As religiões podem ser consideradas como sistemas simbólicos mediante os quais os seres humanos ao longo da sua história sempre procuraram encontrar sabedoria em ordem a enfrentar o mal Um olhar pela história das religiões oferece-nos dados que podem ser compreendidos a partir de três tipos ideais de atitude básica em relação ao problema: Ascese, Gnose, Praxis. O Budismo originário, o Maniqueísmo e a religião bí-blico-cristã são exemplificações disso mesmo. Mais do que uma opção pela exclusão, os membros da nossa (...) cultura ocidental iluminada demonstram uma preferência pela atitude práxica. É a partir dela que nos cabe recuperar os valores das outras. Isso é também o que em muitos significa a presença de uma certa nostalgia pela "espiritualidade oriental". Ou ainda, como modesta gnose, a "teodiceia" (porquê tanto mal?): tão pouco prometedora enquanto resposta (teórica), como inevitável enquanto pergunta. /// Religions can be viewed as symbolic systems with which human beings have throughout history sought the wisdom which enables them to face evil. A survey through the history of religions exhibits features which may be brought to three ideal types of basic attitudes: the ascetic, the gnostic and the 'praxical'. Original Buddhism, Manichaeism and the biblical-Christian Religion exemplify them. Men and women of our occidental, enlightened culture need not to take an exclusive option thereabout. They show a preference for the praxical trend, even though at the same time they also retrieve some of the values of the other ones. Signs of this can be seen in the interest of many for 'oriental spirituality' as well as in that sort of modest gnosis which is "theodicee "(Why so much evil?): always unpromising as a theoretical answer and unavoidable as a question. /// Las religiones pueden ser consideradas como sistemas simbólicos con los que los seres humanos hemos buscado en nuestra historia una sabiduría para afrontar el mal. Un recorrido por la historia de las religiones ofrece datos que pueden comprenderse desde tres tipos ideales de actitud básica de afrontamiento: Ascesis, Gnosis, Praxis. El Budismo originário, el Maniqueísmo y la Religión bíblico-cristiana los ejemplifican. Más que una opción excluyente, los humanos de nuestra cultura occidental ilustrada tendrán una preferencia por la actitud práxica. Cabe desde ella recuperar valores de las otras. Eso hace en muchos la añoranza por la "espiritualidad oriental". Y, como modesta gnosis, la "teódicea" (¿por qué tanto mal?): tan poco prometedora como respuesta (teórica), cuanto insoslayable como pregunta. (shrink)

Heidegger’s account of what it is to be a human being is compelling, but closed off to the idea of an Absolute. Yet Jean-Yves Lacoste argues it is possible even for Christianity to accept these atheistic structures of Dasein as native to the human condition. The initial closure of these structures to God cannot be erased, but one can marginalize them to make space for “liturgy,” or a relation to the Absolute. Lacoste offers asceticism as the most vivid illustration of (...) this liturgical marginalization, as a subversion of the structure of care. However, this immediately produces a contradiction. This subversion of care is itself a project of care: to succeed in marginalizing care only confirms it all the deeply. To rescue Lacoste from this vicious circle, I will draw upon Evagrius Ponticus, a 4th century desert monk known for his keen analysis of ascetic experience. Evagrius’ writings show how the subversion of care in ascesis can be completed only by its subversion in prayer. The interplay of these two moments, as elaborated through Evagrius’ writings, thus support Lacoste’s argument and offer a compelling illustration of these ideas at work. (shrink)

This paper argues that Foucault’s The History of Sexuality contains an implicit but important interpretation of Nietzsche’s critique of the ‘ascetic ideal’. It suggests that Foucault undertakes a non-reductive synthesis of seemingly conflicting aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, on the one hand, its valorisation of the ‘Dionysian’ and, on the other hand, its enthusiasm for ‘self-disciplining’. The consequences of a failure to appreciate how Nietzsche’s thought combines these two themes is illustrated through a sketch of what is termed an ‘oppositional’ interpretation (...) of his thought. This erroneously imposes the nature/culture distinction upon Nietzsche’s thought and reads its critique of morality in terms of ‘repression’, the ‘renunciation of instinct’ etc. An alternative, ‘economic’ interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought in which his ‘affirmation of the Dionysian’ and valorisation of self-disciplining are conjoined is outlined and recommended. Foucault’s interpretation of Nietzsche is presented as an example of such an ‘economic’ reading, in that it appreciates Nietzsche’s libidinal interpretation of self-denial. This combination of Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s thought is termed ‘noble ascesis’. This is illustrated through a reading of Foucault’s account of Greco-Roman ethics. Attention is drawn to how Foucault’s implicit interpretation of Nietzsche helps to clarify Nietzsche’s conception of the possibility of a ‘healthy’ appropriation of the ‘ascetic ideal’. The paper attempts to show how the ‘non-moral’ ethical practice Foucault retrieves from the classical world, on the basis of Nietzsche’s distinction between different forms of self-denial, emphasises the affective and libidinal investments of asceticism. This, in turn, is related to Foucault’s critique of the ‘repressive hypothesis’ and overcoming of the ‘repression/transgression’ model of the nature of power. However, the paper identifies some tensions between Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s accounts of asceticism and interpretations of the ethical practice of the Greco-Roman world and closes by considering whether or not these tensions can be resolved. (shrink)

Foucault’s understanding of the history and contemporary significance of ascetic practices or exercises of cultivation (ascesis) differs significantly from attempts which consider the renewal of asceticism in spiritual or even religious terms. This paper tries to show that he thought about related problems from the perspective of aesthetic cultivation. The first part will discuss his analysis of sexuality within the broader context of his theory-formation and elaborate on the theoretical structure of his concept of self-cultivation. In the second part (...) I will situate the idea of creative ascesis in a broader historical context. The third part will provide a preliminary perspective on the transcultural significance of relating Foucault and contemporary Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

