Abstract
The fable of the elephant in Saint Francis of Sales. ~ Versions of the fable in the Middle Ages and sixteenth century. ~ The Physiologus. ~ Versions of the fable in Greek and Latin antiquity. ~ The endpoint with Aristotle. ~ The “subjectivity and truth” relationship: philosophical, positivist, historico-philosophical formulations of the problem. ~ Subjectivity as historical relationship to the truth, and truth as historical system of obligations. ~ Principles of monogamous sexual ethics. ~ The privileged historical question.
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Notes
Foucault will take up this example of the elephant-model in his Introduction to the Histoire de la sexualité, vol. II: L’Usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothêque des histoires,” 1984) “Un schéma de comportement,” pp. 23–24; English translation Robert Hurley, The Use of Pleasure. Volume 2 of The History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985) “An ideal of conduct,” p. 17.
G.L. L. Buffon, Histoire naturelle [1749], in Œuvres complètes, t. XV (Paris: Eymery, Fruger et Cie, Libraires, 1829) pp. 60–166.
C. Gessner, Historiae animalium, book I: De quadrupedis viviparis [1551] (Francofurti: in bibliopolio H. Laurentii, 1620) pp. 376–403.
Albert le Grand, De animalibus [1258; Rome ed., 1478; Venice, 1495] (Münster: Aschendorff, 1916 and 1920); English translation Kenneth Kitchell, Jr. Albertus Magnus, On Animals: A Medieval “Summa Zoologica” (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999).
Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum Naturale [1624], bk. XIC, ch. xliv (Graz: Akademische Druck-und Verlagsanstalt, 1964) pp. 1406–1407). The first part of Speculum majius was written between 1240 and 1260.
In particular in Saint Ambrose Hexaéréron (Divi Ambrosii Hexameron, c. 389), in Patrologiae cursus completus omnium SS. Patrum, doctorum scriptorumque ecclesiasticorum sive Latinorum, sive Graecorum, Patrologia Latina, ed., Jean-Paul Migne, t. 14, 1885; see, for example, 6, 13, 3; English translation John J. Savage, Hexameron, Paradise, and Cain and Abel. Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 1961) vol. 42.
Origen, Homélies sur la Genèse [In Genesim Homiliae], trans., Louis Doutreleau (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1944); English translation Ronald E. Heine, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus. Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2001) vol. 71.
Iulius Solinus [Gaius Iulius Solinus], Collectanea rerum memorabilium (25, 1–15), ed., Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: In aedibus Friderici Nicolai, 1895 [1864]).
Pliny the Elder, Histoire Naturelle, VIII, 1–11, trans., Alfred Ernout (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, CUF, 1952) pp. 23–24; English translation H. Rackham, Natural History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library 353, 1940) vol. III, Book 8, 1–11, pp. 11–13.
The King Juba II of Mauretania (c. 52 BCE—23 CE) was a great scholar. His works on the his tory of Rome, sadly lost, were a reference for historians like Titus Livy and Pliny the Elder. The latter cites him at several places in his Natural History. See J. Lahlou, Moi, Juba, roi de Maurétainie (Paris: Éd. ParisMéditerranée, 1999).
On the truth as obligation, see M. Foucault, Du gouvernement des vivants. Cours au Collège de France, 1979–1980, ed., M. Senellart (Paris: EHESS-Gallimard-Le Seuil, “Hautes Études,” 2012), p. 92; English translation Graham Burchell, On the Government of the Living. Lectures at the Collège de France 1979–1980, English series editor Arnold I. Davidson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) pp. 94–95.
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Gros, F., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (2017). 7 January 1981. In: Gros, F., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (eds) Subjectivity and Truth. Michel Foucault. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73900-4_1
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