Foucault, critique and rights

Critical Horizons

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 267-287

  Patton, Paul ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Critique; Externalism; Foucault; Governmentality; Liberalism; Power; Rights

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748969537     PISSN: 14409917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156851605775009456     Document Type: Review

References (55)

1. M. Foucault, "What is Critique?" in What is Enlightenment? ed. J. Schmidt, Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1996, 382-398, p. 384.
2. M. Foucault, "Kant on Enlightenment and Revolution," trans. C. Gordon, Economy and Society, vol. 15, no. 1, 1986, pp. 88-89.
3. M. Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" in Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 1, Ethics, ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley and others, New York, The New Press, 1997, p. 315.
4. This essay was first published in ed. P. Rabinow, The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon, 1984.
5. Foucault, "What is Critique?", p. 393;
6. "What is Enlightenment?", p. 315.
7. Foucault, "What is Critique?", p. 395.
8. Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?", p. 316.
9. A. Gewirth, "The Epistemology of Human Rights" in Human Rights, eds. E. Paul, F. Miller and J. Paul, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984.
10. D. Darby, "Two Conceptions of Rights Possession," Social Theory and Practice, vol. 27, no. 3, 2001, p. 387.
11. See also Darby, "Unnatural Rights," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 1, 2001, pp. 49-82;
12. "Rights Externalism," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. LXVIII, no.3, 2004, pp. 620-634;
13. R. Martin, A System of Rights, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993;
14. L.W. Summer, The Moral Foundation of Rights, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987.
15. Foucault, "What is Critique?," p. 386.
16. M. Foucault, "The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will" in Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 1, Ethics, ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley and others, New York, The New Press, 1997, pp. 157-162.
17. M. Foucault, "The Risks of Security," in Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 3, Power, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley and others, New York, The New Press, pp. 365-381.
18. M. Foucault, "Confronting Governments: Human Rights," in Essential Works Volume 3, pp. 474-475.
19. For more detailed comment in this speech, see P. Patton "Power and Right in Nietzsche and Foucault," International Studies in Philosophy, vol. XXXVI, no. 3, 2004, pp. 54-58.
20. M. Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Essential Works, Volume 3, p. 341.
21. F. Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 67.
22. Nietzsche's analysis of the origin of rights and duties is analysed further in Patton, "Power and Right in Nietzsche and Foucault," pp. 47-51.
23. See F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 49-50 (Para 93: "Of the rights of the weaker"). In his lecture of 21 January 1979, Foucault points to another scenario in which rights are conceded to the governed in the interest of a form of governmental reason articulated in terms of political economy. Here, individual freedom is conceived in terms of the necessary independence of the governed rather than in terms of a set of fundamental juridical rights.
24. See Naissance de la Biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France 1978-1979, Paris, Gallimard/Seuil, 2004, p. 43.
25. Nietzsche, Daybreak, p. 67.
26. Nietzsche, Daybreak, p. 67.
27. I. Shapiro, The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, suggests a quadripartite structure of rights along four axes: subject, substance, justification and purpose of the relevant entitlement. Like Foucault's characterisation of regimes of exercising power over others or over the self, this schema allows us to envisage change along each of the four axes. Thus, we can see that the disappearance of many of the rights of husbands over wives came about in part because of the political empowerment of woman, but also because of challenge to the beliefs about sexual difference which sustained social practices in relation to the family and sexual division of labour. Or we can see the (still contested) emergence of rights to abortion and suicide, as in part as a consequence of changing views about the nature and value of human life.
28. B. Slattery, "Understanding Aboriginal Rights," The Canadian Bar Review, vol. 66, no. 3, 1987, p. 737.
29. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley, London, Allen Lane, Penguin, 1979, pp. 100-101.
30. M. Foucault, "Society Must be Defended": Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-76, trans. D. Macey, New York, Picador & London, Penguin, 2003, p. 37.
31. See also the first lecture of Foucault's 1978-9 course Naissance de la Biopolitique, pp. 13-15 where he summarises the manner in which, from the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, law conceived in various ways served as the universal principle for establishing limits to the power of the State.
32. Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended," p. 52.
33. Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended," pp. 49-50.
34. Sumner, The Moral Foundation of Rights, p. 12.
35. For example, in relation, to the recent history of 'Indigenous rights' lawyers and historians often speak of the acknowledgment that Aboriginal people possess certain rights or the recognition of those rights by the law. See J. Chesterman and B. Galligan, Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 193, 199.
36. J. Feinberg, cited in. L. Hinman, Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, Second Edition, Fort Worth, Texas, Harcourt Brace, 1998, p. 269.
37. Sumner, The Moral Foundation of Rights, p. 13.
38. Gewirth, "The Epistemology of Human Rights," p. 000
39. In the sense that I use the term here, the principle of terra nullius refers to an organising principle of Australian, law and society rather than a legal doctrine. It refers to all of the ways in which the laws, culture and society of Indigenous peoples were regarded as inferior to European ways.
40. Martin, A System of Rights, p. 41.
41. Darby, "Two Conceptions of Rights Possession," pp. 407-408;
42. "Unnatural Rights," p. 68.
43. Martin, A. System of Rights, p. 78.
44. Re Southern Rhodesia 1919 AC 211, pp. 233-234.
45. Foucault, "Confronting Governments: Human Rights," Essential Works, Volume 3, p. 475.
46. Foucault, "Confronting Governments: Human Rights," Essential Works, Volume 3, p. 474.
47. Essential Works, Volume 3, p. 474. Ibid.
48. Foucault, Naissance de la Biopolitique, p. 6.
49. "In other words, in clear and simple terms, this procedure consists of departing from the rights of man in order to arrive at the delimitation of governmentality in passing through the constitution of the sovereign," Foucault, Naissance de la Biopolitique, pp. 40-41.
50. Foucault, Naissance de la Biopolitique, p. 45.
51. Foucault, Naissance de la Biopolitique, p. 43.
52. Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended," p. 39.
53. Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended," pp. 39-40.
54. R. Mourad, "After Foucault: A New Form of Right," Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 29, no. 4, 2003, pp. 453, 456.
55. Foucault, "The Risks of Security," Essential Works, Volume 3, p. 366.