Michela Foucaulta „myślenie inaczej” o podmiocie i o prawdzie

Abstract

The Hermeneutics of the Subject, a vast volume of lectures by Michel Foucault, deals with the Socratic notion of “care of the soul” or, as the author himself has it, “the practice of care of the Self”. Foucault provides a detailed, sometimes highly meticulous, analysis of philosophical texts in the Platonic tradition, where the concept of “care of the self” adopted the form of “discovery of the self”; he then goes on to study writings by less popular philosophers of the Hellenistic and early Roman Empire periods. Furthermore, he also makes references to classics of the ancient world and of the beginnings of Christian metaphysics. While conducting those analyses – Foucault calls them “discursification” or “thinking differently” of philosophy – he does not so much attempt to understand the meaning embedded in those texts, as to reconstruct “the theory and practice of technology of the Self” included there, that is to make oneself a subject in various situations of contemporary knowledge and authority. Therefore, this is by no means – from the perspective of traditional and phenomenological philosophy – discovering the essence of the personal subject, but shaping a theoretical construct to denote oneself as the subject of various forms of behaviour and activities. In the process of “thinking differently” of traditional philosophical issues, the personal subject has ceased to exist as an ontic entity – one that thinks, asks questions and seeks the truth of oneself – but has simply vanished. A question arises, why didn’t Foucault notice the subject? The answer is, among others, 1. he treated philosophy itself as a mere act of discursification or thinking differently; 2. he had a preconception of the subject as a structure constituted in speech and social practice, and failed to regard it as a living personal subject that asks questions and seeks the truth for itself and communicates the truth to others in the community. It is evident that in the process of discursification or thinking differently of cognition and truth Foucault never regarded the subject as an ontic reality, but only as a notional structure constituted in speech. And that is the true outcome of his “thinking differently” of the subject. Ancient philosophers – Socrates, Plato and his followers, the Cynics, the Epicureans and the Stoics – perceived the human subject as an entity of distinct quality – as a soul – thus as a spiritual or material structure, and a living creature; however, an entity radically different in quality from all forms of animal life. Foucault lost that approach to the soul in philosophy, which is why he announced the “death of man”.