Genealogy of ethics as historical method of analyses of subjectivations and practices of the self

Abstract

This work deepens in the context of the studies and analyses developed by Michel Foucault in the first half of the 1980s, which he calls the genealogy of ethics, and which was the framework of his History of Sexuality. His genealogy traces a discontinuous history of a “technology of the self” that was formed in the West since ancient Greek culture, in different ethical experiences that point out ruptures and transformations and present a disparate set of practices throughout history. Such critical history of these practices and relationships established by the subject with him/herself is correlative to a genealogy of the moral subject in our culture, since it gives visibility to a rich diversity of elaborations, works, and aestheticizations operated by the subject upon him/herself in the effort to constitute him/herself as a moral subject. In order to do so, the genealogy of ethics applies a singular look and perspective, developing its own problematizations and methodological strategies in relation to the author's previous studies.