The History of Sexuality Part Four Confessions of Flesh

In 1984, shortly before Michel Foucault’s death, the second and third parts of The History of Sexuality appeared. His work on the remaining parts was halted. Finally, after eight years of work, the fourth part of the book appeared.
The shift from Greco-Roman ethos to Christian ethics—which is the subject of the fourth part—should not be addressed by law, prohibition, or taboo, but by the practices of the self, the techniques of its formation, and the ways in which institutions of austerity, asceticism, and monasticism are constructed, based on ecclesiastical structures and their understanding of sex, desire, and pleasure, whether marital or extramarital. It should also address a strict discourse on repentance, baptism, purity, and virginity, all through an articulation based on confession and flesh.
The individual’s desire to know the truth about himself leads to a succession of confessions, both to himself and to others, who are supposed to be able to inform us of our truths, thanks to their ability to understand and interpret our confessions. From confession centered on sex, we speak the truth of sex, so that sex may reveal our truth.
Just as a “science” of “madness” reveals its truth so that we do not lose our truth, a “science” of “sex” speaks its truth so that we may see our truth in it. The truth of the self lies in the other who knows; knowledge in the self of what it does not know is itself.
Therefore, Foucault returns to the origins upon which church confession will be built: Adam and Eve and their confession of sin, and to Cain’s murder of Abel without confessing his crime. This is a sin more heinous than murder, since failure to confess is an unforgivable insolence before God. Therefore, we have Arabized what we are on the path to through the confessions of the flesh, which cannot be expressed by the words “flesh,” “bodies,” or “body.” This is attested to by John Cassian’s statement, which speaks of living in the flesh while liberating us from the flesh: “coming out of the flesh while remaining in the flesh.”