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Freedom and spirituality
Karen Vintges
Spirituality is an idiosyncratic concept in the work of Foucault, which might best be characterized as an "intensity without a 'spirit"'. 1 To understand Foucault's specific concept of spirituality, we have to take into account some basic themes of his oeuvre, especially of his later work, that is, his books, interviews and lectures since 1976. In this chapter I will first analyse the way in which Foucault uses the concept of spirituality in his early work, a utilization that is inspired by surrealist writers. For this analysis I rely heavily on the work ofJeremy Carrette, who in his book Foucault and Religion (2000) devotes a chapter to this topic. In the second section of the chapter I briefly discuss Foucault's analysis, as found in his "middle" (1970-76) works, ofdominantforms of subjectivity in the modern West. This discussion lays the ground for the chapter's third section, which analyses the "exit" status of the concept of spirituality in Foucault's final works. Here I show that spir- ituality constitutes an ethical self-transformation as conscious practice of freedom. In a fourth section, I discuss Foucault's epistemological claims regarding the relation between spirituality and truth. In the next two sections I analyse his concept of "political spirituality" and argue that this concept offers us a new normative perspective for cross- cultural politics. In a concluding section I illustrate Foucault's idea of spirituality as freedom practice by going into the emerging discourse of Islamic feminism.
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Beyond the body/soul dualism
As Carrette shows, Foucault in his early (pre-1970) work only once talks about spirituality. In a debate on the "new novel" and surreal- ism, Foucault comments on certain surrealist experiments which he witnessed in which people tried to let the body speak. "(R)eference is constantly made", Foucault states,
to a certain number of experiences - experiences, if you like, that I will call, in quotation marks, "spiritual experiences" (although "spiritual" is not quite the right word) - such as dreams, madness, folly, repetition, the double, the disruption of time, the return, etc. These experiences form a constellation that is doubtless quite coherent. I was also struck by the fact this constellation was already mapped out in surrealism. (Foucault 1999b: 72)
Foucault shared with the surrealists an interest in "a new space of thought created by a radical critique of rationality and certainty", with- out, however, taking on board the wider surrealist fascination with religious ideas (Carrette 2000: 56). Through the work of semi-surrealist authors such as Artaud and Klossowski, Foucault tries to think beyond the body/soul dualism of Western, Christian and Cartesian traditions, and to conceive of what Carrette calls a "spiritual corporality", and a "reordering of spiritual concepts into the body" (ibid. : 54).
Whereas surrealism incorporated occult and gnostic influences in its fascination for transgression and its attempt to overcome "all control exercised by reason" (ibid. : 50), Foucault's interest in "spirituality" concerns modes of experience that are rooted in the body and that transgress rational or conscious thought. As we will see, Foucault will retain this element of "spiritual corporality" in his later works but will also add something else to it, since he then is no longer satisfied with the idea of resistance against the rationalist or logo-centric order as primarily a bodily expression (Thompson 2003).
Critique of normality
In his middle work, Foucault at length discusses and criticizes dominant forms of subjectivity in modern Western society. His works of the 1 970s unmask the claim of Western Enlightenment that it brought progress for humanity and society through reason. "'The Enlightenment,' which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines" (Foucault 1 979 :
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222). Originating in the nineteenth century, these disciplines - pan- optic, controlling, discursive institutions such as prisons, schools and medical and welfare institutions ? - applied power techniques, such as surveillance, training and examination, to individual bodies in order to generate rational self-control. The idea that reason makes self-control possible leads to the application of disciplinary techniques not only by institutions, but also by individuals themselves, as a means of gaining such control. In this way, an internal "core self " is established and the autonomous subject is born.
The human sciences play a major role in the disciplines, classifying and categorizing people, surveilling their behaviour, and treating them where their behaviour is deemed abnormal. Sciences like psychiatry, biology, medicine and economics and, later, psychoanalysis, psychol- ogy, sociology, ethnology, pedagogy, criminology, in all their practi- cal dimensions - such as buildings, therapy rooms, intake procedures, exams - codify what is rational and what is not, what is normal and what is not, and what is human and inhuman. Through this regime of political rationality, the subject form of the rational autonomous indi- vidual has since the Enlightenment become the norm in Western culture.
However, to Foucault, the political rationality that characterizes Western societies creates not only a prison for so-called abnormal peo- ple (criminals, sexual perverts, madmen, etc. ) but for the "normal" ones too, and his compassion clearly lies with both (White 1996). 2 Whereas in Discipline and Punish Foucault analyses at length the surveilling power techniques that are applied to the body and that generate rational self-control, in the first volume of The History ofSexuality (1990a) he discusses an inner subjectification at an even deeper level. Discourses such as psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy and medicine force people, on behalf of an inner Truth that has to be revealed, to talk about their supposedly hidden sexual feelings, thus allocating a sexual identity to each of them. To know oneself has become an endless task of turning inward at yet deeper levels. The psy-sciences in general and Freudian psychoanalysis in particular are Foucault's betes noires in his middle work. Through them the modern Western subject has become a suppos- edly authentic, deep self which is compelled time and again to confess its inner feelings. The deep self to Foucault is a prison house a fortiori.
