The Art of the Transpersonal Self

Transformation as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice

A Dissertation Submitted to the

Division of Media and Communications
of the European Graduate School
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
By
Norbert Koppensteiner
December 2007

Acknowledgments

One guiding thread of this dissertation is the relationality of human existence. The becoming
of this dissertation just like the continued becoming of myself is a plurality, it is the
flowing together of different threads that form the nexus that is this dissertation, that form the
ever shifting nexus that I call my self.

My appreciation and profound thanks go to my supervisor, Prof. Wolfgang Schirmacher for

the guidance he has given, a guidance which has made me grow, made me reach, or - in
different words fostered my becoming.
Prof. Martina Kaller and Prof. Wolfgang Dietrich both read the first draft of this dissertation.
They have provided valuable critical feedback but my gratefulness runs much deeper than
that. For years of inspiration I thank them both and Wolfgang Dietrich for providing so many
of the key tunings for the following pages. The song may be mine but the tuning fork to
which the music is set has been provided by him.
This work finally would never have seen the light of day without Josefina. Your critical
reading, your support and love have provided the beacon on which to chart my course through
this adventure, this challenge. Te quiero mucho.

Table of Contents
Why write?.................................................................................................................................. 5
State of the Art and Definition of Terms.................................................................................... 7
(Post)modernity.......................................................................................................................8
Verwindung (twisting, distortion, fading) and Weak Thinking ...........................................13
Rationality, Transrationality................................................................................................. 15
The Transpersonal.................................................................................................................16
Homo Generator....................................................................................................................18
Objective................................................................................................................................... 22
Methodological Considerations................................................................................................ 24
1. Apollo and Dionysius............................................................................................................32
1.1. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Birth of Greek Tragedy .................................................... 33
1.2. The Apollonian Hegemony............................................................................................ 39
1.3. Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 49
2. Philosophy and Spirituality................................................................................................... 51
2.1. Placing the Hermeneutics of the Subject....................................................................... 53
2.2. Philosophy and Spirituality - Knowledge of the Self and Care of the Self................... 57
2.3. Truth, Knowledge, Practices and Transformation......................................................... 61
2.4. The Hellenistic/Spiritual, the Platonic and the Christian Models.................................. 67
2.5. Beyond the Greek Example........................................................................................... 74
2.6. Subjectivity and Self...................................................................................................... 77
2.7. Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 80
3.1. Science and Art.............................................................................................................. 83
3.2. The Object of Art........................................................................................................... 90
3.3. A Life in Transformation............................................................................................... 93
3.4. Conclusion................................................................................................................... 101
4. Energizing Foucault............................................................................................................ 104
4.1. Approaching Power......................................................................................................105
4.2. The Conventional Interpretation of Foucaults Power.................................................106
4.3. Power Re-visited.......................................................................................................... 111
4.4. An Energetic Power .................................................................................................... 115
4.5. The Relational Self.......................................................................................................118
4.6. An Affirmative Practice............................................................................................... 123
4.7. Conclusion................................................................................................................... 128
5. Ethics as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice ........................................................................ 130
5.1. Placing Foucauldian Ethics.......................................................................................... 131
5.2. The Four Domains of the Relationship to Oneself...................................................... 136
5.3. Ethics and Aesthetics................................................................................................... 142
5.3.1. Beyond Morality................................................................................................... 143
5.3.2. Two Understandings of the Aesthetic................................................................... 145
5.4. Ethics as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice.................................................................. 150
5.5. Conclusion................................................................................................................... 154
6. Practices of the Self ............................................................................................................156
6.1. Augusto Boal and the Theatre of the Oppressed..........................................................158
6.1.1. Theoretical Premises............................................................................................ 160
6.1.2. Spectator, what an Insult!......................................................................................163
6.1.3. Relational Becoming in Severality....................................................................... 166
6.2. Systemic Constellation Work.......................................................................................169
6.3. Holotropic Breathwork................................................................................................ 175
6.3.1. The Self as Form Emptiness and Fullness......................................................... 185

6.4. Conclusion................................................................................................................... 188

7. An Impersonal God Where Theory Fades....................................................................... 192
7.1. An Impersonal God...................................................................................................... 193
7.2. Affirming Life as Prerequisite for Experiencing the Divine........................................198
7.3. A Weak Transcendence .............................................................................................. 201
7.4. A Parting of Ways........................................................................................................203
7.5. Spaces for Encounters.................................................................................................. 206
7.6. Conclusion................................................................................................................... 210
8. Beyond the Apollonian Hegemony.....................................................................................212
Bibliography............................................................................................................................216

Why write?

The question that needs to be asked at the beginning of every written work, and indeed even
more so at the beginning of a work of the size of a dissertation is: why write? Closely
followed by why write this particular piece of work, with these means towards these ends?

The answer, if there is to be one, can only be a personal answer as the reasons for
picking up a particular topic at a particular time in life are always personal and distinct. A
dissertation and any kind of written work furthermore always remains a snapshot, a take of a
moment bound in pages, a picture or at best a painting of what actually is a flow of life, a flow
of thoughts and practices in an ever shifting field of becoming with possibly much less
coherence and cohesion than this image of a bound work, published under the name of an
author, would suggest.

This flow of life, this continuous transformation is, I believe, also quite unavoidable,
quite unstoppable and thus quite human. From one moment to the next, with each breath we
take we cease to be identical to ourselves and, in some perhaps infinitesimally small way, we
become other than who we are. Sometimes those changes are not or only barely perceptible, it
is only rarely that some event of great proportions causes us to change in fast forward,
speeding up the process. And yet we change.

Given those observations, one possible answer to the first question could be: the work
of a dissertation can be seen as part of a work of the self on the self, part of a conscious
attempt at a work of transformation. Not to escape what we are at the moment. Not from some
fearful rejection of what is towards some perceived perfection or paradise of what might be,

but in order to give this perpetual process of becoming a certain, temporary shape, try to
fashion it in a certain style and direction which always remain contingent.

The movement that might occur perhaps could be perceived, by oneself, as a step
towards the subjectively better. This subjectively better would simultaneously be the only
standard of measurement in a world without fetters, without a grand book of levers and no
overall system of coordinates in which this movement could be inscribed and measured for its
progress or direction. However, in a certain Deleuzian sense, we might still become the
cartographers of our own space the cartographers of a twisted path on a map that is a
constant work in progress and will need to be partially redrawn time and again (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1987).

I would thus like to answer these first two questions, not quite coincidentally with a
quote from Michel Foucault a quote which has haunted me and to which I have returned
again and again ever since I came across it in the fall of 2004: I am not interested in the
academic status of what I am doing, because my problem is my own transformation [...]. Why
should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting? (Foucault, 1997a: 131)

Writing can so be perceived as part of a practice of the self, a transformation one

effects on oneself and the conditions of possibility for both this transformation and also this
very I which has been cast here upon paper with such a seemingly easy stroke will be the
topic of this dissertation. If there is something like freedom then I would propose that it might
be found within a certain awareness of the self and of its possibilities of becoming, the
transrational and transpersonal conditions of which it will be the work of this dissertation to
sketch.

In the end this is also the task of theory in my opinion: to contribute to a

transformation of the self, by showing how things could also be different instead of, as Michel
Foucault (1990b: 9) says, legitimating what is already known. The good life will not be
realized in theory, in discourse alone we will not be saved, transformed or reconciled. Yet
insofar as the continuous practice of becoming necessitates effecting a shift in the self, a
change of perspective, a certain work performed on oneself, finding out to what extent it is
possible to think differently for me is a crucial step towards a transformative practice and
towards opening a door to a different perception - even if it consists in the recognition of the
point in this process at which we have to let go of rational cognition.

In a personal vein my purpose thus is the following: to think until that curious moment
at which knowledge has to give way to intuition and understanding, and so to also thinkingly,
but not purely thinkingly, trace the path towards that transrational moment in which, through
a rebound effect of a certain constellation of knowledge and practice, a transformation of the
self can occur.

State of the Art and Definition of Terms

Before any discussion of the contents can commence, some terms which will be used
frequently need clarification as to their meaning in the framework of this study. Since several
of those terms also have been the topic of frequent, and often heated, debates in different
academic arenas it furthermore needs to be asserted at which point we shall enter the
discussion. Some of those notions introduced in the following will be reassessed during the
course of this work, will be interpreted differently, evolved further, changed or altered.
7

However, in order to do so a provisional starting point and location within the state of the art
needs to be established.

(Post)modernity
Following Wolfgang Dietrich I shall use the term modernity as designating the societal
project characterized by Newtonian physics, Cartesian reductionism, the nation state of
Thomas Hobbes, and the capitalist world system (Dietrich and Stzl, 2006: 283).
Philosophically, I take this project to be grounded in the tradition deriving from the Ancient
Mediterranean area and in its origins to be associated with, although not exclusively, the
thoughts of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Special focus in this dissertation will be placed on
the thinking of Plato, namely on the concept of the truth and the division into a real and an
apparent world, as it is derived from his Republic1. This venture, however, has to be read
against the background of an already existing long tradition of critical encounters with
Platonic thought; a small part of which will be further elaborated in the following.

At the beginning of a line of skeptical thinking towards modernity, as it is of relevance

for this dissertation, there stands the work of Friedrich Nietzsche in the second half of the
nineteenth century. It has been pointed out that already Nietzsches very first book, The Birth
of Greek Tragedy (1967), is simultaneously a critique of the culture of his time as well as of
its ancient foundations:

The Birth of Tragedy is at once a re-interpretation of ancient Greece, a philosophical

and aesthetic revolution, a critique of contemporary culture, and a programme to
revitalize it. (Vattimo, 2002: 13)

The most famous description of this division between the apparent world of our senses and the real world of
concepts (ideas) is of course the Platonic cave allegory as portrayed in the Republic (page 240ff. in the
translation of Waterfield, 1993).

Far from challenging only the philosophical assumptions of Platonic/Socratic thought,

Nietzsches critiques also concern the long tradition deriving thereof which ultimately leads
into modernity. The division between real and apparent world, truth, objectivity (scientificity),
the self-grounded autonomous subject (Descartes cogito) as well as notions of civilizational
progress or the humanistic ideal of enlightenment so become the target of Nietzsches vitriolic
and dissolving attacks.

In the twentieth century this critical line of investigation has been followed up,
amongst others, by thinkers such as Martin Heidegger (1993), Wolfgang Schirmacher (1983),
Gianni Vattimo (1988; 1997), Jean-Franois Lyotard (1984; 1988), Jacques Derrida (1978),
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari (1984; 1987), Michel Foucault (1972; 1988b) and Jean
Baudrillard (1993; 1994). This list is by no means exclusive or exhaustive but points to a
certain strand of critical thinking of importance for this dissertation. The field of critical
engagements with modernity is far from unified but reaches out in manifold strands, ranging
from the different version of Postcolonialism to various waves of feminist critiques and queer
and gender studies and Peace research.

This debate often has circled around a criticism or deconstruction of the metaphysical
(or metanarrative) foundations of modernity. Metaphysics here can be understood as any kind
of thinking that is grounded in ultimate foundations or first principles; those principles from
which all other thinking can derive and which themselves remain beyond questioning. JeanFranois Lyotard (1984: 27ff.) renders those first principles as metanarratives, from which
legitimation for further (scientific) knowledge originates, but which themselves are not open
to proof of rational argument. Lyotard shows how this concern with legitimation via first
principles arises with Plato and his cave allegory and continually resurfaces as for example
in Aristotle or in Descartes Discourse on Method (1984: 29). With Descartes Cogito the
9

thinking subject is posited as an autonomous and self grounded I, and so is supposed to

provide the stable foundation from which all further argumentation can derive. Lyotard calls
this foundation the story of the mind (1984: 29). It is a story, or (meta)narrative, because on
its own premises it can neither be proven nor refuted.

This critique called postmodern so concerns itself with making visible and contesting
the exclusionary tendencies inherent to metaphysics. Such metaphysical or, in the words of
Gianni Vattimo (2006) also strong thinking, is seen as ultimately leading to violence. To
illustrate this point about violence, Michel Foucault (1988b) sets out to show how the
historical establishment of reason is not the result of an ever more inclusive historical
advance of progress, but that reason is, on the contrary, built on the constitution and
subsequent exclusion of unreason as madness.

With the same author the Platonic relation between truth, power and knowledge is
inverted (Foucault, 2000g). In the Platonic understanding, Foucault asserts, truth and
knowledge could be opposed to (political) power and therefore could work as its corrective.
While it thus remained possible for Plato to pit a powerless truth against a truthless power,
(Foucault, 2000g: 33) Foucault inverts this relation by pointing out that in fact, knowledge
and power advance together and that truth is only ever the result of a specific strategic
constellation between them (2000g).

In the wake of the postmodern critique, concepts like the truth, the autonomous and
self grounded subject, progress, civilization, solvability of conflicts and even peace, have
therefore become sites of contestation and debate. Neither of those terms can today be taken
for granted any more and many pertinent questions from different directions have been raised
about what has been excluded through the tradition of thought which builds on them or uses
10

them as if they were pre-given and would remain the ever same, unwavering and unchanging
through the times.

We can thus grasp the postmodern, in the words of Jean-Franois Lyotard, as

incredulity towards metanarratives (Lyotard, 1984: xxiv) - a definition from which
Wolfgang Dietrich derives the following:

Postmodernity should not be misunderstood as the historical epoch that follows

modernity, although the prefix post might suggest this. However, post also refers
to a reflection of something, in this case, of modernity. Therefore, post indicates that
the social value system of the time span that it circumscribes refers to a condition
which, although preceding it, still has effects and remains relevant at a particular point
in time. If this were not the case, the prefix post would be redundant. Postmodernity,
then, describes the state of mind of one or several generations that have had to
painfully disassociate themselves from the great truths of the previous epoch, without
having found for themselves a new unitary system of reference. This state could be
described by the word dis-illusionment. (Dietrich and Stzl 2006: 283)

However, regarding the critique of these first principles, it is also becoming increasingly
obvious that what has started with Nietzsches scathing analyses has up until now remained
largely a critique that, contesting rationality and pointing out its limits and lacunaes, itself still
advanced by rational means2. The critique of rationality by rational methods in the end seems
to have come full circle, in the recent realization of an increasing dis-illusionment about disillusionment, or as Gianni Vattimo refers to it, disenchantment about disenchantment

[w]e are all by now used to the fact that disenchantment has also produced a radical
disenchantment with the idea of disenchantment itself; or in other words, that

See also Dietrich, 2006b: 26

11

demythification has finally turned against itself, recognizing that even the ideal of the
elimination of myth is a myth. (Vattimo, 1999: 29)

At its limit point there today arises the question of whether the postmodern rejection of
metaphysics and subsequent dis-illusionment has proven to be tenable and indeed livable.
Frederic Jameson (1984: xii) seems to arrive at a very similar question when asking whether
the great master-narratives, which Jean-Franois Lyotard deemed to be unsustainable, have in
fact disappeared or might not, much rather, merely have gone underground, towards a
continuing but now unconscious effectivity as a way of thinking about and acting in our
current situation.

What in consequence can be seen emerging in current discussions having taken note
of the necessary shortcomings of a critique of rationality itself carried out by rational means
are questions revolving around transrationality and transpersonality. This dissertation and the
topics dealt with therein have to be seen as part of this emerging debate which, while still
anchored with one foot in postmodern grounds, is already reaching out with the other,
wondering whether it will dare to put its foot down and where it might land. This step,
wherever it finally will land, should in any case not be interpreted as a step forward, a step
beyond or one that perhaps overcomes an obstacle, but much rather as a twisting movement (a
Verwindung). The current work therefore begins from a postmodern vantage point, taking to
heart the incredulity towards metanarratives. However, by the very token of this incredulity
postmodernity has largely remained a venture of critique. The current work, while heeding the
importance of a postmodern critique, wants to twist postmodernity towards a practice that is
no longer (purely) critical and rational but much rather affirmative and transrational.

12

Verwindung (twisting, distortion, fading) and Weak Thinking

The term Verwindung derives from the thinking of Martin Heidegger (1973) and it is here
used in Gianni Vattimos (1994, 1997, 2006) interpretation of Heideggers thoughts. While
being highly critical of the metaphysical tradition and the violence that is inherent to it,
Vattimo points out that this tradition still forms part of the historical horizon from which
contemporary thinking arises. Vattimo sees the rejection of metaphysics in the light of a truer,
more adequate description of reality as impossible, because such thinking - by the very same
token of a categorical rejection - would fall back into the metaphysical categories it tries to
criticize (1997). The relation that one can establish with metaphysics is thus not one of
overcoming as the perpetual movement of higher unifications which increasingly become
more true - but on the contrary, one that cannot do otherwise than establish a relation of
Verwindung: one of resigned acceptance of continuation, of distortion (Vattimo, 1997: 53).

Vattimo so contrasts the notion of overcoming (berwinden) with the Heideggerian

Verwindung (1997: 53, 54). While the former carries the connotation of a step towards an
increasingly accurate correspondence to the objective truth, the former, while giving up on the
notion of an objectively discernable true world, still accepts metaphysics as part of its heritage
to which it resigns itself, but from which it also heals itself and thus, while giving this
metaphysical heritage a certain space, simultaneously twists and distorts (1997, 53) it into a
new place:

But since it is not a case of correcting the errors of metaphysics with a more
objectively true vision of how things stand, the way out of metaphysics is shown to be
more complicated. We do not have before us any objectivity that, once discovered in
what really is, could provide a criterion by which to change our thoughts, as though
metaphysics might be set aside as an error or a discarded and worn-out piece of
clothing. [...] This term [Verwindung], preserving also a literal connection with
13

berwinden, to overcome, means, however, in practice: to recover from an illness

while still bearing its traces, to resign oneself to something. (Vattimo, 1997: 118)

Similarly, Heideggers English translator Joan Stambaugh (in Heidegger, 1973: 84) points out
that Martin Heideggers Verwindung is not identical to overcoming in the sense of something
that is defeated and left behind or that one has gotten rid off. Verwinden, she asserts,
also has the connotation of incorporating, however without the notion of being elevated by
such incorporations into new and progressively higher unities. Verwindung, especially in the
connotation given to it by Vattimo so operates in conceptual proximity to the idea of a
working-through modernity (durcharbeiten) as Jean-Francois Lyotard (1994) has coined it.

From such an understanding of Verwindung Gianni Vattimo develops his own concept
of weak thinking (2006). Weak is a form of thinking which is aware of its own situatedness
and contingency, takes into account the historical background against which and within which
it is formed (owing to what Heidegger calls the thrownness of being3) and thus, per
definition cannot occur according to a logic of verification and of rigorous demonstration,
but only by means of that old, eminently aesthetic instrument called intuition (2006: 237).
Weak thinking is impure (2006: 228) for it still contains parts of the (strong) metaphysical
tradition. However, instead of rejecting this tradition, weak thinking embraces, declines and
distorts strong metaphysics.

Against the background of the magnificent metaphysical truth Vattimo so states the
weakness of the own thought from the very beginning and thus refrains from building another
grand narrative with an even better, and more perfected overarching truth (Echavarra and
Koppensteiner, 2006: 169). Going beyond Vattimo this approach enables a positive reengagement with metaphysics, bewaring its violent tendencies but integrating and
3

See also Thiele, 2003: 214.

14

acknowledging it as part of our past and (in a twisted form) possibly also future. Both the
concepts of weak thinking and Verwindung will recur frequently in this study and especially
the former will be developed further in the following chapters, in particular as in light of the
concepts of transrationality and transpersonality.

Rationality, Transrationality
As regards the question of rationality and transrationality I take the former to be one of the
hallmarks of the project of modernity. I understand rationality as the method of proceeding by
reason. The term transrational has first been coined by Ken Wilber (1999, 2000a, 2000b,
2001). The prefix trans- derives from Latin and signifies across, beyond, through (Walch,
2002: 120). The transrational thus describes a process which, while also acknowledging
reason, transcends it.

In a Post-Hegelian interpretation this might result in the including and sublating

transcendence of rationality itself within transrationality (Aufhebung) - towards a higher unity.
In a non-dialectical, weak interpretation, instead of elevating and unifying, the rational is
twisted away from the purity of its form (the rational so no longer serves as the proverbial
ultima ratio) towards the acknowledgment of fields of experience beyond rationality. The
manner in which the Apollonian and Dionysian will be related in the course of this
dissertation thus gives rise to a transrationality which does not contain them both in a higher
unity, but is the always precarious and always different relation of two weak principles which
are not dialectical but are mutually part of each other and therefore contingent and codetermining.

15

The Transpersonal
The term transpersonal is also frequently used in this study. It shares with the transrational not
just the prefix trans-, but also its origin in transpersonal psychology: It derives from the field
of transpersonal psychology and has been introduced by Abraham Maslow (Battista, 1996:
52). For use within the psychological field it has been defined in the following way:

Transpersonal, meaning beyond the personal, refers to development beyond

conventional, personal or individual levels. More specifically, transpersonal refers to
development beyond the average, although such higher functioning turns out to be
more common than previously was thought. Transpersonal development is part of a
continuum of human functioning or consciousness, ranging from the prepersonal
(before the formation of a separate ego), to the personal (with a functioning ego) to
the transpersonal (in which an ego remains available but is superseded by more
inclusive frames of reference). (Scotton, 1996a: 3)

In differentiation to such a psychological understanding of transpersonality I will be

using the term in a more philosophical connotation. What is thus of interest here is not so
much a model of the development of the self as it is proposed for example by developmental
psychology or Ken Wilbers (1996, 2000a) concept of an expansive and including model of an
evolutionary self which goes through successive phases becoming ever more holistic more
encompassing, integrated and comprehensive.

What Wilber (1996) outlines might also be termed an Art of the Self, however he
describes the hierarchical version of such an Art, striving for ever higher forms of realization
and implying a developmental telos inherent to all of humanity. For Wilber, development of
the self implies an unfolding through pre-given and describable stages, until the self reaches

16

first its mature egoic form (the centaur) and subsequently transcends this form into higher
stages of being (subtle and causal). On each level the self materializes as an individual form
(surface structure, the personal and concrete expression) which is shaped and determined by
the pre-given, unconscious structural potentials and limitations (Wilber, 1996: 46) specific
to that level (deep structures).

While my project thus shares many common spaces with the work of Wilber (as
indeed the very terms transpersonal and transrational also signify), one crucial difference
regards the question of those developmental hierarchies. In comparison, my Art of the Self is
set against a more open horizon, whose transformations are intuited by the experiencing
person and whose necessities are co-derived from the concrete surroundings without,
however, embedding those transformations into an overall frame of universal reference. In
simple terms it might be stated that what will be proposed here is more the (relational,
situational) outside perspective rather than Wilbers view which turns the gaze inside the self
to find the pre-existing potentialities which for him always already slumber inside us4.

In the present dissertation the transpersonal will be understood much rather in

connection with certain theories of subjectivity (and subjectivation) which problematize the
idea of a single, coherent and stable individual subjectivity (the Cartesian cogito) and dissolve
the understanding of an I-you dichotomy, however without directly recurring to the
prepersonal-personal-transpersonal evolutionary model. The question that is thus opened is
not so much the psychological question of the evolution and superseding of the ego, but the
philosophical and ethical question of an understanding of the self beyond individuality and the
distinctive way of life that might ensue from such a conception; as well as in general terms of

This is not the space to critically appraise the works of Ken Wilber in detail. Suffice therefore to say that in
regards to Wilbers developmental model I hold the criticism that Gustavo Esteva (2006) raised against the
concept of development and Gianni Vattimos (2006) skepticism towards strong thinking to be pertinent.

17

the questions of being and becoming. In summary, it can be concluded that the present work
is an Art of the transpersonal Self because it (1) acknowledge the individual person as one
form of experienced existence, yet also (2) intuits larger frames of reference as for example
the notion of an aesthetic-energetic sphere which will be developed throughout this
dissertation.

Homo Generator
Of special importance for this dissertation is the ground that has already been covered by
Wolfgang Schirmacher (1989, 1991, 1994a, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007a, 2007c)
with his concepts of homo generator and artificial life. Both concepts raise the question of
post-metaphysical living and ask how a good life can still remain possible for humanity at the
dawn of the twenty first century. Moving from a Heideggerian being-in-the-world to a
Deleuzian being-for-the-world (Schirmacher, 1996: 6) homo generator focuses on the active
self-generative powers of the human being. Schirmacher (2007c: 4) here recurs to Hannah
Arendts concept of natality, as the explosive ability in politics and private life to start a new
life at any moment.5

Humans, Schirmacher (2007c) asserts, have always been a self-generating beings but
it is only with homo generator that this feature characterized in the context of this
dissertation as the art of giving ones life a certain, distinct, form comes to the forefront. As
human beings we are therefore artificial by nature as it is within human nature to become
differently, to use the technologies at our disposal in order to turn ourselves into somebody or
(in the Age of New Media, of Internet and Second Life) something else. This sets in motion a
process of becoming which is never finished:
5

Translation from the German original by Daniel Theisen at http://home.bway.net/danny/wolfgang/, last

accessed 30/07/2007.

18

With openness as our existential taste and co-evolutionary power as our design, Homo
Generator favors eternal revisions and safeguards the freedom of creation.
(Schirmacher, 2000: 2)

Homo generator also acknowledges that what is necessary for a gelingendes Leben (a life of
accomplishment) is a certain forgetfulness. The good life, the successful life, indeed, can
never be grasped theoretically; it remains cognitively elusive, rationally ungraspable. What
does remain possible is to attain glimpses of this good life of which we so can become
vaguely aware, but always on the condition that we need to forget at once what we have
glimpsed (Schirmacher, 2000: 4). And yet, we all live this good life, every day, without being
aware of it and, in fact, also on the condition of not being (rationally) aware of it.

Theoretically, the gelingendes Leben remains unattainable, it is impossible to predesign it according to some master-plan, but practically we live it every day. It occurs, as
Schirmacher says behind our backs6. What he so proposes is an affirmative practice of
living. It is a practice because it wants to be lived instead of just being theoretically
determined and it is affirmative for it acknowledges and embraces all facets of life.

It is this double move of simultaneously turning away from (strong) metaphysics while
also sidestepping the traps of rationalism which characterize an important element for this
dissertation. Homo generator provides a conceptual model for what is at stake here: the
question of how an art of living can concretely be envisioned; an art of living which makes
use of different methods and techniques of a transformation of the self and takes to heart
Friedrich Nietzsches (1974: 232) premonition that what is needful, is to give style to

Quote from personal notes taken during Wolfgang Schirmachers lectures at the European Graduate School
(EGS) during the summer of 2006.

19

ones existence, without, by this very same token, believing that the good life could be
planned.

In this undertaking of using the technologies available for generating the own life
Wolfgang Schirmacher and Michel Foucault agree when the former concludes that everyone
is capable of developing an aesthetic self (Schirmacher, 1989: 5). The very artificiality of
human life, in fact, makes the stylization of such an aesthetic self part of human nature. The
self, Schirmacher (2007c: 7) concludes, exists in no other way than as engaged in formgiving7. As regards those technologies of existence Wolfgang Schirmacher places a strong
emphasis on the creative potential of the New Media while the focus in this dissertation will
be placed more on those technologies of the self which can be derived from the realm of
transpersonal psychology and theater practices.

The ethic which Schirmacher proposes in light of this inability to plan a gelingendes
Leben is an ethics characterized by several features:

Gelingen zeigt sich allein im nachhinein, vollzieht eine Ordnung, deren Merkmale
Unberechenbarkeit, Leichtigkeit und Gelassenheit sind. (Schirmacher, 1995: 5)8

Unpredictability, lightness and, most importantly Gelassenheit are three of the characteristics
determining for a Gelingensethik the ethics concomitant to the accomplished life. This
ethics is completed with a commitment to compassion (Schirmacher, 1989). This compassion
has to be understood not as an abstract compassion towards an other that is known only at one
remove, but as a concrete practice which is embodied in a physically conveyed empathy

Translation by Daniel Theisen at http://home.bway.net/danny/wolfgang/, last accessed 30/07/2007.

Accomplishment [Gelingen] shows itself only after the fact, and brings about an order whose characteristics
are unpredictability, lightness and releasement [Gelassenheit]. Translation by Daniel Theisen at
http://home.bway.net/danny/wolfgang/, last accessed 30/07/2007.
8

20

(Schirmacher, 1989: 5). Recognizing ones own face in the suffering of others gives
compassion an understanding of a basic connectivity of life which goes beyond mere
individuality. Drawing on both the Western philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the Indian
Upanishads, Schirmacher asserts:

Das Gaukelbild, das uns vormacht wir seien vom Leiden aller Kreatur durch
Individualitt geschtzt, zerbricht, und Opfer und Tter erkennen sich als dieselben.
TAT TVAM ASI das bist du. Die Mitleidshandlung ist ethisch bedeutsam, gerade
weil sie nicht auf die einzelne Situation zielt, sondern mit dem ganzen Dasein der
Welt und dem Lose der Menschheit verbunden ist. (Schirmacher, 1994b: 7)9

With that Schirmacher asserts the ethical dimension which is inextricably linked to the
concept of homo generator. The generative function of the natality inherent to homo
generator is thus not to be understood as a facile anything goes but on the contrary always
comes together with the task of facing up to ones life. A gelingendes Leben is one for which
also responsibility needs to be claimed and affirmed, but without, however, for this reason
falling into a culture of guilt. Just like her/his failures belong to homo generator in a similar
manner as the own successes, homo generator also rejects the blame for everything you have
not started yourself (Schirmacher, 2007b: 4).

Both failures and successes are but two sides of the same coin if they are approached
with the ethical fourfold of compassion, Gelassenheit, lightness and trust that the
unpredictability inherent to life will lead towards the gelingendes Leben without our planning.

The mirage which leads us to believe that by our individuality we are protected from the suffering of all
creature shatters, and victim and perpetrator recognize themselves as the same: TAT TVAM ASI that is you.
The act of compassion is ethically significant exactly because it does not aim at the single situation but connects
to the whole being-there of the world and to the fate of humanity. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner

21

Objective

The question which drives this dissertation is the ages-old question of how is one to live? If
we understand postmodernity, like it was defined above, as incredulity towards metanarratives
and if we therefore assume that the tenets of a strong truth which in former times could serve
to ground a way of living like the believes in progress, enlightenment, civilization,
development, but also in religions like Christianity have in postmodernity been cast under
suspicion and are examined for their potential for violence, then the question of how live, how
to still give the own life a certain shape, style or form looms large. It is thus exactly in the
postmodern times of the twenty first century that this question has gained renewed relevance
and is now more crucial than ever.

While postmodernity has its merit and importance as practice and virtue of critique, it
leaves open the burning question of how one can, while heeding this postmodern critique, still
engage in affirmative practices to give shape to the own life. Taking heed of the postmodern
critique implies that this process of giving shape can no longer be moral, yet postmodernity
leaves open the question whether it can still be guided by an ethics and affirmative practices?

In this work, which will be undertaken in conclusion of my doctoral studies at the

European Graduate School, I will so venture to re-think some of those categories holding
sway in (post)modernity in order to approximate a possible understanding of how a
transrationality and transpersonality could concretely be lived. I will thus sketch the outlines
of a possible art of living for a subjectivity that is perceived as constantly emergent and in
transformation, a subjectivity that dares to embrace conflict as part of its perpetual transpersonal relational becoming and that emerges beyond the hegemony of the categories of the
truth and morals through a transformation of the self which is understood as an aesthetic
22

(Apollonian) and energetic (Dionysian) practice. I will thus, approximate an Art of the
Transpersonal Self.

From the ethical question of how is one to live? Ultimately a double objective derives:
First to sketch a transpersonal art of living and a fashioning of the self beyond morals and,
secondly, to show how such an undertaking also takes us with postmodern philosophy out of
postmodernity and re-opens the plane of transcendence towards a transrationality.

In order to achieve this objective, I will first re-take some critical moments of Western
philosophy, interpreting with Friedrich Nietzsche and Wolfgang Dietrich the current situation
as Apollonian Hegemony. Secondly, I will show the specific effects of this hegemony on the
forms of subjectivation, and establish with Michel Foucault that a subjectivity, which is open
to transformation, necessarily has to be thought without recurring to either morals or the
strong category of the Truth.

Thirdly, in counterpoint to the Apollonian hegemony, I will develop a concept of art

and establish how, through relating the Apollonian once more with the Dionysian, an Art of
Transformation becomes possible, which is perceived in relationality and aims for a
(verwindende) transfiguration of the subject through putting into dynamic play both
Dionysian (energetic) and Apollonian (aesthetic) elements. Fourthly, this Apollonian
Dionysian interplay shall be linked to a radicalized version of the Foucauldian understanding
of power towards an energetic power. A transpersonal idea of subjectivity will be developed,
perceiving subjectivation as perpetual process within an aesthetic-energetic sphere of
becoming in severality.

23

Fifthly, I will complement this Art of the Trans-personal Self with an ethics that does
not derive its validity from a formal code of behavior and which is thus not a moral ethics, but
on the contrary an aesthetic and energetic one; and will, sixthly, draw out several concrete
practices of the self, as they are applicable and usable in the technological age of the twenty
first century.

I will finally show how such a trans-rational practice ultimately takes us beyond the
field of theory back into a realm of experiential understanding beyond postmodernity, a weak
transcendent realm where (scientific, rational) knowing has to give way to the intuition of
understanding.

Methodological Considerations
The main methodological problem posed by this dissertation is reflected in the question of
how one can thinkingly and theoretically approach something which eludes theorizing? How
is it possible to approximate theoretically something which is beyond rational description?
The main method proposed in this dissertation starts from an analysis, recombination and
interpretation of certain practices, certain works which, following Foucault, the self performs
on itself.

From here I will trace a connection from these practices to a type of experience which
is linked to a certain understanding of the self leading further to an art of living. This method,
however, at first sight might be seen to hit a barrier exactly at the very moment when an
argument for a limitation of the reach of theory in favor of the practice of living is put forth.
At this point recourse to empirical methods might perhaps appear logical.
24

However, in light of the implicit critique of empiricism that is also inherent in this
work, any empirical research leading to scientific knowledge will consciously be avoided
when encountering this point of theoretical rupture in favor of an argument for experiential
understanding (and so an understanding that is non-empirical in the scientific sense) before
which theorizing ceases. This is a necessary restriction advocated and not a shortcoming. As it
will be argued that a certain experiential field of life invariably falls out of the reach of both
rational theorizing and empirical research, any attempt to bring it back into either of those
fields can only be through an act of reduction and renewed rationalization. The method
chosen thus consists in leading the theoretical argument up to that moment of transformation
while acknowledging that it is only through this critical restraint and a cognitive (theoretical)
letting go that the field of the transrational can be opened at all.

The authors chosen here are mainly drawn from the realm of philosophy. Although it
would of course also have been possible to approach the topic via the field of psychology, I
have chosen to lay more emphasis on the philosophical side. If the question is in how far it is
possible to go with certain postmodern philosophers beyond postmodernity, then this slant
towards philosophy to me only appears consequent. Still it needs to be mentioned that some
of the most interesting and cutting edge concepts and practices are currently found in the field
of transpersonal psychology, recurring to the works of, amongst others, C.G. Jung, Wilhelm
Reich, Stanislav Grof, Roberto Assagioli, Abraham Maslow, Ervin Laszlo and Ken Wilber10.
It is my aim to propose meeting points for those two fields, spaces of connectivity where,
beyond the narrow categories of disciplines, a new field of research might open up.

10

See also Dietrich, 2006b 39ff.

25

The term philosophy and philosopher for the purposes of this work are therefore taken
in the broader sense of the word, including as my main sources the works of Michel Foucault
and Friedrich Nietzsche. My affiliation with philosophy ends whenever it is stipulated that in
order to philosophize one needs to have a system which is something I do not claim for
myself. It is in this respect that I follow Michel Foucault, who defines philosophy not by a
certain system or syntax but via its content: philosophy for Foucault is the (critical)
preoccupation with questions of truth and freedom11. It is, he asserts, an activity or movement:

The movement by which, not without uncertainty, dreams and illusions, one detaches
oneself from what is accepted as true and seeks other rules that is philosophy. The
displacement and transformation of frameworks of thinking, the changing of received
values and all the work that has been done to think otherwise, to do something else, to
become other than what one is that too, is philosophy. (Foucault, 1997l: 327)

This movement which, according to Foucault, makes a venture philosophical is also the
movement of becoming differently. This activity of detaching oneself from what has been
held as true is simultaneously a movement of freedom.

On my own trajectory - which I understand as philosophical in this sense - I so remain,

without chagrin or regret, an assembler who takes what he needs but also has no qualms to cut
and continue with something else, if what previously has been found no longer fits his
purposes12. It is in this sense that I intend to take serious Foucaults famous statement that he
wishes his books to be read like a kind of tool-box, which others can rummage through to
find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area (Foucault, 1974).

11

See also Schmid, 2000: 269.

I owe a debt of thanks to Prof. Dr. Martina Kaller for reminding me of the strings that come attached if one
takes up the mantle of the academic discipline of philosophy. Since I have no intention of letting this work be
pulled by those strings I prefer to sever them right away and choose a path which, while perhaps more eclectic,
hopefully is no less meaningful.
12

26

Consequently, the method I employ could perhaps best be described as a circle of

transpositions following Rosi Braidotti (2006: 5), who defines a transposition as follows:

It indicates an intertextual, cross-boundary or transversal transfer, in the sense of a

leap from one code, field or axis into another, not merely in the quantitative mode of
plural multiplications, but rather in the qualitative sense of complex multiplicities. It is
not just a matter of weaving together different strands, variations on a theme (textual
or musical), but rather of playing the positivity of difference as a specific theme of its
own. As a term in music, transposition indicates variations and shifts of scale in a
discontinuous but harmonious pattern. It is thus created as an in-between space of
zigzagging and of crossing, non-linear but not chaotic, nomadic, yet accountable and
committed [].

The term transposition, Braidotti elaborates, has a double history in genetics and music.
Moves of transposition trace a path which appears to proceed by leaps and bounds but is not
deprived of logic and coherence (2006: 5ff.). In the circular form of transposition used here
in this dissertation, starting from a certain concept a circle is described through a series of
subsequent approximations, couplings and partial fusions with and differentiations from
related concepts. In this case the starting point will be the concept of the Apollonian and
Dionysian by Friedrich Nietzsche and, through such a series of transpositions, we shall
examine how a path can be traced leading via a careful dissociation of bonds that would
normally maintain cohesiveness (Braidotti, 2006: 5ff.) from Friedrich Nietzsche into
postmodernity and back out again, thus achieving our objective of going beyond
postmodernity.

In this movement I will simultaneously draw out the Art of the Transpersonal Self,
thus also approximating the second goal. For this undertaking the works of Michel Foucault
and Friedrich Nietzsche have been chosen as guiding grid, also because they lend themselves
27

to both a postmodern, immanent, interpretation but can also be used towards providing
pathways for a re-opening of the plane of transcendence and an art of existence. Ultimately
those Nietzschean and Foucauldian concepts are so transposed to a series of practices and
techniques of living derived from a different tradition and different cultures of origin, once
more following Braidotti`s idea of transposable concepts as nomadic notions that weave a
web connecting philosophy to social reality, theoretical speculation to concrete plans;
concepts to imaginative figurations (Braidotti, 2006: 7).

As far as the use of sources goes, the main bulk of research so has undoubtedly been
conducted on the works of Michel Foucault and furthermore on Friedrich Nietzsche. With
those two authors I have ventured to stick as closely as possible to their own texts, with two
main rules for exceptions. The first one consists in those authors who are of such an
importance in their own right that it might be impossible not to familiarize oneself to some
extent with their works. This goes for Gilles Deleuze in general and for his treatises on
Foucault (Deleuze, 1988) and Nietzsche (Deleuze, 1983) in particular, as well as for Gianni
Vattimos Nietzsche (2002). The second exception was made for literature drawing on those
two authors and of such relevance for the state of the art of the topic at hand that they cannot
be ignored: Wilhelm Schmids Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst (2000) would be
one such example and in a similar vein I am indebted to the works of Bracha Ettinger on the
Matrixial Sphere (2006), which have helped my conceptualization of the transpersonal.