An analysis of theological and philosophical understandings of debt and its role in contemporary capitalism. Max Weber’s account of the rise of capitalism focused on his concept of a Protestant ethic, valuing diligence in earning and saving money but restraint in spending it. However, such individual restraint is foreign to contemporary understandings of finance, which treat ever-increasing consumption and debt as natural, almost essential, for maintaining the economic cycle of buying and selling. In The Debt of the Living, Elettra Stimilli (...) returns to this idea of restraint as ascesis, by analyzing theological and philosophical understandings of debt drawn from a range of figures, including Saint Paul, Schmitt and Agamben, Benjamin and Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and Foucault. Central to this analysis is the logic of “profit for profit’s sake”—an aspect of Weber’s work that Stimilli believes has been given insufficient attention. Following Foucault, she identifies this as the original mechanism of a capitalist dispositif that feeds not on a goal-directed rationality, but on the self-determining character of human agency. Ascesis is fundamental not because it is characterized by renunciation, but because the self-discipline it imposes converts the properly human quality of action without a predetermined goal into a lack, a fault, or a state of guilt: a debt that cannot be settled. Stimilli argues that this lack, which is impossible to fill, should be seen as the basis of the economy of hedonism and consumption that has governed global economies in recent years and as the premise of the current economy of debt. Elettra Stimilli is research fellow of theoretical philosophy at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Arianna Bove is the translator of many books, including Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin, by Antonio Negri. (shrink)

El presente trabajo propone un diálogo entre la filosofía de Foucault y el psicoanálisis de Lacan, utilizando para eso el marco que ofrece el curso La Hermenéutica del sujeto del filósofo francés. A lo largo del mismo se exploran posibles puntos de contacto entre ambos discursos en torno a temas tales como una ascesis filosófica, el tratamiento de las pasiones, la función del otro y el deseo. El escrito parte de la convicción de que este diálogo puede ser mutuamente (...) enriquecedor: del lado de la filosofía permite pensar un modo efectivo de realizar un trabajo estético sobre la propia existencia; del lado del psicoanálisis permite profundizar en su dimensión espiritual antes que médica y normalizadora. Asimismo, de la conjunción de ambos discursos pueden extraerse algunas ideas para pensar una ascesis subjetiva capaz de elaborar una disidencia razonada ante las formas de dominación imperantes. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se enfoca en el abordaje que realiza Foucault de la tragedia Edipo Rey de Sófocles. Mi objetivo es rastrear algunas diferencias entre el análisis que el autor realiza en sus trabajos de los años 70 y el que se encuentra en sus últimos cursos. En esta última etapa, aparece una interpretación que ya no se limita a la descripción genealógica de un modo de ejercer el poder, sino que muestra las implicancias transformadoras de este reconocimiento. A través (...) de esta torsión se hace explicita la dimensión ética del rastreo genealógico, una cuestión que se expresa en un posicionamiento más claro que distingue a la verdad del saber jurídico-discursivo. Este enfoque también revela las diversas posibilidades de desestabilización, cambio y constitución a la altura de este reconocimiento. (shrink)

En el panorama actual de la filosofía ético-política, la ascesis ha sido una de las nociones más influyentes, tomando un lugar determinante a partir de la empresa de Nietzsche en su tratamiento sobre los ideales ascéticos. Ciertamente, con la herencia foucaultiana de este concepto como prácticas de sí, filosofías como la de Judith Butler, Peter Sloterdijk, Elettra Stimilli, entre otros, han admitido como supuesto ontológico central que el cómo los humanos se relacionan consigo mismos es clave para comprender las (...) maneras en que nuestras realidades son configuradas, y que dicha relación tiene lugar en las prácticas que realizamos día a día. No obstante, en diversas religiones y filosofías de la antigüedad, la ascesis ocupaba un rol aparejado con otras nociones, como la de gnosis (que se instaura como un conocimiento especial de la manera en que la realidad está organizada), con vistas a asegurar que los individuos pudiesen ascender a formas de vida que procurasen su salvación. Frente a esta diferencia tan radical en uno y otro momento de la historia de la filosofía, intentaremos trazar ciertas notas que nos permitirían comparar una y otra interpretación de la ascesis, sacando así a luz los aspectos que caracterizan la concepción contemporánea de la ascesis misma. _Palabras clave: _ascesis, vida, educación, filosofía contemporánea, práctica. (shrink)

La escritura. Entre la crisis logocéntrica de Occidente y la ascesis caligráfica de Oriente. La escritura japonesa como caso. Resumen de Tesis de doctorado en Filosofía de Guillermo Goicochea.

Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli tutti elevates some key themes of his papacy. Using the parable of the Good Samaritan as a framing narrative, Francis outlines an active, nonviolent style of politics and social engagement based on practices of attention and hospitality toward one’s neighbors. Francis refers to this mode of engagement as “social friendship.” Francis’s pastoral letters and homilies draw from the content and methodologies common to Latin American liberation theology, but many of his insights are mirrored in an Anglo-American (...) context through the witness of the Catholic Worker movement. This paper looks to the Catholic Worker for a mode by which the Gospel of social friendship can be lived out through asceses of attention and hospitality to the unhoused. Social friendship leads one to responsible action, and universal membership in the Body of Christ calls into question the structures that oppress the vulnerable. (shrink)

This article argues that Henri de Lubac's conception of the homo ecclesiasticus has deep roots in the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola. Drawing upon Splendor of the Church, the article first presents de Lubac's vision of the homo ecclesiasticus and his or her temptations; particularly important here is what de Lubac calls the ‘camouflage of the good’ and the consequent importance of discernment and asceticism. The article concludes by analyzing the Ignatian matrix of de Lubac's thought, especially its emphasis on (...) the discernment of spirits, a generous catholicity, and the inseparability of the spiritual and the ecclesial. (shrink)

이 글은 현대한국철학의 역사를 정립하기 위한 예비적 시도다. 이 시도는 우선 최근 정 치적 주체로 급부상한 '페미니즘 주체'의 탈역사적 성격, 즉 선험적 통일성을 담지하지 않 는 역사 이후의 주체로서의 성격을 적극 참조한다. 이른바 칸트가 개진했던 '이성의 역사'라고 하는 이성의 자기발전에 대한 역사적 성찰에 대해 이 탈역사적 주체는 그 뿌리에서부 터 문제제기를 하고 있다. 다시 말해 현대한국철학사 역시 서양철학사와 동일하게 '철학적 문제는 어떻게 발생하는가'(철학의 체계)와 '이 문제를 정식화하기 위한 개념들의 역사적 발생(철학사)', 이 양자의 이율배반적 관계에 직면할 수밖에 없다. 현대한국철학을 규정하기 위해 (...) 우선 푸코를 따라 현대철학은 '계몽'의 문제인 동시에, 서양의 보편적, 계몽적 주체에 대해 유대인이 갖는 역사적 특수성에 유비적으로 한국의 계몽적 주체 또한 계몽의 반대항으로 역사적 경험으로서의 파국 의 축을 노정한다. 서구라는 타자에 의한 자기상실과 절망으로서의 파국 그리고 타자의 보편적 계몽주의를 번역하고 전유하려는 집단적 시도 로서의 계몽. 이 양축은 타자의 침입에 대한 민중의 '봉기'의 축과 이것을 헌법의 이념으 로 정립하는 '헌정'의 축(3ㆍ1운동 등)과 교차한다. 그렇다면 '누가 철학자인가?'라는 철학 자의 정체성과 관련한 문제에 대하여 우리는 철학이 철학자의 삶의 방식과 분리될 수 없고 도리어 철학의 성격을 규정한다고 주장한다. 그러면서 모방이 가능한 철학자의 사회적, 집단적 인격을 페르소나 라고 정의하고 이 페르소나에 바탕을 두고 자기를 형성하는 '아스케시스'가 철학자의 정체성을 규정하는 근거가 된다고도 주장할 것이다. 이 네 개의 축(계몽, 파국, 봉기, 헌정)과 두 개의 근거(페르소나, 아스케시스)는 현대한국철학의 역사를 쓰기 위한 개념적 도구들이 될 것이다. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 112 Heft: 1 Seiten: 250-252.

Es una tesis admitida y común la que sostiene que Descartes introdujo la forma moderna del método y del quehacer filosófico, caracterizados ambos por su desconexión del terreno de la espiritualidad, del cuidado de sí, de la ascesis y de toda una forma de vida. Se considera que Foucault compartía esa tesis, lo que en su momento criticaría Pierre Hadot. En el presente trabajo tratamos de mostrar que la forma en que Descartes elaboró su método y su propuesta no (...) se ajusta a aquella tesis recibida. En él se mantiene la relación antigua entre filosofía y espiritualidad, método y paideía. Una vez mostrado esto, apuntamos finalmente cómo en él, sin embargo, se abrió la vía para que se diera la ruptura que él no practicó. (shrink)

This paper compares Pierre Hadot’s work on the history of philosophy as a way of life to the work of Albert Camus. I will argue that in the early work of Camus, up to and including the publication of The Myth of Sisyphus, there is evidence to support the notions that, firstly, Camus also identified these historical moments as obstacles to the practice of ascesis, and secondly, that he proceeded by orienting his own work toward overcoming these obstacles, and (...) thus toward a modern rehabilitation of ascesis. Moreover, in contrast to Hadot’s Platonism, Camus located the source of this practice in the pre-philosophical stage of Athenian tragedy. This points to a further contrast between these two figures, which has historical and cultural precedents, in the distinction between this pre-Platonic form of ascesis - favoured by Camus - and the latter Christian form of asceticism - favoured by Hadot, with the status of Platonic ascesis rendered in terms of prefiguring this Christian form of asceticism. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza el concepto de imperativo metanoético que Peter Sloterdijk presenta en ¡Has de cambiar tu vida! Nuestro objetivo es iluminar la naturaleza de lo que, en trabajos anteriores, hemos denominado -a raíz de la obra de Bernard Suits-: razón lúdica. Para ello, primero, expondremos y analizaremos el sentido del imperativo metanoético en Sloterdijk, así como los elementos principales de su razón ascética. Segundo, mostraremos cómo ambos son consecuencia del análisis ontológico de corte heideggeriano en la que (...) Sloterdijk basa su propuesta de filosofía moral. Tercero, presentaremos en términos sloterdijkianos tanto el análisis ontológico de Suits, como el posible imperativo metanoético que se desprendería de su razón lúdica. Por último, centrándonos en el papel que Sloterdijk otorga a la figura del «ocioso», mostraremos las posibles conexiones entre Suits y Sloterdijk. Mostraremos la relación que existe entre los imperativos lúdicos y ascéticos donde, además, el acto «jugar» recibe un papel central en la «respuesta a la pregunta por el ser». In this article, we analyze Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of “metanoethical imperative” in You Must Change Your Life. Our goal is to shed light on what, by drawing on Bernard Suits, we call “ludic reason.” To do so, we will present and examine in depth the meaning of Sloterdijk’s metanoethical imperative, as well as the main features of his concept of “askesis.” Second, we will argue that both concepts are the result of the Heideggerian ontological principles underlying Sloterdijk’s moral philosophy. Third, we will provide a “Sloterdijkean” interpretation of Suits’ account of games by focusing on the metanoethical imperative that could be derived from the notion of the ludic reason. To conclude, we will focus on the role that the figure of the “Good-for-Nothing” plays in Sloterdijk’s account, showing connections between Suits’ and Sloterdijk’s approaches. We will argue that, in the philosophical approaches of both philosophers, the idea of game playing is closely tied to the “question on Being.”. (shrink)

