Kant's "What is
Enlightenment?
Foucault-Key-Concepts
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
112
? THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM
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
? 113
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CON CEPTS
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
1 14
THE PRACTI C E OF FREEDO M
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
? ? ? 115
? MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
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.
116
THE PRACTICE O F FREEDOM
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
? 117
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
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. (Ibid. : 232)
Indeed, the Confessions could be said to encapsulate and epitomize this ancient practice of diary writing. In his lecture course from 1 9 8 1 to 1982, The Hermeneutics ofthe Subject, Foucault discusses Augustine in relation to Plutarch's exemplification of writing about the self as a technology of the self. Writing was a tool to say and discover something about yourself in such a way that you could become different. These forms of personal and private writing bring us close to a form of knowl- edge that transforms us. The ancient Greeks had several words for this type of transformational knowledge: Ethopoios or Ethopoiein (etho- poetic). With the former word the Greeks referred to something that has the quality of transforming a person's being. With the latter, they referred to that which produces, changes and transforms an ethos, a way of life, a code of conduct (Foucault 2005a: 237). With these words, and cognates, the Greeks marked a type of knowledge that is decisive and transformative of the self. There is knowledge that is superfluous and insignificant, but there is knowledge that can transform a person irreversibly. The knowledge produced by this hermeneutics of the self must lead to the sacrifice of the self, so that a new self may be born (see also Foucault 1997a: 227-31).
The different techniques o f writing that were available t o the Greeks, and which Augustine brought to a new level, were ethopoetic technolo- gies of the self. They aimed at transforming the subject by providing a material vehicle for a vigilant and relentless analysis of the self, not simply to restrict and domesticate it, but to transform it. This writing
118
? T H E PRACTICE O F FREEDO M
was a technology of the self that called forth a transformative herme- neutics of the self. Personal writing was the medium for an ethopoetic knowledge. In these techniques of writing about the self, about oneself, Foucault discerned a mechanism for the production of new ways of being. Through them a freedom to be a different self is practised. Etho- poetic knowledge is coupled with an ethopoetic freedom, a freedom that transforms us and grants us the power to proclaim truths about ourselves that may lead others to transform themselves. We wrote, and continue to write, in order to become different, and by becoming dif- ferent we practise a transformative freedom.
Kant,or critique as freedom
Modern moral philosophy begins with Immanuel Kant. He provided a philosophical analysis of how morality can be based on reason alone, and can thus dispense with religion, convention and even physical nature. Kant showed that to be moral is the mark of the rational being, and how the rational determination of the will is all that is required for a philosophical justification of morality. For him, rational beings alone can be free, so long as they submit their will to rational adjudication. Kant's most famous book of ethical theory, Groundwork for the Meta- physics ofMorals, enigmatically pronounces: "Nothing in the world - indeed nothing even beyond the world - can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will" (Ale 3 9 3 ) . 1t is much later that we learn why Kant believed this to be the case. A good will is "absolutely good which cannot be bad, and thus it is a will whose maxim when made into a universal law, can never conflict with itself" (Ale 437). A good will cannot be bad because it is a will determined in accordance with universality. A good will, therefore, is not determined by anything external to it, whether it be obedience to God, deference to tradition, or submission to our desires or inclinations. What motivates individuals to determine their will in accordance with universal law is not something that Kant addresses in this book. Nor does he think it is appropriate to do so at the level of the grounding or justification of morality. How and why people may act in accordance with the moral law is part of the doctrine of virtue, which is the sec- ond part of Kant's moral philosophy. One would have expected that if Foucault were to have approached Kant's moral philosophy, he would have chosen to focus on Kant's doctrine of virtue, or how it is that we direct our will and mind to choose that which is the moral. Yet he did not. He focused instead on Kant's philosophy of history.
? ? ? 119
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
It could be said that Kant was one of the philosophers with whom Foucault dealt most throughout his career. As a young scholar, he trans- lated Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint, and wrote an accompanying commentary (2008a). He also dealt with Kant in his The Order ofThings (1973), and devoted many key essays throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s to him (Foucault 1997a). He dealtwith Kant extensively in his last lecture course at the College de France (Foucault 2009). In it Foucault engages Kant specifically concerning his answer to the question Was ist Aufklarung? (What is Enlightenment? ). Kant's famous text, ''An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? ", published in a newspaper, begins with the memorable lines:
Enlightenment is the human being's emancipation from its self- incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one's intellect without the direction of another. This immaturity is self? incurred when its cause does not lie in a lack of intellect, but rather in a lack of resolve and courage to make use of one's intellect without the direction of another. "Sapere aude! Have the courage to make use of your own intellect! " is hence the motto of enlightenment. (Kant 2006: 17)
Answering more directly the question what is Enlightenment? Kant writes, "If it is asked, then, whether we live an enlightened age, then t h e a n s w e r i s : n o , b u t w e d o l i v e i n a n a g e o f e n l ig h t e n m e n t " ( i b i d . : 2 2 ) . As Foucault underscored, enlightenment here is a process in which the entire human race is involved; it is also something that is ongoing, and it is something that involves a change in our relationship to our reason (1997a: 105-10).
Kant's "What is Enlightenment? " is part of a long tradition in which thinkers are trying to decipher the signs of the times as heralds or ciphers for either a past that is fulfilling itself, or something that is about to unleash a future that is expected. Yet, for Foucault, Kant's text steps outside this tradition when he does not seek to place his age within either a divine plan or the logic of a rational plan of history. Kant does not subordinate the age of enlightenment to another period; nor to something that is dawning or inchoate.
Kant defines Aufklarung in an almost negative way, as an Ausgang, an "exit," a "way out. " In his other texts on history, Kant occa- sionally raises questions of origins or defines the internal teleology of a historical process. In the text on Aufklarung, he deals with the question of contemporary reality alone. He is not seeking to
120
? THE PRACTICE O F FREEDO M
understand the present on the basis of a totality or of a future achievement. He is looking for a difference. What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?