Falling in neither one of those two categories of exceptions is first Gianni Vattimos
concept of Weak Thought (2006), which has been used as a touchstone for this whole work.
This dissertation is in many ways, indeed, a weak proposal. Special emphasis secondly has to
be placed on the influence of Wolfgang Schirmacher whose philosophy of Lebenstechniken
(1983, 1989a, 1994a, 1994b, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007) has provided an inspiration for
28

many of the ideas developed in this work. The third case fitting neither rule nor exception is
the work of Wolfgang Dietrich (1998, 2006a; 2006b, 2006c) and especially but not
exclusively his interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsches Apollo and Dionysius. Wolfgang
Dietrichs influence on this study rightly belongs right next to Michel Foucaults and
Friedrich Nietzsches. While the mistakes I might have made of course are my own, it
remains to be said that without his inspiration and guidance none of this would actually have
been possible. The frequent and crucial reliance I make on especially the energetic
understanding of the Dionysian is drawn from Wolfgang Dietrichs work.

A few further words on the use of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel
Foucault are in order. Although the understanding that can be gleaned from Friedrich
Nietzsches Apollo and Dionysius (1967, 1968, 1974) are one of the guiding threads for this
dissertation, I originally had intended to predominantly draw from Nietzsches early period,
making an exception only for the The Gay Science (1974) which truly is his lifestyle book.
This, however, has proven to be impossible since the Apollonian and Dionysian surface at
different times throughout Nietzsches whole work and really can not be separated from many
other crucial concepts of his thought. In the end I think that this study has profited from not
sticking to the original working plan in this case.

The works of Michel Foucault have provided more of a difficulty to narrow down
from the beginning, especially since his influence is so prevalent throughout this whole
research work. Ultimately I have decided to focus on his middle and late period of work, the
reasons for which I think are fairly apparent.

The middle period shows his pre-occupation with power, discourse and practices, and
it will be an energetic re-interpretation of power around which a lot of the work of my
29

dissertation hinges (Foucault, 1974, 1977a, 1977b, 1980a, 1990a, 2000c). The late period is
identified commonly with the Second and Third Volumes of the History of Sexuality
(Foucault, 1988a; 1990b) and many of his later lectures at the Collge de France (2005) as
well as several crucial articles, interviews (1997b, 1999, 2001) and parts of his projected
fourth volume of the History of Sexuality13. These works mark the period in which Michel
Foucault concerned himself with ethics, the self and the art of living, which for my re-casting
of his ideas towards the Art of the Transpersonal Self simply are crucial. Foucaults later
lectures at the Collge de France (Foucault, 2003, 2005) in this regard are seminal and
basically the whole chapter two has been dedicated to his masterpiece in this respect, namely
The Hermeneutics of the Subject (Foucault, 2005).

This focus on the middle and late phase of Foucaults creative life should in no way be
considered as a depreciation of the early phase, as indeed the middle and late phase only can
be understood if read in the light of his early work centering around discourse and the so
called death of the subject14. However, for the purpose of this work it is - to express it perhaps
a bit flippantly - less important to know the details about why the subject has died but how the
self can still, while taking this death into account, constitute itself in a positive manner and
why and how that could lead us beyond postmodernity. This is really the net benefit that a
radical reading of the late Foucault could bring us, provided one is ready to twist, decline and
distort his thought.

Last but not least, it shall at this point also be explicitly stated that my academic and
professional background is in Peace Studies. Insofar as any dissertation, and especially one
13

This, at the time of Foucaults death supposedly almost finished, fourth volume has never been published in its
entirety. Only a fragment has appeared under the title The Confession of the Flesh (1980b).
14
If such a periodization is taken to be admissible, then the early period would span the time from the original
French publication of Madness and Civilization in 1954 until The Order of Things in 1971. The middle period
would gyrate around two major publications: Discipline and Punish in 1975 and The Will to Knowledge in 1976;
followed by the late period with the above mentioned Use of Pleasure and Care of the Self, both published
shortly before Foucaults death in 1984, as corner-pieces.

30

dedicated to an Art of the Self, is always also and even primarily a personal undertaking this
obviously influences my thoughts and writings. In this light also the works of theorists like
Wolfgang Stzl (2003), Francisco Muoz (2006) and Johan Galtung (1996) can be found in
the following pages, providing an ethical background for this Art of the Transpersonal Self. I
hope it will become sufficiently clear in the course of this dissertation that ethical here by no
means implies moral.

31

1. Apollo and Dionysius

He [man] is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art [...].

(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1967: 37)

The work of Friedrich Nietzsche stands at the cradle for large parts of twentieth century
philosophy. The influence of his thought spans the bridge from such diverse thinkers such as,
for example, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, and yes, Michel Foucault. Foucault himself
has asserted this influence on his thought at several instances during his life and reading
Nietzsche at a young age might have been the same revealing experience it has been for so
many contemporary thinkers. What this chapter and the next one will focus on is to establish a
connection between these two thinkers, Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, a
connection which will fully become apparent in the third chapter and which will lead us
towards the Art of the Transpersonal Self.

To be more concise, the aim of this introductory chapter is to work out the first part of
an interpretive frame which shall serve as the theoretically guiding grid for the whole
dissertation. The second part of this frame will be provided in the subsequent chapter, when
we will be re-taking from a Foucauldian point of view some of the topics dealt with now
under a Nietzschean light. Both together will constitute the frame from which one can
approach the main topic the Art of the Transpersonal Self.

This first chapter thus serves several purposes: First we will approximate a certain
style of living as practiced by the ancient pre-Socratic Greeks. We will see how their
understanding of a distinct style of life is concretely derived from an interplay of two forces
the Apollonian and Dionysian. We will secondly establish how this interplay was to be fatally

32

disrupted and thirdly approach some possible consequences of the subsequent Hegemony of
Apollo and Suppression of the Dionysian.

Ultimately it will become necessary to supersede this (like any) theoretical frame at
the point at which theory fades. However, in order to be able to twist (verwinden) our
theoretical foundations, we need to first make explicit what they are and this will be the
topic of chapter one and two.

1.1. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Birth of Greek Tragedy

When Friedrich Nietzsche published the Birth of Greek Tragedy (1967) as his first book in
1872, there might have been a myriad of purposes on his mind. Some of them, indeed, are
fairly obvious and have been much discussed amongst those evident reasons one might
safely rate his hopes for a rejuvenation of Europe through Germany (a hope which he was
very soon to give up on) and another obvious motive in this book is to give expression to his
admiration of Wagner, for which he would in the preface to a later edition also criticize
himself harshly.

However, there are two things of interest for what is at stake here which unite
Nietzsches first work with many of his later writings. The Birth of Greek Tragedy (1967) is
first of all, like also his later Gay Science (1974) a life-style book. They are both life-style
books in the sense that they both deal with a certain style of living understood as a way of
conceiving oneself and of giving ones life a distinct shape. However, while the Gay Science
is a work of a more prospective kind and so deals with Nietzsches reflections on his own way
of living and with the ways of living he saw during his time or wished to see coming or bring

33

about in the future, the Birth of Greek Tragedy deals with a way of living that at Nietzsches
time was long dead and gone.

In the latter Nietzsche (1967) analyses the cosmovisions of the ancient Greeks. And he
chooses a rather peculiar approach at that, for he looks at Greek life-style through the lens and
focus of Greek tragedy an art form. The time span for which Nietzsche takes the Greek
tragedy into view is no coincidence: It is the period of time in which something happens that
Foucault (1997e) probably would call a problematization: a practice which has hitherto been
taken for granted and accepted starts to lose its self-evidence, becomes problematized and
thus appears in discourse as a question and problem. Nietzsche deals with the crucial timespan in Greek history in which in the realm of art the ancient tragedy withered to be replaced
through the New Attic comedy. Simultaneously, this is also the period in which philosophy
started to appear on the scene in its modern form with the advent of Socrates and Plato.

What Nietzsche (1967) suggests is that this shift is more than a coincidental
simultaneity between a change in the realm of arts (replacement of the tragedy by Attic
comedy) and in the realm of thought (a new system of thinking which arises with Plato). He
contends that together with those two occurrences a whole way of living and perceiving the
world undergoes a fundamental change and break.

This in turn brings us to the second interesting pre-occupation which already can be
found in the Birth of Greek Tragedy and which would stay with Nietzsche for most of his
creative life: the two principles of the Apollonian and Dionysian. And it is those two
principles, or to be more precise the change of relation between those two principles and the
different ways in which they are portrayed which, in Nietzsche, connects the question of

34

(Socratic/Platonic) philosophy with the question of the Greek tragedy and ultimately the way
of living.

At this point we need to take a closer look in order to discern how exactly one of those
three elements (the shifting perception of the Dionyisan/Apollonian relation) traverses the
other two elements the life and death of tragedy in the realm of the arts and the onset of
Socratic/Platonic thought. With Wolfgang Dietrich (2006c) I will argue that what ultimately
emerges from this shift is a changed cosmovision, a changed perception of self and universe
and how those two relate to each other.

Following the Birth of Greek Tragedy in the chronology of its account let us begin
with an approach to the realm of the arts. This immediately leads to the Greek world of
divinities. In the form of Apollo and Dionysius the Ancient Greeks had the peculiar habit of
venerating two gods of the arts and, as Wolfgang Dietrich (2006c: 37) puts it they honored
both gods in kind.

On the one hand, the deity of formal beauty, aesthetics and style or, as Dietrich renders
it, the God of form Apollo. On the other hand, the wild revelries of the Cult of the
Dionysian, as God of the orgiastic, and, once more in the words of Dietrich, the god of
content. If the formalistic elements of the Apollonian reached its epitome in the clear and
sublime Greek architecture, it was the nonimaginistic art of Music (Nietzsche, 1967: 33)
and the energetic vibrations it produced that was deemed to be the expression of the
Dionysian.

Manifested in those two gods, therefore, were two principles, two concepts. Those
concepts in turn were not so much perceived as opposed, but on the contrary as mutually
35

conditioning each other in the form of a co-dependence and dynamic inter-relation. Contrary
to appearances there is so no dialectics in the Apollonian and Dionysian but a reciprocal call
and co-determining connection. For the Greeks Apollo could not exist without Dionysius and
vice versa. What is hidden in those metaphors is a fundamental perception about life and
about how to live it.

Life, human life, for the ancient Greeks in this pre-Socratic period only becomes
possible in the interplay of those two, in the simultaneous acknowledgment of both Dionysian
and Apollonian elements. This is indeed how the Apollonian/Dionysian connects the world of
the arts to the concretely lived world of the Greeks a world in which it was deemed
necessary to give an individual life a certain shape.

The image of a struggle between Apollo and Dionysius which arises on first sight in
Nietzsches account of this time points to the conflictive nature of this interplay and to the
shifting relation between the two principles. Apollo and Dionysius were not always and at
each time evenly matched and equally balanced. The picture that so arises of Greek society is
thus of a way of perceiving the world in which, first, the two principles of form (aesthetics)
and content (energetics) are perceived as mutually conditioning each other. It is, secondly, a
worldview which is inherently conflictive but which does not at all deny this potential for
conflict but, on the contrary, celebrates it as source of creative energy. And it is thirdly a
cosmovision in which the ever shifting relation between both elements is perceived as
absolutely necessary for human life to remain meaningfully possible.

The celebration and symbolic expression of this complex system in turn was Greek
tragedy. The ancient tragedy, far from being a mere form of amusement and far from being
focused solely on its theatrical happenings in the foreground, was an affirmation of this
36

certain way of perceiving life, a clearly defined expression on how to deal with the questions
of form and content or aesthetics and energy.

In the art of tragedy the aspects of both of those two gods surface in great detail: The
Apollonian (formal) aspect gives the tragedy its structure, it serves to channel the Dionysian
energy. For what is at stake in an Art of the Transpersonal Self it is important to realize that
Nietzsche furthermore renders this tragic Apollonian as the principle of individuation
according to stylistic and aesthetic criteria. Through the Apollonian structure the subject can
achieve individuality, separate form and distinctness. In Greek tragedy the Apollonian is thus
symbolized through the single, individual figure the tragic hero. Towards the end of his
creative life, Nietzsche would come back to this figure and describe the Apollonian the
following way:

The word Apollonian means: the urge to perfect self-sufficiency, to the typical
individual, to all that simplifies, distinguishes, makes strong, clear, unambiguous,
typical: freedom under the law. (Nietzsche, 1968: 539)

The Apollonian so turns into the principle of individuation the principium individuationis
(Nietzsche, 1967: 36) which makes for individual identity and stability. The Dionysian on
the contrary is expressed on stage through the dithyrambic chorus. The chorus as main source
of tragic music pulls us into another direction: The chorus is a collective which in itself and
through its music defies individuality and compels us towards a forgetting of ourselves,
towards losing and dissolving individuality in the wild effects of the music. The Dionysian
thus becomes the collective element in which all individuality is potentially dissolved in an
energetic flow:

37

The word Dionysian means: an urge to unity, a reaching out beyond personality, the
everyday society, reality, across the abyss of transitoriness: a passionate-painful
overflowing into darker, fuller, more floating states; an ecstatic affirmation of the total
character of life as that which remains the same just as powerful, just as blissful,
through all change; the great pantheistic sharing of joy and sorrow that sanctifies and
calls good even the most terrible and questionable qualities of life; the eternal will to
procreation, to fruitfulness, to recurrence; the feeling of the necessary unity of creation
and destruction. (Nietzsche, 1968: 539)

The Apollonian soothes, calms and heals, but also asserts and fortifies individuality and
structure, whereas the Dionysian is the perpetual call to let go and give in, to lose inhibitions
and move from the conscious level towards the emotional, towards that which is not known
but felt vibrating through every pore and is thus experienced. Gilles Deleuze (1986: 11)
provides us with an image of this intricate connection between the Apollonian form and the
Dionysian content: Dionysius is like the background on which Apollo embroiders beautiful
appearances, but beneath Apollo, Dionysius rumbles. On the background of the Dionysian
content the Apollonian forms of individuality become possible. Simultaneously, the
Dionysian pull towards dis-individuation is necessary for Apollonian individual being to give
way to a new becoming.

For the Ancient Greeks life was this always precarious balancing act between the two
principles, it became a taking into account and respecting both elements of life as well as their
conflictiveness. In this balancing act Nietzsche situates Greece not just geographically at the
border between two places which show the extreme prevalence of either the Apollonian and
Dionysian - Rome and India:

But from orgies a people can take one path only, the path to Indian Buddhism, and in
order that this may be endurable at all with its yearning towards the nothing it requires
38

the rare ecstatic states with their elevation above space, time and the individual. [...]
Where the political drives are taken to be absolutely valid, it is just as necessary that a
people should go to the path of the most extreme secularization whose most
magnificent but also most terrifying expression may be found in the Roman imperium.
[...] Placed between India and Rome, and pushed toward a seductive choice, the
Greeks succeeded in inventing a third form. (Nietzsche, 1968: 124, 125)

In the negotiation between those two principles, between the formalizing individuation of the
Apollonian and the energetic flow of the Dionysian, revelries the tragedy and the art of Greek
life took place.

To sum it up: it is in this way that the Apollonian/Dionysian traverses the field of
tragedy and gives it meaning within a larger context, as crucial corner stones in a distinct
cosmovision characterized by a striving for an always precarious balance between the
principles of form and content (or aesthetic and energetic) and the acknowledgment of
conflict as potentially creative, but in any case inevitable force in human life. We now have
taken a look at the relation between two of our three elements (the Dionysian/Apollonian and
the field of arts via tragedy). Before we can complete our first part of our theoretical grid and
draw the pertinent conclusions we will now need to take a look at the third element of
relevance for us in The Birth of Greek Tragedy - the Socratic/Platonic moment.

1.2. The Apollonian Hegemony

This brings us to the point of rupture within the Greek cosmovision, the point when the
balance between the two principles was to be fatefully upset. With the appearance of Socrates
and Plato the scales were tipped in one direction and ultimately proved to be beyond the
possibility of regaining a balance. Nietzsche in this instance focuses on Socrates, but it might
39

be suggested that his disciple Plato here deserves our equal attention. With Nietzsche we will
so take a look at the changes occurring in the fifth century B.C. around Socrates and Greek
tragedy, before approximating Plato and the Apollonian hegemony15.

In the fifth century B.C. the art form of Greek tragedy dies away and is replaced by a
new form of theatrical art new Attic Comedy as conceived for the first time by Euripides.
The protagonist and the structure of the story subsequently gain ever more importance in
theater, while the chorus and the music are relegated to mere scaffolding. Theater increasingly
starts to follow a cognitive structure for which the energetic elements play an ever smaller
role. In the general realm of the arts Apollonian elements are focused and highlighted, while
the Dionysian recede. Doric architecture, the clear and simple lines of this most Apollonian
art form, also reach their maturity at this time. Nietzsche comments that there is a war being
waged to push back the Dionysian elements: For me, the Doric state and Doric art are
explicable only as a permanent military encampment of the Apollonian (Nietzsche, 1967:
47).

For Nietzsche, Socrates (together with Euripides) is the first person to no longer
comprehend tragedy, to no longer grasp its emotional and energetic Dionysian pull. Socrates,
the theoretical man (Nietzsche, 1967: 18) approaches the arts from a rational (and thus
Apollonian) point of view:

15

The latter necessarily has to remain a sketch. Important at this point is to draw out some of the lines of the
Apollonian hegemony and subsequent developments in order to approximate why a search for alternatives might
be imperative. However, the focus of this dissertation after all is on an Art of the Self and not so much on the
historical overview which a more complete picture of the history of the Apollonian/Dionysian elements up until
modernity would necessitate. Such a comprehensive account of (European) history is neither possible nor
required here. We will thus subsequently work out the elements of the Apollonian and Dionysian essential for an
understanding of the Art of the Self, but will follow the details of the historical overview only as far as strictly
necessary.

40

[...] Socrates might be called the typical non-mystic, in whom, through a hypertrophy,
the logical nature is developed as excessively as the instinctive nature is developed in
the mystic. (Nietzsche, 1968: 88)

For all his rational and intellectual capabilities which made him such a titan of his time, this
instinctive or intuitive element necessary to feel the Dionysian seems to have remained
underdeveloped in the Socratic worldview. Looking for structure, speech and aesthetics the
Dionysian element is thus downplayed. It is no coincidence that Socrates found that he
himself was unable to play a musical instrument and places so much importance on
knowledge. Once more in the words of Nietzsche: This is the new opposition: the Dionysian
and the Socratic and the art of Greek tragedy was wrecked on this (Nietzsche, 1968: 82).

But Greek tragedy had been, as we have just seen in the previous section, more than
just a form of theatrical amusement, it had been the expression of a cosmovision through
which a whole way of living had been celebrated. The shift that occurred when tragedy started
to wither might have been imperceptible at first, but it would turn out, as we shall see, to be a
fundamental break in Western history. Nietzsche here in his account stays with Socrates, but
for the purposes of this work it is necessary to follow the turn of events for a little longer and
also take Socrates most famous disciple into account. For while it can be agreed with
Nietzsche that in Socrates theoretical man had found its origin, it was Plato who would begin
to formalize this new way of life, which we will take a look at in the second chapter.

The foremost principle for this new way of life and founding ground for a new
cosmovision turned out to be a new category: the Truth. Truth, at that point in history did not
constitute a new phenomenon as such, however it would become Platos lasting influence to
have taken this concept and filled it with a hitherto unknown meaning. Only with Plato does
truth become what we perceive of it today the Truth.
41

In the Platonic understanding the truth is something that is derived from grasping
things as they really are: truth is the effect obtained through an approximation to the pure
world of ideas, a world which lies beyond the mere and deceiving appearances and constitutes
a sphere where things reveal themselves in their essence. Foucault remarks on Plato that he
searched for the authentic, the pure gold (Foucault, 1998e: 344). And he did so by taking a
look at the (impure) manifestations in the real world and then looking from above these
manifestations to a model, a model so pure that the actual purity of the pure resembles it,
approximates it, and measures itself against it (Foucault, 1998e: 345).

Having the truth thus implies seeing things as they really are in their ideal and
abstract form which can be differentiated from the merely apparent world of everyday
existence. Gianni Vattimo sums up this Platonic invention of the truth:

Platos stable and definitive world of ideas was supposed to guarantee the possibility
of rigorous knowledge of the mobile and mutable things of everyday existence.
(Vattimo, 1999: 29)

However, with positing such a world of ideas, the truth itself becomes an abstract category
which in principle works the same and is valid everywhere and at all times. Through the
history-making importance that is placed on the truth, the Apollonian elements of the formal,
the abstract and universal are favored. The truth can now become an abstract and formal
universalism an entirely Apollonian concept.

Wolfgang Dietrich re-casts the Nietzschean interpretation of the Apollonian/Dionysian

once more by associating these two principles more explicitly with two tendencies on how to
organize a society: the formal Apollonian becomes the moral worldview and the content of
42

the Dionysian an energetic interpretation of the world. Moral in this sense implies the
interpretation of the world according to a formalized and universal code of conduct, an
absolute grid from which a division between good and evil can be derived and which
advances hand in hand with the formation of institutions. The energetic worldview, on the
other hand, strives towards harmony in the universe the harmony of society, nature, and
cosmos (Dietrich and Stzl, 2006). Harmony reigns when the relations in a concrete place and
time are in order and balanced.

The energetic is thus primarily a quality of relationality, whereas morality is derived

from adherence to an externalized and abstract formal structure. Extrapolating this thought it
furthermore follows that the formal Apollonian worldview, as we have seen, also lends itself
easily to universalization, whereas the Dionysian harmony has to remain local and contingent.
With Plato and ever since in his wake Apollo is given precedence over Dionysius and with it
the category of the formal reigns within the Mediterranean and in the cultures that derive from
this region:

With the transition [] to the concept of the one and only final truth the
Mediterranean turns away from all its neighbours, invents philosophy as an
intellectual virtue and Europe as a cultural project. (Dietrich, 2006c: 28)

With the Apollonian the logical - the rational, the formal and aesthetic - triumphed over the
energetic and with it triumphed the political now understood as a formal and
institutionalized category of societal organization. The first effects of this shift were so to be
perceived exactly in the field of societal organization with the institutional development of
the city state of the Polis. The Dionysian fall from grace was fully corroborated later on with
the beginning of Christianity, when Dionysius as Satan - was relegated to the dark
(Dietrich, 2006c: 37).
43

The reign of Apollo, the reign of the principle of form, came to its full force in the
institutionalizations of Church, state and, later on, in the formalistic methods of science.
Finally, this led from the Socratic theoretical man to what Wolfgang Dietrichs Nietzsche
calls White Mens Disease as the effect of the negation of Dionysian energy (Dietrich,
2006c: 37). The suppression of the energetic principle individually leads to blockages and, in
its extreme forms, to anomy. The formalistic reign of Apollo leads to the attempt at
controlling emotions via institutionalizations and, in its extreme forms, to the fossilization and
petrification experienced within the modern state system and its ideas of tracked diplomacy
and conflict prevention.

On the effects of this Apollonian hegemony on a larger scale Dietrich points out that it
served to make Europe stubborn, self referential, strong and aggressive (Dietrich, (2006a):
2). On the outside this led to centuries of the European expansionist drive of conquest and
colonialism which always went hand in hand with the Christian missionizing zeal, and on the
inside it meant the formalization and increasing aesthetizication of politics and social life.

Unhinged from the Dionysian another element has since surfaced and the West - being
thusly influenced by Apollo Phobos has become phobic in its striving for security, its manic
fear of the Other and absolute quest for control. The Church and the State would more and
more become the guarantors of the Apollonian tyranny. Under the sign of institutionalization
and (at least in the case of the Church) absolute Truth a formalistic, abstract, and ultimately
rational and universal worldview was aggressively spread all over the world.

As Friedrich Nietzsche - and later Wolfgang Dietrich - already pointed out, Church
and morals also formally advance hand in hand, as morality is exactly derived from such a
44

claim to the Truth. Morals can so be defined as an abstract code of conduct, exclusively
regulating and setting down the universal precepts for the Good life. Through morals it
becomes possible to separate the Good from the Evil, the righteous from the sinners just as
through the Good Book the believers can be separated from the pagans.

Once the claim to ultimate truth and morals has been set down in principle, the Others,
those who do not follow this code of conduct, can at best be tolerated, but most of the time
they at least have to be shown the right path (towards alternatively salvation of their souls, the
truth, development, progress, civilization or enlightenment). And, as history has shown time
and again, once the claim to the absolute truth is established, also this negative and empty
tolerance is always endangered and can only too easily give way to that other practice of the
Church over centuries: Convert or die!

In this rejection of Otherness another Apollonian element, the striving for purity,
reaches its pinnacle. Those three figures - the claim to absolute truth, the rejection of the
Other and the simultaneous striving for the own purity be that of the self and the own
physical body, the purity of ones thoughts, of the social body or the race - are intricately
connected. Left unchecked, there so surfaces something extremely violent in this Apollonian
striving for purity. Everything indeterminate, uncertain, not following the rule laid down be
that rule of the law, the formal code of conduct of morals, but also everything Other that can
so also be classified as inferior - is constantly under the threat of aggression.

It would take long centuries for this formalization and aesthetizication to be pushed to
its extremes. At its culminating point there nevertheless stands the civilization break whose
shadows already led Walter Benjamin in the middle of the 1930s to his pre-sentient

45

realization: All efforts to aestheticize politics culminate in one point. That one point is war
(Benjamin, 2002: 121).

In a re-interpretation of Benjamins statement one could agree that with Apollo

rampant and unchecked the Dionysian is ever more pushed to the margins. The complete
formalization and aestheticization of the social and political sphere can ultimately only be
hostile to life and become inhuman and can so lead to the complete rejection and
annihilation of the energetic force of life. The Fascist regimes from this point of view are not
the accidents of modernity but the culmination of its Apollonian tendencies.

But even if we do not push the argument until its logical conclusion in the Fascist
extremes, there still is something deeply disconcerting about the modern nation states and
their large scale statistical attempts at population management. The abstract and formal
figures of birth rates, life expectancies, crime rates, literacy and the subsequent measures
leading to hospitals per capita, literacy campaigns, sanitation projects, education policies,
reforms in penal laws etc. all those attempts to cull and optimize this abstract figure of a
population according to predetermined statistical standards have been characterized by
Michel Foucault (1990a and 2003) as biopower in which all modern states are engaged in one
way or the other and to some extent.

Biopower is the power that does not need to kill the Other any more, that does no
longer regress to weapons and wars, but that just makes certain forms of Otherness disappear,
through certain policies disallowing certain lives, certain ways of living and thus, in the end,
certain people to exist. Behind the functioning of biopower there is in each case an abstract,
formal, scientific or moral universalism, or in other words: an Apollonian form.

46

Using the terms of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari (1987), the Apollonian principle
is the one of the stratified - that which segments or territorializes and ties the subject to the
principle of identity. Its expressions - discourse, structure, syntax - pull us in a certain
direction of individuation in the famous words of Stuart Hall (1996: 6-10) they hail us into a
particular place and so induce the investment into pre-established identity categories. It is
only through this investment that those (abstract) categories are filled life. Letting oneself be
hailed like this has, one the one hand, a stabilizing effect on identity. On the other hand, it is
also petrifying and normalizing. Falling into the Apollonian trap, performing identities (Butler
1999) in line with those categories implies a discursive normalization of the subject according
to pre-given social standards. The fortified Apollonian principle so favors being, stability selfsameness and is hostile to becoming, transformation and, ultimately, change.

But simultaneously also a door is opened when one realizes with Judith Butler (1999)
that if identity is performed, this implies that it can also be performed differently. It can be
performed not only in accordance with social standards but also in a disobedient way,
resignifying those identity categories to which we are being hailed. Performing identity
differently implies refusing the standards of normality, like for example when queering the
boundaries of the white, North-Atlantic, heterosexual ideal of gender identity.

Michel Foucault (2000f: 336) points in a similar direction of resistance when stating
that maybe the task today is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are. Those
kinds of resistance, however, always run the danger of entirely remaining within Apollonian
categories, in so far as becoming other always implies becoming somebody else and the
danger of re-ensnarement is so never far off. In the seventies Foucault at first tried to
circumnavigate this danger with the gesture of a permanent, unceasing, refusal. Our task then
would be the perpetual displacement of identity, the unceasing becoming other.
47

This rejection is fueled by the very Foucauldian virtue of the critique16 of what has
made us who we are in order to find out how we could yet be different.17

The body without organs as conceptualized by Deleuze and Guattari (1984) is yet
another kind of resistance along similar lines. Aimed against the normalizing discursive
practice par excellence the talking cure of Freudian psychoanalysis - the body without
organs is pure resistance. A body devoid of organs, Deleuze and Guattari reason, is pure
surface, refusing the interiority which would make it an organism, something that is organized
according to hierarchic, arborescent, principles. The body without organs so posits a barrier
against the thrust of psychoanalysis which is aimed at the interior of the human being and
looks to decode the secrets that are hidden inside. In the schizophrenic rejection of the
bounded stable ego, in the refusal of all interiority and in the rhizomatic exteriority of the
Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari aim to scramble and disrupt the organizing power of
the talking cure.

The line of thinking we will follow here, while drawing upon those approaches, is
different insofar as that what is aimed at is not so much a resistance to the Apollonian, but a
Verwindung of its hegemony. Total rejection of the Apollonian would imply, if ever possible,
an attempt to establish a new Truth and fall back into the violent suppression of the dynamic
balance between Apollonian and Dionysian elements.

Balancing the aesthetic, systemic, Apollonian once more with the Dionysian could
imply twisting the principle of individuation with an energetic practice. Thereby a door could
16

See also Butler, 2000.

In his personal and professional life Foucault (1998d, 1997l) unceasingly practiced this virtue by trying to
efface his identity and rejecting all labels ascribed to him and trying to pin him to his identity (Structuralist,
Poststructuralist, Marxist, Anti-Psychiatrist).
17

48

be opened to a positive becoming, that is, not one borne out of rejection. What might be the
result is a Verwindung of individuality in the sense of an integrating letting go. In the last
phase of his work Michel Foucault also seemed to arrive at a similar conclusion, when the
preoccupation with resistance in his writings was successively replaced by questions of a
positive Art of the Self. It seems as if, at the end, the gesture of resisting who we are became
wed to the problematic of how to still positively fashion ones life. For this Art of the Self
Foucault, like Nietzsche before him, recurred to the ancient Mediterranean area.

1.3. Conclusion
With this first Nietzschean chapter we have achieved several crucial insights for our
theoretical grid. First we have worked out the details of the aspects of the Apollonian and
Dionysian, which were identified with form/aesthetic and content/energetic. Following
Wolfgang Dietrich we, in a first transposition, likened the Apollonian and Dionysian to two
cosmovisions, the moral and energetic. In our first transposition we so started out with two
deities, two divinities of ancient Greece and then extrapolated certain principles.

Secondly, we were able to gain an insight over how different forms of relating those
two principles play themselves out on the societal level; we have adopted the Macro-view the societal view, leaving aside the details of how this cosmovision was concretely lived.
Thirdly, we were already able to relate the Apollonian to a critical limitation of theorizing and
will so need to take up this thread again in the following chapters. Thereof derived, fourthly, a
requirement for the next chapter: For the completion of our theoretical framework and before
we approach the Art of the Transpersonal Self properly, it will now be necessary to re-take
those findings from an individual perspective to determine their exact relevance for an art of

49

living. We will do so with Michel Foucault. After a step of clarification in the third chapter
we shall then, in the fourth chapter read him against the grain and relate his work differently.

Fifthly, it has now become sufficiently clear what the immediate stakes for an Art of
the Transpersonal Self are: Relating the Apollonian once more with the Dionysian cannot be a
rejection of the aesthetic component and neither can it be the attempt to overcome everything
that has made us who we are in the Postmodern age. The Art of the Transpersonal Self thus
could only become possible as a form of acknowledging both the Apollonian and Dionysian
components and of putting them into an affirmative relation once more, towards an Art of
transforming ourselves.

Here we so can, sixthly, formulate two overall qualifications for our attempt to create
an Art of the Transpersonal Self: The outcome would (a) only be transpersonal if it would
become possible to twist (verwinden) the clear-cut Apollonian individuation (which has led to
the autonomous, self-grounding subject of modernity) with a Dionysian energetic fading of
personal borders and an opening of the self - while perhaps still acknowledging and affirming
the need for certain aesthetic, stylistic elements in our life. This Art of the Self (b) would be
trans-rational if the Socratic, Platonic rationality and cognition could once more be related to
the energetic, emotional and artistic and the drive to know and rationally grasp could also be
let fade away. The transrational could thus be found, to use the beautiful picture Friedrich
Nietzsche draws here for us in a Socrates who practices music (Nietzsche, 1968: 98).

50

2. Philosophy and Spirituality

Spirituality postulates that the truth is never given to the subject by right
(Michel Foucault, 2005: 15)

In order to fully grasp the implications of the Dionysian and Apollonian for an Art of the
Transpersonal Self we now will return once more to ancient Greece, this time with Michel
Foucault. The main source here will be his seminal lecture at the Collge de France which has
later on been published as The Hermeneutics of the Subject (Foucault, 2005). A few
similarities are immediately apparent. Foucault chooses to start his analysis of ancient Greece
at the very point Nietzsche breaks off - which is the moment of rupture occurring with Plato
and Socrates. What, however, is of even greater importance for our purposes is that Foucault
focuses on what properly can be called an art of living; his perspective is the Microperspective which makes his approach so suited for our theoretical grid.

With this chapter we will approach and analyze certain technologies of the self, which
are the result of a distinctive perception of oneself and which, I will argue, can be reinterpreted along the lines of the relationality of the Apollonian and Dionysian. At the end of
this chapter it will be possible to draw the findings from the first theoretical part of this work
together.

Yet during this chapter it will also be necessary to gain an insight into how an Art of
Living has already been practiced, concretely, in the history of the West. The objective hereby
is not to revive a Greek or Antique way of living - which might in any case be neither possible
nor desirable. We are no Ancient Greeks and live no longer in Antiquity. And yet, our current
living and all possible forms of individuation and subjectivation available at any given

51

moment in time are, to a certain extent, also influenced and co-determined through the way
our historical horizon has been constructed.

In this sense, shedding a different light on the past, unearthing different traditions and
highlighting blocked or abandoned developments can also give some pointers as to the present
state of being. If there is validity to the Foucauldian claim that will be advanced here in this
chapter, namely that between the Platonic and the Christian Model of subjectivation a third
model - the Hellenistic Art of the Self has been buried - then this might also give some further
insights into the Hegemony of Apollo established in the last chapter.

If the task and experiment for this dissertation, furthermore, is the re-linking of the
Apollonian/Dionysian towards an Art of the Transpersonal Self, then taking a close look at the
historical precedents which have co-determined us might well be crucial. Not to resuscitate
pre-Socratic Greece, but to find out what such an Art of Living can still mean for us, living
today as we are in our own local, contingent, but also increasingly impure and thus to a
certain degree open horizon.

The reasoning behind this chapter is so threefold: Foucaults approach has been
chosen as complementing the macro-view of Nietzsche with a micro-view focusing directly
on subjectivation, and the two objectives are to gain an insight into the Greek Art of the Self
and this way to complete the first theoretical frame.

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2.1. Placing the Hermeneutics of the Subject

The course Michel Foucault taught at the Collge de France during the winter of 1981/82 was
named The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Transcribed into book format this course has only
recently appeared in English language (2005) and only slowly stands to take up a place in
Foucaults overall trajectory of thought.

Despite such a slow reception this course is remarkable in several ways and probably
deserves a central place in Foucaults thinking. First of all it provides a glimpse at the period
of Foucaults long pensive silence which spanned from the publishing of The First Volume of
the History of Sexuality in 1976 (Foucault, 1990a) to its succeeding Volumes Two and Three
The Use of Pleasure (Foucault, 1990b) and the Care of the Self in 1984 (Foucault, 1988a).
During those years of reflection, Foucaults thought shifted direction, moving away from the
preoccupation with power towards the question of ethics and the possibility of an art of living.
In other words, during those years Foucauldian thought turns from what is commonly termed
the middle phase to the late, and final phase.

Didier Eribon, one of Foucaults biographers, remarks that this long period of silence
led to any number of rumors and comments: Foucault was finished, he had nothing more to
say, he was at an impasse... (Eribon, 1991: 321). In hindsight it is easy to defuse those
rumors with a reference to the many vibrant and extraordinary lectures which Foucault gave
during this time - of which the ones at the Collge de France just form a part. Those lectures
show that, far from being finished, Foucault had expanded his studies into new realms.

Similarly, rather than seeing this move from the middle to the late phase of
Foucaults work as a break with or even contradiction of earlier thought - as many of his
critics are still quick to do - it might more accurately be termed a Verwindung. We can
53

understand such a Verwindung in this context as a movement of thought by which earlier

elements are twisted into a new position and thus re-evaluated and partially put into a
different frame and redrawn without, however, just declaring them obsolete, without
discarding or overcoming them in light of something that would be more true than that which
had been thought previously.

This can be exemplified by using Gilles Deleuzes Foucault (1988) as example.

Discussing the works of the later Foucault, Deleuze demonstrates how the concepts of earlier
phases continue to inform Foucault also during the time of his focus on Ancient Greece. Yet
the focus has shifted and rather than positing a break, Deleuze traces how the questions of
relations of force, resistance, and the Nietzschean idea of the historicity, contingency and
finitude of the human subject which have earlier on led Foucault to proclaim the death of man
and to seek to analyze constellations of power, now continue to inspire his work, although in a
different fashion. It is on this background that the problem of how it still might be possible to
lead a life of active subjectivation, of co-creating the own subjectivity and attaining an
understanding of ethics that is not guided by a Christian morality gains relevance.

The Hermeneutics of the Subject (2005) also marks the period of time in which
Foucault more and more approaches philosophy. Had he earlier, in a Nietzschean gesture,
rejected any claims to academic philosophy, this course is a step towards a critical reengagement with this discipline. What is evident in this course is that Foucault, while still
criticizing the idea of philosophy as single means of accessing the truth, also comes to
espouse the idea of philosophy as something that can lead to a practice and thereby change
the subject in its very being. Philosophy can wrest the subject away from what it has taken for
granted and inspire a move towards as of yet uncharted becomings. This understanding of

54

philosophy is risky, as it opens and demands the possibility for the philosopher to let
her/himself be transformed by its practice:

This is a form of philosophy which demands that the individual, to borrow Nietzsches
phrase, risks himself constantly. [...] it involves more than the search for objective
knowledge which has no implication for the subjects mode of existence. (OLeary,
2002: 144)

Therefore, Foucault couples the idea of philosophy with the concept of spirituality. The latter
stresses and accentuates the active part of a practice and signifies a move into an experiential
field beyond the realm of pure knowledge (of the self).

During the time of this course at the Collge de France Foucault was working on the
yet unpublished Volume two and three of his History of Sexuality (Foucault, 1990b; 1988a).
The figure of the Care of the Self - which gave the title to the Third Volume of this History appears extensively in this course. The main difference is that in the Care of the Self Foucault
(1988a) approaches the figure of care with an ethical question in mind. He is interested in the
ethical stance that inspires this practice of the care in ancient Greece. In the Hermeneutics of
the Subject (2005) he approaches the self from the point of view of practices, trying to discern
the inner workings and composition of this distinctive Greek art of living.

