La politique des conduites

Starting from a crossed use of Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot and Stanley Cavell’s philosophical perspectives, this dissertation aims to open a new field of research in ethics and political philosophy. It has three main objectives: (1) Exploring the relationship between ethics and politics, or more precisely between moral and political philosophy, through a redefinition of their objects, methods and goals via a specific use of Michel Foucault and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thought. Developing, as a consequence, an “analytic philosophy of politics” aiming to make visible the existence and concrete functioning of power in its ordinary ramifications and its effects of subjection-subjectivation on the everyday life of the individuals. (2) Highlighting the value of the techniques of the self and the spiritual exercises, or better of what can be called the “techniques of the ordinary”, thanks to the comparison, but also the confrontation, between the works of Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot and Stanley Cavell (especially his writings on “moral perfectionism”), as well as, among others, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, Henry David Thoreau, Iris Murdoch and Cora Diamond. (3) Raising the problem of the meaning of the notion of truth within such an ethico-political context, defending the necessity to elaborate a non-epistemological conception of truth and exploring its role in relation to the techniques of the ordinary.