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Single Idea 7419

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / b. Defining ethics ]

Full Idea

What is ethics, if not the practice of freedom, the conscious [réfléchie] practice of freedom?

Gist of Idea

Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom

Source

Michel Foucault (Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom [1984], p.284)

Book Ref

Foucault,Michel: 'Essential Works 1954-1984 I: Ethics', ed/tr. Rabinow,Paul [Penguin 1994], p.284

A Reaction

Makes Foucault sound very existentialist. I'm not sure I understand this kind of remark, given that serial killers seem to be exceptionally good at 'practising their freedom'. However, the idea is akin to Kant's notion of a truly good will (Idea 3710).

Related Idea

Idea 3710 The only purely good thing is a good will [Kant]

The 31 ideas from Michel Foucault

7418 The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed [Foucault]
7419 Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom [Foucault]
7420 When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault]
7422 A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations [Foucault]
7423 Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked [Foucault]
7424 Saying games of truth were merely power relations would be a horrible exaggeration [Foucault]
7425 The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination [Foucault]
7426 Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level [Foucault]
21947 Power is localised, so we either have totalitarian centralisation, or local politics [Foucault, by Gutting]
21946 Prisons gradually became our models for schools, hospitals and factories [Foucault, by Gutting]
7498 Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex [Foucault]
7500 Early Greeks cared about city and companions; later Greeks concentrated on the self [Foucault]
7501 Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art? [Foucault]
22235 Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble) [Foucault]
8991 Foucault can't accept that power is sometimes decent and benign [Foucault, by Scruton]
15045 The big issue since the eighteenth century has been: what is Reason? Its effect, limits and dangers? [Foucault]
15037 Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault]
15038 Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault]
15039 History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault]
15040 Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault]
15041 Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault]
15042 Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault]
15043 Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault]
15044 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault]
22236 The big question of the Renaissance was how to govern everything, from the state to children [Foucault]
21116 Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people [Foucault, by Shorten]
21945 Foucault originally felt that liberating reason had become an instrument of domination [Foucault, by Gutting]
21942 Foucault challenges knowledge in psychology and sociology, not in the basic sciences [Foucault, by Gutting]
21941 Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas [Foucault, by Gutting]
21939 The author function of any text is a plurality of selves [Foucault, by Gutting]
21940 Nature is not the basis of rights, but the willingness to risk death in asserting them [Foucault]