The End of a Line: Care of the Self in Modern Political Thought
Abstract
:1. Part I
1.1. Morality: Code, Conduct, and Ethics
[Ethics is a process] in which the individual delimits that part of himself that will form the object of his moral practice, defines his position relative to the precept he will follow, and decides on a certain mode of being that will serve as his moral goal. And this requires him to act upon himself, to undertake to know himself, to monitor, test, improve, and transform himself.([18], p. 25, translation modified)
1.2. Care of the Self
To start with I would like to take up a notion about which I think I said a few words last year.6 This is the notion of “care of oneself” [“souci de soi-même”]. With this term I’ve tried my best to translate a very complex, rich, and frequently employed Greek notion which had a long life throughout Greek culture: the notion of epimeleia heautou, translated into Latin with, of course, all the flattening of meaning which has so often been denounced or, at any rate, pointed out, as cura sui. Epimeleia heautou is care of oneself [souci de soi-même], attending to oneself, being concerned about oneself, etc.([5], p. 2, translation modified)
- The purpose of the care of the self is to transform the self. To use two of Foucault’s favorite expressions, care of the self is a “poetics” and “cultivation” of the self. Within this tradition, the self is not seen as a fixed substance or pre-given essence. It is a material to be crafted in light of an end or telos. As Foucault states, the purpose of the practices of care of the self is to “change, purify, transform, and transfigure oneself.” ([5], p. 11) Ancient ethics does more than modify conduct. Its true goal is to revolutionize our ethos and way of being in the world, right down to our desires, perceptions, ideals, pursuits, and self-understanding.
- The object of the care of the self is the self. Foucault is emphatic that for the ancients, the self—or more precisely, one’s own self—is the definitive object of the care of the self. “Under no circumstances,” he warns, “can this activity, this practice of the care of the self, be seen as purely and simply preliminary and introductory to the care of others. It is an activity focused solely on the self and whose outcome, realization, and satisfaction, in the strong sense of the word, is found only in the self. … One takes care of the self for oneself, and this care finds its own reward in the care of the self. In the care of the self one is one’s own object and end.” ([5], p. 177). The stridency of these remarks should not be misunderstood. Foucault is not saying that care of the self is by nature individualistic or egoistic, as if it must take place at the expense of other people or by ignoring them. He claims, rather, that in ancient morality the care of the self is a self-sufficient moral end. It is not preparatory labor for care of others.
- The mode of the care of the self is voluntary. Foucault is equally emphatic that care of the self is not prescribed by law or rule. To the contrary, it presupposes the freedom and choice of the individual undertaking it. “Whatever the effects of austerity, renunciation, prohibition, and pernickety prescriptiveness [the care of the self] may induce, it is not and basically never was the effect of obedience to the law”. ([5], p. 317). To speak plainly, I do not try to lead a certain lifestyle or practice certain exercises because I have been commanded by someone else. I do so because I want to transform and improve myself. Caring for oneself is, Foucault insists, “a choice about existence made by the individual. People decide for themselves whether or not to care for themselves.” ([4], p. 271) It may sound odd to hear Foucault speak in such voluntarist tones, but he is firm that care of the self is “without relation to the juridical per se.” ([4], p. 260). Self-initiated subjectification is the non-prescriptive core of this moral system.
2. Part II
2.1. Two Interview Comments
[Question:] Today we no longer speak of sexual liberation in vague terms; we speak of women’s rights, homosexual rights, gay rights, but we don’t know exactly what is meant by “rights” and “gay.” …[Foucault:] I think we should consider the battle for gay rights as an episode that cannot be the final stage. For two reasons: first because a right, in its real effects, is much more linked to attitudes and patterns of behavior than to legal formulations. There can be discrimination against homosexuals even if such discrimination is prohibited by law.… That in the name of respect for individual rights someone is allowed to do as he wants, great! But if what we want to do is to create a new way of life [mode de vie], then the question of individual rights is not pertinent.([39], pp. 157–58)
[Question:] Could the problematic of the care of the self be at the heart of a new way of thinking about politics, of a form of politics different from what we know today?[Foucault:] I admit that I have not gone very far in this direction, and I would very much like to come back to more contemporary questions to try to see what can be made of all this in the context of the current political problematic. But I have the impression that in the political thought of the nineteenth century—and perhaps one should go back even farther, to Rousseau and Hobbes—the political subject was conceived of essentially as a subject of law [sujet de droit], whether natural or positive. On the one hand, it seems to me that contemporary political thought allows very little room for the question of the ethical subject. I don’t like to reply to questions I haven’t studied. However, I would very much like to come back to the questions I examined through ancient culture.([28], p. 294)
2.2. The Juridical Age
I think that Western societies have known an age of, how could you say, a juridical age, a juridical period, which started from the twelfth or thirteenth century and lasted till the beginning of the nineteenth century with great political constitutions, the great civil and penal codes of the nineteenth century, and that those juridical structures are now going down and disappearing. Anyway, from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the hope, the dream of all Western societies has been that it could be possible to govern people through laws, through courts, through juridical institutions. And the idea of writing constitutions with human rights and so on, the project of writing codes, which would be either universal for humanity, or at least universal inside the nation, was the dream of a juridical way of government. The coincidence between the art of governing and juridical structures has been I think one of the great trends of this long period—from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century.([40], pp. 98–99)
If it is true, in fact, that every “morality,” in the broad sense, comprises the two elements I have just mentioned: codes of conduct and forms of subjectivation [i.e., ethics]; if it is true that they can never be entirely dissociated, though they may develop in relative independence from one another—then we should not be surprised to find that in certain moralities the main emphasis is placed on the code, on its systematicity, its richness, is capacity to adjust to every possible case and to embrace every area of conduct. With moralities of this type, the important thing is to focus on the instances of authority that enforce the code, that require it to be learned and observed, that penalize infractions; in these conditions, subjectivation occurs basically in a quasi-juridical form, where the moral subject refers himself to a law, or set of laws, to which he must submit at the risk of committing offenses that may make him liable to punishment. It would be quite incorrect to reduce Christian morality—one probably should say, “Christian moralities”—to such a model; and yet it may not be wrong to think that the organization of the penitential system at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and its development up to the eve of the Reformation, brought about a very strong “juridification”—more precisely, a very strong “codification”—of the moral experience.([18], pp. 29–30, emphasis added, translation modified)
3. Conclusions
Conflicts of Interest
References
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- 3The Use of Pleasure [18] and The Care of the Self [19] were simultaneously published in 1984. Foucault delivered lectures on ancient philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain in 1981 (Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling [20]) and Berkeley in 1983 (titled Fearless Speech by the publisher), in addition to his annual lectures at the Collège de France, The Hermeneutics of the Subject (1981–1982) [5], The Government of Self and Others (1982–1983) [21], and The Courage of Truth (1983–1984) [22]. Among the essays and interviews from this period on the care of the self, the most significant are “On the Genealogy of Ethics” [4] and “What is Enlightenment?” [23]. For an overview see [6,7,24,25,26].
