Foucault’s late ethics operates as practical ontology straddling the ontico-ontological difference.
Evidence
Foucault’s final focusing on the relationship to the self in the experience of the flesh is a practical ontology. Transformed into reflex, such a practical ontology comes to contaminate the ontic but, kept as a code, it straddles the ontico-ontological difference in a way that full-dress moral philosophies will, indeed can, never do: “the care of the flesh is ethically prior [ethiquement premier] in the measure that the relationship to the self is ontologically prior.” This is pouvoir-savoir at ground level, “the working of thought upon itself…as critical activity,” not at degree zero. This is “the soil that can nourish,” this “the general form of problemization.” — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1246
Categorization
- DEFINE: Spivak’s gloss of Foucault’s late project as ‘practical ontology’ is a compressed conceptual frame worth keeping.
- XREF: connects to: Practical involvement precedes detached reflection in his ontology; The ontological difference distinguishes specific entities from the Being they have.