If the Hermeneutics of the Subject deserve a special place in this undertaking it is,
firstly, because it shows, clearer than any of Foucaults other works, this practical side of
Foucaults project. Already as regards the title Wilhelm Schmid (2000: 64) remarks that the
Hermeneutics should be understood as referring to technologies and concrete practices of
the self. What Foucault so aims to isolate in this course is the practices, the techniques and
methods which over the period of antiquity were used to actively work on the self. During this
55

course Foucault explores, in great clarity and detail the practical aspects of an aesthetics of
existence as it had already been lived about two thousand years ago. In the Foucauldian
toolbox we here find models for a how to which can serve as guiding threads for thinking
about concrete practices for a twenty first century Art of the Transpersonal Self.

Secondly, this course not only highlights the tradition which Foucault tries to rescue
from oblivion (what he terms the Hellenistic Model) but also gives us an insight into what he
wants to set himself apart from. It shows us what he rejects as much as what he proposes. It is
in this respect that commentators like Michael Ure (2007) point to the critical distinction
which Foucault places between his project and the Christian Model against which he sets out.

It is this Christian Model which, according to Foucault, was partially responsible for
the obliteration of those practices which had previously enabled an active and positive
preoccupation with the self. In the morally inspired hostility of the early Church Fathers, in
their condemnation and vilification of the care of the self what has been eradicated from our
philosophical and ethical heritage [is] a fertile tradition that offers us alternative
images, techniques, ideas and practices for theorizing the selfs relationship to itself
(Ure, 2007: 31). This Christian condemnation of the care of the self as immoral and
narcissistic served to eventually smother a vibrant tradition which hitherto had linked ethics
and aesthetics towards an art of existence.

The other Model from which Foucault seeks to dissociate his project is what he terms
the Platonic Model. The Platonic Model, in Foucaults rendering, overly favors what would
later be termed the ratio, the rational form of cognition leading first to philosophy as the
principle of knowledge and later on the scientific method as exclusive road to accessing the
Truth. In the Cartesian Cogito both this rationality and the idea of the autonomous, self
56

grounded subject of Enlightenment and modernity are enshrined, and it is in distinction to

those principles that Foucaults Hermeneutics of the Subject looks to a Hellenistic Model to
provide an alternative.

In the interpretation of Timothy OLeary (2002: 35f.) the title Heremeneutics of the
Subject so could be misleading for it actually defines what Foucault sets out against: it is
this hermeneutics which aim at deciphering the Truth of the soul, at interpreting (and
confessing) every movement of thought from which Foucault wants to separate the Hellenistic
Models practices of the active transformation of the self.

On the road to an Art of the Transpersonal Self this course at the Collge de France
thus provides a crucial stepping stone, for it sheds a clearer light on certain practical aspects
and elements of late Foucauldian thought than any other of his texts, while providing a
brilliantly lucid overview on what it sets itself apart from. In this latter respect it is also
uniquely suited for our purposes because it distinguishes the concept of self from the
modern tradition of the Cartesian cogito on the one hand, without letting itself get ensnared in
the entanglements of the moral trap, on the other. Ultimately it is in critical distinction to
those two concepts that also the current study aims to establish itself.

2.2. Philosophy and Spirituality - Knowledge of the Self and Care of the Self
In this lectures at the Collge de France in winter 1981/1982 Michel Foucault based his
course on the distinction between two principles in ancient Greece. The first principle, he
calls the principle of philosophy, and identifies it with the Delphic precept of know
yourself (gnothi seauton). The second one, he names the spiritual principle, the care of

57

the self (epemeleia heautou). He defines the first one, the philosophical principle, as the one
which is concerned with the conditions of possibility of knowledge and the formalized
mechanisms that regulate the access to truth:

We will call, if you like, philosophy the form of thought that asks, not of course
what is true and what is false, but what determines that there is and can be truth and
falsehood and whether or not we can separate the true and the false. We will call
philosophy the form of thought that asks what it is that enables the subject to have
access to the truth and which attempts to determine the conditions and limits of the
subjects access to truth (Foucault 2005: 15).

This first principle of know yourself, the philosophical principle, is so also the principle of
cognition which leads to knowledge. The second principle, the care of the self, Foucault
alternatively also identifies as the spiritual principle, which is related to a certain set of
practices, like ascetics or meditations that the self performs. Like the knowledge of the self
also this second principle is related to truth. Towards that end, Foucault characterizes
spirituality as being the form of practices which postulate that, such as he is, the subject is
not capable of truth, but that, such as it is, the truth can transfigure and save the subject
(Foucault 2005: 19).

Access to truth, in this instant, is linked to an additional attribute that is not only
derived from knowledge (philosophy). Accessing this curious understanding of truth is not
possible via just a form of cognition leaving the self unaltered in its being, but only through
the combination of the knowledge of the self with a spiritual practice care of the self. As
Foucault argues in the quote above, the subject, as it is, remains incapable of truth. Truth is so
related to a practice of transformation of the self. Only in this interplay between knowledge of
the self and care of the self does a form of truth arise which is so understood as exactly this

58

transfiguring moment of alteration and becoming. Through a certain practice combining

knowledge of the self (philosophy) and care of the self (spirituality) a transfiguring moment
of becoming (of truth) is enabled in which the subject, via accessing this notion of truth of
itself, is transformed. We shall now look at this notion in more detail.

In this spiritual practice there is an active element of care - epimeleiea - which is

stressed. This care of oneself, however, is not to be mistaken with a narcissistic or egoistic
love of the self, but is on the contrary always related to some kind of work one performs on
oneself:

[...] the notion of epimeleia does not merely designate this general attitude or this form
of attention turned on the self. The term epimeleia also always designates a number of
actions exercised on the self by the self, actions by which one takes responsibility for
oneself and by which one changes, purifies and transforms oneself. (Foucault, 2005:
11)

This work of care is undertaken first for the spiritual and also physical well-being, but
secondly also for transformative purposes. It is important to point out that the care of the self
is not synonymous either to the modern idea of self-help. It is much rather the practice of an
active self and not intended as a cure for a supposed deficiency in normalcy. There is no
overall standard of normality to be reached but neither is there an abstract ideal of perfect
enlightenment underlying this concept of the care of the self, nor a progressive path towards
higher illumination to be followed.

Simultaneously, this understanding of spirituality should not be confused with a

religion. Although Foucault himself does not state such a difference explicitly, it can be
argued that the differentiation between spirituality and religiosity opened elsewhere by
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Christina and Stanislav Grof (Grof and Grof, 1990: 40ff) also applies in this case. Following
their distinction the main difference between spirituality and religiosity consists in the fact
that the latter is tied to an institutional frame and formalized code of conduct, whereas the
former entails the search for personal transcendence without necessarily recurring to an
abstract and universal frame of reference. While religion thus implies the moral categories of
an absolute truth and goes hand in hand with institutionalization, spirituality can also exist
without those formal superstructures.

Such spirituality, as practiced in the Foucauldian rendering via the care of the self, is
much more a life-long individual preoccupation, for which to begin with it is never too late.
Different stages in life will need different practices and different forms of care, but a special
reason to start or continue them is not necessary. The necessary preconditions are none other
than to first muster the required discipline to carry out those practices and secondly a
willingness and openness to let oneself be transformed by them. Although those practices take
conflict into consideration this is achieved - as we shall see at a later point - through the
understanding that conflict is also the source of creative energy and thus a possible instigator
and catalyst of transformation, instead of something to be prevented, avoided or weeded out
of ones existence.

In summary, those spiritual practices are derived out of an affirmation of life and not
out of a view on its deficiencies. The resulting practice of the self is neither identical to a
rational cognition, nor is it religious. It is much rather a spiritual transformation which
Foucault alternatively describes as a transfiguration, conversion, transformation, being
saved, enlightenment (Foucault, 2005: 14 ff.).

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In the rebound-effect (Foucault, 2005: 18) of the truth onto the self, the subject is in
turn transfigured and transformed. It is so a form of salvation that becomes possible through
this spiritual practice. This salvation, however is not achieved in an eternal afterlife in the
(Christian) heaven, but is on the contrary an individual transfiguration that consists in the
permanent work of the self on the self and is a salvation that so has to be understood as

[...] an activity, the subjects constant action on himself, which finds its reward in a
certain relationship of the subject to himself. [...] One saves oneself for the self, one is
saved by the self, one saves oneself in order to arrive at nothing other than oneself.
(Foucault, 2005: 184, 185)

In Greek thought up until Plato, Foucault (2005: 69) argues, philosophy and spirituality were
never separated but perceived as interrelated and mutually conditioning each other, they were
seen as dependent upon one another. In effect, he postulates, there existed a dynamic
entanglement and reciprocal call between those two. Combining the two of them,
philosophy and spirituality, the subject is able to effect a transformation of the self. This
active moment of change for Foucault is generated through an instant of truth, when the self
ceases to be who he/she was and becomes somebody different becomes transformed and
different.

2.3. Truth, Knowledge, Practices and Transformation

The distinctions of this understanding of truth to the Platonic truth already previously
discussed are readily apparent: unlike the historically later Platonic (and modern) Truth, this
truth cannot be an abstract outside principle. It is not to be found in some pure realm of ideas,

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but is on the contrary an effect of putting into play philosophical knowledge combined with
spiritual practice. Alone, neither of those two components will suffice:

In short, I think we can say that in and of itself an act of knowledge could never give
access to the truth unless it was prepared, accompanied, doubled and completed by a
certain transformation of the subject; not of the individual, but of the subject himself
in his being as subject. [...] Schematically, lets say that throughout the period we call
Antiquity, and in quite different modalities, the question of how to have access to the
truth and the practice of spirituality (or the necessary transformations in the very
being of the subject which allow access to the truth), these two questions, these two
themes, were never separate. (Foucault, 2005: 16, 17)

Truth and personal transformation in this practice are intricately linked and in Foucaults
words it follows that from this point of view there can be no truth without a conversion or a
transformation of the self (Foucault 2005: 15). The truth acquired is as radically different
from the modern truth as it is necessarily personal and local, contingent, and its concrete form
will always depend on the specific work performed by the self on itself, on the specific
elements of philosophy and spirituality put into play.

This truth thus always is relational in all directions and relative instead of absolute. In
the understanding of Gianni Vattimo (2006) this would correspond partially to a weak truth,
one which is aware of its own limitations, its contingency in time and space. The difference,
however, consists in the circumstance that Vattimos (2006: 238) weak truth is of a rhetorical
nature and opened to a discursive process of confirmation against an always already pre-given
ruling horizon. Whereas the truth that is meant here, while also arising against a pre-given
horizon, is not only of a rhetoric nature but contains a practical element which cannot
discursively be expressed (and thus confirmed) and so also cannot be known but only
experienced.
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What so follows from this rendering is that neither this ancient, pre-Platonic truth, nor
the transformation of the self can be grasped rationally. While it is possible to describe the
conditions of knowledge necessary for the access to truth and so to arrive at an approximation
of the concrete elements of the knowledge of the self and while it may be possible to
furthermore grasp the elements of practice in spirituality18, rationality ultimately has to fall
silent before the actual moment of transformation and the truth arising together with it.

We have thus reached the - for the modern, western understanding paradoxical - point
of a truth that cannot be explained rationally and a transformation of the self that likewise
eludes rationality. Everything up until this moment of transformation is in principle open to
rational description and analysis, but if Foucaults analysis is followed further, then it is
exactly the twisting of knowledge about oneself through a spiritual practice that has made this
transfiguration of the self possible in ancient times. The peculiar point about spirituality is that
it cannot be cognitively willed although its foundations are (also) rational.

The moment of transformation thus becomes transrational as it has rational elements

and a certain rational structure, but ultimately transcends rational explanations and cannot be
grasped by those. Knowledge philosophy - plays its crucial role but does not suffice as an
explanation and analysis has lost its prospective capacities and ability for predictions. The
outcome of such a transformative practice can so no longer be rationally apprehended in
advance and this makes such an art of transformation risky.

18

These practices could be a certain posture while meditating; a specific way of organizing ones thought, of
concentrating or broadening the mind; a distinct way of breathing; but also regimens for dietetics, suggestions on
how to keep a journal, etc. All of those practical requirements can still be described by rational means. Foucault
for example analyzes in great detail the Ancient practice of keeping journals the hupomnmata (Foucault,
1997f) and dietetics (Foucault, 1990b).

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On the other hand, the position of imagined security, the flight into the purely
aesthetic, rational and formal makes the transformation of the self impossible. Only by
embracing uncertainty and risk, by letting the rational mind fade to the background, can the
transformation of the self open up as a possibility. Ultimately, at its limit point, such a
transformation can thus only be experienced as it cannot be argued. It is thus not the pull of a
will to knowledge that is the driving force, but spirituality in dynamic interrelation with a
declined knowledge.

Nietzsche was the first to argue in a very similar direction when he famously took the
hammer to the idea that knowledge would be inherent to the human being. He so posits
knowledge as an invention19 instead of it being natural. The striving for rational knowledge is
something that has been incited and, it follows, is not a natural urge. Foucault retakes this
topic and extensively discusses its relation to the modern, abstract Truth which owes its origin
to the Platonic world of ideal forms:

Knowledge [says Nietzsche] was invented, then. To say it was invented is to say that it
has no origin. More precisely, it is to say [...] that knowledge is absolutely not
inscribed in human nature. Knowledge doesnt constitute mans oldest instinct, [...]
there is no such thing as the seed of knowledge. (Foucault, 2000g: 7, 8)

Knowledge, the philosophical principle, for Foucault is not a natural striving inherent to the
human being but something that comes from a specific constellation of strategic power
relations and thus is always the historical and circumstantial result of conditions outside the
domain of knowledge (Foucault, 2000g: 13).

19

See aphorism 333 of the Gay Science (Nietzsche, 1974) on which both Foucault and Freud would pick up, but
also the introduction of On Truth and Lie in an Extra Moral Sense (Nietzsche, 1976b: 42) which reads in its
English version: In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems,
there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.

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Taking this Foucauldian thought one step further, one could so assert that knowledge,
taken as an abstract and formalized exterior quantity can thus not effect a transformation of
the self. Only if it is to some degree personalized and if it is coupled with a spiritual practice
can it become a part of such a transformation. Only as local, contingent knowledge of the self,
only if broken down to the gnothi seauton know yourself - can it become one element in a
stylization of the self that enables transformation. And even that knowledge of the self at the
crucial moment needs to be let go off and twisted by the practice of spirituality.

The same also applies to the concrete practices of the self Foucault analyzed in such
great detail throughout certain periods of Antiquity. What is to be found are practices and
techniques of the self that derive from always local circumstances, that are tailor-made for and
by the subject in his/her concrete circumstances and that do not follow an abstract of conduct
or systematized set of rules. Both the (philosophical) knowledge and the (spiritual) practices
are so specific to time, place and person and do not follow a moral rule understood as
obedience to a system of laws or a codification of pleasures (Foucault, 1990b: 57). What
fascinates here is an Art of Living from which a spiritual/philosophical work on the self is
derived which does not rely on morals or strong Truth.

Foucaults rendering of the spiritual practices of Demetrius, a Cynic philosopher of the

first century A.D., could serve as a particular clear example of a knowledge that has already
turned local and contingent. This example furthermore is of specific interest if what we
ultimately want to approach is not just an Art of the Self, but an Art of the Transpersonal
Self. In his doubling of the spiritual practices, Foucault ascribes to Demetrius an
understanding of knowledge that is not absolute and abstract, but is localized and so to speak
tailor-made for the individual person:

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Well, I think we could call it, quite simply, a relational mode of knowledge, because
when we now consider the gods, other men, the kosmos, the world, etcetera, this
involves taking into account the relation between the gods, men, the world, and things
of the world on the one hand, and ourselves on the other. (Foucault, 2005: 235)

This is not to say that knowledge works like this in each instance when employed together
with spirituality, but that there is a certain precedence of relational knowledge in the spiritual
practices of ancient times which, indeed, fits very easily into the energetic cosmovision we
established with Wolfgang Dietrich (2006a) in the last chapter. This energetic cosmovision, as
we recall, derives from the contemplation of nature, society and cosmos and ones specific
place and role therein.

From this moment onwards, in light of the points sketched on the functioning and
composition of philosophy and spirituality in the practices of transformation, the relation of
those principles to the Apollonian and Dionysian can now be established. One can so match
the principle of philosophy to the Apollonian. In the beginning of this chapter we defined with
Michel Foucault philosophy as a form of thought which asks about the possibility of the
access to truth. Philosophy in this definition becomes a formal, an aesthetic and inherently
Apollonian element. And it is also no coincidence that the philosophic gnothi seauton was the
precept inscribed at the Delphic shrine which was the sacred site of the High Cult of Apollo.
This knowledge, furthermore, turns relational and local only when coupled or brought in
dynamic relation with spirituality which always remains a necessarily personal precept. For,
just as the energetic Dionysian harmony has to be local, also in the practice of spirituality one
cannot take care of the self in the realm and form of the universal (Foucault, 2005: 117).

Spirituality, as that which aims for the transfiguration of the subject and yet cannot
exist without the philosophical principle can so also be understood as a specific form of
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reckoning for the Dionysian, a way of taking the principle of content and the energetic into
account. The spiritual, energetic, or Dionysian, adds the counter-spin to the rational
Apollonian (knowledge, philosophical) which gives their mutual spiraling dance a
transrational twist.

The theoretical advance we have gained here is that through Foucaults rendering we
are now beginning to approach an idea of a transformation of the self, an idea of how the
Ancients made this cosmovision built on the Dionysian/Apollonian concretely operable for
their art of the self. Before we can progress any further, however, the details of this Ancient
spiritual practice need to be established. In order to obtain a clearer picture it is especially
necessary to trace its similarities and differences to the two other great figures of work on the
self arising in the last centuries before and the first centuries after the turn of the Millennium.
In short, this Art of Transformation needs to be differentiated from the Platonic method and
the Christian conversion. This analysis will be advanced, via looking on the one hand at the
practices that underlie these three technologies, but on the other hand especially by posing the
question about which conception of subjectivity inspires them and which effects they thus aim
for.

2.4. The Hellenistic/Spiritual, the Platonic and the Christian Models

Foucault analyzes the spiritual practices of Antiquity in great detail, in their different forms
and manifestations, discerning two major formations of spiritual practices in the Western
world:

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Eros and askesis are, I think, the two major forms in Western spirituality for
conceptualizing the modalities by which the subject must be transformed in order to
finally become capable of truth. (Foucault 2005: 16)

We have already covered the question of the relation between this truth and transformation in
the Ancient Art of the Self. Looking at spiritual practices from the point of view of
subjectivity, what is peculiar about these practices of eros, askesis - and many more as well
as all their variations - is that through them the subject actively constitutes itself. It is this a
form of constitution to be found in the Hellenistic Model20 (Foucault, 2005: 254) of an art of
transformation which is, quite unlike the other forms of constitution of the self, practiced in
the West ever since.

It remains the lasting achievement of Plato to have uncovered this Hellenistic Model
consisting in the interplay between the care of the self and the knowledge of the self in his
Alcibiades (2004). However, Plato here plays a double game (Foucault, 2005: 77, 78). On
the one hand, he uncovers and formulates those two principles of the previous Greek
Antiquity but, at the same time, he covers the space so cleared once more by making one of
those principles pre-dominant and downplaying the other.

Plato famously places the stress on the knowledge of the self, and links this to the
quest of finding out the truth about oneself. For finding out this truth the human being needs
to look inside itself, towards its soul. Before birth, the soul lives in the world of essences but
at birth it forgets what it has seen before. With Plato, knowing oneself thus has the meaning of
a cognitive recollection, an act of memory, in which the soul remembers the world of
essences and thus becomes aware of the Truth - which is also the Truth of itself in its very
20

Foucault points out that he uses the term Hellenistic Model here merely for reasons of convenience to
distinguish it from the Platonic and the Christian Model. He proceeds to analyze this Hellenistic Model in great
detail, using, amongst others, sources from the Epicurean, Cynic and Stoic philosophers (Foucault, 2005).

68

own being (Foucault, 2005: 460). In the dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades, Plato
recurs to the care of the self but absorbs the principle of spirituality into the philosophic
precept of knowing oneself as an act of recollection (Foucault, 2005: 77).

However, while the spiritual practice still plays a certain role with Plato, already with
the Neo-Platonists knowledge becomes the sole principle for accessing the Truth. The
accumulation of knowledge according to abstract and formal criteria is now all there is to
Truth. With that we have entered the realm of the modern understanding of Truth:

I think the modern age of the history of truth begins when knowledge itself and
knowledge alone gives access to truth. [...] That is to say, it is when the philosopher
(or scientist, or simply someone who seeks the truth) can recognize the truth and have
access to it in himself and solely through his activity of knowing, without anything
else being demanded of him and without having to change or alter his being as subject.
(Foucault 2005: 17)

The rebound effect of truth on the self and thus the transformation of the self become so
impossible. Truth in this instance becomes the Apollonian category as which we have
analyzed it in the previous chapter and loses its relational, local and personal and most
importantly transrational character.

Much to the contrary, this absolute and universal Truth now turns into the epitome and
cornerstone of a rational description of world and self. But there is a price to be paid, as the
transfiguration, salvation and transformation that was possible in the Hellenistic Model, has
become impossible. The modern relation between the Truth and the self have begun, Foucault
(2005: 19) asserts, when it is postulated that, such as he is, the subject is capable of truth, but

69

that, such as it is, the truth cannot save the subject. Following the rigid methodologies of
science, Truth is accessible for all, but that Truth, quite simply can do nothing for us!

From this Cartesian moment (Foucault 2005: 14) onwards the history of truth is a
history of knowledge which leaves the subject untouched:

Knowledge will simply open onto the indefinite dimensions of progress, the end of
which is unknown and the advantage of which will only ever be realized in the course
of history by the institutional accumulation of bodies of knowledge, or the
psychological social benefits to be had from having discovered the truth after having
taken such pains to do so. (Foucault 2005: 19)

And so it follows that a crucial moment in Western history is reached when Descartes
succeeds in substituting a subject as founder of practices of knowledge for a subject
constituted through practices of the self (Foucault, 1997d: 279). The accumulation of
knowledge in this new world so has superseded the transformation of the self that was
practiced in the old one.

Foucault (2005: 310) portrays Goethes Faust as being on the borderline between the
old and the new world. Faust so represents a figure really belonging to neither one because he
lives in the new and scientific world, but still realizes what already has been lost with the old
spiritual one: After having studied the traditional disciplines - philosophy, medicine, theology
and law after having painstakingly followed the formalistic requirements down to the last
detail and after having acquired their knowledge, Faust demands transformation and wants to
be transfigured and saved. But trying to read the formal scientific texts in a spiritual way can
only fail, leaving him the now proverbial poor fool, no wiser than before and ultimately
driving him into the pact with the devil as substitute for the spirituality to which he no longer
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has access. Only a few centuries later the West has for the most part also already forgotten
what has been lost.

Here we have - in an admittedly very abridged version - the history of the Platonic
Model, which should prove to become such an epoch-making venture in the West and move
from the soul-searching for the truth to a fully externalized and abstracted Truth to be found
by applying the methods of rational science to an objective outside world. Returning once
more to the original Platonic Model, we find that unlike the Hellenistic Model it applies a
method of an internal gaze in an act of recollection.

Like the Hellenistic Model the original Platonic Model so still knows a truth that needs
to be accessed positively, but while the Hellenistic Model works from an understanding of a
subjectivity that is to be actively constituted (the self as a permanent and unfinished work in
progress) and thus knows no essence to which to return, the Platonic Model consists in the
search for the innermost kernel of truth that is the essence of the human being in the soul.
Most importantly, the Platonic Model also gives precedence to the knowledge of the self the
philosophical or Apollonian elements while confining the care of the self - the spiritual or
Dionysian - to the margins. Lastly, as we already have established, the figure of truth works
completely different in both these Models: In Plato it is the pre-given absolute Truth which is
to be found or remembered, in the Hellenistic Model it is the relative, local and personalized
truth which cannot be expressed rationally.

The third great and historically youngest Model, the Christian one, will take on some
elements of both the Hellenistic and the Platonic Model, but will put them to new uses.
Foucault (2005: 257ff.) describes this Christian Model alternatively as the Model of an
exegesis of the self and as the self-renunciatory Model. Like in the Platonic Model, its
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understanding of Truth is an absolute one and also like the former it admonishes the subject to
turn inwards. However, in the Christian Model this turn inwards serves to test all ones own
thoughts and emotions in order to find out whether there is sin, evil or concupiscence lurking
inside oneself. Everything that comes from the inside has to be mistrusted, painstakingly
examined and scrutinized to ascertain that it is not Satan whispering his insinuations through
our seemingly pure feelings and thoughts.

Like the Hellenistic, the Christian Model also couples this knowledge of the self with
a certain set of practices a series of tests, exercises and purifications, the most famous of
which would be the confession21. Unlike both the Hellenistic and the Platonic Model,
however, the ultimate aim of the Christian Model is neither recollecting the fullness of ones
soul nor is it transformation, but on the contrary renunciation. The aim of knowledge of the
self in the Christian Model is to decipher oneself (Foucault, 2005: 250 ff.); what is found is to
be confessed, renounced and purged:

Each person has the duty to know who he is, that is, to try to know what is happening
inside him, to acknowledge faults, to recognize temptations, to locate desires; and
everyone is obliged to disclose these things either to God or to others in the
community, and, hence, to bear public or private witness against oneself. (Foucault,
1997i: 242)

The ultimate renunciation within the Christian Model would of course be the complete
renunciation of the self and with it the rejection of everything mundane in favor of hastening
all the faster and purer along the road to the heavenly kingdom. Although they both share the

21

The study of the Christian practice of confession, suggested to him by Ivan Illich (Carrette, 1999: 4),
fascinated Foucault throughout his life. In an earlier period of his work he had described it as part of the vast
complex of Christian technologies, forms of government, and management of people termed pastoral power and
had deemed this form of power one of the historical precursor to his concept of biopower. In this light, see for
example the essays Omnes et Singulatim (2000b), The Subject and Power (2000f), The Political Technology of
Individuals (2000e) as well as the First Volume of the History of Sexuality (1990a).

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concept of a combination of knowledge and practice, the affirmation of the Hellenistic Model
is so contrasted with the renunciation of the Christian Model.

This certain closeness in methods under diametrically opposed goals is shown by

Foucault on the example of the practice of askesis (or ascesis in the Christian version). This
practice of askesis/ascesis plays an important role in both traditions. In the Hellenistic Model
askesis is used as a means of actively fashioning the self, as a way of constituting oneself
and attaining a full, perfect, and complete relationship of oneself to oneself (Foucault, 2005:
319, 320). The moments of austerity are so employed as a means to obtain a fuller and more
inclusive relation to oneself.

The Christian use of ascesis, however, goes the exact opposite way and leads through
a series of abstentions and renunciations (of the flesh) to the essential renunciation, selfrenunciation. (Foucault, 2005: 319). The Christian ascesis ultimately does not lead to an
affirmation but to a negation of the self, of its body and its being constituted in the world. It is
in this second meaning that the term ascesis has survived and which is used in modern
common language ascesis as renunciation and abstention - but which is quite different from
the historically older Hellenistic understanding of askesis.

It is also not coincidentally that the second major form of Antique practices eros, the
practice and art of love - received a radical re-definition and was re-employed in the Christian
Model. Love is then stripped from all its physical - all its erotic - components as well as from
its relational focus on the world here and now. The actual bodily acts are suppressed in favor
of a singular and burning love of God. The practice of this love so does not manifest in a
transforming and transfiguring art of pleasure, but through the vows of celibacy in which the

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earthly is denied, the desires and pleasures of the self have to be renounced and rejected and
turned into an exclusive focus on God22.

2.5. Beyond the Greek Example

In the course of history, through a series of conversions, changes, shifts and breaks, Foucault
asserts, the Hellenistic Model was buried and hidden beneath the other two Platonic and
Christian Models - whose tradition goes up until modernity and whose influence lasts until
today. All three of them share some similarities, however there is just as much that separates
them as there are commonalities. The Christian Model probably still is the clearest and easiest
to single out even today, but the influence of the historic successors of the Platonic Model Cartesian method, the sciences, law and, indeed, philosophy - are nowadays just as prevalent
and powerful. And yet or perhaps rather because of this - the question of a style of living, of
a certain aesthetics of existence which is not bound by the Apollonian universalisms of
science and law, still looms large today:

If you take, for example, Stirner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, dandyism, Baudelaire,

anarchy, anarchist thought, etcetera, then you have a series of attempts that are, of
course, very different from each other, but which are all more or less obsessed with the
question: Is it possible to constitute, or reconstitute, an aesthetics of the self?
(Foucault, 2005: 251)

Such an aesthetics, I will argue in what is to follow, might become possible if seen in
conjunction with an energetic principle. Without taking into account the Dionysian, any
aesthetics of existence will invariably be thrown back on its pure Apollonian foundations. But
an inclusion of the Dionysian can only to a certain point be achieved by theoretical and
22

See also Sexuality and Solitude (1997h) and The Battle for Chastity (1997j) where Foucault discusses the
Christian practice of renunciation in regards to sexuality.

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cognitive means. Since theory and academia, as well as science in its broadest understanding,
are themselves results of the rational Apollonian hegemony there is a limit to their use value
and a threshold for their explicative power. The direction we are headed towards - an Art of
the Transpersonal Self - might serve to show exactly those limitations.

Furthermore, if the Dionysian is to be respected, those limits have to be recognized as any attempt to theorize the Dionysian would lead back to the rational field of the
Apollonian. The difficulty for anybody brought up in the West and schooled cognitively in
the (social) sciences consists in exactly resisting this urge to rationalize and theorize.
Ultimately, converting the words of Wolfgang Schirmacher, theory is not life23, its time and
movements are not ours, in it we wont be saved or transfigured. The good life finally remains
elusive and not amenable to the means of theory.

If the problem is still our own transformation, then this will not occur in and through
theory. It might occur in the coupling of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. But also these
very words and lines here are ultimately only the attaching of labels to - and thus reductions
of - the X: that which cannot be known, only understood and therefore has to be named if
one is to find any way of even a verbal approximation. And, just as this coupling cannot be
grasped cognitively, it can so also not be willed. No matter how hard we try, no matter how
much we learn and know, no matter how hard we push, we will not be able to force a
transformation of ourselves.

This, finally, is another meaning of the claim made before, that the transformation of
the self can only occur via embracing uncertainty and risk. Only by an act of de-focusing of
our cognitive mind, of letting go that which we have willed so hard to manifest, might we
23

Quote from personal notes taken during Wolfgang Schirmachers lectures at the European Graduate School
(EGS) during the summer of 2006.

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finally become able to make that jump, or open that line of flight and de-territorialize towards
an as of yet unknown becoming. It is not enough to dare to know, for what is of even greater
importance is to dare to let go of knowledge. Not from a position of ignorance but in order to
open a window of possibility towards that which our own knowledge has blocked us from.
Basking in the radiance of the Apollonian sun also blinds us!

With Nietzsche we can so point out the limits of knowledge in his assertion that what
he wants is once and for all, not to know many things. Wisdom sets limits to knowledge too
(Nietzsche, 1976c: 467). No amount of deconstruction - necessary and valid as it may be
will by itself be able to make that one twisting (verwindenden) step further. Only by giving
those rational elements of critique their time and place, but finally distorting them in an
experiential field might this step finally occur. What emerges, going with Michel Foucault
and Friedrich Nietzsche beyond these authors, might be an Art of the Transpersonal Self
which is formed in the interplay of an aesthetic and energetic practice.

From this follows already a necessity for our next chapters, because everything we
have sketched so far still could be interpreted along the lines of a clear cut individual
subjectivity; along the lines of an I that establishes itself in an aesthetic practice against an
Other. Indeed, we have not yet clarified in how far our emergent practice of the self exactly
would be different from the Man Makes History of modernity which in our rendering
might be misguidedly spelled out as Man Makes Himself.

We will thus, in the next two steps, re-cast in greater detail that Dionysian figure of the
energetic and trace the interplay between aesthetic and energetic until the point where
individuality blurs and transpersonality sets in. This transpersonal sphere, if such a sphere can
be conceptualized at all, will have to be charted time and again, redrawn, drafted and re76

drafted, contain many familiar elements but in new and different places. This sphere of
transpersonality might so become a local and contingent space, containing shifting elements,
boundings and openings as well as aesthetic/energetic lines in an ever shifting matrix beyond
the clear self and other. Before we reach this point, however, some further preliminary
moves towards an understanding of the elements involved here especially art and
transformation will be necessary.

2.6. Subjectivity and Self

Before proceeding any further what remains to be done is disentangle and clarify the concepts
of self and subject in this Foucauldian rendering. In this respect the difference between the
Platonic and the Christian Models, on the one hand, and the Hellenistic Model, on the other
hand, is once more crucial.

Foucault (2005) first distinguishes the Hellenistic self from essential accounts which
build subjectivity on top of a pre-given, unwavering self as soul as it corresponds to both the
Platonic Model and the Christian Model. In both of those, subjectivation is something that
happens on top of this pre-given, stable self as essence. In each of those instances the concrete
subject in its outward appearances is built upon an inner self which forms its permanent and
eternal truth. Foucault casts the Cartesian I to be of a similar mold: as the stable, essential,
ground from which all further thinking and becoming can derive.

Both the Christian and the Platonic Model so introduce a difference between a
transcendent self and a concrete subject which is built upon it and forms its outward
appearance. Where those two Models differ is in the subsequent consequences and

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technologies of subjectivation. As stated previously, the defining feature of the Platonic

Model here is recollection (or memory) and the one of the Christian Model is renunciation.

Historically, those two Models have become dominant. What Foucault attempts to
distinguish from both those essentialist accounts is the Hellenistic Model which follows an
utterly constructivist concept. Taking away the idea of a pre-given essence, the concepts of
subjectivity and self are treated as synonymous in this Hellenistic Model which Foucault
ultimately follows. The self and the subject are identical because the distinction between a
pre-given human essence (a transcendent soul or self) and something that is merely
constructed afterwards (subjectivity and subjectivation) no longer exists.

The history of the self as well as the history of the human subject for Foucault so only
begins at the moment when the human being starts applying the technologies of relationality
not just to the outside world and to its fellow humans, but to itself in order to fashion the own
subjectivity in order to become (different). Put in other words: in Foucaults historical
rendering the human subject enters the scene once the human animal starts creating itself,
starts creating its-self. What Gilles Deleuzes masterful description of this Foucauldian
process shows is that for Foucault the Greeks invented the subject, but only as a derivative or
a product of a subjectivation (Deleuze, 1988: 101). In this understanding, subjectivation as
the art of creating oneself comes first and the subject/self is only the aftereffect of that
process. It is this a thought very similar to the one already put forth by Wolfgang Schirmacher
(1990: 49) who asserts that the defining feature of humanity, what makes us human, is
technology as exemplified in the process of creating oneself through the tools we use.

In his rendering Foucault inverts both the Platonic and the Christian Model which first
pose a transcendent self to which afterwards the merely mundane technologies of
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subjectivation could be applied. For Foucault, however, there is no transcendent self or stable
I upon which to build subjectivity. The self and the subject are the same: a form shaped in a
never-ending process.

The very interiority or inside of the human being is therefore also nothing pre-given
but needs to be created and derives from this process of subjectivation. Only by folding
(Deleuze, 1988: 94ff.) the outside, by bending the relations with the external world back and
by applying the technologies of relationality to the human animal does the self arise. The
inside so derives from the folding of the outside and only thus is the space created in which
the self/subjectivity shall be built:

It is as if the relations of the outside folded back to create a doubling, allow a relation
to oneself to emerge, and constitute an inside which is hollowed out and develops its
own unique dimension. [] What the Greeks did is not to reveal Being or unfold the
Open in a world-historical gesture. According to Foucault they did a great deal less, or
more. They bent the outside, through a series of practical exercises. The Greeks are the
first at doubling. (Deleuze, 1988: 100)

Subjectivation, Deleuze concludes, is created by folding (Deleuze, 1988: 104). This merely
adds a different aspect to the idea of the self as form which is created in relationality: the
process of folding the outside creates the inside which gives the self its shape. The human
subject is that which is relational in all directions: (1) relating towards the non-human
environment (relating to nature or to the divine world), (2) relating towards fellow human
beings and (3) relating to oneself. The subject thus arises as embedded in this triple
relationality.

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It is the last aspect of this triad, the relation to oneself, which, according to Foucault,
was only completed in Ancient Greek times and which will be the focus of this study towards
an Art of the Self. Subjectivation can then also be understood as an active practice; as the
process of becoming by which the subject/self continues to create itself in a perpetual
movement of transforming itself and changing nature (Deleuze, 1988: 104)

Now, while one might debate whether placing the invention of technologies of selfcreation with the Greeks is historically accurate24, what needs to be highlighted here is the
concept of a self that is not distinguished from the concept of subjectivity along a
transcendent/immanent line but that uses both synonymously as something arising in a
procedural manner and open to (aesthetic/energetic) practices of transformation.

2.7. Conclusion
We have established several critical insights in this Foucauldian chapter. First we approached,
in a second transposition how the Greeks concretely operationalized the interplay between the
Dionysian and Apollonian in the form of the Art of the Self rendered for us by Michel
Foucault via the spiritual and philosophical principle. Taking our findings of the first chapter
we have so, through this transposition, related the Apollonian/Dionysian to the mutual
conditioning of the knowledge of the self (philosophy) and care of the self (spirituality) and
simultaneously to the Art of the Self. We have so, secondly, complemented the macro-view of
the first chapter with the micro-view in the second.

24

Especially if the Greek technologies were to be cross-culturally compared to many practices of the self
cultivated for millennia in other parts of the world - like for example on the Indian subcontinent.

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We have thirdly established a necessity for the third and fourth chapters to deal with a
constructive concern. The question that therefore will need thought upon is: In how far does
this Art of the Self we are striving for differ from the self-grounding, autonomous I of
modernity?

Fourthly, the (necessarily very cursory) historical overview is now largely completed
and we have, again with Foucault, established once more how the Art of Living of the
Hellenistic Model was historically supplanted by the combination of the Platonic and the
Christian Model. These explications echoed those of the first chapter, but served to further the
understanding of what we are facing now in postmodern times and were, from this point of
view, indeed, absolutely necessary.

Fifthly, the transrational was approached once more by pointing to the critical
limitations of (postmodern and ultimately any) theorizing. Here one encounters the limits of
rationality and of any critique of rationality by rational means and could so, with the findings
of the first chapter, assert the importance of an experiential field of understanding beyond
knowing and knowledge.

Sixthly, this led to the insight that any Art of the Self that wants to be more than either
just an imitation of Antiquity or yet again a reduction to the Apollonian aesthetics will have to
find different venues for a Verwindung of postmodernity, different practices to reckon for the
energetic which will also still need to be discussed. Here another crucial problem for the next
chapters is encountered: what concrete practices can there be found, in our world today that
might lend themselves to a new Art of the Self that is simultaneously transrational and
transpersonal? What approaches can be found that take the Dionysian into account and resist
this pull of the rational mind that has become so hegemonic in the West? Because it is quite
81

clear that we cannot turn back the time but neither might we want to forever live under the
rays of this Apollonian sun, lest we get burnt to mere dry (formal, aesthetic) husks.

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3. The Art of Transformation

You see, thats why I really work like a dog, and I worked like a dog all my life.
I am not interested in the academic status of what I am doing because
my problem is my own transformation. Thats the reason also why, when people say,
Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else,
my answer is... [Laughs]
Well, do you think I have worked like that all those years to say the same thing and not be changed?
(Michel Foucault, 1997a: 131)

With this chapter we will approach the main topic of this dissertation the Art of
Transformation. Already from this title we can glean the crucial question that will need to be
addressed: Why is it an art of the self we are aiming for, and what might this concept of art
look like and entail? We will raise this concern, as an initial move, right at the very beginning.
Secondly, the question of transformation will be approached here: What does it mean to
speak of subjectivity in transformation, which are possible precedents for such a view and
how does such a transformation figure in an Art of the Transpersonal Self? Those are the
guiding questions for this chapter; we shall begin our venture by taking a look at the aspect of
art in our practice of the self.