Dorion Cairns correctly interprets the preconstituted stratum of Edmund Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation to be the primordial ego and not the social world, as was thought by Alfred Schutz, who considered Husserl to be insufficiently attentive to the social world’s hold upon us. Following Cairns’s interpretation, which involves recovering and reconstructing strata that may never exist independently, one better understands how the transfer of sense animate organism involves automatic association, or somatic apprehension. This sense-transfer extends to any animate organism, not (...) just humans, and draws on extensive unreflected-upon similarities despite the distinctive fact that the other’s body is never given to oneself as is one’s own. Following Cairns’s interpretation, one can also understand the second epoché as an imaginative, reconstructive abstraction rather than as an example of failed ascesis. Consequently, Husserl appears as less intellectualized in his approach to empathy than often thought to be and more confident in the phenomenologist’s capacity to imagine and attend selectively to experience. (shrink)

Basado en Las Confesiones de la carne, cuarto y último volumen de la Historia de sexualidad de Michel Foucault, este artículo interroga el alcance de la noción de “hombre de deseo” que Foucault pone el centro de las modificaciones introducidas por El uso de los placeres al proyecto general de la Historia de la sexualidad. El artículo discute la hipótesis de Foucault según la cual el cristianismo habría forjado una “hermenéutica del deseo” cuyo objetivo es descubrir, a través del análisis (...) del deseo, la verdad oculta del individuo. A partir de las investigaciones que Las Confesiones de la carne proponen sobre la teoría de la libido de San Agustín y la ascesis de la castidad desarrollada por Casiano, el artículo pone en evidencia los problemas que tal hipótesis supone y analiza su impacto para el proyecto general de la Historia de la sexualidad. (shrink)

La virtud y el conocimiento son momentos indisociables para el modo de vida del su!smo islámico en general Los elementos constituyentes de dicha praxis aparecen integrados por un primer estadio ascético seguido de otro de místico. Trataremos de mostrar que el su!smo construye una imagen del hombre determinada por el grado de moralidad inherente al obrar y a la intención y en función después, del modo y de la cualidad del conocimiento adquirido por el individuo. Presentamos, el marco general en (...) el que se encuadra la ética sufíe. Analizaremos, después las posibilidades naturales y trascendentales con las que cuenta el individuo para desarrollar su existencia dentro del marco profético. Un último descenso desde el cuerpo del individuo hacía el espacio de la conciencia, nos mostrará el terreno en el que acontecerá el ejercicio purgativo de la ascesis. For the Islamic Su! way of life, virtue and knowledge are moments which cannot be separated. "e constituting elements of that praxis consist on a!rst ascetic state followed by a second mystic state which we shall try to make clear via two examples. We intend to demonstrate that Su!sm constructs an image of man determined by the level of morality inherent to his actions, in the intention and in the resulting function; of the method and the quality of the knowledge acquired by the individual. We will present the general frame upon which Su! ethics are founded. We will then analyse the natural and transcendental possibilities that the individual has in order to develop his existence within the prophetic frame. One last descent from the body of the individual towards the space of conscience will show us the terrain where the purging exercise of the ascesis occurs. (shrink)

H. S. Harris’s Hegel’s Ladder opens up the epic universe of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by constructing a text that is epic in its dimensions and self-conscious design. It aims at truth. In the first instance, this means adequacy with respect to the Phenomenology ’s epic account of humanity’s movement toward self-certain truth. In the second instance, it means correspondence to the epic design of the Phenomenology. For Harris, it is self-evident that the Phenomenology belongs to the genre of epic, (...) since it repeats in a philosophical idiom the form and content of classical Western epics. That Harris accepts, even celebrates the secondariness of his text, vis-à-vis Hegel’s best-known text, does nothing to diminish its intellectual and narrative power. Indeed, with respect to the latter, I want to claim that Hegel’s Ladder rises to the level of a powerful, original epic precisely in its ascesis. Like all powerful texts, Hegel’s Ladder intimidates. Before interpretation so exhaustive, before discernment so perspicacious, any Hegel commentator will fear that whatever he or she has to say will be parochial, redundant, opaque, and intellectually impoverished. (shrink)

This article is a review of two recently translated books by Italian philoso­pher Elettra Stimilli: The Debt of the Living: Ascesis and Capitalism and Debt and Guilt: A Political Philosophy. The essay critically engages with Stimilli’s interpretation of the nexus between ascesis and capitalism; her account of the ascetic dimensions of contemporary economies of debt; her reflections on the subversive potential of ascesis in the context of contemporary regimes of neoliberal governance.

