Now that Steve D'Arcy's posts seduced me into reading _What is Enlightment_,
I would love to discuss it.
Maybe this is a wacky approach, but let me start by quoting from another piece
in the _Foucault Reader_, namely the piece called _On the Genealogy of Ethics:
An Overview of Work in Progress_. In it, F discusses his interest in Greek
ethics, and says (in particular about Stoic ethics):
"[...] the principal aim, the principal target of this kind of ethics
was an aesthetic one. First, this kind of ethics was only a problem of
personal choice. Second, it was reserved for a few people in the
population; it was not a question of giving a pattern of behavior for
everybody. It was a personal choice for a small elite. The reason for
making this choice was to live a beautiful life, and to leave to others
memories of a beautiful existence. I don't think that we can say that
this kind of ethics was an attempt to normalize the population."
"The idea of the _bios_ as material for an aesthetic piece of art is
something that fascinates me. The idea also that ethics can be a very
strong structure of existence, without any relation with the juridical
per se, with an authoritarian system, with a disciplinary structure.
All that is very interesting."
Then he's asked:
"Q: So what kind of ethics can we build now, when we know that between
ethics and other structures there are only historical coagulations and not
a necessary relation?
And replies:
MF: What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become
something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to
life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts
who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art?
Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?"
-----------------------------------------------
So now, _What is Enlightment_. First F discusses Kant's reply to the
questionnaire in _Berlinische Monatschrift_, and says:
"Thinking back on Kant's text, I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity
rather as an attitude than as a period in history. And by 'attitude', I mean
a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by
certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of
acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of
belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what
the Greeks called an _ethos_."
Then, to characterize this attitude of modernity, F takes Baudelaire as his
example, and begins by saying that Baudelaire defines modernity in terms
of "the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent".
"But, for him, being modern does not lie in recognizing and accepting this
perpetual movement; on the contrary, it lies in adopting a certain attitude
with respect to this movement; and this deliberate, difficult attitude
consists in recapturing something eternal that is not beyond the present
instant, nor behind it, but within it. [...] Modernity is the attitude
that makes it possible to grasp the 'heroic' aspect of the present moment.
Modernity is not a phenomenon of sensitivity to the fleeting present; it
is the will to 'heroize' the present."
Then F says:
"This heroization is ironical, needless to say. The attitude of modernity
does not treat the passing moment as sacred in order to try to maintain
and perpetuate it. It certainly does not involve harvesting it as a fleeting
and intersting curiosity. That would be what Baudelaire would call the
spectator's posture. [...] Baudelaire's modernity is an exercise in which
extreme attention to what is real is confronted with a practice of a liberty
that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it."
"However, modernity for Baudelaire is not simply a form of relationship
to the present; it is also a mode of relationship that has to be established
with oneself. [...] To be modern is not to accept oneself as one is
in the flux of the passing moments; it is to take oneself as object of
a complex and difficult elaboration. [...] Modern man, for Baudelaire,
is not the man who goes off to discover himself, his secrets and his
hidden truth; he is the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity
does not 'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task
of producing himself."
"Let me add just one final word. This ironic heroization of the present,
this transfiguring play of freedom with reality, this ascetic elaboration
of the self -- Baudelaire does not imagine that these have any place in
society itself, or in the body politic. They can only be produced in
another, a different place, which Baudelaire calls art."
So there are a number of things here that I am very curious about. First, the
emergence, somewhere between Kant and Baudelaire, of the "ironic" aspect
of what Foucault proposes as the attitude of modernity. Secondly, the
question of whether treating one's life as a work of art is somehow
inherently linked to seeing oneself as a member of "a small elite".
This is connected to the whole question of the relationship between art
and life; whether art is (or is not) necessarily "another, different place"
as it was for Baudelaire (but did not want to be for Cage, some of the
Fluxites, Beuys, Warhol, Kaprow, Deleuze). And to what extent the "ironic"
aspect of modernity is linked to the perception of art as separate from
life. And what it is that is being sought, and why, when one looks for
"a principle on which to base the elaboration of a new ethics", as Foucault
says is the case with "recent liberation movements". And what it means
to posit, or deny, a gap between ethics and aesthetics, or to bridge it
through an effort of "ironic heroization". And whether F's postulated ethos
of modernity is something that is indeed part of our lives. And who it is
that is the Foucauldian "we", or at least the "we" of WiE.
