No More Learning

In these lectures Foucault once more outlines the ancient Greek ideal that one's whole way of life is important: the true parrhesiastes is a per- son "of moral integrity", a person "of blameless principle and integrity", whose acts and thoughts are in accordance (ibid. : 69). In his studies on parrhesia Foucault wants to trace "the roots of what we can call the criti- cal tradition of the West". He wanted to construct a "genealogy of the critical attitude in Western philosophy" (ibid. : 170-71). His emphasis on the parrhesia aspect of ancient spirituality might well be his implicit answer to the possible objection that, at least since Descartes, knowledge has become democratic and open instead of the prerequisite of a certain privileged group, and critical instead of based on persuasion. Foucault's work on parrhesia is intended to articulate a democratic, open spiritual basisofknowledgeforpresentpurposes: aphilosophicalattitudeofcri- tique which is about one's whole way of life and in that sense "spiritual", an attitude which he identified as the core value of Western Enlighten- ment (1997g) and which he practised in his own work and life. 3
Political spirituality
Foucault's concept of spirituality as free ethical self-transformation through ascesis is political through and through in that it is an exit, a critical alternative to the "normal" Western subject formations of the rational autonomous individual and the deep self, the products of the power/knowledge regime of Western modernity. This is the reason why Foucault invokes the concept of "political spirituality" when he speaks about "the will to discover a different way of governing oneself through a different way of dividing up true and false - this is what I would call 'politicalspiritualite"' (1991b: 82, quoted in Carrette 2000: 137). Foucault is expressing the need to detach our subjectivity from Western modernity's political rationality.
He sympathized with any resistance against this true/false regime of subjectivity, a resistance he also identified in the 1978 Iranian
? 106
? FREEDO M AND SPIRITUALITY
Revolution, which started as a revolution against the attempt to mod- ernize Islamic countries in a European mode. In the last lines of his arti- cle "What Are the Iranians Dreaming About? " Foucault puts forward the "possibility we have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crisis of Christianity, a political spirituality" (2005b: 209). In another article on this subject, Foucault talks about Shi'ism as a form of Islam that differentiates between "mere external obedience to the code" and "the profound spiritual life". In revolutionary Iran at that time iden- tification with the Islamic tradition combined with "the renewal of spiritual experiences", that is, the "desire to renew their entire exist- ence" (2005c: 255). When invoking a "political spirituality", it is the dimension of freedom practices opposing truth regimes, and involving the whole of peoples' ways of life, that Foucault has in mind, and once more we find that he locates this dimension within religious contexts as well.
A cross-cultural concept offreedom
We have seen that in his final works Foucault refers to practices of free ethical spiritual self-transformation not only in secular contexts, but in religious ones as well. He refers not only to certain strands in Christianity and Islam, but also in Asian religion. Liebman Schaub dis- cusses whether there is a counterpart to Foucault's hopelessly trapped "Western man", in the form of a hidden discourse in Foucault's work, which can be designated as an "Oriental subtext" (Liebmann Schaub 1989). Foucault concealed its presence since he wanted to avoid his work being stigmatized as "religious" or "metaphysical", and since he did not want to offer any anthropological model, that is, any absolute truth concerning the human condition.
According to Liebmann Schaub, Foucault's non-Western counter- discourse is to be found in his style rather than in overt opposition to the Western, "normalized" way of life. She, however, only analyses the early Foucault, focusing on his notions of transgression and his ideas on the disappearance of the rational autonomous subject. She argues that Foucault's unsettling style is informed by Buddhism. He wants to show the essential insufficiency of language for expressing truth, in other words that wisdom is beyond words. It is through his style, which criti- cizes Western civilization as a whole, that he has been a "teacher" and a "moralist".
However, if we turn to Foucault's later work, in which Eastern - and Western - philosophies are approached from their practical, ethical side,
? 107
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
we find that Foucault does offer a positive alternative to the "normal- ized" Western ways of life, through his new concept of spirituality as free ethical self-transformation through ascesis. Foucault, during his visit to Japan in 1978, showed great interest in the practice of Zen Buddhism. He took lessons and afterwards said to his teacher: "I'd like to ask you just one question. It's about the universality of Zen. Is it possible to separate the practice of Zen from the totality of the reli- gion and the practice of Buddhism? " (1999b: 1 13). He also remarks that whereas Zen and Christian mysticism cannot be compared, the technique of Christian spirituality and that of Zen are comparable. Foucault's question and remark show his interest in ethical spiritual self-techniques as a cross-cultural phenomenon. He not only explored Zen in 1978 but also Islam, as we have seen from his articles in which he described the Iranian Revolution in terms of a spirituality which opposed Truth regimes and possesses the potential to inspire new politi- cal forms. What I see in these texts is not a right or wrong judgement on the Iranian Revolution,4 but the search for a new concept of freedom which is cross-cultural in that it can take into account a diversity of moral frameworks, including religious ones.