This article analyses the set of ethical questions underlying the emergence of the modern politics of security, as articulated, in particular, in the work of Thomas Hobbes. An ethic is here understood – in line with its ancient philosophical use and the interpretation advanced by authors such as Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot – as a domain of reflections and practices related to the cultivation and conversion of the self ( askēsis, metanoia). The article aims to demonstrate that, besides attending (...) to the physical safety of the state and its citizens, modern apparatuses of security are also crucially implicated in the formation of their subjects as ethical and autonomous individuals. To substantiate this thesis, the article first illustrates how, since the first appearance of the term in the vocabulary of Western thought – and in Seneca’s work in particular – theories of security have been intimately tied to the cultivation of the self. It thus interprets Hobbes’s reflections on the subject as the upshot of a substantive, if implicit, re-articulation of Seneca’s ethic of security, by focusing on the two authors’ respective understandings of (a) autonomy, (b) the world, (c) ascesis, and (d) politics. Overall, it is suggested that the differences between the two authors testify to a wider political-historical shift: in modern regimes of governmentality, the ethical dimension of security no longer defines the rightful exercise of political power, but rather appears as an object of social and economic governance. (shrink)

Resistance and Techniques of Virginity: A Feminist Reading of The Confessions of the Flesh What is the feminist relevance of Foucault’s posthumously published Confessions of the Flesh? This question is part of a larger debate on the usefulness of the later Foucault in conceptualizing resistance against patriarchal power relationships. This paper follows those who argue in favor of the feminist potential of his concepts of freedom and care for the self, in particular the notions of ascesis and askesis. I (...) argue that resistance against gendered norms is explicit in his discussion of counter-conduct (1978), which he links to late-medieval mysticism and to excessive, physical experiences. Both the gender-component and the excessive corporeal experiences disappear, however, from his later concept of askesis, which suggests that Foucault’s omission of women coincides with a displacement of the suffering body as a site of resistance. In the second part of this essay, I argue that this thesis is complicated by the recently published Confessions of the Flesh, and its lengthy discussion of early-Christian virginity. I conclude by commenting on the historiographical limits to recuperate moments of resistance. (shrink)

Was the Byzantine thinker Nicephorus Blemmydes directly influenced in his views about human “proairesis” by the Stoic Epictetus or did he take over his views from the Neoplatonic Simplicius? After exploring Blemmydes’ reception of Epictetus, one can say that Blemmydes drew elements in a brief treatise under the title “De virtute et ascesi” from the mainly Neoplatonic Simplicius, who commented on the handbook by the Stoic Epictetus. Blemmydes, following Simplicius identifies “φ’ μν” with “aftexousion” and he designates “proairesis” as an (...) activity, which emanates from “aftexousion”. Blemmydes shows the moral power of “proairesis” as a transforming factor of human existence and the mediatory factor to the dialectical relation between man and God. For the completion of the study, the following sources have been used: Blemmydes’ De virtute et ascesi, Epictetus’ Handbook, and Neoplatonic Simplicius’ commentaries on the Handbook. I specifically focus on the views of Aristotle, Epictetus, and Neoplatonic Simplicius about “proairesis” and compare the views of Blemmydes to Simplicius’ ideas. I conclude that Blemmydes drew ideas from Simplicius, with regard to human “proairesis” and in the context of the practising and cultivating virtues in everyday life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 401-423 [Access article in PDF] Petrarch and the Genealogy of Asceticism W. Scott Blanchard The morality of thought lies in a procedure that is neither entrenched nor detached. --Theodor Adorno Perhaps no author within or outside of the canon of Western literature wrote as extensively on the topic of solitude as did Francesco Petrarch. While many of our modern associations with (...) the term may find some of their origins traceable as far back as Petrarch's career, the term "solitude" carried with it much different associations in his century than it does for us today, influenced as we are by the Romantic tradition and especially by Wordsworth's absorption with the idea of solitude as an ideal state for self-conscious reflection on the individual's personal history and its meaning. No less than three of Petrarch's major prose works--the De otio religioso, the De vita solitaria, and the Secretum--confront the topic of solitude directly, and we can also point to many letters, poems, and portions of his treatises that either directly or indirectly reflect Petrarch's virtual obsession with solitude. In Petrarch we are confronted with an author who was at once the most politically connected intellectual of his century--we are even tempted to call him a "public intellectual"--and yet who constantly invoked his desire for solitude, for an escape from the many distractions and seductions that the cities and courts of his society offered. For Petrarch these were invariably places where desire lurked and power held sway, so that the life of solitude was often invoked as an alternative--a counter-cultural locus, perhaps--where freedom from temptation and subjection was imagined as an escape from the negotium of worldly life. There is much in Petrarch's writings on the solitary life that is wishful and that we might characterize as merely compensatory in a life that was otherwise quite active and engaged, but there is also a [End Page 401] strain of thought in these works that indicates a certain intransigence beneath Petrarch's overdetermined attachment to the idea, if not the practice, of withdrawal and detachment. An inquiry into Petrarch's idealization of the solitary life may even yield a somewhat reactionary aspect of his complex mind, a conservative strain in an author who was in almost every other way the literary herald of a humanism that was at the center of the cultural avant-garde of the Trecento. Is the Petrarch that in so many accounts of his character is construed as the "first modern man" actually something else, a reluctant ascetic holdover from the Middle Ages? How did Petrarch use his unique understanding of the life of solitude, of ascesis, as a pose from which to construct his sense of himself as an author and intellectual? Or are we simply confronted in the figure of a worldly and an ascetic Petrarch with yet another set of contradictions so appropriate to the "immensely complex" author whose poetic signature was the oxymoron? 1"Asceticism" and "solitude" are of course not synonymous terms, but any examination of a number of Petrarch's works as they fall within what might be called a genealogy of asceticism must recognize from the start that Petrarch's brand of asceticism was somewhat unique, especially insofar as it was deeply influenced by ancient Stoicism as well as by his reading in authors from the early Christian era. The most useful expression for our purposes may be the medieval concept of the "contemplative life," since much of the analysis in what follows will focus on how Petrarch often used his self-proclaimed pose of detachment and withdrawal as a technique for carrying on what were otherwise quite engaged dialogues with those worldly formations of power and authority that are normally conceived of as belonging to the "active" sphere of human existence. 2 For despite Petrarch's participation in or association with a number of political and civic ventures during his long and productive career, he likely never would have freely chosen... (shrink)

