foucault_texts

Primary Texts

Foucault.info | Primary Texts

Repository of texts written by Michel Foucault. Additional texts available online are listed in external links

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[DIR] Parent Directory

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[DIR] archaeologyOfKnowledge/

- The Archeology of Knowledge

[DIR] disciplineAndPunish/

- Discipline and Punish

[DIR] heteroTopia/

- HeteroTopia

[DIR] manet/

- Notes sur Manet (French)

[DIR] parrhesia/

- Discourse & Truth, the seminar>

[DIR] parrhesiasts/

- Diogenes The Cynic

[DIR] pierreRiviere/

- I, Pierre Riviere

[DIR] whatIsEnlightenment/

- What Is Enlightenment ?

[TXT] foucault.authorFunction.en.html [TXT] foucault.entretien1975.fr.html

7.4K The Author Function (1970), Excerpt 60K Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit (1975)

[TXT] foucault.entretienDangereux.fr.html

9.1K Entretien « Vous êtes dangereux » (1983)

[TXT] foucault.eyeOfPower.en.html

4.8K The Eye of Power (1974), Excerpt

[TXT] foucault.hypoMnemata.en.html

5.4K Hypomnemata (1984), Excerpt

[TXT] foucault.omnesEtSingulatim.en.html [TXT] foucault.power.en.html [TXT] foucault.prefaceAntiOedipe.fr.html

69K Omnes et Singulatim (1979) 4.5K The Subject and Power (1982), Excerpt 12K Préface à Anti-Œdipe (1977)

[TXT] foucault.prefaceHistoireFolie.fr.html

6.8K 2nd préface à "Histoire de la folie" (1972)

[TXT] foucault.thisIsNotaPipe.en.html

4.4K This is Not a Pipe (1968), Excerpt

[TXT] foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en. html

33K

Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

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file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:16 πμ

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Foucault.info | The Archaeology of Knowledge

Excerpts from Foucault's essay about discourses, 1969.

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[DIR] Parent Directory [TXT] foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro. html

Size Description 42K Introduction

[TXT] foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o1.html

28K Chapter 1

[TXT] foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o2.html

24K Chapter 2

[TXT] foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o3.html

27K Chapter 3

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/archaeologyOfKnowledge/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:18 πμ

Discipline and Punish

Foucault.info | Discipline and Punish

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[TXT] foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticis..>

86K Discipline: Panopticism

[TXT] foucault.disciplineAndPunish.torture.en..>

14K Punish: Torture

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foucault.uberwachenUndStrafen.panOptism..> 68K PDF file

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:19 πμ

Heterotopias

Foucault.info | Heterotopias

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[DIR] Parent Directory [SND] foucault.espacesAutres.fr. mp3

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1.4M Audio extract 12min. Des espaces autres (1967)

[TXT] foucault.heteroTopia.en.html

28K On Other Spaces (1967)

[TXT] foucault.heteroTopia.fr.html

36K Des espaces autres (1967)

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:19 πμ

Conference sur Manet

Foucault.info | Conference sur Manet

Conference sur Manet. Tunis, 20 Mai 1971.

Notes et illustrations.

L'interêt de Michel Foucault pour la peinture se traduit dans des analyses diverses, notamment le premier chapitre des "Mots et les choses", consacré aux Ménines de Velasquez ainsi qu'un article sur Fromanger en 1975 (D&E III, p707). Le manuscrit "Le noir et la couleur" que Foucault préparait sur Manet n'ayant jamais été publié, reste seulement disponible la conférence que Foucault donna sur Manet au club Tahar Haddad à Tunis en 1971, dont voici quelques notes agrémentées des reproductions correspondantes.

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[DIR] Parent Directory [TXT] foucault.manet.00.intro.fr. html

Size Description 4.9K introduction

[TXT] foucault.manet.01.fr.html

2.1K Page I

[TXT] foucault.manet.02.fr.html

2.1K Page II

[TXT] foucault.manet.03.fr.html

1.7K Page III

[TXT] foucault.manet.04.fr.html

2.0K Page IV

[TXT] foucault.manet.05.fr.html

1.8K Page V

[TXT] foucault.manet.06.fr.html

2.3K Page VI

[TXT] foucault.manet.07.fr.html

2.8K Page VII

Edité pour Foucault.info Mars 2002, les notes parfois lacunaires ont été adaptées pour une lecture plus aisée, il est donc possible que des écarts apparaissent avec le texte original de la conférence, disponible sur bande audio à l'IMEC, Paris.

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/manet/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:20 πμ

Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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[DIR] Parent Directory

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[DIR] Lecture-01/

- The Meaning of the Word Parrhesia

[DIR] Lecture-02/

- The Evolution of the World Parrhesia

[DIR] Lecture-03/

- Parrhesia in the Tragedies of Euripides

[DIR] Lecture-04/

- Parrhesia and Democratic Institutions

[DIR] Lecture-05/

- Practices of Parrhesia

[DIR] Lecture-06/

- Parrhesiastic Games

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foucault.discourseAndTruth. pdf

[TXT] remarks.conclusions.html

585K Download the unabridged text in PDF 600 Ko 9.4K Concluding Remarks to the Seminar

Ed. by Joseph Pearson in 1985 :" The text was compiled from tape-recordings made of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley in the Fall Term of 1983. The lectures were given as part of Foucault's seminar, entitled "Discourse and Truth".

Since Foucault did not write, correct, or edit any part of the text which follows, it lacks his imprimatur and does not present his own lecture notes.

What is given here constitutes only the notes of one of his auditors. Altough the present text is primarily a verbatim transcription of the lectures, repetitive sentences or phrases have been eliminated, responses to questions have been incorparated--whenever possible--into the lectures themselves, and numerous sentences have been revised --all in the hope of producing a more readable set of notes."

Reed. in 1999 : This text was typed during a research trip in Paris, the footnotes and bibliography added by J.Pearson are missing.

Available in photocopy and audiotapes. [BdS nº D213.] (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University, 1985), also at IMEC, Paris.

- Dutch translation: Parresia (Amsterdam: Krisis, 1989). - Newly published "Fearless Speech" (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:20 πμ

Parrhesiasts

Foucault.info | Parrhesiasts

Truth-telling as an activity was one of Michel Foucault's last theme of research. The problematization of truthtelling or parrhesia during Antiquity was the main subject of the seminar he gave at Berkeley in 1983. In parallel, Foucault has given two series of lessons at the College de France untitled "le courage de la verite"--the courage of truth-telling-- describing the life and ethics of truth-tellers or 'parrhesiasts' with a long portrait of Diogenes the Cynic as a professional truth-teller with appropriate techniques. Since then, cynicism has been rehabilitated as a philosophy and analysed in numerous publications.

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[TXT] foucault.diogenes.en. html

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34K The Cynic Philosophers

[TXT] foucault.diogenes.fr.html 13K La vie cynique

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesiasts/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:20 πμ

Pierre Rivière

Foucault.info | Pierre Rivière

The foreword to the book I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother... and an interview with Foucault about the book.

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[DIR] Parent Directory [TXT] foucault.pierreRiviere.foreword.en. html

[TXT] foucault.pierreRiviere.interview.en. html

Size Description 16K Foreword 11K Interview

file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/pierreRiviere/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:21 πμ

What Is Enlightenment ?

Foucault.info | What Is Enlightenment ?

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[TXT] foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.

54K Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?

[TXT] foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html

49K Foucault's unabridged article

[TXT] foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.ru.html

43K Текст на русском языке

[TXT] kant.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html

26K Kant: Qu'est-ce que les Lumieres?

[TXT] kant.wasIstAufklarung.de.html

21K Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

[TXT] kant.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html

17K What Is Enlightenment ?

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file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/whatIsEnlightenment/index.html19/5/2005 10:18:21 πμ

The Author Function (1970), Excerpt

Foucault.info | The Author Function (1970), Excerpt

From Foucault, Michel "What is an Author?", translation Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977. pp.124-127.

In dealing with the "author" as a function of discourse, we must consider the characteristics of a discourse that support this use and determine its differences from other discourses. If we limit our remarks only to those books or texts with authors, we can isolate four different features.

First, they are objects of appropriation; the form of property they have become is of a particular type whose legal codification was accomplished some years ago. It is important to notice, as well, that its status as property is historically secondary to the penal code controlling its appropriation. Speeches and books were assigned real authors, other than mythical or important religious figures, only when the author became subject to punishment and to the extent that his discourse was considered transgressive. In our culture and undoubtably in others as well discourse was not originally a thing, a product, or a possession, but an action situated in a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and unlawful, religious and blasphemous. It was a gesture charged with risks before it became a possession caught in a circuit of property values. But it was at the moment when a system of ownership and strict copyright rules were established (toward the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressive properties always intrinsic to the act of writing became the forceful imperative of literature. It is as if the author, at the moment he was accepted into the social order of property which governs our culture, was compensating for his new status by reviving the older bipolar field of discourse in a systematic practice of transgression and by restoring the danger of writing which, on another side, had been conferred the benefits of property.

Secondly, the "author-function" is not universal or constant in all discourse. Even within our civilization, the same types of texts have not always required authors; there was a time when those texts which we now call "literary" (stories, folk tales, epics and tragedies) were accepted, circulated and valorized without any questions about the identity of their author. Their anonymity was ignored because their real or supposed age was a sufficient guarantee of their authenticity. Text, however, that we now call "scientific" (dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine or illness, the natural sciences or geography) were only considered truthful during the Middle Ages if the name of the author was indicated. Statements on the order of "Hippocrates said..." or "Pliny tells us that..." were not merely formulas for an argument based on authority; they marked a proven discourse. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a totally new conception was developed when scientific texts were accepted on their own merits and positioned within an anonymous and coherent conceptual system of established truths and methods of verification. Authentication no longer required reference to the individual who had produced them; the role of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and, where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denote a specific theorem or proposition, a strange effect, a property, a body, a group of elements, or a pathological syndrome.

At the same time, however, "literary" discourse was acceptable only if it carried an author's name; every text of poetry or fiction was obliged to state its author and the date, place, and circumstance of its writing. The meaning and value attributed to the text depended upon this information. If by accident or design a text was presented anonymously, every effort was made to locate its author. Literary anonymity was of interest only as a puzzle to be solved as, in our day, literary works are totally dominated by the sovereignty of the author. (Undoubtedly, these remarks are far too categorical. Criticism has been concerned for some time now with aspects of a text not fully dependent upon the notion of an individual creator; studies of genre or the analysis of recurring textual motifs and their variations from a norm ther than author. Furthermore, where in mathematics the author has become little more than a handy reference for a particular theorem or group of propositions, the reference to an author in biology or medicine, or to the date of his research has a substantially different bearing. This latter reference, more than simply indicating the source of information, attests to the "reliability" of the evidence, since it entails an appreciation of the techniques and experimental materials available at a given time and in a particular laboratory).

The third point concerning this "author-function" is that it is not formed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual. It results from a complex operation whose purpose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Undoubtedly, this construction is assigned a "realistic" dimension as we speak of an individual's "profundity" or "creative" power, his intentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.authorFunction.en.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:18:22 πμ

The Author Function (1970), Excerpt

Nevertheless, these aspect of an individual, which we designate as an author (or which comprise an individual as an author), are projections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way of handling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extract as pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we practice.

In addition, all these operations vary according to the period and the form of discourse concerned. A "philosopher" and a "poet" are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of an eighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modern novelist. (...)

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Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit (1975)

Foucault.info | Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit (1975)

Inédit extrait d'une série d'entretiens que Roger-Pol Droit a eus avec Michel Foucault au mois de juin 1975, quelques semaines après la publication de « Surveiller et punir ». Le Point 01/07/04 - N°1659 p.82

Roger-Pol Droit : Vous n'aimez pas qu'on vous demande qui vous êtes, vous l'avez dit souvent. Je vais quand même essayer. Souhaitez-vous qu'on vous nomme historien ?

Michel Foucault : Je suis très intéressé par le travail que font les historiens, mais je veux en faire un autre.

Doit-on vous appeler philosophe ?

Pas non plus. Ce que je fais n'est aucunement une philosophie. Ce n'est pas non plus une science à laquelle on pourrait demander les justifications ou les démonstrations qu'on est en droit de demander à une science.

Alors comment vous définiriez-vous ?

Je suis un artificier. Je fabrique quelque chose qui sert finalement à un siège, à une guerre, à une destruction. Je ne suis pas pour la destruction, mais je suis pour qu'on puisse passer, pour qu'on puisse avancer, pour qu'on puisse faire tomber les murs.

Un artificier, c'est d'abord un géologue. Il regarde les couches de terrain, les plis, les failles. Qu'est-ce qui est facile à creuser ? Qu'est-ce qui va résister ? Il observe comment les forteresses sont implantées. Il scrute les reliefs qu'on peut utiliser pour se cacher ou pour lancer un assaut.

Une fois tout cela bien repéré, il reste l'expérimental, le tâtonnement. On envoie des reconnaissances, on poste des guetteurs, on se fait faire des rapports. On définit ensuite la tactique qu'on va employer. Est-ce la sape ? Le siège ?

Est-ce le trou de mine, ou bien l'assaut direct ? La méthode, finalement, n'est rien d'autre que cette stratégie. « Qu'est-ce que c'est, être fou ? Qui en décide ? Depuis quand ? Au nom de quoi ? » Votre première offensive, si je puis dire, c'est, en 1961, « Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique ». Tout est singulier dans cet ouvrage : son sujet, sa méthode, son écriture, ses perspectives. Comment l'idée de cette enquête vous estelle venue ?

Au milieu des années 50, j'ai publié quelques travaux sur la psychologie et la maladie mentale. Un éditeur m'a demandé d'écrire une histoire de la psychiatrie. J'ai pensé à écrire une histoire qui n'apparaissait jamais, celle des fous eux-mêmes. Qu'est-ce que c'est, être fou ? Qui en décide ? Depuis quand ? Au nom de quoi ? C'est une première réponse possible.

Il y en a d'autres ?

J'avais aussi fait des études de psychopathologie. Cette prétendue discipline n'apprenait pas grand-chose. Alors naissait cette question : comment si peu de savoir peut-il entraîner tant de pouvoir ? Il y avait de quoi être stupéfait. Je l'étais d'autant plus que j'ai fait des stages dans les hôpitaux, deux ans à Sainte-Anne. N'étant pas médecin, je n'avais aucun droit, mais étant étudiant et non pas malade, je pouvais me promener. Ainsi, sans jamais avoir à exercer le pouvoir lié au savoir psychiatrique, je pouvais tout de même l'observer à chaque instant. J'étais à la surface de contact entre les malades, avec lesquels je discutais sous prétexte de faire des tests psychologiques, et le corps médical, qui passait régulièrement et prenait des décisions. Cette position, qui était due au hasard, m'a fait voir cette surface de contact entre le fou et le pouvoir qui s'exerce sur lui, et j'ai essayé ensuite d'en restituer la formation historique.

Il y avait donc, de votre part, une expérience personnelle de l'univers psychiatrique...

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Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit (1975)

Elle ne se limite pas à ces années de stage. Dans ma vie personnelle, il se trouve que je me suis senti, dès l'éveil de ma sexualité, exclu, pas vraiment rejeté, mais appartenant à la part d'ombre de la société. C'est tout de même un problème impressionnant quand on le découvre pour soi-même. Très vite, ça s'est transformé en une espèce de menace psychiatrique : si tu n'es pas comme tout le monde, c'est que tu es anormal, si tu es anormal, c'est que tu es malade. Ces trois catégories : n'être pas comme tout le monde, n'être pas normal et être malade, sont tout de même très différentes et se sont trouvées assimilées les unes aux autres. Mais je n'ai pas envie de faire mon autobiographie. Ce n'est pas intéressant.

Pourquoi ?

Je ne veux pas de ce qui pourrait donner l'impression de rassembler ce que j'ai fait en une espèce d'unité qui me caractériserait et me justifierait, en donnant sa place à chacun des textes. Jouons plutôt, si vous voulez, au jeu des énoncés : ils viennent comme ça, on repoussera les uns, on acceptera les autres. Je crois qu'on devrait lancer une question comme on lance une bille au flipper : elle fait tilt ou elle ne fait pas tilt, et puis on la relance, et de nouveau on voit... « Il fallait prendre des sciences à peine formées, contemporaines, [...] et tenter de comprendre quels sont leurs effets de pouvoir. » La bille ricoche donc. Ce qui vous intéressait, c'étaient déjà les relations entre savoir et pouvoir ?

Je trouvais surtout paradoxal de poser le problème du fonctionnement politique du savoir à partir de sciences si hautement élaborées que les mathématiques, la physique et la biologie. On ne posait le problème du fonctionnement historique du savoir qu'à partir de ces grandes sciences nobles. Or j'avais sous les yeux, avec la psychiatrie, de légères pellicules de savoir à peine formées qui étaient absolument liées à des formes de pouvoir que l'on pouvait analyser.

Au fond, au lieu de poser le problème de l'histoire des mathématiques, comme l'avait fait Tran Duc Thao, ou comme le faisait Jean-Toussaint Desanti, au lieu de poser le problème de l'histoire de la physique ou de la biologie, je me disais qu'il fallait prendre des sciences à peine formées, contemporaines, avec un matériau riche, puisque précisément elles nous sont contemporaines, et tenter de comprendre quels sont leurs effets de pouvoir. C'est finalement cela que j'ai voulu faire dans « Histoire de la folie » : reprendre un problème qui était celui des marxistes, la formation d'une science à l'intérieur d'une société donnée.

Pourtant, les marxistes ne posaient pas du tout, à cette époque, le problème de la folie, ou celui de l'institution psychiatrique...

J'ai même compris plus tard que ces problèmes étaient jugés dangereux, à plus d'un égard, du côté des marxistes.

C'était d'abord violer la grande loi de la dignité des sciences, cette hiérarchie encore positiviste, héritée d'Auguste Comte, qui place en premier les mathématiques, puis l'astronomie, etc. S'occuper de ces sciences moches, un peu visqueuses, que sont la psychiatrie ou la psychologie, ce n'était pas bien !

Surtout, en faisant l'histoire de la psychiatrie, en tentant d'analyser son fonctionnement historique dans une société, je mettais le doigt, absolument sans le savoir, sur le fonctionnement de la psychiatrie en Union soviétique.

Je n'avais pas en tête le lien des partis communistes à toutes les techniques de surveillance, de contrôle social, de repérage des anomalies.

C'est pourquoi, d'ailleurs, s'il y a eu beaucoup de psychiatres marxistes, dont certains étaient ouverts et intelligents, ils n'ont pas inventé l'antipsychiatrie. Ce sont des Anglais un peu mystiques qui ont fait ce travail. Les psychiatres marxistes français faisaient fonctionner la machine. Ils ont sans doute mis en question un certain nombre de choses, mais, dans l'histoire du mouvement antipsychiatrique, leur rôle est tout de même relativement limité.

Vous voulez dire à cause de leur lien profond à un certain maintien de l'ordre ?

Oui. Un communiste, en 1960, ne pouvait pas dire qu'un homosexuel n'est pas un malade. Il ne pouvait pas dire non plus : la psychiatrie est liée, dans tous les cas, de bout en bout, à des mécanismes de pouvoir qu'il faut critiquer. « Vers les années 1965-1968, [...] c'était dur de n'être pas marxiste. »

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Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit (1975)

Les marxistes ont donc réservé un mauvais accueil à ce livre...

En fait, ce fut un silence total. Il n'y a pas eu un seul marxiste pour réagir à ce livre, ni en pour ni en contre.

Pourtant, ce bouquin s'adressait d'abord à ces gens qui se posaient le problème du fonctionnement de la science. On peut se demander, rétrospectivement, si leur silence n'était pas lié au fait qu'en toute innocence, donc en toute bêtise, j'avais soulevé un lièvre qui les embarrassait.

Il existait encore une raison plus évidente et simple au désintérêt des marxistes, c'est que je ne me servais pas de Marx, explicitement et massivement, pour conduire l'analyse. Pourtant, à mon sens, l'« Histoire de la folie » est au moins aussi marxiste que bien des histoires des sciences écrites par des marxistes.

Plus tard, vers les années 1965-1968, au moment où le « retour à Marx » produisait les effets non seulement théoriques, mais aussi pratiques que vous connaissez bien, c'était dur de n'être pas marxiste, c'était dur d'avoir écrit tant de pages sans qu'il y ait, à un seul endroit, la petite phrase élogieuse sur Marx à laquelle on aurait pu se raccrocher... Hélas, j'avais écrit trois petites phrases sur Marx qui étaient détestables ! Alors, ce fut la solitude, et aussi les injures...

