Sam,
Foucault does take up Goethe's Faust at two points in his later College de
France lectures.
One is in 1982 (lecture 8, 24 february), where he is talking about how a
certain savoir de spiritualite that we can see in Seneca and Marcus Aurelius
has been masked/covered over by a savoir de connaissance in the 16th and 17th
Centuries. Faust is here given as an example of this tension/process.
The other, and I think this is the more jejeune citation for your concerns, is
in 1984 (lecture 6, 7 march). Here, Foucault is looking at Goethe's Faust as
a hero analogous to the ancient Cynic practices of making one's life a "true
life". He says that the figure of Faust is then replaced in the 19th Century
by the "revolutionary." I quote from my notes:
Faust represents the legend of the philosophical life as heroic, as
ethical,
with all the sedimentation of its tradition through the centuries. And the
legend is then displaced from the philosophical field to the political
field
in the form of the revolutionary life: Exit Faust and enter the
revolutionary figure (le revolutionaire).
Though Foucault does not make the connections between these Romantic figures
and the ethics of self-fashioning as explicit as we would like, the links are
clearly there to be drawn and elaborated upon. I hope this is helpful; have
fun with this project...
Richard
----------------
Richard A. Lynch
Department of Philosophy
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA
(617) 552-3851 (office)
(617) 552-3874 (fax)
(617) 734-7488 (home)
lynchrb@xxxxxx
On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 19:23:30 GMT
owner-foucault-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (foucault-digest) wrote:
>Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 14:20:15 -0500
>From: sam binkley <sbinkley@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Foucault and the romantic subject
>
>Is anyone aware of an instance in which Foucault relates his theories of
>ethical practice and the self to the Romantic sense of self, as developed in
>in the French or German traditions? I know that, when prodded on the
>historical relevance of "ethical practice" to modern contexts, he made some
>remark about "pockets" of ethical practices, offering the Renaissance concept
>of aesthetic self fashioning and Baudellaire's flaneur, but I don't know if
>Foucault made an mention of the relevance of an ethic of self fashioning to
>the Romantic model of the self elaborated by Geothe, Rousseau, and others.
Foucault does take up Goethe's Faust at two points in his later College de
France lectures.
One is in 1982 (lecture 8, 24 february), where he is talking about how a
certain savoir de spiritualite that we can see in Seneca and Marcus Aurelius
has been masked/covered over by a savoir de connaissance in the 16th and 17th
Centuries. Faust is here given as an example of this tension/process.
The other, and I think this is the more jejeune citation for your concerns, is
in 1984 (lecture 6, 7 march). Here, Foucault is looking at Goethe's Faust as
a hero analogous to the ancient Cynic practices of making one's life a "true
life". He says that the figure of Faust is then replaced in the 19th Century
by the "revolutionary." I quote from my notes:
Faust represents the legend of the philosophical life as heroic, as
ethical,
with all the sedimentation of its tradition through the centuries. And the
legend is then displaced from the philosophical field to the political
field
in the form of the revolutionary life: Exit Faust and enter the
revolutionary figure (le revolutionaire).
Though Foucault does not make the connections between these Romantic figures
and the ethics of self-fashioning as explicit as we would like, the links are
clearly there to be drawn and elaborated upon. I hope this is helpful; have
fun with this project...
Richard
----------------
Richard A. Lynch
Department of Philosophy
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA
(617) 552-3851 (office)
(617) 552-3874 (fax)
(617) 734-7488 (home)
lynchrb@xxxxxx
On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 19:23:30 GMT
owner-foucault-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (foucault-digest) wrote:
>Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 14:20:15 -0500
>From: sam binkley <sbinkley@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Foucault and the romantic subject
>
>Is anyone aware of an instance in which Foucault relates his theories of
>ethical practice and the self to the Romantic sense of self, as developed in
>in the French or German traditions? I know that, when prodded on the
>historical relevance of "ethical practice" to modern contexts, he made some
>remark about "pockets" of ethical practices, offering the Renaissance concept
>of aesthetic self fashioning and Baudellaire's flaneur, but I don't know if
>Foucault made an mention of the relevance of an ethic of self fashioning to
>the Romantic model of the self elaborated by Geothe, Rousseau, and others.