3.1. Science and Art

Since I grew tired of the chase
And search I learned to find;
And since the wind blows in my face,
I sail with every wind25
(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1974: 40)

The question that needs to be addressed at the beginning of the chapter is the question of art.
So far we have, without further clarifying the point, spoken about the transformation of the
25

Seit ich des Suchens mde ward,

Erlernte ich das Finden.
Seit mir der Wind hielt Widerpart,
Segl ich mit allen Winden
Friedrich Nietzsche, Die frhliche Wissenschaft

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self as a form of art and before we can make any further advances in our study, this problem
of art so needs to be addressed. The guiding frame here will consist in the following
questioning: firstly why and how is it that the work of the self on the self might be
conceptualized as an art and, secondly, which understanding of art are we following in this
instance? In order to clarify this point we will, thirdly, establish the relation of art to two other
figures, science and handicraft (work), in order to re-take also a general point about the
Apollonian and Dionysian and distinguish our understanding of art from other possible ways
of conceptualization. This will finally enable us to re-connect with some of the findings of the
previous chapters.

In one of his major treatises on the questions of art - Aesthetic Theory (1997)
published posthumously - Theodor Adorno keeps recurring to the enigmatic feature of art, the
inexplicability of any work of art. This inexplicability, this elusiveness which sets in the very
moment one believes one has finally grasped a work of art and which makes it slip away
again at this instant, leads Adorno to the conclusion - which is so vexing for the theoretical
mind - that a work of art can never be completely deciphered: All artworks all art
altogether are enigmas; since antiquity this has been an irritation to the theory of art
(Adorno, 1997: 120).

Indeed it is this enigmaticalness, which for Adorno makes a work a piece of art. With
a work of art, he asserts, one is never finished, as it presents different faces each time one
beholds it and never stays the same. Each understanding just gives way to a new questioning.
Otherwise, without this enigmatic element one might presume, following Adorno, a work
remains a handicraft (or at its worst kitsch). A piece of handicraft might be executed
technically perfect; however without that additional enigmatic quality it will not become a

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work of art. In German there is a saying expressing exactly this point that just technical
perfection in itself does not make for a work of art: Kunst kommt nicht von knnen.26

Each work of art an artist creates in some way needs to reckon for this other and
elusive element which makes a piece of work a work of art sometimes even without the
intention or knowing of the artist. The cognitive realization of what exactly he/she is doing is
thus not in each case necessary for an artist to create a work of art and may even hinder or
block the process. Now this does not imply that a certain element of work, knowing how to
handle ones tools, the element of aesthetics and style in the work of art is not significant, for
it is, indeed, very important and crucial. But style and distinction alone do not make a work of
art. Only by letting the aesthetic element fade at the crucial moment towards the possibility of
a transformation and creation of something different and unexpected, can a piece of art
emerge. Each piece of art so has an aesthetic component, a component of style - but it is not
purely aesthetic. Art, I would suggest, in this sense cannot be cognitively willed.

The work of an artist is so also a work; but it is not only a work. From this perspective
it so does not follow that only the most strenuous exercise, the most rigid of practices and
greatest of complexities will lead to art. Art might just as well be found in the lightest and
easiest stroke of a brush or the most fleeting tone of music.

To briefly summarize the two main points: there is something in art that speaks to us,
but cannot be deciphered rationally and remains an enigma. Similarly, creating a work of art
implies making space for this element. An artist can use the aesthetic means at her/his
disposal style, technique or also knowledge (of schools, of currents or traditions) - to
channel this element, bring it to the forefront and so giving it the space it needs.
26

This saying would, as we will establish in the following, for our purposes need to be qualified through a
different emphasis: art is not just a work; it is not just a craft. It is, in the rendering proposed here, also a work.

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From the above rendering two insights can be gleaned: What follows first of all is that
the aesthetic can give a certain shape to that other element which I would once more
identify as the energetic and can give it a certain direction and form. Although the outcome
will always be determined at least as much by the energetic as it is by the aesthetic, there so
still is some space for a rational willing that enters into the process, even if it has to be let go
off and faded at the critical moment.

This leads, secondly, to a conceptualization of art in its relation to science and crafts.
And it is, indeed, at this point that we need to differentiate ourselves from Theodor Adorno,
when he points out at that art always remains in critical tension (1997: 231) to science and
that the two categories should not be fused (1997: 232). Taking into account what has been
established about the relation between the rational/aesthetic (Apollonian) element and that
other element (the Dionysian, or energetic) within art it can so be asserted, in critical
distinction from Adorno, that our conception of the relation of art and science is not a
dualism, but neither is it a dialectic. Contrary to a dialectic relationship between art and
science, the Art of the Self can only be a weak art. Following Gianni Vattimos (2006)
dissolution of dialectics in a thinking of difference, such weak art so also contains traces and
elements of the rational and aesthetic (of science and theory).

It is furthermore not science or rationality as such that need to be rejected in an Art of

the Self, but only rationalitys pull towards purity and the drive towards a pure Apollonian
form that is to be resisted. It is through attempting to be only rational that science disengages
itself from art and its Dionysian qualities. If, however, the Apollonian is to be once more
related to the Dionysian, then the rational element in art cannot be denied either. It rather
needs to be included and given its own space. That space will of course be different from the
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position rationality occupied in the purely Apollonian striving for hegemony, but still the
Apollonian quality cannot be denied. The Art of the Self is thus, in parts, also a twisted
science!

One could then subsequently, without contradiction, also turn this weak proposition
around and posit the Art of the Self not as an art containing elements of a science, but just as
well as a science - a science which is also an art. It is in this instance only a matter of where
the greater stress is placed and which of the two elements is emphasized and highlighted in its
qualities. In a weak proposal both the Apollonian and the Dionysian are inherent to art and
science. And indeed, the image with which we closed the first chapter, the Nietzschean
picture of a musical Socrates suggests exactly that: it provokes the idea of a scientific mind
which is also, at the same time, an artist.

With Friedrich Nietzsche we can so assert that the Art of the Self might also be thought
of as a Gay Science, understood as a science which embraces its Dionysian element, takes into
account the qualities of an art of living, and therefore becomes a science which is not heavy
and ponderous in its rational musing; a science which is beyond the purity of formal
moralities and which thus sings and sizzles with energy (Kaufmann in Nietzsche, 1974: 13).
It is this life-affirming quality which - taking rationality into account but ultimately moving
beyond rationality - could turn the Art of the Self into a Gay Science of light feet which is
capable of perceiving thinking as dancing (Nietzsche 1976c: 512 ff).

It is, furthermore, in this weak twisting together of art and science that the Art of the
Self becomes a transrational art. Indeed, in light of what we have just affirmed this Art of the
Self could not be anything other but weak and transrational because any strong thinking will,
as we have established in the first chapter, always lead back to the purity of form.
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In this interplay between the rational/aesthetic and the energetic elements which
makes for an Art of the Transpersonal Self it is, as we shall examine on some examples in
further chapters, entirely possible to stress more one or the other element, making this work of
transformation lean more towards a science or an art. The concrete shape this Art of the Self
will take is thus always local and contingent and will in each instant take a different and new
venue, as it always depends on the current interplay of the Apollonian and Dionysian and the
strength and form of the aesthetic in its entanglement with the energetic27. The much vaunted
separation between art and science so turns into a difference of graduation and shades rather
than a difference of principle - as the one is always already inherent in the other.

Here a distinction can be made which has already been hinted at previously. In the
following knowing shall be called the result of rational cognition which is also open to theory.
We shall, furthermore, identify as understanding that other form of perceiving, the one which
derives not from a rational grasping but from intuition and is thus not open to theorizing but
can ever only be realized in the form of an experiential encounter. The aim, owing to the
conceptualization of the Art of the Transpersonal Self as a weak proposal, is a so weak
understanding, one that does not completely disavow its rational counterpart but much more
acknowledges that for intuition and understanding, knowledge plays a certain role as well.

Once more it is emphasized that it is not the Apollonian as such that needs to be
resisted, but only its striving for pure forms. At the same time, it shall also not be hidden here
what the use of understanding and intuition in this meaning implies:
27

If, in this instance, I have chosen to name this study an Art of the Transpersonal Self then this is therefore an
expression of personal preference. It should furthermore serve to accentuate this crucial transrational element,
for which, I believe, using the concept of science would not appear so evocative. It might also be argued that to
stress the Dionysian quality might be more the necessity of today since the situation we are faced with at present
seems to be leaning strongly towards an Apollonian Hegemony and suppression of the Dionysian. Providing a
counterweight to restore a balance might therefore carry some merit. Still, I would like to assert that the Art of
the Self could just as well be conceptualized though placing the stress differently - as a Gay Science.

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Intuition is strictly bound to the metaphysical concept of evidence, of bringing an

inner illumination into the open, of gathering first principles. (Vattimo, 2006: 237)

Even with this weak form of intuition, of understanding, but also with our use of
enigmaticalness and ultimately the transrational, the field of something very similar to
metaphysics opens up again. The question whether it is indeed a new metaphysics that is
approached here will need to be addressed. At this point now we leave this question open, but
will return to it in chapter seven.

Finally there is one further element which relates this figure of an art thusly sketched
to what is at stake here. Recalling for a moment Adornos concept of enigmaticalness - his
assertion that also as beholder one is never finished with a work of art and that a new question
presents itself each time one understands it on one level - lends itself to the assumption that
something in the self changes as one continues to engage with art. It is this transformative
quality of art which echoes the attempts to envision a transformative practice of the self.
Michel Foucault explicitly asserts this transformative element in both the field of art and the
work on the self: Why should a painter work, if he is not transformed by his own painting
(Foucault, 1997a: 131).

It is in this quality of the arts to affect a shift and thus to give the possibility of
becoming other than who we are in which one also recognizes the work on the self as
belonging to that very same category. With such an understanding of art we can turn, through
the continuous transformative aesthetic and energetic practice, also the own life into a work of
art.

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3.2. The Object of Art

Before progressing any further another distinction therefore needs to be introduced: the
question of the object of art. In the colloquial use of the term a work of art is an object,
something that is created by an artist. The material to be worked on is external. Even if this
piece of work is intricately connected to the artist her/himself, commonly an artist is still
distinguished by the works of art she/he creates and not by whichever transformative effects
the act of creating might have had on the person(s) engaged in the process.

The object of art in this understanding can so be material (as for example in the case of
film, photograph, painting, sculpture) or immaterial (music), imaginistic or non-imaginistic.
In all these cases, however, an artist remains defined by the objects she/he creates. The Art
of the Self differs from this concept insofar as the material to be worked is the own life and the
own self. Michel Foucault inaugurates this idea with the following question:

What strikes me is the fact that, in our society, art has become something that is
related only to objects and not to individuals or to life. That art is something which is
specialized or done by experts who are artists. But couldnt everybodys life become a
work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object but not our life?
(Foucault, 1997d: 261)

Such understanding of art shifts the focus of what counts as a work of art and also of who
can be an artist. The material to be worked on is the own life, the own self, which is to be
given a certain form and style. An artist is consequently somebody who attempts to transform
her/himself.

This in turn has four consequences: first the practice of art no longer culminates in a
finished piece of work, but is an ongoing, life-long preoccupation, something with which one
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never is finished. Secondly, it wrests the idea of art away from being the single preoccupation
of the so-called gifted few or celebrated creative geniuses who supposedly have a special
talent which sets them apart. The Art of the Self, quite simply, consists in a daily practice, in
the daily affirmation of life and in the possibility to become differently which arises from this
affirmation. The Art of the Self can be practiced by anybody. Everybody can become such an
artist of the self. Thirdly, as Foucault points out, this work of an Art of the Self usually does
not have an audience; it is a work of the self on the self, by and for the self, it is:

[...] an activity, the subjects constant action on himself, which finds its reward in a
certain relationship of the subject to himself. [...] One saves oneself for the self, one is
saved by the self, one saves oneself in order to arrive at nothing other than oneself.
(Foucault, 2005: 184, 185)

The difference such an Art of the Self could make will matter only for oneself and the
concrete people around, those with whom one is in relationality. But, fourthly and conversely,
with this understanding of art the stakes are also raised. An artist now is somebody who risks
the own transformation, who enters the creative process in order to change oneself, to change
what one has been towards the indeterminate horizon of new becomings with uncertain
outcome and an open future. No results are guaranteed in this game.

In this Foucauldian perception the actual creation of an object so takes a backseat and
most of the time will be completely absent. This does not imply that creating such an object
can be part of a transformation of the self, but in this case the stress is placed differently. The
process of creation the writing, painting, composing, etc. - then is deployed as a tool, as a
technology at the end of which one hopes to emerge transformed. The permanent process of
transformation becomes the goal and creating an external work of art turns into a possible
mean towards this end.
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We can so conclude and draw together the findings of this section in the following
way: We first conceptualized with Theodor Adorno enigmaticalness as an expression of the
Dionysian pull in any work of art. Raising the question of the relation of art to science and
crafts, secondly, a certain stylistic (rational) element of work inherent in any artistic
expression was discerned. However, this aesthetic element is always coupled with and
transfigured by an energetic component. In fact it is only this combination which lets a work
of art appear in its interplay. Thirdly, it so became possible to distinguish the
conceptualization of the relation between art and science from a dualistic or dialectic view
and to assert with Gianni Vattimo the understanding of art as weak that is, simultaneously,
containing elements of Apollonian rationality as well as elements of Dionysian energy.

Fourthly, this led towards re-taking a topic from the first chapter. Via the Nietzschean
figure of the musical Socrates we could so establish the possibility of conceptualizing this Art
of the Self alternatively also as a Gay Science. The theoretical insight gained here was, fifthly,
that the concrete manifestation of the Art of the Self might - depending on the specific
interplay of the Apollonian and Dionysian - at times lean more towards an art or more
towards a science. Sixthly, we were able to come to a closer differentiation between
understanding and knowing, asserting a form of weak understanding as appropriate for an Art
of the Transpersonal Self and thus opening the question of the metaphysical. Seventhly, the
transformative quality of art was linked to a similar characteristic of the practice of the self,
thus completing the rendering of the aesthetic and energetic practice of the self as an Art of
the Self.

The aim of an Art of the Self was, finally, distinguished from the common modern use
of art. The aim of the Art of the Self is not the creation of an outside object but the
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transformation of the self, through a risky process which does not culminate in a finished
piece of work but continues perpetually throughout ones life.

3.3. A Life in Transformation

We others, we immoralists, have, conversely, made room in our hearts for every kind
of understanding, comprehending and approving.
We do not easily negate; we make it a point of honor to be affirmers.
(Nietzsche, 1976c: 491)

If what has been outlined in the past chapters is taken to hold merit, then there is a certain idea
of subjectivity or self that arises thereof. With Michel Foucault (2005) an assessment has been
given of different forms of subjectivation in Ancient Greece. One main difference between
the Platonic Model and the Christian Model on the one hand, and the Hellenistic on the other,
is that unlike the former two the latter does not pre-suppose an essence (soul, strong truth) of
the self. The practice of the Self espoused by the Hellenistic Model is thus one of actively
fashioning a self; as opposed to unearthing the truth about oneself or remembering what the
soul has seen previously in the realm of ideal forms.

If one follows further on this Hellenistic Model, then one consequence of such a
rendering is that subjectivity is not envisioned as a stable being, but, on the contrary, engaged
in an unending flow of becoming: the form which the self takes does not remain the same.
Heraclites was the first to conceptualize this understanding of the self as in transformation, by
asserting that it would be impossible for the same person to step into the same river twice. In
the second attempt of entering, after time has passed, one would no longer be the same person
and also the waters of the river have changed making it different as well. Stepping into that
river, one is thus neither the same person, nor is it the same river (Boal, 1979).

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Radicalizing this thought, Heraclites student Cratylus points out that it is also quite
impossible to step into the same river once. Augusto Boal summarizes this view:

His pupil, Cratylus, even more radical, would say to his teacher that nobody can go
into a river even once, because upon going in, the waters of the river are already
moving (which waters would he enter?) and the person who would attempt it would
already be ageing (who would be entering, the older or the younger one?). (Boal,
1985: 3)

Now, what this outline points to is the impossibility in this view of remaining the same
person. Unlike portrayed in the Platonic rendering what is encountered here is not an essence
which would need to be found in an act of remembrance. And it is neither a Christian version
of the truth about oneself that would need to be deciphered, but a constant flow of changes in
which subjectivation takes place. This finding connects with the view ascribed to the
Hellenistic Model in the last chapter. For those ancient practitioners of that interplay of care
of the self and knowledge of the self it was apparent that with each breath we take we become
other than who we are:

Whenever we breathe we give up a little of our pneuma and take in a little of another
pneuma, so that the pneuma never is the same. And inasmuch as we have a pneuma
we are never the same and consequently could not fix our identity in this. (Foucault,
2005: 303)

As long as we breathe, as long as we take in the air from around us, let it spread in our body
and then exhale it again, we will not remain the same. Indeed, at this very moment the
question arises, where do we begin and end? With each breath we become porous and blur
around the edges: where does the pneuma exhaled stop being a part of us and at which point
in the respiratory process can the air inhaled no longer be separated from us and becomes a
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part of ourselves? Through this inhaling and exhaling a small, perhaps infinitesimally small but still unavoidable - change takes place. Our breath transforms us.28

Life so turns into a perpetual becoming, in which a stable being from one moment to
the next is impossible. Nietzsche succinctly sums it up in the phrase that whatever has being
does not become, whatever becomes does not have being (Nietzsche, 1976c: 479). Life, in
this sense, implies becoming. Wolfgang Schirmacher (2007a: 5) in a similar vein asserts that
the human condition always has implied a becoming, including a becoming human which can
be thought of as open-ended, as never coming to a conclusion29. Following Martin
Heidegger, with Gianni Vattimo (2006) being becomes an act of remembrance: that which
reveals itself only in its absence. Being turns into something that always already is in the past
as something recalled and is therefore never fully established as a presence. Identity
understood as remaining self-identical from one moment to the next might be a misnomer,
for one always is in part not identical to and different from oneself.

What has been said so far has three main consequences: In a perpetual stream of
becoming, firstly a large part of what is happening to the self remains beyond its grasp and
certainly beyond its cognitive willing. Transformation, becoming, takes place in any case,
whether willed or not, independent of conscious reflection. Nietzsche, taking this thought one
step further, points out the ultimate conclusion of this insight namely that a cognitive
willing might not be necessary at all and dispensable for transformation and becoming to take
place: The will no longer moves anything, hence does not explain anything either it merely
accompanies events; it can also be absent (Nietzsche, 1976c: 495). Unlike assumed in the
modern idea of a rational, self grounding subjectivity, in this view becoming can happen

28

In chapter six it will be explicated how this fact can be turned into a practice of the self.
Translation from the German by Daniel Theisen at http://www.bway.net/~danny/wolfgang/; last accessed on
16/06/2007.
29

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independently of the consciously reflecting and willing I. The cogito is no longer ultimate
foundation of the self, but something merely added on.

Secondly, it means that the self possibly might also have much less coherence than is
usually attributed to it in the Cartesian tradition, formed as it is in the interplay of different
influences beyond our cognition. Instead of a coherent structure ordered by a rational mind,
Nietzsche posits the interplay of drives struggling for supremacy. Two paths lead further on
from this. One leads via Sigmund Freuds theory of the drives into psychoanalysis and the
concept of the unconscious. The other one turns, via Michel Foucault, towards an Art of the
Self.30 For Foucault the history of the self begins with the first active attempts at becoming,
with the first practices in which the subject attempts to transcend itself towards becoming
something differently. Since the self, in Foucaults rendering, is a historical phenomenon and
not pre-established in its essential being, this implies that the self has a beginning and can thus
have an ending31, like for example when it transforms into something different.

Thereof, thirdly, derives the conclusion that what one has already become is by no
means an ending point. This insight brings Nietzsche and Foucault to the creative attempt to
envision what one might yet become. We will recur to this point in more detail in the section
of the next chapter entitled An Affirmative Practice.

With that we have reached the threshold to an understanding of the importance of an

Art of the Self. If change is inevitable, if it is impossible to stay the same, if furthermore this
change occurs not through cognitive willing, but in a (transrational and transpersonal) process
of which one is often quite unaware, then the question of the Art of the Self - how to still give

30

What this common foundation suggests, is also that those different roads may not be as separated and
incommensurable as commonly perceived.
31
See also OLeary, 2002.

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ones life a certain shape, how to foster a change towards the subjectively better becomes
pre-eminent. Transformation, change, becoming, all take place in any case. The question then
becomes as to how one can influence our procedural becoming in its Apollonian-Dionysian
entanglement? One of the main tasks of this study is to shed further light on this question.

To resume our reflections it can so be assumed that both Nietzsche and Foucault posit
struggle, or conflict as one of the main causes for transformation. This idea of what instigates
transformation is also echoed in Heraclites, in his famous polemic about war as the father of
all things. In a very similar vein, Nietzsche stipulates that one has renounced the great life
when one renounces war (Nietzsche, 1976c: 489). Foucault asserts, in an inversion of
Clausewitz, that politics if the continuation of war by other means (Foucault, 2003: 15).
Light can be shed on those statements, if they are read on the basis of the above assumption
that struggle, conflict, is the basis for all affirmative transformation and becoming.

By taking a closer look at those statements it so becomes possible to interpret them

beyond their seemingly belligerent attitude. On the example of Nietzsches statement it can
first be asserted that to say that to renounce war means to renounce the great life begs at least
two interpretive questions one asking about what the great life could possibly mean and the
second raising the question of war.

What then, might first the great life be, if Nietzsche is read in light of the above? The
great life, I would argue, is first the affirmative life. It is the life that celebrates existence and
also affirms itself. It is the life which, instead of just letting subjectivation happen, tries to
(also) actively engage in a practice and fashioning of the self. This affirmative life so actively
undertakes the always risky venture of becoming other.

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Such an undertaking, however, has secondly a twisting moment for this affirming,
active, element can no longer consist in the aggressive stance of a cognitive willing, but has to
make room for that other, energetic, element of subjectivation and also include at one point a
letting go of everything that has been aspired to or already achieved. Such an art of the self
thus has to become transrational. It implies not to cling to the single elements in this constant
flow of becoming but to let them stream away.

This great life could thus be the always risky undertaking of a weak affirmation an
affirmation that celebrates the active moment of becoming but also acknowledges the
imperfection (Muoz, 2006, Schirmacher, 2007c) of those moments and the necessity to let go
of them at the crucial juncture. In the terminology of Wolfgang Schirmacher (2007c) such an
affirmation is what marks the crucial difference between homo generator and homo
compensator. The latter strives for perfection and is constantly looking for flaws to purge in
order to overcome the own inadequacy:

Der homo compensator will den Eigenmangel einzig erkennen, um ihn zu beseitigen:
Da der Mensch des Menschen Wolf sei, oft selbst sein eigener schlimmster Feind,
da Selbstunwertgefhle und Urmitrauen sein Leben vergiften und Depressionen es
berschatten, soll ebenso verschwinden wie krperliche Gebrechen und die
verstiegenste Forderung der Tod. (Schirmacher, 2007c: 8)32

The life of homo generator, however, like the Nietzschean great life, is one that is
characterized by acknowledging also the own imperfections not with dread and a fearful
feeling of insufficiency but, on the contrary with Gelassenheit (releasement) (Schirmacher,
2007c: 8). From this vantage point the drive to perfection can be let go off, as our inherent
32

Homo compensator wants to recognize the own shortcomings for the sole purpose of eliminating them. That
man is his own wolf, even at times his own worst enemy, that profound mistrust and feelings of inadequacy
poison his life and depression overshadows it: these situations are supposed to disappear just as physical disease
and--the most outrageous demand--death are supposed to be done away with. Translation by Daniel Theisen at
http://home.bway.net/danny/wolfgang/, last accessed 30/07/2007.

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imperfections are acknowledged and affirmed as well. This great life is so not the striving for
control and security, but on the contrary the letting go of control and embracing of insecurity
through a weak assertion of ones own existence.

The great life is not mainly to be found in the striving for the extraordinary, the greater
achievement or more spectacular feat. It is neither a gesture of vanity understood as that
which tries to hold on to its moments of perceived greatness and is so unable to let go and
relinquish the striving for control. It is much rather to be found in the small daily gestures, in
everyday life and - so to speak - in each breathing in and breathing out.

And this in turn brings us to the second part of Nietzsches statement, namely that
such a great life cannot renounce war. If this war Nietzsche insists upon is read, with
Walter Kaufmann33, metaphorically and is understood as an expression of the conflictive
element inherent in human life, then we can agree with Nietzsche that renouncing this war
implies exactly aspiring to security and control which in turn makes a transformation of the
self impossible. Such a renunciation implies negating the conflictive element in life as
potential source for creative energy. This great life is not the impervious gesture that wards
off all influences and neither is it the prevention nor negation of conflicts. It is much to the
contrary to be found in the acknowledgment of conflicts as positive and potentially creative
parts of human existence. This life therefore is also always risky, as opening oneself to
transformation through conflict has no guaranteed outcome and always also means letting
oneself be transformed.

Now, not to be mistaken, with this understanding the possibility of an individual ethics
that rescinds war as violence can still be retained. It is, however, the expression of a position
33

See also Mandel, 1988: xxix

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that first can no longer be universalized (towards a morality) and that secondly embraces this
war if it is understood as struggle as (sometimes painful) conflict towards a chance of
transformation of oneself.

Relating the topic of transformation to the Apollonian/Dionysian interplay Friedrich

Nietzsche explicitly associates the active moment of transformation and relationality with the
Dionysian element and sketches a Dionysian extreme:

It is impossible for the Dionysian type not to understand any suggestion; he does not
overlook any signs of affect; he possesses the instinct of understanding and guessing
in the highest degree, just as he commands the art of communication in the highest
degree. He enters into any skin, into any affect: he constantly transforms himself.
(Nietzsche, 1976c: 520)

The Dionysian can so be perceived as the art of dis-individuation and relational opening,
experienced in a moment of transfiguration and indeterminacy. This Dionysian element can
thus foster a liberating becoming, can open venues for change, but ultimately also needs to be
coupled with the channeling effects of Apollonian bounding. A completely Dionysian life
seems to be unlivable; but with that the question of how much bounding, how much Apollo
one is willing to take in stride has not yet been answered. And indeed, at its limit point, the
question arises if the transcendence or end of subjectivity might not be encountered in the
Dionysian experience. Might not a transcendence of subjectivation be thought as a series of
un-boundings, transcending individuality?

It is clear that such this transcendence can not be achieved via the other extreme of an
Apollonian Hegemony which denies the life-affirming power of transformation. Inherent in
the Apollonian Hegemony there remains the striving for security and control as the attempt to
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create an absolute position, a position sine cura (without care, without preoccupation) which
ultimately rejects the Dionysian aspect of the relational transformation of human existence
and is once more guided by the thinking of a strong truth.

3.4. Conclusion
This chapter is comprised of two main parts. In the first one, dealing with the question of a
practice of the self as art, firstly, we were able to discern the Art of the Transpersonal Self as
a weak art, deriving out of the interplay between the Apollonian and Dionysian. From this
rendering as weak art it followed, secondly, that the Art of the Transpersonal Self might just
as well be perceived as a Gay (weak) Science.

This rendering as art makes the practice of the self, thirdly, compatible with the
findings of both previous chapters. The practice of the self as art is compatible with both the
Dionysian/Apollonian (aesthetic/energetic) picture of the first and the double practice of
philosophy/spirituality (knowledge of the self and care of the self) given in the second
chapter. The figure of art highlights the element of performing a work on oneself while, at the
same time, it also contains that transrational element which is so crucial for both the
Apollonian/Dionysian and philosophy/spirituality.

Conceptualizing our transformative practices as art thus makes it possible to retain all
those different meanings and possible forms of expression. A specific practice, a concrete Art
of the Self can so focus more on the Apollonian/aesthetic/philosophical or on the
Dionysian/energetic/spiritual aspect while still maintaining the entanglement, mutual
conditioning and balancing of those two and, therefore, avoiding to fall back into a dualism or

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dialectic. A necessity that has yet not been tended to in this work so far is to make visible
what form such an Art of the Self could take. This will be the topic of chapter six.

In the last pages, fourthly, the understanding of subjectivation has been further
differentiated. At the base of this subjectivation an understanding of life in constant
transformation was discerned. This perpetual process of transformation, fifthly, implies a self
in permanent becoming which makes being possible only as absence, as act of remembrance
of that which is never fully present. Sixthly, this led to a problematization of the concept of
the self as a coherent, rationally willing agent. If becoming through transformation, seventhly,
is an unavoidable feature of human life, then the question of how to actively shape this
becoming poses itself with renewed urgency. Hence arises the necessity for an Art of the Self.

With Friedrich Nietzsche we then established that this Art of the Self could realize
itself as great life in a life-affirming practice, which in the form of a weak affirmation
celebrates the active moments of becoming but is also able to let those active elements fade at
a crucial moment of letting go. The transformation of the self, ninthly, always happens in and
through conflict. Conflict is perceived as an unavoidable and possibly creative part of human
existence. It is only through embracing conflict that the possibility for an active
transformation of the self opens up at all!

The different features of relationality, permanent becoming, and subjectivity as form

now add up to a certain understanding of the self which needs to be further addressed in the
next chapter. The question that derives is the one about the meaning of transpersonality. This
problem already has clearly surfaced at the end of the second chapter and can now, after those
intermediary moves, be addressed in the next. Why transpersonality, and what could this
possibly entail? In how far does the transpersonal self differ from the concept of a clear-cut
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singular subjectivity and what does this imply for the project of actively giving ones life a
certain style in an aesthetic and energetic practice?

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4. Energizing Foucault

I know very well, and I think I knew it from the moment I was a child,
that knowledge can do nothing for transforming the world.
Maybe I am wrong. And I am sure I am wrong from a theoretical point of view,
for I know very well that knowledge has transformed the world.
But if I refer to my own personal experience, I have the feeling knowledge cant do anything for us [...].
All this is not related to what I think theoretically (I know thats wrong),
but I speak from my personal experience.
Michel Foucault (1997a: 131)

In this chapter the element of the energetic will be singled out, in an attempt to relate it
differently. In the first chapter the energetic was approached with Wolfgang Dietrichs
interpretation of the Dionysian in Friedrich Nietzsche. After subsequently establishing the
link between the energetic and a certain understanding of the spiritual in the second chapter,
here this analysis will be furthered by taking into consideration also the concept of power.
Using Foucaults concept of power as starting point, but ultimately going beyond Foucault, an
energetic power will so be ascertained. From such an energetic account of power we will then
be able to retake the notion of the self as it is formed in relational and transpersonal
becoming.

Turning the attention towards the X that is the energetic and Dionysian element in
the Art of the Self - and in light of what we have outlined so far in the course of this study - it
can be assumed that this approximation to the Dionysian will not result in a theory, trying to
cognitively grasp the Dionysian moment in all its facets. The task at hand consists much
rather in attempting a shift of perception which allows us to come to an understanding of the
Dionysian, without having to rationally know it. We will now begin to approximate the
possibility of such a shift in this chapter; however this topic in its different forms and facets
will follow us throughout the rest of this dissertation.

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4.1. Approaching Power

Of all the works, all the studies which Michel Foucault conducted during his life, there is one
element, one distinctive feature, that stands out and has received the most attention ever since.
It has become the most debated, contested single part of his work, the most fruitful but also
considered by many the most outrageous (Thiele, 2003: 222). After proclaiming the death of
the (autonomous) subject with his two major works on science and discourse The Order of
Things (1994) and the Archeology of Knowledge (1972) - Foucault changed track in his
investigations and started to focus on that curious interplay of forces that make the subject
who she/he is. The focus of this epoch is not (yet) the pre-occupation with the active practices
of the self which would come later but, on the contrary, with how the subject is constituted,
more or less, from the outside34.

In the course of this undertaking Foucault famously argues the existence of a strangely
intangible force, a force which forms individuality but, unlike the Marxist or Freudian
renderings, is not repressive (Foucault, 1990a: 4ff.) but on the contrary productive. It is a
force which cannot be possessed or wielded by single individuals, not transferred in
democratic elections or through contract (Foucault, 2003: 14) as it is not something that is
acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away (Foucault,
1990a: 95). It is not co-extensive either with the law as the force that only says no:

If it were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you
really think one would be brought to obey it? (Foucault, 2000g: 120)

34

On the nature of the different phases of Foucaults work as regards the self and subjectivation see Schmid,
2000.

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It is a force, intentional but non-subjective (Foucault, 1990a: 95), which flows in dense
networks of relationality, runs down into the most capillary parts of ourselves, which traverses
us, flows through us, connecting us like relays ( Foucault, 2003: 29), suffuses us through its
effects; forms, moulds and transforms us. This force has the potential for great destruction but
is not inherently destructive or violent. Foucault himself, of course, calls this force power.

In the following section we will first take a look at the established wisdom about
Foucauldian power, seeing how power has been interpreted immanently within the
Poststructuralist rendering. In critical distinction to this immanent interpretation we will,
secondly, establish an energetic rendering of power and will, thirdly, relate this energetic
power to the Art of Transpersonal Transformation.

4.2. The Conventional Interpretation of Foucaults Power

Looking at the Foucauldian analysis of power through the lens of many interpreters of
Foucaults work, what springs to mind is that the question of power seems to be posed always
as a question of the political35. Whenever the question of subjectivity arises as a problem in
those analyses it is always through a struggle over the extension of the sphere of the political.
The argument that is advanced still follows the lines that also the personal - individuality,
subjectivity - in the end, are political questions. Any critique put forth in this way so aims at
an extension and enlargement of the political sphere, through the inclusion of that which was
formerly excluded. The question that this line of analysis boils down to is thus always the
question of the inclusion in and exclusion from the sphere of the political.

35

Such a reading seems to be inherent to the interpretations of, for example, Judith Butler (2004a, 2004b, 2005)
and Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2000, 2005).

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In this conventional rendering power is first understood as the ability to (co-)determine

the point of closure in discourse and thus establish what has to be left unsaid and cannot be
expressed. Power thus always has a discursive component, which structures the expressible.
Its terminal point also marks the end of a lifes intelligibility. It is in light of this discursive
component that Foucault focuses, for example, on the Lives of Infamous Men (2000d), those
otherwise nameless, faceless and voiceless past existences, who remain legible for us only by
virtue of a few brief and strident words and whose life comes down to exactly what was
said about them (2000d: 162). Furthermore, as example of how subjectivity is discursively
shaped not just through exclusion but also in its inclusive moments, Foucault studies - in
respect to sexuality - the incitement to discourse in relation to ones doctor, confessor or
therapist (Foucault, 1990a).

In conjunction, power is secondly also equated with practices and how individuality is
formed within certain practices. Practices, working in conjunction with discourse, can here be
understood as actions which make other actions, or other forms of behavior, possible, easier
or more difficult. Power, exercised via practices, so defines and structures subjectivation,
enabling some forms of life, while disenabling others:

It [power] operates on the field of possibilities in which the behavior of the active
subject is able to inscribe itself. It is a set of actions on possible actions; it incites, it
induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; it releases or contrives, makes
more probable or less; in the extreme, it constrains or forbids absolutely, but it is
always a way of acting upon one or more acting subjects by virtue of their acting or
being capable of action. A set of actions upon other actions. (Foucault, 2000f: 341)

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Those two strands are commonly combined towards seeing power as the interplay of
discourses and practices. Power thirdly, always understood as relational, is exercised always
in concrete, and local networks:

Power, in the substantive sense, le pouvoir, doesnt exist. The idea that there is either
located at - or emanating from a given point something which is power seems to
me to be based on a misguided analysis, one which at all events fails to account for a
considerable number of phenomena. In reality, power means relations []. (Foucault,
1980b: 198)

Foucault was in a similar vein always adamant that what he had tried to accomplish is an
analysis of the concrete flow of power, tracing it in its workings as it traverses individuals
through practices and discourses, but that this does not accumulate to a theory of power. The
analysis of power furthermore always has to remain local and contingent, just like power only
exists in its concrete flow:

If one tries to erect a theory of power one will always be obliged to view it as
emerging at a given place and time and hence to deduce it, to reconstruct its genesis.
But if power is in reality an open, more or less coordinated (in the event, no doubt, illcoordinated) cluster of relations, then the only problem is to provide oneself with a
grid of analysis which makes possible an analytic of relation of power. (Foucault,
1980b: 199)

Through its relational exertion in discourses and practices, through its flow in the dense, yet
ever shifting constellation of micro-forces, bodies are formed and subjectivation takes place.
We will shortly highlight the functioning of this kind of interpretation of power on the
example of the work of Giorgio Agamben.

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In parts of his recent work Agamben (1998, 2005) problematizes the modern legal
system upon which societies are built by re-taking the decisionistic legal theory of Carl
Schmitt. Sovereign, according to Schmitt (1985), is he who decides upon the state of
exception who decides when the rule does not apply and what (who) has to remain outside
of the legal sphere on which the political is built. Only on this fundamental exclusion is,
according to Agamben, the fully political life (bios) in Western societies established.

What has to remain outside is bare life (zoe), the life that does not count as political
and, in extreme cases, does also not count as life and therefore can be killed without (legally)
committing homicide. The only distinguishing feature of this bare life then becomes the fact
that it is not (yet) dead (Agamben, 1998; 2005). The bare life remains outside of the realm of
power and thus outside of the realm of subjectivation. In Agamben only upon this
fundamental exclusion is the sphere of power established in which life that counts as fully
human can take place. Foucault describes this sphere of powers operation in the following
way:

It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity
of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute
their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and
confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these
force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or system, or on the contrary,
the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly as
the strategies in which they take effect. (Foucault, 1990a: 92)

In Discipline and Punish (1977a) Foucault exemplified this strategic relationality of power on
the example of the prison system by showing how, in the strategic conglomerate and mutual
interplay of (prison) practices, discourses on criminality, legal, statistical, or generally

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scientific bodies of knowledge accumulated, a certain type of subjectivity is formed that of

the delinquent.

What is important for the purposes of this study is that in this conventional account
power equals concrete discourses and practices, without any remainder or residue. In this type
of interpretation, discourses and practices are all there is to power. Critique can be mounted
by analyzing concrete practices and discourses and trying to determine what has been
excluded in them looking for their blind spot, discerning what is absent. Critique can also
object to certain forms of subjectivation, can protest against being constituted in a specific
fashion, being constituted like that, by that, in the name of these principles, in view of such
objectives and by means of such methods and at this price and cost, not like that, not for that,
not by them (Foucault in OLeary, 2002: 114).

Not power as such is contested in those critiques but a specific relationality, this
concrete constellation with those specific effects. It would thus be a mistake to construe from
this an all out attack on power. The subject is always only constituted within the field of
power; it is only within the interplay of this relationality, that subjectivation takes place. The
aim of critique is always the extension of the political sphere that, which can be said,
practiced and thus lived. The assumptions about power and its critique remain rational.

Indeed, this line of interpretation of power conducted in a Foucauldian or PostFoucauldian vein have a lot of merit and have provided a plethora of fruitful and deeply
insightful analyses and critiques of constellations of power36. However, without wanting to

36

In this respect the continued works of both Judith Butler and Giorgio Agamben stand out. Especially in light of
current events of world politics, a back-to-back reading of Agambens Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare
Life (1998) and Butlers Precarious Live: The Power of Mourning and Violence (2004b) is compelling.

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take away from the feasibility and continued necessity and urgency of these analyses, what we
have in mind here for this chapter aims at something different.

We will so try to disengage power from this immanent interpretation by asking the
question about possible points of connection between the Foucauldian understanding of power
and the energetic. We will, for this undertaking, start with re-taking Foucaults own
conceptualizations on power but establish an interpretation which he himself very likely
might have resisted. The outcome might so be an approximation which, while using
Foucaults work as a starting ground, ultimately has to go with Foucault against the grain of
what is considered established Foucauldian scholarship which interprets power immanently.
Having so far given more of an overview of how power works through institutional discourses
and practices, we will now in the next section focus on power in concrete human relationality
and subsequently approach an energetic power.

