Foucault’s Archeology and Genealogy of the Self

Abstract

Like Dewey and Wittgenstein, Foucault is a thinker of the moving horizon, not interested in uncovering universal principles, but rather in understanding the different ways in which humans come to know about themselves and their world and act upon themselves and others: the conditions of possibility of taken-for-granted views and practices. Not all of this knowledge is ethical in any sense of the word, but much of it is. Foucault’s late work, especially volumes 2 and 3 of the History of Sexuality, is often described in terms of being his work on “ethics.” But these late writings present only the culmination of a thick descriptive and historical inquiry into moral personhood, ancient as well as modern. The essential input of his work for a descriptive ethics lies in his capacity to describe the complex interdependence of practices, institutions, values, forms of personhood, and forms of conceptualization. He also exhibits an intense relationship to his own moral present, which is exemplary for a descriptive philosophical ethics.