Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, Second Edition

2 70 Novel Cc;lns%rgaks and Cc~gee~ybe described from today" perspective as the aesthetics of self-developmentand life-management, rather than as the ethics of the self.The history of concepts comes into Foucauldian ethics in his attempt tounearth, investigate, and build on what Foucault calls "kchniques of theself.'Tooucault describes these techniques as having to do with '"the freedomof the subject: and the relationship to others, i.e., that which constitutesthe very matter of ethics,""" He maintains that the Greeks considered"the freedom of the individual as an ethical problem." In his view, "in antiquitythe will to he a moral subject, the search for an ethics of existence,was principally an effort to affirm one's liberty and to give one's own life acertain farm."38 The ancient moral quest, therefure, was ""essentially asearch far n personal ethics" in contrast to the Christian conception ofethics ""as obedience to a syscem of rules,'"9 With Christianity, &e will tobe it moral subject and live a moral life was transformed into the will to livein accordance with divine law. The crucial question for the Christian is:What is Cod's will? This is a point often missed because Christian confarmityto the law differs from antecedent Judaic conformity to explicit, putativelydivine decrees and their intricate interpretations, Christian conformityis to the embadinnem of the law in the figure of Christ. Being moral isstill a matter of conforming, but to a garadigrn rather than to rules, Theparadigm is made available through parables, admonitions, and examplerather than only decrees. This new understanding of ethical obedience iswhat Thomas B Kernpis summarizes in his aptly titled Tbe Imiaticrn ofChP.ist, Thcre he informs the faithhi that anyone seeking to achieve moralperfection and enlightenment "must endeavor to conform bis life wkally tothe life of Christ."40Fctucauit paints a picture uf the Creco-Roman conception of ethics asmore fundamental than the Judeo-Christian conception. The basic questionasked by f ocrates, Plato, Epictetus, Aristotle, Epicusus, Seneca, and MarcusAurelius is: How ought I to live? Mowever, even if the answer was notgiven in terms of sonformi~ to law or to example, it carried a commitmentto truth. The best w y to live was in accordance with a given natwe: for instance,Plato" tripartite sou!, Aristotle" rational essence, and Epictetus'sdetermined universe. This sort of answer is not acceptable to Foucatrlt,vvhich is why his ethics do nor merely endorse and emulate antiquity% ethicalviews, Foucault needs ""techniques of management" and ethics tbat willenable us to best order our lives and recreate oursefves within power relationsand '"with a minimum of domination."41 We cannot hope to escapepower, hut we can hope to follow the Nietzschcan admonition to recreateoursefves and do it to the greatest degree possible within power relations.To do tbat, we have to understand and resist what we find detailed in Discipli~eamd Punish and The Hist.ory of Sexunlity, In short, we have to understandand resist how in our social order ""the indivld~~al is carefully fah-ricated . . . according to a whole technique of forces and bodies*"'""