(Foucault 1997a: 104-5)
In other words, according to Foucault, Kant's answer to the question of enlightenment is an attempt to formulate the radical character of the present with respect to the task that it presents to us as contemporaries, as children of our own time. Foucault translates Kant's question into a question about how we can differentiate what is new with respect to what has come before. In this way, then, enlightenment turns into critique. We do not live in an enlightened age, avers Kant, but we do live in an age of enlightenment: "If it is asked, then, whether we live in an enlightened age, then the answer is: no, but we do live in an age of enlightenment" (Kant 2006: 22). We are exiting, departing, aban- doning a self-imposed tutelage, to use the other word used to translate Unmiindigkeit (immaturity), by means of the critical use of our reason, by daring to criticize, to know. Enlightenment is that contemporary moment when humanity makes use of reason without the tutelage, the guidance, the submission or derogation, of anyone. Enlightenment is the critical use of reason. Critique is indispensable to enlightenment for it is through critique that we can discern what is a legitimate or illegitimate use of reason. Critique guides reason, leading it to enlight- enment. As Foucault put it: "The critique is, in a sense, the handbook of reason that has grown up in Enlightenment; and, conversely, the Enlightenment is the age of critique" (1997a: 1 1 1).
The challenge from Kant to Foucault is whether we can discern a philosophical ethos that would relate to our own time in a parallel way to how Kant's critique related to his own age of enlightenment. Foucault's own text "What is Enlightenment? " is a response to that call. In it, Foucault provides both negative and positive characteriza- tion of what he calls a philosophical ethos that may be proper to our age. The positive sketching of this philosophical ethos is what con- cerns us here, for it is in this sketch that Foucault refers to the devel- opment of a "historical ontology of ourselves". Foucault explains that this philosophical ethos may be characterized as a "limit-attitude" (1997a: 124). If for Kant criticism was about analysing limits, for Foucault criticism, critique, has to be turned into a positive question. In other words, criticism should not be about demarcating limits but, rather, about transgressing them (see Simons 1995). Criticism, in Foucault's philosophical ethos, turns into a meditation on transgres- sion. "The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the
? 121
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
form of necessary limitations into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression" (1997a: 125). Criticism entails that instead of searching for invariant and transcendental structures that may apply to and hold the same value and significance for all human- ity, we set out in a historical investigation into the processes and events that have led to the constitution of our way of being. Critique as a meditation on possible transgression becomes a critical analysis of the historical ontology of our ways of being. Here historical ontology entails precisely the questioning of who we are and how this "we" has emerged. A critical ontology of ourselves reveals the constructed- ness of our being, its contingency, its revocability and thus its trans- formatibility. Because we have become, we can also become different. A critical ontology of ourselves, as a genealogy of our modern selves, allows us to extract from the very contingency that has made us signs or ciphers of the possibility of becoming other than what we presently are. Critical ontology of the present unleashes what Foucault calls felicitously the "undefined work of freedom" (ibid. : 126).
In short, the Kantian project of a critique of contemporaneity, of our own time, calls for critique as the handbook of enlightenment. In our time, Foucault argues, critique must go beyond the merely nega- tive aspect that Kant had given it. Critique must become positive by becoming a critical ontology of our present. In this way it can sketch the contours of a different time, a time in which we have become dif- ferent in unexpected ways. The philosophical ethos of enlightened critique that Kant championed in his text from the late eighteenth century is transformed by Foucault in the late twentieth century into the philosophical ethos of critical historical transgression. The new philosophical ethos that corresponds to the critical ontology of ourselves is "a historical-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings" (ibid. : 127). We may meet Kant's call to dare to use our reason, to live in an age if not enlightened at least of enlighten- ment, by working on our limits, those limits distinctly drawn out by a critical ontology. It is this critical labour of transgressing our historical contingency that gives form to "our impatience for liberty" (Bernauer & Mahon 1994: 155-6). We give shape to our freedom by engaging in a transgressive critique of our time. We practise our freedom by critiquing the historical shape our humanity has taken. Here, how- ever, freedom is produced, given shape by engaging our time, our day, our own historical period in its brilliant contingency. Freedom is pro- duced in a critical engagement with history, and in this way it cannot but be historical, and thus have a history. Still, Foucault shows that
122
? THE PRACTICE O F FREEDOM
freedom is practised and given shape through this use of reason to unmake the solidity and putative inevitability of history.
The truth offreedom and the freedom oftruth
The guiding thread in the present chapter has been that if we follow the different axes along which Foucault structured his investigation, we are able to discern distinct and original discussions of freedom. In one of the first lectures at what was to be his last lecture course at the College de France, Foucault characterized his work in a slightly new way. He said: "Basically, I've always tried to articulate among modes of veridiction, techniques of governmentality and practices of the self " ; Foucault then noted that by moving towards an analysis of veridiction, or the practices of producing truth, techniques of governmentality, or technologies of government of oneself and others, and the practices of the self, or how one makes oneself into a subject, he in fact has pursued a:
triple theoretical displacement of the theme of knowledge (con- naissance) toward that of veridiction, o f the themes of domination toward that of governmentality, and of the theme of the individual toward that of practices of the self that it seems to me one can study the relations between truth, power and subject without reducing them one to another.
(Foucault quoted in Flynn 1997: 262)
Evidently, there is a thread that links these three axes: freedom. But when freedom is related to each one of these axes, we see a different aspect of it emerge.
Perhaps we can use Flynn's word, prismatic (Flynn 1997), and talk about prismatic freedom: freedom that is refracted differently as it passes through the fields of veridiction, governmentality and techniques of the self. I have shown in this chapter that while freedom may be pri- mordially creative freedom, when it relates to the games of truth, what Foucault calls veridiction, freedom becomes ethopoetic; when freedom relates to governmentality, it is transgressive; when freedom refers to the techniques of the self, it is agonistic. Freedom is never one, it is never stable, it is never an a priori, nor is it ever a transcendental. It is always contingent, it is always to be practised, it is always discursive and relational, it is intransigent and recalcitrant. It is always to be achieved, sustained, preserved and wrested from the games of power in which it always circulates like blood in a living organism. Wherever we look in
? ? 123
? MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
human history, we see the evident truth of freedom, but wherever it has been practised, it has produced its own truth, the truth that:
If societies persist and survive, it is because behind all the consent and the coercion, beyond the threats, the violence, and the per- suasion, there is the possibility of this moment where life cannot be exchanged, where power becomes powerless, and where, in front of the gallows and the machine guns, men rise up.
