"Straying Afield of Oneself"—Foucault and the Craft of Living

Let me begin with a few words from Michel Foucault’s The Uses of Pleasure:

As for what motivated me, it is quite simple…. It was curiosity—the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower’s straying afield of himself?… What is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself?… The essay—which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes… is the living substance of philosophy, at least if we assume that philosophy is still what it was in times past, i.e., an “ascesis,” askesis, an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought.

There are many moving balls here, but what strikes me as deeply pertinent is his definition of philosophy as a type of askesis, “an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought”; a motto of the Craft of Living blog. More than simply striving to be informative, the posts are “athletic” feats of sorts, a type of spiritual calisthenics in the form of probing, experimenting, crafting, and holding myself accountable. They are implicit attempts to work on myself as myself, or, the appropriate Foucault’s gratifying turn of phrase, to foster the “knower’s straying afield of himself.”

I won’t go into what all that Foucault is after here, except to note his correct assumption that true philosophy amounts to a craft, an art of letting go of the self; the illusionary, obstinate, narcissistic, false, incongruous, lazy, bored self. A genuine Christian philosophy will, of course, understand such self-renunciation—the “I no longer live” aspect—entirely in christological terms.

"The Unimportance of Practically Everything"

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I don't know exactly why I have this pronounced minimalism tic. It must be connected to my personality somehow, I suppose. I just love getting rid of extraneous things. A house bubbling over with trinkets, a bursting closet, a work desk buried under an avalanche of papers—the stuff of nightmares! Whatever the reason behind my obsession might be, OCD tendencies and such, the image of pairing down, the prospect of Marie Kondoing my life—that is deeply satisfying. I liken it to the kind of pleasure you get from squeezing slime if my daughter's bliss in so doing is any indication. OK, the analogy is a bit strained, but you get the point.

To that end, I distinctly remember my dad telling me a story many years ago he found in an adventurer's autobiography. I don't know the particulars, but it concerned someone who sold off everything as he was about to embark on an around-the-world voyage with his sailing boat. The night before embarking on his adventure, he lay in his bed in a hotel room, feeling the liberty of material divestment. For some strange reason, I always connected with that imagery of existential “lightness.” (My usage of the term here should not be confused with Milan Kundera’s definition of the same.)

I suppose that is one of the reasons why I am such a sucker for the minimalism industry. I swallow that stuff hook, line, and sinker. (I am writing this in anticipation of the new documentary by the Minimalists. See below.) But more importantly, it explains why essentialism is one of my core identity values, and why—to get the theme going—Greg McKeown's Essentialism has a vaunted space on my craft of living bookshelf. I could go on quoting him for quite some time, but for this occasion, a couple of quotes will suffice:

The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. [7]

Essentialism is about creating a system for handling the closet of our lives. This is not a process you undertake once a year, once a month, or even once a week, like organizing your closet. It is a discipline you apply each and every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or whether to politely decline. It’s a method for making the tough trade-off between lots of good things and a few really great things. It’s about learning how to do less but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment of your life. [19]

The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” [45]

All this is merely whetting my appetite, and one cannot but be tempted to extemporize on these insights at some length. And I certainly shall do on these pages, committed that I feel to the importance of this theme. In the meantime, cheers!