QuestionsWho am I, really?Creating oneself as a work of art
Who am I, really?A self to build

Creating oneself as a work of art

The aesthetics of existence; care of the self

Michel Foucault 1926 · 1984Philosopher and historian: knowledge and power produce each other, and every society has its regime of truth.
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What it claims

There is only one practical consequence: we must create ourselves as a work of art, through chosen practices of the self, rather than seek ourselves as a hidden truth.

Why

If the self is not given to us, the only practical consequence is to make it, through practices of the self, as an artist makes a work.

The same idea through history
Jean-Paul Sartre1945Foucault starts from Sartre: the self is not a given essence. But he reproaches Sartre with returning to the idea of what one truly is, through the notion of authenticity, instead of moving on to creation.
Michel Foucault1983In an interview with Dreyfus and Rabinow, then in the last books on the Greeks, Foucault puts forward the formula: make one's life a work of art.
In short

"Creating oneself as a work of art" is an argument by Michel Foucault ('On the Genealogy of Ethics' (interview, 1983); The Use of Pleasure (1984), 1983) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: a self to build). Its claim: There is only one practical consequence: we must create ourselves as a work of art, through chosen practices of the self, rather than seek ourselves as a hidden truth. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

'On the Genealogy of Ethics' (interview, 1983); The Use of Pleasure (1984)
Valid with an implicit premise

Who is my true self? Many philosophers and psychologists say it must be discovered within. Foucault thinks the opposite: the self is not given in advance, so the only practical consequence is to create it. He draws on the Greeks and Romans, for whom caring for oneself was an art of living (exercises, writing, regimen, choice of friends). He contrasts this with a quest for the 'true self' that psychology would decipher. Each person thus becomes, to a large extent, the artist of their own life.

P1The self is not given to us.
P2 · implicit premiseIf the self is not given, there is nothing to discover or recover: the 'true self' one claims to unveil is itself a construction.
P3In our society art has become something related only to objects and experts; yet everyone's life could become a work: 'Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?'
P4The Greeks had a practice of the self to give their life certain values and a form.
Therefore there is only one practical consequence: we must create ourselves as a work of art, through chosen practices of the self, rather than seek ourselves as a hidden truth.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid with P2. P1 is the starting thesis. P2, hidden, rules out the search for a true self. P3 and P4 show that self-creation is possible and has existed. The main point of attack is the step from P1 to the conclusion: that the self is not given does not imply it is free to create itself (the self may be shaped by others, see foucault-corps-dociles). Foucault himself answers that these practices are not invented by the individual alone: they are models found in his culture.
Analogy. A potter who does not find a vase inside the clay but makes one. He does not start from nothing (the clay, the techniques, the models in his workshop exist), but the final form depends on his work.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

An objection drawn from Sartre (authenticity) 1945 · attacks premise 2

Reconstructed objection (Sartre, who died in 1980, did not address it to Foucault): for Sartre, man is first what he makes of himself, but remains responsible for how he does so, in bad faith or in authenticity. By replacing authenticity with aesthetics, Foucault would leave self-creation without any criterion: one could create oneself stupidly or cruelly.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Foucault in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) In the 1983 interview Foucault discusses Sartre: in his view one should not relate creative activity to the relation one has to oneself, but relate the relation to oneself to a creative activity. The criterion is therefore not fidelity to a true self but the form given to one's life (our reading; he does not answer the moral objection itself).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Sartre: authenticity judges how one makes oneself. Foucault: the criterion is creation itself. Core disagreement: do we need a moral norm to judge a successful life?
P
Pierre Hadot 1989 · attacks premise 4

Hadot, the historian of ancient philosophy on whom Foucault had drawn, reproaches his reading with being too aesthetic and too centred on the self (he sees in it the risk of a new dandyism). The ancients' spiritual exercises aimed at rising to universal reason and seeing the world from the standpoint of the whole, not at making a self.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1989, after the author's death (1984).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hadot: the ancients aimed at the universal, not at a successful self. Core disagreement: is the ancient 'care of the self' a model of self-creation or of self-transcendence?
Michel Foucault himself (the weight of culture) 1984 · attacks the conclusion

If the individual does not invent himself alone, is self-creation free? Foucault admits that practices of the self are not invented by the individual: they are models proposed or imposed on him by his culture, society and social group.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Foucault in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Reconstructed reply (our reading): choosing, combining and reworking models is already a real freedom, like a writer working in a language he did not invent. Critics answer that this reduces 'creation' to a choice from a catalogue.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Foucault: one creates oneself with inherited models. Critics: then one does not truly create oneself. Core disagreement: does freedom require inventing one's own models?