(Afary & Anderson 2005 : 263-4)
124
? PART Ill
S u bjectivity
? ? ? ? N I NE
Fo cault's t an racti s bj
Edward McGushin
Everyone, at some point, has heard that seemingly ubiquitous advice: just be yourself. 1 Keep it real, be true to yourself, be your own per- son, find yourself, express yourself, be confident in yourself, have self-esteem, follow your own path, and so on. On the one hand, this guidance seems completely natural: are we not all trying our best to be ourselves? Yet, on the other hand, the directive, be yourself, some? - times sounds strangely hollow: after all, who else could I possibly be but myself? Of course, everyone is familiar with the many ways in which we fail to be ourselves. We all know the pressures and impulses to conform, to mask, to deny ourselves. We say what we think others want us to say; we act the way others want us to act. We lie to ourselves, betray our- selves, forget ourselves, let ourselves down, and neglect ourselves. On top of all this we live at a time of rapidly advancing technologies for the chemical manipulation of moods and the genetic engineering of physi- cal and mental traits. Faced with the capacity to transform one's mood, memory, longevity, or sexuality through chemical or genetic manipula- tion, what could it possibly mean to "just be yourself " ?
And yet in the face o f all these obstacles w e still seek out and prize the true, authentic self and the true, authentic life. This struggle to be true to oneself is one of the most defining characteristics of modern life. Movies and music, literature and reality television all portray it. It is the central motif of commercial advertisements and brand marketing, psychology, ethics and politics. If we stop to think about all this we are faced with a strange, unsettling realization. All this focus on the true self reflects a desire for a higher, truer life; a yearning for something more that could be called an "ethic of the self " or an "ethic of authenticity"
? ? 127
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
(Taylor 1992). Yet at the same time, the fact that we seem to need all of this constant encouragement to be our true selves also implies that our predominant way of being is false, that for the most part we fall short of truly being ourselves, that we are not our selves. As Jean-Paul Sartre (1989) put it, a human being is not a cauliflower. A cauliflower never has to confront the problem of what it means to be a cauliflower; it never has to make a choice about how it will live its life; it will never be challenged about its choice. A cauliflower is just what it is, fully defined and determined by its essence as a cauliflower. A human being, on the other hand, at a profound level is strange and unfamiliar to him or herself, at once far from and yet bound to the self.
Resolutely facing this paradoxical task of being ourselves is what Michel Foucault calls the "care for the self" (souci de soi). 2 He defines our "subjectivity" as what we make of ourselves when we do devote our- selves to taking care of ourselves. We can begin to understand precisely what Foucault means by the care for the self and subjectivity by exam- ining more carefully what the quest to be true to oneself entails. Each of those very common pieces of advice - be true to yourself, express yourself, or discover yourself ? refers to ways of forming a relationship of the self to itself. For example, when I express myself, I am both the self who is doing the expressing and the self who is being expressed. My self as expressive agent is related to my self as object expressed through the very activity of self-expression (whatever that activity might concretely entail). When we speak of self-discovery or self-expression, we have a tendency to get caught up in the content delivered in each of these activi- ties and hence neglect their relational character. In the activity of seeking and discovering my self, my attention is entirely directed towards the self as that object being sought, as that substance or essence that I discover and come to know. In self-discovery and self-expression our interest is in the self that is being expressed. If we attend to the expressive act or gesture it is usually in order to make sure that it is properly suited to the content being expressed. In other words, we tend to see the act of discovery or expression as a mere vehicle for the manifestation and com- munication of the self being expressed. On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that discovering and expressing are what we might call relational activities. In other words, they are activities that form, maintain, or intensify relationships. What makes self-relational activities distinctive and strange is that the terms being related are essentially iden- tical. Self-discovery and self-expression form a relationship of the self to itself. But this implies that the self is in some sense other than itself.
How does this work? The self-relational activity forms a relation- ship by establishing a difference within an identity. For example, in the
128
? FOU CAULT'S THEORY AND PRACTICE O F S UB J E CTIVITY
activity of finding oneself, the self divides itself into (a) a subject actively seeking and (b) an object passively being sought. Of course, the activity of relating these two terms is nothing other than the self actively seek- ing, discovering and expressing itself. But for the self to become both active agent and passive object, it must actively divide itself through some activity of self-relating. In other words, it is the activity of seek- ing and discovering that makes or constitutes the self as both an active seeker and sought after object.
