Die Lust beim späten Foucault
On Pleasure in Later Foucault

Summary/Abstract: In the general context of Foucault’s genealogy of the modern subject, his reflections about pleasure are especially relevant. That is because he reconsiders from the radical perspective of the essential and controversial relationship between pleasure, desire, and truth the whole history of the Western civilization, starting with Ancient Greece. This essay puts into question Foucault’s search for a new and different “economy of bodies and pleasures”. If, on the one hand, the French thinker emphasizes the ethical-political valence of the “use of pleasure” (and above all, its emancipatory potential regarding the subjection/subjectivation dialectics), on the other hand, he seems to remain torn by an unresolved tension between an ‘ascetic’ tendency and the seduction of dissipative drifts.

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