Foucault News

My latest post at the New APPS group blog

Continuing from my last post on ‘Style of Living versus Juridification in Foucault’, there seems to be me to be something to be gained by thinking about Kierkegaard’s ethics here, even if Kierkegaard’s Christianity and Foucault’s aesthetic self seem rather distinct. The emphasis in Foucault on style or aesthetics of life or existence seems to be be already the object of criticism, in Kierkegaard’s account of the aesthetic (as a mode of life rather than with regard to the appreciation of art and beauty). However, Foucault does refer on occasion to the self as acting on itself in Kierkegaard. So Kierkegaard has a particular importance in suggesting that the self is not just an observing consciousness.

Kierkegaard’s attitude to the self , and modes of living, is in some degree structured by an understanding of the relation between individuality and…