Richard:
Thanks for the tip! this all sounds very interesting: I'll check these sources
and see what I can come up with.
As i understand it, the romantic hero/artist did two things: he/she invoked a
disafilliation from the modern present (as a corrupt epoch, tarnished and
fragmentedby modern technology, instrumental rationality, etc), but also the
romantic subject projected an imaginary affiliation with a remote past, or a
remote future, where the fragmented subject (divided between passions and reason)
was resolved into teh heroic character.
I guess these are pretty routine comments on romanticism, but I think it is
possible to relate the romantic, imaginary quest for an integrated heroic subject
to a mode of "ethical work" in the sense that foucault discussed in History of
sexuality II & III. To say that the romantic concept of the authentic, heroic
self involved, not just an imaginary withdrawal from modern rationality (into the
personal, the production of art, etc) but an active work on oneself in the course
of a lived life with others. In short, I'm trying to say that what the Romantics
did in the imagination, and what Foucault's ancient ethicists did in practice,
were not so distinct, that there may be cases where the two overlapped.
(specifically, I'm writing on the counterculture of the 1960's, but that's
another story).
I guess what I have to decide is: how much of this is my fudging foucault to fit
my agenda, and how much of it is in foucault's texts, undeveloped, as richard
says.
in any case, thanks for letting me unload this.
sb
> 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.
--
____________________________
Sam Binkley
Department of Sociology, New School University
65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Address: PO Box 20202, New York, NY 10009
phone: (212) 420 9425 web: http://www.thing.net/~sbinkley/
Thanks for the tip! this all sounds very interesting: I'll check these sources
and see what I can come up with.
As i understand it, the romantic hero/artist did two things: he/she invoked a
disafilliation from the modern present (as a corrupt epoch, tarnished and
fragmentedby modern technology, instrumental rationality, etc), but also the
romantic subject projected an imaginary affiliation with a remote past, or a
remote future, where the fragmented subject (divided between passions and reason)
was resolved into teh heroic character.
I guess these are pretty routine comments on romanticism, but I think it is
possible to relate the romantic, imaginary quest for an integrated heroic subject
to a mode of "ethical work" in the sense that foucault discussed in History of
sexuality II & III. To say that the romantic concept of the authentic, heroic
self involved, not just an imaginary withdrawal from modern rationality (into the
personal, the production of art, etc) but an active work on oneself in the course
of a lived life with others. In short, I'm trying to say that what the Romantics
did in the imagination, and what Foucault's ancient ethicists did in practice,
were not so distinct, that there may be cases where the two overlapped.
(specifically, I'm writing on the counterculture of the 1960's, but that's
another story).
I guess what I have to decide is: how much of this is my fudging foucault to fit
my agenda, and how much of it is in foucault's texts, undeveloped, as richard
says.
in any case, thanks for letting me unload this.
sb
> 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.
--
____________________________
Sam Binkley
Department of Sociology, New School University
65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Address: PO Box 20202, New York, NY 10009
phone: (212) 420 9425 web: http://www.thing.net/~sbinkley/