Vous avez éprouvé à ce moment le sentiment d'être seul ?

Je l'ai ressenti bien avant, en particulier après la publication de l'« Histoire de la folie ». Entre le moment où j'ai commencé à poser ce type de problème concernant la psychiatrie et ses effets de pouvoir et le moment où ces questions ont commencé à rencontrer un écho concret et réel dans la société, il s'est écoulé des années. J'avais l'impression d'avoir allumé la mèche, et puis on n'avait rien entendu. Comme dans un cartoon, je pianotais en attendant la détonation, et la détonation ne venait pas !

Vous imaginiez véritablement votre livre comme une bombe ?

Absolument ! J'envisageais ce livre comme une espèce de souffle vraiment matériel, et je continue à le rêver comme ça, une espèce de souffle faisant éclater des portes et des fenêtres... Mon rêve, ce serait un explosif efficace comme une bombe et joli comme un feu d'artifice.

Et votre « Histoire de la folie » a bien été perçue très vite comme un feu d'artifice, mais avant tout littéraire.

Cela vous a déconcerté ?

C'était une sorte de chassé-croisé : je m'étais adressé plutôt à des politiques, et je n'ai été d'abord entendu que par des gens qui étaient considérés comme des littéraires, en particulier Blanchot et Barthes. Mais il est vraisemblable qu'ils avaient, à partir même de leur expérience littéraire, une sensibilité à un certain nombre de problèmes que les politiques, eux, n'avaient pas. Qu'ils aient réagi me paraît finalement être le signe qu'ils étaient, à l'intérieur même de leur pratique essentiellement littéraire, plus profondément politiques que ceux qui avaient le discours marxiste pour coder leur politique.

J'en reviens aux histoires biographiques ! Heureusement, elles touchent un peu plus que ma biographie. Quand j'ai vu des gens que j'admirais beaucoup, comme Blanchot et Barthes, porter de l'intérêt à mon livre, j'ai éprouvé à la fois de l'émerveillement et un peu de honte, comme si, sans le vouloir, je les avais dupés. Car ce que je faisais était pour moi tout à fait étranger au champ de la littérature. Mon travail était directement lié à la forme des portes dans les asiles, à l'existence des serrures, etc. Mon discours était lié à cette matérialité-là, à ces espaces clos, et je voulais que les mots que j'avais écrits traversent des murs, fassent sauter des serrures, ouvrent des fenêtres !

Vous dites cela en riant...

Il faut bien y mettre un peu d'ironie... Ce qui est ennuyeux, dans les interviews, c'est que le rire ne passe pas !

Rien n'interdit de l'indiquer !

Evidemment, mais quand on met entre parenthèses « rire », vous savez bien que ça ne donne pas cette sonorité d'une phrase qui se perd en rire... « Il faut que le livre fasse plaisir à ceux qui le lisent. » file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (3 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

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Revenons sur la question de l'écriture. Vous dites qu'« Histoire de la folie » n'est pas une oeuvre littéraire à vos yeux. Pourtant, son écriture et son style ont été tout de suite remarqués. Cela vaut aussi pour vos autres livres.

On vous lit pour la nouveauté et l'acuité des analyses, mais aussi par plaisir. Il y a un style Michel Foucault, des effets de plume presque à chaque page. Ce n'est tout de même pas un hasard. Pourquoi dites-vous que vous n'êtes pas un écrivain ?

C'est très simple. Je crois qu'il faut avoir une conscience artisanale dans ce domaine. De même qu'il faut bien faire un sabot, il faut bien faire un livre. Cela vaut d'ailleurs pour n'importe quel paquet de phrases imprimées, que ce soit dans un journal ou une revue. Pour moi, l'écriture n'est rien d'autre que cela. Elle doit servir au livre. Ce n'est pas le livre qui sert cette grande entité, si sacralisée maintenant, que serait « l'écriture ».

Vous me dites que j'emploie souvent un certain nombre de contorsions stylistiques qui semblent prouver que j'aime bien le beau style. Eh bien, oui, il y a toujours une espèce de plaisir, bassement érotique peut-être, à trouver une jolie phrase, quand on s'ennuie, un matin, à écrire des choses pas très drôles. On s'excite un peu, en rêvassant, et brusquement on trouve la jolie phrase qu'on attendait. Ça fait plaisir, ça donne un élan pour aller plus loin. Il y a de cela, évidemment.

Mais il y a aussi le fait que, si on veut qu'il devienne un instrument dont d'autres pourront se servir, il faut que le livre fasse plaisir à ceux qui le lisent. Ça me paraît être le devoir élémentaire de celui qui livre cette marchandise ou cet objet artisanal : il faut que ça puisse faire plaisir ! « Je considère mes livres comme des mines, des paquets d'explosifs. » Double plaisir, donc : de l'auteur, du lecteur...

Absolument. Que des trouvailles ou des astuces de style fassent plaisir à celui qui écrit, et à celui qui lit, je trouve ça très bien. Il n'y a aucune raison que je me refuse ce plaisir, de même qu'il n'y a pas de raison que j'impose de s'ennuyer à des gens dont je souhaite qu'ils lisent mon livre. Il s'agit de parvenir à quelque chose d'absolument transparent au niveau de ce qui est dit, avec tout de même une espèce de surface de chatoiement qui fasse qu'on ait plaisir à caresser le texte, à l'utiliser, à y repenser, à le reprendre. C'est ma morale du livre.

Mais ce n'est pas, encore une fois, « de l'écriture ». Je n'aime pas l'écriture. Etre écrivain me paraît véritablement dérisoire. Si j'avais à me définir, à donner de moi une définition prétentieuse, si j'avais à décrire cette espèce d'image qu'on a à côté de soi, qui à la fois ricane et puis vous guide malgré tout, alors je dirais que je suis un artisan, et aussi, je le répète, une sorte d'artificier. Je considère mes livres comme des mines, des paquets d'explosifs... Ce que j'espère qu'ils sont !

Dans mon esprit, ces livres ont à produire un certain effet, et pour cela il faut mettre le paquet, pour parler vulgairement. Mais le livre doit disparaître par son effet même, et dans son effet même. « L'écriture » n'est qu'un moyen, ce n'est pas le but. « L'oeuvre » n'est pas le but non plus ! De sorte que remanier un de mes livres pour l'intégrer à l'unité d'une oeuvre, pour qu'il me ressemble ou pour qu'il ressemble aux livres qui viendront ensuite, ça n'a pour moi aucun sens.

Vous refusez d'être un auteur ?

Dès que vous écrivez, même si c'est sous votre nom d'état civil, vous vous mettez à fonctionner comme quelqu'un d'un peu autre, un « écrivain ». Vous établissez, de vous-même à vous-même, des continuités et un niveau de cohérence qui ne sont pas exactement ceux de votre vie réelle. Un bouquin de vous renvoie à un autre bouquin de vous, une déclaration de vous renvoie à tel geste public de vous... Tout cela finit par constituer une sorte de néoidentité qui n'est pas identique à votre identité d'état civil, ni même à votre identité sociale. D'ailleurs, vous le savez très bien, puisque vous voulez protéger votre vie dite privée.

Vous n'admettez pas que votre vie d'écrivain ou votre vie publique interfère totalement avec votre vie privée. Vous établissez entre vous, écrivain, et les autres écrivains, ceux qui vous ont précédé, ceux qui vous entourent ou qui vous suivront, des liens d'affinités, de parenté, de cousinage, d'ascendance, de descendance qui ne sont pas ceux de votre famille réelle.

Ce n'est pas ainsi que je vois mon travail. J'imaginerai plutôt mes livres comme des billes qui roulent. Vous les file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (4 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

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captez, vous les prenez, vous les relancez. Et si ça marche, tant mieux. Mais ne me demandez pas qui je suis avant d'utiliser mes billes pour savoir si elles ne vont pas être empoisonnées, ou si elles ne sont pas bien sphériques, ou si elles ne vont pas dans le bon sens. En tout cas, ce n'est pas parce que vous m'aurez demandé mon identité que vous saurez si ce que je fais est utilisable.

Ecrire n'est-il pas pour vous, malgré tout, une nécessité ?

Non, non, ce n'est absolument pas une nécessité. Je n'ai jamais considéré que c'était un honneur que d'écrire ou un privilège, ou quoi que ce soit d'extraordinaire. Je dis souvent : ah, quand viendra le jour où je n'écrirai plus ! Ce n'est pas le rêve d'aller au désert, ou simplement à la plage, mais de faire autre chose que d'écrire. Je le dis aussi en un sens plus précis, qui est : quand est-ce que je me mettrai à écrire sans qu'écrire soit « de l'écriture » ? Sans cette espèce de solennité qui sent l'huile.

Les choses que je publie, elles sont écrites, au mauvais sens du terme : ça sent « l'écriture ». Et quand je me mets au travail, c'est de « l'écriture », ça implique tout un rituel, toute une difficulté. Je me mets dans un tunnel, je ne veux voir personne, alors que j'aimerais au contraire avoir une écriture facile, de premier jet. Et ça, je n'y arrive absolument pas. Et il faut le dire, parce que ce n'est pas la peine de tenir de grands discours contre « l'écriture » si on ne sait pas que j'ai tant de mal à ne pas « écrire » quand je me mets à écrire. Je voudrais échapper à cette activité enfermée, solennelle, repliée sur soi qui est pour moi l'activité de mettre des mots sur le papier Vous prenez pourtant, à ce travail du papier et de l'encre, un réel plaisir ?

Le plaisir que j'y prends est tout de même très opposé à ce que je voudrais que soit l'écriture. J'aimerais que ce soit un truc qui passe, qu'on jette comme ça, qu'on écrit sur un coin de table, qu'on donne, qui circule, qui aurait pu être un tract, une affiche, un fragment de film, un discours public, n'importe quoi... Encore une fois, je n'arrive pas à écrire ainsi. Bien sûr, j'y ai mon plaisir, je découvre des petits trucs, mais je n'ai pas plaisir à prendre ce plaisir.

J'éprouve à son égard un sentiment de malaise, parce que je rêverais d'un tout autre plaisir que celui, bien familier, de tous les gens qui écrivent. On s'enferme, le papier est blanc, on n'a aucune idée, et puis, petit à petit, au bout de deux heures, ou de deux jours, ou de deux semaines, à l'intérieur même de l'activité d'écrire, un tas de choses sont devenues présentes. Le texte existe, on en sait beaucoup plus qu'avant. On avait la tête vide, on l'a pleine, car l'écriture ne vide pas, elle remplit. De son propre vide on fait une pléthore. Tout le monde connaît ça. Ça ne m'amuse pas ! « Je rêve toujours d'écrire un genre de livre tel que la question : "D'où ça vient ?" n'ait pas de sens. » Alors vous rêveriez de quoi ? De quelle autre écriture ?

Une écriture discontinue, qui ne s'apercevrait pas qu'elle est une écriture, qui se servirait du papier blanc, ou de la machine, ou du porte-plume, ou du clavier, comme ça, au milieu de tas d'autres choses qui pourraient être le pinceau ou la caméra. Tout ça passant très rapidement de l'un à l'autre, une sorte de fébrilité et de chaos Vous avez envie d'essayer ?

Oui, mais il me manque cette espèce de je-ne-sais-quoi de fébrilité ou de talent, les deux sans doute. Finalement, je suis toujours renvoyé à l'écriture. Alors je rêve de textes brefs. Mais ça donne toujours de gros livres ! Malgré tout, je rêve toujours d'écrire un genre de livre tel que la question : « D'où ça vient ? » n'ait pas de sens. Je rêve d'une pensée vraiment instrumentale. Peu importe d'où elle vient. Ça tombe comme ça. L'essentiel, c'est qu'on ait entre les mains un instrument avec lequel on va pouvoir aborder la psychiatrie, ou le problème des prisons.

Vous n'aimez guère qu'on vous demande vos justifications, les raisons de votre légitimité. Pourquoi ?

Quand je suis rentré de Tunisie, l'hiver 68-69, à l'université de Vincennes il était difficile de dire quoi que ce soit sans que quelqu'un vous demande : « D'où tu parles ? » Cette question me mettait toujours dans un grand abattement. Ça me paraissait une question policière, au fond. Sous l'apparence d'une question théorique et politique (« D'où parles-tu ? »), en fait, on me posait une question d'identité (« Au fond, qui es-tu ? », « Dis-nous donc si tu es marxiste ou si tu n'es pas marxiste », « Dis-nous si tu es idéaliste ou matérialiste », « Dis-nous si tu es prof ou militant », « Montre ta carte d'identité, dis au nom de quoi tu vas pouvoir circuler d'une manière telle qu'on reconnaîtra où tu es »). file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (5 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

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Ça me paraît finalement une question de discipline. Et je ne peux pas m'empêcher de rabattre ces graves interrogations sur la justification du fondement à la vilaine petite question : « Qui es-tu, où es-tu né ? A quelle famille appartiens-tu ? » Ou encore : « Quelle est ta profession ? Comment est-ce qu'on peut te classer ? Où dois-tu faire ton service militaire ? » Voilà ce que j'entends, chaque fois qu'on demande : « De quelle théorie te sers-tu ? Qu'est-ce qui t'abrite ? Qu'est-ce qui te justifie ? » J'entends des questions policières et menaçantes : « Aux yeux de qui seras-tu innocent, même si tu dois être condamné ? » Ou bien : « Il doit bien y avoir un groupe de gens, ou une société ou une forme de pensée, qui t'absoudra, et dont tu pourras obtenir la relaxe. Et si ceux-là t'absolvent, c'est que nous devons te condamner ! » « L'individualité, l'identité individuelle sont des produits du pouvoir. » Qu'est-ce qui vous semble tellement à fuir dans ces demandes d'identité ?

Je crois que l'identité est un des produits premiers du pouvoir, de ce type de pouvoir que nous connaissons dans notre société. Je crois beaucoup, en effet, à l'importance constitutive des formes juridico-politico-policières de notre société. Est-ce que le sujet, identique à lui-même, avec son historicité propre, sa genèse, ses continuités, les effets de son enfance prolongés jusqu'au dernier jour de sa vie, etc., n'est pas le produit d'un certain type de pouvoir qui s'exerce sur nous, dans les formes juridiques anciennes et dans les formes policières récentes ?

Il faut rappeler que le pouvoir n'est pas un ensemble de mécanismes de négation, de refus, d'exclusion. Mais il produit effectivement. Il produit vraisemblablement jusqu'aux individus eux-mêmes. L'individualité, l'identité individuelle sont des produits du pouvoir. C'est pour cela que je m'en méfie, et que je m'efforce de défaire ces pièges.

La seule vérité de l'« Histoire de la folie », ou de « Surveiller et punir », c'est qu'il y ait des gens qui s'en servent, et se battent avec. C'est la seule vérité que je cherche. La question « D'où est-ce que ça vient ? est-ce que c'est marxiste ? » me paraît finalement une question d'identité, donc une question policière.

Je vais donc être policier, car j'aimerais quand même revenir un moment en arrière, comprendre d'où est venu votre itinéraire. Durant vos années d'Ecole normale, vous étiez marxiste ?

Comme presque tous ceux de ma génération, j'étais entre le marxisme et la phénoménologie, moins celle que Sartre ou Merleau-Ponty ont pu connaître et utiliser que la phénoménologie présente dans ce texte de Husserl de 19351937, « La crise des sciences européennes », la « Krisis », comme nous disions. Ce qu'il mettait en question, c'était tout le système de savoir dont l'Europe avait été le foyer, le principe, le moteur, et par lequel elle avait été aussi bien affranchie qu'emprisonnée. Pour nous, quelques années après la guerre et tout ce qui s'était passé, cette interrogation reparaissait dans sa vivacité. La Krisis, c'était pour nous le texte qui signalait, dans une philosophie très hautaine, très académique, très fermée sur elle-même malgré son projet de description universelle, l'irruption d'une histoire toute contemporaine. Quelque chose était en train de craquer, autour de Husserl, autour de ce discours que l'Université allemande tenait à bout de bras, depuis tant d'années. Ce craquement, on l'entendait brusquement dans le discours du philosophe. On se demandait enfin ce qu'étaient ce savoir et cette rationalité, si profondément liés à notre destin, profondément liés à tant de pouvoirs, et si impuissants devant l'Histoire.

Et les sciences humaines étaient évidemment des objets qui se trouvaient mis en question par cette démarche. Mes premiers balbutiements étaient donc cela : qu'est-ce que les sciences humaines ? A partir de quoi sont-elles possibles ? Comment est-on arrivé à construire de pareils discours et à se donner de pareils objets ? Je reprenais ces interrogations, mais en essayant de me débarrasser du cadre philosophique de Husserl.

On assistait en même temps à la lente montée du marxisme à l'intérieur d'une pratique qu'on peut dire traditionnelle et universitaire de la philosophie. Pour les générations d'avant-guerre, le marxisme représentait presque toujours une alternative au travail universitaire. Lucien Herr, grande figure historique, était un bibliothécaire impavide à l'Ecole normale et, le soir, la bibliothèque soigneusement bouclée, il descendait animer des réunions socialistes sans qu'en principe personne ne le sache. « Althusser m'avait envoyé faire des cours de philosophie aux candidats à l'ENA de la CGT ! »

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Cette situation était différente au temps de vos études ?

Oui, après la guerre, le marxisme entrait dans l'université. A un moment, on a pu citer Marx dans les copies d'agrégation. Cela correspondait à la stratégie du Parti envers les appareils d'Etat. Je me souviens parfaitement qu'Althusser m'avait envoyé gentiment faire des cours de philosophie et de philosophie politique aux candidats à l'ENA de la CGT ! En fait, cette entrée du Parti communiste dans l'appareil d'Etat n'a réussi pleinement que dans l'université.

Cette acceptation du marxisme dans l'université et l'acceptation par le Parti communiste de pratiques universitaires normalement reconnues ont créé pour nous une situation d'une grande facilité. Devenir agrégé de philo en parlant de Marx, comme les choses étaient simples ! Alors nous livrions de pseudo-luttes : pour le droit de citer Engels aussi bien que Marx, pour que le président du jury d'agrégation accepte qu'on parle de Lénine. C'étaient nos petits combats, on les croyait très importants.

Seulement, à mesure qu'on entrait dans cette union de l'université et du Parti communiste, on découvrait avec horreur leur similitude : les mêmes hiérarchies, les mêmes contraintes, les mêmes orthodoxies. On ne pouvait pas faire plus proche de l'université que la structure du Parti, du moins dans ses basses sphères qui concernaient les intellectuels. Rédiger une dissertation pour un président de jury d'agrégation, ou écrire, comme ça m'est arrivé, des articles que signait un dirigeant du Parti, c'était exactement le même exercice !

C'est là qu'a commencé pour moi une forme d'étouffement qui était dû à la facilité même de ces opérations. On croyait que ça allait être la lutte, et tout baignait dans l'huile. Ce qui m'avait intéressé et stimulé, c'était ce mirage de la lutte qu'on nous avait fait miroiter. Nous devions être les soldats avancés de la mise de l'université à la disposition du peuple, ou de l'avant-garde du prolétariat ! Et nous nous retrouvions entre nous, toujours les mêmes.

Alors, je suis parti pour la Suède, puis pour la Pologne.

C'est en Pologne que vous avez cessé d'être marxiste ?

Oui, parce que là j'ai vu fonctionner un Parti communiste au pouvoir, contrôlant un appareil d'Etat, s'identifiant avec lui. Ce que j'avais senti obscurément pendant la période 50-55 apparaissait dans sa vérité brutale, historique, profonde. Ce n'étaient plus des imaginations d'étudiant, des jeux à l'intérieur de l'université. C'était le sérieux d'un pays asservi par un parti.

Depuis ce moment-là, je peux dire que je ne suis pas marxiste, au sens où je ne peux pas accepter le fonctionnement des partis communistes tels qu'on nous les propose en Europe de l'Est comme en Europe de l'Ouest.

S'il y a chez Marx des choses vraies, on peut les utiliser comme instruments sans avoir à les citer, les reconnaîtra qui veut bien ! Ou qui en est capable...

Y a-t-il d'autres moments où le fait de vivre à l'étranger ait contribué à l'élaboration de votre pensée ?