4.3. Power Re-visited

In the introduction to this section, I have pointed towards several critical features of
Foucauldian power. The most important of those is probably powers productivity. Power is
not the force which represses but which positively makes us who we are. Only within the
sphere of power can any kind of subjectivation take place. Foucault so points out that if it is
only power - in its concrete flow and workings in and on us - that forms us, then the
individual human being is not all powers opposite number but on the contrary one of
powers first effects (Foucault, 2003: 30). It is only upon the basis of this being-constituted
and on the premise of acknowledging this constitutedness through and within power that the

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possibility for an active practice of the self opens up. Subjectivation can only occur within
and on the basis of power relations.

In the Foucauldian rendering an outside of power would therefore also not be the
originary zone of freedom, but on the contrary, an outside of power is only thinkable as a zone
of anomy and violence. If power is what makes us who we are, if power is the active agent of
subjectivation, stepping outside of power - or being brought outside of power - means being
deprived of every possibility for individuation and subjectivation. The Other of power is so
not freedom but domination and violence. Jenny Edkins and Vronique Pin-Fat retake this
crucial point on power as follows:

A relationship of violence acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it bends, it

breaks, it destroys, or it closes off all possibilities. Its opposite pole can only be
passivity, and if it comes up against any resistance it has no other option but to try to
break it down. A power relationship, on the other hand, can only be articulated on the
basis of two elements that are indispensable if it is really to be a power relationship:
that the other (the one over whom power is exercised) is recognised and maintained
to the very end as a subject who acts; and that, faced with a relationship of power, a
whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up.
(Edkins and Pin-Fat, 2004: 12)

Power thus is not a figure that concerns only a single individual. Power in each instance is
always relational; it is something that flows between concrete individuals. Power also does
not exist as an abstract, but only ever in its concrete manifestations, it is always local. The
importance of this relational component in Michel Foucault is such that his whole work has
also been classified as a philosophy of relation (Veyne, 1997a: 177). The self gains its
specific shape by virtue of being located at a certain juncture within powers net of
relationality. Relationality is thus the feature that concretely determines the shape of the self.
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As long as relationality is set up in a way that allows for the possible reversion or at
least modification and change of those relations, power still flows, and freedom as well as
active subjectivation become a possibility. And here we encounter another facet of power.
Just as subjects are formed through the exercise of power, they simultaneously always also are
forming others with whom they are in relation.

Power is the basic condition of human life and, ultimately, only through power also
the possibility for the active self-formation of the subject opens up. An Art of the Self only
becomes possible within power. This gives meaning to the famous Foucauldian phrase that
there can be no power without freedom and that power is exercised only over free subjects
and only insofar as they are free (Foucault, 2000f: 342). Freedom opens up as a possibility
only within power.

To flip the above statement around: Wherever power ceases, subjectivation is also no
longer possible and one is neither constituted as a human being any more, nor does the option
remain available to constitute oneself as such. It is when the relations between people ossify,
become inflexible, petrify and ultimately turn unchangeable and set in stone that power also
ceases and becomes something different, it turns into domination. Domination arises each
time the relations between people are set in a way they are no longer reversible and any
attempt at change is prevented and blocked (Foucault, 1997k: 283). Individually this state of
being when power is blocked leads to anomy and violence whilst the continued individuation
is disrupted and the subject in its being is thrown into complete disarray.

From the above follows a further point of great importance: In this rendering the
subject is not a pre-given essence but, on the contrary, a form and one which is not always or
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primarily identical to itself (Foucault, 1997k: 290). The Subject is a form that receives its
concrete shape and is imbued with a distinct life in the always relational flow of power. In
different relations to different people this subject will so take on a different form, present
itself differently and thus become differently. There is no essence to recur to which could
constitute the true self and so would serve to establish the distinction to a mere mask.
Alienation, like is posited in the Marxist analysis, so looses its point of reference because
there is no longer the true self from which one could be alienated and no imprisoned nature
waiting to be liberated (Foucault, 2000a: 275).

We thus become partially different, when we are in a concrete situation a mother or

father, a teacher, a worker, a lover, etc. and it is in this sense that we are, as Foucault asserts,
not identical to ourselves. To say that the subject is a form connects us to the idea of
transformation expounded in the third chapter. It is to imply that it is not a (pregiven)
substance, but that the subject has a history and a future:

[...] in the course of their history men have never stopped constructing themselves, that
is to say continually displacing their subjectivity, constituting themselves in an infinite
and multiple series of different subjectivities, which will never come to an end and
will never bring us face to face with something which would be Man [...]. (Foucault,
2000a: 276)

Having established these points we so become able to tackle the crux of the question of power
which still has eluded us so far: while the above lines have provided a general approximation
towards that phenomenon which is called power, the picture still remains incomplete in many
ways.

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With the strategic play of discourses and practices, with their effect on subjectivation
and with the question of what happens when the relations become unchangeable, only
Apollonian elements of subjectivation have been analyzed. And indeed, seen from this view it
is also only logical that what happens when this Apollonian element purifies or becomes
hegemonic is domination. However, what is still missing in this account is a way of reckoning
for the Dionysian. We will thus in the following try to complete the picture with approaching
an energetic power.

4.4. An Energetic Power

Let us first focus on the concept of relationality in its connection to subjectivation. With our
view of the Dionysian/Apollonian in mind we could approach the concept of relationality in
the following way. Any relation, to begin with, always has two interrelated components. On
the one hand the aesthetic component, which in this instance we could also term the formal or
systemic: Any relation we find ourselves engaged in always takes place in an already pregiven larger context which, to a certain degree, defines our subjectivity in that concrete
relation.

Whether we are engaged in the relation between mother and daughter, friend and
friend, teacher and pupil, or any other imaginable type of engagement, there always is a
certain formal (or systemic) setting which in part determines the concrete shape of this
relationality. What the connotations of being a teacher, mother, friend, daughter,
pupil, etc. will carry might not be open to a universally valid description, will vary and
change with each context and societal setting. Still this Apollonian, systemic component is
always there and in principle amenable to a concrete analysis and can be described rationally.

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This is also, indeed, what Michel Foucault has done so masterfully in his analyses of
discourses and practices. Any relation so is in part determined by this systemic, aesthetic or
Apollonian quality.

However, it is also true that almost no relation is determined completely by this

element. No matter how exacting, rigid and detailed those systemic and formal elements and
rules are, only in its extreme outer reaches is the relation totally determined by them. For
anything else there is always this other element which plays a part in any relation and will
also co-shape its concrete form, however without being open itself to rational analysis. This
element has been called many different names in different contexts emotion (concretely as
desire in Deleuze or pleasure in Foucault); spirituality; the libidinal or sexuality; the drives;
affection etc. and we have here identified it as the Dionysian.

Any relation is thus always the concrete interplay of the Apollonian and Dionysian
and both those elements together in their mutual conditioning will determine the distinctive
form this relation will take. Together with the different relationalities also our subjectivity is
formed. To complete the Foucauldian rendering of power it would need to be energized. We
have so far called this X that flows through the systemic and aesthetic element Dionysian
energy.

An energetic account of power can build on the elements of the Foucauldian analysis
relationality, discourses and practices but adds to this rational (Apollonian) description a
transrational Dionysian twist. In an energetic power we so still assert that the subject is
formed (and forms itself) in a concrete relationality involving discourses and practices. But
the concrete form this relationality will take is not just determined by discourse and practice
without residue. Through discourse and practices energy flows shapes them and is in turn
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shaped by them. In an energetic power the relationality leading to subjectivation is not just
determined rationally by Apollonian discourses and practices, but just as well by the energetic
element (like for example emotions) that is also carried through them and within them. The
emotion that is conveyed through an utterance is just as important as what is (rationally) said
and only their interplay determines the shape the concrete relationality will take.

We can so make use of the many tools and concepts of the Foucauldian analysis of
power, including his idea of the self as form, via enriching them with an energetic component.
An energetic power thus is literally a force which flows in and through the individual person.
An energetic power could so also be likened to the picture of electricity flowing through
electrical networks. Pushing this metaphor one step further we could also take up the
Foucauldian picture of the subject as relay (Foucault, 2003: 29) for power. In the concept of
an energetic power the subject might similarly be likened to a relay station which receives,
transforms and transmits energy along aesthetic lines.

Taking this analogy one step further the energetic power can be perceived as a flowing
force the force of life. This force is not identical to discourse and practices but is transmitted
also through them. Discourse and practices may lead to a certain form of life, to a form of
self, to a mode of subjectivation. Equally they can be the expression of a distinct life but
they are not identical to it.

Discourse and practices are the visible expression of the force of life which flows
through them, but which itself is not rationally apprehensible. Discourse and practices are the
co-determining aesthetic element which always goes together with an energetic force of life
(energetic flow of power). Discourse and practices are open to rational description and
analysis, as Foucault has shown so masterfully. The energetic power is transrational and can
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only be experienced, not described. Together they are a different expression for the
Apollonian and Dionysian interplay.

It so becomes possible to posit an aesthetic/energetic sphere. This sphere might be

conceived as the space from which human subjectivation arises, as the relational sphere of
which the self is a part. It is this the sphere of energetic power within which (human) life
takes place but which is simultaneously formed by this life and co-extensive to it. The self
that emerges within this sphere is always relational and in this sense transpersonal.

4.5. The Relational Self

Working with this concept of the aesthetic/energetic sphere it so becomes possible to sketch a
transpersonal becoming: in both the active and passive moments of becoming, subjectivation
is shaped in relationality - by that which (and those who) surround(s) us just as well as by
ourselves. One is thus constantly engaged in a process of polyvalent transmission along
aesthetic/energetic lines. In this process the self is shaped just as it shapes others in turn,
embedded in a sphere of energetic power.

Instead of being a clear-cut, separated and distinct shape, the form of the self could
thus better be described as a certain density and ever shifting constellation within this
aesthetic/energetic sphere. The self is not different from the aesthetic/energetic sphere, but
forms part of it and also, in turn, co-forms this sphere from which it cannot be separated.

In an initial sketch one could so see the self, firstly, as part of an aesthetic/energetic
sphere in which, secondly, its form is emergent through relationality. Thirdly, this self can so

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not be separated from the sphere of which it forms part, but there is also no longer a clear
separation towards the others with whom this self is in relationality.

Going one further step beyond Foucault one can draw here on a concept derived from
the psychoanalysis to clarify this last point. Artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger (2006)
proposes to conceptualize the self as severality. The term severality implies that the self is
always co-formed and co-forming in a connecting and dis-connecting with those others who
are concretely around it. From them it is not completely distinct but engaged in a constant
process of differentiation in togetherness. The self is thus not singular, but always plural.

Unlike in an endlessly schizoid Deleuzian multiplicity (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987),

in which the self is made up of an infinite amount of connecting parts (the famous thousand
plateaus), Bracha Ettinger proposes that the self is not formed by endlessly different
influences and connecting points but by certain - specific yet shifting - constellations with
partial others who co-determine and influence its becoming. Griselda Pollock captures
Ettingers concept of a subject as plural already from inception, as at least several, but
not infinite (Pollock, 2006: 13). Ettinger herself sees subjectivation as a process of
differentiation-in-co-emergence and co-fading37.

Relationality is thus the basic human condition. Not to be connected, not to form and
be formed in relationality becomes unthinkable. The self turns into a severality from which
Others are never completely different, never total but always only partial others
(Ettinger, 2006: 148) and what arises can so be termed a transsubjectivity (Ettinger, 2006:
167).

37

Transcripts from the authors notes taken at the occasion of Bracha Ettingers lectures at the European
Graduate School on June 05th 2006. On co-emergence see also Ettinger, 2006.

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What this interpretation serves to bring to the forefront is an element which has been
inherent in Foucaults analysis, but which he never specified and which has been lacking in
this study so far: It is an account of how the self as form is not an individual form, but a
transpersonal form, intricately connected to the lives of others. Foucaults meticulous tracings
of power can help in sketching this aesthetic/energetic sphere as many of Foucaults
visualizations and tools of analysis can now be applied to an energized power. All
subjectivation thus takes place within this sphere and only as part of it does the self as form
take shape.

Moreover it can be asserted that within that sphere of mutually co-dependent

becoming, an Art of the Self is never a work just on the self as its effects will flow through the
lines of connectivity towards the partial others and become part of the mutual codetermination. Also any blockage that occurs, any trauma or violence, consequently is also
never just an individual occurrence but produces echoes throughout the sphere and with the
co-determined others. This also opens the door to, for example, inter-generational
transmissions as residual aesthetic/energetic traces may linger on and continue to exert
influence even if the concrete lives have already faded away.

The term individual at this point furthermore becomes misplaced. Already in chapter
two identity has been found to be is a misnomer, for one does not remain identical to oneself
from one moment to the next. Similar can be affirmed for the individual as individuum the
unit which cannot be divided. The subject in this rendering is no longer indivisible and neither
is it a single unit separable from its surroundings.

The truth that can be constituted in practices of the self is the contingent and
momentary truth deriving from an instant of relational becoming and remaining tied to it. No
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overall truth of the self can hold sway any longer. What truth arises is actively formed,
established and constituted and not a pregiven, objective fact or essence of the self which
could be found and deciphered. This truth is established in transformation and is always
relational and contingent. It does hold true for this emergent moment of becoming with
which it arises but without promise or guarantee of permanence. What merits and qualifies
this truth is merely its potential for giving a new and different perspective, a new and different
knowledge of the self which can thus foster further transformations. However, having thusly
served its purpose this weak truth may well fade again with new transformations.

Opening the possibility for such an active transformation of the self in the
transpersonal energetic/aesthetic sphere it is possible to use different venues, different
practices and approaches and also different stimuli to effect a transformation. Michel Foucault
has pointed to the transfiguring experience of pleasure and Gilles Deleuze names it desire.
Desire, with Deleuze, can open up a line of flight towards a de-territorializing becoming
(Deleuze, 1997). Michel Foucault argues the Use of Pleasure (1990b) for a similar purpose.
Pleasure, in Foucaults understanding, has the potential to wrest us away from the bounding
discourse on sexuality, which ties us to a sexualized and naturalized identity, towards an
opening of spaces and becoming which can be found in a pleasure understood as experiment
and each time new experience.

In the reading proposed here, both desire and pleasure can be used in an aesthetic and
energetic practice for a transformation of the self. It is, indeed, in this approach that the
famous argument about desire/pleasure can be bridged38. As Patricia McCormack (2006: 6)
points out, the experience of pleasure can be as much a vector for transformation and
38

Foucault rejects the possibility of becoming through desire and argues that desire is always perceived as a lack
- as an argument out of the negative - whereas Deleuze contrarily points to pleasure as being bounding and
territorializing. For a discussion of those diverging views see Gilles Deleuzes essay on Desire and Pleasure
(1997).

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transfiguration as desire if the former is understood as setting into action a process of

becoming a spark after which the self is not returned happy or satisfied, but disrupted,
irreversibly changed or affected. Wilhelm Schmid (2000: 340, 341) asserts in a similar
manner that the experience of pleasure is not at all sedentary or tranquilizing but, on the
contrary, that which pushes us to our limits, towards a transgression and transformation of the
self:

Im Konzept der Lebenskunst ist die Lust nicht ein Ziel oder ein Zweck, sondern ein
Mittel und ein Instrument zur Gestaltung und Transformation des Selbst.39 (Schmid,
2000: 341)

All of the above authors, finally, conceptualize the self as intimately linked to a bodily
experience. Especially in Michel Foucault this embodied experience of the self is highly
significant, as the different lines of relationality mainly attach on to the body, affect and even
form it and as it is also via the experience of the body that the self is formed. However, in all
of those authors the body is an experience rather than a substance. With this stipulation,
therefore, nothing has been said about the concrete form of this experience (hence there is
also no such thing as a natural, unmediated, body for any of those authors) which can take
multiple possible forms.

Venturing further in our hybridization of different traditions it is also of significance

that therapists like Bracha Ettinger use art in their trauma-work as possibility for opening up a
similar venue of transformation. As Ettinger points out, art can have this quality of becoming
a transport-station of trauma, even though there is no guarantee that through the practice of
art a trauma can surface and be transported and thus the self be transformed:

39

In the concept of the art of living pleasure is neither goal nor aim, but rather a means and instrument for the
fashioning and transformation of the self. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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The place of art is for me the transport-station of trauma: a transport-station that more
than a place is rather a space, that allows for certain occasions of occurrence and of
encounter [...]. The transport is expected in this station, and it is possible, but the
transport-station does not promise that the passage of remnants of trauma will actually
take place in it; it only supplies the space for this occasion. (Ettinger, 2000: 91)

With these last words the circle closes as this observation fits very well with our findings
from the last chapter about the enigmatic yet potentially transformative qualities of art and
artwork. In certain distinction from the Hellenistic mode of subjectivation the Art of the
Transpersonal Self can so give rise to practices which, besides being used for giving ones life
a certain style, can also specifically be used for therapeutic purposes.

This study so starts to move into the realm of a contemporary practice which, while
recurring to certain stylistic elements of an older, ancient Art of the Self, puts those elements
to new and different uses. The Greek mode becomes a distant memory (Deleuze, 1988:
104) to which it is possible to look for inspiration in some aspects, but from which the modern
subject will necessarily have to differ in its means and ends.

4.6. An Affirmative Practice

A life-affirming and transformative practice of the self thus consists in shaping the flow of
power, channeling energy through certain constellations of discourse40 and practices and
conversely using the energetic to partially change the effects of discourse and influence

40

Using discourse in this way has a long tradition reaching back thousands of years with manifold different
expressions - from the Ancient Greek parrhsia described by Michel Foucault in Fearless Speech (2001) to the
different traditions and forms of (spiritual) chants, prayers and mantras. In each of those instances the discursive
element - very often elaborately described in its intonation, vocalization, breathing and rhythms - is coupled with
an energetic component to achieve a transformative practice of the self. In a subsequent section we will take a
look at a few transpersonal and transrational practices of the self in order to obtain a clearer picture of what is
approached here.

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practices. And this cannot be achieved through theoretical endeavors (although a certain
moment of cognitive insight might also be the first step) but can only occur in the experiential
practice of an Art of the Self that is simultaneously aesthetic and energetic and takes both
elements into account.

Such a practice might be found as working with emotion and spirituality, but just as
well with sexuality or with the aesthetics of discourse. In this light a sexual practice can be
just as transformative as a spiritual one and, indeed, very often the two coincide in the same.
This is, to use a non-European example, the case in the Tantric yogic practice where ritual
sexual union is used as a vehicle for inducing spiritual experiences (Grof and Grof, 1990:
79). Such an expression of the Dionysian might subsequently be perceived not as a permanent
orgy, but as an act of the celebration of life in all its transformative and transfiguring qualities.

Turning the above around and following the logic of purity to its extremes, we can so
also assert that the only way in which a complete determination of relationality through the
systemic would be possible is in the form of an Apollonian Hegemony. We now can perceive
this Hegemony just as well in the figure of domination understood as the outside to an
energetic power. In domination the relations have been stratified and rigidified to such an
extent, that the transformative flow of energetic power ceases. A blockage of power occurs
and domination arises in the instant when the mutual influencing interplay between the
energetic and its rational co-determining elements of practices and discourses is no longer
possible, because the latter have been set in a way that their strategic (rational) imperative can
no longer be altered.

Domination thus would be a form and expression of the Apollonian Hegemony and of
the rule of the formal and aesthetic over content. Yet it needs to be pointed out that, in light of
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the above rendering of an aesthetic/energetic sphere of life, the Dionysian energetic can never
be completely suppressed. Any Apollonian Hegemony therefore has to remain an ever
unfinished striving and it is this very impossibility to reach its prospective goal which at times
can make its zeal and relentless fury all the more ferocious.

In this way we can draw several findings of the last chapters together. What such a
striving for purity, in its extreme forms, leads to is something we have already sketched in the
first chapter. It could there be described as the negation of the force of life through the
triumph of what Walter Benjamin (2002) called the aesthetic politics. Alternatively we could
render it with Wolfgang Dietrich (2006c) as the attempted suppression of the Dionysian, or drawn from this section - call it bare life with Giorgio Agamben (1998). What lies at the basis
of all those concepts is the striving for complete determination of relationality through the
systemic and formal and the simultaneous denial of the force of life.

This insight could help us to further an important point about the Dionysian and
establish a distinction in two directions. First, the concept of an energetic power surely might
ring disconcerting for those who insist that power is still something that - in the first instance is to be resisted. And, not to be mistaken, everything we have determined so far is no negation
of the possibility of resistance against specific forms of subjectivation which might be
individually perceived, and with good reason, as a subjection to outside forces. However,
against an analysis that associates Foucauldian power still exclusively with political power
and thus falls back into merely remaining in the position of resistance to and critique of all
power, it needs to be pointed out that the celebration of life in all its aspects is only possible
through the acceptance of the basic feature of an energetic power.

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Turning this proposition around we realize that one should equally beware the easy
and nave veneration of the Dionysian as inherently good. The connecting of the Dionysian to
power in an energetic fashion also helps to reassert a distinction in this direction. What
already surfaced in chapter one in the rendering of the interplay between the Apollonian and
the Dionysian can here once more be affirmed with an energetic power. One of the main
points about the interplay between the Apollonian and the Dionysian is exactly that they are
not identical to the binary distinction between the forces of good and the forces of evil no
matter which of the two is associated with which of those forces. The identification of the
Dionysian with an energetic power only serves to stress that point. This identification, indeed,
might ring just as strange in the ears of those who associate the Dionysian energetic with
something inherently good as with those who try to fight power at all costs.

The crucial practice could once more consist in that Nietzschean gesture of a
celebration of life that is not borne out of turning a blind eye on some of lifes parts and
simply negating the existence of everything that does not fit, but that would consist in an
affirmation of life in all its forms and moments41. This affirmative life is beyond good and evil
because it is characterized, as Gilles Deleuze (1983: 104ff.) points out, by its freedom from
the moralizing categories of ressentiment towards the other and bad consciousness towards
oneself. And it is in this affirmation of life that ultimately a letting go and letting fade of its
aspects (not just those perceived as painful but just as well the joyful ones) might take place.

41

References to the affirmation of life can be found all throughout Nietzsches creative life. It is in the context of
Ecce Homo (1989b) that Nietzsches translator and commentator, Walter Kaufmann remarks in the editors
introduction (1989b: 206) about the connection to Nietzsches personal life: A man in physical agony much of
his adult life and warned by his doctors not to read and write much lest he strain his half-blind eyes, does not
once complain. He is thankful for his illness and tells us how it made his life better. Nietzsche himself prefaces
the first part of Ecce Homo, on the day of his forty-fourth birthday, by recounting the presents he has received
throughout the previous year and asking How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? (1989a: 221). Much
more to the point, this affirmation of life in all its facets, this attitude of saying Yes to life even in its strangest
and hardest problems (Nietzsche, 1976c: 562) is also a cornerstone of Nietzsches philosophy and is to be found,
amongst others, extensively also throughout the Gay Science (1974), the Twilight of the Idols (1976c), and the
Will to Power (1968).

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In this way the own life might so become what Wolfgang Schirmacher (2007a: 7;
1995: 3) calls a gelingendes Leben - a life of accomplishment - a life that accomplishes itself
not because it has been cognitively willed to succeed, but that succeeds on the contrary
behind our back and without our knowing. It succeeds out of a stance of Gelassenheit
(releasement) (1995: 4) which implies an affirmative acknowledgment of our existence in a
moment of cognitively letting go. The gelingendes Leben, Schirmacher asserts, is always
spoilt once one tries to rationally tackle and grasp it, whereas it can be lived with a
Gelassenheit which does not try to force it but gives it the space to unfold of its own accord as it invariably does.

Acknowledging life in its different aspects, affirming it, might so be a step towards a
Verwindung of individuality in a becoming that turns into a practice of letting go of what we
already have become. Finally, it needs to be pointed out that this fading does not imply a
forgetting. Besides the question of whether a willed forgetting might be possible at all, it is
also not what is desired here. This letting go much rather has the implication of an integration
in which the individual elements fade into the background towards the formation of a
transrational, relational and thus transpersonal Art of the Self which establishes itself in each
present moment anew.

Friedrich Nietzsche shows how such integration might take place when, in Ecce Homo
(1989b), he sets out to show how one might become what one is, recounted in the words of
OLeary as follows:

[...] for Nietzsche, to become who one is is to integrate and unify all those traits,
habits and experiences that make up ones character. However, there is no state of
being unified that replaces an earlier state of becoming; rather, unity is a continual
process a process not of improvement and perfection, but of integration and
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stylization. This is a process in which the individual gradually owns (and disowns
by modifying) more and more of their characteristics and experiences. (OLeary,
2002: 136)

This process implies an acceptance and affirmation of what we have become so far in which
certain elements are enhanced while others are let fade or put into a new and different position
than they occupied before. Such a process dissolves blockages by redeeming and affirming
parts of the self previously rejected or suppressed.

4.7. Conclusion
Throughout the present chapter, setting out once more in a Foucauldian vein the idea of the
Dionysian was related to Foucauldian power. While traces and elements of this interpretation
were certainly inherent already in Foucaults writing, his idea of power for this purpose was
re-modeled and twisted into an energetic direction. This interpretation should not be
perceived as a rejection of the conventional conceptualization of political power which
continues to be of critical importance. And yet, by stressing different elements and putting to
the fore unusual aspects we were able to arrive at a novel understanding of power.

Point of departure was a differentiation of the understanding of power that was to be

worked out from its conventional interpretation. Therefore, firstly, a short introduction was
given on understandings which equate power with a combination of discourse and practice.
Secondly, some features of power in Foucaults own rendering were established foremost
among them its productivity, relationality and the form of subjectivity (the subject as form)
that goes hand in glove with them. Thirdly, the question of relationality was re-considered
from the point of view of the aesthetic/energetic.
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Via this relationality, fourthly, the Foucauldian rendering of power was complemented
with a Dionysian element; which led to a transrational, energetic power in interplay with
rationally apprehensible forms - discourses and practices. In a third transposition via an
intermediary step of discussing the immanent interpretation of power, this study arrived
therefore at an energetic power, thereby further adding to the picture of the Apollonian and
Dionysian established in previous chapters.

Fifthly, this energetic power was so identified as force of life and the hypothesis of an
aesthetic/energetic sphere was proposed. This led, sixthly, to a crucial differentiation for the
Art of the Transpersonal Self as celebration of life in all its form towards a possible fading of
subjectivity. The Art of the Self was portrayed as an art of Verwindung of subjectivity, an art
also of fading and letting go. We might no longer be able to break through into an originary
outside beyond the Apollonian/Dionysian, but within such a practice of the self an impure and
imperfect freedom can be found. Such Freedom is understood as the possibility to partially
transform ourselves and ultimately opening up the prospect, still so far ahead of us at this
point, for a fading of subjectivity. We are so approaching the possibility of giving our life a
certain style of turning ourselves into a work of art - through an affirmative aesthetic and
energetic practice for a self engaged in a constant becoming.

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5. Ethics as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice

What is ethics,
if not the practice of freedom, the conscious [rflchie] practice of freedom?
Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics.
But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.
(Michel Foucault, 1997k: 284)

In the previous chapters we have highlighted the distinguishing features of an Art of the Self,
beyond the individuality of the autonomous, self grounded subject and beyond the rationality
of the Cartesian cogito. With the concepts of the aesthetic and energetic an understanding of
the self as in transformation has been approximated. What, however, remains to be discussed
is the question of ethics. This shall be the inquiry guiding this chapter: after rejecting the
morality which has dominated Western thinking for more than two millennia the question
which needs to be put to such an Art of the Transpersonal Self is whether through its practice
an ethics, understood as an approximation to the problematic of how is one to live, can still
remain possible? What I will therefore highlight in this chapter is an ethics as aesthetic and
energetic practice an ethics as transformation.

In order to approach this topic, a preliminary observation as to its necessity: In the

rejection of the moral world order, in the critiques of its renunciatory effects and of the
violence that is inherent in the striving for Apollonian purity and absolute, formalized, Truth
it should also not be overlooked that one significant function of this order was to provide
orientational knowledge, to impart a grid of orientation for individual behavior. Along the
lines of this grid, holding on to its firm handrails and stepping on its secure grounding, the
individual could derive an orientation of what it means to lead the good life, obtain concrete
codes and prescriptions for actions - what to do and what not to do. It provided a
comprehensive worldview according to which the world can be interpreted and according to
which a moral judgment of good and evil becomes possible.
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However, as we have established, there always was a flip side to this moral
worldview. By the very same token of strength and comprehensiveness a transformation of
the self remained inaccessible as the strong category of the Truth only allows for a
deciphering (or renunciation) of the self

- knowledge of this truth does not lead to a

transformation. This transformation of the self can only be had by letting go of those handrails
of morality and aspiring to live without the iron-clad foundations of an absolute Truth. A
transformation of the self can only be had by embracing the daily existence entailing
insecurity, conflict and risk. Living a life without recurring to strong morals also implies that
living the good life can no longer follow a pre-determined and universal pattern.

And yet, if we understand the question about the good life as the question about
orientational knowledge it becomes clear that our objection to morals does not imply a
rejection of ethics but only that ethics will need to be derived differently. Here we return
once more to Michel Foucault, whose concepts of the aesthetics of existence offers insights
into an art of ethics that can be derived out of an Art of the Self. The question of ethics,
leading towards an Art of the Self is something that started to pre-occupy Foucault rather late
in his life. In the following we will so begin by re-tracing this phase of Foucauldian work in
order to contextualize it and develop some of its key features and trajectories before retaking
it from the point of view of an aesthetic and energetic Art of the Transpersonal Self.

5.1. Placing Foucauldian Ethics

The Use of Pleasure (1990b) and the Care of the Self (1988a), originally published in 1984
shortly before his death, are commonly attributed to be the main works of the late phase of

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Foucault42. With those two volumes Foucault was to end the silence which had lasted for
almost a decade during which no new books by him had appeared. During those years
Foucault had written and rewritten, sketched and abandoned drafts for what had been
originally scheduled as a five volume series on the history of sexuality.

In the introduction to The Use of Pleasure Foucault gives testimony to the many shifts
and changes this project underwent, before finally seeing the light of publication. Foucault
(1990b: 4) elaborates how his plans to historically study the experience of sexuality in the
correlation between fields of knowledge, types of normativity and forms of subjectivity had
led him to a different undertaking in which this experience of sexuality, while still playing a
certain role, became part of a larger framework. Far from only being concerned with the
question of sexuality, the topic of study expanded to frame the question of subjectivation.

Didier Eribon (1991: 319) remarks on what happened between the publication of the
first and the release of the second and third volume: Histoire de la Sexualit became a
history of techniques of self, a genealogy of the subject and of the ways in which it was
constituted at the dawn of Western culture. What so becomes apparent is a shift, which later
on has been called the shift from the middle to the later phase of Michel Foucaults thinking.
Towards the end of his life he himself would characterize the overall trajectory of his thought
the following way:

Three domains of genealogy are possible. First a historical ontology of ourselves in

relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge;
second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which
42

Many important essays and interviews of this phase have been compiled in the First Volume of the Essential
Works of Michel Foucault entitled Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (1997b). The most comprehensive overviews
can be found within this volume in the texts On the Genealogy of Ethics. An Overview over a Work in Progress
(1997d); Technologies of the Self (1997i), An Interview by Stephen Riggins (1997a), The Ethics of the Concern
of the Self as a Practice of Freedom (1997k); and Friendship as a Way of Life (1997c).

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we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in

relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents. All three
were present, albeit in a somewhat confused fashion, in Madness and Civilization. The
truth axis was studied in The Birth of the Clinic and The Order of Things. The power
axis was studied in Discipline and Punish, and the ethical axis in The History of
Sexuality. (Foucault, 1997d: 263)

In other words: while in the early phase of his thinking Foucault had concerned himself with
how the subject emerges as object of research (scientific) discourses, and the middle phase
had shown his preoccupation with this subject as being formed in the relationality of networks
of power, he now asks about the conditions and technologies through which it can fold those
relations back onto itself, thus actively recognizing itself as subject and engage in a process of
transformation of the self. Foucault so turns to the forms and modalities in which the
individual constitutes and recognizes himself qua subject (1990b: 6). This last turn implies
an active pre-occupation of the subject with itself and thus for Foucault needs to be
investigated as an ethical problem, following the Socratic question of How is one to live?
(OLeary, 2002: 9).

A main concern uniting those latter two volumes of the History of Sexuality is so the
question of ethics. What Foucault aims to extrapolate from Antiquity is an understanding of
ethics that perceives it as the elaboration of a form of relation to self that enables an
individual to fashion himself into a subject of ethical conduct (Foucault, 1990b: 251). This
ethics so distinguishes itself from a morality as it is not presented in the form of a universal
law which each and every individual would have to obey (1990b: 250). What Foucault aims
to extract from those ancient examples is a form of subjectivation and technologies of
transformation which, while still remaining committed to an ethics, do no longer perceive this

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ethics in the form of the universal standards of morality. Wilhelm Schmid (2000: 225)
recapitulates this Foucauldian understanding of ethics in relation to subjectivity:

Die Frage der Ethik ist die Frage der Form, die man sich und seinem Leben gibt, und
die Art der Reflektion, die man darber anstellt. Sie konstituiert sich ber das Ethos,
die Haltung des Individuums, und nicht ber die Befolgung der Norm. [] Dem
entspricht die Form des Subjekts: Anstelle der passiven Konstituierung in der
Unterwerfung unter die Norm geht es nun um die aktive Konstituierung ber die
Frage der Form der Existenz.43

From within the Socratic/Platonic tradition Foucault so takes up the Socratic question of
ethics. For his answer, however, he looks elsewhere. The Models from which Foucault once
more aims to differentiate his own project are the Platonic and the Christian Models as he
discerned them several years earlier in his course on the Hermeneutics of the Subject
(Foucault, 2005). The last two published Volumes of the History of Sexuality (Foucault,
1990b; 1988a) continue this trajectory of a rejection of both the Platonic universality of truth
and the Christian morality.

In both those undertakings Foucault continues a vein of thinking first tapped by

Friedrich Nietzsche. Leslie Paul Thiele (2003: 224) observes that like Nietzsche, Foucault
assesses moral codes as idols. They are approached hammer in hand: The hollowness of
their rationalities must be sounded out. Also the Foucauldian skepticism towards an ultimate
truth and his rejection of the Cartesian subject stem from a Nietzschean origin. For Foucault
as for Nietzsche, what derives from those premises is an insight into the necessity of an
aesthetic creation of the self:
43

The question of ethics is the question about the form which one gives oneself and the own life, as well as the
kind of reflection which one conducts on it. It constitutes itself via the Ethos, the attitude of the individual, and
not from the adherence to a norm. [] This corresponds to the form of the subject: instead of being passively
constituted through the subjection under a norm it is about the active constitution via the question of the form of
existence. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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Das Leben des Menschen, den Menschen selbst, begreift Nietzsche als ein Kunstwerk,
und die Frhliche Wissenschaft erscheint nun als Nietzsches Lebenskunstbuch. Die
sthetische Gestaltung seiner selbst ist der Gegenentwurf zur normierten, moralischen
Existenz und entfaltet einen neuen Begriff von Kunst. (Schmid, 2000: 219)

In the last phase of his work Michel Foucault recurs to the time of the ancient Mediterranean,
but interprets his findings within a frame substantially derived from Friedrich Nietzsche. And
Foucault picks up the thread where Nietzsche left off: While Nietzsches preoccupation was
with the time leading up to Socrates and the Socratic break (1967, 1967b), Foucault follows
the turn of events further up through the various stages of Greek and Roman Antiquity and
into the first centuries of our time. The Use of Pleasure (1990b) and the Care of the Self
(1988a) were the last books to be completed by Foucault, appearing shortly before his death.
A further, fourth, volume in the History of Sexuality titled The Confessions of the Flesh,
while supposedly almost finished (Eribon, 1991: 323 ff.), remains unpublished to this day.
Although they so have remained the last books published by Foucault himself, they certainly
have not provided an ending point for the trajectory and impetus of Foucauldian thought and
neither do they profess some kind of return of to the principles of Humanism.

The late Foucauldian turn towards an aesthetic of existence and technologies of the
self in no way resuscitate Universal Man as the subject of Enlightenment and Human Rights.
But neither are they testimony that the death of this subject would need to open out onto a
bleak and dystopic vista of cynicism and despair or a flight into world-rejecting narcissism.
What emerges from Foucaults last writings under the name of an art of living is much rather
the attempt to re-think an ethics beyond morality and beyond the transcendental subject of
Enlightenment.

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5.2. The Four Domains of the Relationship to Oneself

At the beginning of The Use of Pleasure Foucault (1990b) develops the methodological tools
to analyze moral systems. He begins by clarifying a basic distinction which is inherent to
every system engaged with the broad question of how is one to live. Each such system can
be analyzed, he asserts, by the respective emphasis it places on codes of behavior and forms
of subjectivation (Foucault 1990b: 29). Both elements, to a certain degree, are inherent to all
ethical or moral systems, but their level of development, richness, flexibility and importance
vary. Thus a basic distinction becomes possible:

[] we should not be surprised to find that in certain moralities the main emphasis is
placed on the code, on its systematicity, its richness, its capacity to adjust to every
possible case and embrace every area of behavior. With moralities of this type, the
important thing is to focus on instances of authority that enforce the code, that require
it to be learned and observed, that penalize infractions; in these conditions the
subjectivation occurs basically in a quasi-juridical form, where the ethical subject
refers his conduct to a law, or set of laws, to which he must submit at the risk of
committing offenses that make him liable to punishment. (Foucault 1990b: 29, 30)

The question about the code of behavior thus is the question about norms and their concrete
form, elaboration and the stringency of adherence they demand. In the context of this
dissertation we have so far defined systems stressing the code-aspect as tending towards the
Apollonian (moral, abstract). What is of importance for those systems is the abstract
codification of moral rules and their complex elaboration. Subjectivation occurs through
modeling the own life in accordance with those precepts and through aspiring to adhere to
them as strictly and closely as possible. However, Foucault asserts, there also is a different
model:

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On the other hand, it is easy to conceive of moralities in which the strong and dynamic
element is to be sought in the forms of subjectivation and practices of the self. In this
case, the system of codes and rules of behavior may be rather rudimentary. Their exact
observation may be relatively unimportant, at least compared with what is required of
the individual in the relationship he has with himself, in his different actions, thoughts,
and feelings as he endeavors to form himself as an ethical subject. Here the emphasis
is on the forms of relations with the self, on the methods and techniques by which he
works them out, on the exercises by which he makes of himself an object to be known,
and on the practices that enable him to transform his own mode of being. (Foucault
1990b: 30)

The question about the forms of subjectivation is focused on the concrete way in which the
subject establishes her/himself as a subject. Since both forms of subjectivation and codes of
behavior are inherent to both models, the difference between the two is one of grades and
degrees and not of clear cut oppositions. Foucault (1990b: 30) calls the model which focuses
more on forms of subjectivation the ethics-oriented model, and the former the code-oriented
one. The question of ethics, he asserts, is the question about the form of subjectivation
inherent to any moral system. This question of ethics, in turn, always presents itself on four
different levels and can be divided in four component parts according to their (1) ethical
substance, (2) mode of subjection, (3) elaboration of ethical work and (4) telos (1990b: 26ff.).

(1) The ethical substance concerns the question about which part of the own self shall
be included in the ethical work. Which part of the self, which element of the own life is
considered to be important for the question of how to live? This question will be answered
differently whether, for example, the relations to nature or to the Gods are important for living
a good life or whether it is only the societal relations which form part of the ethical substance
and need to be considered. It makes a difference if the ethical substance revolves around the

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question of how to deal with acts linked to pleasure or rather desire, if what counts is the
own intentions or rather the own feelings (Foucault, 1997d: 263). In any case, the ethical
substance defines which part of the self, whatever that in the concrete (societal and personal)
circumstances may be needs to be worked over as part of an ethical life.

