Foucault shares a lot of interesting ideas and arguments as to why sexuality is viewed the way it is today. However, he writes as if he's trying to bolster the word count for an assignment. I will blame the English translation, I'm sure his original french is much more rich.

"no podría haber deseo sin privación, sin carencia de la cosa deseada, y sin mezcla por consiguiente de cierto sufrimiento; pero el apetito, explica en el Filebo, sólo puede provocarse con la representación, la imagen o el recuerdo de lo que da placer; de ahí concluye que no podría haber deseo más que en el alma, ya que si el cuerpo es alcanzado por la carencia, es el alma y sólo el alma la que puede por el recuerdo hacer presente lo que se desea y así suscitar la epithymia."

مجنون هذا الفوكو
بهذا الجزء يطرح فوكو الكثير من الأفكار لدى الاثنيين القدماء وفلسفاتهم ويناقشها ويحللها

استعمال المتع وتدور افكار هذا الجزء نحو ثلاثة أجزاء
الاول الحمية البدنية والرياضية والفكرية
والثانية الجانب التربوي البيتي
والثالثة حب الغلمان

ويناقشها ويحللها ويقارن بين الكثير من حوارات الفلاسفة

ويتعمق حتى يأخذك معه في جانب المؤيد لهذه الأفكار
وبالطبع حين تعرف أن فوكو من المؤيدين للمثلية الجنسية ولكن لا يرغمكعلى موافقته بل يدعك تحلل وتفكر معه هل كانوا محقين ام لا
وبطبيعة الفطرة الانسانية نقول لا نحن نرفض هذه المثليه ولكن يقول لك فوكو انا موافق لرأيك ولكن تعال معي اشرح لك لماذا
قبلوا هده الأفكار
ولماذا كانوا يؤيدون هذه الأفكار

تتعمق معه وتحلل وفي النهاية تجيبه ثانيه


كتاب رائع موضوعي سلس لأبعد درجة

ممتع هذا الفوكو ولو لم نتفق معه

3.5 rating. It’s hard to rate Foucault because his writing is never enjoyable. It’s always incredibly dense and it feels like when you’re reading you still don’t catch everything.
I enjoyed Foucault’s detailed outlining of Greek sexual morality and expectations and how they shifted over time. This overall serves to support his claims first that hedoism was not the general practice of all Greeks, and second that the Christian belief of repressed sexuality was not unique but instead somewhat adopted. Most of the work documents the relationship between teenage boys and men in ancient Greece but in the conclusion Foucault establishes that there will be a shift over time to repressing sexual expression with women and a focus on women’s sexuality.

De la Dietética, un uso medido de la sexualidad y la lucha contra el propio deseo nos libertará de esa esclavitud seductora.
De la Económica, la energía debe fluir para sucesos importantes de la vida y debe ahorrarse de momentos lascivos desgastantes.
De la Erótica, el juego del amor entre el enamorado y el amante, sabiendo cuánto dar y cuánto ceder; sujeto al respeto mutuo.

Lo

Se quisermos fixar uma origem para os vários grandes temas que deram forma à nossa moral sexual (pertença do prazer ao domínio perigoso do mal, a obrigação da fidelidade monogâmica, a exclusão de parceiros do mesmo sexo) não apenas não devemos atribuí-los a essa ficção que se chama a moral “judaico-cristã”, mas sobretudo não devemos procurar aí a função intemporal da interdição ou a forma permanente da lei. A austeridade sexual precocemente recomendada pela filosofia grega não se enraíza na intemporalidade de uma lei que assumiria alternadamente as formas historicamente diversas da repressão: ela releva de uma história que é, para compreender as transformações da experiência moral, mais decisiva que a dos códigos: uma história da “ética” entendida como a elaboração de uma forma de relação a si que permite ao indivíduo constituir-se como sujeito de uma conduta moral.




