Foucault’s fourfold ethics scheme is a question-posing tool, not a blueprint

Evidence

The approach I am suggesting can be further elaborated by reference to the four elements Foucault posits as central to the study of ethics. This fourfold scheme, however, cannot be taken as a blueprint for the study of ethics; rather, the utility of Foucault’s analytical framework lies in the fact that it raises a series of questions about the relationship between moral codes and ethical conduct, questions that are answerable only through an examination of specifi practices through which historically located moral norms are lived. The fi component, which Foucault calls the “substance of ethics,” refers to those aspects of the self that pertain to the domain of ethical judgment and practice. The substance of ethics in medieval Christianity, for example, was fl and desire, whereas the part of oneself most subject to analysis and labor in the modem period is feelings (Foucault 1 997b, 263 ). The second aspect of ethics, which Foucault calls the “mode of subjectivation,” refers to how people are incited or called upon to recognize their moral obligations-for exam.. ple, whether through divine law, rational rule, or cosmological order. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 225

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Foucault’s four aspects of ethics: substance, mode of subjectivation, techniques of the self, and telos.
• XREF: The medieval-Christian substance-of-ethics contrast (flesh/desire vs. modern feelings) resonates with the historical-ethics discussion in The Use of Pleasure and related Foucault scholarship.