Oui, la Tunisie a été pour moi, entre 1966 et 1968, le symétrique de l'expérience polonaise. Ma société, je ne la connaissais que sous l'angle d'un privilégié. Je n'avais jamais eu beaucoup de problèmes, ni politiques ni économiques, dans mon existence. Et je n'avais perçu ce que pouvait être une oppression qu'en Pologne, c'est-à-dire dans un Etat socialiste. De la société capitaliste je n'avais connu finalement que le côté velouté et facile. En Tunisie, j'ai découvert ce que pouvaient être les restes d'une colonisation capitaliste, et la naissance d'un développement de type capitaliste avec tous les phénomènes d'exploitation et d'oppression économiques et politiques.

Deux mois avant Mai 68, j'ai vu en Tunisie une grève étudiante qui a littéralement baigné dans le sang à l'université.

Les étudiants étaient conduits au sous-sol, où il y avait une cafétéria, et remontaient le visage en sang parce qu'ils avaient été matraqués. Il y a eu des centaines d'arrestations. Plusieurs de mes étudiants ont été condamnés à dix, douze, quatorze ans de prison. Ce fut pour moi un mois de mai sans doute plus sérieux que celui que j'aurais connu en France.

La double expérience Pologne-Tunisie équilibrait mon expérience politique et me renvoyait à des choses qu'au fond je n'avais pas suffisamment soupçonnées dans mes pures spéculations : l'importance de l'exercice du pouvoir, ces lignes de contact entre le corps, la vie, le discours et le pouvoir politique.

Dans les silences et les gestes quotidiens d'un Polonais qui se sait surveillé, qui attend d'être dans la rue pour vous file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (7 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

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dire quelque chose, parce qu'il sait bien que dans l'appartement d'un étranger il y a des micros partout, dans la façon dont on baisse la voix quand on est dans un restaurant, dans la manière dont on brûle une lettre, enfin dans tous ces petits gestes étouffants, aussi bien que dans la violence crue et sauvage de la police tunisienne s'abattant sur une faculté, j'ai traversé une sorte d'expérience physique du pouvoir, des rapports entre corps et pouvoir.

Ensuite, ces moments-là m'ont considérablement obsédé, même si je n'en ai tiré la leçon théorique que très tardivement. Je me suis aperçu que j'aurais dû parler depuis longtemps de ces problèmes de rapport entre le pouvoir et le corps à quoi j'ai abouti, finalement, dans « Surveiller et punir ».

Pourtant, pour beaucoup de gens, Mai 68 a constitué aussi une expérience de la violence physique du pouvoir et de son rapport au corps. Même avec quelque retard, vous ne l'avez pas perçu ?

Je suis rentré en France en novembre 1968. J'ai eu l'impression que toute cette expérience avait tout de même été profondément engagée et codée par un discours marxiste auquel très peu échappaient. Au contraire, aussi bien en Tunisie qu'en Pologne, cette expérience m'était apparue indépendamment de tout codage par le discours marxiste.

S'il y avait discours marxiste en Pologne, il était du côté du pouvoir, du côté de la violence.

Dans les années d'après-Mai, ceux qui se disaient révolutionnaires sans se référer explicitement au marxisme conservaient tout de même une très forte adhérence à la plupart des analyses marxistes. Et lorsqu'ils intervenaient, lorsqu'ils posaient des questions, lorsqu'ils discutaient avec vous, les effets de pouvoir étaient toujours liés au marxisme. A Vincennes, durant l'hiver 1968-1969, dire à haute et intelligible voix : « Je ne suis pas marxiste », c'était physiquement très difficile... Ce qui m'a frappé à Vincennes, dans les « AG » et les machins comme ça auxquels j'ai assisté, c'est l'incroyable proximité entre ce qui s'y passait et ce que j'avais entendu et vu au PC, dans sa période la plus stalinienne. Bien sûr, toutes les formes étaient changées, les rituels étaient différents. Mais les effets de pouvoir, les terreurs, les prestiges, les hiérarchies, les obéissances, les veuleries, les petites ignominies, etc., c'était la même chose. C'était un stalinisme explosé, en ébullition, mais c'était toujours lui... Et je me disais : comme ils ont peu changé !

Revenons à votre parcours...

Vous savez, ce parcours a été zigzagant. « Les mots et les choses » est un livre qui est d'une certaine façon marginal, tout en prenant les autres en fourchette. Il est marginal parce qu'il n'était pas du tout dans le droit-fil de mon problème. En étudiant l'histoire de la folie, je m'étais naturellement posé le problème du fonctionnement du savoir médical à l'intérieur duquel s'étaient trouvés délimités les rapports du fou et du non-fou, à partir du XIXe siècle.

Et puis le savoir médical conduisait au problème de cette très rapide évolution qui a eu lieu à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et qui a fait apparaître non seulement la psychiatrie et la psychopathologie, mais aussi la biologie et les sciences humaines. C'était le passage d'un certain type d'empiricité à un autre. Prenez n'importe quel bouquin de médecine de 1780 et n'importe quel bouquin de 1820 : on est passé d'un monde à un autre... il faut vraiment avoir très peu lu ce genre d'ouvrage, que ce soit de grammaire, de médecine ou d'économie politique, pour imaginer que je délire quand je parle d'une coupure à la fin du XVIIIe siècle !

Au fond, « Les mots et les choses » ne fait que constater cette coupure, essaie d'en dresser le bilan dans un certain nombre de discours, essentiellement ceux qui tournent autour de l'homme, du travail, de la ville, du langage....

Cette coupure, c'est mon problème, ce n'est pas ma solution. Si j'insiste tellement sur cette coupure, c'est que c'est un sacré casse-tête, et pas du tout une manière de résoudre les choses.

Comment expliquer cette coupure ? A quoi correspond-elle ?

En fait, j'ai mis sept ans avant de m'apercevoir que la solution n'était pas à chercher où je la cherchais, dans quelque chose du genre l'idéologie, le progrès de la rationalité ou le mode de production. C'était finalement dans les technologies de pouvoir et dans leurs transformations, depuis le XVIIe siècle jusqu'à maintenant, qu'il fallait voir le socle à partir duquel le changement était possible. « Les mots et les choses » se situait au niveau du constat de la coupure et de la nécessité d'aller chercher une explication. « Surveiller et punir », c'est la généalogie, si vous voulez, l'analyse des conditions historiques qui ont rendu possible cette coupure.

J'ai commencé à comprendre comment on avait bâti non seulement le personnage du fou, mais le personnage de l'homme normal, à travers toute une certaine anthropologie de la raison et de la déraison. Il m'est apparu, à travers file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (8 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

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ces enquêtes, que la position centrale de l'homme était finalement une figure propre au discours scientifique, ou au discours des sciences humaines, ou au discours philosophique du XIXe siècle. Tout centrer sur la figure de l'homme, ce n'est pas une ligne de pente du discours philosophique depuis son origine, c'est une flexion récente dont on peut parfaitement repérer l'origine et dont on peut voir aussi comment elle est en train de disparaître, vraisemblablement depuis la fin du XIXe. « Au fond, je n'ai qu'un seul objet d'étude historique, c'est le seuil de la modernité. » La découverte de cette coupure, l'accent mis sur les effets de pouvoir des différents savoirs, acceptez-vous de dire que c'est votre découverte, votre apport personnel ?

Absolument pas ! C'est dans le droit-fil de tout un ensemble, que ce soit « La généalogie de la morale » de Nietzsche ou la « Krisis » de Husserl. L'histoire du pouvoir de la vérité dans une société comme la nôtre, cette question, elle tourne sans arrêt dans les têtes depuis une centaine d'années. Je n'ai fait que l'aborder à ma façon, et j'ai énoncé dans « L'archéologie du savoir » quelques règles que je me suis données. Elles n'ont rien de bouleversant ni de révolutionnaire, mais, puisque les gens ne semblaient pas bien comprendre ce que je faisais, j'ai donné mes règles.

Je ne suis pas de ces veilleurs qui affirment toujours être le premier à avoir vu le jour se lever. Ce qui m'intéresse, c'est de comprendre en quoi consiste ce seuil de modernité que l'on peut repérer entre le XVIIe et le XIXe siècle. A partir de ce seuil, le discours européen a développé des pouvoirs d'universalisation gigantesques. Aujourd'hui, dans ses notions fondamentales et ses règles essentielles, il peut être porteur de n'importe quel type de vérité, même si cette vérité doit être retournée contre l'Europe, contre l'Occident.

Au fond, je n'ai qu'un seul objet d'étude historique, c'est le seuil de la modernité. Qui sommes-nous, nous qui parlons ce langage tel qu'il a des pouvoirs qui s'imposent à nous-mêmes dans notre société, et à d'autres sociétés ?

Quel est ce langage que l'on peut retourner contre nous, que nous pouvons retourner contre nous-mêmes ? Quel est cet emballement formidable du passage à l'universalité du discours occidental ? Voilà mon problème historique. « La vérité a du pouvoir. Elle possède des effets pratiques, des effets politiques. » Une façon différente de concevoir la relation entre savoir et pouvoir ?

Le savoir, pendant des siècles, disons depuis Platon, s'est donné comme statut d'être d'une essence fondamentalement différente du pouvoir. Si tu deviens roi, tu seras fou, passionné et aveugle. Renonce au pouvoir, renonce à l'ambition, renonce à vaincre, alors tu pourras contempler la vérité. Il y a eu un fonctionnement très ancien de tout le système de savoir dans son opposition ou son indépendance à l'égard du pouvoir. A présent, au contraire, ce qu'on interroge, c'est la position des intellectuels et des savants dans la société, dans les systèmes de production, dans les systèmes politiques. Le savoir apparaît lié en profondeur à toute une série d'effets de pouvoir.

L'archéologie, c'est essentiellement cette détection.

Le type de discours qui fonctionne en Occident, depuis un certain nombre de siècles, comme discours de vérité, et qui est passé maintenant à l'échelle mondiale, ce type de discours est lié à toute une série de phénomènes de pouvoir et de relations de pouvoir. La vérité a du pouvoir. Elle possède des effets pratiques, des effets politiques.

L'exclusion du fou, par exemple, est un des innombrables effets de pouvoir du discours rationnel. Comment ces effets de pouvoir opèrent-ils ? Comment deviennent-ils possibles ? Voilà ce que j'essaie de comprendre.

Une société sans pouvoir est-elle possible ? C'est une question qui a du sens ou qui n'en a pas ?

Je crois qu'il n'y a pas à poser le problème en termes « faut-il du pouvoir ou n'en faut-il pas ? ». Le pouvoir va si loin, il s'enfonce si profondément, il est véhiculé par un réseau capillaire si serré qu'on se demande où il n'y en aurait pas. Pourtant, son analyse a été très négligée par les études historiques. La seconde moitié du XIXe siècle a découvert les mécanismes de l'exploitation, peut-être la tâche de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle est-elle de découvrir les mécanismes du pouvoir. Car nous sommes tous non seulement la cible d'un pouvoir, mais aussi le relais, ou le point d'où émane un certain pouvoir !

Ce qu'il y a à découvrir en nous, ce n'est pas ce qui est aliéné, ou ce qui est inconscient. Ce sont ces petites valves, ces petits relais, ces minuscules engrenages, ces microscopiques synapses par lesquels le pouvoir passe et se trouve reconduit par lui-même. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (9 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

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Dans cette perspective, reste-t-il quelque chose qui échapperait au pouvoir ?

Ce qui échappe au pouvoir, c'est le contre-pouvoir, qui est pourtant pris lui aussi dans le même jeu. C'est pourquoi il faut reprendre le problème de la guerre, de l'affrontement. Il faut reprendre les analyses tactiques et stratégiques à un niveau extraordinairement bas, infime, quotidien. Il faut repenser l'universelle bataille en échappant aux perspectives de l'Apocalypse. En effet, on a vécu depuis le XIXe siècle dans une économie de pensée qui était apocalyptique. Hegel, Marx ou Nietzsche, ou Heidegger dans un autre sens, nous ont promis le lendemain, l'aube, l'aurore, le jour qui pointe, le soir, la nuit, etc. Cette temporalité, à la fois cyclique et binaire, commandait notre pensée politique et nous laisse désarmés quand il s'agit de penser autrement.

Est-il possible d'avoir une pensée politique qui ne soit pas de l'ordre de la description triste : voilà comment c'est, et vous voyez que ce n'est pas drôle ! Le pessimisme de droite consiste à dire : regardez comme les hommes sont salauds. Le pessimisme de gauche dit : regardez comme le pouvoir est dégueulasse ! Pouvons-nous échapper à ces pessimismes sans tomber dans la promesse révolutionnaire, dans l'annonciation du soir ou du matin ? Je crois que c'est ça, l'enjeu, actuellement.

Ce qui conduit à votre conception de l'Histoire. Sartre disait : « Foucault n'a pas le sens de l'Histoire »...

C'est une phrase qui m'enchante ! Je voudrais qu'on la mette en exergue de tout ce que je fais, car je crois qu'elle est profondément vraie. Si avoir le sens de l'Histoire, c'est lire avec une attention respectueuse les ouvrages des grands historiens, les doubler sur leur aile droite d'un rien de phénoménologie existentielle, sur la gauche d'un zeste de matérialisme historique, si avoir le sens de l'Histoire, c'est prendre l'Histoire toute faite, acceptée dans l'université, en ajoutant seulement que c'est une Histoire bourgeoise qui ne tient pas compte de l'apport marxiste, eh bien, il est vrai que je n'ai absolument pas le sens de l'Histoire ! Sartre a peut-être le sens de l'Histoire, mais il n'en fait pas. Qu'a-t-il apporté à l'Histoire ? Zéro !

Je pense qu'il voulait dire autre chose, malgré tout. Il voulait dire que je ne respecte pas cette signification de l'Histoire admise dans toute une philosophie post-hégélienne, dans laquelle sont impliqués des processus qui doivent être toujours les mêmes ; exemple, la lutte des classes... Deuxièmement, avoir le sens de l'Histoire, dans cette forme-là d'histoire, c'est être toujours capable d'opérer une totalisation, au niveau d'une société, ou d'une culture, ou d'une conscience, peu importe. Une étude historique est achevée, dans cette optique, quand ce processus vient s'inscrire dans une conscience qui en dégage la signification dans le mouvement même par laquelle elle est déterminée... Il est vrai que de cette Histoire-là je n'ai absolument pas le sens !

Comment définiriez-vous l'Histoire, vous ?

J'en fais un usage rigoureusement instrumental. C'est à partir d'une question précise que je rencontre dans l'actualité que la possibilité d'une histoire se dessine pour moi. Mais l'utilisation académique de l'Histoire est essentiellement une utilisation conservatrice : retrouver le passé de quelque chose a essentiellement pour fonction de permettre sa survie. L'histoire de l'asile, par exemple, telle qu'on l'a faite souvent, d'ailleurs - je ne suis pas le premier -, était essentiellement destinée à en montrer l'espèce de nécessité, de fatalité historique.

Ce que je tente de faire, c'est au contraire de montrer l'impossibilité de la chose, la formidable impossibilité sur quoi repose le fonctionnement de l'asile, par exemple. Les histoires que je fais ne sont pas explicatives, elles ne montrent jamais la nécessité de quelque chose, mais plutôt la série des enclenchements par lesquels l'impossible s'est produit et reconduit son propre scandale, son propre paradoxe, jusqu'à maintenant. Tout ce qu'il peut y avoir d'irrégulier, de hasardeux, d'imprévisible dans un processus historique m'intéresse considérablement. « A la limite, on peut penser que c'est le plus impossible qui est finalement devenu le nécessaire. » D'habitude, les historiens écartent ce qui relève de l'exception...

Parce qu'une des tâches de l'Histoire, qui a pour fonction de conserver les choses, est justement de gommer ces espèces d'irrégularités ou de hasards, ces événements en dents de scie. On gomme tout cela pour rester dans une forme de nécessité qui, si elle s'inscrit dans un vocabulaire marxiste, passe pour être politiquement révolutionnaire, mais qui me paraît, finalement, avoir des effets tout à fait différents.

Je considère que ma tâche est de donner le maximum de chances à la multiplicité, à la rencontre, à l'impossible, à l'imprévisible... Cette manière d'interroger l'Histoire à partir de ces jeux de possibilité et d'impossibilité est à mes file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretien1975.fr.html (10 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:23 πμ

Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit (1975)

yeux la plus féconde quand on veut faire une histoire politique et une politique historique. A la limite, on peut penser que c'est le plus impossible qui est finalement devenu le nécessaire. Il faut donner son maximum de chances à l'impossible et se dire : comment cette chose impossible s'est-elle effectivement produite ?

Montrer que l'asile ou la prison n'ont rien d'inéluctable, c'est aussi les combattre...

Je crois, à la suite de Nietzsche, que la vérité est à comprendre en termes de guerre. La vérité de la vérité, c'est la guerre. L'ensemble des processus par lesquels la vérité l'emporte sont des mécanismes de pouvoir, et qui lui assurent le pouvoir.

C'est une guerre permanente ?

Je pense, oui.

Dans cette guerre, quels sont vos ennemis ?

Ce ne sont pas des personnes, plutôt des espèces de lignes qu'on peut trouver dans des discours, et même éventuellement dans les miens, et dont je veux me départir, et me démarquer. Pourtant, c'est bien de guerre qu'il s'agit, puisque mon discours est instrumental, comme sont instrumentales une armée, ou simplement une arme. Ou encore un sac de poudre, ou un cocktail Molotov. Vous voyez, cette histoire d'artificier, on y revient Roger-Pol Droit

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Entretien « Vous êtes dangereux » (1983)

Foucault.info | Entretien « Vous êtes dangereux » (1983)

« Vous êtes dangereux » Libération, n° 639, 10 juin 1983, p. 20. Republié dans Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits. 1954-1988. Tome IV : 1980-1988, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, p. 522-524, avec la présentation suivante : « Emprisonné pour un vol de huit cent francs, qu'il niait, Roger Knobelspiess bénéficie d'une libération conditionnelle. Arrêté de nouveau pour vol, il est placé dans un quartier de haute sécurité, dont il entreprend la dénonciation. Son combat le rend populaire auprès de journalistes, d'intellectuels et d'artistes. Un comité, dont M. Foucault ne fit pas partie, se constitue pour que son procès soit révisé et demande à M. Foucault de préfacer son livre Q.H.S. : quartier de haute sécurité (Paris, Stock, 1980). Lorsque la gauche arrive au pouvoir, Roger Knobelspiess est rejugé et libéré. Arrêté peu après à l'occasion d'un hold-up, celui qui avait été le symbole de l'iniquité de la justice devient alors la représentation du laxisme de la gauche et de l'irresponsabilité des intellectuels. M. Foucault répond ici à cette campagne. »

Pour être surpris, j'ai été surpris. Non par ce qui s'est passé, mais par les réactions, et la physionomie qu'elles ont donnée à l'événement.

Ce qui s'est passé ? Un homme est condamné à quinze ans de prison pour un hold-up. Neuf ans après, la cour d'assises de Rouen déclare que la condamnation de Knobelspiess est manifestement exagérée. Libéré, il vient d'être inculpé à nouveau pour d'autres faits. Et voilà que toute la presse crie à l'erreur, à la duperie, à l'intoxication. Et elle crie contre qui ? Contre ceux qui avaient demandé une justice mieux mesurée, contre ceux qui avaient affirmé que la prison n'était pas de nature à transformer un condamné.

Posons quelques questions simples : 1) Où est l'erreur ? Ceux qui ont essayé de poser sérieusement le problème de la prison le disent depuis des années : la prison a été instaurée pour punir et amender. Elle punit ? Peut-être. Elle amende ? Certainement pas. Ni réinsertion ni formation, mais constitution et renforcement d'un « milieu délinquant ». Qui entre en prison pour vol de quelques milliers de francs a bien plus de chances d'en sortir gangster qu'honnête homme. Le livre de Knobelspiess le montrait bien : prison à l'intérieur de la prison, les quartiers de haute sécurité risquaient de faire des enragés. Knobelspiess l'a dit, nous l'avons dit et il fallait que ce soit connu. Les faits, autant que nous pouvons le savoir, risquent de le confirmer.

2) Qui a été dupé ? Ceux évidemment auxquels on a voulu faire croire qu'un bon séjour en prison pouvait toujours être utile pour redresser un garçon dangereux ou empêcher la récidive d'un délinquant primaire. Ceux également a qui l'on a voulu faire croire que quinze ans de prison infligés à Knobelspiess pour un fait mal établi pourraient être du plus grand profit pour lui et pour les autres. Les gens n'ont pas été dupés par ceux qui veulent qu'une justice soit aussi scrupuleuse que possible, mais par ceux qui promettent que des punitions mal réfléchies assureront la sécurité.