-m
I would love to discuss it.
Maybe this is a wacky approach, but let me start by quoting from another piece
in the _Foucault Reader_, namely the piece called _On the Genealogy of Ethics:
An Overview of Work in Progress_. In it, F discusses his interest in Greek
ethics, and says (in particular about Stoic ethics):
"[...] the principal aim, the principal target of this kind of ethics
was an aesthetic one. First, this kind of ethics was only a problem of
personal choice. Second, it was reserved for a few people in the
population; it was not a question of giving a pattern of behavior for
everybody. It was a personal choice for a small elite. The reason for
making this choice was to live a beautiful life, and to leave to others
memories of a beautiful existence. I don't think that we can say that
this kind of ethics was an attempt to normalize the population."
"The idea of the _bios_ as material for an aesthetic piece of art is
something that fascinates me. The idea also that ethics can be a very
strong structure of existence, without any relation with the juridical
per se, with an authoritarian system, with a disciplinary structure.
All that is very interesting."
Then he's asked:
"Q: So what kind of ethics can we build now, when we know that between
ethics and other structures there are only historical coagulations and not
a necessary relation?
And replies:
MF: What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become
something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to
life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts
who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art?
Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?"
-----------------------------------------------
So now, _What is Enlightment_. First F discusses Kant's reply to the
questionnaire in _Berlinische Monatschrift_, and says:
"Thinking back on Kant's text, I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity
rather as an attitude than as a period in history. And by 'attitude', I mean
a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by
certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of
acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of
belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what
the Greeks called an _ethos_."
Then, to characterize this attitude of modernity, F takes Baudelaire as his
example, and begins by saying that Baudelaire defines modernity in terms
of "the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent".
"But, for him, being modern does not lie in recognizing and accepting this
perpetual movement; on the contrary, it lies in adopting a certain attitude
with respect to this movement; and this deliberate, difficult attitude
consists in recapturing something eternal that is not beyond the present
instant, nor behind it, but within it. [...] Modernity is the attitude
that makes it possible to grasp the 'heroic' aspect of the present moment.
Modernity is not a phenomenon of sensitivity to the fleeting present; it
is the will to 'heroize' the present."
Then F says:
"This heroization is ironical, needless to say. The attitude of modernity
does not treat the passing moment as sacred in order to try to maintain
and perpetuate it. It certainly does not involve harvesting it as a fleeting
and intersting curiosity. That would be what Baudelaire would call the
spectator's posture. [...] Baudelaire's modernity is an exercise in which
extreme attention to what is real is confronted with a practice of a liberty
that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it."
"However, modernity for Baudelaire is not simply a form of relationship
to the present; it is also a mode of relationship that has to be established
with oneself. [...] To be modern is not to accept oneself as one is
in the flux of the passing moments; it is to take oneself as object of
a complex and difficult elaboration. [...] Modern man, for Baudelaire,
is not the man who goes off to discover himself, his secrets and his
hidden truth; he is the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity
does not 'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task
of producing himself."
"Let me add just one final word. This ironic heroization of the present,
this transfiguring play of freedom with reality, this ascetic elaboration
of the self -- Baudelaire does not imagine that these have any place in
society itself, or in the body politic. They can only be produced in
another, a different place, which Baudelaire calls art."
So there are a number of things here that I am very curious about. First, the
emergence, somewhere between Kant and Baudelaire, of the "ironic" aspect
of what Foucault proposes as the attitude of modernity. Secondly, the
question of whether treating one's life as a work of art is somehow
inherently linked to seeing oneself as a member of "a small elite".
This is connected to the whole question of the relationship between art
and life; whether art is (or is not) necessarily "another, different place"
as it was for Baudelaire (but did not want to be for Cage, some of the
Fluxites, Beuys, Warhol, Kaprow, Deleuze). And to what extent the "ironic"
aspect of modernity is linked to the perception of art as separate from
life. And what it is that is being sought, and why, when one looks for
"a principle on which to base the elaboration of a new ethics", as Foucault
says is the case with "recent liberation movements". And what it means
to posit, or deny, a gap between ethics and aesthetics, or to bridge it
through an effort of "ironic heroization". And whether F's postulated ethos
of modernity is something that is indeed part of our lives. And who it is
that is the Foucauldian "we", or at least the "we" of WiE.
-m