CGC Notes Week 2 (10/05/2018)

Questions: 

1.) How should we understand the master/disciple relationship vis a vis power relations, autonomy? Pg.32 

2.) Modality of experience definition? Phenomenological? Hegelian? Pg.31 

3.) What does it mean to acquire different ontological statuses? Pg. 31 

4.) Truth, true discourses, obligations? Knowledge and truth? Are they different? 

5.) His use of knowledge and truth dont seem to be consistent (savoir vs. connaissance?) 

6.) Disappearance of arts of living? Did arts of living literature really not exist at Foucault’s time or have they all just transitioned from concerns with ‘being’ to concerns with ‘doing’? What constitutes ‘autonomy’ with regard to the arts of living literature? (pg.27) 

7.) What can we learn about genealogy from statement about this being a program of possible research? Hypothesis? Pg.29

8.) Relation between modalities of experience and the limit experience?  

You cannot change conduct unless you change yourself, constant process of self-transformation 

Non-autonomous arts of living literature= aimed at achievement of certain specific goals, ways of doing?

 Current incarnations of arts of living literature= non-autonomous institutionally or is autonomy via externality to specific goals? 

Did literature exist, and he didn’t know about it? (Look into Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles, and Self-Help Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life (2005) by Micki McGee, relation to Conduct Book genre of the Middle Ages?, Mirrors for Princes?, literature review of self-help material published in French, English, or German prior to 1981?)

Did literature go underground? Not that nobody cares anymore but transition from being to doing forced the literature into various places? Current self-help literature/arts of living literature part of new form of disciplinary activity imbedded in institutions?

Autonomy in master/disciple relation (directed toward the development of the autonomy of the disciple? How the disciple becomes autonomous?)  vs autonomy in literature? 

Does common understanding of good life disable autonomy? Cant have ‘books for princes’ when we are all trying to be like princes. 

Arts of living broken up into different areas?

Backhanded/indirect comment/reference to psychotherapy, psychiatry, medicine, pedagogy? (see beginning of Berkeley lecture for more explicit connection) 

Are comments on paganism (pg.39) his own or historical views? Likely historical. 

Uncovering the self? 

All activity directed toward transformation of self? (happiness as instrumental as opposed to intrinsic?)

Aristotelian ethics as an ethics of being. 

Breakdown/disintegration/lack of autonomy occurs because different specific actions are being considered (and so need to be addressed in different areas) whereas arts of living (as concerned with ‘being’) deal with wholesale combination of every part of being.  

Connection with Buddhism/Hinduism concern for self? Indian relations with Ancient Greece? Questions of existence in Indian philosophies. 

Is he right? Did we lose a concern with being? 

What’s the difference between changing ‘being’ and changing ‘habits’ or ‘practices’ (hard to understand difference, maybe that’s exactly proof! We can’t even understand what ontology or being is separate from doing/actions. We see the world differently from the Greeks/ancients)  

Microeconomic accounts of human decision making? Based around Subjective truth of desires. From last week: we cant be wrong about our desires?