Alisdair ManIntyre's well-known criticism of modern moral philosophy contrasts what he sees as the moral vacuity of modern culture with a ‘classical tradition' in ethical thought depicted as restoring cohesion and coherence to social striving and ethical life. MacIntyre's stress on the culturally specific circumstances within which ethical imperatives derive their force provides a corrective to unworldly tendancies within post-Kantian moral philosophy, yet his ‘classical’ ethical landscape possesses an equally striking kind of unworldliness. His image of a life lived as (...) an unbroken moral narrative is dependent on a picture of classical social existence viewed as an integrated whole, as opposed to the ethical ‘segmentation’ of modern social life. Here I question this image of a moral life without boundaries by reference to perhaps the most influential of all classical ethical texts, Cicero's De Officiis. I argue that Cicero's discussion of the virtues is marked by a strong sense of the demarcation of ethical spheres and statuses, and that what MacIntyre takes as the appropriate end-product of ethical ascesis is instead a highly exceptional heroic limit-case. (shrink)

The internal resistance to religious forms of power is often at issue in Michel Foucault’s genealogy of Christianity. For this anti-clerical Nietzschean, religion is, like science, always a battle over bodies and souls. In his 1978 Collège de France lectures, he traced the nature and descent of an apparatus of “pastoral power” characterized by confession, direction, obedience, and sacrifice. Governmental rationality, both individualizing and totalizing, is its modern descendant. At different moments, Foucault rather infamously opposed to the pastorate and governmentality (...) such ethico-political spiritualities as the Iranian Revolution and ancient Greek ascesis, but he also took care to identify numerous forms of resistance specific and internal to Christianity itself. His lecture of 1 March 1978 outlined five examples of “insurrections of conduct”: “eschatology, Scripture, mysticism, the community, and ascesis.” I will detail Foucault’s analysis of pastoral counter-conducts, and explore how he sets up the nature and stakes of this tension within Christianity and its secular kin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RECENT INTERPRETATIONS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM ROBIN DARLING YOUNG The Oatholio University of A.merioa Washington, D.O. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syria.n Orient. Be1·keley: University of California Press, 1987. Elizabeth A. Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith. Essays on Late Ancient Christianity. Lewiston/Queenston: The (...) Edwin Mellen Press, 1986. Elain~ Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1988. Introduction FROM THE FIRST century, the development of patristic Christology, both orthodox and heterodox, was the result of a collective reflection upon the identity and redemptive action of Jesus, the Logos, who was en arche and became incarnate at a specific point in the history of the cosmos. Likewise, the development of the patristic theory of askesis, tihe devout discipline of the Christian, beginning within the New Testament canon, was a discussion of how the Christian might, through his moral life, move toward the goal offered him by the Logos: conversion to, identification with, and eventual unification with Jesus Christ. This occurred by the means of progressive discipline and love in the company of other believers and employed methods older than Christianity itself. What made and makes Christian askesis unique as a U4 ROBIN DARLING YOUNG religious self-discipline is the personal identification of the believer with Christ. It is undeniable that Christolo~J, soteriology, and ascetical theory have been linked historically. The answer to the question, "Who do men say that I am?" (Mt. 16.13) will imply the form of the response to the divine imperative of " follow me" (:~11. 16.24,Q5). Those theologians of the early church who were blessed with consistency almost automatically adjusted their Christology and their moral theology. A concise statement of this connection may be found in Irenaeus's Against Heresis (5.18-20). "[Christ] caused man to cleave to and to become one with God... unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of immortality." The result of the incarnation is the imperative.for human beings, now freed by the " most holy and merciful Lord, [who] loves the human race" (18.6), to model their actions after his (20.2). Origen's Exhortation to 1Vlartyrdom recalls the earlier formulation of Paul when he refers to " the mind of Christ within us" (ch. 4) and states that "Now it is revealed whether or not we have taken up our cross and followed Jesus. This will have happened if Christ is living in us " (12). The willingness to face martyrdom was the great test of Christ's inner presence : " I think that they love God with all their soul who with a great desire to be in union with God withdraw and separate their soul not only from the earthly hody but from eveTything material " (3). Such an exhortation, which sees askesis as a preparation for martyrdom as well as a mode of life, had already been clear-·ly enunciated hy Ignatius (To the Ephesians, 4). Ignatius, "called Theophoros (God-bearer)," wrote that he had "welcomed that beloved name of yours, earned through your natural righteousness in accordance with faith and love in Christ Jesus, our savior. Imitating God [incarnate] and inflamed by the blood of God [in the Eucharist] you accomplished your common task perfectly." EARLY CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM H5 Together with Paul, Ignatius left a legacy of early Christi.an opinion remarkable for the unity it proposes between Christ.and the Christian. Reflecting upon the incarnation, it understands Christ,as redeemer and model for Christians. Although critical Biblical scholarship has for decades prescinded from a portrait of Christ himself, as opposed to the communities founded hy him, most early Christians considered him to have been a single, celibate person. They did not, of course, think of Christ as a monk in the later sense of the term, hut their insistence that the Christian moral life of ascesis and sacrifice,be modeled upon Jesus' own life can he seen a:s preparing the way for such a view of Christ. The best reason for... (shrink)

