Ethics is constituted by practical activities and embodied dispositions, not by norms or ideas

Evidence

Michel Foucault’s later work draws upon this tradition to formulate what Claire Colebrook aptly calls a “positive conception of ethics” that extends the domain of ethics “be.. yond notions of norms, justifi tion, legitimation, and meaning to include the consideration of the practices, selves, bodies, and desires that determine ( and are codetermined by) ethics” (Colebrook 1998, 50) . Foucault’s conception of positive ethics is Aristotelian in that it conceives of ethics not as an Idea, or as a set of regulatory norms, but as a set of practical activities that are germane to a certain way of life. Ethics in this conception is embedded in a set of spe.. cifi practices ( what Aristotle called “practices of virtue”). It is only from the standpoint of the dispositions formed through these practices that the Kant.. ian question of moral deliberation can be posed. In this view, you ask not what a particular ethical theory means, but what it does. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 204

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Foucault’s ‘positive ethics’ against the Kantian model of ethics as universal moral deliberation.
• XREF: Connects to Bourdieu’s habitus discussion in the same chapter and to virtue ethics debates (MacIntyre). — connects to: Modern ethics shifted from being to doing as the supreme value of action.; Subjectivity forms through practice, not prior to it. — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 85; Ethics begins with stories, not dictates, and demands patient listening to others — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 127 (+1 more)