Spiritual practices
Foucault's historicizing of the Western subject leads him to ancient Greek and Hellenist forms of subjectivity in his final works. In his
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1981-82 College de France course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject (2005a), he clearly points out that the ancient saying "you have to know yourself" (gnothi seauton) was grounded in something other than the search for one's inner truth. It was interwoven with the "care of the self " (epimeleia heautou), a tradition which we seem to have forgotten since modernity.
The label "care ofthe self" is, from 1976 onwards, used by Foucault to articulate ancient practices which aim for self-improvement in rela- tion to an ethical way of life. Ethics in antiquity was a strong structure in itself, relatively autonomous in regard to other structures. It con- sisted of vocabularies that were intended as guides for the concrete shaping of oneself as ethical subject. The striving for self-knowledge concerned one's position and one's behaviour, so as to be able to trans- form oneself "in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality" (Foucault 1997d: 225). Here we have a subject that is not the deep self of the disciplines but rather a more superficial self, which strives for the ethical coherence of its acting. Through constant practising or "ascesis", by way of "technolo- gies of the self" such as writing exercises, meditation and dialogue with oneself, one tries to create an "ethos". This personal ethics (the word ethos meaning literally "character" in Greek, referring to one's personality) is not only a matter of thought; instead, it is "a mode of being for the subject, along with a certain way of acting, a way visible to others" (1997e: 286). It is in this context that Foucault again uses the concept of spirituality.
The work of Pierre Hadot, classicist and colleague of Foucault at the College de France, is of importance here. Hadot, in his approach to classical philosophy, emphasizes the fact that philosophy in antiquity for a large part consisted in "spiritual exercises". To indicate that ancient philosophy was a way of life that engaged the whole of existence, Hadot considers the term "spiritual" the most appropriate:
It is . . . necessary to use this term, I believe, because none of the other adjectives we could use - "psychic," "moral," "ethical," "intellectual," "of thought," "of the soul" - covers all the aspects of the reality we want to describe . . . the word "thought" does not indicate clearly enough that imagination and sensibility play a very important role in these exercises. (1995: 81-2)
In his later work Foucault, clearly inspired by Hadot's approach, uses the concept of "spirituality" in a similar vein, namely to indicate the transforming of one's mode of being, not just of one's thinking:
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By spirituality I mean - but I'm not sure this definition can hold for very long ? the subject's attainment of a certain mode of being and the transformations that the subject must carry out on itself to attain this mode of being. I believe that spirituality and philosophy were identical or nearly identical in ancient spiritu- ality. (1997e: 294)
Whereas Foucault here equates spirituality and ancient philosophy as such, in his 1 9 8 2 lectures The Hermeneutics of the Subject the concept of spirituality is linked to the concept of care of the self: "going through the . . . different forms of philosophy and the different forms of exercises and philosophical or spiritual practices, we see the principle of care of the self expressed in a variety of phrases" (2005 a: 12). Carrette rightly identifies in the later Foucault an overlapping and merging of ethics and spirituality as each pertains to a "mode of self-formation" or a "mode of being" (Carrette 2000: 136, 138). Spirituality in the later Foucault parallels his definition of ethical self-transformation through ascesis which involves one's whole way of life. It is in this sense that we find a spirituality without a spirit, without an incorporeal supernatural being or immortal soul, in Foucault's work.
As with his early surrealist-inspired notion, the concept of spiritual- ity opposes the Cartesian body/soul dualism. It explicitly involves the bodily dimension, be it this time in a normative context, that is, in the form of an ethos which is a lived ethics and as such involves bodily ele- ments, acts and behaviour.
The winning of an ethos, through a care of the self, clearly is some- thing Foucault puts forward as an exit from the impoverished self- techniques of modern man, which are over-determined by surveilling and scrutinizing disciplines and governing practices. "In the Greek and Roman civilizations, such practices of the self were much more important and especially more autonomous than they were later, after they were taken over to a certain extent by religious, pedagogical, medical, or psychiatric institutions" (Foucault 1997e: 282, emphasis added). Care of the self in antiquity used to be the framework for the knowledge of oneself instead of the other way around, as it is in Western modernity where a care of the self only occurs through the concern for truth (ibid. : 295). We can conclude that the concept of spirituality in Foucault's final works points to this tradition of ethical self-transformation through ascesis, as an autonomous dimension of life. We then deal with practices of ethical self-transformation which are not dictated by moral rules or codes, but which come down to "prac- tices of freedom", since people can freely create themselves as ethical
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subjects. These ethical self-practices are "not something invented by the individual himself. They are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group" (ibid,: 291). However, through these models, tools and techniques one can acquire and freely create a personal ethos, visible in one's acts and way of life.
