No More Learning

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Su a
Brad Elliott Stone
Is there a relationship between subjectivity and truth in our contempo- rary age? Foucault's answer is "no". In this chapter, I seek to explicate Foucault's conclusion about the divorce of subjectivity and truth. Begin- ning with Foucault's account of the shift between ancient and modern philosophy,1 I show in the first section that the modern, strictly epis- temological understanding of truth removes us from the possibility of having an ethical relationship to the truth. This ethical relationship to the truth, however, was the heart of ancient philosophy, whose goal was not "knowledge" but human flourishing. The second section explores the role of truth in ancient philosophy. The third section turns to an explication of Foucault's account of parrhesia as it was understood in ancient philosophy. Parrhesia is the act of telling the truth out of one's moral duty, even in dangerous situations. I then offer examples of how parrhesia was used in ancient philosophy, followed by a brief discussion of whether or not we can recreate a meaningful relationship between subjectivity and truth.
In the shadow ofthe Cartesian moment
Foucault's 1 9 8 2 lecture course The Hermeneutics olthe Subject contin- ues his investigation into the connection between subjectivity and truth beguninthe 1981 courseSubjectivityandTruth. 2Inthe 1981 lecture course, Foucault focused exclusively on Hellenic views of sexuality. In 1 9 8 2, Foucault wants to ask the question of the relationship between subjectivityandtruthinamoregeneralway: "[i]nwhathistoricalform
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do the relations between the 'subject' and 'truth,' elements that do not usually fall within the historian's practice or analysis, take shape in the West? " (2005a: 2). How does the West relate subjectivity and truth, if at all?
One of Foucault's main arguments in his opening lecture in 1 9 8 2 is that there is a discontinuity in the history of the relationship between subjectivity and truth. To show this discontinuity, Foucault discusses the radical difference between how the ancient thinkers understood the relationship between subjectivity and truth and how the modern thinkers understand it. Foucault returns to the old philosophical motto "Know yourself", gnothi seauton. This hope for self-knowledge, cen- tral to the philosopher's quest, was always essentially coupled with another motto: "take care of yourself", epimeleia heautou. However, in the contemporary age, this coupling is no longer essential. For the ancient thinkers, one had to be a particular kind of person in order to know oneself, let alone know anything else of importance. In our age, however, knowledge is considered something that one can obtain regardless of the kind of person one is. This is where Foucault detects an archaeological (in Foucault's sense of the term) break in the history of knowledge. Foucault asserts that the ancient thinkers considered the care of the self "the justificatory framework, ground, and founda- tion for the imperative 'know yourself"' (ibid. : 8). That we can now claim self-knowledge without any ethical requirements would be for the ancients unintelligible.
The 1982 course focuses on the ancient methods ofbeingthe kind of person who could gain access to the truth. This will provide a prelimi- nary answer to Foucault's key question: "Why did Western thought and philosophy neglect the notion ofepimeleiaheautou in its reconstruction of its own history ? " (ibid. : 1 2) . Why has contemporary thought claimed continuity with ancient thought through the quest for self-knowledge while being oblivious to the fact that the ancient thinkers had require- ments for self-knowledge that modern thought does not bother to fulfil?
One possible explanation is the rise of Christianity with its emphasis on selflessness. The non-egoist principle of Christianity causes one to see the care of the self as too selfish. Also, the Judaeo-Christian belief in an omniscient God whose knowledge is distinct from God's moral goodness allows for a hope for God's kind of knowledge without having to care for oneself. Although this is a possible explanation, it does not give the strongest case. For Foucault, the stronger case is archaeological rather than historical.
For Foucault, Descartes' philosophy represents an archaeological event3 in which the "concept" of self-knowledge had shifted. Foucault
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describes what he calls "the Cartesian moment", a moment character- ized "by philosophically requalifying the gnothi seauton and by dis- crediting the epimeleia heautou" (ibid. : 14). Foucault spends the rest of the first hour of the opening lecture of the 1982 course on the discontinuity in the history of the relationship of subjectivity and truth evidenced by this moment. At the heart of the Cartesian moment is the belief that self-knowledge is a given, a fact that Descartes nimbly proves in the Second Meditation of Meditations on First Philosophy. From this self-knowledge, one can then proceed, with certainty, to knowledge of God, mathematics and even the physical world itself. What is missing here, Foucault points out, is the ancient notion of the care of the self.
