Ethics Unbound: Foucault's Aesthetics of Existence as a Reconceptualization of the Normativity of Ethical Claims

Philosophy Department C3 Fellow Daniel Rodriguez-Navas

In this talk, I offer an account of Foucault’s ethical views that brings into view their interest and systematic unity, arguing that through his enquiry into the history of ethics, Foucault sought to reconceptualize the normativity of ethical claims in order to render intelligible the distinctively ethical character of the binding force of ethical norms. In his view, rather than prohibitive standards that parse the space of possible action into the permissible and the impermissible, ethical norms are productive instruments for the individual’s active self-constitution as a genuinely autonomous subject. Rather than limits on the space of freedom, ethical norms are instruments for the attainment of autonomy.