When asked whether the care of the self in the classical sense should be updated, Foucault answers: "absolutely", but adds that in mod- ern times this of course will lead to something new (ibid. : 294). The "growth of capabilities" of modern man should be disentangled from the dominant power regime (1997g: 317). Whereas in antiquity the care of the self was linked "to a virile society, to dissymmetry, exclusion of the other" ("all that is quite disgusting! "), "couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? " (1997e: 258, 261). Foucault's normative hori- zon is that freedom practices should be developed as much as possible by as many persons as possible.
Foucault emphasizes that acquiring an ethos in antiquity always took place in different philosophical schools and groups, in which people through spiritual practices trained themselves in acquiring an ethos (2005a: 1 13 ). Occasionally he talks about religious groups as well, for instance when he discusses the Therapeutae group in The Hermeneutics ofthe Subject (ibid. : 116). He also refers to the autonomous ethical spiritual dimension in a religious context, discussing certain strands of Christianity, for instance when he states :
during the Renaissance you s e e a whole series o f religious groups . . . that resist this pastoral power and claim the right to make their own statuses for themselves. According to these groups, the individual should take care of his own salvation independently of the ecclesiastical institution and of the ecclesiastical pastorate. We can see, therefore, a reappearance, up to a certain point, not of the culture of the self, which had never disappeared, but a reaffirmation of its autonomy. (1997f: 278, emphasis added)
Note that once again Foucault emphasizes the relatively autonomous realm of ethical spiritual self-formation. Also, more importantly, note that according to him this realm can exist in religious contexts as well (Vintges 2004). The concept of spirituality does not refer to religion as such, as Carrette (2000) implies in several places, but to practices of free ethical self-transformation, which can be found inside as well as outside religious frameworks.
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Spirituality and truth
In addition to taking the form of free ethical self-transformation through self-techniques, the issue of spirituality also appears in Foucault's later work in relation to truth. In The Hermeneutics ofthe Subject he argues that "spirituality" is:
the search, practice and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth. We will call "spirituality" then the set of these researches, practices, and experiences . . . [which are for the subject . . . ] the price to be paid for access to the truth.
(2005a: 15)
Before Descartes, knowledge was based on this type ofspirituality. The "Cartesian moment", however, marks the beginning of the modern age of the history of truth, where knowledge and knowledge alone is the condition for the subject's access to truth. Moreover, for Descartes such access is possible without the individual "having to change or alter his being as subject", that is, without the need of transforming the structure of one's subjectivity in substantial ways (ibid. : 17).
Foucault acknowledges that w e can recognize a "false science" b y its appeal to (the necessity of) such a transformation. However, he then states that in "those forms of knowledge (savoir) that are not exactly sciences, and which we should not seek to assimilate to the structure ofscience, there is again the strong and clear presence of at least cer- tain elements, certain requirements of spirituality" (ibid. : 29, emphasis added). Marxism and psychoanalysis are two forms of post-Cartesian knowledge that still demand an initiation and transformation of the subject in its very being. However, both forms of knowledge have tried to conceal this, instead of openly acknowledging the necessity of ethi- cal self-transformation, that is, spirituality as a condition of access to truth (ibid. ). Foucault seems to imply that philosophers should not try to assimilate their form of knowledge to the structure of science, but instead should have an eye for the relation of spirituality to truth.
Perhaps to avoid any suggestion of privileging a philosophical type of knowledge which is based on initiation as closure, Foucault in his next years' lectures specifies his preferred notion of "spirituality as access to truth" by analysing the concept of parrhesia. The word parrhesia means "saying everything". A "parrhesiastes" is the speaker who says everything he has in mind, even if it is something which can endanger his life - for instance if it is something different from what the king,
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or the majority of the people, believe. Foucault analyses at length how courageous truth-telling is part of the ancient tradition of spirituality as access to truth. In Fearless Speech, a collection of lectures delivered in Berkeley during the summer of 1 9 8 3 , Foucault defines the verbal activ- ity of parrhesia as follows: "In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy" (2001: 19-20).
In these lectures Foucault once more outlines the ancient Greek ideal that one's whole way of life is important: the true parrhesiastes is a per- son "of moral integrity", a person "of blameless principle and integrity", whose acts and thoughts are in accordance (ibid. : 69). In his studies on parrhesia Foucault wants to trace "the roots of what we can call the criti- cal tradition of the West". He wanted to construct a "genealogy of the critical attitude in Western philosophy" (ibid. : 170-71). His emphasis on the parrhesia aspect of ancient spirituality might well be his implicit answer to the possible objection that, at least since Descartes, knowledge has become democratic and open instead of the prerequisite of a certain privileged group, and critical instead of based on persuasion. Foucault's work on parrhesia is intended to articulate a democratic, open spiritual basisofknowledgeforpresentpurposes: aphilosophicalattitudeofcri- tique which is about one's whole way of life and in that sense "spiritual", an attitude which he identified as the core value of Western Enlighten- ment (1997g) and which he practised in his own work and life. 3
Political spirituality
Foucault's concept of spirituality as free ethical self-transformation through ascesis is political through and through in that it is an exit, a critical alternative to the "normal" Western subject formations of the rational autonomous individual and the deep self, the products of the power/knowledge regime of Western modernity. This is the reason why Foucault invokes the concept of "political spirituality" when he speaks about "the will to discover a different way of governing oneself through a different way of dividing up true and false - this is what I would call 'politicalspiritualite"' (1991b: 82, quoted in Carrette 2000: 137). Foucault is expressing the need to detach our subjectivity from Western modernity's political rationality.