Paraphrasing Liebman Schaub, and together with Bernauer (2004), I would conclude that an "Oriental Subtext" runs through all of Foucault's work. Bernauer asks whether an oriental influence is to be seen in Foucault's radical interrogation of Western individualism and whether his notion of self-stylization was influenced by Asia, more specifically his visits to Japan in 1970 and 1978. I suggest that this influence has been the background to his reconceptualizing of freedom in other terms than the ones of individual rational autonomy, in terms namely of spirituality as ethical self-transformation through exercises, which involve the creation and invention of one's whole way of life. His oriental interest, in my view, has inspired this normative horizon of freedom practices for all, as a cross-cultural alternative to the dominant concept of freedom of Western liberalism.
The emerging discourse of Islamic feminism
The emerging discourse of "Islamic feminism" illustrates the topical- ity of Foucault's new concepts. Since the 1990s, new perspectives and practices are developing that demonstrate that Islam and "gender jus- tice" are not inherently incompatible. These perspectives and prac- tices also criticize both Western feminism and liberalism for imposing Western concepts of freedom and autonomy on believing Muslim
108
FREEDOM AND SPIRITUALITY
women, as well as Islamic fundamentalists for claiming that women in the Islamic world are already able to live their lives to the fullest. 5 Believing Muslim women in, for example, Egypt, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran and Morocco do contest structures of male domination in the Islamic world by arguing for gender equality and gender justice in new interpretations of the moral source of Islam, the Qur'an. Scholars such as Leila Ahmed, Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas refer to the dynamic and diverse history of Islam for their reinterpretations of the Qur'an and Islamic historical traditions. They highlight the egalitarian Spirit of Islam's ethical spiritual message, and the active role of women in the history of Islam. Other studies show the active role of women in Islamic societies today, demonstrating that Islamic women are in no way the passive, oppressed creatures that many Western feminists hold them to be. In Muslim-majority countries there are women's organizations that have a feminist agenda (such as Malaysia's "Sisters in Islam").
This new emerging discourse of Islamic feminism can be analysed as a political spirituality, that is, as a practice of free ethical self- transformation which opposes the Truth regime of Western liberalism as well as the fundamentalist type of Islam. These women are freely but ethically transforming themselves through all kinds of self-techniques, on the collective and individual level, such as veiling in new contexts, educating themselves in interpreting the Qur'an, practising mixed gen- der prayer, and inventing themselves as modern, believing, Muslim women. The emerging discourse of Islamic feminism shows that West- ern feminists who contend that feminism should be based on secular liberalism's fundamentals should enlarge, if not revise, their concept of freedom, so as to escape the limits that are imposed on all women. 6
When asked about the state of the art of Western philosophy, Foucault said:
European thought finds itself at a turning point . . . (which) is nothing other than the end of imperialism. The crisis of Western thought is identical to the end of imperialism . . . There is no phi- losopher who marks out this period. For it is the end of the era of Western philosophy. Thus, if philosophy of the future exists, it must be born outside of Europe, or equally born in consequence of meetings and impacts between Europe and non-Europe.
(1999c: 1 13)
Foucault, through his new concept of spirituality without a spirit, in the sense of free ethical self-transformation through self-techniques, has offered us new concepts of freedom and equality which criticize
? 109
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
Western modernity7 as well as other Truth regimes, and which offer a cross-cultural normative perspective. In my view Foucault was ahead of his time in that he felt that we have to change our concepts to make sense of the culturally pluralist world we live in.
Notes
1. I borrow this phrase fromJeremy Carrette (2000: 60; see also 162-3, n. 72).
2. Many argue that Foucault's work Discipline and Punish lacks any normative perspective. Explicit phrases, however, clearly show Foucault's rejection of the disciplines as domination, for instance where he speaks of the development of the disciplines as the "dark side" of the establishment of the egalitarian juridical framework (Foucault 1979: 222) and of the "malicious minutiae of the disci-
plines and their investigations" (ibid. : 226).
3. Discussing Kant's text "What is Enlightenment? " Foucault points out how
Kant's answer "sapere aude" ("dare to know") refers not only to "institutional, ethical and political" conditions, but to a "spiritual" condition as well. Kant's answer involves as well an appeal to an "act of courage to be accomplished personally ", by man, "by a change that he himself will bring about in himself " . Western Enlightenment is a spiritual attitude to Foucault. He argues that it is "not faithfulness to doctrinal elements but, rather, the permanent reactivation of an attitude" that may connect us with the Enlightenment (1997g: 306, 3 12).
