This book offers a bold reinterpretation of Michel Foucault s late work, reconstructing him as an ethical philosopher whose account of antiquity provides crucial resources for understanding contemporary forms of power. Bringing Foucault into original dialogue with Habermas, Beck, and Giddens, the book develops a genealogical reading that bridges Foucault s analyses of self formation, governmentality, and modernity. It shows how key democratic and globalisation related theories often assumed to stand apart from neoliberal modes of rule can themselves reproduce subtle forms of governmentality.Through a sustained engagement with ancient ethical practices, cognitive ethics, reflexive modernisation, and global third way politics, the book demonstrates how Foucault s late thought offers both a critique of modern Western societies and a heuristic framework for creative self care in the present.
1: The genealogical significance of the ancient background of the West.- 2: Governmentality.- 3: Cognitive ethics.- 4: The governmentality of a world domestic policy.- 5: Risk and the reflexive subject.- 6: The governmentality of global third way politics.
Dimitrios Lais is an Associate Fellow at the Morrell Centre for Legal and Political Philosophy, University of York, UK
