Abstract
Judith Butler productively explores the broadening of the spectrum of Foucault’s concept of “critique”. The nexus between critique and formation and between self-critique and self-education permeates the arguments of the two authors. Still, Butler indicates how much critique itself as virtue, discussed by Foucault, needs the formative dimension to be able to clarify in a post-foundationalist theoretical context of non-prescriptive normativity. This article intends to show that, with this step, Butler’s reconstruction of the problem reaches a new level, both clarifying the meaning of self-formation of the subject and more accurately indicating the new meaning assumed by the Foucauldian notion of “critique” as virtue.
Keywords
critique; Virtue; Self-formation; Normativity