(2) The mode of subjection deals with how the subject is invited or incited
(Foucault, 1997d: 264) to fashion oneself as an ethical subject. Is it according to
individual(istic) choice, is it derived from the relationality of the concrete situation, or in
response to universal law? In the latter instance, is it, for example, because of the natural law
of reason that all human beings are called upon to conduct themselves in a certain manner or
because of the commandments of God?

(3) The form of elaboration of the ethical work concerns itself with the actual
practices, with the tools and technologies of subjectivation. In the words of Foucault, it
elaborates on the means by which we can change ourselves (1997d: 265). This is one of the
crucial aspects and questions for this study. Which are the concrete practices that are available
for subjectivation? Which behavioral patterns, meditation techniques, practices of thought,
philosophical tests of the self or techniques of transformation can be used or even just
imagined?

(4) The telos regards the aim and goal of subjectivation. What form of being do we
aspire to? Is it the purity of the Christian self, the Kantian liberation from immaturity, the no
longer alienated human being or the return to the state of nature of an original paradise? Is it,
indeed, even a finished form at all or an open process?

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Those four axes for Foucault define the ethical question, which is simultaneously the
question about the forms of subjectivation. If Foucault investigates the Ancient period to such
extent as to devote two whole books to it, this is because he believes that from those accounts
a way of living can be extrapolated which gives precedence to forms of subjectivation over
codes of behavior.

The historical accuracy of the Foucauldian picture of the ancients has been much
disputed. Pierre Hadot (2002: 177ff.), for example, raises misgivings about Foucaults
scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean, claiming that what Foucault reads into the Antique
period regarding the self cannot be supported by the literature of the period, or at least not to
the extent Foucault claims. Against such a philologists reading of Foucault, Timothy
OLeary (2002) points out that, while Foucaults sources are from the past, his concerns are
very much for the present. The point for a genealogist like Nietzsche or Foucault, OLeary
asserts, is not so much historical accuracy as the relevance of their interpretation for the
present. This interpretation is of course bolstered by historical material, but its distinguishing
criterion is the importance for the present rather than an objective truth:

[] a history such as Foucaults account of ancient ethical practices must be judged

not only in terms of historiographical accuracy, but also in terms of the contribution it
makes to the re-interpretation and re-constitution of ethical subjectivities today. [].
While it may be the case, then, that for a certain point of view these historical accounts
are fictions, what is important is that at the level of a present concern they are true.
I am well aware, Foucault says, that I have never written anything but fictions [].
But a fiction is not merely a false or inaccurate telling of events; a fiction is a
production, a creation, a transformation of reality; fiction is as much a verb as a noun.
(OLeary, 2002: 100, 101)

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The aim of the Foucauldian historical fictions is thus not to objectively prove what happened
in the past, but to change a part of current political reality making it different. Foucaults
histories are thus not the neutral statements of a dis-interested scholar but, on the contrary,
tools for an engagement with present conditions: One fictions history on the basis of a
political reality that makes it true, one fictions a politics not yet in existence on the basis of a
historical truth (Foucault, 1980c: 193). What this particular Foucauldian historical fiction so
aims at is to enable new ways of constituting the self in the present. What he wants to show is
that the end of morality as he sees it heralded in the present does not need to be the end of
ethics. He interprets this shift, on the contrary, only as a shift away from the codes of
behavior.

With extrapolating and highlighting the second, corresponding principle the forms of
subjectivation - Foucault reminds us that the question of how is one to live? can still
meaningfully be answered. The end of morality thus does then not need to be perceived as an
end of ethics. The subject that, under such conditions, poses this question of ethics is so no
longer the subject of a stable being but the subject perceived as form or, as Wilhelm Schmid
calls it, the experiential subject:

Das Subjekt das all diesen Aspekten entspricht, ist das Subjekt der Erfahrung nicht
das Subjekt der reinen, rohen Erfahrung, sondern der Erfahrung im doppelten Sinne,
wie er dem franzsischen Begriff exprience zu eigen ist: Demnach steht Erfahrung in
einem engen Verhltnis zum Experiment, um nicht nur die gemachte, sondern die
mgliche Erfahrung und die Mglichkeit der Transformation zu denken. Eine
Erfahrung ist etwas, woraus man verndert hervorgeht. (Schmid, 2000: 236)44

44

The subject, which corresponds to all those aspects is the subject of experience not of the pure, raw
experience, but of the experience in that double sense which is inherent to the French term exprience: according
to this experience is closely related to experiment, in order to think not just the experiences one made, but also
those which would be possible as well as the possibility of transformation. An experience is something from
which one emerges changed. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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The subject which is the aim of those forms of subjectivation is thus neither the cogito-subject
nor the transcendental subject, but the one of experience (Schmid, 2000: 238). Ethics is so a
certain form of activity, it is something that the subject does, a practice through which it
forms itself. An ethics in this understanding is a practice exercised through certain forms of
behavior towards oneself and others. It is a style which one tries to give ones existence. It
consists in the permanent work on oneself, the never ceasing task of turning the own life into
a work of art and fostering an aesthetic becoming.

Derived from the above fourfold rendering of the forms of subjectivation this
dissertation places special emphasis on the elements (3) and (4) the technologies of
subjectivation and the telos - the aim of such an ethics. Chapter 6 will answer the questions of
the technologies of subjectivation in regards to an Art of the Transpersonal Self. There the
difference between the Art of the Transpersonal Self and the Foucauldian aesthetics of
existence will assert itself in the clearest, as Foucault associates those practices exclusively
with an aesthetic, while we will follow an aesthetic and energetic rendering.

On the question of the telos, however, we agree with Foucault (1997k) when he states
that the telos of such an ethics is freedom. Not the freedom of the transcendental, substantial,
subject to live authentically in synchronicity with ones essence, but the freedom to each day
become differently to aim at shaping and transforming the own self against a concrete
historical horizon from which one emerges and to a certain degree remains embedded,
without being completely determined by it. It is in this sense that Foucault postulates that
ethics is the continuous practice of freedom and links it to the aesthetic (1997k: 284). In the
following we will now continue in a Foucauldian rendering of an ethics as aesthetics before,
going beyond Foucault, complementing this aesthetic with an energetic element leading into
Chapter 6 towards the practices of the self.
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5.3. Ethics and Aesthetics

In order to clearer understand this ethics as aesthetics, it is necessary to distinguish it in
several directions. First, it needs to be shown how such an ethics becomes possible without
recurring to a strong morality. Here Foucault follows Nietzsches footsteps in trying to insist
on an ethics beyond good and evil.

Secondly, however, this Foucauldian aesthetics also has to be differentiated from the
idea of aesthetics as beauty; it needs to be differentiated from the concept of the
aestheticization of life which already Walter Benjamin (2002) criticized in Fascism. Since the
Foucauldian concepts supersedes the distinction between aesthetics and ethics which
modernity has put in place, it needs to be made clear that in this ethics the good is not
identical to the beautiful.

In a similar vein also the concept of art needs to be disentangled from the idea of
something that is only available for the select few, the artistic geniuses who, in a stroke of
inspiration, fashion a masterpiece which in this process emerges as a finished piece of work.
Both this idea of the artist-genius and the concept of the finished work of art need to be
differentiated from the Foucauldian understandings. Those two distinct topics will be
explored in the next section.

Thirdly, and going beyond Foucault, it will also be necessary to place such an ethics as
aesthetic practice into our context of an Art of the Transpersonal Self. This implies that an
ethics for us cannot remain a purely aesthetic practice, it cannot be just Apollonian. In the last

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part of this chapter the Foucauldian trope of turning ones life into a work of art will therefore
be complemented with an energetic element, re-casting ethics as aesthetic and energetic
practice of transformation.

5.3.1. Beyond Morality

Defining morality as a formalized code of conduct which guides actions and lays down the
law of how to live the good life, what fascinates Foucault about a certain period and strand of
thought of Ancient Greece is that it elaborated an ethics in which such a morality was
strikingly absent. The question of how to live ones life was not decided according to a pre-set
code of values, but according to circumstantial, contingent factors, relating to oneself and
ones specific situation in life. An ethical activity thus always arose from the concrete
situation:

The principle according to which this activity was meant to be regulated [...] was not
defined by a universal legislation determining permitted and forbidden acts; but rather
by a savoir-faire, an art that prescribed the modalities of a use that depended on
different variables (need, time, status). (Foucault, 1988a: 91)

This ethics so operates with dynamic principles of variable adjustments which are always
temporal and circumstantial pertaining only to the concrete individual and the status of the
individual himself (Foucault, 1988a: 54). It has a lot to do with taking the perceived needs
into account, ones status, the systemic components involved, it relates to kairos the art of
discerning the opportune moment (Foucault, 1988a: 57) and being in the moment.

The ideal of this ethics conforms to an understanding of a dynamic interplay between

individually constituted elements concerning the persons involved and the concrete

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relationality between them. The balance that this ethics strives for is expressed as maintaining
an equilibrium (Foucault, 1988a: 56) which therefore could never take the form of a
precise codification or a law applicable to everybody in all circumstances (Foucault, 1988a:
56).

What is sketched here is an ethics that is not moral, but that is still made up by
Apollonian elements - form, aesthetics and style. It is so an ethics derived out of the
Apollonian, but one which curiously resists the pull towards abstraction. It refrains from
integrating those elements into an abstract grid to regulate all conduct. It develops different
local strategies for transforming a given relationality, but these strategies can never be
universalized and indeed also need not be. The question of how to lead the good life could
thus be relationally derived from the concrete situation, without the necessity for a Good
Book or code of laws to which to refer:

And for this there was no need of anything resembling a text that would have the force
of law, but rather, of a techne or practice, a savoir-faire that by taking general
principles into account would guide action in its time, according to its context, and in
view of its ends. (Foucault, 1988a: 62)

It is in the development of an experiential knowledge a savoir faire - adaptable to the

concrete situation, from which this ethics derives. From the Greek precursors Foucault so
extrapolates an ethics, that - unlike Christian morality and its pre-formulated code of conduct
- in its individual applications is exactly not just an instance of a modulated universality
(Foucault, 1988a: 60). Quite the contrary ethics is derived out of the concrete situation in
which it also remains and thus can be perceived almost as tailored to ones own way of life
(Foucault, 1988a: 60). Foucauldian ethics so are linked to an aesthetic of existence that is not

144

reducible to purely a science of life and not grounded in the moral codes of axioms and
algorithms (Thiele, 2003: 222).

5.3.2. Two Understandings of the Aesthetic

Amongst the most disconcerting critiques that have been leveled against this understanding of
ethics as aesthetic practice are those which link it either with a veneration of the Greek and
Roman style of life and its well known inclination towards male-centered, patriarchal values
of virility or, even more chilling with a Fascist aestheticization of life (OLeary, 2002: 122
ff.). As regards the former it shall serve to point out that Foucault was well aware of the
overall Greek way of life and never proposed a whole-sale take over of Greek ethics 45, but
rather a strategic re-use of parts of Ancient practices of the self which necessarily would have
to be deployed differently in a modern setting.

The other critique seems to be more serious and it is on account of the latter concern.
Because Foucauldian ethics abandon the binding norms of morality as well as supersede the
modern separation between the aesthetic and the ethical spheres, its critics, like Jrgen
Habermas, continue to raise the specter of Fascism:

These fears are founded on the perhaps justifiable suspicion that a personal ethics
which abandons both Aristotelian virtue and Kantian duty in favor of the idea of the
self as a work of art can very easily slip into, or at least collude with, a politics which
treats the masses as raw material to be moulded by the will of their masters. (OLeary,
2002: 123)

45

See Veyne, 1997b but also many explicit references of Foucault like the following, in which he makes it clear
that he does not deem a wholesale resuscitation of Greek ethics in any way desirable: The Greek ethics of
pleasure is linked to a virile society, to dissymmetry, exclusion of the other, an obsession with penetration, and a
kind of threat of being dispossessed of your own energy and so on. All that is quite disgusting. (Foucault,
1997d: 258)

145

The fear is that, uncoupled from a morality, such an ethics as aesthetics might either lead to a
narcissistic veneration of the beautiful self, or to a life-denying aestheticization of politics like
it has been criticized by Walter Benjamin (2002): Equaling the good with the aesthetically
beautiful, the political sphere is de-politicized as it is aesthetically ritualized. The masses are
given the possibility to aesthetic expression; however such an expression occurs only in a
homogenizing unity and at the price of simultaneously being denied all rights of political
expression (Benjamin, 2002).

At the end of such a fascist aestheticization stands the ideal of a unified and uniform
body politic and the concomitant concept of a unified, homogenous and unchanging self, like
it is envisioned in the hardened frame of both body and self-as-machine in Marinetti and the
Futurists:

If there is something characteristic about fascist aestheticization of politics, it must be

sought in this insistence upon the idea of a non-fractured subject, which finds itself
reassuringly reflected in a non-fractured uniform public space. (OLeary, 2002: 127)

In the creation of the unified masses as a beautiful piece of work it does not matter if the
world is destroyed along the way: fiat ars, pereat mundus (Benjamin, 2002: 121). In the
Stahlgewitter (Storm of Steel) of Ernst Jngers ballet of mechanized war, the body of the
nation is purified (Jnger, 2004). Under the assumptions of a unified self and unified public,
and equating the aesthetic with the beautiful, the consequences are chilling indeed.

Against such an understanding, firstly, it needs to be asserted that the Foucauldian

concept of the aesthetics and art differs sharply from the ideal of the creation of a beautiful
piece of work. What Foucault conceptualizes is the idea of a perpetual transformation of the
self which he renders as a never ceasing process. Instead of the ultimate goal of a finished
146

piece of work, which in its being remains stable as it has been perfected (unified), one so
encounters an unceasing flow of becoming in transformation. Instead of the petrifying and
static principle of identity, Foucault proposes a continued process of differentiation of the
self (Foucault, 1997g: 166). The aesthetic component refers to the attempt to shape this
process and give it a certain form according to concrete relational necessities much rather than
following a category of beauty which would lead back to an abstract ideal form. It is this pull
towards an abstract unification under the concept of beauty which the Foucauldian aesthetics
of existence resists and the Fascist aesthetics espouse.

Regarding the question of art, secondly, Foucault uses the concept of techn which has
both implications: Art in the modern sense but also work. At this point we can refer to the
conceptualization of a weak art we already gave in chapter three as an art which is also a
work, although not exclusively so. This concept of ethics as an aesthetic practice is thus
linked to the Foucauldian understanding of style, about which Paul Veyne remarks:

Style does not mean distinction here; the word is to be taken in the sense of the
Greeks, for whom an artist was first of all an artisan and a work of art was first of all a
work. Greek ethics is quite dead, and Foucault judged it as undesirable as it would be
impossible to resuscitate this ethics; but he considered one of its elements, namely, the
idea of a work of the self on the self, to be capable of reacquiring a contemporary
meaning, in the manner of one of those pagan temple columns that one occasionally
sees reutilized in more recent structures. (Veyne, 1997b: 231)

Instead of an elitist preoccupation or task for the genius artist, the Foucauldian aesthetics of
existence is an everyday practice, practicable by everyone, in relation with everyone in the
concrete surroundings. It this view that might lead one to see and live the own life
aesthetically and relationally or, expressed in Foucauldian terminology, as a work of art open
to that possibility of a transformation of the self. And therefore, as one might add, always
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open for events of conflict. The Foucauldian understanding of the self, rendered by OLeary
as a

[...] precarious, ever-changing, substance-less form which is the site of endless

conflict, differentiates him at a fundamental level, from the fascist goal of the stable,
armored, individual who embodies the eternal (or, at least thousand year) truth of
his/her race. (OLeary, 2002: 132)

Contrarily to the fascist ideal, the experience of the Foucauldian self is in a permanent flow of
becoming, it is fluid, open, soft (OLeary, 2002: 127) and in any case not geared
towards a finished state. Similarly, Wilhelm Schmid (2000: 241) describes this self to be one
difference and dispersion, instead of identity. It is aesthetic not in the sense of the beautiful
replacing the good but, on the contrary, in the understanding of a techn for giving ones
existence a certain style, while referring to neither the abstract category of the good (morality)
nor the one of the beautiful.

Finally, as regards the question of why of project of a life as perpetual selftransformation, as to the impetus that inspires this undertaking, Timothy OLeary (2002: 138)
once more comes to our aid by pointing out that it is born from the realization that myself
and my life have no shape, or purpose, no justification, outside of the form which I give to
them. Wolfgang Schirmacher (2007c) calls this insight the step towards homo generator:

Mein phnomenologischer Befund ist: Der Mensch war schon von jeher homo
generator, aber hat sich lange als homo creator (der aus dem Nichts Erschaffende),
homo faber (der Werkzeuge Verwendende), homo sapiens (der Vernnftige), homo
ludens (der Spielende) unzureichend verstanden. (Schirmacher, 2007c: 3) 46
46

My phenomenological diagnosis is: the human being has always been Homo generator, but for a long time
the nomenclature of his self-characterizations has been insufficiently comprehensive: Homo creator (i.e. the one
who creates something from nothing), Homo faber (i.e. the user of tools), Homo sapiens (i.e. the rational being),
Homo
ludens
(i.e.
the
being
that
plays).
Translation
by
Daniel
Theisen
at

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Homo generator acknowledges that humans have always been self-generating beings and
goes about turning this insight into an affirmative practice. Recurring to Martin Heidegger,
Wolfgang Schirmacher acknowledges that while we, as homo generator, may not be able to
decide on our origins, this in no way predisposes on our becoming:

Homo generator, der sich selbst erzeugende Mensch, ist durch Autopoiesis geprgt,
ereignet sich tautologisch: Ich bin, der ich werde. Zwar ist mein Ursprung
fremdbestimmt, aber nicht mein Entwurf, der im immer erneut entschlossenen
Beginnen mein Ereignis austrgt. Fr seine Taten und Unterlassungen bernimmt der
Mensch, gewollt oder ungewollt, ohne jedes Wenn und Aber Verantwortung. Ob mein
Wille an sich frei ist, ist fr mich ohne Bedeutung. Fr alles, was durch ihn begonnen
wurde, wird der homo generator geradestehen: Sein entwerfendes Selbstverstndnis
ist meine Selbstverstndlichkeit. (Schirmacher, 2007c: 4)47

And it is through this rendering that our project once more touches base with Nietzsche (1974:
232) and his concurrent insistence that what is needful is that one give style to ones
character and existence. Also in Nietzsche this style is no mere abstraction, but always related
to a personal state and the necessities of a given moment, instead of the formal characteristics
of beauty:

Good is any style that really communicates with an inward state, that makes no
mistake about the signs, the tempo of the signs, the gestures [...].Good style in itself is
a pure folly, mere idealism, on a level with the beautiful in itself, on a level with

http://home.bway.net/danny/wolfgang/, last accessed 30/07/2007.

47
Homo generator, the human being that generates itself, bears the stamp of autopoesis and enowns itself
tautologically: I am who I become. While my origin is determined from without, my blueprint, which carries out
my enownment in beginnings that are decided upon ever anew, is not. Whether he wants to or not, man takes
responsibility for all his actions and omissions, with no ifs, ands, or buts. Whether my will is free matters to me
not at all. Homo generator will answer for everything that was begun through his will: his self-conception as a
designer is my implicitness. Translation by Daniel Theisen at http://home.bway.net/danny/wolfgang/, last
accessed 30/07/2007.

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the beautiful in itself, the good in itself, the thing in itself. (Nietzsche, 1989:
265)

To lead an ethical life is thus, in the interpretation of Schirmacher, Nietzsche and Foucault
proposed here, to lead a life that is concerned with giving itself a certain shape and form. And
here we once more need to go beyond Foucault. Insofar as this shape is always one which is
made up of relations, insofar as it is a form which emerges as a concrete constellation of
relationality, it is not just defined by its Apollonian qualities. An ethics of giving ones life a
certain shape thus also has to take the other element into account through which this shape is
co-determined. An ethics in our Art of the Transpersonal Self thus always needs to be an
aesthetic and energetic practice.

5.4. Ethics as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice

Perceiving ethics as the attempt to give ones life a certain form along aesthetic and energetic
lines entails first of all that we consider the self as a weak form. It arises out of the interplay of
the aesthetic and the energetic component and is thus no longer a pure Apollonian form, but
the result derived from relating the Apollonian once more with the Dionysian. In this manner
we retain many of the Foucauldian elements of the aesthetics of existence, but once more
twist them by assigning them a different place within our relationality. While still agreeing
with the basic idea of the self as form instead of substance, we modify it here towards an
aesthetically and energetically co-determined form.

An aesthetic and energetic ethics thus implies taking into account our co-emergence in
severality and being aware that within the aesthetic and energetic sphere any action is always
one also affecting the co-emergent (Ettinger, 2006) and co-fading others. This ethical practice
150

is therefore always relational along aesthetic/energetic lines. It takes both the aesthetic
(formal, systemic) but just as well the energetic (emotional, spiritual, libidinal etc.)
components of a given situation into account and, if necessary, seeks to transform them
according to the perceived situational necessities.

The gain of the ethical practice sketched above in relation to the Art of the
Transpersonal Self is that a practice can be derived thereof, which does not try to deny the
actual living situations of concrete human beings but arises, on the contrary, exactly out of
those situations. This practice can still give space for the Apollonian (formal, systemic)
elements of a specific situation but without being completely determined by them. Being set
within a larger systemic and historical background containing formal, Apollonian elements
and constraints such an ethical practice does not try to deny or overcome those constraints but
to twist them in an aesthetic/energetic interplay according to the situational necessities.

Ultimately this practice thus derives to a certain degree from an acausal 48 standpoint;
not just because the elements can never all be known completely (which is a problem of
quantity) but also because the energetic eludes rational description (which is a matter of
quality). This ethical practice thus becomes variable, multifold and pluriform, but also forever
imperfect (Muoz, 2006).

If we pose the question of ethics as regards the Art of the Transpersonal Self, then
some pointers towards how an orientational knowledge beyond the Apollonian Hegemony and
the strong categories of Truth and morals might remain possible. Furthermore, it can already
be discerned that, firstly, we have stipulated that an Art of the Transpersonal self includes an

48

Acausal here understood as deriving from the insight that it is impossible to impute singular causes to
situations and events.

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affirmation of life in all its different aspects and facets. It is out of such an affirmation that the
project of giving ones life a certain style acquires an ethical attribute.

The Art of the Self, secondly, arises in the context of the awareness of our relationality
with partial others within the aesthetic/energetic sphere. We are thus from the outset
transpersonal and in part determined by others and co-determining towards them. Each action
we take never only affects our self alone since within the relationality of the
aesthetic/energetic sphere there is no such thing as a self alone. Any ethical practice will
thus have to reflect on this severality and co-emergence and co-fading and how ones own
actions might reverberate through this aesthetic/energetic sphere and concretely affect the
partial others.

Thirdly, the practice of an Art of the Self also embraces conflict as basic facet of
human life and possible source of creative change. The question that is of relevance is then
how to creatively deal with this conflict to keep open the possibility of mutual transformation
in and through it?

In such an Art of the Self, fourthly, the ethical question of how is one to live? is not
answered via recourse to a formalized code of conduct an abstract, absolute point of
reference. It is not moral. Ethics is here much rather understood as a practice exercised
through ones behavior towards oneself and others. It arises from the crucial realization that
within the aesthetic/energetic sphere of becoming-in togetherness every action towards
another is also always (partially) an action towards oneself. Wolfgang Schirmacher (1994b) in
his ethics of compassion here refers to the Indian Upanishads and the notion of the TAT
TVAM ASI which was already mentioned in the discussion on the State of the Art. It is this
realization in the face of the suffering other that, in fact, this other is not an outside, foreign
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being, but much rather always already you which points towards a perception of a basic
relationality of existence. This other is always engendered by the same aesthetic/energetic
basic undercurrent of life that is the aesthetic/energetic sphere.

This ethics could therefore, fifthly, for example take the form of a practice of
compassion. This, however, has to be placed under the proviso that compassion is not
confused with pity. In Friedrich Nietzsches work (Nietzsche, 1976a) one encounters a
differentiation of the two. Mitleid as pity for Nietzsche always carries an idea of superiority
towards the one to be pitied, of being glad not to be in the shoes of the other. This other-to-bepitied so remains an abstract, outside other and, indeed, Nietzsche advocates strongly
against a Mitleid understood as pity. Yet perceived as compassion, on the contrary, it arises
from the empathic understanding of a basic connectivity and togetherness of existence. As
Fred Ulfers pointed out49, Friedrich Nietzsche exemplified this practice of compassion during
the episode in Turin shortly before his breakdown, when throwing his arms around the horse
which was about to be beaten.

What derives thereof, sixthly, is an ethics as aesthetic and energetic practice which
follows certain guiding threads and principles derived from the concepts underlying the Art of
the Transpersonal Self but poses them in the form of questions to be asked every day anew,
instead of pre-given recipes for action.

Through the evaluation of a given aesthetic/energetic constellation and ones position

therein a form of situational, local and contingent truth (an orientational knowledge) can arise.
In the transrational rebound effect of this situational truth, a transformation of the self can
occur. Since this process is open ended, the questions of what to do? and what would be the
49

In a discussion at the occasion of the authors defense of this dissertation in New York, December 2007.

153

subjectively appropriate choice? arise each time differently and there is no guarantee that
answers given once, in one concrete situation, will remain valid for future use. It is in this
sense that an art of ethics is also, as Foucault (1997k: 284) points out, a practice of freedom
for in it we acquire the freedom to think differently, to each time anew pose the risky, the
exhilarating question of who we are, in order to find out how we could - through the practice
of everyday life give ourselves a certain weak shape and thus yet become differently once
again.

5.5. Conclusion
This chapter has been dedicated to the question, whether a non-moral form of ethics might
possibly be envisioned and how such an ethics could be formed within the Art of the
Transpersonal Self. It has to be stated that, firstly, this Art of the Self can not provide a frame
of orientational knowledge equal in universal comprehensiveness to the moral one as it
always has to be understood from the given circumstances. However, far from being a
shortcoming this is a crucial aspect of an Art of the Self, as it simultaneously opens the door
for a local and contingent ethics, which derives from the concrete situation and is not tied to a
formal grid of interpretation and judgment as good and evil.

From the Foucauldian rendering of the Greek aesthetics of existence, pertinent features
for a current Art of the Transpersonal Self have been gleaned. An ethics derived thereof
would, secondly, be an aesthetic and energetic practice, arising from the relationality of a
concrete situation. Unlike a formalized morality such an ethics, thirdly, does not draw its
orientational knowledge out of abstract universalities, but out of the concretely lived horizon
and the perceived necessities of the situation. Such an ethics does not look for a fixed grid,

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scientific truth or holy writ in order to arrive at judgments pertaining to truth/falsehood but
looks, on the contrary, for relational adjustments according to the specific circumstances to
guide ones own action. This understanding, fourthly, opens the way for re-casting ethics as a
relational, energetic and aesthetic savoir-faire - a practice that can be both philosophical and
spiritual and integrates Apollonian and Dionysian elements.

This ethics, fifthly, arises from the crucial insight that within the aesthetic-energetic
relationality of existence every act towards another is at least partially also always an act
towards oneself. This realization could lead to a practice of compassion which is not
understood as pity towards an abstract, outside other but derives from the becoming-intogetherness within the aesthetic/energetic sphere in which the perceiving self cannot be
untangled from the perceived other and in which each action reverberates in all directions
along the lines of relationality.

Yet, which concrete form an ethical practice will take can, sixthly, not be determined
beforehand and from the outside. Employed in an Art of the Transpersonal Self, such an
ethics as practice could start from a life affirming principle, embracing conflict and a
relational, transpersonal becoming. What finally could be cultivated through such a practice is
an attunement to a given situation from which an orientational knowledge can arise that, in
turn, enables further transformations of the self with an ethical guideline and underpinning.

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6. Practices of the Self

No-one can see me twice as I am, in each fleeting instant of my life,

as all instants are fleeting... as is life.
I will never be the same, each second that steals away from me.
And similarly, those who see me now
will never be the same as themselves
in any two successive seconds of the trajectory of their paths through life.
(Augusto Boal, 2006: 13)

The concept of this dissertation in part is derived from a series of enigmatic encounters, from
the engagement and participation in practices leading to experiential understanding which
each time left me changed yet strangely puzzled and - in the beginning - even resistant on a
cognitive level. The experience of that which eludes rationalization and theorization, the
approximation of the point at which knowledge slips and falters, the occurrence of something
that can not be explained rationally, all that provides a mystery and sometimes provocation
for the theoretical mind. The slippage, however, occurs all the stronger and the sought after
becomes ever more elusive, the more one tries to think about it and analyze it. Trying to know
and analyze the experience, indeed, seems to make its occurrence impossible. Respecting this
impossibility at times seems so to be one of the most important and difficult steps of
unlearning the Western mind undertakes in this regard.

This chapter is dedicated to certain concrete practices of the self. The term practice
here is taken to mean, following Wilhelm Schmid, a combination of praxis and technique:

Im Begriff der Praktik werden die Begriffe von Praxis (die Tatsache, dass wir
etwas tun) und Technik (die Frage, wie wir etwas tun) miteinander verschmolzen.
(Schmid, 2000: 261)50
50

In the term of practice the concepts of praxis (the fact that we are doing something) and technique (the
question about how something is done) are fused. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

156

Those practices can, as technologies and methods be learnt, written down, described and
known. This is what we will attempt in the next couple of pages. However, none of these
analyses and interpretations can give an approximation to what occurs in the moment of
transformation which remains ineffable (Grof and Bennett, 1993: 19). This moment can only
be experienced and understood, and only to a certain degree described and known. From our
description of the methods also no (or only a very limited) predictive capacity follows.

Those methodologies of an Art of the Transpersonal Self only prepare the (rational)
stage from which a transrational experience might spring. The rational elements have their
place and necessity, but neither are they sufficient as explanations for concrete
transformations, nor will a transformation occur whenever such an explanation is attempted.
Sticking to this crucial limitation we will thus take a look at some of those practices, without
trying to reduce the energetic X of the moment of transformation to our analysis. Those
practices so have to be understood as an expression of what we previously have called either a
Weak Art or a Gay Science.

Through those practices an Art of the Transpersonal Self could be realized. They so
are concrete expressions of the always critical and risky venture to give ones life a certain
shape and style; embracing the insecurity that such an affirmation of a relational becoming in
severality through a transformative practice might entail.

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6.1. Augusto Boal and the Theatre of the Oppressed

Theater is change
and not the simple presentation of what exists:
it is becoming and not being.
(Augusto Boal, 1985: 28)

The first practice to be discussed here is the Theatre of the Oppressed, which has to be placed
in the context of the political struggles in Latin American emerging during the second half of
the twentieth century. The Brazilian actor, director and activist Augusto Boal invented this
method combining the theoretical works of Paolo Freire with a certain form of (Marxist)
political activism which, in its theatrical implementation, is indebted to the plays of Bert
Brecht. In Boals Theatre method all those different influences are intertwined to form a
unique and potent mix for individual and collective transformation. In its original conception
the Theatre of the Oppressed so fused the Marxist commitment to social change and justice
with pedagogical concerns and the impetus, visibility and expressivity of a theatrical form of
enactment.

Set in the times of the rise of the different socialist ideas all throughout Latin America,
the Theatre of the Oppressed aimed at making people at the receiving end of capitalism aware
of the mechanisms of their oppression. However, unlike the Brechtian plays which despite
sharing this educational feature - kept the spectators firmly in their seats while the action
proceeded on stage, the Theatre of the Oppressed aimed at an immediate form of activity
involving everybody present. Thus Boals goal in theater was what his countryman and
inspiration Paul Freire had been in education: the latter criticized the division between teacher
and student, while the former actively went about abolishing the difference between actors
and spectators - and both were inspired by a Marxist ideal of emancipation.

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The Theatre of the Oppressed first developed in the 1950s and 1960s out of the
performances and plays staged at the Arena Theater of Sao Paolo (Boal, 1985: 159ff.) which
Boal also directed. In a development lasting for more than a decade, the plays staged at Arena
where successively dynamised: taking over the basic topics, ideas and characters of a written
play but increasingly improvising the actual performance and interpreting the characters on
the spot, making them come alive in ways beyond the mere recital of pre-rehearsed texts.

The reality they wanted to show at this time, Boal (1985: 168) concluded later, was a
reality in perpetual transition, whereas the stylistic tools available to them were perfect and
finished and thus static. Therefore, the structural aspects of the play its pregiven settings,
carefully elaborated interactions, and scripted developments - were radically dynamised. The
actor and her/his individual, shifting, performance literally took center stage. Classics of
(European and North American) Theater were replaced by local plays. This first phase of
destruction (Boal, 1985: 165) of the conventional understanding of theater culminated in the
play Zumb:

Now in Zumb and this is neither a virtue nor a defect each moment of the play
was interpreted presently and conflictually, even though the montage of the
performance might not allow one to forget the presence of the storys group narrator;
some actors remained in tie and place of the spectators, while others traveled to other
places and times. The result of this was a kind of patchwork quilt formed of small
fragments of many plays, documents and songs. (Boal, 1985: 169)

In the trajectory of the emergent Theatre of the Oppressed, Zumb marked the end of one and
the beginning of a new phase inaugurated by the step away from any pre-given scripts. This
next phase, of even greater importance for what is at stake in the Art of the Transpersonal
Self, would then be marked by the dissolution of the spectator/actor distinction. This

159

distinction was crafted into a social technique of transformation which equally involved
audience and mimes in a play, however the play was taken from their life and flows back
into it.

6.1.1. Theoretical Premises

In one of his main written works, entitled The Theatre of the Oppressed (1985), Augusto Boal
later on would set out to also theoretically reflect upon the changes developing in the 1970s.
Starting with an analysis of theater in Ancient Greece, Boal first dissociates himself from the
Aristotelian understanding of the function of theatrical work and art. Unlike what he calls the
Aristotelian coercive system of tragedy (1985: 3ff.) his own understanding of theater shall
not be tranquilizing and sedentary, but transformative51.

Boal asserts that the function of (Post-Socratic) theater in the Aristotelian system and
the long tradition that derives thereof is to tie the viewers to passivity and adjust her/him to
what pre-exists (Boal, 1985: 47). While the structure of the play leads the viewers to a
cathartic moment of identification with the tragic hero/protagonist, they simultaneously also
are constituted as passive subjects, excluded as they are as spectators from the action on
stage52.

Aristotelian tragedy, argues Boal (1985: 36ff; 1995: 71ff), follows a certain pattern in
which the downfall of the tragic hero is caused by a tragic flaw (hamartia) which incites the
tragic protagonist to transgress against the law. At the end of the play, in a moment of
51

For further information on the current practice of the Theatre of the Oppressed/Theater for Living see
http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org/ and http://www.headlinestheatre.com/.
52
In comparison with the overview over Greek tragedy given in chapter one it needs to be highlighted that
Boals description starts with Aristotle. For our purposes this implies a Post-Socratic time in which the break
with the earlier tradition described by Nietzsche (1967) had already occurred. Unlike Nietzsche, Boal does not
consider earlier forms of tragedy at all. Insofar as Aristotle can be considered not the norm of Greek thought but
rather the exception, we are left in the dark about Boals views on earlier forms of tragic art.

160

catharsis, this tragic flaw is purged and equilibrium restored. According to Boal, what the
Aristotelian tradition tries to purge from both the tragic protagonist in the play and from the
spectators in the audience is the desire to transgress against the law. The catharsis so shall
lead to a form of individual adjustment to the established social norms and rules. In short,
what shall be eliminated or suppressed is the desire for transformation.

This sedentary quality is a feature that is not inherent only to the ancient form of
theater but to most theatrical forms up until today. Boal here uses Aristotle only as starting
point for what really is a general comment on most forms of theater up until today. The thrust
of his critique is that theater mainly functions as a pleasant diversion but in its ubiquitous
form does not easily lend itself to an active engagement towards a practice of becoming
(Boal, 1985: 46f.).

A practice of the self, as we have previously established, could be described as a

technique which consciously takes the aesthetic and energetic elements of becoming into
account. It develops tools with which such a necessarily unpredictable transformation can be
given the space it needs to occur. This transformation is allowed to develop into many
directions, while still retaining the option for a certain amount of active influence and
channeling of this becoming. However, the outcome can still never be pre-determined.

The channeling occurs through the aesthetic, cognitive, or systemic elements of such a
practice, while through the acknowledgment and inclusion of the energetic component the
transrational and unpredictable moment is introduced and can be maintained. The outcome
will be different depending on the set-up of this interplay in the concrete technique: How
much space is given to the energetic element? How well defined or loose the

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aesthetic/systemic rules are? How much stress is placed on the (rational) knowledge of the
self and cognitive interpretation?

We can assert that the transformative outcome might be different depending on those
variables and structures, however thereof derives neither a predictive capability as to the exact
outcome nor the guarantee that there will be, in fact, a discernable outcome. That is also what
makes this process transrational. It has rational components which can be described and thus
learned as a technique and we can lead our description up until that moment of
transformation, but exactly this very moment of becoming eludes us. Participating in such a
practice, being open to transformation, implies at this point to let happen that which can not
be rationally willed.

In agreement with Boal (1985: 122) we can so stipulate that the practice of theater, if it
is to be a transformative practice, has to do away with the separating distinction between
spectator and actor and the rigidity of an unchangeable plot in order to open the possibility for
all participants to establish themselves as active subjects and for the transformative becoming
to occur. Becoming and transformation might happen in any case, but if one intends to
actively work on the self, shape this process and perhaps give it a direction towards the
subjectively better, then this process needs to be consciously included and taken into account.
Such is the work of a practice of the Self.

In his method of the Theatre of the Oppressed Augusto Boal expresses an acute
awareness of this aesthetic element and the way it can be focused for a transformative practice
when he asserts that the aesthetic transcendence of reason is the reason for theatre and for all
the arts. We cannot divorce reason and feeling, idea and form (Boal, 2006: 15). However, for
Augusto Boal, coming from a Marxist tradition, the relation between reason and feeling
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remains a dialectical one, very much like the relation between art and science was portrayed
earlier in Theodor Adorno (see chapter three). And, also like with Adorno, we can here assent
to this statement provided it is read, first, against the grain of the authors intentions in a
weak form instead of a dialectic one. Secondly, it needs to be pointed out that therefore also
the transcendence of reason can never be only aesthetic, but is always aesthetic and energetic.

6.1.2. Spectator, what an Insult!

Augusto Boals Theatre of the Oppressed (1985: 139ff) introduces the technique of Forum
Theatre53. The first distinct feature of a Forum theater is its characteristic as a local and
contingent, vernacular form of theater. It implies for a group of people to work on a common
problem or topic. This people might be called the actors, however what is meant is not a
group of professional mimes, but any group of people wishing to do transformative work on a
certain topic.

The topic of the play has to be one of concrete importance and relevance for the group
- it can focus on a concern, personal or collective problem or issue in which this particular
group of people is involved. This topic is then turned into a work of art a play is drafted and
rehearsed by the group itself, dramatizing the action until a moment of crisis or even
imminent catastrophe is reached in the story. At this point the play ends with the moment of
the erupting crisis lingering as worst case scenario and without an apparent solution being
predetermined. This piece is then acted out to an audience, which in turn is asked to intervene
in the play if they disagree with the way the turn of events is progressing and if they see a

53

The Theatre of the Oppressed (1985: 126ff.) has a broad range of different techniques at its disposal ranging
from Statue Theater, to Newspaper Theater, Legislative Theater until the Invisible Theater as well as a plethora
of other methods like the tools of the Rainbow of Desire (1995). It is only for the purpose of this study that we
will mainly focus on Forum Theater which has been singled out because it seems to me to be the clearest way of
showing the workings of the Theatre of the Oppressed in light of an Art of the Transpersonal Self.

