The last period of Foucault’s work is often labeled as “the ethical turn”. His reflections upon t... more The last period of Foucault’s work is often labeled as “the ethical turn”. His reflections upon the Greek epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”), his Nietzschean ideal of making life “a work of art”, and his search for new forms of subjectivity are commonly seen as a shift from his former political “problematizations” in favor of an ethical approach, focused on the so-called “aesthetics of existence”. In this paper, I would like to present the role played by the aesthetics of existence in the entire Foucauldian work and to answer some of the objections Foucault received on his late inquiries. Some of these objections concern the immoralism and relativism of Foucault’s ethics; others try to prove that the abandonment of power analysis lead Foucault towards an individualistic ethics, lacking political engagement.
The last period of Foucault’s work is often labeled as “the ethical turn”. His reflections upon t... more The last period of Foucault’s work is often labeled as “the ethical turn”. His reflections upon the Greek epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”), his Nietzschean ideal of making life “a work of art”, and his search for new forms of subjectivity are commonly seen as a shift from his former political “problematizations” in favor of an ethical approach, focused on the so-called “aesthetics of existence”. In this paper, I would like to present the role played by the aesthetics of existence in the entire Foucauldian work and to answer some of the objections Foucault received on his late inquiries. Some of these objections concern the immoralism and relativism of Foucault’s ethics; others try to prove that the abandonment of power analysis lead Foucault towards an individualistic ethics, lacking political engagement.
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Papers by Daniel Nica