The theme of subjectivity in Foucault's lecture series L'hermé neutique du sujet

Foucault Studies

Volumn , Issue 2, 2005, Pages 75-96

  Harrer, Sebastian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BONN   (Germany)

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EID: 33744795573     PISSN: None     EISSN: 18325203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.22439/fs.v0i2.861     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. The notion of "aesthetics of existence" refers to an understanding of ethics that derives from the philosophies of post-classical Greece and the Roman Empire, and these are the same sources that Foucault uses for his re-interpretation. The idea it refers to was called "ethics" in Antiquity, in the sense of a personal "ethos" (cf. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame (Indiana): University of Notre Dame Press, 2nd edition 1984), chap. 4)
2. The idea of "Art", which is implied by the term "aesthetics", was always understood as an "imitation of life" in ancient philosophy (cf. Aristotle, Poetics, 1. 1447a).
3. Hence, life itself cannot be interpreted as an "Art" in the sense of "aesthetics". The ancient notion of "tekhnê tou biou", i.e. The "art of living", bears a different use of the term, as in "the art of woodcarving", (cf. Julia Annas, "Virtue as a Skill," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (1995): 227-243).
4. While the idea behind it clearly derives from ancient thought, the notion of "aesthetics of existence", which plays on the ambiguity of the word "art", is a Foucaldian term. Recently, another aspect of this notion has been pointed out by Joseph Tanke (cf. his "Cynical aesthetics: A theme from Michel Foucault's 1984 lectures at the Collège de France," Philosophy Today 46, 2 (2002): 170- 184). Tanke reports Foucault's comparison of the way of life of the early Cynics to that of contemporary artists, pointing out that the forms of likening one's life to one's thinking involved in both of them are essentially the same. This is an idea that may also be implied to Foucault's notion of the "aesthetics" of existence.
5. Cf. Peter Dews, "The Return of the Subject in the Late Foucault," Radical Philosophy 51 (1989): 37-41;
6. Jerold J Abrams, "Aesthetics of self-fashioning and cosmopolitanism: Foucault and Rorty on the art of living," Philosophy Today 46, 2 (2002): 185-192;
7. Ian Burkitt, "Technologies of the Self: Habitus and Capacities," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32, 2 (2002): 219-237.
8. Cf. Thomas Flynn, who holds that the philosophy of the late Foucault "fills in a gap in 'structuralist' historiography, namely, the absence of the individual, responsible agent", p. 538 of his "Truth and Subjectivation in the later Foucault," Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985): 531-540;
9. furthermore: Tina Besley, "Social Education and Mental Hygiene: Foucault, disciplinary technologies and the moral constitution of youth," Educational Philosophy and Theory 34, 4 (2002): 419-433;
10. James D. Faubion, "Toward an Anthropology of Ethics: Foucault and the Pedagogies of Autopoiesis," Edith Wyschogrod (ed.), The Ethical (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003): 146-165;
11. also: Rob Devos, "The Return of the Subject in Michel Foucault," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76, 2 (2002): 255-280: "In processes of self-constitution the subject is not only target and effect. The individual turns himself into a subject. Here we find an active 'I' at work, who does not coincide with himself, but who objectifies himself and forms himself into a subject" (p. 278);
12. Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living. Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley/ Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 180.
13. Famous critics of Foucault's philosophy, some of which remain unreconciled even with his late period, include: Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 1987), chap. 9 and 10;
14. Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 1991), chap. 4.6;
15. Thomas McCarthy, "The Critique of Impure Reason: Foucault and the Frankfurt School," ibid., Ideals and Illusions: On Deconstruction and Reconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 1991);
16. Michael Walzer, "The Politics of Michel Foucault," David Hoy (ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986);
17. Charles Taylor, "Foucault on Freedom and Truth," Foucault: A Critical Reader.
18. Cf. Flynn, "Truth and Subjectivation in the later Foucault".
19. Richard Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 1992), 154.
20. Amy Allen, "The anti-subjective hypothesis: Michel Foucault and the death of the subject," The Philosophical Forum 31, 2 (2000): 113-130.
21. Another interesting contribution to the debate - which would actually render the debate itself superfluous - was made by Frédéric Gros, the editor of Foucault's lecture series on L'Herméneutique du Sujet (cf. his "Sujet moral et soi éthique chez Foucault," Archives de Philosophie 65, 2 (2002): 229-237). Gros does not think that what has come to be called Foucault's "philosophy of the subject" was part of Foucault's own philosophy. Rather, we should take notions such as "technologies of the self" and "relation to self" as a "reading grid for historical phenomena" (229: "grilles de lecture de phénomènes historiques"). However, numerous statements made by Foucault in essays or interviews suggest that his interest in the "technologies of the self" goes beyond a purely historical one.