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possibility for a change which might lead to a different ending. Augusto Boal describes the
overall process and its consequences the following way:

First the participants are asked to tell a story containing a political or social problem of
difficult solution. Then a ten- or fifteen minute skit portraying that problem and the
solution intended for discussion is improvised or rehearsed, and subsequently
presented. When the skit is over, the participants are asked if they agree with the
solution presented. At least some will say no. At this point it is explained that the
scene will be performed once more, exactly as it was the first time. But now any
participant in the audience has the right to replace any actor and lead the action in the
direction that seems to him most appropriate. [...] the other actors have to face the
newly created situation, responding instantly to all the possibilities that it may present.
[...] Anyone may propose any solution, but it must be done on the stage, working,
acting, doing things and not from the comfort of his seat. (Boal, 1985: 139)

The differences between such a practice of art and a regular theater play are immediately
apparent. First it turns the actors into the active creators of the story, as it is indeed their story
and in it their own investment and personalities that is portrayed. What is intended is a form
of transformation, not just the amusement of an audience. There is something personal at
stake in this play! This form of theater secondly also emancipates itself from the theater
houses. A stage can be any open space that one chooses to delineate as such.

It furthermore makes use of the art of theater to achieve an overall sensory perception
of the issue in its connectivity to the different people present, transcending the use of
language towards using the whole body:

Words are the work and the instruments of reason: we have to transcend them and
look for forms of communication which are not just rational, but also sensory
aesthetic communications. (Boal, 2006: 15)
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Since all the people acting out the problem are also those personally involved and are now
playing a part in the problem, different from the position they normally occupy, it allows for a
shift in perspective for all the persons involved. What is so created is what Augusto Boal
(1995: 43 ff.) calls an image of reality in the play. Their different position now gives all the
participants the possibility of a changed experiential understanding of the situation, resulting
from the shift in their aesthetic and energetic relationality through the altered position they
have taken on in the play.

This experience of a new aesthetic/energetic position within the overall system opens
the possibility for a rebound effect: Acting a different position may transform the person
acting. In the words of Boal, a spark so could leap back from the image of reality towards a
reality of image and thus a transubstantiation (1995: 44) can occur. Experiencing - feeling that a certain problem can be perceived from a different point of view and (through the
development of the play) can also be treated differently, could affect a shift in the overall
aesthetic/energetic constellation that makes up this specific system. The relational grid (or,
using our Foucauldian description from chapter four: the relational micro-system of
(energetic) power) can so be altered as each person becomes aware on a different level of the
own and others position in it. Through the play the opportunity for the participants opens up
to relate differently and thus perhaps become differently.

What the Theatre of the Oppressed aims for is a cathartic moment (Boal, 1995: 69ff.).
In this question Augusto Boal comes to modify his position: while in his early works Boal
(1985) rejects all forms of theatrical catharsis as inherently Aristotelian, later on he
distinguishes the Aristotelian understanding of the term from the theatrical catharsis he now
wishes to employ in the Theatre of the Oppressed (1995). The essentially sedentary
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Aristotelian catharsis, he then asserts, is aimed at purging from the tragic hero a single flaw,
the one which made him/her transgress against the law. This form of catharsis thus works as a
reinforcement of pre-given abstract norms and what shall be purged is the very desire for
transformation in order to better adapt the individual to society (Boal, 1995: 71). The
catharsis in Boals Theatre method shall work exactly the opposite way, removing obstacles
and blocks for transformation, dynamising the people involved (Boal, 1995: 71).

6.1.3. Relational Becoming in Severality

Such a practice of theater might also give an altered awareness of the concrete others involved
in the situation. This can lead towards the transformative insight we established theoretically
in chapter four, namely that others are always only partial others with whom we are
connected and that becoming is always a co-emergence in severality. The aesthetic/energetic
sphere previously described expresses itself here as a concrete system of relationality tying
people together in their becoming gyrating in this instant around a common problem. Boal,
coming from a Marxist tradition, expresses the same thought slightly differently:

The I is transformed into an us extraordinary leap. In this us and in each I, we

discover the discovery that the artist made. When we are able to speak of us, we
become the sum of all our relations and something more, as in any synergy. (Boal,
2006: 20)

Through the involvement of the audience an additional feature is added. Neither actor nor
spectator can be understood any more in the conventional sense of the words, as both are
given the possibility to establish themselves as active subjects which are always engaged in a
mutually determining and determined relational becoming. To stress this active element Boal

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(1995: 13) uses the term spectactor to designate the bridging of the gap between actor and
spectator.

In the practice of Forum Theater, understood as an Art of the Transpersonal Self, the
possibility for a transformation opens up in the exercise and application of a distinct method
on the self. Forum Theater so turns into an example of transformation as aesthetic and
energetic practice. In his own diction Boal so concludes that we must all do theatre, to
discover who we are and find out who we could become (Boal, 2006: 62). To this statement
one might only add the suggestion that perhaps already the process of finding out is part of
the becoming. The being that is so found is then already a being that is remembered as a
line of flight might have opened and the flow of becoming have carried us onwards.

Through trying out (enacting and embodying) different solutions, diverse ways of
handling the problem and shifting the relationality, multiple images of reality can be tried and
tested, opening the possibility for a succession of realities of image in a continuum of
becoming each time the spark flies back to the spectactors. This acting out is repeated and the
process carried on until a moment of saturation is reached, when everybody feels that the
possibilities have been exhausted or satisfactorily transformed.

The process of transformation furthermore is not finished once the performance ends,
but is carried on in and through each subject and thus in the overall relationality of the system
with partial others. Boal concludes:

The show is the beginning of a necessary social transformation and not a moment of
equilibrium and repose. The end is the beginning! (Boal, 2006: 6)

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Repeating the process at a later time will thus produce a different play and different images of
reality. This practice of the self proposes the transpersonal transformation of the self in and
through conflict, because conflict in the form of the issue, topic, concern or problem at hand
becomes the instigator for change. The transformation of the self as an active practice only
becomes possible by also embracing, working with and through this conflict.

The concomitant truth that arises can only be a weak truth. Any strong truth with its
absolute divisions in right and wrong and subsequent calls for judgment makes it impossible
to engage in the practice of transformation. The strong aesthetic, formal bindings of knowing
(the Truth) prevent the openness which is necessary for experiential understanding to occur
and for it to have a transfiguring effect. Entering the process with strong, rational knowledge
and an analytical mindset so hinders and hampers this art of transpersonal transformation.
Establishing a transfiguring awareness of the aesthetic/energetic relationality implies an act of
rational de-focusing, establishing a presence which attunes itself to the transrational
vibrations rather than the cognitive vivisection of our surroundings.

Perhaps against the intentions of its (Marxist) originator the Forum Theater and other
methods of the Theater of the Oppressed can so be inscribed and used in an Art of the
Transpersonal Self. At this instance it may be obvious that the point here is not so much to
show that this has been the original and unadulterated intention behind the inception of this
method some decades ago in Brazil, but to offer a different and novel interpretation, twisting
this tried and proven tool towards new and aesthetic/energetic purposes. We so have gained
an insight into the workings of such a practice of the self under current conditions.

As Boals reference to Aristotle indicates, this method is necessarily constituted

against a concrete historical background and a long tradition from which it derives and against
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which it contrasts its distinct features. However, within that historical horizon it so brings us
the possibility to partially suspend our own ontological ground and, in some way, shape that
process of becoming differently from who we are. From within that pre-constituted horizon a
line of flight opens so up, towards different horizons as of yet unknown.

6.2. Systemic Constellation Work

With this section we are once more venturing into the field of (transpersonal) psychology
this time in order to explore the use value of the therapeutic method of Systemic Constellation
Work. Systemic Constellation Work was conceived, exemplary described and reported by the
German psychologist Bert Hellinger (2003).

In the meantime, as Family Constellation Work it has also been investigated

theoretically (Weber, 2000) and has finally branched out to encompass also other areas, as for
example in the case of Organizational Constellations or Political Constellation Work (Kaller,
2007). The first deals, as the name implies, with a field of appliance restricted to the
immediate family, whereas the latter have a different or sometimes wider grasp including
possible transformations of the self with respect to diverse aspects of (social) life. Political
Constellations are therefore also known as Alles-Aufstellungen (Everything Constellations)
due to their broad, inclusive reach (Kaller, 2007: 3).

As with Augusto Boal in the last section, it also needs to be noted that the
interpretation of Systemic Constellation Work we are aiming for here is one that perceives it
as part of an Art of the Self. It is for us so only secondarily an element in a therapeutic
practice. Our interpretation thus necessarily differs from the one given by many practitioners

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in the field, who approach Constellation work from the point of departure of (transpersonal)
psychology. Therefore the established wisdom about the tools of Systemic Constellations shall
be used here only as starting point to establish our own interpretation.

A practitioner in the field, Albrecht Mahr who studied with Bert Hellinger, gives a
concise description of the very basic principle of functioning of Systemic Constellations on
the example of Family Constellations and hence it is worth quoting him here at length:

Familienaufstellungen werden in Gruppen von ca. 20 Teilnehmern durchgefhrt. Ein

Teilnehmer whlt fr sich selbst und fr die brigen Mitglieder seiner Herkunfts- oder
Gegenwartsfamilie Stellvertreter aus der Gruppe aus und stellt diese im Raum in
Beziehung zueinander auf, wobei er sich ganz von seinem Gefhl leiten lt. Mit
diesem Aufstellen entfaltet sich das innere, meist unbewute Bild des Teilnehmers
von seiner Familie als ueres Kraftfeld der Aufstellung. Die bei den Stellvertretern
auftauchenden Gefhle und Krperempfindungen geben auf eine oft erstaunlich
genaue Weise die Situation des betreffenden Familienmitglieds und der in dieser
Familie wirkenden Krfte wieder. Stellvertreter erleben in der Aufstellung u.U.
intensive Gefhle von Liebe, Trauer oder Wut ebenso wie ausgeprgte krperliche
Empfindungen wie Hitze, Taubheit, Schmerzen oder berraschende Leichtigkeit - all
das ohne vorherige Information ber die Person, die sie vertreten. Es scheint so, da
die Stellvertreter durch den Akt des Aufstellens zu Medien fr Erfahrungen
unbekannter anderer Menschen werden, von denen sie auf eine gefhlshaftkrperliche Weise wissen und an deren Schicksal sie fr die Dauer der Aufstellung
teilhaben. ber dieses Erleben der Stellvertreter knnen die in einer Familie im
Guten wie im Schlimmen wirkenden Krfte in einer Aufstellung ans Licht kommen und
vielleicht erstmals bewut wahrgenommen werden54. (Mahr, 1999: 2, 3)
54

Family constellations are done in groups of about 20 participants. One participant chooses representatives
from the group for him/herself and the other members of his original- and present family and places them in the
room in relation to each other, while letting him/herself completely be guided by the own feelings. With this
constellation the participants inner, most of the time unconscious, picture of the own family unfolds as outer
force field in the constellation. The feelings and bodily perceptions arising with the representatives resemble in
an amazingly exact form the situation of the family member concerned and the forces at work in the family.
During the constellation representatives experience amongst others intensive emotions of love, grief or rage; just
as well as pronounced bodily sensations like heat, numbness, pain or surprising levity all of that without
previous information about the person they are substituting. It seems as if the representatives would become a
medium through the act of being placed in the constellation for the experiences of unknown other people,

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What is immediately apparent in this description is a certain similarity between this method
and the Theater of the Oppressed: both work with the whole body, integrating physical
sensations and sensory perceptions. Both methods also use physical space and a certain
placement/movement to express the relationality within an aesthetic/energetic system. This
system connects all the members of the group.

Both methods gyrate around a certain topic, problem or issue. In Systemic

Constellation Work this is expressed in its aesthetic/energetic relational aspects through first
the placement of the representatives in physical space, and then through a concerted attempt at
transformation (guided by a facilitator) via working towards a shift in the relationality.

A main difference consists in the way the practice proceeds. In Forum Theater this is
via rehearsing and acting a play, trying different solutions with a group of outsiders (an
audience which is so also turned into spectactors). In the many variations of Systemic
Constellation Work a transformation is attempted via movements in space, words and
gestures, relying on changes in the feelings of the representatives as pointers to whether a
positive transformation is being approached. A constellation practice ideally is so led up until
the point in which the tension or strong negative emotions experienced by the representatives
have been relieved and transformed. What is thus provided is a picture very similar to what
has been described above with Augusto Boal as image of reality and its way of fostering a
becoming through a subsequent reality of image.

about whom they come to know in a sensory-bodily way and in whose fate they participate for the duration of
the constellation. Through the experiencing of the representatives those forces which for better or worse are
working within a family can surface in a constellation and perhaps be experienced consciously for the first time.
Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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Importantly, the awareness of the underlying transrationality and transpersonality

seems to be much more clearly expressed in Systemic Constellation Work than in the theater
method. The outer field of force, which a participant establishes by placing the
representatives in systemic constellation work, represents an external and (to a certain degree)
conscious recreation of the own aesthetic/energetic sphere of co-emergence and the
relationality therein. The severality of the own becoming is so established in the visible and
perceptible sensory space of the constellation.

The process is much less informed by aesthetic rules and cognitive action than in the
Forum Theater method. The cognitive input in Systemic Constellation Work is mainly
provided through the facilitator, who uses her/his experience, professional training and
(theoretical) knowledge to guide the process. It is the facilitator who, during the course of the
constellation, suggests movements, word or gestures to the participants and thus helps shaping
the overall aesthetic/energetic dynamic. And yet the facilitator does not only guide according
to her/his rational knowledge, but just as well includes an energetic component, which implies
a rational letting go and letting oneself be guided:

Eine der wichtigsten und wirksamsten Interventionen bei der Lsungssuche ist NichtWissen. Nicht-Wissen allerdings ist alles andere als nichts wissen, sondern gerade das
Gegenteil: ber sehr viel theoretisches Wissen und klinische Erfahrung verfgen und
der Tatsache vertrauen, dass das wissende Feld der Aufstellung sich unserer
Fhigkeiten bedient, ohne dass wir den Ausgang kennen Ich sage deshalb auch gerne:
kundige Selbstvergessenheit55. (Mahr, 2000: 34, 35)

55

While seeking solutions one of the most important and effective interventions is not-knowing. Not-knowing
is everything but knowing nothing, it is much rather the contrary: to dispose over very much theoretical
knowledge and clinical experience und to trust into the fact, that the knowing field of the constellation will make
use of our capabilities, without us knowing the result. That is why I often like to say: knowing selfforgetfulness. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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Once more in the words of Albrecht Mahr, it is not so much about (rationally) finding the
solutions, but about letting oneself be found by the fitting solution (Mahr, 2000: 30).
Systemic Constellation Work so relies to a certain extent on the energetic and intuitive
element to guide and achieve a constellation of relationality which, also for the participants, is
beyond mere representation in the sense of acting.

This transrational energetic element fosters an experience of a momentary becomingin-togetherness for the representative in relation to the person that is represented. Feelings,
emotions, thoughts, sensory perceptions so flow towards the representative and form an
experiential understanding of the person represented in the concrete situation. A new
temporary severality and co-emergence is so established. The ritual at the end of each
constellation work, in which the representatives are released from their roles, can thus be
understood as the corresponding element of co-fading.

In the words of Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 10ff), the act of taking on the role of the
person to be represented can be described as a deterritorializing moment of becomingrepresentative and, when the role is given back, the subsequent instant of re-territorialization
occurs. What happens in between can be felt, understood and to a certain degree expressed,
but not rationally explained. In this line of thought it furthermore appears only consequent
that it is reported that sometimes also the person represented (even if far away and unaware of
the proceedings in the constellation work) experiences emotions related to the happenings in
the constellation. Although the effects of the constellation are usually experienced much
stronger by the people directly present which are affected in a much more immediate way, the
co-emergence and co-fading can just as well be felt by the persons represented.

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The process of constellation work could be described with Deleuze and Guattari as
mutual becomings which interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities (Deleuze
and Guattari, 1987: 10) and occur in an aesthetic and energetic sphere. This sphere is
externally visualized by the person placing the participants and is then built up in severality
by the group.

This practice of Constellation Work aims at a transforming insight, first of all, for the
participant placing the representatives and thus building the aesthetic/energetic sphere of
her/his personal surroundings. However, the transforming rebound effect might just as well
occur (although probably differently) for the other participants who are offering themselves as
representatives. For a Practice of the Self both roles - although in different ways - have their
merit and can find their use. The element of an art, as something that is guided just as much
by intuition as by cognitive means, probably emerges even clearer here than in the Forum
Theater56.

What needs to be highlighted is that, like in theater work, in Constellation work we

find a contemporary practice of an Art of the Transpersonal Self. What furthermore deserves
mentioning is that neither one of those two practices are activities to be engaged in for just as
diversion or amusement but can, if taken seriously, inspire a transfiguration and help in the
active shaping of an ongoing process of becoming. In our interpretation both acknowledge the
transpersonality of the self and enable us to work with this transpersonality towards a lifeaffirming active transformation in severality. Either one of them sees conflict as possible
creative instigator of change but neither works towards a purification, understood as a series
of renunciations of what we are in order to become more perfect.

56

However, it needs to be pointed out that both the Theater Work and Systemic Constellation are far from
monolithic practices and know manifold different variations which diverge in how far they stress the
aesthetic/systemic component or rely on the energetic.

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What they thus aim for can be described as a twisting/fading (verwindend) movement
in which becoming does not imply leaving behind or rejecting what we have been, but
integrating it into our self which so continues as always different and emerging. Only by
accepting, integrating and fading57 who we once were can we partially find out who we now
are and open the possibility for actively embracing and also shaping who we might yet
become.

6.3. Holotropic Breathwork

Previously we have already alluded to the transformative qualities of the pneuma, of our
breathing. With each lungful of air we take in, we blur the boundaries between us and our
surroundings, making a piece of our environment - and, at times, other peoples pneuma - part
of ourselves. Each time we exhale we charge the atmosphere similarly with a part of
ourselves. With each breath we change as our boundaries blur.

Holotropic Breathwork turns this insight into a practice of the Self, a method and tool
of transformation. In its Western coinage Holotropic Breathwork goes back to the
experiments and consciousness research of Stanislav and Christina Grof (Grof 1988, Grof and
Grof, 1990; Grof and Bennett, 1993) starting in the second half of the twentieth century.
Stanislav Grofs research on consciousness initially began with work on psychedelic
substances like LSD in Czechoslovakia. During those initial studies Grof found out that, far
from only inducing drug-related effects like other forms of intoxication, psychedelic
substances produced the additional effect of raising the energetic niveau of the human
psyche (Grof, 1988: xii). Instead of classifying those effects along a real/apparent dichotomy
57

Which in this connotation also implies letting go.

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and so labeling them as simple hallucinations or illusions, Stanislav Grof (1988) chose a
different path and opted for the more open term of nonordinary states of consciousness to
describe the alterations in the mind so induced.

Further research yielded the insight that almost the same effects could also be induced
without the intake of any kind of (psychedelic) substances. Especially the cross-cultural
comparison to rites of passage of various cultures, shamanic procedures of all times,
aboriginal healing ceremonies, spiritual practices of various religions and mystical traditions
(Grof, 1988: xii) gave way to an astounding similarity:

It is interesting to notice that the spectrum of experiences induced by psychedelic

compounds is practically indistinguishable from those resulting from various non-drug
techniques. (Grof, 1988: xii)

Researching in a similar direction, Kathryn Lee and Patricia Speyer have pointed out that in
different cultures meditation techniques specifically using modulations of breathing can be
found dating back as far as 4000 years (Lee and Speyer, 1996: 367).

While Stanislav Grof was interested in the therapeutic use of LSD and psychedelics,
especially for psychotherapy, two occurrences led the Grofs onto a different track. On the one
hand, the continued encounter with practices from different cultures served to show the
limitations of the psychoanalytic talking-cure while, on the other hand, the changing social
and legal setting in their new country of residence, the USA, made the work with psychedelic
substances increasingly difficult or impossible. For their therapeutic work in the field of
psychotherapy this implied a double shift. The outcome was Holotropic Breathwork which
takes the actual therapeutic work away from its almost exclusive focus on the discursive level
towards a predominantly nondiscursive practice and which, concomitantly, substitutes a
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breathing technique for the intake of psychedelic substances in order to induce an altered state
of consciousness.

Breathwork therefore first of all means exactly what the name implies - a general
term for techniques that primarily involve breathing or manipulation of the breath (Lee and
Speyer, 1996: 366). Holotropic stems from the Greek holos for whole and trepein for
moving in the direction of and together designates a movement towards wholeness (Grof,
1988: 165). Holotropic Breathwork thus is a method which uses breathing techniques to
induce nonordinary states of consciousness. The movement towards wholeness indicates the
intention of a therapeutic or healing use of this technique which will need to be discussed
further on.

While many of the breathing techniques employed in different cultures (ranging from
the Indian pranayama and Yogic practices until the Sufi traditions) tend to be technically
complex and elaborate, Holotropic Breathwork reduces this to its bare essentials:

Of all the methods, we have opted for simple increase in the rate of breathing. We
have concluded that a specific technique of breathing is less important than the fact
that the client is breathing faster and more effectively than usual, and with full
concentration and awareness of the inner process. (Grof, 1988: 171)

The technical aspects of this practice are so reduced to its simplest forms, to a kind of
hyperventilation. Despite the seeming simplicity of its practice, this basic technique can
induce an astoundingly large array of different experiences. Sylvester Walch, himself trained
in this technique by Stanislav Grof, provides a precise yet complex account of how a
breathing seminar might evolve:

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The room is darkened and prepared with cushions, mattresses and blankets. All
participants, between 16 and 30 people, work in pairs, one experiencing person and
one helper. Roles are then switched in the next session. The helper, called sitter, has to
make sure that the experiencing person, who is lying on her back with her eyes closed
and is in a state of trance, can feel safe, especially when she is experiencing intense
emotional stress, rapid and strong movements and other heavy physical expressions.
The sitter also supports the experiencing person by providing resistance, or assistance,
depending on what is needed. It may also be the case that he will just sit next to the
experiencing person - quietly and attentively. Sitters often report that by assisting
another person, their own process of development is actively complemented. In the
beginning of the session, the experiencing people are lying on their backs with their
eyes closed, a relaxation exercise helps people to open up and let go more easily. At
the end of this relaxation exercise, the participants are asked to breathe more quickly
and dynamically and to allow any feelings, images, sounds and movements. [] The
process is intensified by evocative music. [] Slowly, a dynamic field of breathing is
built up, a collective space of experience, from which differing experiences and
sensations can be processed individually. People react in different ways. Some might
breathe loudly, scream or move heavily. Others may go deep inside and seem far away
from the outside world. (Walch, 2006: 6, 7)

Like in the previous two methods described, Forum Theatre and Constellation Work, also
Holotropic Breathwork works with the whole bodily system in order to achieve a shift in the
overall (sensory) perception. In the rendering provided by Sylvester Walch, a breathing
session can be divided into several phases which are helped, guided and indicated by the type
of music used:

In the first part of a breathing session, music with fast rhythms, such as drum music is
used to support breathing. Thereafter dramatic pieces from the area of ethnic, classical
or movie soundtrack are used to facilitate breakthroughs. In the last third, integrating,
slow or spiritual music is played. Music helps movement, dynamics, creativity and
calmness. (Walch, 2006: 7)

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Similar to the cathartic moment described in the theatre method, the process during
Holotropic Breathwork often increases in intensity as it progresses. Indeed, Stanislav Grof
sometimes describes this process as pneumocatharsis (1988: 170ff.), as a process leading to a
breathing-induced build-up of energies which afterwards is released in a cathartic moment
dissolving tensions and blockages:

The intensity of the experiences gradually increases until it reaches a culmination

point, where most people who have dealt with some painful issues feel a sense of
resolution or even a breakthrough. (Grof and Grof, 1990: 260)

The breathing process induces physical responses which can range from intense bodily
movements and tremors until sounds, screams, coughing and vomiting (Grof, 1988: 173). The
ultimate effect on this level is a form of abreaction in which the body releases hitherto
blocked energy. If necessary, this process can be stimulated and guided by focused body
work, where the therapist encourages certain postures in the participant or applies physical
pressure to intensify and subsequently release tension (Grof, 1988: 194ff.).

Simultaneous to those immediate physical reactions - and intrinsically connected to

them - Holotropic Breathwork also leads to the above mentioned nonordinary states of
consciousness. In Holotropic Breathwork the breathing and music serve to lower the cognitive
barriers and foster a de-centering of the rational mind. The rational control and censorship
is thus strongly decreased (Walch, 2006: 7) and the ensuing altered and shifted perception
can in turn inspire a transforming moment of becoming. The exact manifestation such a
nonordinary state of consciousness will take and which course the process will run can vary
greatly and many different forms occur. They range from out-of-body-experiences to
impressions relating to the own biological birth, as well as death and rebirth scenes are also
known to often contain a rich mythological textuality drawn from different cultures and
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epochs (Grof, 1988: 37ff). Researchers and theorists in this field have spent considerable
efforts categorizing those different known effects (Grof, 1988; Grof and Bennett 1993;
Walch, 2002) drawing up an experiential cartography and attempting to place those findings
into a theoretical framework.

However, the exact nature of those experiences during the nonordinary state of
consciousness is a heavily contested subject with severe difference and often bitterly fought
arguments. Supporters and practitioners of Holotropic (and generally Transpersonal) methods
tend to accredit those experiences with an existence beyond the individual consciousness and
often try to establish the veracity of what has been experienced. A recurring motive here is the
narration of incidents of nonordinary states of consciousness in which the practitioner gained
knowledge which he/she did not possess previously and which afterwards was found out to be
factually correct. Opponents use the opposite strategy, trying to contest this veracity to
discredit either the scientificity and/or use value of the method or even the personal integrity
and credibility of the practitioners. While the one side believes itself to be at the cutting edge
of a dawning new development, the other side dismisses the whole practice as just the newest
version of a New Age fad.

Yet while for this context it might be necessary to at least point out the existence of
this debate as it signifies that the practice introduced here is heavily contested, I at the same
time believe that either side of the argument is not of particular relevance for what is at stake
here. I would argue that for the question of the transformation of the self it is of no greater
importance whether the experiences correspond objectively to outside occurrences.

What is of relevance for an Art of the Transpersonal Self is that a person practicing
those techniques is willing to engage to such a degree that, as described in chapter 2.3., the
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combination of a spiritual practice with a certain knowledge of the self leads to a rebound
effect in which a certain, local, contingent and weak notion of truth about the self can arise.
This moment of such a weak truth is, in the understanding proposed here, simultaneously the
opening moment of a transformation.

Whether this experienced truth is verifiable according to outside standards of

scientificity is of no relevance and it might even be argued that it is exactly the adherence to
those veracity standards of a strong (Apollonian) truth which tends to make such a
transformation difficult or impossible to experience in the first place. It is in this sense that I
am quite content to bracket the question of whether those experiences can be proven in the
outside world.

What is necessary from the point of view of an Art of the Transpersonal Self is the
active engagement with the chosen practice, suspending judgment and letting oneself be led
towards the transrational moment of becoming. Belief is not required in this instant but, just
like judgment, also disbelief needs to be suspended towards an attitude of taking the single
moment for what it is, relinquishing rational control, letting the process unfold and a possible
vector of transformation manifest itself. This becoming could firstly consist in an integrative
twisting of elements and experiences of the past (a Verwindung of painful, hurting or
traumatic experiences) and, secondly, also lead to a changed awareness of the
aesthetic/energetic relationality of ones existence. The former would coincide more with a
therapeutic use of Breathwork and the latter correspond rather to an opening transformation.

In the altered state of consciousness it becomes possible to work through different

experiences, engage with traumatic events not easily accessible in the ordinary state of
consciousness and thus spark and inspire healing processes. However, what is of equal
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importance for an Art of the Self is that those practices can not just be used to deal with- and
heal oneself from the negative elements of life, but also as an open, affirmative practice of the
self. Rather than seeing them just as tools to help the injured and traumatized life, they
additionally can also function as the affirmative practice for an active life. It is needless to say
that the former can not always be clearly distinguished from the latter.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is equally important to stress the fact that those

practices can not only be used in case something feels wrong or hurts, in case one is
struggling with a problem or traumatized, but that they can be just as useful as transformative
practices celebrating a life in becoming. It is especially this aspect which an Art of the Self
also wants to emphasize without therefore overlooking the other, healing, element. Also
Stanislav Grof seems to point at such a possibility when he asserts:

Some powerful transforming experiences might not have any specific content at all.
They consist of a sequence of intense build-up of emotions or physical tensions and
subsequent deep release and relaxation. (Grof, 1988: 167)

The Art of the Transpersonal Self knows no overall goal or final/ultimate stage to be
achieved, but it is an open, life-long practice. Becoming is not geared at becoming-somethingspecific after which the process would stop, it does not follow an overall hierarchically (and
neither a holarchically) preordained path towards perfection. This does not preclude
integrating healing elements into an Art of the Transpersonal Self indeed at times and
certain junctures in life those may be the driving impetus behind its practice, as for example
when one is faced with painful experiences, existential problems, conflicts and traumas.
Nevertheless, in an Art of the Transpersonal Self those moments are recognized as inevitable
elements of human existence which can function as vectors for transformation and thus are
not denied, but on the contrary, acknowledged, affirmed and worked through. And, once those
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hurtful moments fade, this does not imply that the practice of the self and the becoming stop
but just that the practice shifts towards different aspects of becoming and so on, without
ceasing.

Holotropic Breathwork can so be used at times as a therapeutic tool but just as well as
an ongoing, affirmative, method of transformation. It very consciously draws on older
breathing techniques deriving from the mystic or spiritual field as it can be found in many
cultural traditions all around the world:

Zahlreiche therapeutische und spirituelle Richtungen haben auf den Atem als Vehikel
der persnlichen Reifung und des spirituellen Wachstums gesetzt. Das beschleunigte
Atmen als natrliches Mittel der Bewusstseinserweiterung, der Reinigung und der
Steigerung des spirituellen Energieflusses ist in den Pranayama-bungen des Yoga,
im Dikhr der Sufis, in Ritualen des Schamanismus und in Zeremonien urchristlicher
Gemeinden eingesetzt worden. (Walch, 2002: 21) 58

Holotropic Breathwork so integrates older and diverse currents and traditions into a
framework adapted to fit the current, (post)modern Western world. The method derived
thereof is a practice which combines several further insights for the Art of the Transpersonal
Self.

Like both practices of Forum Theatre and Constellation Work described previously,
Holotropic Breathwork is practiced mainly in a group. The distinction between breather and
sitter here insofar corresponds to the distinction in Constellation Work between the participant
doing his/her constellation and the representatives. In both settings we have somebody (or
58

Numerous therapeutic and spiritual directions have emphasized the breath as vehicle for personal maturation
and spiritual growth. Accelerated breathing as natural means of enlarging the consciousness, of purification and
for enhancing the spiritual flow of energy have been used in the Pranayama-practices of Yoga, in the Dikhr of
Sufism, the rituals of Shamanism and the ceremonies of early Christian communities. Translation by Norbert
Koppensteiner.

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several people) who seem to occupy a primary experiencing role and others who appear to be
in a supportive position. However, just like in Constellation Work, it is also stressed here that
the supportive position can be just as conducive to a transformative experience. This
experience will necessary be different than the one experienced in the other position, yet this
is not a statement in the sense of better or worse. This difference is necessarily a result of
a different aesthetic/energetic position within the overall setting.

A session in Holotropic Breathwork - like a constellation in Constellation Work - is

accompanied by a facilitator or therapist. Just like in the latter method, emphasis is placed not
exclusively on rational knowledge, but on the facilitators role in supporting the process,
without judgment and sometimes even without intellectual understanding (Grof and Grof,
1990: 262). In both methods the role of this therapist differs sharply from the conventional
picture of the psychoanalyst who rationally diagnoses a patient and produces therapies for
cures by virtue of his expert knowledge. In both Holotropic Breathwork and Constellation
Work, the therapist is somebody who also lets her/himself be guided by the process and is
thus a facilitator - somebody who facilitates, makes more facile, helps and guides and thus a
partner in a process rather than an expert imparting rational, diagnostic and therapeutic
verdicts.

All three methods mentioned here make use of a collective space and
aesthetic/energetic sphere in order to achieve a transformation of the self. In all three practices
we witness the characteristic dis-bordering (entgrenzend) effect described in Chapter Four as
co-emergence in severality. What the breathing method shows even more clearly than the
other two is that the transformative effect consists in a becoming of the self which can no
longer be clearly separated from the becoming of the Other.

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Although this becoming is perceived as an intensely private experience, Holotropic

Breathwork takes place in an aesthetic/energetic sphere whose connecting features are
enhanced and highlighted through the build up of energy and channeled in part also through
the setting, how it evolves, and through music. This becoming so transcends the idea of
collective and individual and is thus transpersonal. In the aesthetic/energetic sphere the
inside and outside are intricately connected and blurred. In the end both inside and outside can
no longer be separated as all subjectivation takes place within the aesthetic/energetic flow.

6.3.1. The Self as Form Emptiness and Fullness

There is one peculiar quality and possible effect of Holotropic Breathwork which in certain
aspects is unlike the transformations described so far in the previous two sections. Through
the rapid breathing and the hyperventilation, enhanced and guided by the music, an
aesthetic/energetic setting is built which enables an altered state of consciousness no longer
determined by rational cognition. In this state, an attunement to the relationality of existence
can lead to a transfiguring and fulfilling moment of letting go with quite intriguing
consequences:

Nur wenn wir konsequent alles loslassen, was wir haben und wer wir sind, dann
knnen wir eine Ahnung davon bekommen, was das Selbst ist. (Walch, 2002: 145)59

Let us explore this crucial facet in more detail: Only in the act of letting go what we have
become so far, can we experience the transpersonality of the aesthetic/energetic relationality
we share in our co-emergence. With that we approach again the Foucauldian assertion that the
self is a form (see also Chapter Four). The self can so be understood as a form established by
the manifold aesthetic/energetic lines converging on us and transformed by us. The self is the
59

Only if we consistently let go of everything we have and are, can we attain a premonition for what the self
is. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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form emerging in severality through and within the aesthetic/energetic flow. It is constantly
transforming energy and transformed by energy - along aesthetic lines.

This self - as form - is thus simultaneously empty (devoid of a singular essence which
would make it separate and distinguish it from the aesthetic/energetic flow) and full (filled
with the aesthetic/energetic current of life of which it forms part). It is thus in the moment of
realization of the emptiness of the self, that the door is opened towards a perception of the
fullness of life of which we are part. From the experience of emptiness springs realization of
the unity and fullness of life!

Once more cross-culturally recurring to a different tradition, this insight is portrayed in

the image of the Zen Circle. Using this method the Zen-practitioner, while moving through
the degrees of the circle, increasingly realizes the interchangeability of emptiness and fullness
and, transcending ego-limitations, ultimately returns back to the zero degree of the ordinary
world but now perceives it without value judgments (Grof and Grof, 1990: 137). At this
point even the circle itself disappears as just a teaching device. Using a slightly different
terminology, Sylvester Walch describes how such an experience can be realized during
Holotropic Breathwork:

Durch die Hyperventilation erzeugt der individuelle Atem freie Valenzen fr die
Verbindung mit dem kosmischen Atem durch die Auflsung der selbstgeschaffenen
Begrenzung60. (Walch, 2002: 61)

Induced through such a practice, those free valences can lead to an experience of the fullness
of the aesthetic/energetic sphere. What normally keeps us from this realization is the
insistence on our own separated individuality. The continued individuation, necessary though
60

Through hyperventilation the individual breath generates free valences towards a connection with the cosmic
breath through the dissolution of self-created boundaries. Translation by Norbert Koppensteiner.

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it may be throughout large parts of our existence, therefore needs to be faded (verwunden) at
one point for an experiential understanding of the basic relationality of life in the
aesthetic/energetic to be attained. The weakening of those individual boundaries leads to a
state in which one perceives both: either the weak form of the self, or the energetic unity of
life. The ensuing logical paradox between the both and the either...or can rationally not be
dissolved.
The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (1993b) casts this simultaneous experience of
emptiness and fullness as an act of remembrance. In this act of remembrance the self
actualizes the clean slate which it had been in the early stages of its life, before individuation
and cognition left their memory impression and before subjectivation began. In this
understanding, before prior to being inscribed with experiences and memories, the self is like
an empty sheet, free of marks. The first human experience so is an experience of emptiness. It
is in this light, Sloterdijk reasons, that one can understand the Mystics insistence that the
experience of nothingness or emptiness is in fact the most natural state and starting point for
all other experiences. Sloterdijk points to the many mystic traditions which speak of such an
act of remembering emptiness/fullness and he recounts the fundamental difficulty of
elaborating on something which is before language61:

Wenn die paradoxe Erinnerung an nichts in einem Gehirn Platz greift, dann geht
diese zustndlich vor den Informationsspeicher zurck, in dem die Welt in sprach- und
bildgebundenen Vorstellungen mitsamt den typischen informierenden Szenen
aufbewahrt wird. Der Inhalt der Erinnerung ist in diesem Fall ein Zustand, der sich
als wacher und vorstellungsfreier Aufenthalt in einem klaren Medium oder einem
Nichts beschreiben liee, mit dem Zusatz, dass dieses Nichts, aus der Position des
In-Seins, ebenso gut als Flle aufgefasst werden kann. Aber weil der Zustand selbst

61

Also Ken Wilber arrives at a similar conclusion regarding such an ineffable experience. See Wilber, 2001: 51f.

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ein vorsprachlicher ist, kann ihn die Frage, ob Leere oder Flle seine wahre Natur
besser charakterisiert, nicht berhren.62 (Sloterdijk, 1993b: 68, 69)

And here the circle closes: The practices of an Art of the Transpersonal Self could
encourage such a fading of individuality understood as letting go of the subjective past and
its remembered being. If, through such a series of practices, the self lets its individuality fade
it so could attain an awareness of this emptiness. Realizing this emptiness simultaneously
opens the possibility for an affirmation of all life beyond the own individuality. In this
experience of emptiness of the self the overflowing fullness of all life can be found which - in
its aesthetic/energetic relationality - stretches in all dimensions. The dis-individuating
realization could open the door to a dawning awareness of the aesthetic/energetic connectivity
which points towards a basic unity of all (human) life.

We will take this crucial point into the next chapter where it will be explored in greater
detail. Since this opening will once more lead to reflections of a theoretical nature, we will
first conclude this chapter of practices, before addressing the implications of this assertion of
a unity of life we have arrived at here.

6.4. Conclusion
This chapter was dedicated to exploring concrete practices of an Art of the Self. Choosing
three practices can necessarily only give a glimpse and cursory introduction to what is a vast
62

Whenever the paradoxical memory of nothingness takes hold in a brain, it recurs to a state before the
information memory in which the world has been stored in linguistic and pictorial imaginations and in which it is
being kept together with the typical informatory scenes. In this case the content of this memory is a state of
being which can be understood as the awake and conception-less residence in a clear medium or nothingness,
with the addition that, from the position of being-within, this nothingness could just as well be described as
fullness. But because this state itself is one which precedes language it cannot be touched by the question
whether its true nature would better be characterized by emptiness or fullness. Translation by Norbert
Koppensteiner

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field of traditions, techniques and methods which have been applied for millennia all over the
world. An in-depth analysis and comparison of all possible practices, however, is certainly
beyond the scope of this work and would probably fill libraries. Our three practices Forum
Theater, Systemic Constellation Work and Holotropic Breathwork - were chosen because they
have arisen from a Western postmodern way of life or have successfully been adapted to it
but of course many more techniques could be imagined and are currently in use. Those three
practices constitute concrete examples and contributions towards an Art of the Transpersonal
Self. Within the current study this Art thus gains a specific applicability and becomes tangible.

