Foucault’s Ethics

Foucault’s most important contribution to ethics is a theoretical framework he developed for historical times and places—Hellenistic Greece, Imperial Rome, and early Christianity. The same lens he used to uncover the ethical systems at work in the discourse of others Foucault uses to examine his own work also. It reveals a normative ethics embedded in his material with three dimensions: (a) the importance of reflective and nonjudgmental communication, (b) the necessity of resisting domination, and (c) creating new, alternative relationships. His framework has potential for examining various ethical systems in a comparative manner while taking each one seriously.