He sympathized with any resistance against this true/false regime of subjectivity, a resistance he also identified in the 1978 Iranian
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Revolution, which started as a revolution against the attempt to mod- ernize Islamic countries in a European mode. In the last lines of his arti- cle "What Are the Iranians Dreaming About? " Foucault puts forward the "possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality" (2005b: 209). In another article on this subject, Foucault talks about Shi'ism as a form of Islam that differentiates between "mere external obedience to the code" and "the profound spiritual life". In revolutionary Iran at that time iden- tification with the Islamic tradition combined with "the renewal of spiritual experiences", that is, the "desire to renew their entire exist- ence" (2005c: 255). When invoking a "political spirituality", it is the dimension of freedom practices opposing truth regimes, and involving the whole of peoples' ways of life, that Foucault has in mind, and once more we find that he locates this dimension within religious contexts as well.
A cross-cultural concept offreedom
We have seen that in his final works Foucault refers to practices of free ethical spiritual self-transformation not only in secular contexts, but in religious ones as well. He refers not only to certain strands in Christianity and Islam, but also in Asian religion. Liebman Schaub dis- cusses whether there is a counterpart to Foucault's hopelessly trapped "Western man", in the form of a hidden discourse in Foucault's work, which can be designated as an "Oriental subtext" (Liebmann Schaub 1989). Foucault concealed its presence since he wanted to avoid his work being stigmatized as "religious" or "metaphysical", and since he did not want to offer any anthropological model, that is, any absolute truth concerning the human condition.
According to Liebmann Schaub, Foucault's non-Western counter- discourse is to be found in his style rather than in overt opposition to the Western, "normalized" way of life. She, however, only analyses the early Foucault, focusing on his notions of transgression and his ideas on the disappearance of the rational autonomous subject. She argues that Foucault's unsettling style is informed by Buddhism. He wants to show the essential insufficiency of language for expressing truth, in other words that wisdom is beyond words. It is through his style, which criti- cizes Western civilization as a whole, that he has been a "teacher" and a "moralist".
However, if we turn to Foucault's later work, in which Eastern - and Western - philosophies are approached from their practical, ethical side,
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we find that Foucault does offer a positive alternative to the "normal- ized" Western ways of life, through his new concept of spirituality as free ethical self-transformation through ascesis. Foucault, during his visit to Japan in 1978, showed great interest in the practice of Zen Buddhism. He took lessons and afterwards said to his teacher: "I'd like to ask you just one question. It's about the universality of Zen. Is it possible to separate the practice of Zen from the totality of the reli- gion and the practice of Buddhism? " (1999b: 1 13). He also remarks that whereas Zen and Christian mysticism cannot be compared, the technique of Christian spirituality and that of Zen are comparable. Foucault's question and remark show his interest in ethical spiritual self-techniques as a cross-cultural phenomenon. He not only explored Zen in 1978 but also Islam, as we have seen from his articles in which he described the Iranian Revolution in terms of a spirituality which opposed Truth regimes and possesses the potential to inspire new politi- cal forms. What I see in these texts is not a right or wrong judgement on the Iranian Revolution,4 but the search for a new concept of freedom which is cross-cultural in that it can take into account a diversity of moral frameworks, including religious ones.
Paraphrasing Liebman Schaub, and together with Bernauer (2004), I would conclude that an "Oriental Subtext" runs through all of Foucault's work. Bernauer asks whether an oriental influence is to be seen in Foucault's radical interrogation of Western individualism and whether his notion of self-stylization was influenced by Asia, more specifically his visits to Japan in 1970 and 1978. I suggest that this influence has been the background to his reconceptualizing of freedom in other terms than the ones of individual rational autonomy, in terms namely of spirituality as ethical self-transformation through exercises, which involve the creation and invention of one's whole way of life. His oriental interest, in my view, has inspired this normative horizon of freedom practices for all, as a cross-cultural alternative to the dominant concept of freedom of Western liberalism.
