Taking his point of departure in Foucault’s work from the mid to late 1970s, Professor de Beistegui will argue that the lecture courses and books from that period lay the ground for a genealogy of the western subject as a subject of desire. Beyond Foucault’s own genealogy, he’ll ask about the connections and tensions between the rationalities of the sexual instinct and economic interest , and suggest that they require a third rationality, and a third sense of desire, which involves the Law and the symbolic order, the significance of which Foucault recognizes, but doesn’t explore.

Gil Anidjar, professor in the Departments of Religion and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) and core ICLS faculty member, will be the respondent.

Miguel de Beistegui was educated in France (BA, MA in Philosophy at the Sorbonne), the US (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago), and Germany (Postdoc, Hegel-Archiv, Bochum). He specializes in 20th century German and French philosophy, and has published books and articles in the following areas: ontology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and politics. Initially specializing in the thought of Martin Heidegger, and in phenomenology in general, he has become convinced that philosophy needs to resist extreme specialization and develop the conceptual tools to engage with our time, not only bringing together the various branches of philosophy, but also establishing a dialogue between philosophy and the other disciplines, in the social as well as the natural sciences. His publications include Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology (2004), The New Heidegger (2005), Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze (2010), Proust as Philosopher: the Art of Metaphor (2012), and Aesthetics After Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor (2012). He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming The Care of Life: Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics and Biopolitics.