The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure

A meditation on the problematization of desire in Ancient Greece. Foucault presents the era's ethics of pleasure in stark contrast to the hermeneutics of desire that emerged with early Christian doctrine.

Far more transparent than the opaque preceding volume, Foucault's canvassing of Greek thought as it pertains to the history of how the norms of sexual behaviour have developed is thorough, fair, and clear. A helpful introduction to Greek thought on the issue.

Foucault cautions the reader of this volume right in the beginning that he is not a classicist and neither trained in the classical Greek nor Latin canon; unfortunately, this also seems quite apparent through larger parts of his textual analysis. Often times, the sources consulted for his argument seem rather random, and he gives little to no contextualization. To be fair, Foucault was never known as an acute historian but rather as an influential philosopher. Conceptually then, the volume at hand is again highly valuable and well laid out: Foucault here traces the emergence of morality, moral codes, and ethics governing sexual behavior in ancient Greece. He then investigates the interrelationship between those ethics and certain modes of subjection and subject creation. All in all a sometimes a bit tiring yet interesting read, not Foucault at his best, yet still conceptually widely relevant.

I met this guy at a party who wanted to do nothing but talk about Foucault (I didn't like him very much). HIS opinion was that Foucault was awful. I wouldn't say awful, but he is not easy to read. If I met Foucault at a party, I would probably like him as much as I did that guy who insulted him. But he wrote about interesting things.

No rating because I skipped about half the book. Oops!

Foucault entra a fundo nos textos gregos. Percebemos como os gregos viam o prazer. Como regulavam o sexo e se regulavam a si próprios. Que preconceitos tinham sobre o género e sobre os papéis de cada um na sociedade.

Sobretudo a partir dos textos morais e de comentários sobre comportamentos da altura, que chegaram até hoje, sabemos como os os gregos viam as relações. Ficamos a saber que valorizavam acima de tudo o domínio do próprio sobre as paixões do corpo.

É mais tarde que o cristianismo vem legislar sobre o que é permitido ou não fazer. Os gregos levavam a mal, sobretudo, que um homem (a moral era sempre uma moral dos homens, feita na perspectiva masculina) mostrasse falta de domínio. Sobre si, ou sobre a(s) suas mulheres, escravos. No sexo, era mal visto não que se fizesse determinado acto em particular, mas que se desse a entender que o desejo, as paixões estavam a dominar em vez de ser ao contrário, em vez de de se conseguir dominar o desejo. Era bem visto ter uma relação com um rapaz mais novo, por se estar numa posição de domínio, e isso não implicava nenhuma perda de virilidade. O que lesava a reputação era estar numa posição de dominado, numa relação com outro homem. Precisamente por isso, há conselhos extensos, nos textos morais, sobre como se deve comportar um rapaz, que entra numa relação com um homem mais velho, não sendo demasiado fácil, para não estragar a sua reputação. Não são condenados os actos em si, como imorais, mas o caracter do homem que se coloca numa ou noutra posição.

The purpose here is “not to write a history of sexual behaviors and practices,” nor “analyze the scientific, religious, or philosophical ideas” related to them,” but rather to examine “that quite recent and banal notion of ‘sexuality’: to stand detached from it, bracket its familiarity, in order to analyze the theoretical and practical context with which it has been associated” (3). So, a husserlian reduction of sexuality into its archaeological context.

Recognizing that purported ‘individuals’ “decipher, recognize, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire,” Foucault therefore wants to develop a “hermeneutics of desire” (5). The ultimate object of the inquiry here is the subtitle, ‘the use of pleasure,’ more specifically in its ancient formula, the chresis aphrodision, with attention to how it entered “a domain of moral valuation and choice” as well as how it situates within “modes of subjectivation” such as “the ethical substance, the types of subjection, the forms of elaboration of self, and the moral teleology”—which will summon the details of “themes of austerity” regarding “the relation to one’s body, the relation to one’s wife, the relation to boys, and the relation to truth” (32).