What is missing at the core of Cartesian philosophy (and modern thought since Descartes) is spirituality. Foucault uses this term in a technical sense, not to be immediately confused with one's religious practices (although that sense of spirituality will itself be a mode of what Foucault means here by "spirituality"). Foucault defines spiritu- ality as "the search, practice, and experience through which the sub- ject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth" (ibid. : 1 5 ) . When philosophy is coupled with spirituality, philosophy is "the form of thought that asks what it is that enables the subject to have access to the truth and which attempts to determine the conditions and limits to the subject's access to the truth" (ibid. ). Ancient philosophy was the pursuit of the kind of life that would lead to knowledge, not just an analysis of what could be known and how one could know it. The Cartesian moment, however, allows for a philosophy without spirituality, removing the first part of philosophy's definition (What enables the subject to have access to the truth? ) while retaining the second part (What are the conditions and limits to the subject's access of truth? ). This is a point of diffraction (cf. Foucault 1972: 65) between ancient and modern thought: ancient thought finds the second part of the definition unintelligible with- out the first part, while modern thought cleanly divides epistemology from ethics.
The reason the ancients would find modern philosophy unintelligi- ble, Foucault claims, is the Cartesian insistence that self-knowledge is self-given, and that the right use of one's own already-in-place mental powers can lead to truth. One of the postulates of spirituality pre- sented by Foucault is that "the truth is never given to the subject by right"; that is, "the subject does not have right of access to the truth" (Foucault 2005a: 15). For the ancients, the subject's already-in-place mental "powers" are precisely what need to be overcome! The second
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postulate is that "there can be no truth without a conversion or a trans- formation of the subject" (ibid. ). In order to access the truth, one must care for oneself and become a particular kind of person, a person who has correctly prepared oneself to be the bearer and speaker of the truth for which one has prepared. The third postulate of spirituality is that the truth, once accessed, "enlightens the subject" and "gives the subjecttranquilityofthesoul" (ibid. : 16). Knowledgeisnotforknowl- edge's sake; rather, it is to bring about a particular kind of person.
Modernity does not accept any of these three ancient postulates. Foucault states the rules for accessing knowledge in the modern period. First, there must be an epistemological method that will lead one to the truth. Second, one must be sane, educated and willing to participate in the scientific community. Foucault laments that in the modern age "the truth cannot save the subject" (ibid. : 19) since there is no requirement that one modify one's life in order to access the truth that would in turn further modify that life. With the Cartesian moment, the philosopher's task is no longer defined in terms of care of the self, but is strictly in the purview of knowledge. As Foucault mentions in a later interview, in the post-Cartesian age, "I can be immoral and know the truth . . . Before Descartes, one could not be impure, immoral, and know the truth" (Foucault 1997f: 279).
The rest of The Hermeneutics olthe Subject describes the practices undertaken by the Greeks, the Hellenists and the early Christians in their quest to care for the self in order to obtain knowledge. 4 I will not explore them here because there are other chapters in this collection that will address them. However, I will remind the reader that there are discontinuities between the Greek, Hellenist and early Christian's respective understandings of the care of the self. For example, the Greeks saw care of the self as a pedagogical issue having to do with youths preparing to govern in the polis, whereas the Stoics saw care of the self as a medico-therapeutic method that covered one's entire lifespan. Of interest in this essay is the bigger archaeological shift between the period in which there was at least some expectation of a relationship between subjectivity and truth and our contemporary age, an age in which, as Foucault states in The Order a/ Things, "no moral- ity is possible" (1973: 328).
Truth-telling in antiquity
For several years prior to his death, Foucault was obsessed with the question of truth-telling as a moral activity. After the Cartesian moment,
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truth simply became an epistemological matter, a mere question of whether statements corresponded to facts about the world (or, if one is a coherentist, whether all the statements about the world can be held without contradiction). Scepticism, which in the ancient world had to do with the limits of human understanding, became the epistemologi- cal standard bearer and pacesetter. In order to have knowledge, one had to be able to overcome the threat of scepticism. Descartes suggests that the way around scepticism is method. In his Rules for the Direc- tion of the Mind and the Fourth Meditation, Descartes lays out a way to enumerate the parts of a problem correctly so that one can have a clear and distinct understanding. Nowhere in these rules will one find any moral requirements.
