The “Confessions of the Flesh” by M. Foucault: Towards Understanding of Methodology and Significance

Abstract

The author of the article analyzes the subject, the structure and the content elements of Michel Foucault’s posthumous “Confessions of the Flesh” (2018, Russian translation 2021). Foucault there turns to the patristic tradition (which gives some researchers a reason to talk about a “new theology”), but also proclaims the need for the unity of philosophical and philological approaches, a “lexicalization” (in the words of Philippe Chevallier). The author examines fragments on Christian chastity and the ascetic model of Cassian to demonstrate the historical and philosophical significance of Foucault’s distinctions between the ancient and Christian concepts of chastity, as well as between the “prohibitional” and “transformational” forms of asceticism.