Lecture of 28th January, 1981

Foucault distinguishes between the Graeco-Roman concept of aphrodisia, the Christian concept of flesh and the modern concept of sexuality. These are not three domains of distinct objects. They are three modes of experience, that is three modalities of the relation of the self with itself, in the rapport that we have with a particular domain of objects. Foucault is suggesting that the relation with sexual activity is always about a self-relation and about sexual activities which are joined in a changing modality.

Artemidorus did not make moral judgements, but looked at what was favourable or unfavourable in events to come, in the interpretation of dreams which he presumes refers to future events. It is, however, an ethical perception, presumably in the sense that the ethical is what concerned with with relation of the self with itself. Foucault appears to assume a distinction between morality as…