Care of the self is what we do when we set out to do the hard work of forging a relationship to ourselves. The resulting subjectivity is the concrete form of activity that defines the relationship of the self to itself. Subjectivity in this sense is the real basis of the self as both agent and object. In other words, Foucault argues that the self or subject is not a self-standing being, some sort of essence or substance, that exists within us whether we look for it or not (1996b). It is brought into exist- ence as the upshot of some form of relational activity. What is more, subjectivity, as a dynamic, active relationship, can take on a number of different forms (1996a: 440). For example, someone may believe, as did the Cynics and Nietzsche, that they can only discover who they truly are by facing great hardships or dangers. Or someone might think, like the Stoics or Descartes, that self-discovery is the work of quiet, solitary introspection. Still another, following the lead of Socrates, might hold that self-discovery is only possible through provocative dialogue with others where individuals examine and challenge each other's most cher- ished beliefs. Each of these activities of self-seeking produces a different kind of active agent and makes manifest a different self-substance or self-object. In each of these cases, it is the activity through which the individual takes on this dynamic relationship to herself that establishes who she truly is. When we lose sight of this we start to accept a static, fixed idea of who and what we are, and then we are inclined to neglect the development of the active relationship, which is the real life and heart of subjectivity. 3 Rather than assuming that facing hardships allows me to discover my true qualities, my true self, I need to recognize that actively facing hardships is what makes me into a certain kind of self. 4
Because Foucault holds that subjectivity is the relationship of the self to itself and that this relationship is composed of and formed by a variety of possible activities, he does not produce a theory of the subject or the self that would tell us who and what we truly are - he does not tell us what kind of substance we are or what our essence is. Rather, Foucault's work simultaneously carries out two tasks. First he presents us with a careful description and analysis of a few of the many various forms of subjectivity that Western civilization has
? 129
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
produced since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. Second, and at the same time, he puts into practice a distinct form of subjec- tivity. In other words, Foucault's works are activities through which he gave form to his own subjectivity and established a certain way of being a philosopher. In order to better understand Foucault's theory and practice of subjectivity, and to see how it might help us in our quest to become ourselves, let us turn to a brief survey of the elements or material that we address when we try to form a relationship to ourselves.
Disciplinary subjectivity
When I look into myself I find thoughts and feelings, hopes and desires, memories and fantasies. I recognize my own power to perceive and to think, to focus and to choose. I distinguish my body, with its features and processes, from my mental or psychological life. As a consequence, I may wonder whether I am wholly a material substance or if I am an immaterial substance somehow connected to and dependent on this material body to perceive and move around in the world. But even if my true self (mind or soul) is distinct from my body, this self is bound to and responsible for its actions in the world.
My life from moment to moment, day to day, is composed of a series of interconnected experiences in which I find myself involved in relationships and engaged in projects that connect me in various ways to objects, persons, places and values that do not belong to my self. In fact, most of my inner life takes place as a result of and with respect to my actions, relationships, contact, or interaction with objects, persons, places and values that exist outside and independently of my self, that are other than me. I form opinions about the things I have seen and done, about what I have felt, desired and hoped. I make judgements, deciding that some things are good and others bad, that I like some and not others. In addition to judging things and forming opinions, I deliberate and choose. It seems that at every moment I am faced with the possibility of choice, although much of the time things keep mov- ing forward and taking me with them without my having to make a stand. But I believe that I am free to do one thing rather than another. Finally, I try to explain and understand all of these things and formulate an account of them, sometimes going as far as elaborating systematic theories about the world.
I spend my time doing things: going to school, eating, sleeping, hanging out with friends, killing time, entertaining myself, working,
130
? FOUCAULT'S THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SUBJECTIVITY
wondering what I am doing on earth. Sometimes it can seem as though my life is made up of a fairly random string of events, one after the other. At other times I recognize that there is a certain order to much, perhaps most, of what I do. At those times I can see that my life is composed of projects and tasks. I usually act in order to attain some end. And usually that end is really just the means to some other end. For example, I go to school to get an education and I get an education in order to get a good job and I get a good job in order to make good money so that I can support myself and maybe a family and so on.
I might believe in God and have faith that there is some purpose to all of this. But maybe I believe that there is no God and you just do these things and then die. Most likely, whether I believe in God or not, I generally find myself trying to, or at least hoping to, make the most of my time before I die. And when I think of this I realize that death itself lends a certain urgency and order to the things that I do. I do not live on this earth forever, and I cannot stop the passage of time. My life has a direction, a flow towards the future, from birth, through childhood and adolescence to adulthood, to old age and death: that is, if I do not die sooner. Even in the prime of my life, part of what defines me and makes me who and what I am is that I am a fragile, vulnerable, mortal being. I will absolutely die one day, but I could die at any moment. My body is vulnerable to harm from external objects, but its own internal processes could go awry and cause me to suffer or die. My inner life, my mental and emotional life, is in some respects even more vulnerable to outside events and forces than is my body: other people influence how I see myself, they can lead me to feel inadequate, strange, mis- understood, abnormal or evil. My vulnerability is intensified because I seem dependent on objects and people other than myself. In other words, my interactions with the world around me are not indifferent; they are necessary and urgent. I need food, shelter and companionship. My interaction with other people is especially urgent and consequently fraught with dangers. I find myself constantly seeking the affirmation and approval of others, I want them to recognize me, value me for who I am. I realize that this recognition is terribly important to me - I crave love, respect, honour. And yet the more I crave these things the more difficult they become, the more I seem to be at the mercy of others and how they see me. At the same time I realize that they crave the same sorts of things as I do, sometimes they even seem to want that recogni- tion and love to come from me.
This brief and rather simplistic pastiche is sufficient to illustrate the complexity of the struggle to be true to oneself, to discover oneself, to express oneself. Sorting through the elements of which life and self
? 131
? MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CO N CEPTS
seem to be composed I wonder precisely how I might even begin to discern and discover my self in them and to live a life that is authentic and true. However, the need for real self-examination loses its intensity when I realize that I can go through life with a minimal attention to these facts and without much reflection on how best to understand and live them. Life, as it turns out, has largely been laid out before me. I am daily encouraged and instructed, gently nudged, or firmly pushed in the proper direction. It is easy enough simply to absorb, sponge-like, much of what I need to know to survive in the world. It is easy enough to follow the path, robot-like, that I have been set upon. For example, I go to school and write down what my teachers say and study it. But what I learn is more than just the content of the lesson. Whether I am studying maths or history, biology or economics, by getting up, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, eating breakfast, making it to class on time, sitting in my place and focusing on the lesson, I learn many other things than maths or history, biology or economics. I learn how to wait and listen. I learn how to defer gratification. I learn how to measure myself in quantitative terms : I am smart if I get a certain number on my exams, if I do certain things before others do them. I learn the importance of these quantitative evaluations and to consume them with passion and anxiety - the letter C is first met with a desire to do better, then with frustration and resentment, and finally with quiet resignation. Grades, evaluations, pay-cheques, commodities tell me who I am, how I am doing, what I am worth.
