The body and the contemporary: between the pleasure principle, the asceticism and the áskesis ^{1 2 3}

Abstract

This paper presents a debate about the status of the body in contemporary times. It starts from the premise that this object lies in the tension between the pleasure principle, as a result of the appeals of consumerist hedonism in today's society, and, on the other hand, of body asceticism, inherited from the secularization of the body formation of Puritan asceticism. In both records a relationship of heteronomy of the subject is diagnosed in relation to the body and the world that it inhabits. As an alternative to this heteronomous tension, a possibility of human body formation is postulated from the registration of the áskesis, in the way it was proposed by the French thinker Michel Foucault, when analysing the philosophical schools of Greek and Roman Hellenism.

Keywords body; pleasure; control; Education of the human person