What this chapter served to show is that an Art of the Self may have its roots in the
Ancient Mediterranean (and, indeed, draw on many other cultures as well), but that it is by no
means a dead practice without relevance today. It is, on the contrary, from the successful
adaptation, changing and twisting of older practices that a new, cutting edge and inspiring
understanding of techniques of living is currently emerging. It may thus no longer be a
contradiction to give shamanistic practices, (spiritual) transformations of the self and different
approaches to healing a place within the technological life of the twenty first century.

In a fourth transposition the theoretical frame derived from the previous transpositions
was so wed to a series of practical methods which themselves are the result of a
transdisciplinary and cross-cultural encounter. In line with Rosi Braidottis (2006: 5),
suggestion of a transposition as intertextual, cross-boundary or transversal transfer, this
chapter combined (continental) European postmodern theory with practices and technologies
stemming from Brazilian theater and, in two further cases, therapeutic practices significantly
influenced by Eastern (Indian) traditions. The result is a combination which does not
completely ascribe to either one of those traditions and strands, but much rather weaves them

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together into a discontinuous but harmonious pattern which, according to Braidotti (2006:
5), is the hallmark of transpositions.

The Art of the Transpersonal Self was so sketched as a set of practices that can, on the
one hand, lead to a continued, active, subjectivation as individuation and thereby lend itself to
the project of giving ones life a certain form. Within this understanding one roughly can
differentiate between the use of an Art of the Self for therapeutic purposes and the more
general purpose of subjectivation as open form of transformation. It is probably in the frame
of a therapeutic use that the connection of transformation to conflict arises especially clear.
However this process of transformation may, on the other hand, also reach a point at which
the transformation leads to a fading of individuality. Although this second effect derives from
the first it still makes sense to distinguish the two, because the second seems to suggest an
inversion of the first, or at least a radicalization of certain tendencies of fading which (as
integration) are also present in the first.

Neither of those forms of use implies that these practices should not be taken
seriously, they require quite some discipline and exercise and are neither intended nor
usefully practicable just for fun. It does, however, mean that those practices can become part
of everyday life, can be exercised permanently and continuously; which indeed is also
necessary for an Art of the Transpersonal Self. Leaving the quite extraordinary experience of
emptiness for a moment aside, it can be postulated that in such practices being is continuously
transcended in the movement of new becomings.

Besides presenting the practical applicability and possible workings of such practices
for an Art of the Self, we were able to further complete our understanding of the self and
subjectivation in this chapter. The intricate connectivity and relationality of the self became
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clearer in the practices portrayed in the first two examples. On the third example, Holotropic
Breathwork, we were able to re-take and substantiate some Foucauldian and Deleuzian topics
from the last chapter. It so became possible to highlight and give additional meaning to the
idea of the self as form.

With Forum Theater and Systemic Constellation Work we explored different venues of
active subjectivation, while through our last example we started to properly approach the
possibility of a fading of individuality. All three examples served to substantiate the idea of a
transpersonal self that co-emerges in severality and is amenable to the active practice of a
permanent transformational becoming. Underlying this concrete severality we encountered a
connectivity which spreads in all directions and forms an aesthetic/energetic sphere of life.

In this chapter we were led to an insight about the basic unity of life and the possibility
of experiencing such a unity through a letting go of the autonomous, singular individuality. In
other words, from the de-individualizing experience of emptiness there springs the awareness
of the fullness of life. The implications of this insight remain yet to be examined and this will
be the guiding thread for the next chapter.

The aesthetic and energetic form, that concrete relationality that makes us human, also
implies the relation one has with one self. Not in order to find out about ones perennial truth
but to effect a transformation. On that path, certain techniques might prove helpful at different
junctions. Foucault (1988a; 1990b; 2005) described some of them recurring to the ancients.
Other might be, from todays perspective, the art of Systemic Constellations, Forum Theater,
and Breathwork. The Transpersonal Art of the Self can bloom in this instant, as the energetic
and aesthetic shaping of the relation one has with oneself and with ones surroundings.

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7. An Impersonal God Where Theory Fades

If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence.
For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and
if our soul has trembled with happiness like a harp string just once,
all eternity was needed to produce this event
and in this single moment of affirmation
all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
(Nietzsche, 1968: 532, 533)

With the analysis of three practices in the last chapter a critical juncture has been reached,
leading to a new opening and insight. In the flow within the aesthetic and energetic sphere we
encounter something that is connecting the self to possibly all other living beings, yet is at the
same time strangely local and contingent. If it holds true that the energetic does not lend itself
to abstraction, that it is the force which always only flows in concrete (aesthetically codetermined) relationality, then we seem to be at the threshold of an understanding that is
metaphysical yet local and personal. With Friedrich Nietzsche this study has begun, and it
was the very same author who so forcefully criticized the metaphysical assumptions on which
modernity was built. In his writings the death of God has been heralded (1974) and the
twentieth century has subsequently taken heed of this call, deconstructing, criticizing and
trying to overcome metaphysics (Vattimo, 1997).

Insofar as postmodernity was born out of the rejection of metaphysics (Lyotard, 1984),
it has not succeeded in overcoming its heritage. However there is an important net benefit to
be accrued. Weaving its path through postmodern critiques, the metaphysics we currently
seem to be approaching can no longer be the same as a hundred years ago, when Nietzsche set
out on his criticism. Being aware of the violence that lurks in the metaphysics of a pure
Apollonian form, remaining skeptical about the (Christian) morality, the question still needs
to be approached: If there is a continued possibility and necessity for a transformation of the
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self, if this transformation can neither be explained nor brought about by rational means and,
finally, if at the limit point of this transformation there occurs an understanding of a basic
connectivity of life, then what kind of salvation can we still hope for? What experience of
transcendence is still possible today?

7.1. An Impersonal God

Throughout this study it has been argued that the Apollonian does not need to be rejected
wholesale. Rationality, as for example practiced in the postmodern virtue of critique (Butler,
2000), has its place and its necessity. However, I have also put forth that rationality alone
does not suffice for an affirmative life. Such an affirmation can not solely take place on
Apollonian grounds neither deconstruction, rational cognition, nor the practice of critique
by themselves lead to an affirmative life. Yet such an affirmation seems to be necessary, if
human existence is to remain meaningfully possible. I have tried to show that the continuous
becoming of human beings can only take place on the grounds of such an affirmation. I hold
that the good life can be realized only in a practice that is not purely critical.

And indeed, it can be argued that also we Western, supposedly rational individuals,
have always to a certain degree lived a practice of affirmation, ignoring what we knew to be
rationally true. Besides rationality, besides what we cognitively thought, we always have in
some way affirmatively practiced the transformation of ourselves. Otherwise human existence
would not have remained possible.

As Peter Sloterdijk (1987: 68ff.) points out, even nowadays, after knowing it for
centuries to be rationally wrong, most humans still have the feeling that the sun rises in the

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morning. The sunrise is affirmed, without thinking that it is, in fact, the earth that rises. The
Copernican worldview may have rationally displaced the Ptolemeian, but as Sloterdijk (1987)
reminds us, Western human beings have always remained in part Ptolemeians affirming
their experiences despite what they held to be rationally true.

Michel Foucault and many others have shown us the importance of the practice of
critique, the importance of thinking differently63. However this critique needs to be coupled
with an affirmative practice, if the task of transformation is to be turned into an active practice
of the self. And at this juncture another quality needs to be added to this practice of
transformation: The recognition of something beyond our rational knowledge and the
recognition of the unbroken human need to be fulfilled or transfigured. It is this also the
recognition of something beyond our cognitive grasp.

In the Art of the Transpersonal Self this recognition plays itself out in the celebration
of the aesthetic/energetic basic unity of life beyond individuality and beyond the pure
rationalization of the autonomous subject. In the experience of this basic unity of life
something past our knowing is approached and affirmed, something that might be called the
immanent divine (Grof and Grof, 1990: 40) as the realization of a basic creative energetic
connectivity beyond all seeming boundaries.

Indeed, many names could be given to this experience and it alternatively might be as
well understood as the experience of an impersonal (energetic) god - that from which life
springs and which enables subjectivation through individuation and its transcendence. If the
self is specific form within the aesthetic/energetic flow, then we are encountering this
immanent divine within ourselves as well as everywhere surrounding us. Subjectivation is
63

See also the discussion entitled (Post)modernity at the beginning of this work.

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then a specific constellation of the basic aesthetic/energetic current from which it can neither
be separated nor distinguished and of which our lives become concrete expressions.

In this sense it remains true - as Heidegger says - that only a God can still save us
(1966: 11). Insofar as we crave the advent of a personal god who will become the active agent
of our salvation and take this cumbersome burden of being saved from us, well, we may wait
in vain. We have killed this personal god beneath the weight of all that we have said
(Foucault, 1972: 211). This personalized god was the active agent who set down the moral
codes of conduct of thou shalt or thou shalt not for us to follow. It was this also the god
separated and distinct from us and to bask in whose grace worldly matters have to be
renounced. If this god would be the only divine option available, then what would be left to
humanity, this orphaned multiplicity (Sloterdijk, 1993a: 50), is with Heidegger to
nevertheless aspire to an affirmative practice of witnessing our own decline in the face of the
absent god (Heidegger, 1966: 11).

Alternatively - in the reading proposed here - what remains possible is the perception
of an impersonal, energetic, god. This impersonal force neither has left us nor as it is identical
with the force of life. It is not an outside agent in whose eyes we have to pass muster and to
whose grace we have to live up. On the contrary, it is the force which cannot be separated
from us, from whose grounds we could not stray even if we tried and whose expression we
are individually and collectively. It will not solve the question of our salvation for us, it will
not take us by the hand and lead us to deliverance, yet it is the impersonal force that keeps
open the possibility for us to affect our own salvation and transcendence even if we cannot
will this transcendence to happen. This is the form of a continuing transcendence which might
find its expression in certain moments of a peak experience or cosmic unity64 (be that in a
64

The term peak experience originally derives from transpersonal psychology and was coined by Abraham
Maslow. Stanislav Grof likens it to both oceanic states and cosmic unity which he describes as follows:

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practice of meditation, love, sexuality or other) but that is mainly realized through an
everyday practice in which the divine and sacred are re-encountered.

Following a Deleuzian vein, Rosi Braidotti (2002, 2006) thinks along similar lines
with the use she makes of the notion of zoe. Braidotti starts from a critique of the concept of
zoe as bare life in the form used by Giorgio Agamben (see chapter 4.2.). She contends that
this idea of a bare life on whose excluded inclusion rests the full, political, human life (bios),
fundamentally remains an argument out of the negative and at odds with an affirmative theory
and practice:

This view is linked to Heideggers theory of Being as deriving its force from the
annihilation of animal life. Agamben perpetuates the philosophical habit of taking
mortality or finitude as the trans-historical horizon for discussions of life. The
fixation on Thanatos which Nietzsche criticized over a century ago is still very
present in critical debates today. (Braidotti, 2006: 39)

In an almost psychoanalytic turn, Agambens zoe is that which is always already lost and
absent, it is lifes forever receding horizon. Against this concept of zoe as bare life, Braidotti
conceptualizes her own understanding of zoe as the fullness of life, the potency (potentia)
inherent in all beings. Zoe, in its positive plenitude, so is the generative inhuman energy
(Braidotti, 2006: 270). Starting from Henri Bergsons lan vital - as it was recast by Gilles
Deleuze (2006) - she thinks of zoe as an immanent transcendence which resists a
sacralization65 and yet forms the undercurrent of human becoming. Instead of that which is
Descriptions of cosmic unity are often filled with paradoxes that violate Aristotelian logic. [...] an experience of
cosmic unity might be without content, yet embracing all there is. Or we might feel that we are without ego
at the same time that our consciousness has expanded to include the entire universe. We can perceive ourselves
as existing and yet not existing and see all material objects as being empty while emptiness itself appears filled
with form. (Grof and Bennett, 1993: 39, 40)
65
The notion of the sacred that is resisted here can concretely be understood as that which is to be sacrificed (the
sacrificial as in bare life) and which derives its divinity from a being-forfeit and being absent which
simultaneously enables the positive human life as built upon this sacrifice. This notion of the sacred so relates to
the Christian tradition of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, sacrificed for the whole of humanity. For the
discussion further on it is important to keep this specific connotation in mind.

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always already absent and excluded (Agamben) and also against those who would turn it into
a metaphysical, abstract and outside substance, Braidottis zoe is always embodied. It is
inseparably tied to the enfleshed subject in and through which it manifests.

Zoe so is that which always is already present the endless vitality of life as
continuous becoming (Braidotti, 2006: 41), the affirmative power of life and vector of
transformation (2006: 109). The love of zoe is thus the affirmative love of life in all its
magnificence in its exuberant, flowing, generative but also cruel and uncaring aspects. This
notion of zoe is beyond good and evil as it is a fundamentally amoral force, the true nature of
which is best described in its relentless generative power (Braidotti, 2006: 223).

What has been described above as the simultaneous experience of emptiness (of the
self as form) and fullness (of life) is here rendered by Braidotti as the Deleuzian becomingimperceptible (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 232 ff.): The dawning awareness and experience
of the force of zoe which is simultaneously the Verwindung of individuality and ego-death:

Becoming-imperceptible is the point of fusion between the self and his or her habitat,
the cosmos as a whole. [] It is like the floodgates of creative forces that make it
possible to be actually fully inserted into the hic et nunc defined as the present
unfolding of potentials, but also of qualitative shifts within the subject. The
paradoxical price to pay for this is the death of the ego understood as social identity, as
the labels with which potestas has marked our embodied location. [] In this sense,
Deleuzes becoming-imperceptible is Deleuzes conceptual and affirmative answer
to Foucaults much celebrated and grossly misunderstood death of the subject. You
have to die to the self in order to enter qualitatively finer processes of becoming.
(Braidotti, 2006: 261)

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The I of the ego is not the proprietor of the generative power of life, it does not own
this life. It is, at best, as Braidotti remarks, a time share (2006: 236). What is there to do for
the self is to live according to this generative power, to embrace its flowing pull towards new
becomings, and to give it a certain, temporal, shape. If there is meaning to be given to the
Foucauldian undertaking of turning ones life into a work of art, then I would suggest it might
be found in one of the forms of a continuous practice which leads to the daily encounter and
affirmation of the divine understood as force of life in and through oneself and ones
surroundings and thus to ones own transcendence.

7.2. Affirming Life as Prerequisite for Experiencing the Divine

At this point a crucial array of questions and constructive concerns arises: Drawing on
postmodern philosophy, can the possibility of experiencing such an impersonal energetic god
be maintained? Is it possible to meaningfully use the concept of a god without having to
completely revoke all of those rightful critiques starting with Nietzsche and without falling
back into the old metaphysical trap of strong thinking66? Are we not, with positing a divine
principle, in fact making a step backwards into the realm of absolute metaphysics, closing
down possibilities of critique, spaces for difference opened only after long struggles? Still
reeling from the aftereffects of the iron-clad Christian morality, will we so be cast back yet
again into absolute formal principles?

Here we can draw directly on Friedrich Nietzsche who, after heralding the death of
God (1974: 181ff.), comes back to qualify his statement with a new possibility and a new
question:

66

On the pitfalls of metaphysics and strong thinking see also Vattimo 1997.

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At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to
conceive of a god beyond good and evil? (Nietzsche, 1968: 36)

For Nietzsche, in order for the idea of such a god beyond good and evil to hold any meaning a
certain basic attitude towards life is necessary. Far from denying this possibility, Nietzsche
goes on to set down the prerequisite which has to be met for encountering such a god. What is
required is that one holds an attitude which no longer judges any kind of experience as good
or bad, but that welcomes every turn of events in kind - no matter what it brings:

Every basic character trait that is encountered at the bottom of every event, that finds
expression in every event, would have to lead every individual who experienced it as
his own basic character trait to welcome every moment of universal existence with a
sense of triumph. The crucial point would be that one experienced this basic character
trait in oneself as good, valuable with pleasure. (Nietzsche, 1968: 36)

The crucial point here is that the question whether such a god will be possible for us is
decided by ourselves and our own attitude and perception. Transcendence is not bestowed in
the form of divine grace as reward from the outside. This is no easy solution: only in a
universal celebration of existence in all its facets can such a god be experienced. What
Nietzsche asks for is to embrace everything that happens as the best possible option in this
moment, to celebrate every instant of life as being a part of oneself. What is meant is an
affirmation beyond good and evil which refrains from any moral judgment. This, it must be
noted, is far from simple. Judgment is especially hard to renounce when one feels the victim,
the oppressed, when one takes righteousness to be ones only weapon.

And yet, an active transformation of the self can only be had if one steps back from a
claim to absolute Truth to right/wrong, good/evil. As we have already pointed out in
previous chapters, it is exactly such an attitude of non-judgment and acceptance which is not
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to be equaled to passivity. Quite the contrary, it is this attitude which enables the possibility to
think, act, and become differently. It is precisely this kind of stance that our Art of the
Transpersonal Self also intends to foster and inspire. Here we reconnect with our Foucauldian
findings of chapter four where we postulated as one hallmark of such an Art of the Self that it
acknowledges and embraces the aesthetic/energetic in all its forms also in the classical
Foucauldian understanding of power.

What we have already pointed out previously can here be asserted once more with
Friedrich Nietzsche: This impersonal divine principle can also express itself in a terrible side
and does not lend itself to the easy veneration as inherently good and benevolent! Also with
Nietzsche we here encounter the possibility of a divine principle, while additionally pointing
to the necessity of suspending judgment as part of such a practice of the self. Thus, while we
once more re-open the possibility of encountering the divine, there is no absolute moral
imperative or formalized code of conduct that derives thereof. This divine is, on the contrary,
to be found in a practice of a transforming Verwindung of those strong moral categories.

To ward off another possible misunderstanding: Such a celebration of life is no recipe

for fatalism or passivity. It necessitates the perpetual active work of the self on itself and the
always risky acceptance of conflict as basic element of human life through which
transformation-in-becoming can take place. It is no statement against acting in line with ones
own values but those values can never be formalized, fixed and rigid, but always only local
and open to perpetual re-evaluation.67 Accepting each moment as it occurs is no precept for
non-action. On the contrary, the possibility of working towards new becomings is only
67

That this attitude may be difficult to practice is easily comprehensible when one takes into account that it also
implies a non-judgmental stance towards the perpetrators of all kinds of violence and atrocities. Some practices
of an Art of the Self in our study especially the practice of Systemic Constellation - are set up in a way to foster
such a non-judgmental presence. In his Vier Grundlagen der Aufstellungsarbeit (Four Pillars for the Work with
Constellations at http://mahrsysteme.de/) Albrecht Mahr also stresses this attitude of non-judgment. That this is a
difficult and very often exacting and challenging process needs to be highlighted. However, in the sense of a
continued transformation of the self it can also be tremendously rewarding and enriching.

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possible on the basis of the acknowledgment of every moment of life, in the way it is
concretely perceived, as integral part of oneself. Beyond good and evil each moment of our
becoming is therefore also neither arbitrary (coincidental) nor necessary (predetermined).

As the energetic/aesthetic flow only exists in relationality, this impersonal god is

furthermore not identical with an outside force. God is not the Almighty Other lording over
His creation. The experience of the energetic as the experience of life is simultaneously the
experience of the self in both its emptiness and fullness. The perceiving self and this
energetic, impersonal god are in the end one and the same and the perception of the
aesthetic/energetic can so not be separated from the perceiving self. What might be
encountered is something that is beyond our rational cognition but it is not a thing-in-itself or
outside essence which could be posited independent of our experience. To sum up this last
thought, neither is this impersonal god an active, willing, agent who reaches down to earth
and makes us, nor is it separable from the self. This is what is meant when it has here been
identified with life or the divine principle.

7.3. A Weak Transcendence

With this divine or sacred principle, or aesthetic/energetic force of an impersonal god, we so
are approaching metaphysics. Since it also has become clear that this metaphysics is not an
overcoming of postmodernity through a new strong, absolute principle, it could be proposed
that this form of metaphysics might be understood in the sense of Gianni Vattimo (2006) as
an ultra-metaphysics68 which, in the fading of individuality, also opens the fullness of the
68

The German translation of Vattimos text (2006) by Hans-Martin Schnherr-Mann has kept the Nietzschean
connotations by calling Vattimos concept an ber-Metaphysik. The English translation as post-metaphysics
in the same volume unfortunately has lost this meaning and so suggests, in my opinion, a too easy approximation
or integration into postmodernity. Therefore I decided to use the term ultra-metaphysics (derived from the
Spanish translation in the same book as ultrametafsica) which first of all seems to me to be closer to the

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plane of transcendence towards a flow of the energetic as recognition of the divine. This
transcendence then could be perceived as a weak form of transcendence which, on the one
hand, corresponds to peoples needs for transfiguration, salvation and fulfillment while, on the
other, posits this divine encounter as always experienced concretely and locally. It can not be
grasped abstractly or clad into the formulas and codifications of a strong Truth but it can only
be understood intuitively and experienced. Any form of expression of this experience occurs
always within a concrete life-world to which it remains tied.

The weak transcendence so takes place against this horizon of interpretation and can
not, without violence, be integrated into a universal frame of communication. No
proselytizing pull derives from this weak transcendence as it does not lay claim to a universal
Truth which would be automatically communicable outside of its horizon of experience. And
yet it is metaphysical in the sense of a transcendental experience which cannot be rationalized
or analyzed and thus has to be taken as given. Hence it is a weak form because it cannot be
universalized and knows about its own contingency and the situatedness of its experience. Yet
it is transcendent as it posits the existence of a force beyond our knowing and description a
principle which is rationally impossible to know.

It also needs to be stressed that in our interpretation it neither is a question of whether

those divine experiences are absolutely or objectively real and or not. It is not a matter of
proving an experience absolutely real as opposed to it being just apparently real. From a weak
standpoint those experiences are perceived as real within the given horizon in which they
arise and hold true for a moment they so are a weak truth. Whether that horizon can also be
that of science (whether that experience can be scientifically validated) is a different question.
But also science in our context pertains to only a weak truth as science is understood,
meaning Vattimo gives it and secondly (and most importantly) does no longer carry the reference back to
postmodernity which, indeed, I believe it would no longer be a part of.

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following Nietzsche (1974), as gay science. Whether those experiences so hold true in the
scientific sense of the word is only of remote interest as long as they hold some truth within
the horizon in which they appear. The scientific horizon bestows only a certain kind of
validity and is no ultimate arbiter any more.

In any case, arising as experiences of a concrete person, they intimately relate to that
person her/himself and her/his concrete surroundings and partial others. For the
transformative, healing or changing effects this truth can have, the question of an overall truth
and absolute reality are moot. For those experiences to have a transformative effect they do
not need to be verified according to an abstract outer standard. The only thing necessary for a
possibility of transformation to occur is that the experiencing person takes those experiences
for whatever they are within that moment true for a given situation, expressions of a certain
instant of becoming. While it is so necessary to suspend judgments (on strong truth/reality, on
good/evil) this experience does not ask for blind faith and neither to renounce critical faculties
and thinking.

7.4. A Parting of Ways

At this point of the discussion it becomes necessary to establish a critical distinction towards
the role which Gianni Vattimo ascribes to hermeneutics69 for accessing the divine. From his
hermeneutic approach, Vattimo (2006) argues that the weak truth is rhetorical70 and, following
Heidegger, that Being discloses itself in language71. In contrast to his view, in the proposed

69

I understand hermeneutics as method of linguistic interpretation, following Vattimos assertion that the
constitutive characteristics of hermeneutics are ontology and Sprachlichkeit, linguisticality (Vattimo, 1997: 3).
70
See also chapter two.
71
See also the discussion of hermeneutics by Luca DIsanto in his introduction to Vattimos Belief (1999).

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Art of the Transpersonal Self, truth and being (becoming) are not just rhetorical and not just
revealed in discourse.

In the present rendering, truth and being are mediated, communicated, and thus
partially co-constituted in discourse, but experience is always seen as carrying a nondiscursive element. I thus agree with Vattimo in so far as experiences are always perceived
against a historically specific horizon in which they arise; however experiences carry a felt
component which escapes (discursive) expression within that horizon. Emotions, feelings,
sensations are not equal to discourse and can only be mediated through discourse in their
Apollonian qualities, thereby loosing the Dionysian element.

In accordance with Vattimo it needs to be asserted that in this experience no thing-initself discloses itself as this experience is always mediated against a historically constructed
horizon (and could thus never be pure), but going beyond Vattimo I also stipulate that this
experience in part escapes expression within that horizon. When Vattimo asserts as Luca
DIsanto points out (1999: 8) that the postmodern subject is only as an interpreter of
signs and thus of a chain of messages which consists in the historical-natural languages
that make every experience of the world possible, Vattimo is subsequently led to hold fast to
the Good Book for accessing the divine. It seems to be only in the constant, never-ending
interpretation of the scriptures that the divine announces itself. In my rendering this task of
accumulation of knowledge and interpretation alone do not engender a transformation of the
self. Vattimo, on the other hand, seeks to constantly re-interpret Christian inheritance and
identifies this inheritance once more with a text:

I believe that one ought to speak of Christian inheritance in a much broader sense that
would concern our culture in general, which has also become what it is because it has
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been worked and forged in friendship by the Christian message, or more generally
by the biblical revelation (Old and New Testament). (Vattimo, 1999: 33)

Vattimo so arrives at the point in which truth is once more tied to an abstract form the Bible
of the Old and New Testament in which the long process of Gods education of humanity
reveals itself (Vattimo, 1999: 38). In the end, for Vattimo (1999: 60), salvation is bound to the
text.

This study, while coinciding to a large degree with a weak proposal (truth as always
contingent and context bound, human life as taking place against a historically mediated
horizon), moves towards an experiential field of understanding in which discourse only plays
a co-constitutive role. It entails the recognition of experiences which remains beyond
description and for which scriptures do not offer authoritative access to the divine.

The first difference with Gianni Vattimo thus concerns the question of the roles of
interpretation and experience. A second difference is that Vattimo in his work on Belief
(1999) maintains the idea of a God as active agent, who chooses to limit himself in an act of
incarnation and kenosis in which he empties himself into Jesus Christ. Although starting
like Vattimo from a Nietzschean point of view, the interpretation established here differs from
also in this second aspect. In Vattimos rendering humanity continues to live by the grace of
an active, outside, God who just chose to limit himself, while here an impersonal god was
portrayed, who is not an active outside agent but the flowing force of life which cannot be
separated from the experiencing subject.

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7.5. Spaces for Encounters

At this point Western philosophy re-encounters parts of its own spiritual past as well as a
possible future in the engagement with other traditions of thought. Similar processes,
practices and experiences have been described in many spiritual traditions over the
millennia72. Many of them contain descriptions of peak experiences in which individuality is
transcended and leading towards a realization of the relationality and unity of life. Michel
Foucault here provides an outlook for us, summing up the current state of affairs and retaking
that Nietzschean theme of a philosophy of the future:

There is no philosopher who marks out this period. For it is the end of the era of
Western philosophy. Thus, if a philosophy of the future exists, it must be born outside
of Europe or equally born in consequence of meetings and impacts between Europe
and non-Europe. (Foucault, 1999: 113)

In this light it should also be remembered that already Nietzsche (1968: 124, 125) situated
Ancient Greece at the halfway point between Rome and India, and that the precedent for an
Eastern influence on Western philosophy already has been established at the very cradle of
the Western tradition. Michel Foucault analyzed the historical practices of the self in Ancient
Greece in great detail, acknowledging the influence of other (Eastern) traditions of thought on
the Greek modalities of working on the self. Today, we seem to be at another juncture where
the dis-oriented73 Western tradition might make use (and be in need) of practices stemming
from somewhere else, adapting, changing and reconfiguring them to fit our current framework
if the Apollonian Hegemony is to be lifted and Apollo once more related to Dionysius.
Perhaps it is time that the ban on thinking and acting in that direction which has been in place
in the West since after the Sixties be lifted. Postmodernity as critique of rationality by rational
72

See also the Section Cross-Cultural Roots in the Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology, edited
by Scotton, Chinen and Battista, 1996.
73
The idea of dis-orientation, understood as lack of Orient, was introduced by Salman Rushdie in his novel The
Ground beneath her Feet and is here quoted after Dietrich, 2006a: 2.

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means has its validity (Dietrich, 2006c: 26). However, since postmodernity remains tied to the
Apollonian forms, going beyond it implies, from the perspective proposed here, a renewed
engagement with that which cannot be theorized which entails as we have just seen, a form of
weak transcendence.

Engaging with different non-European traditions we find that the experience of such
an impersonal god as the divine force of which oneself is part is also encountered in many
philosophical systems and spiritual practices. In the Indian Upanishads this realization of
divinity is expressed as the Tat Tvam Asi, the Thou Art That or you are the Godhead
(Grof and Bennett, 1993: 164). What we encountered already earlier in our discussion of the
State of the Art with Wolfgang Schirmachers ethics of compassion as it is derived out of a
basic unity of life beyond individuality, we re-encounter here with Stanislav Grof. Grof
reminds us of the many different expressions which are used for this realization of unity
which, in the end, nevertheless remains beyond words:

The ultimate creative principle has been known by many names Brahman in
Hinduism, Dharmakaya in Mahayana Buddhism, the Tao in Taoism, Pneuma in
Christian mysticism, Allah in Sufism, and Kether in the Kabbalah. The basic message
in the mystical traditions has been that not only can we connect with the creative
principle but each of us, in a sense, is the creative principle. (Grof and Bennett, 1993:
163, 164)

In this vein it might be worth exploring in which space the Western philosophers employed
here and those conceptualizations meet. For some of those philosophers, like Michel Foucault
who spent time in a Zen Buddhist temple, such a connection is also autobiographically
confirmable (Foucault, 1999: 110). The Foucauldian idea of a self as form instead of
substance and the concept of a perpetual transformation as becoming coincides to a striking

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amount with the Zen Buddhist assertion that the self is formed in interaction with the world,
thus giving the illusion of a substance where there is really only a form shaped in a series of
encounters:

Buddhists believe that change and movement are characteristic of existence.

Everything is in change or flux. The idea of a fixed or permanent ego or self is
perceived as an illusion that is created in an attempt to cope with the ever-flowing flux
of reality. (Scotton, 1996b: 115)

In this line of thinking it might perhaps also be more than a mere coincidence that a former
priest, Ivan Illich, is said to have sparked Foucaults interest in the technologies of the self
(Carrette, 1999: 4). Even more, Foucaults thought has also been referred to as worldly
mysticism (Bernauer, 1990: 178) while simultaneously mystic forms of healing and
transformation, as they can be found cross-culturally, have been called a form of technology
of the sacred and art of transcendence (Walsh, 1996: 97).

This brings us to a second argument: Just as it would be a misinterpretation to see all

of Buddhism as a world-rejecting retreat into narcissism, it would also be misplaced to think
of the Art of the Transpersonal Self as geared towards a renunciation of self and world in
favor of the mystic unity. Much to the contrary, what an Art of the Self is occupied with is the
question of how to live ones life, how to give ones daily existence a certain shape and style
without recurring to a universal code of conduct. An Art of the Self is neither a form of
escapism nor of world-rejecting introspective individualism.

As I have showed throughout this work, a postmodern interpretation of Foucaults

thinking might thus not necessarily remain the only possible one and both his and Friedrich
Nietzsches thoughts might be turned into vectors leading to a renewed coupling and mutual
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impregnation of traditions. In transpersonal psychology, from whose realm some of the

practices previously described hail, such a coupling of different strands of thought and
distinct cosmovisions was already successfully attempted some time ago (Scotton, Chinen and
Battista, 1996). Holotropic Breathwork and Constellation Work are some of the visible
results.

The question remains, whether philosophy will dare to do the same, even at the risk of
re-approaching some of those categories that were so rightfully criticized over the past
decades. What we have sketched so far is but the first step towards a space where traditions of
Western philosophy might re-encounter non-Western traditions leading towards a philosophy
that is simultaneously a practice and a form of spirituality and, thus, acknowledges for
transrational experiences.

Michel Foucault once pointed out that there are times when the question of knowing
if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, are
absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all (Foucault, 1988a: 8). It is
in line with this inquisitiveness of finding out to what degree it is possible to think differently
in order to become differently that this study borrows heavily from practices taken from
different fields. In this endeavor this study has sought to test in how far those practices can be
interpreted with certain thinkers considered postmodern, to sound out in how far it is possible
to go with those thinkers beyond postmodernity and to what extent they can accompany us in
the concrete application of those practices towards the point where theory fades.

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7.6. Conclusion
Starting from the point of departure of a unity of life this chapter first identified this
experience of unity as an experience of the divine. This force of life could also be rendered
with in the form of Rosi Braidottis understanding of zoe as generative energy or, as the
experience of an impersonal god, which we secondly were able to distinguish from the
personal god and strong foundations of metaphysical thinking.

The plane of transcendence, fourthly, opens up once more as weak transcendence as

an experience of a divine principle which cannot be known but is yet local and always
emergent against a concrete horizon. With Friedrich Nietzsche we fifthly asserted the
necessity of an affirmation of life beyond good and evil as necessary precondition for
experiencing such an impersonal god. Sixthly we parted ways with Gianni Vattimo who
consequently thinks postmodernity until its limit point and steps beyond, but afterwards falls
back into a Christian hermeneutics of the Bible. Against his Christian philosophy I so pose an
affirmative, practical, philosophy whose rallying point is not the ever new interpretation of a
text but the daily experience of life in all its forms.

At this point Western philosophy, seventhly, re-encounters other extra-European

traditions as well as parts of its own spiritual history. The necessity for such an encounter
was, seventhly, asserted if the Apollonian hegemony is to be lifted.

Finally, with our fifth transposition, the circle closes in this chapter. At the very
beginnings of this study there stood Apollo and Dionysius - two divinities, two gods, of
ancient Greece. Spanning the bridge through several transpositions into and out of
postmodernity we have now once more arrived at the realm of the divine: at an aesthetic and
energetic impersonal god. Starting with Nietzsches critique of strong, metaphysical, thinking
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we so approximate a weak transcendence after strong metaphysics. Having traveled the route
via postmodernity it needs to be emphasized that this conclusion entails no rejection of
postmodern thinking, whose modes of critique and investigation continue to serve many
eminently important purposes. We have, however, against the grain of mainstream
postmodern thought, established a new opening into the transcendental in which a twisted
postmodern tradition also finds its place.

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8. Beyond the Apollonian Hegemony

In sum it is question of searching for another kind of critical philosophy.

Not a critical philosophy that seeks to determine the conditions and the limits
of our possible knowledge of the object,
but a critical philosophy that seeks the conditions
and the indefinite possibilities of transforming the subject,
of transforming ourselves.
(Michel Foucault, quoted after OLeary, 2002: 139)

This dissertation began with a short historical assessment read from the perspective of two
principles: the Apollonian and Dionysian. Ever since Platonic times the abstract forms of the
truth, morals, the institutionalizations of church and state and with them Apollo have reigned
supreme in the West. Through a long series of shift and changes this formalistic pull has
become ever stronger in the West and nowadays the Apollonian sun burns bright on the
European and North American horizons. It also shines its radiant beams down on many other
places in the world, wherever those European inventions have been spread, often with fire and
sword. Shadows have, indeed, become rare in the past centuries when everything Dionysian
was cast under suspicion. Repressing the Dionysian in oneself it had to be externalized,
fought and purged in the name of the Cross, progress, enlightenment and civilization all
around the world. However, since the energy of life can be suppressed neither completely nor
permanently, since the Other can never be totally vanquished or assimilated, the struggle is
never finished but always continues in different guises, different times and places. Striving for
security so becomes a quest for a world in which the Other has become extinct and the own
repressed Dionysian parts do not return an impossible undertaking; and highly violent.

Coming out of a tradition of a thinking of difference and doubt, the aim of the Art of the
Transpersonal Self is to contribute to a renewed balance between the Apollonian and
Dionysian, by opening spaces and proposing practices, fostering transformations of the self
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which acknowledge both elements and also appreciate the daily art of existence that can be
the outcome of such a re-linking. It is also highly untimely from the point of view of the
different international arenas and actors, as it asks for an affirmative stance of suspending
judgment as opposed to providing certainty and security.

Finally it is practiced on the small, local or communal level. What has here been
termed Art of the Transpersonal Self is in the end the result of series of transpositions,
adaptations and modifications of practices that in part are thousands of years old and hail from
different places and times. They derive from the hybrid space where spirituality, philosophy,
(transpersonal) psychology and different cosmovisions might encounter and mutually enrich
one another, without ever becoming the same. The Art of the Self sketched in this work is but
one way of conceiving this undertaking, it is a hybrid derived to fit a certain horizon of
experience. Hopefully it might also be adaptable to other horizons in which it then will no
longer be the same. However, for this smallness it is still no less serious.

On the contrary, this insistence on the locality and concreteness entails a crucial
limitation. The attempt to change the world, well meaning though it may be, cannot be had
without violence. We owe to Jean-Franois Lyotard (1988) the concept of the diffrend
designating an incommensurability that, due to a lack of a mutually accepted frame of
arbitration, cannot be resolved without an act of violence. Conflicts, therefore, very often
simply cannot be resolved.

What yet remains possible is a transformation of the high energetic individual states
conflicts generate. Finding a creative way of transforming those high energetic states of
conflict in and through - which also a transformation of the self together with the partial
others of the conflictive situation occurs - is also aim of an Art of the Self. This art is,
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however, neither a catch-all recipe for salvation, nor the high road to universal enlightenment.
Through this art we will not be absolved from conflicts, but we are offered an exhilarating
daily chance of transformation if we dare embracing them.

From this conflictive approach follows that the ethical dimension of an Art of the
Transpersonal Self is so intricately linked to peace. Beyond all pipe dreams and hopes about
the one peace on earth, the perpetual peace, beyond the eschatological story of paradise in
heaven or here on earth at the end of all days, after the myths of progress and development
have been debunked there, first of all, stands a notion of a plurality of contextual, relational
and conflictive peaces (Dietrich and Stzl, 2006).

Wolfgang Dietrich asserts that what peace means differs on closer inspection from
culture to culture and the connotations and etymological interpretations of the concept of
peace do not coincide in different languages, but are an expression of the plurality of
worldviews and perceptions of the societies speaking those languages (Dietrich and Stzl,
2006: 290 ff.). The etymological connotations of peace are not the same in each language, and
what it means to talk about peace, think it, or live in peace differs, whether it is done in
English, German, Arabic or Catalan. Those peaces can so no longer be equalized and made
synonymous to each other; their plurality may very well give rise to manifold diffrends.

From this acknowledgement of plurality and relationality, also Ivan Illich draws the
pertinent conclusion: War tends to make cultures alike, whereas peace is that condition under
which each culture flowers in its own incomparable way. From this it follows that peace
cannot be exported, it is inevitably corrupted by transfer; its attempted export always means
war (Illich, 2006: 175). With the rendering of Francisco Muoz (2006) peace further
becomes an imperfect societal process. The imperfection mirrors the Art of the Transpersonal
214

Self in so far as it relates to its status as infinite, interminable and ever unfinished process
involving concrete actors in specific times and spaces.

Thinking peace this way is risky as it implies embracing conflict as a basic principle of
human interaction. If we then deem a contribution to the maintaining of this plurality, the
continuous process of transforming conflicts nonviolently and with creativity and empathy
(Galtung, 1996) then the connection between an Art of the Self and peace becomes clearer. A
so perceived peace and a daily and continuous practice of transformation go hand in glove.
An Art of the Self might be one concrete form, one possible shape this daily transformation
could take, as the expression of a peace that is relative and relational (Dietrich, 2006: 44),
local and contingent, can neither be exported nor imposed, that is risky and affirmative and
that, although it cannot be universalized in formal abstractions, can still take us onto a plane
of weak transcendence.

215

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