Foucault's 'Askesis': The ethical work of thinking modernity against modernity (Michel Foucault)

The following essay unpacks the Foucauldian critique of modernity with the goal of coming to an inclusive understanding of how Foucault's critical attention to modernity: (a) re-figures Enlightenment attitudes to central philosophical notions like truth, knowledge and the good, and (b) constitutes an ethos of critical reflexivity which foregrounds the relational ambiguity of modernity and philosophical responses to it. The essay begins by analyzing Foucault's work on Kant, critique and Enlightenment. It moves to a discussion of how genealogy disrupts traditional ethico-political systematics. It ends by addressing how Foucault's suggestion of an aesthetics of ethics and existence both fits within his critique of modernity and challenges traditional understandings of what constitutes philosophy and the work of thought.