[...] a dificuldade provocada, nessa sociedade que admitia relações sexuais entre homens, pela justaposição de uma ética da superioridade viril e de uma concepção de toda a relação sexual segundo o esquema da penetração e da dominação do macho; a consequência é, por um lado, que o papel da “actividade” e da dominação é afectado por valores constantemente positivos mas, por outro lado, que é necessário atribuir a um dos parceiros no acto sexual a posição passiva, dominada e inferior. E se não existe qualquer problema quando se trata de uma mulher ou de um escrav[izado], as coisas são muito diferentes quando se trata de um homem [livre]. É, sem dúvida, a existência dessa dificuldade que explica, ao mesmo tempo, o silêncio de que se rodeou de facto essa relação entre adultos e a ruidosa desqualificação daqueles que justamente rompem esse silêncio e assinalam a sua aceitação, ou melhor, a sua preferência por esse papel “inferior”. É igualmente em função dessa dificuldade que toda a atenção foi concentrada na relação entre homens e rapazes, pois que nela um dos parceiros, pela sua juventude e pelo facto de não ter ainda atingido um estatuto viril, pode ser, por um tempo breve, objecto aceitável de prazer. Mas se o rapaz, pelo seu encanto próprio, pode ser para os homens uma presa que perseguem sem que nisso haja escândalo ou problema, não se deve esquecer que ele terá um dia de ser homem, de exercer poderes e responsabilidades, não podendo mais ser, evidentemente, objecto de prazer [...].




Nota-se, então, que o princípio que liga o homem à obrigação de não ter parceiro fora do casal que forma é de uma natureza diferente do que liga a mulher a uma obrigação análoga. No caso desta, é por estar sob o poder do marido que essa obrigação lhe é imposta. No caso dele, é porque exerce o poder e deve dar provas do domínio de si na prática desse poder que deve restringir as suas escolhas sexuais. Ter apenas relação com o seu esposo é para a mulher uma consequência do facto de estar sob o seu poder. Ter apenas relação com a sua esposa é para o marido a mais bela maneira de exercer o poder sobre a mulher. Muito mais do que a prefiguração de uma simetria que se poderá encontrar na moral ulterior, trata-se aqui da estilização de uma dissimetria actual. Uma restrição que é análoga naquilo que permite ou proíbe, mas que não recobre para os dois esposos o mesmo modo de “se conduzir”.

Why am I subjecting myself to this, you ask? Well, I read the first volume so I thought might as well read the other two, my intentions were purely un-intellectual, I just wanted to flex about having read all three volumes of Foucault's History of Sexuality. Do I regret it? Not at all. The second book is even better than the first, more informative and highly amusing. Hilarious even.

In this volume Foucault examines Greek sexual practices and Greek attitudes, thoughts and taboos on sex, to get to the root of the problematization of sex. And this includes a lot of reading and analysis of early Greek writing on sex. And man, have they got some solid advice:

But the author restricts himself to brief generalities: first, no one should “make frequent and continual use of sexual intercourse”; the latter is more suitable for “cold, moist, atrabilious, and flatulent persons,” and least suitable for thin ones; there are periods in life when it is more harmful, as in the case of old people or for those who are “in the period that extends from childhood to adolescence.”

The Greeks or Romans had no notion of 'sexuality' as such, they did not link various loosely connected sexual practices under a single origin. Sexual virility was not connected to ideas of active/latent homosexuality or even with what modern society would consider 'effeminate, but rather with lack of moderation.

Sexual taboos were not clearly defined, instead a 'mastery of the self' was encountered and even idealized. The sexual act was not an object of moral disqualification for the Greeks, but Foucault writes that the texts reveal an anxiety about the violence of the act itself, about the obstacles it could potentially raise for a mastery of self-control.

Hence sexual activity was located within the broad parame ters of life and death, of time, becoming, and eternity. It became necessary because the individual was fated to die, and in order that he might in a sense escape death.

Within marriage, a wife was required to submit to the authority of her husband and therefore infidelity on her part was essentially forbidden. While the husband was not prevented from engaging in adultery by social norms (as long as the other participant was not another married woman,) he was encouraged to refrain from doing so, as a show of self-restraint. A cheating husband reflected poorly on the wife, because within the Greek society it implied that she was incapable of properly governing the household and satisfying her husband. And thus, Foucault writes that marriage relations were fundamentally asymmetric.

