Foucault's Ethics - Aesthetics

Michel Foucault lived from 1926 to 1984, the era which the Occident traditional intellectualism and human-centered thinking mythology had appeared theoretical and practical crisis. He apperceived this and denoted his life to quest for the truth of subject. In order, his research can be approximately divided into three dimensions: knowledge, power and ethic. What the former two dimensions hunted after is about indirect and constituted subject: one's tyranny to objects results in falling into knowledge trap, one's strong aggress to others leads to getting into the cage of power. This thesis mainly discusses about the ethic-the last dimension mentioned. It is self-constitution of a subject aesthetically, also the subject reconstructed by Foucault. Foucault's research to ethic problems is his ethnics-aesthetics theory.Foucault's turn is inevitable and obviously. Both ethic and moral have different meanings from the former. His view of ethic is consistent with the ancient Greece's exist aesthetics in some ways. By studying the ancient Greece's free-human-ethic, Foucault found that the actively asking in the field of sex stands mostly for the ancient Greece's exist-aesthetics. Firstly, their concept of sexual morality penetrated definition of large charge and worth, enjoyment and obligation, forbearance and moral, freedom and truth. Secondly the stylization of the sex act can be explained by four respects: regimen, domestic science, Eros and truth. Therefore the core of ancient Greece's exist aesthetics is self-regard, in other word, with pursuing stylized exist, they made themselves happy by controlling themselves. Moreover we can treat our life as art.Two conclusions can be obtained from Foucault's ethic-aesthetic idea. The first is practicability: we must work hard to form our own ethic-aesthetic in every daily affair. The second is openness: there is enough and necessary act space instead of rigid rules to comply with.