This Cartesian account of truth is quite different from what the Greeks called parrhesia and the Latins called libertas. In Fearless Speech, the transcripts of his 1983 lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, Foucault defines parrhesia as:
verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relation- ship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty . . . the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flat- tery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.
(2001: 12)
This personal relationship to truth is missing from modern thought, so perhaps a potential way to "return to morality" would be to investi- gate what parrhesia is, how it was used, and what hope there is for us in the modern age to reclaim it as a philosophical practice. Foucault begins his exploration of truth-telling in 1981 with the College de France lecture course Subjectivite et verite (not yet published). This theme marks the rest of his lecture courses before his death: The Hermeneutics ofthe Subject in 1982, Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres in 1983 (published in French, not yet translated into English), and Le Courage de la verite: Le government de soi et des autres II in 1984 (published in French, not yet translated into English).
Foucault claims that there are three ways in which ancient philoso- phy takes up parrhesia as its governing principle. First, ancient philoso- phy was not separate from how one was to live one's life. Foucault says that we should interpret this unity of thought and life as "the general framework of the parrhesiastic function by means of which life was traversed, penetrated, and sustained" (Foucault 2008b: 3 15). Parrhesia
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was key to the living of a philosophical life. The ancient thinkers con- cerned themselves not just with truth-telling (dire-vrai) but also with the true life (la vraie vie). The question of the true life, for the most part, is missing in the modern philosophical age.
Second, philosophy in the ancient period "never stopped addressing, in one way or another, those who governed" (ibid. : 3 1 6) . The relation- ship between philosophy and politics, Foucault argues, was a dominant feature of antiquity. As he states, "philosophy is a form of life; it is also a kind of office - at once both public and private - of political counsel" (ibid. : 317). Although there have been post-Cartesian thinkers who have offered their truth-telling abilities to those who govern, it is no longer considered a necessary part of the philosopher's job description. This absence of political counsel would be very strange to Plato, for example, whose Philosopher King serves as the paradigm for the just city in Republic.
Third, the ancient thinkers did not limit their work to the classroom. Any audience could be the audience of a philosophical discourse, and any location could become a philosophical classroom. Philosophy was a public enterprise, never a subject taught in school to a select band of people or a solitary armchair contemplation of thought experiments; its goal was to improve people's souls. The philosopher had "the courage to tell the truth to others in order to guide them in their own conduct"
(ibid. : 3 1 8). It is no surprise, then, that Socrates, upon being con- demned for doing philosophy and asked what his punishment should be, responds by suggesting that, in exchange for his public service, he should receive lunch every day for a year just like a victorious Olympic athlete (Apology 36d-e). It would be a fitting reward for everything he had philosophically done for Athens.
Foucault laments that modern philosophy does not have ancient philosophy's parrhesiastic features. He states that "modern Western thought, at least if we consider it as it is currently presented (as a scholastic or university subject), has relatively few points in common with the parrhesiastic philosophy [of the ancients]" (2008b: 318). It is curious that Foucault uses the appositive phrase "at least if we con- sider it as it is currently presented". Could there be a way of thinking of modern philosophy that might reopen the possibility of morality? Perhaps, but we will need to do some work first. If we want to return to morality, we will need to investigate parrhesia further and deter- mine if there is anything in our age that might serve as a good substi- tute for it.
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Telling the truth:parrhesia
In Fearless Speech Foucault highlights five important characteristics of parrhesia : frankness, truth, danger, criticism and duty. These char- acteristics will differentiate moral truth-telling from other forms of communication. We will address each in turn.
(a) Frankness. First, parrhesia is franc parler, or as we would say, "tell- ing it like it is". The parrhesiastes, the one who performs the act of parrhesia, does not use rhetoric; she simply reveals whatever is in her mind on a given subject. As Foucault describes it, "the speaker is sup- posed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks" (2001: 12). Because they worry too much about offending, most people often do not tell the truth; instead, they tell half-truths or flat-out lies. Frankness, however, shows the audience a couple of things: (i) that the speaker really believes what she is saying, and (ii) that the speaker believes in what she is saying enough that it should be said as if it were directly from her mind, unmediated by language.