3) Où est l'intoxication ? Soljenitsyne a une phrase superbe et dure : « On aurait dû, dit-il, se méfier de ces leaders politiques qui ont l'habitude d'héroïser leurs prisons. » Il y a toute une littérature de pacotille et un journalisme plat qui pratiquent à la fois l'amour des délinquants et la peur panique de la délinquance. Le truand héros, l'ennemi public, le rebelle indomptable, les anges noirs... On publie sous le nom de grands tueurs ou de gangsters célèbres des livres rewrités – ou plutôt writés – par des éditeurs : et les médias s'en enchantent. La réalité est tout autre : l'univers de la délinquance et de la prison est dur, mesquin, avilissant. L'intoxication ne consiste pas à le dire. Elle consiste à draper cette réalité sous des oripeaux dérisoires. Ces héroïsations ambiguës sont dangereuses, car une société a besoin non pas d'aimer ou de haïr ses criminels, mais de savoir aussi exactement que possible qui elle punit, pourquoi elle punit, comment elle punit et avec quels effets. Elles sont dangereuses aussi car rien n'est plus facile que d'alimenter par ces exaltations troubles un climat de peur et d'insécurité où les violences s'exaspèrent d'un côté comme de l'autre.

4) Où est le courage ? Il est dans le sérieux qu'on apporte à poser et à reposer sans cesse ces problèmes qui sont parmi les plus vieux du monde : ceux de la justice et de la punition. Une justice ne doit jamais oublier combien il est difficile d'être juste et facile d'être injuste, quel travail demande la découverte d'un atome de vérité et combien serait périlleux l'abus de son pouvoir. Ce fut la grandeur des sociétés comme les nôtres : depuis des siècles, à travers discussions, polémiques, erreurs aussi, elles se sont interrogées sur la manière dont la justice doit être dite, c'est-à-dire pratiquée. La justice – je parle là de l'institution – finit par servir le despotisme si ceux qui l'exercent et ceux -là même qu'elle protège n'ont pas le courage de la problématiser. Le travail de l'actuel garde des file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.entretienDangereux.fr.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:18:24 πμ

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Sceaux [Robert Badinter] pour repenser le système pénal plus largement qu'il ne l'avait été jusqu'ici est, de ce point de vue, important. En tout cas, les magistrats et les jurés de Rouen ont été fidèles à cette tradition et à cette nécessité lorsqu'ils ont déclaré démesurée la peine infligée à Knobelspiess. Démesurée, donc mauvaise pour tout le monde.

5) Où sont les dangers ? Les dangers sont dans la délinquance. Les dangers sont dans les abus de pouvoir. Et ils sont dans la spirale qui les lie entre eux. Il faut s'en prendre à tout ce qui peut renforcer la délinquance. S'en prendre aussi à tout ce qui, dans la manière de la punir, risque de la renforcer.

Quant à vous, pour qui un crime d'aujourd'hui justifierait une punition d'hier, vous ne savez pas raisonner. Mais pis, vous êtes dangereux pour nous et pour vous-même, si du moins, comme nous, vous ne voulez pas vous trouver un jour sous le coup d'une justice endormie sous ses arbitraires. Vous êtes aussi un danger historique. Car une justice doit toujours s'interroger sur elle-même tout comme une société ne peut vivre que du travail qu'elle exerce sur ellemême et sur ses institutions.

Michel Foucault

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The Eye of Power (1974), Excerpt

Foucault.info | The Eye of Power (1974), Excerpt Excerpt from Power/Knowledge

(...)

It was while I was studying the origins of clinical medicine. I had been planning a study of hospital architecture in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the great movement for the reform of medical institutions was getting under way. I wanted to find out how the medical gaze was institutionalised, how it was effectively inscribed in social space, how the new form of the hospital was at once the effect and the support of a new type of gaze.

In examining the series of different architectural projects which followed the second fire at the Hotel-Dieu in 1772, I noticed how the whole problem of visibility of bodies, individuals and things, under a system of centralised observation, was one of their most constant directing principles. In the case of the hospitals this general problem involves a further difficulty: it was necessary to avoid undue contact, contagion, physical proximity and overcrowding, while at the same time ensuring ventilation and circulation of air, at once dividing space up and keeping it open, ensuring a surveillance which would be both global and individualising while at the same time carefully separating the individuals under observation. For some time I thought all these problems were specific to eighteenth-century medicine and its beliefs.

Then while studying the problems of the penal system, I noticed that all the great projects for re-organising the prisons (which date, incidently, from a slightly later period, the first half of the nineteenth century) take up this same theme, but accompanied this time by the almost invariable reference to Bentham. There was scarcely a text or a proposal about the prisons which didn't mention Bentham's 'device' - the 'Panopticon' The principle was this. A perimeter building in the form of a ring. At the center of this, a tower, pierced by large windows opening on to the inner face of the ring. The outer building is divided into cells each of which traverses the whole thickness of the building. These cells have two windows, one opening on to the inside, facing the windows of the central tower, the other, outer one allowing daylight to pass through the whole cell. All that is then needed is to put an overseer in the tower and place in each of the cells a lunatic, a patient, a convict, or a schoolboy. The back lighting enables one to pick out from the central tower the little captive silhouettes in the ring of cells. In short, the principle of the dungeon is reversed; daylight and the overseer's gaze capture the inmate more effectively than darkness, which afforded after all a sort of protection. ... We are talking about two things here: the gaze and interiorisation. And isn't it basically the problem of the cost of power? In reality power is only exercised at a cost. Obviously, there is an economic cost, and Bentham talks about this. How many overseers will the Panopticon need? How much will the machine then cost to run? But there is also a specifically political cost. If you are too violent, you risk provoking revolts...In contrast to that you have the system of surveillance, which on the contrary involves very little expense. There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercizing this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be minimal cost. (...)

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Hypomnemata (1984), Excerpt

Foucault.info | Hypomnemata (1984), Excerpt

From an Interview with Michel Foucault in The Foucault Reader; Paul Rabinow, editor (New York) Pantheon, 1984, p 363-5.

First, to bring out a certain number of historical facts which are often glossed over when posing this problem of writing, we must look into the famous question of the hypomnemata. Current interpreters see in the critique of the hypomnemata in the Phaedrus a critique of writing as a material support for memory. Now, in fact, hypomnemata has a very precise meaning. It is a copybook, a notebook. Precisely this type of notebook was coming into vogue in Plato's time for personal and administrative use. This new technology was as disrupting as the introduction of the computer into private life today. It seems to me the question of writing and the self must be posed in terms of the technical and material framework in which it arose. [...]

What seems remarkable to me is that these new instruments were immediately used for the constitution of a permanent relationship to oneself -- one must manage oneself as a governor manages the governed, as a head of an enterprise manages his enterprise, a head of household manages his household...So, if you will, the point at which the question of the hypomnemata and the culture of the self comes together in a remarkable fashion is the point at which the culture of the self takes as its goal the perfect government of the self -- a sort of permanent political relationship between self and self. The ancients carried on this politics of themselves with these notebooks just as governments and those who manage enterprises administered by keeping registers. This is how writing seems to me to be linked to the problem of the culture of the self. [...]

In the technical sense, the hypomnemata could be account books, public registers, individual notebooks serving as memoranda. Their use as books of life, guides for conduct, seems to have become a current thing among a whole cultivated public. Into them one entered quotations, fragments of works, examples, and actions to which one had been witness or of which one had read the account, reflections or reasonings which one had heard or which had come to mind. They constituted a material memory of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering these as an accumulated treasure for rereading and later meditation. They also formed a raw material for the writing of more systematic treatises in which were given arguments and means by which to struggle against some defect (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery) or to overcome some difficult circumstance (a mourning, an exile, downfall, disgrace). [...]

As personal as they were, the hypomnemata must nevertheless not be taken for intimate diaries or for those accounts of spiritual experience (temptations, struggles, falls, and victories) which can be found in later Christian literature. They do not constitute an "account of oneself"; their objective is not to bring the arcana conscientiae to light, the confession of which -- be it oral or written -- has a purifying value. The movement that they seek to effect is the inverse of this last one. The point is not to pursue the indescribable, not to reveal the hidden, not to say the nonsaid, but, on the contrary, to collect the already-said, to reassemble that which one could hear or read, and this to an end which is nothing less than the constitution of oneself. The hypomnemata are to be resituated in the context of a very sensitive tension of that period. Whithin a culture very affected by traditionality, by the recognized value of the already-said, by the recurrence of discourse, by the 'citational" practice under the seal of age and authority, an ethic was developing which was very explicitly oriented to the care of oneself, toward definite objectives such as retiring into oneself, reaching oneself, living with oneself, being sufficient to oneself, profiting by and enjoying oneself. Such is the objective of the hypomnemata: to make of the recollection of the fragmentary logos transmitted by teaching, listening, or reading a means to establish as adequate and as perfect a relationship of oneself to oneself as possible.

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Omnes et Singulatim (1979)

Foucault.info | Omnes et Singulatim (1979)

Michel Foucault, Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of ‘Political Reason’ "The Tanner Lectures on Human Values", delivered at Stanford University, October 10 and 16, 1979.

I The title sounds pretentious, I know. But the reason for that is precisely its own excuse. Since the nineteenth century, Western thought has never stopped labouring at the task of criticising the role of reason - or the lack of reason - in political structures. It’s therefore perfectly unfitting to undertake such a vast project once again.

However, so many previous attempts are a warrant that every new venture will be just about as successful as the former ones - and in any case, probably just as fortunate.

Under such a banner, mine is the embarrassment of one who has only sketches and uncompletable drafts to propose. Philosophy gave up trying to offset the impotence of scientific reason long ago; it no longer tries to complete its edifice.

One of the Enlightenment’s tasks was to multiply reason’s political powers. But the men of the nineteenth century soon started wondering whether reason weren’t getting too powerful in our societies. They began to worry about a relationship they confusedly suspected between a rationalisation-prone society and certain threats to the individual and his liberties, to the species and its survival.

In other words, since Kant, the role of philosophy has been to prevent reason going beyond the limits of what is given in experience; but from the same moment- that is, from the development of modern states and political management of society - the role of philosophy has also been to keep watch over the excessive powers of political rationality - which is rather a promising life expectancy.

Everybody is aware of such banal facts. But that they are banal does not mean they don’t exist. What we have to do with banal facts is to discover - or try to discover - which specific and perhaps original problems are connected with them.

The relationship between rationalisation and the excesses of political power is evident. And we should not need to wait for bureaucracy or concentration camps to recognize the existence of such relations. But the problem is: what to do with such an evident fact ?

Shall we ‘try’ reason? To my mind, nothing would be more sterile. First, because the field has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Second, because it’s senseless to refer to ‘reason’ as the contrary entity to non-reason. Last, because such a trial would trap us into playing the arbitrary and boring part of either the rationalist or the irrationalist.

Shall we investigate this kind of rationalism which seems to be specific to our modern culture and which originates in Enlightenment? I think that that was the way of some of the members of the Frankfurter Schule. My purpose is not to begin a discussion of their works - they are most important and valuable. I would suggest another way of investigating the links between rationalisation and power: 1. It may be wise not to take as a whole the rationalisation of society or of culture, but to analyse this process in several fields, each of them grounded in a fundamental experience: madness, illness, death, crime, sexuality, etc.

2. I think that the word ‘rationalisation’ is a dangerous one. The main problem when people try to rationalise something is not to investigate whether or not they conform to principles of rationality, but to discover which kind of rationality they are using.

3. Even if the Enlightenment has been a very important phase in our history, and in the development of political technology, I think we have to refer to much more remote processes if we want to understand how we have been trapped in our own history.

This was my ‘ligne de conduite’ in my previous work: analyse the relations between experiences like madness, death, crime, sexuality, and several technologies of power. What I am working on now is the problem of individuality - or, I should say, selfidentity as referred to the problem of ‘individualising power’.

Everyone knows that in European societies political power has evolved towards more and more centralised forms.

Historians have been studying this organisation of the state, with its administration and bureaucracy, for dozens of years.

I’d like to suggest in these two lectures the possibility of analysing another kind of transformation in such power file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.omnesEtSingulatim.en.html (1 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:27 πμ

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relationships. This transformation is, perhaps, less celebrated. But I think that it is also important, mainly for modern societies. Apparently this evolution seems antagonistic to the evolution towards a centralised state. What I mean in fact is the development of power techniques oriented towards individuals and intended to rule them in a continuous and permanent way. If the state is the political form of a centralised and centralising power, let us call pastorship the individualising power.

My purpose this evening is to outline the origin of this pastoral modality of power, or at least some aspects of its ancient history. And in the next lecture, I’ll try to show how this pastorship happened to combine with its opposite, the state.

The idea of the deity, or the king, or the leader, as a shepherd followed by a flock of sheep wasn’t familiar to the Greeks and Romans. There were exceptions, I know - early ones in Homeric literature, later ones in certain texts of the Lower Empire. I’ll come back to them later. Roughly speaking, we can say that the metaphor of the flock didn’t occur in great Greek or Roman political literature.

This is not the case in ancient Oriental societies: Egypt, Assyria, Judaea. Pharaoh was an Egyptian shepherd.

Indeed, he ritually received the herdsman’s crook on his coronation day; and the term ‘shepherd of men’ was one of the Babylonian monarch’s titles. But God was also a shepherd leading men to their grazing ground and ensuring them food. An Egyptian hymn invoked Ra this way: "O Ra that keepest watch when all men sleep, Thou who seekest what is good for thy cattle . . . .” The association between God and King is easily made, since both assume the same role: the flock they watch over is the same; the shepherd-king is entrusted with the great divine shepherd’s creatures. An Assyrian invocation to the king ran like this: “Illustrious companion of pastures, Thou who carest for thy land and feedest it, shepherd of all abundance.”

But, as we know, it was the Hebrews who developed and intensified the pastoral theme - with nevertheless a highly peculiar characteristic: God, and God only, is his people’s shepherd. With just one positive exception: David, as the founder of the monarchy, is the only one to be referred to as a shepherd. God gave him the task of assembling a flock.

There are negative exceptions, too: wicked kings are consistently compared to bad shepherds; they disperse the flock, let it die of thirst, shear it solely for profit’s sake. Jahweh is the one and only true shepherd. He guides his own people in person, aided only by his prophets. As the Psalms say: “Like a flock/hast Thou led Thy people, by Moses’ and by Aaron’s hand.” Of course I can treat neither the historical problems pertaining to the origin of this comparison nor its evolution throughout Jewish thought. I just want to show a few themes typical of pastoral power. I’d like to point out the contrast with Greek political thought, and to show how important these themes became in Christian thought and institutions later on.

1. The shepherd wields power over a flock rather than over a land. It’s probably much more complex than that, but, broadly speaking, the relation between the deity, the land, and men differs from that of the Greeks. Their gods owned the land, and this primary possession determined the relationship between men and gods. On the contrary, it’s the Shepherd-God’s relationship with his flock that is primary and fundamental here. God gives, or promises, his flock a land.

2. The shepherd gathers together, guides, and leads his flock. The idea that the political leader was to quiet any hostilities within the city and make unity reign over conflict is undoubtedly present in Greek thought. But what the shepherd gathers together is dispersed individuals. They gather together on hearing his voice: “I’ll whistle and will gather them together.” Conversely, the shepherd only has to disappear for the flock to be scattered. In other words, the shepherd’s immediate presence and direct action cause the flock to exist.

Once the good Greek lawgiver, like Solon, has resolved any conflicts, what he leaves behind him is a strong city with laws enabling it to endure without him.

3. The shepherd’s role is to ensure the salvation of his flock. The Greeks said also that the deity saved the city; they never stopped declaring that the competent leader is a helmsman warding his ship away from the rocks. But the way the shepherd saves his flock is quite different. It’s not only a matter of saving them all, all together, when danger comes nigh. It’s a matter of constant, individualised, and final kindness. Constant kindness, for the shepherd ensures his flock’s food; every day he attends to their thirst and hunger. The Greek god was asked to provide a fruitful land and abundant crops. He wasn’t asked to foster a flock day by day. And individualised kindness, too, for the shepherd sees that all the sheep, each and every one of them, is fed and saved. Later Hebrew literature, especially, laid the emphasis on such individually kindly power: a rabbinical commentary on Exodus explains why Jahweh chose Moses to shepherd his people: he had left his flock to go and search for one lost sheep.

Last and not least, it’s final kindness. The shepherd has a target for his flock. It must either be led to good grazing ground or brought back to the fold.

4. Yet another difference lies in the idea that wielding power is a ‘duty’. The Greek leader had naturally to make decisions in the interest of all; he would have been a bad leader had he preferred his personal interest. But his duty was a glorious one: even if in war he had to give up his life, such a sacrifice was offset by something extremely precious: immortality. He never lost. By way of contrast, shepherdly kindness is much closer to ‘devotedness’. Everything the shepherd does is geared to the good of his flock. That’s his constant concern.

When they sleep, he keeps watch. The theme of keeping watch is important. It brings out two aspects of the shepherd’s devotedness.

First, he acts, he works, he puts himself out, for those he nourishes and who are asleep. Second, he watches over them. He pays attention to them all and scans each one of them. He’s got to know his flock as a whole, and in detail. Not only must he know where good pastures are, the seasons’ laws and the order of things; he must also know each one’s particular needs. Once again, a rabbinical commentary on Exodus describes Moses’ qualities as a shepherd this way: he would send each sheep in turn to graze - first, the youngest, for them to browse on the tenderest sward; then the older ones; and last the oldest, who were capable of browsing on the

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roughest grass. The shepherd’s power implies individual attention paid to each member of the flock.

These are just themes that Hebraic texts associate with the metaphors of the Shepherd-God and his flock of people.

In no way do I claim that that is effectively how political power was wielded in Hebrew society before the fall of Jerusalem. I do not even claim that such a conception of political power is in any way coherent.

They’re just themes. Paradoxical, even contradictory, ones. Christianity was to give them considerable importance, both in the Middle Ages and in modern times. Among all the societies in history, ours - I mean, those that came into being at the end of Antiquity on the Western side of the European continent - have perhaps been the most aggressive and the most conquering; they have been capable of the most stupefying violence, against themselves as well as against others. They invented a great many different political forms. They profoundly altered their legal structures several times. It must be kept in mind that they alone evolved a strange technology of power treating the vast majority of men as a flock with a few as shepherds. They thus established between them a series of complex, continuous, and paradoxical relationships.

This is undoubtedly something singular in the course of history. Clearly, the development of ‘pastoral technology’ in the management of men profoundly disrupted the structures of ancient society. ***************** So as to better explain the importance of this disruption, I’d like to briefly return to what I was saying about the Greeks. I can see the objections liable to be made.

One is that the Homeric poems use the shepherd metaphor to refer to the kings. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the expression poiμ•u la•u crops up several times. It qualifies the leaders, highlighting the grandeur of their power.

Moreover, it’s a ritual title, common in even late Indo-European literature. In Beowulf, the king is still regarded as a shepherd. But there is nothing really surprising in the fact that the same title, as in the Assyrian texts, is to be found in archaic epic poems.

The problem arises rather as to Greek thought: There is at least one category of texts where references to shepherd models are made: the Pythagorean ones. The metaphor of the herdsman appears in the Fragments of Archytas, quoted by Stobeus. The word u•μoV (the law) is connected with the word nuoμe•V (shepherd) : the shepherd shares out, the law apportions. Then Zeus is called N•μioV and N•μeioV because he gives his sheep food. And, finally, the magistrate must be Fil•uqrwpoV, i.e., devoid of selfishness. He must be full of zeal and solicitude, like a shepherd.

Grube, the German editor of Archytas’ Fragments, says that this proves a Hebrew influence unique in Greek literature. Other commentators, such as Delatte, say that the comparison between gods, magistrates, and shepherds was common in Greece. It is therefore not to be dwelt upon.

I shall restrict myself to political literature. The results of the enquiry are clear: the political metaphor of the shepherd occurs neither in Isocrates, nor in Demosthenes, nor in Aristotle. This is rather surprising when one reflects that in his Areopagiticus, Isocrates insists on the magistrates’ duties; he stresses the need for them to be devoted and to show concern for young people. Yet not a word as to any shepherd.

