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Pushing against an open door: Agamben on Hadot and Foucault
journal contribution
posted on 2022-01-01, 00:00 authored by Matthew Sharpe, Matteo StettlerAbstract
This article provides a rejoinder to Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of the Hadot-Foucault dialogue, which appeared in the pivotal ‘Intermezzo’ of The Use of Bodies. In ‘Pushing against the open door’ section, we provide a close reading of Agamben’s claims about Hadot’s alleged misreadings of Foucault on the ancients and on subjectivity more widely. We demonstrate how, far from rebutting Hadot, these claims end up confirming the latter’s positions on Foucault malgré Agamben. In ‘Wisdom, the cosmic dimension, and the “objectivist-exercisant” self’ section, we draw on classicist Christopher Gill’s notion of the ‘objectivist-participant’ self in Greco-Roman Antiquity, to argue that the deepest stakes of the debate between Foucault and Hadot do not implicate Hadot’s incompetence, as Agamben suggests. They concern Foucault’s unease, as well as Agamben’s misunderstanding, of the objective and participative dimensions of ancient conceptions of selfhood. In ‘The ghosts of christianities past’ section, we contest the recurrent tendency of commentators, like Agamben, to assume latent carry-overs of Hadot’s early religiosity in his later works on Greek and Roman philosophy and spiritual exercises as reflecting the long shadow of Christianity in postmodern thought.
This article provides a rejoinder to Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of the Hadot-Foucault dialogue, which appeared in the pivotal ‘Intermezzo’ of The Use of Bodies. In ‘Pushing against the open door’ section, we provide a close reading of Agamben’s claims about Hadot’s alleged misreadings of Foucault on the ancients and on subjectivity more widely. We demonstrate how, far from rebutting Hadot, these claims end up confirming the latter’s positions on Foucault malgré Agamben. In ‘Wisdom, the cosmic dimension, and the “objectivist-exercisant” self’ section, we draw on classicist Christopher Gill’s notion of the ‘objectivist-participant’ self in Greco-Roman Antiquity, to argue that the deepest stakes of the debate between Foucault and Hadot do not implicate Hadot’s incompetence, as Agamben suggests. They concern Foucault’s unease, as well as Agamben’s misunderstanding, of the objective and participative dimensions of ancient conceptions of selfhood. In ‘The ghosts of christianities past’ section, we contest the recurrent tendency of commentators, like Agamben, to assume latent carry-overs of Hadot’s early religiosity in his later works on Greek and Roman philosophy and spiritual exercises as reflecting the long shadow of Christianity in postmodern thought.
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CLASSICAL RECEPTIONS JOURNALVolume
14Issue
1Pagination
120 - 139Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESSPublisher DOI
ISSN
1759-5134eISSN
1759-5142Language
EnglishPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalUsage metrics
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