Floating through the void, we reach out for a hand that's not there... and if it is, we will wish we didn't reach out at all.
In an anonymous interview conducted in the Spring of 1980, Michel Foucault claimed Philosophy wasn’t so much the study of what is true or false but, rather, the study of how we should relate to that which is true (p. 327). Throughout this past week, I’ve explored the ethical work of Michele Foucault, and have come away with a better understanding of the man’s mind. On Monday, the 17th of April, I covered what I took away from Foucault’s discussions on the relationship between Power and Truth, and on Wednesday, the 19th of April, I reviewed his ethical model and biopolitics. Today, I will be exploring Foucault’s discussion on the development of the self and its relation to the state.
Throughout Foucault’s work, what we find is a heavy emphasis on the Hupomnēmata. The goal of this notetaking process was to develop, for the notetaker, a unified self in harmony with its components (p. 213). This developmental technique was a product of the mass introduction of reading and writing to the Classical, Western world. Ancient philosophers observed that too much reading without notetaking or writing led to Stultition (pp. 211-212). Stultition is identified by mental agitation, distraction, a capriciousness of opinion and desire, and mental or physical weakness; i.e., it produced chaos or disorder. The Hupomnēmata allowed men of ancient Greece and Italy to Manage their thoughts as if they were money-keepers or accountants of their minds.
This writing process was counterposed by the Correspondence. Rather than organizing a self, the Correspondence allowed an individual to develop a narrative for oneself, their correspondent, and others to look back on. Through this process, a kind of virtuous character can develop (pp. 215-216). These correspondences, for the longest time, served two goals, at least: they showed how one could improve the relationship between their body and soul (self) to improve their health, and to teach the importance of a mode of being, even a simple mode, for the development of character. In addition, the Correspondence helped to improve one’s memory and test one’s mental acuity (pp. 219-221). These correspondences heavily relied on a student of a school of thought, or technique, to be attached to a master or guide to whom he confessed himself and his day’s or life’s events. This master could reply with praise, scorn, advice, ridicule, or confirmation of their addresser’s actions and choices, and (if need be) help them get back on the right track. The student could send a letter to his master, who would reply to his student’s message, which the student would reply to again (to explain to the master how his master’s advice helped him, or not). Through this process, the correspondence emphasized the importance of one’s relation to his friend or master, enabling both to grow through their mutual and triangular communications.
As I have previously emphasized, these self-development techniques are a product of the ancient injunction posed by Socrates to Alcibiades: care for yourself. This injunction has a foundation in our political nature. We are animals of the polis or society. Our character, the character of political leaders, will reflect itself in the society we are stewards of or rule over. In this way, tyranny is not so much a product of Power per se but the product of Power that lacks the character to rule over his subjects appropriately. However, as Foucault suggests, the ancient conception of self-development faded away through the Middle Ages.
On Wednesday, I touched on the difference between Exomologesis and Exagoreusis and pointed out that both resulted in the annihilation of the self. The former resulted in the annihilation of the self for their sinful actions while the latter required submission to an authority and the abandonment of all self-desire. Under a pastoral framework, this made the community subjects of a higher authority. In time though, this mode of living diminished, particularly around the time of Descartes. With the emergence of Descartes, the ethical framework established by the pastoral mode lost its need to establish the truth through right character. Through sensory observation and empirical methods, anyone could know or claim to have access to the truth. In other words, the products of vérité or savoir were no longer dependent on one’s good character. I.e., technologies could be produced for any desire Man could imagine, even his most base and sordid desires. In response, we get Kant’s claim to a universal ethical mode wherein universal knowledge, acquired through ethical practice, produces a universally ethical Man (p. 280.)
These Enlightenment philosophers pose a major problem for the ethical mode. Essentially, they take the ethical practices that developed from Socratic, Platonic, Stoic, and Epicurean Philosophy that then were appropriated and reconstituted for a Medieval, pastoral society out of their context and apply them for purposes that they were not intended for and which had no relationship to their use. By dissociating the ethical mode from its relational contexts, we were given the dandies of the 19th Century, the cult of Personality found in Hollywood from 1980 to the mid-2010s, and (more generally) varieties of the self based on knowledge produced without any ethical mode. That is, our society promotes an ethical mode that emphasizes self-aggrandizement rather than self-discovery; the latter preserves the relational quality that forces the self to construct forms for itself that are limited by its environment; the former, as I see it, is an ethical mode that deludes its practitioners into thinking that the environment will conform to their existential forms (p. 311).
In response to this, Foucault suggests we should take a historical-political perspective, engaging in genealogical and archeological analyses of the ethical technologies that produced the current circumstances we find ourselves within (p. 315), even if tentatively. One of the benefits of this method is that it grounds any potential ethical mode in historical realities, avoiding the magical thinking produced by connaissance of knowledge (savoir) sans experiential or relational knowledge (vérité) (p. 316). “[H]istorical ontology,” Foucault states, “of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical… [for] we know from experience that the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to produce the overall programs of another society, of another way of thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has led only to the return of the most dangerous traditions.” This method also forces us to confront the reality of particular, perennial problems (p. 316). By forcing us to confront recurring problematics, things that stop us in our tracks, I think this also benefits us by showing us that Man has an essential nature and is always held in check by certain qualities of himself or his environment.
