For The Love Of Boys

Authors

  • John M. Carvalho Villanova University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i17.4300

Keywords:

pleasures, practices, self-mastery, love, truth

Abstract

Foucault’s late studies of classical Greek and Roman texts are significant for the attention they give to the nuances and complexities the authors of those texts attribute to the relations between men and boys.  Foucault follows carefully the considerations the classical writers gave to the bodies, pleasures and knowledge that formed and were formed by these relations.  His aim is not to capture what was said in these texts but to think with them about what it might have taken, lacking any standard or model, for boys and men, both, to become, in the context of their relations with one another, beautiful examples of what it means to be alive.  What interests him, ultimately, is not boys or the ancient pleasures associated with boys but this practice of making one’s life admirable, to oneself and to those with whom one associates freely and intimately, in the absence of a given standard or code.  If there is a Foucauldean ethics, it can be nothing more or less than this becoming an admirable instance of a life worth living.

Author Biography

John M. Carvalho, Villanova University

John Carvalho is Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. He is the author, most recently, of “Strange Fruit: Music Between Violence and Death,” “Repetition and Self-Realization in Jazz Improvisation,” “Thinking, the Unconscious and Film,” and “Subtle Bodies and the Other Jouissance.

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Published

2014-04-30

How to Cite

Carvalho, J. M. (2014). For The Love Of Boys. Foucault Studies, (17), 213–231. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i17.4300