4. My view here is contrary to Mary and Anderson (2005), who fiercely attack Foucault. For a critique of their view see Honig (2008). We have to take into account that in 1978 many people considered the Iranian Revolution to be primarily an anti-colonialist revolution. The enthusiasm of this anti-imperialist uprising is what Foucault tries to describe in a few journalistic articles, wherein he discusses how people were "spiritually" involved, in that their whole way of life was at stake, and speaks in terms of a "political spirituality", opposing Truth regimes and producing something new. Foucault responded to the vio- lence that marked the post-revolutionary power struggle in Iran by distancing himself from its outcome in the form of simply another regime of Truth. In journalistic articles published in April and May 1979 he supported the rights of the individual against the "bloody government of a fundamentalist clergy" (Foucault 2005d: 265).
5. For an overview see Dubel and Vintges (2007).
6. Okin1999hasbeenveryinfluentialinthedebateonfeminismandmulticultur-
alism. As the title indicates, Okin argues that multiculturalism is bad for women, and that only Western liberalism has a place for women's rights. Instead I would argue that Western liberalism in its own way puts limits on women, in that they have to adapt themselves to the ways of life, and subject form, of the Western autonomous rational individual.
7. "The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state, and from the state's institutions, but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries" (Foucault 1982a: 216).
110
? EIGHT
Eduardo Mendieta
Freedom has a history
Freedom is one of the most intractable philosophical problems in the Western philosophical tradition. Indeed, there is a way in which the history of Western philosophy can be written in terms of the different attempts that have been made to define freedom. The history of eth- ics, without question, has been determined by how freedom has been defined. In the West, since the ancient Greeks, what we take to be human, or rather, the humanity of humans, has been defined in terms of freedom. Humans are free animals, the argument goes, whereas other animals are unfree because they are determined by instinct. Yet what is this freedom that marks the boundary between human and non-human animals? How does it relate to reason? How does it relate to our passions and emotions? How does it relate to our imagination? Are we free if we submit to a putatively rational norm ? Is this not a form of subjugation that constrains freedom? Are we free if we choose our will contrary to what is alleged to be a commandment of God? Are we free if we have been condemned to damnation by an original sin that had nothing to do with us ? Are we free if we abandon ourselves to our pleasure and seek to live on the razor's edge of pleasurable danger? And, perhaps most importantly, has freedom been construed or defined in the same way across different historical periods? That is to say, was the freedom of the Egyptian peasant the same as that of the Greek and Roman citizens, the same as that of a slave in an American plantation, the same as that of a citizen in the European Union? If ethics has a his- tory, freedom must have a history, too (Patterson 1991). The history
? ? 111
? MICHEL FOU CAULT: KEY CONCEPTS
of freedom then turns out to be a history of ethics, as well as a history of the different ways in which we have conceived what it means to be a subject, an agent, and a free person.
In this chapter I am going to offer a way of reading and understand- ing Michel Foucault's work as an extremely original analysis of free- dom. My reading of Foucault's work will illustrate that his work has been profoundly misunderstood when he has been read exclusively as a thinker of domination, subjugation, subjection, discipline, normaliza- tion and power. I will show that Foucault's work can be understood as an exploration of freedom, as so many attempts to understand the ways in which freedom is not a given, an a priori, primordial and foundational right of a subject, but is instead an achievement, a practice, a vocation, an ascesis, a way of being. We are not born free. We make ourselves free through practices of caring for ourselves, of governing, relating ourselves to ourselves through others, for either love or hate of others is a way of relating to ourselves. Freedom is thus not a state of being, but a way of being in relation to ourselves, to others and to our world. Freedom is a praxis. Additionally, I will seek to show that freedom is not unitary and ontologically stable, but rather that it is relational and generative. Freedom is not a given aspect of human nature, nor is there a human nature. We produce our humanity by generating modalities of freedom, ways of relating to ourselves, to truth, and to our historical period, or present. If there is freedom, it is always creative freedom. Thus, I hope to show that Foucault has been one of the most important contemporary philosophers of freedom.
In this chapter I will follow Foucault's own way of characterizing his work as gravitating or revolving around three major axes, each mark- ing a particular period or stage of his work. Thus, there are the axes of knowledge, power and ethics. These axes have been the focus of particular approaches or methods of investigation: archaeology, geneal- ogy and hermeneutics. Yet Foucault himself resisted and contested the attempt to see a succession of methods or problems within his work. In his view, his work is held together by one central motif, the subject, or more precisely "practices of the self" (1997c, 2005a, 1997a). In contrast to reading his work as an analysis of power, we should under- stand it as a genealogy of the subject. A genealogical analysis seeks to understand how something could become an object of preoccupation, concern, debate and admonition. Instead of assuming the givenness of an object of analysis, genealogy aims to show how a series of practices, institutions and structures constituted the object of study. Additionally, for Foucault, a genealogical study is in turn a history of our present; it is an investigation of our own contemporaneity or contemporary
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.