The emerging discourse of Islamic feminism
The emerging discourse of "Islamic feminism" illustrates the topical- ity of Foucault's new concepts. Since the 1990s, new perspectives and practices are developing that demonstrate that Islam and "gender jus- tice" are not inherently incompatible. These perspectives and prac- tices also criticize both Western feminism and liberalism for imposing Western concepts of freedom and autonomy on believing Muslim
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women, as well as Islamic fundamentalists for claiming that women in the Islamic world are already able to live their lives to the fullest. 5 Believing Muslim women in, for example, Egypt, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran and Morocco do contest structures of male domination in the Islamic world by arguing for gender equality and gender justice in new interpretations of the moral source of Islam, the Qur'an. Scholars such as Leila Ahmed, Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas refer to the dynamic and diverse history of Islam for their reinterpretations of the Qur'an and Islamic historical traditions. They highlight the egalitarian Spirit of Islam's ethical spiritual message, and the active role of women in the history of Islam. Other studies show the active role of women in Islamic societies today, demonstrating that Islamic women are in no way the passive, oppressed creatures that many Western feminists hold them to be. In Muslim-majority countries there are women's organizations that have a feminist agenda (such as Malaysia's "Sisters in Islam").
This new emerging discourse of Islamic feminism can be analysed as a political spirituality, that is, as a practice of free ethical self- transformation which opposes the Truth regime of Western liberalism as well as the fundamentalist type of Islam. These women are freely but ethically transforming themselves through all kinds of self-techniques, on the collective and individual level, such as veiling in new contexts, educating themselves in interpreting the Qur'an, practising mixed gen- der prayer, and inventing themselves as modern, believing, Muslim women. The emerging discourse of Islamic feminism shows that West- ern feminists who contend that feminism should be based on secular liberalism's fundamentals should enlarge, if not revise, their concept of freedom, so as to escape the limits that are imposed on all women. 6
When asked about the state of the art of Western philosophy, Foucault said:
European thought finds itself at a turning point . . . (which) is nothing other than the end of imperialism. The crisis of Western thought is identical to the end of imperialism . . .
There is no phi- losopher who marks out this period. For it is the end of the era of Western philosophy. Thus, if philosophy of the future exists, it must be born outside of Europe, or equally born in consequence of meetings and impacts between Europe and non-Europe.
(1999c: 1 13)
Foucault, through his new concept of spirituality without a spirit, in the sense of free ethical self-transformation through self-techniques, has offered us new concepts of freedom and equality which criticize
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Western modernity7 as well as other Truth regimes, and which offer a cross-cultural normative perspective. In my view Foucault was ahead of his time in that he felt that we have to change our concepts to make sense of the culturally pluralist world we live in.
Notes
1. I borrow this phrase fromJeremy Carrette (2000: 60; see also 162-3, n. 72).
2. Many argue that Foucault's work Discipline and Punish lacks any normative perspective. Explicit phrases, however, clearly show Foucault's rejection of the disciplines as domination, for instance where he speaks of the development of the disciplines as the "dark side" of the establishment of the egalitarian juridical framework (Foucault 1979: 222) and of the "malicious minutiae of the disci-
plines and their investigations" (ibid. : 226).
3. Discussing Kant's text "What is Enlightenment? " Foucault points out how
Kant's answer "sapere aude" ("dare to know") refers not only to "institutional, ethical and political" conditions, but to a "spiritual" condition as well. Kant's answer involves as well an appeal to an "act of courage to be accomplished personally ", by man, "by a change that he himself will bring about in himself " . Western Enlightenment is a spiritual attitude to Foucault. He argues that it is "not faithfulness to doctrinal elements but, rather, the permanent reactivation of an attitude" that may connect us with the Enlightenment (1997g: 306, 3 12).
4. My view here is contrary to Mary and Anderson (2005), who fiercely attack Foucault. For a critique of their view see Honig (2008). We have to take into account that in 1978 many people considered the Iranian Revolution to be primarily an anti-colonialist revolution. The enthusiasm of this anti-imperialist uprising is what Foucault tries to describe in a few journalistic articles, wherein he discusses how people were "spiritually" involved, in that their whole way of life was at stake, and speaks in terms of a "political spirituality", opposing Truth regimes and producing something new. Foucault responded to the vio- lence that marked the post-revolutionary power struggle in Iran by distancing himself from its outcome in the form of simply another regime of Truth. In journalistic articles published in April and May 1979 he supported the rights of the individual against the "bloody government of a fundamentalist clergy" (Foucault 2005d: 265).
5. For an overview see Dubel and Vintges (2007).
6. Okin1999hasbeenveryinfluentialinthedebateonfeminismandmulticultur-
alism. As the title indicates, Okin argues that multiculturalism is bad for women, and that only Western liberalism has a place for women's rights. Instead I would argue that Western liberalism in its own way puts limits on women, in that they have to adapt themselves to the ways of life, and subject form, of the Western autonomous rational individual.
7. "The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state, and from the state's institutions, but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries" (Foucault 1982a: 216).