Most importantly, Foucault writes that our notion of homosexuality is plainly inadequate while referring to the set of experiences and forms of valuation that constituted same-sex relationships within ancient Greek culture. The Greeks did not view love for one's own sex and the other sex as opposites, as two exclusive choices.

In short, modern conservatives and liberals would be utterly confused and would probably pull their hair out in ancient Greece.

The introduction to “The Use of Pleasure,” the second volume in Michel Foucault’s “History of Sexuality,” promises a lot. Refocusing from his well worn conception of power networks to “desire and the desiring subject” (5), Michel suggests his study will combine his two previous modes of scholarship--the archaeologies of the 1960s and the genealogies of the 1970s--in a single volume. This is, he says, a work of philosophy that uses fourth-century BCE practical historical texts to construct, again, “the genealogy of desiring man,” his “practices of self,” and his “‘aesthetics of existence’” (12). It is refreshing to see Michel move beyond the pure analytics of power and to channel his obsession with discursive nodes, modes, networks, and domains into a different kind of relations, those that exist between people and inside the individual. In fact, while some of Michel’s previous work handled the ways in which power worked on, through, and within the individual, “The Use of Pleasure” seems the first Foucauldian publication to emphasize the ways in which desire (substituting for power) is conditioned by the self for the self. This concern seems to derive, in part, from his definition of contemporary philosophy, which he claims is “the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself” and, more importantly, concerns the ~desire~ “to learn to what extent the effort to think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently” (9). This denotation feels like the closest admission of subjectivity that Michel is capable of and, if nothing else, suggests that this is his ~passion project~. It also places a burden on the subsequent work that Michel fails to actualize: it’s never very clear--within the text itself, without a biography of the author--how he is bringing these thoughts to bear onto his own history. I couldn't quite overcome this failure.

In choosing to focus on classical Greece, Foucault essentially abandons the project he set out on in his “Introduction,” requiring readers to do mental gymnastics to see correlations between modern and contemporary sexualities and the classical sexualities he discusses here. There are, don’t worry, many such connections to make and, very occasionally, Michel will compare some portion of Greek conceptions of the self to more recent Western notions (most often when he is discussing the homosexual; is this his connection to personal history?). On the other hand, Michel’s periodization allows him to focus solely on the nature of desire and pleasure among classical Greece’s “free men,” a category he should have problematized more. Here as everywhere else in his oeuvre, Michel fails to take an intersectional perspective, that is, while he may acknowledge issues of class, he completely neglects a feminist critique of the rampant misogyny of the periods he discusses let alone begins to tackle the flagrant racism that was omnipresent. Yes, he does mention women somewhat extensively in relation to marital fidelity but he literally goes on (and on and on) about how women were submissive and passive to their husbands without once truly ‘problematizing’ (to throw one of his pet words back at him) this relation. The more I think about these omissions, the more I believe they seriously hinder the potency of his arguments about both power and desire. It’s like he has historical amnesia or, perhaps, he is solely concerned with men because they, rather than women or people of color, have been the dominant focus of discourse. (WORST EXCUSE EVER.) Or, perhaps, men just interest him more because he was gay. (Don’t be basic, Michel.) Whatever reason there may be for the neglect of feminist and racialized analyses, it is a complicated, frustrating fact that the “truth” promised by this esteemed author did not include these perspectives. I am ashamed to not have thought of this before but now that I have thought it I can't get over it, despite some otherwise provocative arguments and arresting individual chapters.

Running throughout is the proposition that freedom for ancient Greeks possess a doubled nature by which a truthful relation of oneself to oneself, primarily characterized by moderation of pleasures/desires, corresponds to and largely determines one’s position within the city state. Attaching civic responsibility to an ordered, moderate lifestyle means that an enslavement to desire threatens one’s individual freedom as well as the health of one’s government. This critique especially rings true in an era when emotion rather than reason (rationality being the guiding logic of this claim) dominates political discourse and governmental as well as electoral decision-making, a troubling change that risks the health of many nations as well as global political, economic, social, and environmental well-being. In establishing truth through moderation in relation to a self responsible to both a populace and itself, rather than rooting truth in the enlightenment of a singular knowing subject, the ancient Greeks privileged both individual and collective in a way that many contemporary societies do not. Therefore, the troubling, doomed idea of the rugged self reliant individual (hello, America) had no place in Greek society. By tying truth to an aesthetics of existence rooted in “formal principles in the use of pleasures, in the way one distributed them, in the limits one observed, in the hierarchy one respected” (89), Michel suggests that moderating one’s sexuality helped one become a better citizen.