Of note is that the truth-teller speaks for herself, completely reveal- ing her cards in the process. This differs, Foucault claims in the 1984 lectures at the College de France, from the prophet, who indeed tells the truth, but "does not speak in his own name. He speaks for another voice; his mouth serves as an intermediary for a voice which speaks from beyond" (2009: 16). The unmediated frankness of the truth- teller, compared to the prophet's mediated, representative speech, gives the parrhesiastes moral authority and culpability. The truth-teller can- not advise interlocutors to "not kill the messenger". She lives and dies on what is said: the message and the messenger are one and the same.
(b) TJ? uth. Frankness, however, is not sufficient for parrhesia. It is not enough that someone really believes that what they say is true; what they say must actually be true. As Foucault writes, the parrhesiastes "says what is true because he knows that it is true; and he knows that it is true because it really is true . . . his opinion is also the truth . . . there is always an exact coincidence between belief and truth" (2001: 14). There is no conflict between the mind of the parrhesiastes and her heart: she believes in the truth that she knows, believes in her knowl- edge of the truth, and knows that her beliefs are true. The truth is judged by the bare conviction of the speaker. It is this conviction that makes the parrhesiastes tell the truth (the really true) ; it is not a "cor- respondence" between "the world" and the statements made by the
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speaker. Scepticism is dismissed by Foucault as "a particularly modern [question] which . . . is foreign to the Greeks" (ibid. : 1 5 ) . So, although parrhesia requires that the truth-teller tell the truth in an "epistemic" sense, the importance is not on the epistemic fact that the truth was said; rather, the importance lies in the moral power of the truth-teller.
(c) Danger. However, frank speech, even when spoken with conviction, is not sufficient to classify an utterance as parrhesia. Parrhesia occurs when the truth puts the truth-teller in some kind of danger. In the face of danger, liars lie. The parrhesiastes, however, tells the truth, usually to a person who is more powerful than she, a person who knows that what the truth-teller says is true. Hence there is an element of courage in parrhesia. As Foucault tells us, "a grammar teacher may tell the truth to the children that he teaches, and indeed has no doubt that what he teaches is true. But in spite of this coincidence between belief and truth, he is not a parrhesiastes" (ibid. : 16). Simply put, there is no courage required to say that three is a prime number. A philosopher pointing out a tyrant's tyranny, however, is a different situation. The tyrant knows that he is a tyrant, so the philosopher is not saying something that the tyrant does not know. However, telling the tyrant that he is a tyrant puts the truth-teller in danger; nonetheless, although aware of the danger, the philosopher tells him anyway, and suggests ways for the tyrant to change his way of governing. In order for one to be a parrhesiastes, one must have something to lose in telling the truth. No risk, no parrhesia.
In the 1 9 8 4 lectures, Foucault reasserts that the parrhesiastes "is not the professor, the teacher, the how-to guy who says, in the name of tradition, techne" (2009: 25). Instead of techne, technical knowledge, the truth-teller proclaims ethos, a way of living one's life. This involves a risk unknown by the technician. The teacher knows no risk, Foucault claims, because he works in the context of shared values: heritage, common knowledge, tradition, friendship. The truth-teller, however, "takes a risk. He risks the relationship that he has with the one whom he addresses. In telling the truth, far from establishing a positive line of common knowledge, heritage, affiliation, recognition, and friend- ship, he can, to the contrary, provoke anger" (ibid. : 24). Truth-telling requires stepping outside of the alleged "shared values" held by the interlocutor.
This "stepping outside" will be the grounds for the critical dimension of parrhesia.
(d) Critique. Parrhesia has to be more than just frank statements stated that causes the truth-teller to be potentially endangered. Truth-telling in a moral sense requires that the truth be something that the hearer
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does not like. In other words, parrhesia must have a dimension of criticism. The truth told by the truth-teller must force, even if just for a moment, the interlocutor to examine himself. It is at this point that courage is required. Given that the recipient of parrhesia is usually in a superior position of power to the speaker, the recipient is tempted to unleash his power upon the truth-teller by punishing her, firing her, killing her, and so on. This is where most people fall short: afraid of the possible retaliation, the liar lies, converting what could be a moment of critique into a moment of flattery. The parrhesiastes frankly tells a critical, unflattering truth about the matter. Parrhesia is the opposite of self-interested, cowardly, unhelpful flattery. The parrhesiastes speaks the truth with frankness in the face of danger in order to help those for whom violence is the easier solution.