By contrast, Plato often speaks of the shepherd-magistrate. He mentions the idea in Critias, The Republic, and Laws. He thrashes it out in The Statesman. In the former, the shepherd theme is rather subordinate. Sometimes, those happy days when mankind was governed directly by the gods and grazed on abundant pastures are evoked (Critias) , Sometimes, the magistrates’ necessary virtue – as contrasted with Thrasymachos’ vice, is what is insisted upon (The Republic). And sometimes, the problem is to define the subordinate magistrates’ role: indeed, they, just as the watchdogs, have to obey “those at the top of the scale” (Laws).

But in The Statesman pastoral power is the central problem and it is treated at length. Can the city’s decisionmaker, can the commander, be defined as a sort of shepherd ?

Plato’s analysis is well known. To solve this question he uses the division method. A distinction is drawn between the man who conveys orders to inanimate things (e.g., the architect), and the man who gives orders to animals; between the man who gives orders to isolated animals (like a yoke of oxen) and he who gives orders to flocks; and he who gives orders to animal flocks, and he who commands human flocks. And there we have the political leader: a shepherd of men.

But this first division remains unsatisfactory. It has to be pushed further. The method opposing men to all the other animals isn’t a good one. And so the dialogue starts all over again. A whole series of distinctions is established: file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.omnesEtSingulatim.en.html (3 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:27 πμ

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between wild animals and tame ones; those that live in water, and those that live on land; those with horns, and those without; between cleft- and plain-hoofed animals; between those capable and incapable of mutual reproduction. And the dialogue wanders astray with these never-ending subdivisions.

So, what do the initial development of the dialogue and its subsequent failure show? That the division method can prove nothing at all when it isn’t managed correctly. It also shows that the idea of analysing political power as the relationship between a shepherd and his animals was probably rather a controversial one at the time. Indeed, it’s the first assumption to cross the interlocutors’ minds when seeking to discover the essence of the politician. Was it a commonplace at the time? Or was Plato rather discussing one of the Pythagorean themes? The absence of the shepherd metaphor in other contemporary political texts seems to tip the scale towards the second hypothesis. But we can probably leave the discussion open.

My personal enquiry bears upon how Plato impugns the theme in the rest of the dialogue. He does so first by means of methodological arguments and then by means of the celebrated myth of the world revolving round its spindle.

The methodological arguments are extremely interesting. Whether the king is a sort of shepherd or not can be told, not by deciding which different species can form a flock, but by analysing what the shepherd does.

What is characteristic of his task? First, the shepherd is alone at the head of his flock. Second, his job is to supply his cattle with food; to care for them when they are sick; to play them music to get them together, and guide them; to arrange their intercourse with a view to the finest offspring. So we do find the typical shepherd-metaphor themes of Oriental texts.

And what’s the king’s task in regard to all this? Like the shepherd, he is alone at the head of the city. But, for the rest, who provides mankind with food? The king? No. The farmer, the baker do. Who looks after men when they are sick? The king? No. The physician. And who guides them with music? The gymnast – not the king. And so, many citizens could quite legitimately claim the title ‘shepherd of men’. Just as the human flock’s shepherd has many rivals, so has the politician. Consequently, if we want to find out what the politician really and essentially is, we must sift it out from ‘the surrounding flood’, thereby demonstrating in what ways he isn’t a shepherd.

Plato therefore resorts to the myth of the world revolving round its axis in two successive and contrary motions.

In a first phase, each animal species belonged to a flock led by a Genius-Shepherd. The human flock was led by the deity itself. It could lavishly avail itself of the fruits of the earth; it needed no abode; and after Death, men came back to life. A crucial sentence adds: “The deity being their shepherd, mankind needed no political constitution.”

In a second phase, the world turned in the opposite direction. The gods were no longer men’s shepherds; they had to look after themselves. For they had been given fire. What would the politician’s role then be? Would he become the shepherd in the gods’ stead? Not at all. His job was to weave a strong fabric for the city. Being a politician didn’t mean feeding, nursing, and breeding off spring, but binding: binding different virtues; binding contrary temperaments (either impetuous or moderate), using the ‘shuttle’ of popular opinion. The royal art of ruling consisted in gathering lives together “into a community based upon concord and friendship,’ and so he wove “the finest of fabrics.” The entire population, “slaves and free men alike, were mantled in its folds.”

The Statesman therefore seems to be classical antiquity’s most systematic reflexion on the theme of the pastorate which was later to become so important in the Christian West. That we are discussing it seems to prove that a perhaps initially Oriental theme was important enough in Plato’s day to deserve investigation, but we stress the fact that it was impugned.

Not impugned entirely, however. Plato did admit that the physician, the farmer, the gymnast, and the pedagogue acted as shepherds. But he refused to get them involved with the politician’s activity. He said so explicitly: how would the politician ever find the time to come and sit by each person, feed him, give him concerts, and care for him when sick ? Only a god in a Golden Age could ever act like that; or again, like a physician or pedagogue, be responsible for the lives and development of a few individuals. But, situated between the two – the gods and the swains – the men who hold political power are not to be shepherds. Their task doesn’t consist in fostering the life of a group of individuals. It consists in forming and assuring the city’s unity. In short, the political problem is that of the relation between the one and the many in the framework of the city and its citizens. The pastoral problem concerns the lives of individuals.

All this seems very remote, perhaps. The reason for my insisting on these ancient texts is that they show us how early this problem – or rather, this series of problems – arose. They span the entirety of Western history. They are still highly important for contemporary society. They deal with the relations between political power at work within the state as a legal framework of unity, and a power we can call ‘pastoral’, whose role is to constantly ensure, file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.omnesEtSingulatim.en.html (4 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:27 πμ

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sustain, and improve the lives of each and every one.

The well-known ‘welfare state problem’ does not only bring the needs or the new governmental techniques of today’s world to light. It must be recognised for what it is: one of the extremely numerous reappearances of the tricky adjustment between political power wielded over legal subjects and pastoral power wielded over live individuals.

I have obviously no intention whatsoever of recounting the evolution of pastoral power throughout Christianity. The immense problems this would raise can easily be imagined: from doctrinal problems, such as Christ's denomination as 'the good shepherd', right up to institutional ones, such as parochial organisation, or the way pastoral responsibilities were shared between priests and bishops.

All I want to do is bring to light two or three aspects I regard as important for the evolution of pastorship, i.e., the technology of power.

First of all, let us examine the theoretical elaboration of the theme in ancient Christian literature: Chrysostom, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and, for monastic life, Cassian or Benedict. The Hebrew themes are considerably altered in at least four ways: 1. First, with regard to responsibility. We saw that the shepherd was to assume responsibility for the destiny of the whole flock and of each and every sheep. In the Christian conception, the shepherd must render an account – not only of each sheep, but of all their actions, all the good or evil they are liable to do, all that happens to them.

Moreover, between each sheep and its shepherd Christianity conceives a complex exchange and circulation of sins and merits. The sheep's sin is also imputable to the shepherd. He'll have to render an account of it at the Last Judgement. Conversely, by helping his flock to find salvation, the shepherd will also find his own. But by saving his sheep, he lays himself open to getting lost; so if he wants to save himself, he must needs run the risk of losing himself for others. If he does get lost, it is the flock that will incur the greatest danger. But let's leave all these paradoxes aside. My aim was just to underline the force and complexity of the moral ties binding the shepherd to each member of his flock. And what I especially wanted to underline was that such ties not only concerned individuals' lives, but the details of their actions as well.

2. The second important alteration concerns the problem of obedience. In the Hebrew conception, God being a shepherd, the flock following him complies to his will, to his law. Christianity, on the other hand, conceived the shepherd-sheep relationship as one of individual and complete dependence. This is undoubtedly one of the points at which Christian pastorship radically diverged from Greek thought. If a Greek had to obey, he did so because it was the law, or the will of the city. If he did happen to follow the will of someone in particular (a physician, an orator, a pedagogue), then that person had rationally persuaded him to do so. And it had to be for a strictly determined aim: to be cured, to acquire a skill, to make the best choice.

In Christianity, the tie with the shepherd is an individual one. It is personal submission to him. His will is done, not because it is consistent with the law, and not just as far as it is consistent with it, but, principally, because it is his will. In Cassian’s Coenobiticul Institutions, there are many edifying anecdotes in which the monk finds salvation by carrying out the absurdest of his superior’s orders.

Obedience is a virtue. This means that it is not, as for the Greeks, a provisional means to an end, but rather an end in itself. It is a permanent state; the sheep must permanently submit to their pastors: subditi. As Saint Benedict says, monks do not live according to their own free will; their wish is to be under the abbot’s command : ambulantes alieno judicio et imperio. Greek Christianity named this state of obedience •p•qeia.. The evolution of the word’s meaning is significant. In Greek philosophy, •p•qeia denotes the control that the individual, thanks to the exercise of reason, can exert over his passions. In Christian thought, p•qoV is willpower exerted over oneself, for oneself. Ap•qeia delivers us from such wilfulness.

3. Christian pastorship implies a peculiar type of knowledge between the pastor and each of his sheep.

This knowledge is particular. It individualizes. It isn’t enough to know the state of the flock. That of each sheep must also be known.

The theme existed long before there was Christian pastorship, but it was considerably amplified in three different ways: the shepherd must be informed as to the material needs of each member of the flock and provide for them when necessary. He must know what is going on, what each of them does – his public sins. Last and not least, he must know what goes on in the soul of each one, that is, his secret sins, his progress on the road to sainthood.

In order to ensure this individual knowledge, Christianity appropriated two essential instruments at work in the Hellenistic world: selfexamination and the guidance of conscience. It took them over, but not without altering them considerably.

It is well known that self-examination was widespread among the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and the Epicureans as a means of daily taking stock of the good or evil performed in regard to one’s duties. One’s progress on the way to perfection, i.e., self-mastery and the domination of one’s passions, could thus be measured. The guidance of conscience was also predominant in certain cultured circles, but as advice given – and sometimes paid for – in particularly difficult circumstances: in mourning, or when one was suffering a setback.

Christian pastorship closely associated these two practices. On one hand, conscience-guiding constituted a constant bind : the sheep didn’t let itself be led only to come through any rough passage victoriously, it let itself be led every second. Being guided was a state and you were fatally lost if you tried to escape it. The ever-quoted phrase runs like this: he who suffers not guidance withers away like a dead leaf. As for self-examination, its aim was not to close self-awareness in upon itself, but to enable it to open up entirely to its director – to unveil to him the depths of the soul.

There are a great many first-century ascetic and monastic texts concerning the link between guidance and self-examination that show how crucial these techniques were for Christianity and how complex they had already become. What I would like to emphasise is that they delineate the emergence of a very strange phenomenon in Greco-Roman civilisation, that is, the organisation of a link between total obedience, knowledge of oneself, and confession to someone else.

4. There is another transformation – maybe the most important. All those Christian techniques of examination, confession, guidance, obedience, have an aim: to get individuals to work at their own ‘mortification’ in this world. Mortification is not death, of course, but it is a renunciation of this world and of oneself: a kind of everyday death. A death which is supposed to provide life in another world. This is not the first time we see the shepherd theme associated with death; but here it is other than in the Greek idea of political power. It is not a sacrifice for the city; Christian mortification is a kind of relation from oneself to oneself. It is a part, a constitutive part of the Christian self-identity.

We can say that Christian pastorship has introduced a game that neither the Greeks nor the Hebrews imagined. A strange game whose elements are life, death, truth, obedience, individuals, self-identity; a game which seems to have nothing to do with the game of the city surviving through the sacrifice of the citizens. Our societies proved to be really demonic since they happened to combine those two

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games – the city / citizen game and the shepherd / flock game – in what we call the modern states.

As you may notice, what I have been trying to do this evening is not to solve a problem but to suggest a way to approach a problem. This problem is similar to those I have been working on since my first book about insanity and mental illness. As I told you previously, this problem deals with the relations between experiences (like madness, illness, transgression of laws, sexuality, self-identity) knowledge (like psychiatry, medicine, criminology, sexology, psychology), and power (such as the power which is wielded in psychiatric and penal institutions, and in all other institutions which deal with individual control).

Our civilisation has developed the most complex system of knowledge, the most sophisticated structures of power: what has this kind of knowledge, this type of power made of us? In what way are those fundamental experiences of madness, suffering, death, crime, desire, individuality connected, even if we are not aware of it, with knowledge and power? I am sure I’ll never get the answer; but that does not mean that we don’t have to ask the question.

II I have tried to show how primitive Christianity shaped the idea of a pastoral influence continuously exerting itself on individuals and through the demonstration of their particular truth. And I have tried to show how this idea of pastoral power was foreign to Greek thought despite a certain number of borrowings such as practical selfexamination and the guidance of conscience.

I would like at this time, leaping across many centuries, to describe another episode which has been in itself particularly important in the history of this government of individuals by their own verity.

This instance concerns the formation of the state in the modern sense of the word. If I make this historical connection it is obviously not in order to suggest that the aspect of pastoral power disappeared during the ten great centuries of Christian Europe, Catholic and Roman, but it seems to me that this period, contrary to what one might expect, has not been that of the triumphant pastorate. And that is true for several reasons: some are of an economic nature - the pastorate of souls is an especially urban experience, difficult to reconcile with the poor and extensive rural economy at the beginning of the Middle Ages. The other reasons are of a cultural nature: the pastorate is a complicated technique which demands a certain level of culture, not only on the part of the pastor but also among his flock. Other reasons relate to the sociopolitical structure. Feudality developed between individuals a tissue of personal bonds of an altogether different type than the pastorate.

I do not wish to say that the idea of a pastoral government of men disappeared entirely in the medieval church. It has, indeed, remained and one can even say that it has shown great vitality. Two series of facts tend to prove this.

First, the reforms which had been made in the Church itself, especially in the monastic orders – the different reforms operating successively inside existing monasteries – had the goal of restoring the rigor of pastoral order among the monks themselves. As for the newly created orders – Dominican and Franciscan – essentially they proposed to perform pastoral work among the faithful. The Church tried ceaselessly during successive crises to regain its pastoral functions. But there is more. In the population itself one sees all during the Middle Ages the development of a long series of struggles whose object was pastoral power. Critics of the Church which fails in its obligations reject its hierarchical structure, look for the more or less spontaneous forms of community in which the flock could find the shepherd it needed. This search for pastoral expression took on numerous aspects, at times extremely violent struggles as was the case for the Vaudois, sometimes peaceful quests as among the Freres de la Vie community. Sometimes it stirred very extensive movements such as the Hussites, sometimes it fermented limited groups like the Amis de Dieu de l’Oberland. It happened that these movements were close to heresy, as among the Beghards, at times stirring orthodox movements which dwelt within the bosom of the Church (like that of the Italian Oratorians in the fifteenth century).

I raise all of this in a very allusive manner in order to emphasise that if the pastorate was not instituted as an effective, practical government of men during the Middle Ages, it has been a permanent concern and a stake in constant struggles. There was across the entire period of the Middle Ages a yearning to arrange pastoral relations among men and this aspiration affected both the mystical tide and the great millenarian dreams. ******************* Of course, I don’t intend to treat here the problem of how states are formed. Nor do I intend to go into the different economic, social, and political processes from which they stem. Neither do I want to analyse the different institutions or mechanisms with which states equipped themselves in order to ensure their survival. I’d just like to give some fragmentary indications as to something midway between the state as a type of political organisation and its mechanisms, viz., the type of rationality implemented in the exercise of state power.

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I mentioned this in my first lecture. Rather than wonder whether aberrant state power is due to excessive rationalism or irrationalism, I think it would be more appropriate to pin down the specific type of political rationality the state produced.

After all, at least in this respect, political practices resemble scientific ones: it’s not ‘reason in general’ that is implemented, but always a very specific type of rationality. The striking thing is that the rationality of state power was reflective and perfectly aware of its specificity. It was not tucked away in spontaneous, blind practices. It was not brought to light by some retrospective analysis. It was formulated especially in two sets of doctrine: the reason of state and the theory of police. These two phrases soon acquired narrow and pejorative meanings, I know. But for the 150 or 200 years during which modern states were formed, their meaning was much broader than now.

The doctrine of reason of state attempted to define how the principles and methods of state government differed, say, from the way God governed the world, the father his family, or a superior his community.

The doctrine of the police defines the nature of the objects of the state’s rational activity; it defines the nature of the aims it pursues, the general form of the instruments involved.

So, what I’d like to speak about today is the system of rationality. But first, there are two preliminaries: (1) Meinecke having published a most important book on reason of state, I’ll speak mainly of the policing theory.

(2) Germany and Italy underwent the greatest difficulties in getting established as states, and they produced the greatest number of reflexions on reason of state and the police. I’ll often refer to the Italian and German texts. *********************** Let’s begin with reason of state. Here are a few definitions: BOTERO: “A perfect knowledge of the means through which states form, strengthen themselves, endure, and grow.”

PALAZZO (Discourse on Government and True Reason of State, 1606) : “A rule or art enabling us to discover how to establish peace and order within the Republic.”

CHEMNITZ (De Ratione Status, 1647) : “A certain political consideration required for all public matters, councils, and projects, whose only aim is the state’s preservation, expansion, and felicity; to which end, the easiest and promptest means are to be employed.”

Let me consider certain features these definitions have in common.

1. Reason of state is regarded as an ‘art’, that is, a technique conforming to certain rules. These rules do not simply pertain to customs or traditions, but to knowledge - rational knowledge. Nowadays, the expression reason of state evokes ‘arbitrariness’ or ‘violence’. But at the time, what people had in mind was a rationality specific to the art of governing states.

2. From where does this specific art of government draw its rationale? The answer to this question provokes the scandal of nascent political thought. And yet it’s very simple: the art of governing is rational, if reflexion causes it to observe the nature of what is governed – here, the state.

Now, to state such a platitude is to break with a simultaneously Christian and judiciary tradition, a tradition which claimed that government was essentially just. It respected a whole system of laws: human laws; the law of nature; divine law.

There is a quite significant text by St. Thomas on these points. He recalls that “art, in its field, must imitate what nature carries out in its own”; it is only reasonable under that condition. The king’s government of his kingdom must imitate God’s government of nature; or again, the soul’s government of the body. The king must found cities just as God created the world; just as the soul gives form to the body. The king must also lead men towards their finality, just as God does for natural beings, or as the soul does, when directing the body. And what is man’s finality? What’s good for the body? No; he’d need only a physician, not a king. Wealth? No; a steward would suffice. Truth? Not even that; for only a teacher would be needed. Man needs someone capable of opening up the way to heavenly bliss through his conformity, here on earth, to what is honesturn.

As we can see, the model for the art of government is that of God imposing his laws upon his creatures. St. Thomas’s model for rational government is not a political one, whereas what the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seek under the denomination ‘reason of state’ are principles capable of guiding an actual government. They aren’t concerned with nature and its laws in general. They’re concerned with what the state is; what its exigencies are.

And so we can understand the religious scandal aroused by such a type of research. It explains why reason of state was assimilated to atheism. In France, in particular, the expression generated in a political context was commonly associated with ‘atheist’.

3. Reason of state is also opposed to another tradition. In The Prince, Machiavelli’s problem is to decide how a province or territory acquired through inheritance or by conquest can be held against its internal or external rivals. Machiavelli’s entire analysis is aimed at defining what keeps up or reinforces the link between prince and state, whereas the problem posed by reason of state is that of the very existence and nature of the state itself. This is why the theoreticians of reason of state tried to stay aloof from Machiavelli; he had a bad reputation and they couldn’t recognize their own problem in his. Conversely, those opposed to reason of state tried to impair this new art of governing, denouncing it as Machiavelli’s legacy. However, despite these confused quarrels a century after The Prince had been written, reason of state marks the emergence of an extremely – albeit only partly – different type of rationality from Machiavelli’s.

The aim of such an art of governing is precisely not to reinforce the power a prince can wield over his domain. Its aim is to reinforce the state itself. This is one of the most characteristic features of all the definitions that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries put forward. Rational government is this, so to speak: given the nature of the state, it can hold down its enemies for an indeterminate length of time. It can only do so if it increases its own strength. And its enemies do likewise. The state whose only concern would be to

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hold out would most certainly come to disaster. This idea is a very important one. It is bound up with a new historical outlook. Indeed, it implies that states are realities which must needs hold out for an indefinite length of historical time – and in a disputed geographical area.

