Sexuality and the Christian self: Michel Foucault's reading of the church fathers

This article discusses Michel Foucault’s “last” book, the recently published Les aveux de la chair. In the first part, an analysis is provided of Foucault’s understanding and treatment of the patristic texts he decides to mine for his theory of sexuality. Foucault finds in the church fathers a general view of sexuality not too different from that of contemporaneous philosophers. The novelty that Christianity brings does not, therefore, consist in a more restrictive sexual ethic. Foucault goes so far as to argue that even the Christian notion of virginity was unexceptionable from a Greek point of view. The novelty of Christianity, rather, was the way sexuality was related to the self. Therefore, as discussed in the article’s second part, Foucault includes in his presentation the baptismal catechesis and the institute of confession. The article concludes, however, that Foucault does not fully succeed in integrating patristic views of sexuality with the early history of church discipline. It is therefore proposed that this alignment was plausible to Foucault on account of his preconceived, teleological interpretation of patristic Christianity. Ultimately, he discovered in the church fathers the ideas his interpretation of early modern Catholicism led him to suspect there. The article’s final part inscribes Foucault’s newly available interpretation of the fathers into his broader thesis about the genealogy of the modern self and the role of Christianity in this history