Introduction

Summary

The main aim of this book is to clarify the moral concern about sexuality and sexual activities expressed by leading authors in classical antiquity. Michel Foucault was, of course, the first thinker to undertake this clarification, and one aim of his stimulating study was to demonstrate the way in which his new ethics programme worked. Therefore my starting point is the reconstruction of claims about the control of the desires and the creation of the moral subject in classical philosophical, medical, economic and rhetorical texts which Michel Foucault presents in the second volume of The History of Sexuality (The Use of Pleasure (UP)). There is now a mass of literature on Foucault's programme of ethics, some of which also deals with his interpretation of ancient sources. But most authors treat his analyses of these texts as documents illustrating his intellectual development, which is their primary interest. None of them subjects his thoughts on ancient sources to a detailed critical assessment in order to suggest alternative readings that are based not only on the general theoretical premises of Foucault's project, but also on modern standards of textual interpretation and the present state of philosophical and historical knowledge of the ancient world. What follows is intended to reduce this deficit.

Much of what I have to say is a critical reconstruction of Foucault's own reconstruction – while at the same time I try to maintain the systematic aspects of his perspective.