Resumen Es bien conocida esa extrañeza que desde la Antigüedad provocan, en relación con el quehacer filosófico, el gesto y el verbo cínicos; además de convocar intelectualmente en un modo moderno a esa escuela o esa manera de vivir filosóficamente, se cuestionará la noción de cultura y la de lo bello, para así provocar un ejercicio crítico del pensamiento y revelar la figuración viva y actual de un modo de filosofar artísticamente, por lo menos desde el verbo escrito en su (...) modalidad literaria y filosófica. Esa provocación se entenderá irónicamente en una doble figuración: la que opera, ciertamente, el cinismo al valorar una ascesis del cuerpo en su ponos frente a la institucionalización escolar de la filosofía, y la que operamos en tanto que el cinismo se vuelve un sujeto de la prueba crítica de nuestro pensamiento.The strangeness caused by the cynic gesture and verb is well known since ancient times regarding philosophical praxis. This paper will challenge, in cynical terms and according to his way ofliving and thinking, the notions of culture and beauty, but from a modern reading of such school, producing a critical thinking exercise. As a result, a current and lively mode of artistic philosophizing will be revealed, at least as written verb in a literary and philosophical way. This challenge can be ironically understood in two ways: the one that the cynics apply when valuing corporal ascesis in its ponos in contrast to institutionalized philosophy schooling; and the one that we apply when the cynicism becomes a subject of the critical proof of our thinking. (shrink)

This essay explores ethical foundations for meeting the digital challenge via a case study of the work, life, and virtues of the greatest mathematician and natural scientist of the eighteenth century, Leonhard Euler. By biography and history one can learn of the gifts of human strength, practices, good will, dependence on others, and friendships which made possible Euler’s own astonishing corpus of work and that of many other scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technologists. Digital technology results from a combination of science (...) (demonstrable knowledge and method), technology, engineering, and art (forms and artifacts of making and expressing), and mathematics (abstract numerical, algebraic, geometrical, formal, and digital concepts, rules, representations, and logics). Joint reflection on the biographical, historical, and natural sources of mathematics and the digital is essential for any humanization or ascesis in response to the perils and promises of digital technology for human thriving. As ethics enable and embody an ethos, so technologies are means and manifestations of a telos. Thus, thought and action for thriving through the digital needs to contemplate and conciliate the ends of humans and of the digital. (shrink)

En este ensayo nos ocupamos del tema de la confesión protestante, en el marco de las tesis de Foucault sobre el saber y el poder. Para ello, nos apoyamos en dos tradiciones distintas: de un lado, el análisis de Weber de la relación entre la ascesis y el capitalismo en las sociedades reformistas; de otro lado, el análisis político de Foucault sobre la pastoral en cuanto estrategia de poder que está vinculada a la cuestión sobre la subjetividad. La hipótesis (...) es que la confesión protestante puede ser analizada a la luz de los postulados sobre el poder, para tratar de mostrar cómo la cuestión del uso del tiempo y la disciplina en la actividad son cuestiones que están, en parte, en el origen –en sentido genealógico– de los dispositivos de codificación moral de las sociedades modernas. En la primera parte, interesa ver cómo la confesión protestante constituye una estrategia de poder que articula los sujetos al problema del gobierno de sí. El objetivo es describir la emergencia de ciertas modalidades confesionales, relacionadas con los manuales casuísticos o tratados sobre el arte de gobernarse a sí mismo, que derivan en prácticas de control de la actividad. Luego, nos ocupamos del problema de la subjetividad, caracterizándola mediante el concepto de pliegue. Para cerrar, aprovechamos las reflexiones sobre la confesión protestante para responder a la pregunta de ¿cómo es que los enunciados devienen práctica social? (shrink)

This article approaches queer history by offering a salutary corrective to dominant cultural and subcultural forces enjoining us to remember. The life-enabling and properly revolutionary effects of actively forgetting the past and, in particular, the legacy of previous generations, are first outlined in readings of Nietzsche, The Aeneid, Freud, Deleuze and Guattari. The localized exercise of an active forgetting is proposed as a response to one especially problematic case of intergenerational transmission in recent French gay and lesbian history: a collective (...) act of self-censorship by the team responsible for the 2002 internet republication of the 1973 ‘cult’ special issue of Recherches, entitled Three Billion Perverts. While the article does not seek to contest the decision to censor these thirty-two pages headed ‘Pédo-Philie’ from the republication, it does take issue with the assumptions underlying the way in which the decision was presented. The article suggests that this act of self-censorship typifies the way in which younger gay and lesbian people of the early twenty-first century are placed in a schizogenic ‘double bind’ by their immediate forebears, radical gays and lesbians of the 1970s, the generation of Guy Hocquenghem and the FHAR; members of the younger generation are told simultaneously to remember and that what they are being told to remember cannot be conveyed to them. The ascesis of an active forgetting is presented as the only way out of this impasse and a necessary emancipating prerequisite for new life and new possibilities. (shrink)

