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The return of morality: an examination of Michel Foucault’s concept of an individual’s morality as a lawless universality

Tighe, Ian (2023) The return of morality: an examination of Michel Foucault’s concept of an individual’s morality as a lawless universality. PhD thesis, Dublin City University.

Abstract
Michel Foucault describes how, using technologies of the self, those practices of self on self, necessarily learned in processes of spiritual direction, an individual is enabled to self-constitute an ethical subjectivity, and then, by conducting her own conduct, enjoy a singular style of living that reflects an unmitigated relation between her freedom and truth. The history of these ancient technologies also describes the constitution of ‘ways of being’ or attitudes independent of external power and of unique styles of living in ancient Greece, without reference to essential subjectivity. Foucault’s exposition of this freedom to self-constitute a unique style of existence is to answer the questions: where a concern for truth constantly calls truth into question, what is the form of existence which makes this questioning possible and what life is necessary given that an imposed truth is not necessary? By opposing concepts of self and trans-subjectivation in a new conception of ethics as a relationship of self to self, Foucault demonstrates how a subject might transform herself and refuse to renounce herself as obliged by the deployment of knowledge (connaissance). He asks whether this ethical subject might sustain a modern morality that will, no longer, need to be supported by either traditional ideology, code, or law? The Return of Morality is an exploration of these ancient Hellenistic technologies of selfsubjectivation and their possible use today as the condition of possibility, according to Foucault, for modern strategies that refuse the limits imposed by the internal ruse of freedom and the inverted image of modern forms of pastoral power that govern self-identification and individualisation. This technology might allow the re-establishment of self-government and enable a style of living that might be called a unified morality for today, one referring to all life experience, one that exists outside of imposed code and law.
Metadata
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Date of Award:November 2023
Refereed:No
Supervisor(s):Leask, Ian
Subjects:Humanities > Philosophy
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Theology, Philosophy, & Music
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. View License
ID Code:28178
Deposited On:06 Nov 2023 12:46 by Ian Leask . Last Modified 06 Nov 2023 12:46
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