Rothschild Haggadah (Italy)

Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence

The Rothschild Haggadah, a lavishly illuminated 15th-century Jewish manuscript originating in Italy, presents a unique intersection between private devotional practice and the performativity of identity. Through Michel Foucault’s lens in The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, the manuscript becomes not merely a liturgical object but a spiritual technology—a medium for subjectivation in the Judaic tradition.

Foucault's late philosophy emphasizes the aesthetics of existence, wherein individuals form themselves as ethical subjects through practices of self-care, modes of attention, and stylized conduct. The Rothschild Haggadah, used during Passover, structures a yearly re-enactment of the Exodus not just as a collective memory, but as a ritualized training in ethical becoming. Its narrative is not simply to be read—it is to be performed, recited, and embodied. This aligns with Foucault’s view of ancient texts as tools through which one shapes one’s ethical self through ritualized internalization.

The manuscript’s images—rich with color, hybrid Gothic-Hebrew stylistics, and symbolic actions—enact a scriptural mirror for the Jewish subject. They present models for conduct, figures of faith, and historical exemplars to be reflected upon and (temporarily) embodied. Foucault would see in the Haggadah an apparatus of ethical recollection: a training in spiritual vigilance through which the self is purified, disciplined, and reintegrated into divine order.

Moreover, the illumination of the Haggadah signals a deliberate aestheticization of the sacred: it is a physical manifestation of what Foucault calls the art of existence. The scribal artisanship, detailed iconography, and the use of ornament as mnemonic and affective device transform this book into a self-fashioning technology—a ritual object where beauty becomes a mode of spiritual training.

Thus, the Rothschild Haggadah is both a liturgical device and an aesthetic machine that inculcates ethical subjectivity. It exemplifies how religious manuscripts can operate as Foucault’s technologies of the self, orienting users toward a self cultivated through divine memory, visual pedagogy, and ethical storytelling.