- 4This Introduction was first published independently as “Usage des plaisirs et techniques de soi” [27] in Le Débat in 1983. Reprinted in Dits et écrits II.
- 5([28], p. 263). Foucault is not alone in approaching the topic of morality through the lens of the self’s relation to itself. Other prominent accounts in English include [29,30], and especially Stanley Cavell’s later work on moral perfectionism. Within Foucault’s own milieu, we could name Paul Veyne, Pierre Hadot, Marcel Detienne, and Georges Dumézil, all of whom are specialists of classical history and philosophy. What distinguishes Foucault’s interpretation of the practices of the self is his framing of the self’s relation to itself in terms of care for oneself.
- 6As Frédéric Gros (editor of this lecture course) notes, Foucault was mistaken on this point. He did not mention the care of the self in the lectures of the previous year.
- 7Another difficulty with the English “care of the self” is that Foucault’s phrase in French is “souci de soi,” not “souci du soi.” A more literal translation would be “care of self.” Dropping the definite article helps to avoid any connotation of an essential self, which is a notion Foucault criticized over his whole career. Keeping this caveat in mind, I will continue to use “care of the self” as it is the standard translation.
- 8In his attention to ancient practices of the self, Foucault follows in the footsteps of the French classicist and philosopher, Pierre Hadot. It is no exaggeration to say that Hadot’s work on spiritual exercises in antiquity is the main influence on Foucault’s later period. See [31].
- 11([5], p. 9). In “Ethics as Ascetics” [25] Davidson argues that Foucault addresses the practices of ancient sexuality in order to elaborate his conception of ethics. McGuishin is adept at showing why, for Foucault, care of self remains necessary today. See Part 2 of Foucault’s Askesis [6], “Care of the Self and Parrhesia in the Age of Reason.”
- 12([22], p. 2). The word “trip” is in English in the original.
- 13I note that much of Foucault’s work, especially from his middle period, is critical of a juridical conception of power. He particularly criticizes the belief that social and political life is governed by legal codes and state authority when, in fact, other mechanisms of power are at work (e.g., disciplinary, hermeneutic, and biopolitical). See ([42], pp. 51–59; [8], pp. 13–20).
- 15The issue of the role of law and juridical institutions in what I have called “political” government is a debated topic in Foucault studies, with some scholars arguing that Foucault expels laws from his analysis of power (see [45]), and others claiming that his conception of law is illimitable (see [46]). For Foucault’s concepts of government, governance, and governmentality as political techniques, see [47,48].
- 17Robert Hurley’s translation of this line is misleading. Foucault writes, “le sujet moral se rapporte à une loi, ou à un ensemble de lois, auxquels il doit se soumettre sous peine de fautes qui l’exposent à un châtiment.” Hurley translates this as, “the ethical subject refers his conduct to a law, or set of laws, to which he must submit at the risk of committing offenses that may make him liable to punishment.” There are two problems here. First, Hurley translates “le sujet moral” as “the ethical subject” even though for Foucault “moral” is the more comprehensive category. Ethics is a part of morality, not the other way around. And second, Foucault does not say that the subject refers his or her “conduct” to a law but, more generally, that the subject refers him or herself to a law.
- 20Perhaps this is why of all the many strands of modern political thought Foucault names only anarchism (and Max Stirner in particular) as having given a central role to ethics and the aesthetics of the self: it alone is not based on the subject of law ([5], p. 251).
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Lefebvre, A. The End of a Line: Care of the Self in Modern Political Thought. Genealogy 2017, 1, 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1010002
Lefebvre A. The End of a Line: Care of the Self in Modern Political Thought. Genealogy. 2017; 1(1):2. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1010002
Chicago/Turabian StyleLefebvre, Alexandre. 2017. "The End of a Line: Care of the Self in Modern Political Thought" Genealogy 1, no. 1: 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy1010002