22. "Le retour de la morale," Dits et Ecrits (= DE) IV, no. 354, 697: "Je suis en train de relire les manuscrits que j'ai écrits pour cette histoire de la morale et qui concernent le début du christianisme [.] En relisant ces manuscrits abandonnés depuis longtemps, je retrouve le même refus du style des Mots et les Choses, de l'Histoire de la Folie ou de Raymond Roussel. Je dois dire que ça me fait problème, parce que cette rupture ne s'est pas produite progressivement. C'est très brusquement, dès 1975-1976, que je me suis tout à fait départi de ce style, dans la mesure où j'avais en tête de faire une histoire du sujet, qui ne soit pas celle d'un événement qui se serait produit un jour et dont il aurait fallu raconter la genèse et l'aboutissement." (Note: this and all subsequent translations are mine, S.H.).
23. Cf. also: "Le sujet et le pouvoir," DE IV, no. 306, 222sq.
24. and: L'usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, 2001 [orig. published in 1984]), 12 et seq.
25. Cf. Wilhelm Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst: die Frage nach dem Grund und die Neubegründung der Ethik bei Foucault (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), 82;
26. and: James W. Bernauer, Michel Foucault's Force of Flight: Toward an Ethics for Thought (New Jersey/ London: Humanities Press, 1990), 123.
27. Michel Foucault, L'herméneutique du sujet, Cours au Collège de France (1981-1982), édition établie sous la direction de François Ewald et Alessandro Fontana, par Frédéric Gros (Paris: Seuil/ Gallimard, 2001).
28. L'Usage des Plaisirs, 33-37.
29. Christoph Menke, "Two Kinds of Practice: On the Relation between Social Discipline and the Aesthetics of Existence," Constellations 10, 2 (2003): 199-210 (208 et seq.).
30. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 173: "l'exercice de la discipline suppose un dispositif qui contraigne par le jeu du regard".
31. Reported in Seneca, Epistulae, 32, 1.
32. Richard Lynch also argues for a continuity in Foucault's conception of power (cf. his "Is power all there is? Michel Foucault and the 'omnipresence' of power relations," Philosophy Today 42, 1 (1998): 65-70). However, his analysis focuses on power relations in the "social landscape". As I will argue in this paper, the full scope of Foucault's conception of power is revealed only by interpreting it as a quasi-metaphysical notion.
33. On Foucault's analytics of power, cf. also: Hinrich Fink-Eitel, "Michel Foucaults Analytik der Macht," Friedrich A. Kittler (ed.), Austreibung des Geistes aus den Geisteswissenschaften. Programme des Poststrukturalismus (Paderborn et al.: Schöningh, 1980): 38-78;
34. and: Roger Deacon, "An analytics of power relations: Foucault on the history of discipline," History of the Human Sciences 15, 1 (2002): 89-117.
35. The term is drawn from: Kirsten Hebel, "Dezentrierung des Subjekts in der Selbstsorge. Zum ästhetischen Aspekt einer nicht-normativen Ethik bei Foucault," G. Gamm, G. Kimmerle (eds.), Ethik und Ästhetik: nachmetaphysische Perspektiven (Tübingen: Edition Diskord, 1990): 226-241.
36. Foucault explicitly refers his own model to Nietzsche's theory, which he calls "l'hypothèse de Nietzsche", Michel Foucault, "Il faut défendre la société", Cours au Collège de France (1975-1976), édition établie sous la direction de François Ewald et Alessandro Fontana, par Mauro Bertani et Alessandro Fontana (Paris: Seuil/ Gallimard, 1997), 17.
37. "Nietzsche, la généalogie, l'histoire," DE II, no. 84, 138: "pièce à pièce à partir de figures qui lui sont étrangères".
38. Hence, Schmid calls Foucault's theory of subjectivation an "exoteric theory of subjectivity" (Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 248 et seq.).
39. Cf.: Hubert Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (University of Chicago Press, second edition, 1983), 143 et seq.
40. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: PUF, 1973), 45: "Toute force est en rapport avec d'autres, soit pour obéir, soit pour commander. Ce qui définit un corps est ce rapport entre des forces dominantes et des forces dominées."
41. "Il faut défendre la société", 39.
42. Deleuze, Foucault, 131: "forme est un composé de rapports de forces".
43. Cf. L'Herméneutique du Sujet, 56.
44. Newman calls this the "fictional division" inside the subject while involved in ascetic practices (cf.: Robert J. Newman, "Cotidie meditare. Theory and Practice of the meditatio in Imperial Stoicism," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, part II, vol. 36. 3: 1473-1517 (1480)).
45. Menke, "Two Kinds of Practice...," 208 et seq.
46. There is rich evidence and documentation of Foucault's interest in issues of education and education policy from very early on in his career. In 1965, Foucault ran for the post of Vice Director of Tertiary Education of the Humanities in the French Ministry of Education (DE I, "Chronologie," 27 [January 1965]);
47. in the end, he was not elected, allegedly because of a campaign that exploited his sexual orientation (ibid. [May 1965]). Theoretical evidence in this issue can be found above all in a text from 1984, where Foucault takes a retrospective view on his activities in that field ("L'éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté," DE IV, no. 356, 727: "Prenons aussi quelque chose qui a été l'objet de critiques souvent justifiées: l'institution pédagogique. Je ne vois pas où est le mal dans la pratique de quelqu'un qui, dans un jeu de vérité donné, sachant plus qu'un autre, lui dit ce qu'il faut faire, lui apprend, lui transmet un savoir, lui communique des techniques; le problème est plutôt de savoir comment on va éviter dans ces pratiques - où le pouvoir ne peut pas ne pas jouer et où il n'est pas mauvais en soi - les effets de domination qui vont faire qu'un gosse sera soumis à l'autorité arbitraire et inutile d'un instituteur, un étudiant sous la coupe d'un professeur autoritaire, etc. Je crois qu'il faut poser ce problème en termes de règles de droit, de techniques rationnelles de gouvernement et d'êthos, de pratique de soi et de liberté").