Just to set the tone, Foucault observes the ancient complexity of disentangling sex and gender from sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity:

Socrates’ first speech in the Phaedrus alludes to it, when he voices disapproval of the love that is given to soft boys, too delicate to be exposed to the sun as they are growing up, and all made up with rouge and decked out in ornaments. And it is with these same traits that Agathon appears in the Thesmophoriazusae: pale complexion, smooth-shaven cheeks, woman’s voice, so much so that his interlocutor wonders if he is in the presence of a man or a woman. It would be completely incorrect to interpret this as a condemnation of love of boys, or of what we generally refer to as homosexual relations; but at the same time, one cannot fail to see in it the effect of strongly negative judgments concerning some possible aspects of relations between men, as well as definite aversion to anything that might denote a deliberate renunciation of the signs and privileges of the masculine role. (19)

Another axis of analysis here is the notion of self-discipline, wherein “extreme virtue was the visible mark of the mastery they brought to bear on themselves and hence of the power they were worthy of exercising over others” (20). Indeed, the distinction between “a virile man and an effeminate man did not coincide with our opposition between hetero- and homosexuality” (85), but rather in whether “one who yielded to the pleasures that enticed him: he was under the power of his own appetites and those of others” (id.).

The aphrodisia for the Greeks equates to the Roman venerea--our “'pleasures of love,’ ‘sexual relations,’ ‘carnal acts,’ ‘sensual pleasures’—one renders the term as best one can, but the difference between the notional sets, theirs and ours, makes it hard to translate”—noting of course that Foucault writes in French (35). The ancients considered that the intensity of the aphrodisia compelled discipline: “people were induced to overturn the hierarchy, placing these appetites and their satisfaction uppermost, and giving them absolute power over the soul” (49), perhaps what Dante identifies as those condemned for ‘subjugating reason to appetite,’ which is expressly politicized by the Athenians as “the tendency to rebellion and riotousness was the ‘stasiastic’ potential of the sexual appetite” (id.)—we must recall in Agamben’s Stasis that the ancient rules for civil war (i.e., stasis) was the mandatory nature of participation therein for all members of the polis as well as the subsequent amnesia/amnestia.

Two key concepts are enkrateia, self-mastery, and sophrosyne, moderation. These are usefully contrasted with two defects, respectively akrasia (incontinent) and akolasia (immoderate) (64 ff); whereas the latter fails to see a vice as an affirmative evil and abandons the self to enjoying it, the former realizes that a particular aphrodisiac course is unprincipled, a bad idea, and in actively attempting to avoid it, succumbs nevertheless. If it sounds as though this line of thinking develops a “polemical attitude toward oneself,” it is entirely because the ancient mind sought to avoid the reduction of the self to “slavery” to excess (66). Sometimes this recommended an “extirpation” of desire (69) (as in Plato’s Laws), whereas at others it is more rigorously developed as epimeleia heautou, the ‘care of the self’ (volume III’s subtitle) (73)—a condition of possibility for a person to enter into politics—and it is a regimen: in Plato’s Republic, desire is always already “apt to invade the soul” (74).

Plenty plenty more. The meaning of Greek diaite (regimen) (100 ff). Differential practices in marriage (145 et seq.). The relation of eros to other affects (190 ff). The significance of ephebophilia (230 ff). Overall this is a departure from the plan laid out in volume I, with no attention, that I can see, directly on the notion of a scientia sexualis as distinguished from the ars amatoria. Citations range all across classical Greek sources, with much attention to Plato and Aristotle—it is very serious. Readers of Agamben will see connections everywhere, as this is a mine for an inchoate discipline of biopolitical management.

Recommended for all philolagnoi.

A good book for those already interested in Foucault’s work, with some interesting development of his ideas regarding the self, knowledge, and practices, but nothing mind-blowing. It mostly works as a preface to his other discussions of sexuality. Won’t blow any minds

It was good but I preferred the first volume.

This is very different from the first one and it is more about a very specific focus on sexuality in Greek antiquity, and I found it curiously "too" straightforward for a Foucault work, I was expecting more complex and profound analyses, but that simplicity allow him to establish a very coherent and interesting reading of ancient Greek sexuality. Also, it makes it pretty easy (the easiest?) to read for a Foucault's book.

Moreso, I hoped that it would talk more about female sexuality, even if I get that there was clearly less literature about it, I cannot accept that it was not possible to expand more on it.

But I kinda like that Foucault was probably just chilling here and got especially hyped to talk about men-to-men love!

If I wasn't so specifically interested in Greek antiquity and its sexuality, I would give it 3 stars.