4. Finally, we can see that reason of state, understood as rational government able to increase the state’s strength in accordance with itself presupposes the constitution of a certain type of knowledge. Government is only possible if the strength of the state is known; it can thus be sustained. The state’s capacity, and the means to enlarge it, must be known. The strength and capacities of the other states must also be known. Indeed, the governed state must hold out against the others. Government therefore entails more than just implementing general principles of reason, wisdom, and prudence. Knowledge is necessary; concrete, precise, and measured knowledge as to the state’s strength. The art of governing, characteristic of reason of state, is intimately bound up with the development of what was then called either political statistics, or arithmetic; that is, the knowledge of different states’ respective forces. Such knowledge was indispensable for correct government. Briefly speaking, then: reason of state is not an art of government according to divine, natural, or human laws. It doesn’t have to respect the general order of the world. It’s government in accordance with the state’s strength. It’s government whose aim is to increase this strength within an extensive and competitive framework.

******************** So what the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors understand by ‘the police’ is very different from what we put under the term. It would be worth studying why these authors are mostly Italians and Germans, but whatever!

What they understand by ‘police’ isn’t an institution or mechanism functioning within the state, but a governmental technology peculiar to the state; domains, techniques, targets where the state intervenes.

To be clear and simple, I will exemplify what I’m saying with a text which is both utopian and a project. It’s one of the first utopia-programmes for a policed state. Turquet de Mayenne drew it up and presented it in 1611 to the Dutch States General. In his book Science in the Government of Louis XIV, J. King draws attention to the importance of this strange work. Its title is Aristo- Democrutic Monarchy; that’s enough to show what is important in the author’s eyes: not so much choosing between these different types of constitution as their mixture in view to a vital end, viz., the state. Turquet also calls it the City, the Republic, or yet again, the Police.

Here is the organisation Turquet proposes. Four grand officials rank beside the king. One is in charge of Justice; another, of the Army; the third, of the Exchecquer, i.e., the king’s taxes and revenues; the fourth is in charge of the police. It seems that this officer’s role was to have been mainly a moral one. According to Turquet, he was to foster among the people “modesty, charity, loyalty, industriousness, friendly cooperation, honesty.” We recognize the traditional idea that the subject’s virtue ensures the kingdom’s good management. But, when we come down to the details, the outlook is somewhat different.

Turquet suggests that in each province, there should be boards keeping law and order. There should be two that see to people; the other two see to things. The first board, the one pertaining to people, was to see to the positive, active, productive aspects of life. In other words, it was concerned with education; determining each one’s tastes and aptitudes; the choosing of occupations - useful ones: each person over the age of twenty-five had to be enrolled on a register noting his occupation. Those not usefully employed were regarded as the dregs of society.

The second board was to see to the negative aspects of life: the poor (widows, orphans, the aged) requiring help; the unemployed; those whose activities required financial aid (no interest was to be charged) ; public health: diseases, epidemics; and accidents such as fire and flood.

One of the boards concerned with things was to specialise in commodities and manufactured goods. It was to indicate what was to be produced, and how; it was also to control markets and trading. The fourth board would see to the ‘demesne’, i.e., the territory, space: private property, legacies, donations, sales were to be controlled; manorial rights were to be reformed; roads, rivers, public buildings, and forests would also be seen to.

In many features, the text is akin to the political utopias which were so numerous at the time. But it is also contemporary with the great theoretical discussions on reason of state and the administrative organisation of monarchies. It is highly representative of what the epoch considered a traditionally governed state’s tasks to be.

What does this text demonstrate?

1. The ‘police’ appears as an administration heading the state, together with the judiciary, the army, and the exchecquer. True. Yet in fact, it embraces everything else. Turquet says so: “It branches out into all of the people’s conditions, everything they do or undertake.

Its field comprises justice, finance, and the army.”

2. The police includes everything. But from an extremely particular point of view. Men and things are envisioned as to their relationships: men’s coexistence on a territory; their relationships as to property; what they produce; what is exchanged on the market. It also considers how they live, the diseases and accidents which can befall them. What the police sees to is a live, active, productive man.

Turquet employs a remarkable expression: “The police’s true object is man.”

3. Such intervention in men’s activities could well be qualified as totalitarian. What are the aims pursued? They fall into two categories.

First, the police has to do with everything providing the city with adornment, form, and splendour. Splendour denotes not only the beauty of a state ordered to perfection; but also its strength, its vigour. The police therefore ensures and highlights the state’s vigour.

Second, the police’s other purpose is to foster working and trading relations between men, as well as aid and mutual help. There again, the word Turquet uses is important: the police must ensure ‘communication’ among men, in the broad sense of the word. Otherwise, file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.omnesEtSingulatim.en.html (8 of 11)19/5/2005 10:18:27 πμ

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men wouldn’t be able to live; or their lives would be precarious, poverty-stricken, and perpetually threatened. And here, we can make out what is, I think, an important idea. As a form of rational intervention wielding political power over men, the role of the police is to supply them with a little extra life; and by so doing, supply the state with a little extra strength. This is done by controlling ‘communication’, i.e., the common activities of individuals (work, production, exchange, accommodation). You’ll object: but that’s only the utopia of some obscure author. You can hardly deduce any significant consequences from it! But I say: Turquet’s book is but one example of a huge literature circulating in most European countries of the day. The fact that it is over-simple and yet very detailed brings out all the better the characteristics that could be recognized elsewhere. Above all, I’d say that such ideas were not stillborn.

They spread all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, either as applied policies (such as cameralism or mercantilism), or as subjects to be taught (the German Polizeiwissenschaft; don’t let’s forget that this was the title under which the science of administration was taught in Germany).

These are the two perspectives that I’d like, not to study, but at least to suggest. First I’ll refer to a French administrative compendium, then to a German textbook.

1. Every historian knows Delamare’s Compendium. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, this administrator undertook the compilation of the whole kingdom’s police regulations. It’s an infinite source of highly valuable information. The general conception of the police that such a quantity of rules and regulations could convey to an administrator like Delamare is what I’d like to emphasise.

Delamare says that the police must see to eleven things within the state: (1) religion; (2) morals; (3) health; ( 4 ) supplies; ( 5 ) roads, highways, town buildings; (6) public safety; (7) the liberal arts (roughly speaking, arts and science); (8) trade; (9) factories; (10) manservants and labourers; (11) the poor.

The same classification features in every treatise concerning the police. As in Turquet’s utopia programme, apart from the army, justice properly speaking, and direct taxes, the police apparently sees to everything. The same thing can be said differently: Royal power had asserted itself against feudalism thanks to the support of an armed force and by developing a judicial system and establishing a tax system. These were the ways in which royal power was traditionally wielded. Now, ‘the police’ is the term covering the whole new field in which centralised political and administrative power can intervene.

Now, what is the logic behind intervention in cultural rites, small-scale production techniques, intellectual life, and the road network ?

Delamare’s answer seems a bit hesitant. Now he says, “The police sees to everything pertaining to men’s happiness”; now he says, “The police sees to everything regulating ‘society’ (social relations) carried on between men.” Now again, he says that the police sees to living. This is the definition I will dwell upon. It’s the most original and it clarifies the other two; and Delamare himself dwells upon it. He makes the following remarks as to the police’s eleven objects. The police deals with religion, not, of course, from the point of view of dogmatic truth, but from that of the moral quality of life. In seeing to health and supplies, it deals with the preservation of life; concerning trade, factories, workers, the poor and public order, it deals with the conveniences of life. In seeing to the theatre, literature, entertainment, its object is life’s pleasures. In short, life is the object of the police: the indispensable, the useful, and the superfluous. That people survive, live, and even do better than just that, is what the police has to ensure.

And so we link up with the other definitions Delamare proposes: “The sole purpose of the police is to lead man to the utmost happiness to be enjoyed in this life.” Or again, the police cares for the good of the soul (thanks to religion and morality), the good of the body (food, health, clothing, housing), wealth (industry, trade, labour). Or again, the police sees to the benefits that can be derived only from living in society.

2. Now let us have a look at the German textbooks. They were used to teach the science of administration somewhat later on. It was taught in various universities, especially in Gottingen, and was extremely important for continental Europe. Here it was that the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian civil servants – those who were to carry out Joseph 11’s and the Great Catherine’s reforms – were trained. Certain Frenchmen, especially in Napoleon’s entourage, knew the teachings of Polizeiwissenschaft very well.

What was to be found in these textbooks ? Huhenthal’s Liber de Politia featured the following items : the number of citizens; religion and morals; health; food; the safety of persons and of goods (particularly in reference to fires and floods) ; the administration of justice; citizens’ conveniences and pleasures (how to obtain them, how to restrict them). Then comes a series of chapters about rivers, forests, mines, brine pits, housing, and finally, several chapters on how to acquire goods either through farming, industry, or trade.

In his Precis for the Police, Willebrand speaks successively of morals, trades and crafts, health, safety, and last of all, of town building and planning. Considering the subjects at least, there isn’t a great deal of difference from Delamare’s.

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But the most important of these texts is Von Justi’s Elements of Police. The police’s specific purpose is still defined as live individuals living in society. Nevertheless, the way Von Justi organises his book is somewhat different. He studies first what he calls the ‘state’s landed property’, i.e.,its territory. He considers it in two different aspects: how it is inhabited (town vs. country), and then, who inhabit these territories (the number of people, their growth, health, mortality, immigration). Von Justi then analyses the ‘goods and chattels’, i.e., the commodities, manufactured goods, and their circulation which involve problems pertaining to cost, credit, and currency. Finally, the last part is devoted to the conduct of individuals: their morals, their occupational capabilities, their honesty, and how they respect the Law. In my opinion, Von Justi’s work is a much more advanced demonstration of how the police problem was evolved than Delamare’s ‘Introduction’ to his compendium of statutes. There are four reasons for this.

First, Von Justi defines much more clearly what the central paradox of police is. The police, he says, is what enables the state to increase its power and exert its strength to the full. On the other hand, the police has to keep. the citizens happy – happiness being understood as survival, life, and improved living. He perfectly defines what I feel to be the aim of the modern art of government, or state rationality: viz., to develop those elements constitutive of individuals’ lives in such a way that their development also fosters that of the strength of the state.

Von Justi then draws a distinction between this task, which he calls Polizei, as do his contemporaries, and Politik, Die Politik. Die Politik is basically a negative task. It consists in the state’s fighting against its internal and external enemies. Polizei, however, is a positive task: it has to foster both citizens’ lives and the state’s strength.

And here is the important point: Von Justi insists much more than does Delamare on a notion which became increasingly important during the eighteenth century – population. Population was understood as a group of live individuals. Their characteristics were those of all the individuals belonging to the same species, living side by side.

(They thus presented mortality and fecundity rates; they were subject to epidemics, overpopulation; they presented a certain type of territorial distribution.) True, Delamare did use the term ‘life’ to characterise the concern of the police, but the emphasis he gave it wasn’t very pronounced. Proceeding through the eighteenth century, and especially in Germany, we see that what is defined as the object of the police is population, i.e., a group of beings living in a given area.

And last, one only has to read Von Justi to see that it is not only a utopia, as with Turquet, nor a compendium of systematically filed regulations. Von Justi claims to draw up a Polizeiwissenschuft. His book isn’t simply a list of prescriptions. It’s also a grid through which the state, i.e., territory, resources, population, towns, etc., can be observed. Von Justi combines ‘statistics’ (the description of states) with the art of government. Polizeiwissenschuft is at once an art of government and a method for the analysis of a population living on a territory.

Such historical considerations must appear to be very remote; they must seem useless in regard to present-day concerns. I wouldn’t go as far as Hermann Hesse, who says that only the “constant reference to history, the past, and antiquity” is fecund. But experience has taught me that the history of various forms of rationality is sometimes more effective in unsettling our certitudes and dogmatism than is abstract criticism. For centuries, religion couldn’t bear having its history told. Today, our schools of rationality balk at having their history written, which is no doubt significant.

What I’ve wanted to show is a direction for research. These are only the rudiments of something I’ve been working at for the last two years. It’s the historical analysis of what we could call, using an obsolete term, the art of government.

This study rests upon several basic assumptions. I’d sum them up like this: 1. Power is not a substance. Neither is it a mysterious property whose origin must be delved into. Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals. Such relations are specific, that is, they have nothing to do with exchange, production, communication, even though they combine with them. The characteristic feature of power is that some men can more or less entirely determine other men’s conduct – but never exhaustively or coercively. A man who is chained up and beaten is subject to force being exerted over him. Not power. But if he can be induced to speak, when his ultimate recourse could have been to hold his tongue, preferring death, then he has been caused to behave in a certain way. His freedom has been subjected to power. He has been submitted to government. If an individual can remain free, however little his freedom may be, power can subject him to government. There is no power without potential refusal or revolt.

2. As for all relations among men, many factors determine power. Yet rationalisation is also constantly working away at it. There are specific forms to such rationalisation. It differs from the rationalisation peculiar to economic processes, or to production and communication techniques; it differs from that of scientific discourse. The government of men by men -whether they form small or large groups, whether it is power exerted by men over women, or by adults over children, or by one class over another, or by a bureaucracy over a population - involves a certain type of rationality. It doesn’t involve instrumental violence.

3. Consequently, those who resist or rebel against a form of power cannot merely be content to denounce violence or criticise an institution. Nor is it enough to cast the blame on reason in general. What has to be questioned is the form of rationality at stake. The

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criticism of power wielded over the mentally sick or mad cannot be restricted to psychiatric institutions; nor can those questioning the power to punish be content with denouncing prisons as total institutions. The question is: how are such relations of power rationalized?

Asking it is the only way to avoid other institutions, with the same objectives and the same effects, from taking their stead.

4. For several centuries, the state has been one of the most remarkable, one of the most redoubtable, forms of human government. Very significantly, political criticism has reproached the state with being simultaneously a factor for individualisation and a totalitarian principle, Just to look at nascent state rationality, just to see what its first policing project was, makes it clear that, right from the start, the state is both individualising and totalitarian. Opposing the individual and his interests to it is just as hazardous as opposing it with the community and its requirements. Political rationality has grown and imposed itself all throughout the history of Western societies. It first took its stand on the idea of pastoral power, then on that of reason of state. Its inevitable effects are both individualisation and totalisation. Liberation can only come from attacking, not just one of these two effects, but political rationality’s very roots.

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The Subject and Power (1982), Excerpt

Foucault.info | The Subject and Power (1982), Excerpt

From "the Subject and Power" 1982, in "Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics" University of chicago, p208.

I would like to suggest another way to go further toward a new economy of power relations, a way which is more empirical, more directly related to our present situation, and which implies more relations between theory and practice. It consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point. To use another metaphor, it consists of using this resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, and find out their point of application and the methods used. Rather than analyzing power from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analyzing power relations through the antagonism of strategies [. . . .]

Let us come back to the definition of the exercise of power as a way in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions. What, therefore, would be proper to a relationship of power is that it be a mode of action upon actions. That is to say, power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted "above" society as a supplementary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream of. In any case, to live in a society is to live in such a way that action upon other actions is possible-- and in fact ongoing. A society without power relations can only be an abstraction. Which, be it said in passing, makes all the more politically necessary the analysis of power relations in a given society, their historical formation, the source of their strength or fragility, the conditions which are necessary to transform some or to abolish others. For to say that there cannot be a society without power relations is not to say either that those which are established are necessary or, in any case, that power constitutes a fatality at the heart of societies, such that it cannot be undermined. Instead, I would say that the analysis, elaboration, and bringing into question of power relations and the "agonism" between power relations and the intransitivity of freedom is a permanent political task inherent in all social existence [. . . .]

In effect, between a relationship of power and a strategy of struggle there is a reciprocal appeal, a perpetual linking and a perpetual reversal. At every moment the relationship of power may become a confrontation between two adversaries. Equally, the relationship between adversaries in society may, at every moment, give place to the putting into operation of mechanisms of power. The consequence of this instability is the ability to decipher the same events and the same transformations either from inside the history of struggle or from the standpoint of the power relationships. The interpretations which result will not consist of the same elements of meaning or the same links or the same types of intelligibility, although they refer to the same historical fabric, and each of the two analyses must have reference to the other. In fact, it is precisely the disparities between the two readings which make visible those fundamental phenomena of "domination" which are present in a large number of human societies.

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Préface à Anti-Œdipe (1977)

Foucault.info | Préface à Anti-Œdipe (1977)

Préface de Michel Foucault à la traduction américaine du livre de Gilles Deleuze et Felix Guattari, L'Anti-Oedipe : capitalisme et schizophrénie, 1977. In Michel Foucault, Dits et Ecrits II, 1976-1988, Paris, Gallimard, 2001 (1ère Edition 1994), p. 133-136.

Pendant les années 1945-1965 (je parle de l'Europe), il y avait une certaine manière correcte de penser, un certain style du discours politique, une certaine éthique de l'intellectuel. Il fallait être à tu et à toi avec Marx, ne pas laisser ses rêves vagabonder trop loin de Freud, et traiter les systèmes de signes -le signifiant- avec le plus grand respect. Telles étaient les trois conditions qui rendaient acceptables cette singulière occupation qu'est le fait d'écrire et d'énoncer une part de vérité sur soi et son époque.

Puis vinrent cinq années brèves, passionnées, cinq années de jubilations et d'énigmes. Aux portes de notre monde le Vietnam, et évidement, et le premier grand coup porté aux pouvoirs constitués. Mais si à l'intérieur de nos murs que se passait-il exactement ? Un amalgame de politique révolutionnaire et anti-répressive ? Une guerre menée sur deux fronts -l'exploitation sociale et la répression psychique ? Une montée de la libido modulée par le conflit des classes ?

C'est possible. Quoi qu'il en soit c'est par cette interprétation familière et dualiste que l'on a prétendu expliquer les événements de ces années. Le rêve qui, entre la Première Guerre mondiale et l'avènement du fascisme, avaient tenu sous son charme les fractions les plus utopistes de l'Europe – l'Allemagne de Wilhelm et la France des surréalistes- était revenu embrasser la réalité elle-même : Marx et Freud éclairés par la même incandescence.

Mais est-bien ce qui s'est passé ? Était-ce bien une reprise du projet utopique des années trente, à l'échelle, cette fois, de la pratique historique ? Ou y a-t-il eu, au contraire, un mouvement vers des luttes politiques qui ne se conformaient plus au modèle prescrit par la tradition marxiste ? Vers une expérience et une technologie du désir qui n'étaient plus freudiennes ? On a certes brandi les vieux étendards, mais le combat s'est déplacé et a gagné de nouvelle zones.

L’Anti-Œdipe montre, tout d'abord, l'étendue du terrain couvert. Mais il fait beaucoup plus. Il ne se dissipe pas dans le dénigrement des vieilles idoles, mais il s'amuse beaucoup avec Freud. Et, surtout, il nous incite à aller plus loin.

Ce serait une erreur de lire L’Anti-Œdipe comme la nouvelle référence théorique (vous savez cette fameuse théorie qu'on nous a si souvent annoncée : celle qui va tout englober, celle qui est absolument totalisante et rassurante, celle, nous assure-t-on, dont « nous avons tant besoin » en cette époque de dispersion et de spécialisation d'où l'« espoir » a disparu). Il ne fait pas chercher une « philosophie » dans cette extraordinaire profusion de notions nouvelles et de concepts surprises : L’Anti-Œdipe n'est pas un Hegel clinquant. La meilleure manière, je crois de lire L’Anti-Œdipe , est de l'aborder comme un « art », au sens ou on parle d'art érotique, par exemple. S'appuyant sur les notions en apparence abstraites de multiplicités, de flux, de dispositifs et de branchements, l'analyse du rapport du désir à la réalité et à la « machine » capitaliste apporte des réponses à des questions concrètes. Des questions qui se soucient moins du pourquoi des choses que de leur comment. Comment introduit-on le désir dans la pensée, dans le discours, dans l'action ? Comment le discours peut-il et doit-il déployer ses forces dans la sphère du politique et s'intensifier dans le processus de renversement de l'ordre établi ? Ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica.

D'où les trois adversaires auxquels L’Anti-Œdipe se trouve confronté. Trois adversaires qui n'ont pas la même force, qui représentent des degrés divers de menace, et que ce livre combat par des moyens différents.

1) Les ascètes politiques, les militants moroses, les terroristes de la théorie, ceux qui voudraient préserver l'ordre pur de la politique et du discours politique. Les bureaucrates de la révolution et les fonctionnaires de la Vérité.

2) Les pitoyables techniciens du désir, les psychanalystes et les sémiologues qui enregistrent chaque signe et chaque symptôme, et qui voudraient réduire l'organisation multiple du désir à la loi binaire de la structure et du manque.

