Nietzsche and Foucault's relationship with asceticism

The education of the affections for the constitution of the autonomous subject

Abstract

In On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche critiques what he terms the “ascetic ideals,” linking it to the Christian tradition. Nietzsche's principal adversary here is the “ascetic priest,” a figure that need not to be confined strictly to the clerical domain. A century later, Michel Foucault engages with the concept of askesis in volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality. Foucault employs this theme to explore the dispositive of sexuality, marking what is referred to as the third phase of his intellectual journey, the “aesthetics of existence.” This phase, emerging in the 1980s, follows his earlier explorations in the Archaeology of Knowledge and The Genealogy of Power, and comes after his analysis of the rising neoliberal ethos in North Atlantic nations. Foucault’s narratives delve into the ancient practices of self-care aiming to cultivate an autonomous subject —one not enslaved by external moral or even by its own desires. Foucault's meditations on this “art of living” can be interpreted as an extension of his critique of neoliberalism, but they also resonate as a potential response to Nietzsche’s earlier condemnation of the ascetic ideal. However, while Nietzsche devoted attention to the “physiological” issues in the ascetic ideals, he was equally preoccupied with the conception of a new subjectivity that goes beyond the constraints of Christian moral imperatives. Thus, rather than presenting Nietzsche and Foucault as adversaries, this inquiry posits that they share a common ground: both thinkers are concerned with the possibility of forging a new kind of subject, one who resists the prevailing moral frameworks and the caprices of desire. This article will therefore investigate the interplay between Nietzsche and Foucault on the matter of asceticism, here conceptualized as a form of education of the affects aimed at the cultivation of an autonomous subject.