I have reservations about this method, however. While it is true that, on occasion, historical-political analyses of ethical modes can provide us with new technologies, if those technologies are the product of a people, in specific circumstances, surrounded by specific people, who were affected by unique, historical problems, those technologies and their specific effect are – in a sense – incommunicable. The ethical techniques they can provide us can shed light on how we arrived at where we are today perhaps. Still, an exercise that emphasizes the application of ancient techniques without a recognition of the fact that they are techniques of another time and people seems to me to be a practice of mental onanism. Through this process of technical necromancy, we are prone to confusing our purposes for their ethical technologies with our own. More to the point, they cannot help us move forward from yesterday. How, then, if we remain in the past, are we to mature?
I think maturity can come from an acceptance of the present. In the present, what Foucault sees our circumstances as and what we must see our circumstances as are overlapping game sets. Foucault does not argue this gamification of society is only about power relations (p. 296); in fact, he says the polar opposite. Nor does he attribute Power to evil. Instead, as I previously stated, Power’s evil tendencies are a product of a diminished ethical character (p. 300). Power can be an effective game player, an ethical game player if he understands how he relates to himself, his family, his occupation, his occupation’s relation to his city, his city’s relation to his nation and his place in it, his nation’s relation to other nations and his place in it, and his relation to his nation’s ideologies, laws, and customs and how he can properly inhabit them or dismantle them, at least. Thus, as I recognized from my exploration of de Jouvenel’s work, Power must become a factor of one’s ethical self-development; he, too, has a place within one's virtuous character.
The problem posed by Foucault’s recognition of the Enlightenment paradigm’s inability to provide Modern Man with an ethical mode of being is that, with a nearly infinite set of domains (savoir) and fields (connaissance) of knowledge, Man can create various forms of being that service his personal interests. Again, he can develop these ethical modes and define their ethicality only for himself. The integral ingredient found in the correspondence technique, the relationship between oneself, his friend or master, and their community, is no longer there. What difference do any of the truths he finds from his inquisitorial techniques matter if he cannot integrate them into a mode of being that is good for himself and those he associates with? Thus, the truth can no longer liberate Man because it is not necessarily tied to an ethical framework. Without an ethical mode to implement the truths he finds, Man becomes a slave to his passions. Modern Man scratches his unresolvable itch for meaning with facts, and with those facts, since he has no ēthos, he descends further into meaninglessness.
What does this mean for the state and Power? When we look back on the 20th Century, there is no lack of men whose character caused them to consume their entire society in their name. Unfortunately, the mass’s meaninglessness gave them the impetus to do so. With a void of meaning, the masses could be subjugated by the state and Power; i.e., made the state’s and Power’s subject or slave. Once appropriated, the scientific and enlightenment techniques become a utility function. The state uses this acquired and theoretical knowledge to subjugate and coordinate its population. If knowledge acquisition is about pleasure, a thing done for its own sake, what stops the state from using that knowledge to please itself and satiate its interests? What principle can these rational, empirical inquisitors stand on to halt the state’s maniacal advances? What is to stop the state or sovereign from using knowledge to dominate and obliterate the identities of millions of people in the name of progress, to build war machines that rip up the earth and tear down the heavens, to invent technologies that manifest the Sun’s power or subsume whole cities beneath the ocean, to conquer the world in the name of universal truth and goodness? What binds Power when nothing but one’s interests or the ability to manipulate the law binds oneself? The collapse of the old ethical paradigm, in progress and reason’s name, enabled the state and sovereign to more easily subjugate and march its citizens to war; to engage in covert, imperialistic conquests. Man's technical crafts become perverted by the state to preserve its authority and command its citizens. Art and Media can be transfigured into a technique for Power to shape the minds of his citizens. Everything made to free Man becomes warped by Power to turn Man into a slave because Man no longer has a genuine basis to assert that this specific subjugation and objectification is unethical; it's all a function of Power's or the state's law, which is inevitably captured by both. With the collapse of the old ethical paradigm, Man became nothing more than a sack of meat: a resource for Power to passively consume as it pleased.
What I think every reader should take away from Foucault’s ethical work is his emphasis on creative self-development vis-à-vis a community willing to acknowledge the contemporary circumstances of their existence for what they are. Foucault’s ethical model demands truthful expression (verdica dicta). However, it also demands that this truthful expression be forged through, at least, communication with the self and recognition of one's environment and its components. Thus, to develop a contemporary ethical model, the sensible right must acknowledge circumstances for what they are and be in communication with people, on their side, willing to make them the best they can be. They must focus on the tekhnē tou biou. They must, in truth and community, not in their or their community’s truth, facing the contemporary conditions of their existence, make their life a form of art.
Bibliography
Foucault, M. and Rabinow, P (translator) (1997). Michele Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth. Editions Gallimard.
