生命作為藝術品如何可能：晚期傅柯物化觀之反思

Abstract

霍耐特（Axel Honneth） 指出， 當主體在認知的過程中， 遺忘了自我的承認（recognition）關係，並把自身的感受和願望當作物一般的客體來對待時，便構成所謂的「自我物化」（self-reification）。我們以為，傅柯（Michel Foucault）晚期思想中的「自我技術」（technologies of the self）具有鮮明的「自我物化」色彩，而此物化乃是以某種倫理學／美學式的「建構主義」（Konstruktivismus）來展開的：「我們必須把自己創造成一件藝術作品。」本文所關注的問題是：晚期傅柯何以且如何發展出這樣的思想？這套思想本身的問題何在？其可能的知識與政治效應為何？比起前期與中期對「客體化」（objectification）問題的大量批判，晚期傅柯的理論卻鮮少涉及物我關係（主體與物的關係）。但物我關係卻從未消失；相反，它成了傅柯解蔽「自我」時的可見性條件，也就是說，成了他自己的「未思」（unthought）。正因此，原本作為批判對象的物我關係（某種支配性的權力關係）便偷渡進他的晚期思想中，成為從內部支撐其「工夫主義」（asceticism）的存有論、義務論與認識論基礎。本文將從系譜學與考古學的角度出發，並結合海德格（Martin Heidegger）的理論，對晚期傅柯的「自我物化」之可能性條件進行內部批判和反思。結論處，我們將藉由阿岡本（Giorgio Agamben）的姿勢理論，為「生存美學」（aesthetics of existence）提供一個有別於傅柯的思考進路。

Axel Honneth pointed out that when the subject forgets the relationship of self-recognition in the process of cognition, and treats his own feelings and desires as objects, it constitutes the so-called “self-reification”. I think that the “technologies of the self” in Michel Foucault’s later thoughts have a distinct color of “self-reification”, and this reification is based on certain ethical/aesthetic “constitutivism” (Konstruktivismus): “We have to create ourselves as a work of art.” The main questions in this article are: Why and how did Foucault develop such thoughts in the late period? What is the problem with this set of thinking itself? What are its possible cognitive and political effects? Compared with the massive critiques of “objectification” in the early and middle periods, Foucault’s theory in the late period rarely involves the relationship between subject and object. But the subject-object relationship never disappears; on the contrary, it becomes the condition of visibility for Foucault when he unconceals the “self”, that is to say, becomes his own “unthought”. Because of this, the subject-object relationship (some kind of dominant power relations) that was originally the object of criticism sneaked into his late thinking and became the basis of ontology, deontology and epistemology that supported his “asceticism” from within. From the perspective of genealogy and archaeology, combined with Martin Heidegger’s theory, this article internally criticizes and reflects on the conditions of possibility of late Foucault’s “self-reification”. At the conclusion, it takes Giorgio Agamben’s gesture theory to provide an approach for “aesthetics of existence” that is different from Foucault.