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Eduardo Mendieta
Freedom has a history
Freedom is one of the most intractable philosophical problems in the Western philosophical tradition. Indeed, there is a way in which the history of Western philosophy can be written in terms of the different attempts that have been made to define freedom. The history of eth- ics, without question, has been determined by how freedom has been defined. In the West, since the ancient Greeks, what we take to be human, or rather, the humanity of humans, has been defined in terms of freedom. Humans are free animals, the argument goes, whereas other animals are unfree because they are determined by instinct. Yet what is this freedom that marks the boundary between human and non-human animals? How does it relate to reason? How does it relate to our passions and emotions? How does it relate to our imagination? Are we free if we submit to a putatively rational norm ? Is this not a form of subjugation that constrains freedom? Are we free if we choose our will contrary to what is alleged to be a commandment of God? Are we free if we have been condemned to damnation by an original sin that had nothing to do with us ? Are we free if we abandon ourselves to our pleasure and seek to live on the razor's edge of pleasurable danger? And, perhaps most importantly, has freedom been construed or defined in the same way across different historical periods? That is to say, was the freedom of the Egyptian peasant the same as that of the Greek and Roman citizens, the same as that of a slave in an American plantation, the same as that of a citizen in the European Union? If ethics has a his- tory, freedom must have a history, too (Patterson 1991). The history
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of freedom then turns out to be a history of ethics, as well as a history of the different ways in which we have conceived what it means to be a subject, an agent, and a free person.
In this chapter I am going to offer a way of reading and understand- ing Michel Foucault's work as an extremely original analysis of free- dom. My reading of Foucault's work will illustrate that his work has been profoundly misunderstood when he has been read exclusively as a thinker of domination, subjugation, subjection, discipline, normaliza- tion and power. I will show that Foucault's work can be understood as an exploration of freedom, as so many attempts to understand the ways in which freedom is not a given, an a priori, primordial and foundational right of a subject, but is instead an achievement, a practice, a vocation, an ascesis, a way of being. We are not born free. We make ourselves free through practices of caring for ourselves, of governing, relating ourselves to ourselves through others, for either love or hate of others is a way of relating to ourselves. Freedom is thus not a state of being, but a way of being in relation to ourselves, to others and to our world. Freedom is a praxis. Additionally, I will seek to show that freedom is not unitary and ontologically stable, but rather that it is relational and generative. Freedom is not a given aspect of human nature, nor is there a human nature. We produce our humanity by generating modalities of freedom, ways of relating to ourselves, to truth, and to our historical period, or present. If there is freedom, it is always creative freedom. Thus, I hope to show that Foucault has been one of the most important contemporary philosophers of freedom.
In this chapter I will follow Foucault's own way of characterizing his work as gravitating or revolving around three major axes, each mark- ing a particular period or stage of his work. Thus, there are the axes of knowledge, power and ethics. These axes have been the focus of particular approaches or methods of investigation: archaeology, geneal- ogy and hermeneutics. Yet Foucault himself resisted and contested the attempt to see a succession of methods or problems within his work. In his view, his work is held together by one central motif, the subject, or more precisely "practices of the self" (1997c, 2005a, 1997a). In contrast to reading his work as an analysis of power, we should under- stand it as a genealogy of the subject. A genealogical analysis seeks to understand how something could become an object of preoccupation, concern, debate and admonition. Instead of assuming the givenness of an object of analysis, genealogy aims to show how a series of practices, institutions and structures constituted the object of study. Additionally, for Foucault, a genealogical study is in turn a history of our present; it is an investigation of our own contemporaneity or contemporary
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times. We are the ones asking how this particular object of analysis was constituted and how that constitution informs our own ways of being and relating. To understand Foucault's work in this way, however, also means that we have to recognize how central the question of freedom is to this project. Genealogy is a technique of analysis that renders what we took to be natural, ontologically stable, historically immutable into something that is historically contingent, produced, mutable and thus open to transformation, revision, abandonment and challenge. Geneal- ogy, it could be said, is a science of freedom, of creative freedom that opens up horizons of being by challenging us to exceed, to transgress, to step over the limit established by existing modes of subjectivity and subjectivation.
Foucault's genealogies of the modern subject aim to draw out the ways in which freedom is a practice and not a given, an a priori, something antecedent to the subject. I will show in the following that Foucault developed this generative understanding of freedom through original readings of key figures in the Western philosophical canon. I will focus on three key figures that Foucault studied closely in his published works, and in his lectures at the College de France during the last decade of his life, namely Socrates, Augustine and Kant. I will show that through his readings of each one of these figures Foucault challenges us to see each of them in a new light, in the light of the his- tory of freedom and the subject.
Socrates or democratic freedom
Socrates is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the West- ern philosophical canon. He is also the exemplar of what Foucault called "philosophy as a way of life" (2005a). He died after having been sentenced to death by his fellow Athenians. Socrates had been charged with "corrupting the youth" and for "impiety". Socrates chose to die rather than escape and thus betray his Athens. Socrates died for his convictions: he did not want to betray Athens or his philosophical calling. For this reason, Socrates is also a martyr of philosophy as a way of life (see Hadot 1995).
