From the 1981 “Sexuality and Solitude” to the 1982 “Le combat de la chasteté” to the 1984 History of Sexuality, Volume 2, Michel Foucault’s published works have long recognized the influence of the historian of late antiquity, Peter Brown. With the 2018 publication of Foucault’s draft of Les Aveux de la chair (Confessions of the Flesh) bearing no mention of Brown, the depth of this influence requires further elaboration. Despite Brown not appearing in the “Index of Modern Authors,” Confessions of (...) the Flesh reflects Foucault’s debt to Brown for his readings of Augustine of Hippo and his conceptualizations of sexuality and subjectivity. Analyzing archival evidence alongside biographical narratives helps us better understand Brown’s vital influence as Foucault was shifting his History of Sexuality project, his archival practices, and his genealogy of subjectivity. Appreciating the textual and conceptual engagement between Foucault and Brown thus illuminates not only Confessions of the Flesh as Volume 4 in the History of Sexuality series but also the conceptual and methodological developments of both scholars in their disciplinary intersections. (shrink)

In an archived draft at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Foucault describes two questions haunting him since 1963: “Why are we obliged to tell the truth about ourselves? Which truth?” Foucault poses these two questions in 1980 in drafts for his lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, and I see in these two questions two argumentative threads that weave through Foucault's changing History of Sexuality series over his last decade. These two threads correspond to the dimorphism Foucault frames in (...) Part III of Confessions of the Flesh between confessing monks and married men, that correlates with the distinction between “veridiction” and “juridiction” as two forms relating subjectivity and sexuality. To help tease out these threads, I make two recommendations for how to read Confessions of the Flesh in this following review essay: (1) situate Confessions of the Flesh in relation to Foucault's History of Sexuality series which spans his last decade from 1974 to 1984 and (2) untangle two major threads of Confessions of the Flesh in Foucault's treatment of Cassian and Augustine, as progenitors of veridiction and juridiction respectively, which together produce the conditions for modern disciplinary subjects. (shrink)

Of the practices John Cassian brings from Egyptian desert elders to southern Gallic monks, his scriptural hermeneutics best reflects the dynamic link between exegesis and askēsis, reflection and action, and authority and agency. His four-fold method reinforces the view that scripture is absolutely authoritative but incredibly obscure and therefore requires interpretation. Riddled with contradictions, acts of violence, and the plainly nonsensical, scripture provides foundations in early Christianity only through the complex interplay of interpretation, authority, and power. To read exegesis only (...) as an intellectual exercise or assertion of power, however, neglects its relation to other forms of askēsis in Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes. For Cassian, scriptural interpretation renders lived practice and practical knowledge inseparable from contemplative knowledge. Cassian’s view of scriptural meditātiō is shaped in late antique Christian milieus where interpretive reading practices shape ascetic habits alongside practices of manual labor, fasting, and prayer. For Cassian and the Egyptian desert ascetics with whom he trained, scriptural interpretation does not lead to keen description or reflection alone, but must impact one’s practices, one’s tropos, one’s very way of life. Such a perspective allows us to see not only the relevance of Cassian’s ethics to Christian thought and practice, but also to approach Cassian’s texts with a critical eye for how they enable reflection on contemporary religious ethics beyond the particulars of Christian predicates. (shrink)