(e) Duty. So far we have described parrhesia in terms of frankness, conviction, danger, and criticism; what is missing is that which unites these principles. That connective feature is the sense of moral duty that accompanies the parrhesiastes. In the face of potential danger, the liar lies, and he justifies his action by appealing to the circumstances. This is a consequentialist response. But, akin to Kant, Foucault claims that parrhesia is the result of a moral decision to tell the truth, even if doing so is dangerous. The truth-teller "is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak, but he feels that it is his duty to do so . . . Parrhesia is thus related to freedom and to duty" (2001: 19). In order to tell the truth in the sense of parrhesia, one must be free to not tell the truth, either by lying or by saying nothing. To tell the truth requires that the truth-teller have an ethical relationship with herself. The parrhesiastes "risk[s] death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken . . . he prefers himself as a truth- teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself" (ibid. : 17). 5 Truth-telling is morally praiseworthy because it is done exactly when it would be easier not to do it.
This is what differentiates the truth-teller from the sage. In the 1 9 8 4 lectures, Foucault points out that although the sage is like the truth- teller in so far as there is a unity of messenger and message (unlike the prophet), "the sage . . . keeps his wisdom in retreat, or at least in an essential reserve. Basically, the sage is wise in and for himself, and he need not speak . . . nothing obligates him to distribute, teach, or manifest his wisdom" (2009 : 1 8 ) . The parrhesiastes, in contrast, is morally obli- gated to speak. She cannot keep the truth to herself; she must proclaim the truth - she must speak all of the truth to everyone to whom it is addressed. Parrhesia understood this way is a truth that cannot be kept
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hidden. The truth-teller un-conceals herself, the interlocutor, and the truth that is to be communicated. 6
Uses ofparrhesia in ancient philosophy
In the Berkeley lectures in 1983, Foucault describes the use ofparrhesia in three different arenas: community life, public life and personal life. Foucault refers to the Epicureans in order to illustrate the use of truth- telling in community life. In Epicurean communities, parrhesia was a collective, communal activity. At the heart of the communal use of truth-telling were the personal interviews done by advanced teachers. In these interviews, "a teacher would give advice and precepts to indi- vidual community members" (Foucault 2001: 113). There were also group confession sessions, "where each of the community members in turn would disclose their thoughts, faults, misbehavior, and so on . . . 'the salvation by one another"' (ibid. : 1 14) . In this communal model, parrhesia was used "in house" for the purpose of spiritual guidance, either privately or in open groups.
To illustrate the public use of parrhesia, Foucault turns to the Cyn- ics. The Cynics used truth-telling as a means of public instruction. Foucault highlights three truth-telling Cynic practices: critical preach- ing, scandalous behaviour and provocative dialogue. We will address each in turn.
The Cynics, unlike the Epicureans, spoke to large crowds, usually composed of people who were outside of their community. Foucault states that preaching "is still one of the main forms of truth-telling practiced in our society, and it involves the idea that the truth must be told and taught not only to the best members of the society, or to an exclusive group, but to everyone" (ibid. : 120). Cynics told the truth to anyone, anytime, anywhere. The need to speak out against the institu- tions of society (the favourite target of Cynics) on the larger public scale exemplifies parrhesia as frank, critical truth-telling done simply because "the truth has to be said", regardless of the risk.
The Cynics were the masters of frank risk-taking truth-telling. Scan- dalous behaviour, particularly personified in Diogenes the Cynic, was a public way to show the truth and the relationship one had to the truth. The most famous example of Diogenes involves Diogenes masturbating in the public square. When asked to give an account for his behaviour, Diogenes states that "he wished it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly" (ibid. : 122, quoting Diogenes Laertius, VI, 46; 69).
The point here is clear: if eating, the removal of hunger, is allowed in
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the public square, then surely the removal of sexual desire, which is just as much aphrodisia as eating and drinking, should be allowed in public. That one considers masturbation shameful is strange given that one does not consider eating and drinking shameful.
