The cultivation of the self: Critique of technical practice within and without Chinese Chan Buddhism (Michel Foucault)

This dissertation examines the notion of the cultivation of the self in Foucault's philosophy and the Chinese religions of Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism. The later Foucault theorizes the ancient Greco-Roman practice of self-cultivation and regards this practice as an aesthetic ethical model of acquiring moral perfection through technical practice. This renewed interest in the idea of the cultivation of the self in Foucault is driven by the desire to overcome Cartesian subjectivity, which takes subjective principles as absolute. However, how is the cultivation of the self as technical practice able to produce a universal moral consequence instead of a contingent practical consequence? How can this morality predetermined by techniques be different from conventional morality predetermined by moral principles?; To oppose Foucault's understanding of the cultivation of the self, this dissertation examines two critiques of this understanding in terms of technical practice in Chinese religious traditions: the Sudden Chan School and the School of the Mind. Negating the moral possibility of the technical practice of self-cultivation, these two Schools assert that morality cannot be predetermined by either given theoretical principles or practical techniques. As these two Schools and my dissertation suggest, the cultivation of the self is not a positive constitution of the self, but remains a critical awareness of the essentialist understanding of the self. With this awareness, the moral self no longer refers to the self predetermined by given codes of behavior and procedures of activities, but to the self who is willing to put its desires and intentions to the public field to negotiate their accommodation with other people's desires and intentions.