3) Enfin, l'ennemi majeur, l'adversaire stratégique (alors que l'opposition de L’Anti-Œdipe à ses autres ennemis constitue plutôt un engagement tactique): le fascisme. Et non seulement le fascisme historique de Hitler et de Mussolini qui a su si bien mobiliser et utiliser le désir des masses, mais aussi le fascisme qui est en nous tous, qui file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.prefaceAntiOedipe.fr.html (1 of 3)19/5/2005 10:18:28 πμ

Préface à Anti-Œdipe (1977)

hante nos esprits et nos conduites quotidiennes, le fascisme qui nous fait aimer le pouvoir, désirer cette chose même qui nous domine et nous exploite.

Je dirais que L’Anti-Œdipe (puissent ses auteurs me pardonner) est un livre d'éthique, le premier livre d'éthique qu'on ait écrit en France depuis assez longtemps (c'est peut-être la raison pour laquelle son succès ne s'est pas limité à un « lectorat » particulier : être anti-Oedipe est devenu un style de vie, un mode de pensée et de vie.

Comment faire pour ne pas devenir fasciste même quand (surtout quand) on croit être un militant révolutionnaire ?

Comme débarrasser nos discours et nos actes, nos coeurs et nos plaisirs du fascisme ? Comme débusquer le fascisme qui s'est incrusté dans notre comportement ? Les moralistes chrétiens cherchaient les traces de la chair qui s'étaient logées dans les replis de l'âme. Deleuze et Guattari, pour leur part, guettent les traces les plus infimes du fascisme dans le corps.

En rendant un modeste hommage à Saint-François-de-Sales, on pourrait dire que L’Anti-Œdipe est une Introduction à la vie non-fasciste.

Cet art de vivre contraire à toutes les formes de fascisme, qu’elles soient déjà installées ou proches de l’être, s’accompagne d’un certain nombre de principes essentiels, que je résumerais comme suit si je devais faire de ce grand livre un manuel ou un guide de vie quotidienne : - libérez l’action politique de toute forme de paranoïa unitaire et totalisante ; - faites croître l’action, la pensée et les désirs par prolifération, juxtaposition et disjonction, plutôt que par subdivision et hiérarchisation pyramidale ; - affranchissez-vous des vieilles catégories du Négatif (la loi, la limite, la castration, le manque, la lacune), que la pensée occidentale a si longtemps sacralisées comme forme du pouvoir et mode d’accès à la réalité. Préférez ce qui est positif et multiple, la différence à l’uniforme, le flux aux unités, les agencements mobiles aux systèmes.

Considérez que ce qui est productif n’est pas sédentaire, mais nomade ; - n’imaginez pas qu’il faille être triste pour être militant, même si la chose qu’on combat est abominable. C’est le lien du désir à la réalité (et non sa fuite dans les formes de la représentation) qui possède une force révolutionnaire ; - n’utilisez pas la pensée pour donner à une pratique politique une valeur de vérité ; ni l’action politique pour discréditer une pensée, comme si elle n’était que pure spéculation. Utilisez la pratique politique comme un intensificateur de la pensée, et l’analyse comme un multiplicateur des formes et des domaines d’intervention de l’action politique ; - n’exigez pas de la politique qu’elle rétablisse des « droits » de l’individu tels que la philosophie les a définis.

L’individu est le produit du pouvoir. Ce qu’il faut, c’est « désindividualiser » par la multiplication et le déplacement des divers agencements. Le groupe ne doit pas être le lien organique qui unit des individus hiérarchisés, mais un constant générateur de « désindividualisation » ; - ne tombez pas amoureux du pouvoir.

On pourrait même dire que Deleuze et Guattari aiment si peu le pouvoir qu'ils ont cherché à neutraliser les effets de pouvoirs liés à leur propre discours. D'ou les jeux et les pièges qu'on trouve un peu partout dans le livre, et qui font de sa traduction un véritable tour de force. Mais ce ne sont pas les pièges familiers de la rhétorique, ceux qui cherchent à séduire le lecteur sans qu'il soit conscient de la manipulation, et finissent par le gagner à la cause des auteurs contre sa volonté. Les pièges de L’Anti-Œdipe sont ceux de l'humour : tant d'invitations à se laisser expulser, à prendre congé du texte en claquant la porte. Le livre se donne souvent à penser qu'il n'est qu'humour et jeux là où pourtant quelque chose d'essentiel se passe, quelque chose qui est du plus grand sérieux : la traque de toutes les formes de fascisme, depuis celles, colossales, qui nous entourent et nous écrasent jusqu'aux formes menues qui font l'amère tyrannie de nos vies quotidiennes.

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Préface à Anti-Œdipe (1977)

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2nd préface à "Histoire de la folie" (1972)

Foucault.info | 2nd préface à "Histoire de la folie" (1972)

Michel Foucault, seconde préface pour la réedition d'Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, 1972.

Je devrais, pour ce livre déjà vieux, écrire une nouvelle préface. J’avoue que j’y répugne. Car j’aurais beau faire : je ne manquerais pas de vouloir le justifier pour ce qu’il était et le réinscrire, autant que faire se peut, dans ce qui se passe aujourd’hui. Possible ou non, habile ou pas, ce ne serait pas honnête. Ce ne serait pas conforme surtout à ce que doit être, par rapport à un livre, la réserve de celui qui l’a écrit. Un livre se produit, évènement minuscule, petit objet maniable. Il est pris dès lors dans un jeu incessant de répétitions ; ses doubles, autour de lui et bien loin de lui se mettent à fourmiller ; chaque lecture lui donne, pour un instant, un corps impalpable et unique ; des fragments de lui-même circulent qu’on fait valoir pour lui, qui passent pour le contenir presque tout entier et en lesquels finalement il lui arrive de trouver refuge ; les commentaires le dédoublent, autres discours où il doit enfin paraître lui-même, avouer ce qu’il a refusé de dire, se délivrer de ce que, bruyamment, il feignait d’être. La réédition en un autre temps, en un autre lieu, est encore un de ces doubles : ni tout à fait leurre ni tout à fait identité.

La tentation est grande pour qui écrit le livre de faire la loi à tout ce papillotement de simulacres, à leur prescrire une forme, à les lester d’une identité, à leur imposer une marque qui leur donnerait à tous une certaine valeur constante. « Je suis l’auteur : regardez mon visage ou mon profil ; voici à quoi devront ressembler toutes ces figures redoublées qui vont circuler sous mon nom ; celles qui s’en éloigneront ne vaudront rien ; et c’est à leur degré de ressemblance que vous pourrez juger de la valeur des autres. Je suis le nom, la loi, l’âme, le secret, la balance de tous ces doubles. » Ainsi s’écrit la Préface, acte premier par lequel commence à s’établir la monarchie de l’auteur, déclaration de tyrannie : mon intention doit être votre précepte ; vous plierez votre lecture, vos analyses, vos critiques, à ce que j’ai voulu faire, entendez bien ma modestie : quand je parle des limites de mon entreprise, j’entends borner votre liberté ; et si je proclame mon sentiment d’avoir été inégal à ma tâche, c’est que je ne veux pas vous laisser le privilège d’objecter à mon livre le fantasme d’un autre, tout proche de lui, mais plus beau que ce qu’il est. Je suis le monarque des choses que j’ai dites et je garde sur elles une éminente souveraineté : celle de mon intention et du sens que j’ai voulu leur donner.

Je voudrais qu’un livre, au moins du côté de celui qui l’a écrit, ne soit rien d’autre que les phrases dont il est fait ; qu’il ne se dédouble pas dans ce premier simulacre de lui-même qu’est une préface, et qui prétend donner sa loi à tous ceux qui pourront à l’avenir être formés à partir de lui. Je voudrais que cet objet-événement, presque imperceptible parmi tant d’autres, se recopie, se fragmente, se répète, se simule, se dédouble, disparaisse finalement sans que celui à qui il est arrivé de le produire, puisse jamais revendiquer le droit d’en être le maître, d’imposer ce qu’il voulait dire, ni de dire ce qu’il devait être. Bref, je voudrais qu’un livre ne se donne pas luimême ce statut de texte auquel la pédagogie ou la critique sauront bien le réduire ; mais qu’il ait la désinvolture de se présenter comme discours : à la fois bataille et arme, stratégie et choc, lutte et trophée ou blessure, conjonctures et vestiges, rencontre irrégulière et scène répétable.

C’est pourquoi à la demande qu’on m’a faite d’écrire pour ce livre réédité une nouvelle préface, je n’ai pu répondre qu’une chose : supprimons donc l’ancienne. Telle sera l’honnêteté. Ne cherchons ni à justifier ce vieux livre ni à le réinscrire aujourd’hui ; la série des évènements auxquels il appartient et qui sont sa vraie loi, est loin d’être close. Quant à la nouveauté, ne feignons pas de la découvrir en lui, comme une réserve secrète, comme une richesse d’abord inaperçue : elle n’a été faite que des choses qui ont été dites sur lui, et des évènements dans lesquels il a été pris.

- Mais vous venez de faire une préface - Du moins est-elle courte.

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This is Not a Pipe (1968), Excerpt

Foucault.info | This is Not a Pipe (1968), Excerpt 6. Nonaffirmative Painting.*

Separation between linguistic signs and plastic elements; equivalence of resemblance and affirmation. These two principles constituted the tension in classical painting, because the second reintroduced discourse (affirmation exists only where there is speech) into an art from which the linguistic element was rigorously excluded. Hence the fact that classical painting spoke—and spoke constantly—while constituting itself entirely outside language; hence the fact that it rested silently in a discursive space; hence the fact that it provided, beneath itself, a kind of common ground where it could restore the bonds of signs and the image. Magritte knits verbal signs and plastic elements together, but without referring them to a prior isotopism. He skirts the base of affirmative discourse on which resemblance calmly reposes, and he brings pure similitudes and nonaffirmative verbal statements into play within the instability of a disoriented volume and an unmapped space. A process whose formulation is in some sense given by Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

To employ a calligram where are found, simultaneously present and visible, image, text, resemblance, affirmation and their common ground.

Then suddenly to open up, so that the calligram immediately decomposes and disappears, leaving as a trace only its own absence.

To allow discourse to collapse of its own weight and to acquire the visible shape of letters. Letters which, insofar as they are drawn, enter into an uncertain, indefinite relation, confused with the drawing itself--but minus any area to serve as a common ground.

To allow similitudes, on the other to multiply of themselves, to be born from their own vapour and to rise endlessly into an ether where they refer to nothing more than themselves.

To verify clearly, at the end of the operation, that the precipitate has changed colour, that it has gone from black to white, that the “This is a pipe” silently hidden in the mimetic representation has become the “This is not a pipe” of circulating similitudes.

A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell.[1]

* Translator’s note: the original title of this chapter is “peindre n’est pas affirmer” literally, “To Paint is Not to Affirm”.

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This is Not a Pipe (1968), Excerpt

[1] Foucault’s reference is not to Magritte but to Andy Warhol, whose various series of soup cans, celebrity portraits and so on Foucault apparently sees as undermining any sense of the unique, indivisible identity of their “models.” See Foucault’s comments on Warhol in the important essay “Theatricum Philosophicum” reprinted in Language, Counter Memory, Practice (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977).

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Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

Foucault.info | Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984: Volume Three.Translated by Robert Hurley. The New Press.

What I would like to tell you in these lectures are some things that may be inexact, untrue, or erroneous, which I will present as working hypotheses, with a view to a future work. I beg your indulgence, and more than that, your malice. Indeed, I would be very pleased if at the end of each lecture you would voice some criticisms and objections so that, insofar as possible and assuming my mind is not yet too rigid, I might gradually adapt to your questions and thus at the end of these five lectures we might have done some work together or possibly made some progress.

Today, under the title "Truth and Juridical Forms," I will offer some methodological reflections to introduce a problem that may appear somewhat enigmatic to you. I will try to present what constitutes the point of convergence of three or four existing, already-explored, already-inventoried series of inquiries, which I will compare and combine in a kind of investigation. I won't say it is original, but it is at least a new departure.

The first inquiry is historical: How have domains of knowledge been formed on the basis of social practices? Let me explain the point at issue. There is a tendency that we may call, a bit ironically, "academic Marxism," which consists of trying to determine the way in which economic conditions of existence may be reflected and expressed in the consciousness of men. It seems to me that this form of analysis, traditional in university Marxism in France, exhibits a very serious defect—basically, that of assuming that the human subject, the subject of knowledge, and forms of knowledge themselves are somehow given beforehand and definitively, and that economic, social, and political conditions of existence are merely laid or imprinted on this definitely given subject.

My aim will be to show you how social practices may engender domains of knowledge that not only bring new objects, new concepts, and new techniques to light, but also give rise to totally new forms of subjects and subjects of knowledge. The subject of knowledge itself has a history; the relation of the subject to the object; or, more clearly, truth itself has a history.

Thus, I would especially like to show how a certain knowledge of man was formed in the nineteenth century, a knowledge of individuality, of the normal or abnormal, conforming or nonconforming individual, a knowledge, that actually originated in social practices of control and supervision [surveillance]. And how, in a certain way, this knowledge was not imposed on, proposed to, or imprinted on an existing human subject of knowledge; rather, it engendered an utterly new type of subject of knowledge. The history of knowledge domains connected with social practices—excluding the primacy of a definitively given subject of knowledge—is a first line of research I suggest to you.

The second line of research is a methodological one, which might be called "discourse analysis." Here again there is, it seems to me, in a tradition that is recent but already accepted in European universities, a tendency to treat discourse as a set of linguistic facts linked together by syntactic rules of construction.

A few years ago, it was original and important to say and to show that what was done with language—poetry, literature, philosophy, discourse in general—obeyed a certain number of internal laws or regularities: the laws and regularities of language. The linguistic character of language facts was an important discovery for a certain period.

Then, it seems, the moment came to consider these facts of discourse no longer simply in their linguistic dimension, but in a sense—and here I'm taking my cue from studies done by the Anglo-Americans—as games, strategic games of action and reaction, question and answer, domination and evasion, as well as struggle. On one level, discourse is a regular set of linguistic facts, while on another level it is an ordered set of polemical and strategic facts. This analysis of discourse as a strategic and polemical game is, in my judgment, a second line of research to pursue.

Lastly, the third line of research that I proposed—and where it meets the first two, it defines the point of convergence where I will place myself—is a reworking of the theory of the subject. That theory has been profoundly modified and renewed, over the last several years, by a certain number of theories—or, even more seriously, by a certain number of practices, among which psychoanalysis is of course in the forefront. Psychoanalysis has file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en.html (1 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:29 πμ

Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

undoubtedly been the practice and the theory that has reevaluated in the most fundamental way the somewhat sacred priority conferred on the subject, which has become established in Western thought since Descartes.

Two or three centuries ago, Western philosophy postulated, explicitly or implicitly, the subject as the foundation, as the central core of all knowledge, as that in which and on the basis of which freedom revealed itself and truth could blossom. Now, it seems to me that psychoanalysis has insistently called into question this absolute position of the subject. But while psychoanalysis has done this, elsewhere—in the field of what we may call the "theory of knowledge," or in that of epistemology, or in that of the history of the sciences, or again in that of the history of ideas—it seems to me that the theory of the subject has remained very philosophical, very Cartesian and Kantian; for, at the level of generalities where I situate myself, I don't differentiate between the Cartesian and Kantian conceptions.

Currently, when one does history—the history of ideas, of knowledge, or simply history—one sticks to this subject of knowledge, to this subject of representation as the point of origin from which knowledge is possible and truth appears. It would be interesting to try to see how a subject came to be constituted that is not definitively given, that is not the thing on the basis of which truth happens to history—rather, a subject that constitutes itself within history and is constantly established and reestablished by history. It is toward that radical critique of the human subject by history that we should direct our efforts.

A certain university or academic tradition of Marxism has not yet given up the traditional philosophical conception of the subject. In my view, what we should do is show the historical construction of a subject through a discourse understood as consisting of a set of strategies which are part of social practices.

That is the theoretical background of the problems I would like to raise.

Among the social practices whose historical analysis enables one to locate the emergence of new forms of subjectivity, it seemed to me that the most important ones are juridical practices.

The hypothesis I would like to put forward is that there are two histories of truth. The first is a kind of internal history of truth, the history of a truth that rectifies itself in terms of its own principles of regulation: it's the history of truth as it is constructed in or on the basis of the history of the sciences. On the other hand, it seems to me that there are in society (or at least in our societies) other places where truth is formed, where a certain number of games are defined—games through which one sees certain forms of subjectivity, certain object domains, certain types of knowledge come into being—and that, consequently, one can on that basis construct an external, exterior history of truth.

Judicial practices, the manner in which wrongs and responsibilities are settled between men, the mode by which, in the history of the West, society conceived and defined the way men could be judged in terms of wrongs committed, the way in which compensation for some actions and punishment for others were imposed on specific individuals—all these rules or, if you will, all these practices that were indeed governed by rules but also constantly modified through the course of history, seem to me to be one of the forms by which our society defined types of subjectivity, forms of knowledge, and, consequently, relations between man and truth which deserve to be studied.

There you have a general view of the theme I intend to develop: juridical forms and their evolution in the field of penal law as the generative locus for a given number of forms of truth. I will try to show you how certain forms of truth can be defined in terms of penal practice. For what is called the inquiry—the inquiry as practiced by philosophers of the Fifteenth to the eighteenth century, and also by scientists, whether they were geographers, botanists, zoologists, or economists—is a rather characteristic form of truth in our societies.

Now where does one find the origin of the inquiry? One finds it in political and administrative practice, which I'm going to talk about; one also finds it in judicial practice. The inquiry made its appearance as a form of search for truth within the judicial order in the middle of the medieval era. It was in order to know exactly who did what, under what conditions, and at what moment, that the West devised complex techniques of inquiry which later were to be used in the scientific realm and in the realm of philosophical reflection.

In the same way, other forms of analysis were invented in the nineteenth century, from the starting point of juridical, judicial, and penal problems—rather curious and particular forms of analysis that I shall call examination, in contradistinction to the inquiry. Such forms of analysis gave rise to sociology, psychology, psychopathology, criminology, and psychoanalysis. I will try to show you how, when one looks for the origin of these forms of analysis, file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en.html (2 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:29 πμ

Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

one sees that they arose in direct conjunction with the formation of a certain number of political and social controls, during the forming of capitalist society in the late nineteenth century.

Here, then, is a broad sketch of the topic of this series of lectures. In the next one, I will talk about the birth of the inquiry in Greek thought, in something that is neither completely a myth nor entirely a tragedy—the story of Oedipus. I will speak of the Oedipus story not as a point of origin, as the moment of formulation of man's desire or forms of desire, but, on the contrary, as a rather curious episode in the history of knowledge and as a point of emergence of the inquiry. In the next lecture I will deal with the relation of conflict, the opposition that arose in the Middle Ages between the system of the test and the system of the inquiry. Finally, in the last two lectures, I will talk about the birth of what I shall call the examination or the sciences of examination, which are connected with the formation and stabilization of capitalist society.

For the moment I would like to pick up again, in a different way, the methodological reflections I spoke of earlier.

It would have been possible, and perhaps more honest, to cite only one name, that of Nietzsche, because what I say here won't mean anything if it isn't connected to Nietzsche's work, which seems to me to be the best, the most effective, the most pertinent of the models that one can draw upon. In Nietzsche, one finds a type of discourse that undertakes a historical analysis of the formation of the subject itself, a historical analysis of the birth of a certain type of knowledge [savoir]—without ever granting the preexistence of a subject of knowledge [connaissance]. What I propose to do now is to retrace in his work the outlines that can serve as a model for us in our analyses.

I will take as our starting point a text by Nietzsche, dated 1873, which was published only after his death. The text says: "In some remote corner of the universe, bathed in the fires of innumerable solar systems, there once was a planet where clever animals invented knowledge. That was the grandest and most mendacious minute of `universal history.'"

In this extremely rich and difficult text, I will leave aside several things, including—and above all—the famous phrase "that was the most mendacious minute." Firstly and gladly, I will consider the insolent and cavalier manner in which Nietzsche says that knowledge was invented on a star at a particular moment. I speak of insolence in this text of Nietzsche's because we have to remember that in 1873, one is if not in the middle of Kantianism then at least in the middle of neo-Kantianism; the idea that time and space are not forms of knowledge, but more like primitive rocks onto which knowledge attaches itself, is absolutely unthinkable for the period.