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
112
? THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM
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
? 113
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CON CEPTS
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
1 14
THE PRACTI C E OF FREEDO M
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
? ? ? 115
? MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
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.
116
THE PRACTICE O F FREEDOM
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
? 117
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
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. (Ibid. : 232)
Indeed, the Confessions could be said to encapsulate and epitomize this ancient practice of diary writing. In his lecture course from 1 9 8 1 to 1982, The Hermeneutics ofthe Subject, Foucault discusses Augustine in relation to Plutarch's exemplification of writing about the self as a technology of the self. Writing was a tool to say and discover something about yourself in such a way that you could become different. These forms of personal and private writing bring us close to a form of knowl- edge that transforms us. The ancient Greeks had several words for this type of transformational knowledge: Ethopoios or Ethopoiein (etho- poetic). With the former word the Greeks referred to something that has the quality of transforming a person's being. With the latter, they referred to that which produces, changes and transforms an ethos, a way of life, a code of conduct (Foucault 2005a: 237). With these words, and cognates, the Greeks marked a type of knowledge that is decisive and transformative of the self. There is knowledge that is superfluous and insignificant, but there is knowledge that can transform a person irreversibly. The knowledge produced by this hermeneutics of the self must lead to the sacrifice of the self, so that a new self may be born (see also Foucault 1997a: 227-31).
The different techniques o f writing that were available t o the Greeks, and which Augustine brought to a new level, were ethopoetic technolo- gies of the self. They aimed at transforming the subject by providing a material vehicle for a vigilant and relentless analysis of the self, not simply to restrict and domesticate it, but to transform it. This writing
118
? T H E PRACTICE O F FREEDO M
was a technology of the self that called forth a transformative herme- neutics of the self. Personal writing was the medium for an ethopoetic knowledge. In these techniques of writing about the self, about oneself, Foucault discerned a mechanism for the production of new ways of being. Through them a freedom to be a different self is practised. Etho- poetic knowledge is coupled with an ethopoetic freedom, a freedom that transforms us and grants us the power to proclaim truths about ourselves that may lead others to transform themselves. We wrote, and continue to write, in order to become different, and by becoming dif- ferent we practise a transformative freedom.
Kant,or critique as freedom
Modern moral philosophy begins with Immanuel Kant. He provided a philosophical analysis of how morality can be based on reason alone, and can thus dispense with religion, convention and even physical nature. Kant showed that to be moral is the mark of the rational being, and how the rational determination of the will is all that is required for a philosophical justification of morality. For him, rational beings alone can be free, so long as they submit their will to rational adjudication. Kant's most famous book of ethical theory, Groundwork for the Meta- physics ofMorals, enigmatically pronounces: "Nothing in the world - indeed nothing even beyond the world - can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will" (Ale 3 9 3 ) . 1t is much later that we learn why Kant believed this to be the case. A good will is "absolutely good which cannot be bad, and thus it is a will whose maxim when made into a universal law, can never conflict with itself" (Ale 437). A good will cannot be bad because it is a will determined in accordance with universality. A good will, therefore, is not determined by anything external to it, whether it be obedience to God, deference to tradition, or submission to our desires or inclinations. What motivates individuals to determine their will in accordance with universal law is not something that Kant addresses in this book. Nor does he think it is appropriate to do so at the level of the grounding or justification of morality. How and why people may act in accordance with the moral law is part of the doctrine of virtue, which is the sec- ond part of Kant's moral philosophy. One would have expected that if Foucault were to have approached Kant's moral philosophy, he would have chosen to focus on Kant's doctrine of virtue, or how it is that we direct our will and mind to choose that which is the moral. Yet he did not. He focused instead on Kant's philosophy of history.
? ? ? 119
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
It could be said that Kant was one of the philosophers with whom Foucault dealt most throughout his career. As a young scholar, he trans- lated Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint, and wrote an accompanying commentary (2008a). He also dealt with Kant in his The Order ofThings (1973), and devoted many key essays throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s to him (Foucault 1997a). He dealtwith Kant extensively in his last lecture course at the College de France (Foucault 2009). In it Foucault engages Kant specifically concerning his answer to the question Was ist Aufklarung? (What is Enlightenment? ). Kant's famous text, ''An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? ", published in a newspaper, begins with the memorable lines:
Enlightenment is the human being's emancipation from its self- incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one's intellect without the direction of another. This immaturity is self? incurred when its cause does not lie in a lack of intellect, but rather in a lack of resolve and courage to make use of one's intellect without the direction of another. "Sapere aude! Have the courage to make use of your own intellect! " is hence the motto of enlightenment. (Kant 2006: 17)
Answering more directly the question what is Enlightenment? Kant writes, "If it is asked, then, whether we live an enlightened age, then t h e a n s w e r i s : n o , b u t w e d o l i v e i n a n a g e o f e n l ig h t e n m e n t " ( i b i d . : 2 2 ) . As Foucault underscored, enlightenment here is a process in which the entire human race is involved; it is also something that is ongoing, and it is something that involves a change in our relationship to our reason (1997a: 105-10).
Kant's "What is Enlightenment? " is part of a long tradition in which thinkers are trying to decipher the signs of the times as heralds or ciphers for either a past that is fulfilling itself, or something that is about to unleash a future that is expected. Yet, for Foucault, Kant's text steps outside this tradition when he does not seek to place his age within either a divine plan or the logic of a rational plan of history. Kant does not subordinate the age of enlightenment to another period; nor to something that is dawning or inchoate.
Kant defines Aufklarung in an almost negative way, as an Ausgang, an "exit," a "way out. " In his other texts on history, Kant occa- sionally raises questions of origins or defines the internal teleology of a historical process. In the text on Aufklarung, he deals with the question of contemporary reality alone. He is not seeking to
120
? THE PRACTICE O F FREEDO M
understand the present on the basis of a totality or of a future achievement. He is looking for a difference. What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?
