Michel Foucault's ascesis and the Christian epistemologization of the subject in Foucault's genealogical technique de soi

Abstract

In this thesis I examine Foucault's later writings in the 80s on the technology of the self and engage current scholarship that discusses the applicability of Foucault's use of this concept for understanding freedom in Christian theology. After a detailed examination of Foucault's writings on this subject matter I show that lie sharply contrasts an "aesthetics of existence," a term referring to the self in ancient Greece, from a Christian technology of the self. This latter term I show is in fact precisely what Foucault exposes as a constrictive technology of the self which he credits as making an indefinite subject into a predicable, knowable and definite subject. Bringing this prevalent distinction into the greater scholarship on Foucault, I challenge some readings that support the view that a premodern Christian ascesis functioned as an inspirational source for Foucault's "critical ontology" of the modern subject.