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Single Idea 7501
[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / h. Fine deeds
]
Full Idea
Couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?
Gist of Idea
Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art?
Source
Michel Foucault (On the Genealogy of Ethics [1983], p.261)
Book Ref
Foucault,Michel: 'Essential Works 1954-1984 I: Ethics', ed/tr. Rabinow,Paul [Penguin 1994], p.261
A Reaction
This sounds wonderfully appealing until I try to think how I would implement it. The Augustine move, from sinner to saint, is a possibility, but there is nothing good about sin. The Christian ideal, of colossal self-sacrifice, can be very heroic.
The
31 ideas
from Michel Foucault
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7418
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The idea of liberation suggests there is a human nature which has been repressed
[Foucault]
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7419
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Ethics is the conscious practice of freedom
[Foucault]
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7420
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When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos
[Foucault]
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7422
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A subject is a form which can change, in (say) political or sexual situations
[Foucault]
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7423
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Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked
[Foucault]
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7424
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Saying games of truth were merely power relations would be a horrible exaggeration
[Foucault]
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7425
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The aim is not to eliminate power relations, but to reduce domination
[Foucault]
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7426
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Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level
[Foucault]
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21947
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Power is localised, so we either have totalitarian centralisation, or local politics
[Foucault, by Gutting]
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21946
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Prisons gradually became our models for schools, hospitals and factories
[Foucault, by Gutting]
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7498
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Greeks and early Christians were much more concerned about food than about sex
[Foucault]
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7500
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Early Greeks cared about city and companions; later Greeks concentrated on the self
[Foucault]
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7501
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Why couldn't a person's life become a work of art?
[Foucault]
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22235
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Feelings are not unchanging, but have a history (especially if they are noble)
[Foucault]
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8991
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Foucault can't accept that power is sometimes decent and benign
[Foucault, by Scruton]
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15045
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The big issue since the eighteenth century has been: what is Reason? Its effect, limits and dangers?
[Foucault]
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15037
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Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development?
[Foucault]
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15038
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Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history
[Foucault]
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15039
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History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles
[Foucault]
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15040
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Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics
[Foucault]
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15041
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Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse
[Foucault]
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15042
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Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints
[Foucault]
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15043
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Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms
[Foucault]
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15044
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'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable
[Foucault]
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22236
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The big question of the Renaissance was how to govern everything, from the state to children
[Foucault]
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21116
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Power is used to create identities and ways of life for other people
[Foucault, by Shorten]
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21945
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Foucault originally felt that liberating reason had become an instrument of domination
[Foucault, by Gutting]
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21942
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Foucault challenges knowledge in psychology and sociology, not in the basic sciences
[Foucault, by Gutting]
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21941
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Unlike Marxists, Foucault explains thought internally, without deference to conscious ideas
[Foucault, by Gutting]
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21939
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The author function of any text is a plurality of selves
[Foucault, by Gutting]
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21940
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Nature is not the basis of rights, but the willingness to risk death in asserting them
[Foucault]
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