In many of Plato's dialogues, in particular those dealing with vir- tue, we encounter a Socrates who argues that knowledge, courage and justice are virtues (Gorgias, Laches, Protagoras, Sophists). These Pla- tonic dialogues have left us with a philosophical problem, however. Are knowledge, courage and justice one or separate virtues? If knowledge and courage are virtues, should this not entail that we should also be
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just, that is to say, moral? If courage and justice are forms of knowledge does this not entail that we should act correctly ? In the history of West- ern philosophy in general, and within the history of the appropriation of Plato's work in particular, Socrates' moral theory has been treated as both a form of moral intellectualism and as moral eudaimonia (Vlastos 1991). Moral intellectualism is a form of moral cognitivism, which argues that morality is a form of knowledge, that we can discover what is the right thing to do if we set out to question our reasons for doing the just and moral. Moral eudaimonia, on the other hand, argues that morality is the pursuit of the happy, content, fulfilled life. It should be noted that for the Greeks, eudaimonia, or happiness, was not related to pleasure or narcissism, but was rather about attaining a beautiful and admirable life. Thus, the pursuit of the happy, admirable, life is the pursuit of virtues that are linked to knowledge.
For Socrates, morality is a form of knowledge. If we know what is the right thing to do, can we fail to do it, and if so, why? This has been called the problem of the weakness of the will, or Al<. rasia. Soc- rates, in Plato's Protagoras, already diagnosed this problem when he postulated: "no one willingly chooses the bad" (35 8d). Evidently, if one knows what is the good and the bad, one will choose what leads to happiness, which is coeval with knowledge. Yet this is contrary to our mundane experience. Even extremely moral Greeks failed to choose what was the good, over what was the bad, notwithstanding their mental lucidity. We do not always choose what is rationally the best, and we sometimes chose what is patently the immoral. In the philosophical canon, thus, we have these two different, even incom- patible images of Socrates. On the one hand, we have a Socrates com- mitted to the moral life as a form of knowledge, and on the other, a Socrates that submits to the injustice and evident "ignorance" of his fellow Athenians. Socrates himself chose injustice over justice, despite his own knowledge of this injustice.
Foucault dealt with Socrates in several of his last works, in particular in Volume II of The History of Sexuality (1990b), his 198 1-82 lec- ture course at the College de France, The Hermeneutics of the Subject (2005a), and his course at Berkeley in the autumn of 1983 (2001). Foucault develops a very original reading of Socrates by reading Xeno- phon, Plato and Plutarch jointly as sources on Socrates' character and way of life. What emerges in these readings, spread out over these different texts produced over six or seven years, is a Socrates who is a champion of a technology of living (tekhne tou biou) that is co- extensive with the care of the self (epimeleia heautou) (Foucault 2005 a: 8 6) . By reading specifically the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades, Foucault
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demonstrates that Socrates is articulating the art of living as an art of taking care of oneself. This taking care of oneself is a relationship to oneself that has political implications. One cannot govern, or rule over others, if one has not taken care of oneself. What Socrates articulates in theAlcibiades, thus, is a circle: "from the self as an object of care to knowledge of government as the government of others" (2005a: 39). Socrates, furthermore, will show how this caring of the self constitutes the philosophical life. Philosophy thus is an ethos, or way of life, that challenges us to live rightly by taking care of ourselves; not so that we can behold ourselves in a narcissistic way, but precisely so that we can properly govern others. Here it becomes discernable how the self is not already given. It is not an irreducible substance, some hidden gem, to be discovered or excavated. The self is to be fashioned through vigilance, courage and perseverance so that one may be worthy of governing others.
There is a link, according to Foucault, between caring for the self and speaking the truth. While truth-telling can be dangerous to both oneself and others, from a Foucauldian perspective whoever speaks the truth does so because they are caring for themselves and, in doing so, caring for others. Socrates' experiences illustrate this point, and Foucault returns to the figure of Socrates in later texts and lectures, specifically from the perspective of parrhesia, which is translated by him as frank, truthful, unconstrained speech: in a word, fearless speech (2001 : 1 1-13). In his 1983-84 lectures at the College de France, titled The Courage of Truth, Foucault now treats Socrates as a person who speaks frankly, freely and fearlessly: a parrhesiastes (Flynn 1997: 268). Socrates is the speaker of truth. The central text in this reading is the
Apology, the dialogue in which Plato reconstructs Socrates' trial. In the Apology we encounter the famous lines, "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Apology 38a). Yet Foucault focuses on the way in which Socrates challenges the Athenian polity by turning his defence, his apologia, into an indictment of the way in which Athenians have failed to take care of themselves. Socrates has spoken the truth, he has engaged others in dialogue in the agora, the public square. He has done so because not to have spoken the truth would have been a failure to himself and others.
In Foucault's analysis, then, the Platonic dialogues Apology, Alcibi- ades Major and Gorgias address how the art of living calls for a coor- dination between caring for the self and speaking truthfully so as to be able to live beautifully, or ethically, in a democracy. Socrates is some- one who both exemplifies and challenges us to give a rational account of ourselves (Foucault 2001: 97). This giving a rational account of
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oneself by having the courage to speak the truth is what Foucault calls Socratic and democratic parrhesia (ibid. ). Frank and fearless speech may be dangerous to democracy, but it is also indispensable for its health. Without speaking frankly and fearlessly, we cannot properly take care of ourselves, and thus are not able to engage properly in the art of living rightly. What Foucault said about Epictetus could also be said about Socrates. Indeed, Epictetus is the culmination of a process that Socrates had inaugurated. "The care of the self, for Epitectus, is a privilege-duty, a gift-obligation that ensures our freedom while forcing us to take care of ourselves as the object of our diligence" (Foucault 1986: 47). To take ourselves as an object of care requires that we become parrhesiasts, speakers of truth, and in this way we could govern ourselves and others.
