The culture of the self: How does the subject think of himself in religions?

The expression "culture of the self", coined by Michel Foucault, invites us to question the place of the subject and its relationship with itself within different religions. In his religious experience, the subject faces several tensions, evident on both an individual and collective scale: between Self and Other, between nature and culture, between individual and community, between human word and divine word.

How can we fully situate the subject? His existence is underpinned by two types of relationship: one vertical, linked to transcendence, and another, horizontal, linked to community belonging, where the individual is absorbed into a system of shared values and practices that shape his identity. The question then arises as to whether religion defines the subject in its entirety, or whether it retains a margin of autonomy in the way it inhabits and interprets the world. And if so, what happens to the subject when it thinks of itself outside any religious tradition, or when its relationship with God seems to be eroded by modernity? The relationship to the divine has always provoked questioning, transformations and tensions: how does this translate into the way we conceive the relationship to ourselves?

Religion is fertile ground for observing forms of spirituality and return to the self, where the subject cultivates his inner world through practices such as prayer, meditation, asceticism, reading, self-writing, silence. These practices lead the subject to question the very purpose of religion: is it above all a relationship with oneself, a relationship with others, or a relationship with God? And can these dimensions intersect, or must they be thought of separately?

Language plays an important role in this reflection on self-cultivation within a religious framework. How does the subject say himself in the face of the divine word? What place is given to human speech - interpretive, poetic, theological - in the construction of the religious subject? Are there different ways of thinking about the subject according to tradition, era and corpus?

This doctoral day thus proposes to explore the multiple ways in which religions think about and shape the subject from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. It is aimed at doctoral students and PhDs who have just recently defended their thesis.

Sending proposals: View e-mail

Deadline: March 15, 2026.

Response: March 30, 2026.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Madalina Vartejanu-Joubert

Marion La Rosa

Kenza Rahmani

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Stéphane Arguillère

Nicolas Elias

Ridha Atlagh

Ji Zhe

Étienne Naveau

Ilya Platov

Frédéric Wang

Bibliography

FOUCAULT, Michel, L'herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France (1981-1982), Paris, Gallimard/Seuil, coll. "Hautes Études", 2001.

FOURNIER, Laurent Sébastien, Anthropologie de la modernité. Entre globalisation et fragmentation, Armand Colin, coll. " U ", 2021.

HADOT, Pierre, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris, Albin Michel, 2002.

RICŒUR, Paul, Soi-même comme un autre,Paris, Seuil, 1990.

TOURAINE, Alain, Critique de la modernité,Paris, Fayard, 1992.