The third Cynic practice was the use of provocative dialogue. This is often depicted as dialogues between Diogenes and Alexander the Great. One example from the texts is that Diogenes told Alexander to move out of his way because Alexander was blocking the sun. Another example would be Diogenes calling Alexander a bastard. To say such a thing to the emperor, especially in public, is indeed provocative. From Diogenes' point of view, Alexander just is not so great! Foucault points out that "whereas Socrates plays with his interlocutor's ignorance, Dio- genes wants to hurt Alexander's pride" (ibid. : 126). In other words, the provocative dialogue is a unique variation of Socratic dialogue: by showing someone that they are not true to what they claim, the philosopher encourages the interlocutor to examine oneself and begin to take care of oneself.
Preaching, acting out and attacking pride: these were the three main categories of the public use of parrhesia performed by the Cynics. Foucault would have more to say about the Stoics in the 1984 lectures at the College de France. This is because, as Foucault states, "the Cynic parrhesiastic game is played at the very limits of the parrhesiastic con- tract. It borders on transgression because the parrhesiastes may have made too many insulting remarks" (ibid. : 127). 7 The Cynics reappear as examples for Foucault because they take truth-telling to its absolute limit; parrhesia is the modus operandi of the entire Cynic worldview. Perhaps no other group completely embodied parrhesia in their own persons in the way that the Cynics did.
The final arena for the use of parrhesia is in one's private life, includ- ing one's personal relationships. One needs truth-telling such that one is one's own interlocutor: pride and flattery are possible even with one's self. One needs parrhesia in order to stay away from self-deception. The group that best represents this use of truth-telling is the Stoics, although Foucault would later add early Christians to the list.
At the heart of Stoic life was self-examination. This self-examination is not the same as confession in the later Christian period. Instead, self- examination was more of an administrative activity. As Foucault notes, Seneca does not account for "sins" but:
mistakes . . . inefficient actions requiring adjustments between ends and means . . . The point of the fault concerns a practical error in his behavior since he was unable to establish an effective
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rational relation between the principles of conduct he knows and the behavior he actually engaged in. (Ibid. : 149)
Seneca is only keeping track of his errors because those errors are frus- trating his goal. If Seneca were to give up that goal, then there would be nothing to account for. In order to tell whether one is fulfilling one's goals, one must be able to give an honest, flattery-free account of oneself: this is the role of self-examination.
The second truth-telling practice that the Stoics used was self- diagnosis. Once again, Foucault warns us not to make self-diagnosis into what would later be thought of in terms of confession. Instead, self-diagnosis was a way to figure out where one's problem lies. Foucault reads from Seneca's "On the Tranquility of Mind", a letter in which Seneca responds to the self-diagnosis of Serenus, who had written to Seneca for moral advice. The self-diagnosis lays out Serenus' moral "symptoms", and leaves it to Seneca to make a moral "diagnosis". Serenus does this only because he wants tranquillity and needs help from Seneca on how to obtain it. When Serenus speaks of his "illness", he must be careful not to misrepresent himself, regardless of whether his description presents him in the most flattering light. In order for Seneca truly to help him, Serenus understands that he must say all tell the truth - about his life, his likes and his dislikes.
The third practice is self-testing. Foucault discusses Epictetus' method of testing representations and sorting them into the categories of those things that are in one's control and those things that are not in one's control. It is important, as with self-examination and self-diagnosis, to be frank, critical and truthful about this sorting. In so doing, the practitioner gains a truth about himself that is free from flattery and self-deception. As Foucault says,
The truth about the disciple emerges from a personal relation which he establishes with himself: and this truth can now be disclosed either to himself . . . or to someone else . . . And the dis- ciple must also test himself, and check to see whether he is able to achieve self-mastery. (ibid. : 164-5)
Upon deciding on self-mastery, the disciple must be able to examine himself in order to be able to disclose to himself whether he is work- ing towards self-mastery or not. Upon discovering any flaws in the plan or in its execution, the disciple diagnoses himself in order to give the master correct information in order to secure a correct "remedy" to flaws.
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A return to morality?
Epicureans, Cynics and Stoics: these Hellenic schools ofthoughtrepre- sent, as Foucault argues in 1 9 8 3 , "a genuine golden age in the history of care of the self" (2005a: 81). Although we are unable to "return" to these schools of thought owing to archaeological reasons, we can at least pose the question of how we as subjects became so divorced from truth as a practice of the self such that "subjectivity" and "truth" are merely placeholders for something now long gone. How can we return to morality? Can we reclaim truth as a moral activity, freed from mere epistemology?