This essay argues that what makes Michel Foucault’s oeuvre not only stand apart but also cohere is an assiduous philosophical practice taking the form of an ongoing yet concrete self-modification in the medium of thought. Part I gives an account of three essential aspects of Foucault’s conception of philosophical activity. Beginning with his famous characterization of philosophy in terms of ascēsis, it moves on to articulate his characterization of philosophical practice as a distinct form of meditation, differing from both Cartesian (...) meditation and Hegelian meditation, as it aims to stand vigil for the day to come and operates as a preface to transgression. Part II begins the articulation of crucial traits left implicit in this understanding of philosophy by turning to Foucault’s in-depth investigation of philosophy in Antiquity during his lectures at the Collège de France in the 1980s. First, it develops how philosophy here begins to constitute and distinguish itself by establishing itself as an activity that has a privileged relationship to truth and truth-telling as an unremitting, existentially determining challenge for the philosopher. Further, it instantiates how Platonism elaborates the need for a sustained ‘auto-ascetic’ ethical non-compliant differentiation as the condition of possibility for accessing and stating truth, and then describes how the assertion of an ethical differentiation and attitude in Cynicism takes the form of an insistent combat for another world in this world. Finally, it underlines how the ethical-practical philosophical work upon oneself in Antiquity is developed in an ongoing critical and political exchange with others. Part III indicates how ethical differentiation according to Foucault remains an essential precondition for the practice of philosophy and is further developed in the modern age. This is particularly perspicuous in Kant’s determination of the Enlightenment, in the attitude of modernity exemplified by Baudelaire, and in the history of revolt since the beginning of early Modernity. On this background, Part IV develops how philosophy as an ongoing meditative practice of self-modification leads to an affirmative critique, confirming the virtuality of this world in order to investigate the potentiality in the examined. In this manner, the essay presents Foucault’s philosophical practice as well as an outline of the history of ideas of a seemingly alternate, yet still agenda-setting conception of philosophical practice today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Negative Capability Reclaimed: Literature and Philosophy Contra PoliticsIhab HassanI began a few years ago to try to make space in my reckoning and imagining for the marvellous as well as the murderous.Seamus HeaneyTwo concerns cross in this essay: the first, explicit, regards the current condition of the academic humanities, their idioms and axioms, especially in America; the second, implicit, regards my own need to confront criticism, its abstractions that (...) now enable, now disable, the profession and even more the experience of literature. Such concerns must mix speculation and autobiography, mix the pride with the pathos of mind.But I should admit it from the start: my title cries paradox. Negative capability reclaimed? Can reclamation dwell in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” as Keats thought, and can a critic aspire to the condition of a poet, in whom the “sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates consideration”? 1Mine, I repeat, is a hybrid critical discourse, touched by exasperation more than mystery. Yet negative capability can still serve us as emblem of certain qualities, attitudes, dispositions that we bring to literature, without turning that happy phrase into yet another slogan. Beyond the arrogance of transient ideologies, beyond the mawkishness of self-regard, negative capability may offer us a kind of patience, perhaps ascesis, the intellectual and, yes, spiritual equivalent of discipline in our moment. [End Page 305]IStated baldly, my proposition, which I will need continually to texture and qualify, is this: the prevalence of politics, the obsession with power, the unrelieved pressure of both in the university, skew our language, thought, values. Thus the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, between Homer and Plato, now cedes the field to a nastier agon between both and politics as GRIM (my acronym for the Great Rumbling Ideological Machine) grinds on. These are no abstractions; the clamorous evidence is all about, indicative even in its triviality, banality.Take a book blurb. Kathy Acker endorses a new, and quite intelligent work, entitled Male Matters, thus: “Calvin Thomas is able to hint at a way out of the prisonhouse of straight male identity.” Granted, this is but an ad in a university press catalogue. But what does the language reveal about the assumptions of academic discourse? “Prisonhouse,” really, for all unfortunate, straight males? Is a generalization of this kind permissible when blander generalizations about other groups raise such a hue and cry? Will straight African-American or Native American males feel “offended” by the statement? Or is it all a matter of restitution, categorical loyalty, political commitment? And when will that supreme fiction, the white, straight, bourgeois, rational male “subject” cease to prop up every ideological complaint?Thought blends into hype; words writhe; stereotypes become as transparent as the stereotypes they once repugned. But let us consider an example worthier of criticism. In his Inaugural Lecture as Robert Wallace Professor at the University of Melbourne, entitled “The Departure of English?” (the question mark risks disingenuousness), Professor Simon During inelegantly states: “The academic appropriation of the avant-garde transfiguration of values is happening as what I am calling the departure of English—in the relative decline of literary studies and cultural studies’ emergence.” 2 Professor During thus assumes, on behalf of cultural studies, the mantles of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Hugo Ball—where is Antonin Artaud?—and Walter Benjamin, though none really had a mantle to bequeath. For a moment, the mind reels: Nietzscheans and poètes maudits, Pataphysicians and Dadaists, as apostles of cultural studies, of political correctness, group think, and GRIM? Involuntarily, the lines of William Butler Yeats, in “The Scholars,” sing out: “Lord, what would they say / Did their Catullus walk that way?” [End Page 306]We are all free, of course, to reinvent our ancestors and to derive later authority from what an earlier generation derided—free, this side of ludicrousness. But Professor During’s argument, a sort of academic conceit, discourages mere ridicule; it has pedagogical consequences. Thus he continues: “I am certainly not claiming a causal relation between modernism circa 1900 and academic cultural studies today. Rather I want to argue that cultural studies... (shrink)

Se discurre sobre la idea de isla antropógena o isla inteligente, que en Sloterdijk adquiere las figuras del cosmonauta, del acróbata, del asceta, pero también la del soldado con máscara antigás. En la era del atmoterrorismo, las islas humanas requerirían –sobre todo– de tecnologías de climatización procedentes de los prototipos de las islas absolutas y de las islas atmosféricas (los otros dos modelos descritos por el filósofo alemán). Tal integración tecnológica no equivaldría sino a la síntesis entre ascesis e (...) inmunización. En tal sentido, ambos polos, el de la ultratecnología y el de la naturaleza, parecen condensar en la noción de isla humana el propósito pre-adámico y de tintes prometeicos de construir una máquina de mundo de vida. (shrink)