Foucault as virtue ethicist

Foucault Studies

Volumn , Issue 1, 2004, Pages 20-31

  Levy, Neil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79959823241     PISSN: None     EISSN: 18325203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.22439/fs.v0i1.563     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. The major texts of Foucault s last period are the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), hereafter cited in the text as UP;
2. and The Care of the Self, trans. R. Hurley, (London: Penguin Books, 1986).
3. On virtue ethics, see the articles collected in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds) Virtue Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1997).
4. I take myself here to be engaged in the project of shedding light on a little appreciated point of convergence between Foucault and an important strand of Anglo-American ethical thought, a convergence that suggests that greater dialogue between the Continental and Analytic traditions, at least on these questions, would prove fruitful. I should not like my argument to be understood to play down the very real differences in the stakes, styles and methods of the two major kinds of Western philosophy. On the degree to which Analytic and Continental philosophy differ from each other, and the prospects for reconciliation between them, see my Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences, Metaphilosophy, April 2003.
5. Michel Foucault, The Ethics of Care of the Self as Practice of Freedom, J.D. Gauthier (trans), in James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, The Final Foucault (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987), p. 5. Hereafter cited in the text as ECS.
6. Michel Foucault, The Concern for Truth, A. Sheridan (trans), in Lawrence Kritzman (ed), Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984 (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 260.
7. Michel Foucault, Pour en finir avec les mensonges, in Le Nouvel Observateur (June 21-7, 1985), p. 61. My translation.
8. John McDowell, Virtue and Reason in Crisp and Slote, p. 141.
9. Indeed, it has been argued that one of the primary appeals of virtue ethics is that it promises a nonskeptical response to the failure of codification. (Gary Watson, On the Primacy of Character in Owen Flanagan and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty Identity, Character and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990)., p. 454).
10. For influential work in the Anglo-American tradition which emphasizes later Ancient thought, see Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
11. I argue for this in interpretation of the later Foucault in my Being Up-To-Fate: Foucault, Sartre and Postmodernity (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).
12. Michel Foucault, An Aesthetics of Existence Alan Sheridan (trans), in Kritzman, p. 49.
13. G.E.M. Anscombe Modern Moral Philosophy in Crisp and Slote, p. 30. Hereafter cited in the text as MMP.
14. An Aesthetics of Existence, p. 49.
15. As an anonymous referee pointed out to me, Foucault does provide hints that suggest that he, like Anscombe, sees the decline in religious belief- the so-called Death of God -as central to the decline in codified morality. However, Foucault provides no more than hints; perhaps he intended to develop an account in later volumes of the History of Sexuality.
16. McDowell, Virtue and Reason, p. 156
17. Sabina Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 52.
18. Philippa Foot, Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives, in Michael Smith (ed) Meta-Ethics (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1995).
19. Robert B. Louden On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics, in Crisp and Slote, p. 213
20. [B]behind the pretext of explaining an action, are ways of defining an individual. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 18.
21. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (London: Penguin Books, 1990).
22. Foucault, The Return of Morality, in Kritzman, p. 253.