(Foucault 1997a: 104-5)
In other words, according to Foucault, Kant's answer to the question of enlightenment is an attempt to formulate the radical character of the present with respect to the task that it presents to us as contemporaries, as children of our own time. Foucault translates Kant's question into a question about how we can differentiate what is new with respect to what has come before. In this way, then, enlightenment turns into critique. We do not live in an enlightened age, avers Kant, but we do live in an age of enlightenment: "If it is asked, then, whether we live in an enlightened age, then the answer is: no, but we do live in an age of enlightenment" (Kant 2006: 22). We are exiting, departing, aban- doning a self-imposed tutelage, to use the other word used to translate Unmiindigkeit (immaturity), by means of the critical use of our reason, by daring to criticize, to know. Enlightenment is that contemporary moment when humanity makes use of reason without the tutelage, the guidance, the submission or derogation, of anyone. Enlightenment is the critical use of reason. Critique is indispensable to enlightenment for it is through critique that we can discern what is a legitimate or illegitimate use of reason. Critique guides reason, leading it to enlight- enment. As Foucault put it: "The critique is, in a sense, the handbook of reason that has grown up in Enlightenment; and, conversely, the Enlightenment is the age of critique" (1997a: 1 1 1).
The challenge from Kant to Foucault is whether we can discern a philosophical ethos that would relate to our own time in a parallel way to how Kant's critique related to his own age of enlightenment. Foucault's own text "What is Enlightenment? " is a response to that call. In it, Foucault provides both negative and positive characteriza- tion of what he calls a philosophical ethos that may be proper to our age. The positive sketching of this philosophical ethos is what con- cerns us here, for it is in this sketch that Foucault refers to the devel- opment of a "historical ontology of ourselves". Foucault explains that this philosophical ethos may be characterized as a "limit-attitude" (1997a: 124). If for Kant criticism was about analysing limits, for Foucault criticism, critique, has to be turned into a positive question. In other words, criticism should not be about demarcating limits but, rather, about transgressing them (see Simons 1995). Criticism, in Foucault's philosophical ethos, turns into a meditation on transgres- sion. "The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the
? 121
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
form of necessary limitations into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression" (1997a: 125). Criticism entails that instead of searching for invariant and transcendental structures that may apply to and hold the same value and significance for all human- ity, we set out in a historical investigation into the processes and events that have led to the constitution of our way of being. Critique as a meditation on possible transgression becomes a critical analysis of the historical ontology of our ways of being. Here historical ontology entails precisely the questioning of who we are and how this "we" has emerged. A critical ontology of ourselves reveals the constructed- ness of our being, its contingency, its revocability and thus its trans- formatibility. Because we have become, we can also become different. A critical ontology of ourselves, as a genealogy of our modern selves, allows us to extract from the very contingency that has made us signs or ciphers of the possibility of becoming other than what we presently are. Critical ontology of the present unleashes what Foucault calls felicitously the "undefined work of freedom" (ibid. : 126).
In short, the Kantian project of a critique of contemporaneity, of our own time, calls for critique as the handbook of enlightenment. In our time, Foucault argues, critique must go beyond the merely nega- tive aspect that Kant had given it. Critique must become positive by becoming a critical ontology of our present. In this way it can sketch the contours of a different time, a time in which we have become dif- ferent in unexpected ways. The philosophical ethos of enlightened critique that Kant championed in his text from the late eighteenth century is transformed by Foucault in the late twentieth century into the philosophical ethos of critical historical transgression. The new philosophical ethos that corresponds to the critical ontology of ourselves is "a historical-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings" (ibid. : 127). We may meet Kant's call to dare to use our reason, to live in an age if not enlightened at least of enlighten- ment, by working on our limits, those limits distinctly drawn out by a critical ontology. It is this critical labour of transgressing our historical contingency that gives form to "our impatience for liberty" (Bernauer & Mahon 1994: 155-6). We give shape to our freedom by engaging in a transgressive critique of our time. We practise our freedom by critiquing the historical shape our humanity has taken. Here, how- ever, freedom is produced, given shape by engaging our time, our day, our own historical period in its brilliant contingency. Freedom is pro- duced in a critical engagement with history, and in this way it cannot but be historical, and thus have a history. Still, Foucault shows that
122
? THE PRACTICE O F FREEDOM
freedom is practised and given shape through this use of reason to unmake the solidity and putative inevitability of history.
The truth offreedom and the freedom oftruth
The guiding thread in the present chapter has been that if we follow the different axes along which Foucault structured his investigation, we are able to discern distinct and original discussions of freedom. In one of the first lectures at what was to be his last lecture course at the College de France, Foucault characterized his work in a slightly new way. He said: "Basically, I've always tried to articulate among modes of veridiction, techniques of governmentality and practices of the self " ; Foucault then noted that by moving towards an analysis of veridiction, or the practices of producing truth, techniques of governmentality, or technologies of government of oneself and others, and the practices of the self, or how one makes oneself into a subject, he in fact has pursued a:
triple theoretical displacement of the theme of knowledge (con- naissance) toward that of veridiction, o f the themes of domination toward that of governmentality, and of the theme of the individual toward that of practices of the self that it seems to me one can study the relations between truth, power and subject without reducing them one to another.
(Foucault quoted in Flynn 1997: 262)
Evidently, there is a thread that links these three axes: freedom. But when freedom is related to each one of these axes, we see a different aspect of it emerge.
Perhaps we can use Flynn's word, prismatic (Flynn 1997), and talk about prismatic freedom: freedom that is refracted differently as it passes through the fields of veridiction, governmentality and techniques of the self. I have shown in this chapter that while freedom may be pri- mordially creative freedom, when it relates to the games of truth, what Foucault calls veridiction, freedom becomes ethopoetic; when freedom relates to governmentality, it is transgressive; when freedom refers to the techniques of the self, it is agonistic. Freedom is never one, it is never stable, it is never an a priori, nor is it ever a transcendental. It is always contingent, it is always to be practised, it is always discursive and relational, it is intransigent and recalcitrant. It is always to be achieved, sustained, preserved and wrested from the games of power in which it always circulates like blood in a living organism. Wherever we look in
? ? 123
? MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
human history, we see the evident truth of freedom, but wherever it has been practised, it has produced its own truth, the truth that:
If societies persist and survive, it is because behind all the consent and the coercion, beyond the threats, the violence, and the per- suasion, there is the possibility of this moment where life cannot be exchanged, where power becomes powerless, and where, in front of the gallows and the machine guns, men rise up.
