How to learn to like the same?

In Kooperation mit L.A.Raeven

Sie erklärten sich einverstanden und gaben mir Anweisungen, was, wieviel und in welcher Art ich zu essen und zu trinken habe. Motiviert von den oben beschrieben Gedanken, regte ich einen Dialog an, über Biopolitik, das nackte Leben und ästhetischen Terrorismus.

3. ebd. Einundzwanzigster Lehrsatz des zweiten Teils, S. 175

4. ebd. Vierzehnter Lehrsatz des zweiten Teils, S. 159

5. ebd. Zweiunddreissigster Lehrsatz des ersten Teils S. 77–78

6. Michel Foucault: Sexualität und Wahrheit, Bd. II: Der Gebrauch der Lüste. Frankfurt am Main 1989

7. Diät heißt auf französisch auch »Régime«, Ernährungsweise, Lebensweise. Ein Denkspruch sagt: »À ce régime, il ne tiendra pas longtemps.« (Petit Robert) Vielen Dank an Andreas Hiepko für den Hinweis.

8. ebd., S. 123

9. ebd., S. 133

12. ebd., S. 140

13. Michel Foucault: Zur Genealogie der Ethik (Interview, 1983), in: Hubert L. Dreyfus und Paul Rabinow: Michel Foucault. Jenseits von Strukturalismus und Hermeneutik. Frankfurt am Main 1987. S. 273.

How to learn to like the same

In cooperation with L.A. Raeven

How are we to understand the fact that we conceive of ourselves as physical, corporeal beings and at the same time as intelligible, thinking ones? Is there an internal correlation between our conceptual and intelligible abilities and the ways we function physically?
In his Ethics (1), Baruch de Spinoza argues that the two belong together — the chain of mind and the chain of the physical: “So, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, though expressed in two ways” (2) and later, “We there showed that the idea of body and body, that is, mind and body (II.xiii.), are one and the same individual conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension." (3) That means that they do not stand in opposition to one another but rather run pervasively through me (in both directions <–>). Mind brings to perfection the power of agency immanent in the body: “The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions.” (4)
For Spinoza there is no free will, rather only the use of reason: “Will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause. Proof: Will is only a particular mode of thinking, like intellect; therefore (by Prop. xxviii.) no volition can exist, nor be conditioned to act, unless it be conditioned by some cause other than itself, which cause is conditioned by a third cause, and so on to infinity.” (5) This leads to the fact that his ethics, too, is not something externally guided like laws or rules, but rather emerges from “within”, from reason or from the desire to become a better person, which necessarily includes an effort or at least a concentration.
I see these considerations in connection with Michel Foucault’s The Use of Pleasure (6), in which he describes ancient Greek dietary practices. Diet (7) is the “art of the everyday relationship of the individual to his body” (8). He adds that this relation “is to be understood as referring not only to the corporal realm but to the moral realm as well” (9) as a principle of moderate living that constantly asks itself what the “correct” or “true” measure is. Dietetics is the stylizing of a stance practiced by individuals and by society in order to form the body and regulate its proportions.
Starting with dietetics, Foucault outlines the concept of an “aesthetics of existence” in which he establishes a connection between ethics and aesthetics. Ethics becomes a “practice of the self” and “as the art of behaviour” (10) nourishes itself on aesthetics. Conversely, aesthetics produces itself from ethical practices: “the diet of the body has also to be a matter of thought, deliberation, and prudenz […] regimen addresses itself to the soul, and inculcates principles in the soul.” (11) I regard Spinoza’s thoughts about ethics and Foucault’s concept of an “aesthetic of existence” as experiments, as attempts to attain a better body and a better mind — within which framework dietetics describes one part of an ensemble of subjectivization processes, one part of “forming oneself as a subject”. (12) This means that as subjects we are equipped by already existing societal rules with a power of rearranging and transforming these rules according to our own minds. The power of agency is inherent in dietetics, which thus involves a political dimension: “[…] ethics can be a very strong structure of existence, without any relation with the juridical per se, with an authoritarian system, with a disciplinary structure.” (13)
Dietetics becomes especially political when the institutions commit themselves to taking responsibility for the care of life itself. (14) Holger Meins describes this similar in an info-mail from prison, during a hungerstrike: “we have two very strong weapons: our wits and our life. our consciousness and our being.” (15)
These aesthetic, ethical and political questions of dietetics, and the related possibility of creating new forms of interpersonal connections on this basis, formed the occasion for a project, in which what is normally private (what and how much of it one eats) was to be turned over to a stranger. Since I knew that the artists L.A. Raeven follow a diet and nourish themselves in a particular way, I asked them for their collaboration. They agreed and gave me instructions as to how I was supposed to eat and drink and how much. Motivated by the aforementioned concerns, I initiated a dialogue on biopolitics, bare life and aesthetic terrorism.

1. Baruch de Spinoza: Ethics, Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. Etext. Gutenberg. www.gutenberg.org
2. Ibid., Proposition VI I, Part Two.

3. Ibid., Proposition XIII [XXI?], Part Two.
4. Ibid., Proposition XIV, Part Two.
5. Ibid., Proposition XXXII, Part One.

7. In French diet also means “regime”, form of nutrition, way of life. An old adage says: “À ce régime, il ne tiendra pas longtemps.” (Petit Robert) Many thanks to Andreas Hiepko for pointing this out.