Equally powerful are the final two parts of the book, which handle how sex and love played out in relationships between older men and adolescent boys. These chapters have significant ramifications for the queer theory that emerged in the wake of Foucault and suggest there is Foucauldian work yet to be done. There were a whole set of prescribed practices and moral values associated with these kind of affairs that would, ideally, culminate in a loving friendship that one would derive just as much if not more pleasure from than the preceding sexual relationship. In fact, both sections come at the end of the volume, a placement that likely derives from Michel’s belief that these kinds of relations were the most troubled in all of ancient Greece. Restated with more power, he claims that the epoch’s sexual ethics formed around and derived from this love between boys and men (245). Michel suggests, via Plato, (this) love was a spiritual concern, that is, love pertained to the identification of beauty and truth in the soul--rather than the body--of another. Thus, the conception of “true love” came from men looking into the souls of boys and vice versa. While initially suggesting there were passive/active and submissive/dominant relations between boys and men, Michel, again via Platonic discourse, concludes that the boys eventually became the “masters” of these relations because they first knew true love, which was fostered not through sexual pleasure but rather through an alternative pleasure cultivated by knowing one’s partner was satisfied. He uses this claim to restate and generalize the proposition that true love was not a matter of erotics but rather resultant from an open communion between two (male) souls based in the pleasure of knowing one another. This is a liberating theory of the true love and the self rejected by queer pessimism and not fully taken up by queer optimism; it suggests that the original figure for true love in Western culture was that fostered between a man and boy, positing that a proto-homosexuality rather than heterosexuality was the basis for all subsequent notions of love, desire, and pleasure. It is important to note, however, that Michel doesn’t mean to bring about LGBTQ+ liberation with this fact but rather seeks to right a discursive wrong, perhaps limiting the ramifications of his claims. It seems to me that Michel's intention should be separated from the content used to reach said conclusions because these are radical reformulations of Western sexuality and could be harnessed as tools of liberation. Moreover, it would seem that the onus to connect these conclusions to a personal philosophy of history rests with contemporary queer theorists and historians frustrated by Michel’s failure to live up to his own promises.

Unfortunately, a bit too often Michel’s infatuation with details that fascinate him but may bore even the specialized reader take center stage: there are very under-theorized chapters about diet and an overlong discussion of semen (ancient Greeks thought it a “foam” generated in the brain!), neither of which are wholly justified, at least in their length, by the overall argument. There’s plenty more such detail to go around, which makes a large portion of this book a slog to get through. When it’s riveting, it’s riveting, but I suspect, depending upon why you’re coming to this book, large swaths will not appeal to you.

Como siempre dejándome perplejo con la información que da y que me genera curiosidad por ahondar en los temas que plantea, en est aocasio acerca de amor o relaciones griegas y las interacciones entre los individuos.

Michel Foucault's work "The History of Sexuality: Volume 2—The Use of Pleasure" thoroughly examines the attitudes and perceptions surrounding sexuality in classical Greek culture. Foucault explores the intricate ways the Greeks conceptualized and navigated the realm of sexuality, shedding light on the historical context and the significance of these beliefs in shaping societal norms and individual experiences.

Foucault delves into a wide array of topics, ranging from ancient Greek medical advice on the most beneficial season for engaging in sexual activity to an in-depth exploration of the societal roles and treatment of women throughout history.

The book delves deeply into the distinguishing characteristics and commonalities between the Ancient, Christian, and Modern eras, shedding light on how sexuality transformed into a moral quandary in Western societies.

It's a fascinating read!

Buen y conciso acercamiento a la moral griega del uso de los placeres. Util para indagar de donde viene la moral cristiana y que tan arraigada se encuentra en las ideas griegas de "sabiduria" y "dominio de sí".

Lo recomiendo ampliamente.