Freedom is produced through these techniques of the self, parrhesia and epimeleia heautou, fearless speech and the care of the self. Free- dom here is agonistic and creative, it results from not submitting to an external power but generating a power that is exercised over oneself so that one can be worthy of exercising it over others. This agonistic freedom, a freedom that results from a contest with oneself and with others, is thus also a democratic freedom, inextricably produced within and for a democratic life. We are never free alone, but only in the company of those before whom we give an account of ourselves by speaking fearlessly.
Augustine or ethopoetic freedom
Augustine may be said to be the first Christian philosopher, and surely the first major Christian theologian within the West. Along with Boethius, Augustine is a key figure in the articulation of Greek and Roman thinking into a distinct form of Christian philosophy. His Con- {essions remains one of the most influential works of this unique form of spiritual exercise (Augustine 1991). Augustine is also credited with having formulated a very original answer to the question of why there is evil in the world, even if God is both almighty and all-beneficent.
In several works, such as The City o{God, On Free Choice ofthe Will and Concerning the Nature o{ Good, Against the Manicheans, Augustine formulated his theodicy. Theodicy, which literarily means God's Justice (thea, God, and dyke, justice), is an answer to the question of the exist- ence of evil. Augustine argued that evil is not a substance, but a priva- tion, an absence, or diminution of the good. Against the Manicheans, he argued that evil could not be a separate substance, entity or being.
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This would be a heresy, as it would challenge the Christian monotheistic doctrine of God's omnipotence. Evil, thus, is not a thing, but a non- being. It is not itself a principle, but a turning, a negation, a privation of some prior or primordial good. In his famous On Free Choice ofthe Will, Augustine argues that evil is a product of the human will turning away from God's goodness (Augustine 1 993). The will turns away from goodness towards evil, not because it is itself evil, but because it lets itself be turned by what Augustine calls libido, or inordinate desire. This inordinate desire has always been called or translated as concupis- cence. How do we allow ourselves to be led astray by concupiscence? In Augustine's view, we bring evil into the world because we aspire to terrestrial or temporal things instead of aiming for that which is eter- nal and truly good. We bring evil into the world because we fail to be vigilant over our carnal desires and inclinations. We allow that which is superior and more perfect, our will and mind, to be subjugated to that which is inferior and finite: the flesh.
For Foucault, Augustine occupies a pivotal role in the transformation of the technologies of the self from late antiquity to the medieval and early modern periods. At one point Foucault planned to publish five additional volumes of The History ofSexuality with the introduction that was published in 1976. Volume II was to be called Flesh and the Body and it was supposed to deal with the problematization of the flesh in early Christian thinking. The others would have been called: The Children's Crusade; Woman, Mother, Hysteric; Perverts; and finally, Population and Race (Davidson 1994: 1 17). Foucault published only two more volumes: The Use ofPleasure (1990b) and The Care ofThe Self (1986). This is worth noting because we can speculate that the projected Volume II would have dealt extensively with Augustine. For Foucault, Augustine marks the transition in late antiquity from a pre- occupation with desire that is distributed among different techniques: from diet, to physical exercise, to with whom and when to have sex to a "doctrinal unification" that made it possible to put together under one theoretical overview questions of death and immortality, with ques- tions of desire, sex, marriage and the "conditions of access to truth" (1990b: 253-4). Sex, concupiscence, desire became a privilege point of access to the subject, or rather, the subject is now formed around the specific relations that are to be had with one's desire, body and flesh. With Augustine, what had been dietary and medical concerns become the litmus test of the sinfulness and salvation of the subject. Indeed, the flesh that seems to have its own will is now deciphered as emblem of humanity's sinfulness. As Foucault put it: "Sex in erection is the image of man revolted against God. The arrogance of sex is the punishment
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and consequence of the arrogance of man" (1997c: 18 1-2). This flesh revolted against God became in Augustine the problem of the relation- ship between one's desire and one's will. This problem will command a "permanent hermeneutics of the self" (ibid. : 182).
There is another treatment of Augustine in Foucault's writing that is perhaps more interesting and provocative, and that is to be found in some lectures from 1982 titled "Technologies of the Self". In these lectures Foucault approaches Augustine from the standpoint of the use of writing techniques and exercises to take care of the self. The care of the self was not just a dietary, medical and philosophical concern; it was also the object of writing. One wrote in order to take care of one's self.
The self is something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity. That is not a modern trait born of the Refor- mation or of Romanticism; it is one of the most ancient Western traditions. It was well established and deeply rooted when Augus- tine started his Confessions.