چكيده لاتين :
Max Scheler, in Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Value,
and Michel Foucault, in Volumes 2 and 3 of his History of Sexuality, The
Use of Pleasure and Care of the Self,[1] offer seemingly very different
ethical projects, but ones that are nonetheless complementary in several
significant ways. Both thinkers, inspired by Nietzsche, attempt to rethink
the genesis of the moral “ought” without appeal to any rule of reason--
whether it be in the form of an utilitarian calculus, a Kantian categorical
imperative, or a social contract--conceived as external to and constraining
of desire. Both Scheler and Foucault challenge Western philosophy’s deep,
long-standing distrust of eros (often cast in the feminine) and belief that
it stands in need of control by logos (often cast in the masculine). Their
methods are radically different, though: Scheler derives an emotive a priori
from a phenomenological analysis of concrete acts of preferencing, while
Foucault is explicitly anti-phenomenological, as he carries out specific
historical, genealogical studies of ethical norms governing the sexuality
of aristocratic males in Greek and Roman antiquity. In this paper, I will
examine this theme in detail. My aim here is not to offer a Schelerian
critique of Foucault, although one might be suggested. Rather, my
thesis is that, although Foucault does not explicitly articulate what I am
terming the “spititualization of power,” his genealogical studies of ethical
practices in antiquity, especially those governing the relationships between
husbands and wives, nonetheless provide striking illustrations of its central
features, as Scheler described. Foucault used his studies to demonstrate
the moral problemization of pleasures in antiquity, which led to so many
of the prohibitions in Western culture against pleasures with which we are
so familiar. What I find interesting in his studies here, however, is how
well they exemplify the qualitative transformation in power that Scheler
described.