We need to offer a few caveats. First, I am not suggesting that one can no longer take care of oneself through practices of the self. Weight Watchers, for example, employs many practices that would fit into the Stoicmodelofcareoftheself. 8 Otherexamplesincludethemartialarts, meditation and, given my proximity to the beach, surfing. We are still engaged in something like practices of the self, as other contributors to this volume well illustrate. Second, I am not suggesting that one cannot tell the truth in dangerous situations. There are whistleblowers who risk job security in the name of truth. Protesters are often willing (and plan) to get arrested for the sake of their cause. There is also something akin to the use of parrhesia in interventions and psychoanalysis. We indeed have practices like care of the self and parrhesia, but they are discontinuous with their older meaning.
Foucault argues that it is impossible in the modern period for prac- tices of the self to be of much use in helping one be a parrhesiastes and vice versa. The yogi, for example, will have a hard time claiming that doing yoga justifies her critique of the government (if she were even to offer such a critique). It would be difficult to understand that the government should believe her critique as true because of her moral character as a result of doing yoga. Additionally, how many people do yoga in order to gain the moral fortitude to access the truth and tell the truth to others? In the United States, yoga is done mostly for aesthetic purposes or for medical benefit. The spiritual dimension of yoga is often internal to the practitioner: stress release and better breathing. Yoga is not the action done in order to truly gain truth about the world; it is a relaxing form of exercise. This is not to suggest that exercise cannot be a practice of the self aimed at truth, but most people exercise for the sake of health and beauty - usually the latter - not for the sake of truth and knowledge. So we see a disconnect between truth and subjectivity here. Yoga, dieting and other practices of the self in today's society seem to have nothing to do with one's moral self. Yoga is done by the virtuous
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as expertly as the wicked, by the more intelligent as carefully as the less intelligent. One does not go to one's yoga instructor and seek solutions to serious problems; the yoga instructor is simply there to offer the class, not to live in community with the students.
In fact, when most people resolve for the New Year that they will "take better care of themselves", they usually always mean this in a strictly medical sense. One resolves to lose weight, lower their bad cho- lesterol, cut out junk food, and so on. In making those resolutions, one rarely adds to the list "become a morally better person by lowering my cholesterol". The modern period sees the body mechanically, so there is no automatic connection between one's moral self and the body as medical object. No student will believe that the knowledge taught by a given professor, for example, is true in virtue of the professor having a healthy body.
The more I discuss our modern "practices of the self", the clearer it seems that we do not "take care" of ourselves in the ancient sense at all. It might be best to say that we have self-disciplinary practices more than practices of the self per se. Therefore, our return to morality might entail being more self-conscious about how our self-disciplinary practices inform our desires to tell the truth. Let us resolve to be truth- tellers, and form ourselves in such a way that we live for the truth. But what is truth in today's world? Is it the kind of truth one should live or die for? We must therefore become more aware of what counts for truth at any moment. Perhaps the return to morality, the critique of truth and self-discipline is simply the Foucauldian project.
Notes
1. It is perhaps here that we see Foucault's greatest debt to Heidegger's "The Age of the World Picture" (Heidegger 1977: 1 15-54).
2. "Subjectivity and Truth" was a draft of his 1983 book The Care ofthe Self, the third volume of the The History ofSexuality (Foucault 1986).
3. Ofcourse,itneednotbeDescarteswhodidthis,butsincethatisthefigurethat most people would know, we go with him. Foucault does not ascribe agency to authors; therefore, we must be sure not to "blame" Descartes for the Cartesian moment we are about to describe.
4. Although Foucault runs out of time before giving a detailed account of early Christian practices, he gives many hints throughout the lecture course. His best accounts of early Christian (and later Christian) practices can be found in the essays "Technologies of the Self ", "Sexuality and Solitude" and "The Battle for Chastity" from the same period of Foucault's work (Foucault 1997c).
5. ImmanuelKant,MetaphysicsofMorals,Aldc 6:429,whereKantstatesthatour duty to tell the truth is not a duty to others but a duty to ourselves as a moral being.
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6. Foucault mentions in the 1984 lectures that parrhesia is not about "epistemologi- cal structures", but rather "des formes alethurgiques", forms of unconcealment (Foucault 2009: 5; see Heidegger 1996: ? 44).
7. Note that the theme of transgression, a Foucauldian theme from the 1960s, reappears here.