The Virtue of Self-care and the Genealogy of Christian Marriage: Focusing on M. Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4: Confessions of the Flesh

This article is to examine whether the Christian marriage can be a locus of ‘spiritual practice’ and virtue of ‘self-care’ development. The goal of this study is to trace the genealogical history of the Magisterial teachings on marriage, which has revealed how the value of ‘spiritual practice’ and the technology of ‘self-care’ have been developed, for the sake of one’s personal ‘salvation’. To do this, this study explores how Michel Foucault’s study of self-care can help to discuss the Magisterial teachings on marriage. Although Foucault has never dealt with the Christian marital doctrine, this study tries to discuss it genealogically, by using Foucault’s insights which analyze the fourth-century Christian Fathers’ theological statements of marriage. By using Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Vol.4: the Confessions of the Flesh, as an analyzing lens, this study explores the subject of self-perception and of self-cultivation, which is the subject that Christian conjugal life has embraced for a long time. By comparing the Church Fathers’ theological statements about the marriage, in particular analyzing the sermons and writings of Chrysostomus and Augustinus in the fourth century, this study traces the history of using marriage as an art of renunciation for the sake of one’s salvation. This study finds these historical traces of marital art in the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, especially in the Gaudium et spes once again. Finally, this finds the same traces in Pope Francisco’s Amoris Laetitia in which marriage has been confirmed as a locus of the spiritual practice and the virtue development for the sake of cultivating self-reflection and personal fulfillment.