(Afary & Anderson 2005 : 263-4)
124
? PART Ill
S u bjectivity
? ? ? ? N I NE
Fo cault's t an racti s bj
Edward McGushin
Everyone, at some point, has heard that seemingly ubiquitous advice: just be yourself. 1 Keep it real, be true to yourself, be your own per- son, find yourself, express yourself, be confident in yourself, have self-esteem, follow your own path, and so on. On the one hand, this guidance seems completely natural: are we not all trying our best to be ourselves? Yet, on the other hand, the directive, be yourself, some? - times sounds strangely hollow: after all, who else could I possibly be but myself? Of course, everyone is familiar with the many ways in which we fail to be ourselves. We all know the pressures and impulses to conform, to mask, to deny ourselves. We say what we think others want us to say; we act the way others want us to act. We lie to ourselves, betray our- selves, forget ourselves, let ourselves down, and neglect ourselves. On top of all this we live at a time of rapidly advancing technologies for the chemical manipulation of moods and the genetic engineering of physi- cal and mental traits. Faced with the capacity to transform one's mood, memory, longevity, or sexuality through chemical or genetic manipula- tion, what could it possibly mean to "just be yourself " ?
And yet in the face o f all these obstacles w e still seek out and prize the true, authentic self and the true, authentic life. This struggle to be true to oneself is one of the most defining characteristics of modern life. Movies and music, literature and reality television all portray it. It is the central motif of commercial advertisements and brand marketing, psychology, ethics and politics. If we stop to think about all this we are faced with a strange, unsettling realization. All this focus on the true self reflects a desire for a higher, truer life; a yearning for something more that could be called an "ethic of the self " or an "ethic of authenticity"
? ? 127
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
(Taylor 1992). Yet at the same time, the fact that we seem to need all of this constant encouragement to be our true selves also implies that our predominant way of being is false, that for the most part we fall short of truly being ourselves, that we are not our selves. As Jean-Paul Sartre (1989) put it, a human being is not a cauliflower. A cauliflower never has to confront the problem of what it means to be a cauliflower; it never has to make a choice about how it will live its life; it will never be challenged about its choice. A cauliflower is just what it is, fully defined and determined by its essence as a cauliflower. A human being, on the other hand, at a profound level is strange and unfamiliar to him or herself, at once far from and yet bound to the self.
Resolutely facing this paradoxical task of being ourselves is what Michel Foucault calls the "care for the self" (souci de soi). 2 He defines our "subjectivity" as what we make of ourselves when we do devote our- selves to taking care of ourselves. We can begin to understand precisely what Foucault means by the care for the self and subjectivity by exam- ining more carefully what the quest to be true to oneself entails. Each of those very common pieces of advice - be true to yourself, express yourself, or discover yourself ? refers to ways of forming a relationship of the self to itself. For example, when I express myself, I am both the self who is doing the expressing and the self who is being expressed. My self as expressive agent is related to my self as object expressed through the very activity of self-expression (whatever that activity might concretely entail). When we speak of self-discovery or self-expression, we have a tendency to get caught up in the content delivered in each of these activi- ties and hence neglect their relational character. In the activity of seeking and discovering my self, my attention is entirely directed towards the self as that object being sought, as that substance or essence that I discover and come to know. In self-discovery and self-expression our interest is in the self that is being expressed. If we attend to the expressive act or gesture it is usually in order to make sure that it is properly suited to the content being expressed. In other words, we tend to see the act of discovery or expression as a mere vehicle for the manifestation and com- munication of the self being expressed. On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that discovering and expressing are what we might call relational activities. In other words, they are activities that form, maintain, or intensify relationships. What makes self-relational activities distinctive and strange is that the terms being related are essentially iden- tical. Self-discovery and self-expression form a relationship of the self to itself. But this implies that the self is in some sense other than itself.
How does this work? The self-relational activity forms a relation- ship by establishing a difference within an identity. For example, in the
128
? FOU CAULT'S THEORY AND PRACTICE O F S UB J E CTIVITY
activity of finding oneself, the self divides itself into (a) a subject actively seeking and (b) an object passively being sought. Of course, the activity of relating these two terms is nothing other than the self actively seek- ing, discovering and expressing itself. But for the self to become both active agent and passive object, it must actively divide itself through some activity of self-relating. In other words, it is the activity of seek- ing and discovering that makes or constitutes the self as both an active seeker and sought after object.
Care of the self is what we do when we set out to do the hard work of forging a relationship to ourselves. The resulting subjectivity is the concrete form of activity that defines the relationship of the self to itself. Subjectivity in this sense is the real basis of the self as both agent and object. In other words, Foucault argues that the self or subject is not a self-standing being, some sort of essence or substance, that exists within us whether we look for it or not (1996b). It is brought into exist- ence as the upshot of some form of relational activity. What is more, subjectivity, as a dynamic, active relationship, can take on a number of different forms (1996a: 440). For example, someone may believe, as did the Cynics and Nietzsche, that they can only discover who they truly are by facing great hardships or dangers. Or someone might think, like the Stoics or Descartes, that self-discovery is the work of quiet, solitary introspection. Still another, following the lead of Socrates, might hold that self-discovery is only possible through provocative dialogue with others where individuals examine and challenge each other's most cher- ished beliefs. Each of these activities of self-seeking produces a different kind of active agent and makes manifest a different self-substance or self-object. In each of these cases, it is the activity through which the individual takes on this dynamic relationship to herself that establishes who she truly is. When we lose sight of this we start to accept a static, fixed idea of who and what we are, and then we are inclined to neglect the development of the active relationship, which is the real life and heart of subjectivity. 3 Rather than assuming that facing hardships allows me to discover my true qualities, my true self, I need to recognize that actively facing hardships is what makes me into a certain kind of self. 4
Because Foucault holds that subjectivity is the relationship of the self to itself and that this relationship is composed of and formed by a variety of possible activities, he does not produce a theory of the subject or the self that would tell us who and what we truly are - he does not tell us what kind of substance we are or what our essence is. Rather, Foucault's work simultaneously carries out two tasks. First he presents us with a careful description and analysis of a few of the many various forms of subjectivity that Western civilization has
? 129
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
produced since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. Second, and at the same time, he puts into practice a distinct form of subjec- tivity. In other words, Foucault's works are activities through which he gave form to his own subjectivity and established a certain way of being a philosopher. In order to better understand Foucault's theory and practice of subjectivity, and to see how it might help us in our quest to become ourselves, let us turn to a brief survey of the elements or material that we address when we try to form a relationship to ourselves.
