ABSTRACT
Recently, there has been a thriving discussion going on, which has related Foucault’s Cynicism lectures to the topic of affirmative biopolitics. Cynicism in late Foucault really is something quite exceptional in his overall view of ancient Greco-Roman philosophy and culture more generally, revolving around the autonomy of the subject. Foucauldian Cynicism holds the conviction that the ascetic and meditative exercises of oneself are inseparable from the care for others. Foucault develops his insight on ars erotica through its differentiation from and even opposition to scientia sexualis. In political terms all this implies that in Foucauldian ars erotica it is more perspicuous than in Foucauldian Cynicism that we discover resistant potentials and effects of the most radical, most pervasive sort.
