Abstract
The art of living idiom suits well a practice-oriented approach in ethics of technology. But what remains or becomes of the functioning and use of reason in ethics? In reaction to the comments by Huijer this reply elaborates in more detail how Foucault’s art of living can be adapted for a critical contemporary ethics of technology. And the aesthetic-political rationality in Foucault’s ethics is compared with Wellner’s suggestions of holding on to the notion of code but with a new meaning. Foucault’s fourfold scheme of subjectivation and a distinction of “below and above reason” structure the argument.
Highlights
The art of living idiom suits well a practice-oriented approach in ethics of technology
I just implicitly made use of Foucault’s fourfold scheme for studying ethics, which was introduced in our discussion by Marli Huijer, when she mentioned four dimensions of the moral experience: ontology, deontology, ascetics, teleology
In my paper I chose to bring up only the simpler version that Foucault uses simultaneously, and which is referred to by Wellner, namely of a code-based ethics versus a practical arts of living
Summary
The simpler scheme that Foucault uses in his work on ethics is a distinction between codebased ethics and ethics of subjectivation. The genealogy of the subject, of ethics in the sense of subjectivation became the project of Foucault’s later work. His genealogy of ethics reveals how in the course of history different understandings of the subject and different experiences of being a subject have prevailed. In structuring this genealogy, Foucault introduces the fourfold scheme of subjectivation and investigates how different ethical systems differ along these dimensions. Subjectivation appears as self-causation, with four kinds of causes, or constitutive facets: (1) the materiality of the self, (2) the model, or principle one recognizes oneself subject of, (3) the work or practices of self-formation, (4) the state of being that the care of oneself strives to achieve
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