48. Cf. for example, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aurora, book five, no. 553.
49. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Foreword, no. 2.
50. L'herméneutique du sujet, 79.
51. Cf. Wolfgang Detel, Macht, Moral, Wissen, Foucault und die klassische Antike (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), 121. It is quite interesting that this term itself does not appear in Foucault. It is evident that "dietetics" as part of a philosophical way of life can only belong to prophylactic medicine, since it is concerned with structuring human life with the goal of development, growth and self-fulfilment, and not with treating illnesses that can never be predicted with certainty. To use the stoic terms, we can say that the object of prophylactic medicine, i.e. ,the structuring of our way of life, "depends on us", whereas the object of therapeutic medicine, i.e., illnesses, "does not depend on us".
52. Le souci de soi, 138.
53. Spiritual and ascetic exercises were a means commonly employed in moral education in Antiquity. Numerous treatises on spiritual exercises seem to have been in circulation (cf. Diogenes Laertios, Vitae VII, 166 et seq.).
54. However, very few have been preserved. Prominent examples are the treatises "peri askêseôs" ("on exercise") by Epictetus (Diatribae, III, 12)
55. and Musonius (Musonii reliquiae, ed. Hense, Leipzig 1905).
56. Foucault discusses the link between the Delphic dictum of "Know thyself!" ("gnôthi seautôn") and the Hellenistic principle of "care of the self" (L'Herméneutique du Sujet, 18: "epimeleia heautou"; Plato uses the term "epimeleia tês psykhês" in Apologia 29d-30c). According to him, the former is subordinated to the latter. By trying to transform our being through ascetic practices, we may achieve a kind of "harmony" between our acts and our thoughts. Foucault calls this a "feedback-effect" of truth ("effet de retour"). In Antiquity, this phenomenon was not limited to ethics only. Ancient epistemology was linked with spirituality. If we seek access to a certain truth, we may be required to perform spiritual exercises, and to work in order to transform ourselves and our epistemological structure. Only afterwards will certain truths be accessible to us. The modern concept of epistemology, which is that of scientific method, is completely different. What is required for knowledge of the truth, is a set of methodological rules and a standard configuration of the epistemological subject (i.e., one must not be intoxicated, dreaming, or affected by mental delusion etc.). Philosophers of our time have often been puzzled by what is called the Socratic "moral intellectualism", i.e., the idea that no one who actually knows the good will act wrong. It is often taken to imply a statement about human nature, and this causes perplexity. However, we can also interpret this statement in the line of an "ascetic epistemology": if we take for granted that at the time of Socrates, "true knowledge" did not merely mean computational registration of given data, but appropriation of a truth through ascetic and spiritual practices, then the idea of "moral intellectualism" does not seem so odd any more. Habitualised practical truth is directly linked to action, in the sense that the subject has exercised this implication through meditation, training and ascesis. The purportedly puzzling statement is really only a remark about spirituality in virtue ethics.
57. Pierre Hadot, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique? (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 414 et seq.
58. Foucault (L'Herméneutique du Sujet, 309) calls the "logoi boêthoi" "action induction schemes".
59. Paul Rabbow (Seelenführung. Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike (München, 1954), 124) compares them to a constant "ringing in your ear" (this is how he translates the Greek metaphor of "enaulon").
60. Alexander Nehamas (The Art of Living, 95 et seq.)
61. seems to endorse a similar view. However, Pierre Hadot is highly critical of this "quasi-behaviouristic" interpretation. In his study on Marcus Aurelius (Pierre Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 53), he writes that the "logoi" are rather condensed versions of longer demonstrations. They serve as mnemonic devices meant to bring the soul into the same disposition it was in while grasping the truth of the original demonstration. And this state of disposition is naturally believed to motivate to action.
62. Foucault mentions hypomnêmata in L'herméneutique du sujet, 343. A more detailed analysis can be found in: "Ecriture de soi," DE IV, no. 329: 418-423.
63. Pierre Hadot, "Réflexions sur la notion de 'culture de soi'," Michel Foucault philosophe (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 263, criticizes Foucault's view of writing as a "technology of the self". He claims that according to a philologically faithful interpretation of the ancient sources, the exercise of writing was instead meant to approximate the subject to a logos of the "kosmos" or of a universal human community. Thus, writing is rather a technique of self-dilation than of self-concentration.
64. Cf. Cicero, De oratore, 1. 61. 260: "Demosthenes perfecit meditando, [my italics, S.H.] ut nemo planius esse locutus putaretur." (Demosthenes achieved through exercise, that nobody else could be considered a more even-measured orator.)