a contemporary Foucauldian praxis regarding the crises and conundrums we currently encounter? In the face of the current trend towards universalism how can Foucault provide a challenge or riff to such theoretical and rhetorical orientations, especially concerning the ‘political subjectivity’ as one which unapologetically takes up pleasure?