Disciplinary subjectivity
When I look into myself I find thoughts and feelings, hopes and desires, memories and fantasies. I recognize my own power to perceive and to think, to focus and to choose. I distinguish my body, with its features and processes, from my mental or psychological life. As a consequence, I may wonder whether I am wholly a material substance or if I am an immaterial substance somehow connected to and dependent on this material body to perceive and move around in the world. But even if my true self (mind or soul) is distinct from my body, this self is bound to and responsible for its actions in the world.
My life from moment to moment, day to day, is composed of a series of interconnected experiences in which I find myself involved in relationships and engaged in projects that connect me in various ways to objects, persons, places and values that do not belong to my self. In fact, most of my inner life takes place as a result of and with respect to my actions, relationships, contact, or interaction with objects, persons, places and values that exist outside and independently of my self, that are other than me. I form opinions about the things I have seen and done, about what I have felt, desired and hoped. I make judgements, deciding that some things are good and others bad, that I like some and not others. In addition to judging things and forming opinions, I deliberate and choose. It seems that at every moment I am faced with the possibility of choice, although much of the time things keep mov- ing forward and taking me with them without my having to make a stand. But I believe that I am free to do one thing rather than another. Finally, I try to explain and understand all of these things and formulate an account of them, sometimes going as far as elaborating systematic theories about the world.
I spend my time doing things: going to school, eating, sleeping, hanging out with friends, killing time, entertaining myself, working,
130
? FOUCAULT'S THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SUBJECTIVITY
wondering what I am doing on earth. Sometimes it can seem as though my life is made up of a fairly random string of events, one after the other. At other times I recognize that there is a certain order to much, perhaps most, of what I do. At those times I can see that my life is composed of projects and tasks. I usually act in order to attain some end. And usually that end is really just the means to some other end. For example, I go to school to get an education and I get an education in order to get a good job and I get a good job in order to make good money so that I can support myself and maybe a family and so on.
I might believe in God and have faith that there is some purpose to all of this. But maybe I believe that there is no God and you just do these things and then die. Most likely, whether I believe in God or not, I generally find myself trying to, or at least hoping to, make the most of my time before I die. And when I think of this I realize that death itself lends a certain urgency and order to the things that I do. I do not live on this earth forever, and I cannot stop the passage of time. My life has a direction, a flow towards the future, from birth, through childhood and adolescence to adulthood, to old age and death: that is, if I do not die sooner. Even in the prime of my life, part of what defines me and makes me who and what I am is that I am a fragile, vulnerable, mortal being. I will absolutely die one day, but I could die at any moment. My body is vulnerable to harm from external objects, but its own internal processes could go awry and cause me to suffer or die. My inner life, my mental and emotional life, is in some respects even more vulnerable to outside events and forces than is my body: other people influence how I see myself, they can lead me to feel inadequate, strange, mis- understood, abnormal or evil. My vulnerability is intensified because I seem dependent on objects and people other than myself. In other words, my interactions with the world around me are not indifferent; they are necessary and urgent. I need food, shelter and companionship. My interaction with other people is especially urgent and consequently fraught with dangers. I find myself constantly seeking the affirmation and approval of others, I want them to recognize me, value me for who I am. I realize that this recognition is terribly important to me - I crave love, respect, honour. And yet the more I crave these things the more difficult they become, the more I seem to be at the mercy of others and how they see me. At the same time I realize that they crave the same sorts of things as I do, sometimes they even seem to want that recogni- tion and love to come from me.
This brief and rather simplistic pastiche is sufficient to illustrate the complexity of the struggle to be true to oneself, to discover oneself, to express oneself. Sorting through the elements of which life and self
? 131
? MICHEL FOUCAULT: KEY CO N CEPTS
seem to be composed I wonder precisely how I might even begin to discern and discover my self in them and to live a life that is authentic and true. However, the need for real self-examination loses its intensity when I realize that I can go through life with a minimal attention to these facts and without much reflection on how best to understand and live them. Life, as it turns out, has largely been laid out before me. I am daily encouraged and instructed, gently nudged, or firmly pushed in the proper direction. It is easy enough simply to absorb, sponge-like, much of what I need to know to survive in the world. It is easy enough to follow the path, robot-like, that I have been set upon. For example, I go to school and write down what my teachers say and study it. But what I learn is more than just the content of the lesson. Whether I am studying maths or history, biology or economics, by getting up, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, eating breakfast, making it to class on time, sitting in my place and focusing on the lesson, I learn many other things than maths or history, biology or economics. I learn how to wait and listen. I learn how to defer gratification. I learn how to measure myself in quantitative terms : I am smart if I get a certain number on my exams, if I do certain things before others do them. I learn the importance of these quantitative evaluations and to consume them with passion and anxiety - the letter C is first met with a desire to do better, then with frustration and resentment, and finally with quiet resignation. Grades, evaluations, pay-cheques, commodities tell me who I am, how I am doing, what I am worth.