That's where I would like to focus my attention, dwelling first on the term "invention" itself. Nietzsche states that at a particular point in time and a particular place in the universe, intelligent animals invented knowledge. The word he employs, "invention"—the German term is Erfindung—recurs often in these texts, and always with a polemical meaning and intention. When he speaks of invention, Nietzsche always has an opposite word in mind, the word "origin" [Ursprung]. When he says "invention," it's in order not to say "origin"; when he says Erfindung, it's in order not to say Ursprung.

We have a number of proofs of this, and I will present two or three of them. For example, in a passage that comes, I believe, from The Gay Science where he speaks of Schopenhauer, criticizing his analysis of religion, Nietzsche says that Schopenhauer made the mistake of looking for the origin—Ursprung—of religion in a metaphysical sentiment present in all men and containing the latent core, the true and essential model of all religion. Nietzsche says this is a completely false history of religion, because to suppose that religion originates in a metaphysical sentiment signifies, purely and simply, that religion was already given, at least in an implicit state, enveloped in that metaphysical sentiment. But history is not that, says Nietzsche, that is not the way history was made—things didn't happen like that. Religion has no origin, it has no Ursprung, it was invented, there was an Erfindung of religion. At a particular moment in the past, something happened that made religion appear. Religion was made; it did not exist before. Between the great continuity of the Ursprung described by Schopenhauer and the great break that characterizes Nietzsche's Erfindung, there is a fundamental opposition.

Speaking of poetry, still in The Gay Science, Nietzsche declares that there are those who look for the origin, the Ursprung, of poetry, when in fact there is no Ursprung of poetry, there is only an invention of poetry. Somebody had the rather curious idea of using a certain number of rhythmic or musical properties of language to speak, to impose his words, to establish by means of those words a certain relation of power over others. Poetry, too, was invented or made.

There is also the famous passage at the end of the first discourse of The Genealogy of Morals where Nietzsche refers to a sort of great factory in which the ideal is produced. The ideal has no origin: it too was invented, manufactured, produced by a series of mechanisms, of little mechanisms. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en.html (3 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:29 πμ

Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

For Nietzsche, invention, Erfindung, is on the one hand a break, on the other something with a small beginning, one that is low, mean, unavowable. This is the crucial point of the Erfindung. It was by obscure power relations that poetry was invented. It was also by pure and obscure power relations that religion was invented. We see the meanness, then, of all these small beginnings as compared with the solemnity of their origin as conceived by philosophers. The historian should not be afraid of the meanness of things, for it was out of the sequence of mean and little things that, finally, great things were formed. Good historical method requires us to counterpose the meticulous and unavowable meanness of these fabrications and inventions, to the solemnity of origins.

Knowledge was invented, then. To say that it was invented is to say that it has no origin. More precisely, it is to say, however paradoxical this may be, that knowledge is absolutely not inscribed in human nature. Knowledge doesn't constitute man's oldest instinct; and, conversely, in human behavior, the human appetite, the human instinct, there is no such thing as the seed of knowledge. As a matter of fact, Nietzsche says, knowledge does have a connection with the instincts, but it cannot be present in them, and cannot even be one instinct among the others. Knowledge is simply the outcome of the interplay, the encounter, the junction, the struggle, and the compromise between the instincts. Something is produced because the instincts meet, fight one another, and at the end of their battles finally reach a compromise. That something is knowledge.

Consequently, for Nietzsche knowledge is not of the same nature as the instincts, it is not like a refinement of the instincts. Knowledge does indeed have instincts as its foundation, basis, and starting point, but its basis is the instincts in their confrontation, of which knowledge is only the surface outcome. Knowledge is like a luminescence, a spreading light, but one that is produced by mechanisms or realities that are of completely different natures.

Knowledge is a result of the instincts; it is like a stroke of luck, or like the outcome of a protracted compromise. It is also, Nietzsche says, like "a spark between two swords," but not a thing made of their metal.

Knowledge—a surface effect, something prefigured in human nature—plays its game in the presence of the instincts, above them, among them; it curbs them, it expresses a certain state of tension or appeasement between the instincts. But knowledge cannot be deduced analytically, according to a kind of natural derivation. It cannot be deduced in a necessary way from the instincts themselves. Knowledge doesn't really form part of human nature.

Conflict, combat, the outcome of the combat, and, consequently, risk and chance are what gives rise to knowledge.

Knowledge is not instinctive, it is counterinstinctive; just as it is not natural, but counternatural.

That is the first meaning that can be given to the idea that knowledge is an invention and has no origin. But the other sense that could be given to Nietzsche's assertion is that knowledge, beyond merely not being bound up with human nature, not being derived from human nature, isn't even closely connected to the world to be known.

According to Nietzsche, there is no resemblance, no prior affinity between knowledge and the things that need to be known. In more strictly Kantian terms, one should say the conditions of experience and the conditions of the object of experience are completely heterogeneous.

That is the great break with the prior tradition of Western philosophy, for Kant himself had been the first to say explicitly that the conditions of experience and those of the object of experience were identical. Nietzsche thinks, on the contrary, that between knowledge and the world to be known there is as much difference as between knowledge and human nature. So one has a human nature, a world, and something called knowledge between the two, without any affinity, resemblance, or even natural tie between them.

Nietzsche says repeatedly that knowledge has no affinity with the world to be known. I will cite just one passage from The Gay Science, aphorism 109: "The total character of the world is chaos for all eternity—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom." The world absolutely does not seek to imitate man; it knows no law. Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. Knowledge must struggle against a world without order, without connectedness, without form, without beauty, without wisdom, without harmony, and without law. That is the world that knowledge deals with. There is nothing in knowledge that enables it, by any right whatever, to know this world. It is not natural for nature to be known. Thus, between the instincts and knowledge, one finds not a continuity but, rather, a relation of struggle, domination, servitude, settlement. In the same way, there can be no relation of natural continuity between knowledge and the things that knowledge must know. There can only be a relation of violence, domination, power, and force, a relation of violation.

Knowledge can only be a violation of the things to be known, and not a perception, a recognition, an identification of or with those things.

It seems to me that in this analysis by Nietzsche there is a very important double break with the tradition of file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en.html (4 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:29 πμ

Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

Western philosophy, something we should learn from. The first break is between knowledge and things. What is it, really, in Western philosophy that certifies that things to be known and knowledge itself are in a relation of continuity? What assurance is there that knowledge has the ability to truly know the things of the world instead of being indefinite error, illusion, and arbitrariness? What in Western philosophy guarantees that, if not God? Of course, from Descartes, to go back no further than that, and still even in Kant, God is the principle that ensures a harmony between knowledge and the things to be known. To demonstrate that knowledge was really based in the things of the world, Descartes had to affirm the existence of God. If there is no relation between knowledge and the things to be known, if the relation between knowledge and known things is arbitrary, if it is a relation of power and violence, the existence of God at the center of the system of knowledge is no longer indispensable. As a matter of fact, in the same passage from The Gay Science where he speaks of the absence of order, connectedness, form, and beauty in the world, Nietzsche asks, "When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature?"

Second, I would say that if it is true that between knowledge and the instincts—all that constitutes, that makes up the human animal—there is only discontinuity, relations of domination and servitude, power relations, then it's not God that disappears but the subject in its unity and its sovereignty.

When we retrace the philosophical tradition starting from Descartes, to go no further back than that, we see that the unity of the subject was ensured by the unbroken continuity running from desire to knowledge [connaissance], from the instincts to knowledge [savoir], from the body to truth. All of that ensured the subject's existence. If, on the one hand, it is true that there are mechanisms of instinct, the play of desire, the affrontment between the mechanisms of the body and the will, and on the other hand, at a completely different level of nature, there is knowledge, then we don't need the postulate of the unity of the human subject. We can grant the existence of subjects, or we can grant that the subject doesn't exist. In this respect, then, the text by Nietzsehe I have cited seems to present a break with the oldest and most firmly established tradition of Western philosophy.

Now, when Nietzsche says that knowledge is the result of the instincts, but that it is not an instinct and is not directly derived from the instincts, what does he mean exactly? And how does he conceive of that curious mechanism by which the instincts, without having any natural relation with knowledge, can, merely by their activity, produce, invent a knowledge that has nothing to do with them? That is the second series of problems I would like to address.

There is a passage in The Gay Science, aphorism 333, which can be considered one of the closest analyses Nietzsche conducted of that manufacture, of that invention of knowledge. In this long text titled "The Meaning of Knowing," Nietzsche takes up a text by Spinoza in which the latter sets intelligere, to understand, against ridere [to laugh], lugere [to lament], and detestari [to detest]. Spinoza said that if we wish to understand things, if we really wish to understand them in their nature, their essence, and hence their truth, we must take care not to laugh at them, lament them, or detest them. Only when those passions are calmed can we finally understand. Nietzsche says that not only is this not true, but it is exactly the opposite that occurs. Intelligere, to understand, is nothing more than a certain game, or more exactly, the outcome of a certain game, of a certain compromise or settlement between ridere, lugere, and detestari. Nietzsche says that we understand only because behind all that there is the interplay and struggle of those three instincts, of those three mechanisms, or those three passions that are expressed by laughter, lament, and detestation.

Several points need to be considered here. First, we should note that these three passions, or these three drives—laughing, lamenting, detesting—are all ways not of getting close to the object or identifying with it but, on the contrary, of keeping the object at a distance, differentiating oneself from it or marking one's separation from it, protecting oneself from it through laughter, devalorizing it through complaint, removing it and possibly destroying it through hatred. Consequently, all these drives, which are at the root of knowledge and which produce it, have in common a distancing of the object, a will to remove oneself from it and to remove it at the same time—a will, finally, to destroy it. Behind knowledge there is a will, no doubt obscure, not to bring the object near to oneself or identify with it but, on the contrary, to get away from it and destroy it—a radical malice of knowledge.

We thus arrive at a second important idea: These drives—laughing, lamenting, detesting—can all be categorized as bad relations. Behind knowledge, at the root of knowledge, Nietzsche does not posit a kind of affection, drive, or passion that makes us love the object to be known; rather, there are drives that would place us in a position of hatred, contempt, or fear before things that are threatening and presumptuous.

If these three drives—laughing, lamenting, hating—manage to produce knowledge, this is not, according to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/foucault.truthAndJudicialForms.en.html (5 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:29 πμ

Truth and Judicial Forms (1974), Excerpt

Nietzsche, because they have subsided, as in Spinoza, or made peace, or because they have attained a unity. On the contrary, it's because they have tried, as Nietzsche says, to harm one another, it's because they're in a state of war—in a momentary stabilization of this state of war, they reach a kind of state, a kind of hiatus, in which knowledge will finally appear as the "spark between two swords."

So in knowledge there is not a congruence with the object, a relation of assimilation, but, rather, a relation of distance and domination; there is not something like happiness and love but hatred and hostility; there is not a unification but a precarious system of power. The great themes traditionally present in Western philosophy are thoroughly called into question in the Nietzsche text I've cited.

Western philosophy—and this time it isn't necessary to limit the reference to Descartes, one can go back to Plato—has always characterized knowledge by logocentrism, by resemblance, by congruence, by bliss, by unity. All these great themes are now called into question. One understands, then, why Nietzsche mentions Spinoza, because of all the Western philosophers Spinoza carried this conception of knowledge as congruence, bliss, and unity the farthest. At the center, at the root of knowledge, Nietzsche places something like hatred, struggle, power relations.

So one can see why Nietzsche declares that it is the philosopher who is the most likely to be wrong about the nature of knowledge, since he always thinks of it in the form of congruence, love, unity, and pacification. Thus, if we seek to ascertain what knowledge is, we must not look to the form of life, of existence, of asceticism that characterize the philosopher. If we truly wish to know knowledge, to know what it is, to apprehend it at its root, in its manufacture, we must look not to philosophers but to politicians—we need to understand what the relations of struggle and power are. One can understand what knowledge consists of only by examining these relations of struggle and power, the manner in which things and men hate one another, fight one another, and try to dominate one another, to exercise power relations over one another.

So one can understand how this type of analysis can give us an effective introduction to a political history of knowledge, the facts of knowledge and the subject of knowledge.

At this point I would like to reply to a possible objection: "All that is very fine, but it isn't in Nietzsche. Your own ravings, your obsession with finding power relations everywhere, with bringing this political dimension even into the history of knowledge or into the history of truth has made you believe that Nietzsche said that."

I will say two things in reply. First, I chose this passage from Nietzsche in terms of my own interests, not with the purpose of showing that this was the Nietzschean conception of knowledge—for there are innumerable passages in Nietzsche on the subject that are rather contradictory—but only to show that there are in Nietzsche a certain number of elements that afford us a model for a historical analysis of what I would call the politics of truth. It's a model that one does find in Nietzsche, and I even think that in his work it constitutes one of the most important models for understanding some of the seemingly contradictory elements of his conception of knowledge.

Indeed, if one grants that this is what Nietzsche means by the discovery of knowledge, if all these relations are behind knowledge, which, in a certain sense, is only their outcome, then it becomes possible to understand certain difficult passages in Nietzsche.

(Continues...)

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Archaeology Of Knowledge, Introduction

Foucault.info | Archaeology Of Knowledge, Introduction

For many years now historians have preferred to turn their attention to long periods, as if, beneath the shifts and changes of political events, they were trying to reveal the stable, almost indestructible system of checks and balances, the irreversible processes, the constant readjustments, the underlying tendencies that gather force, and are then suddenly reversed after centuries of continuity, the movements of accumulation and slow saturation, the great silent, motionless bases that traditional history has covered with a thick layer of events. The tools that enable historians to carry out this work of analysis are partly inherited and partly of their own making: models of economic growth, quantitative analysis of market movements, accounts of demographic expansion and contraction, the study of climate and its long-term changes, the fixing of sociological constants, the description of technological adjustments and of their spread and continuity. These tools have enabled workers in the historical field to distinguish various sedimentary strata; linear successions, which for so long had been the object of research, have given way to discoveries in depth. From the political mobility at the surface down to the slow movements of 'material civilisation', ever more levels of analysis have been established: each has its own peculiar discontinuities and patterns; and as one descends to the deepest levels, the rhythms become broader. Beneath the rapidly changing history of governments, wars, and famines, there emerge other, apparently unmoving histories: the history of sea routes, the history of corn or of gold-mining, the history of drought and of irrigation, the history of crop rotation, the history of the balance achieved by the human species between hunger and abundance. The old questions of the traditional analysis (What link should be made between disparate events? How can a causal succession be established between them? What continuity or overall significance do they possess? Is it possible to define a totality, or must one be content with reconstituting connections?) are now being replaced by questions of another type: which strata should be isolated from others? What types of series should be established? What criteria of periodisation should be adopted for each of them? What system of relations (hierarchy, dominance, stratification, univocal determination, circular causality) may be established between them? What series of series may be established? And in what large-scale chronological table may distinct series of events be determined?

At about the same time, in the disciplines that we call the history of ideas, the history of science, the history of philosophy, the history of thought, and the history of literature (we can ignore their specificity for the moment), in those disciplines which, despite their names, evade very largely the work and methods of the historian, attention has been turned, on the contrary, away from vast unities like 'periods' or 'centuries' to the phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity. Beneath the great continuities of thought, beneath the solid, homogeneous manifestations of a single mind or of a collective mentality, beneath the stubborn development of a science striving to exist and to reach completion at the very outset, beneath the persistence of a particular genre, form, discipline, or theoretical activity, one is now trying to detect the incidence of interruptions. Interruptions whose status and nature vary considerably. There are the epistemological acts and thresholds described by Bachelard: they suspend the continuous accumulation of knowledge, interrupt its slow development, and force it to enter a new time, cut it off from its empirical origin and its original motivations, cleanse it of its imaginary complicities; they direct historical analysis away from the search for silent beginnings, and the never-ending tracing-back to the original precursors, towards the search for a new type of rationality and its various effects. There are the displacements and transformations of concepts: the analyses of G. Canguilhem may serve as models; they show that the history of a concept is not wholly and entirely that of its progressive refinement, its continuously increasing rationality, its abstraction gradient, but that of its various fields of constitution and validity, that of its successive rules of use, that of the many theoretical contexts in which it developed and matured. There is the distinction, which we also owe to Canguilhem, between the microscopic and macroscopic scales of the history of the sciences, in which events and their consequences are not arranged in the same way: thus a discovery, the development of a method, the achievements, and the failures, of a particular scientist, do not have the same incidence, and cannot be described in the same way at both levels; on each of the two levels, a different history is being written. Recurrent redistributions reveal several pasts, several forms of connection, several hierarchies of importance, several networks of determination, several teleologies, for one and the same science, as its present undergoes change: thus historical descriptions are necessarily ordered by the present state of knowledge, they increase with every transformation and never cease, in turn, to break with themselves (in the field of mathematics, M. Serres has provided the theory of this phenomenon). There are the architectonic unities of systems of the kind analysed by M. Guéroult, which are concerned not with the description of cultural influences, traditions, and continuities, but with internal coherences, axioms, deductive connections, compatibilities. Lastly, the most radical discontinuities are the breaks effected by a work of theoretical transformation which establishes a science by detaching it from the ideology of its past and by revealing this past as ideological'. To this should be added, of course, literary analysis, which now takes as its unity, not the spirit or sensibility of a period, nor 'groups', 'schools', 'generations', or 'movements', nor even the personality of the author, in the interplay of his life and his 'creation', but the particular file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...nowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro.html (1 of 7)19/5/2005 10:18:31 πμ

Archaeology Of Knowledge, Introduction

structure of a given œuvre, book, or text.

And the great problem presented by such historical analyses is not how continuities are established, how a single pattern is formed and preserved, how for so many different, successive minds there is a single horizon, what mode of action and what substructure is implied by the interplay of transmissions, resumptions, disappearances, and repetitions, how the origin may extend its sway well beyond itself to that conclusion that is never given - the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations, but one of transformations that serve as new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations. What one is seeing, then, is the emergence of a whole field of questions, some of which are already familiar, by which this new form of history is trying to develop its own theory: how is one to specify the different concepts that enable us to conceive of discontinuity (threshold, rupture, break, mutation, transformation)? By what criteria is one to isolate the unities with which one is dealing; what is a science? What is an œuvre? What is a theory? What is a concept?

What is a text? How is one to diversify the levels at which one may place oneself, each of which possesses its own divisions and form of analysis? What is the legitimate level of formalisation? What is that of interpretation? Of structural analysis? Of attributions of causality?

In short, the history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears to be abandoning the irruption of events in favour of stable structures.

But we must not be taken in by this apparent interchange. Despite appearances, we must not imagine that certain of the historical disciplines have moved from the continuous to the discontinuous, while others have moved from the tangled mass of discontinuities to the great, uninterrupted unities; we must not imagine that in the analysis of politics, institutions, or economics, we have become more and more sensitive to overall determinations, while in the analysis of ideas and of knowledge, we are paying more and more attention to the play of difference; we must not imagine that these two great forms of description have crossed without recognising one another.

In fact, the same problems are being posed in either case, but they have provoked opposite effects on the surface.

These problems may be summed up in a word: the questioning of the document. Of course, it is obvious enough that ever since a discipline such as history has existed, documents have been used, questioned, and have given rise to questions; scholars have asked not only what these documents meant, but also whether they were telling the truth, and by what right they could claim to be doing so, whether they were sincere or deliberately misleading, well informed or ignorant, authentic or tampered with. But each of these questions, and all this critical concern, pointed to one and the same end: the reconstitution, on the basis of what the documents say, and sometimes merely hint at, of the past from which they emanate and which has now disappeared far behind them; the document was always treated as the language of a voice since reduced to silence, its fragile, but possibly decipherable trace. Now, through a mutation that is not of very recent origin, but which has still not come to an end, history has altered its position in relation to the document: it has taken as its primary task, not the interpretation of the document, nor the attempt to decide whether it is telling the truth or what is its expressive value, but to work on it from within and to develop it: history now organises the document, divides it up, distributes it, orders it, arranges it in levels, establishes series, distinguishes between what is relevant and what is not, discovers elements, defines unities, describes relations. The document, then, is no longer for history an inert material through which it tries to reconstitute what men have done or said, the events of which only the trace remains; history is now trying to define within the documentary material itself unities, totalities, series, relations.

History must be detached from the image that satisfied it for so long, and through which it found its anthropological justification: that of an age-old collective consciousness that made use of material documents to refresh its memory; history is the work expended on material documentation (books, texts, accounts, registers, acts, buildings, institutions, laws, techniques, objects, customs, etc.) that exists, in every time and place, in every society, either in a spontaneous or in a consciously organised form. The document is not the fortunate tool of a history that is primarily and fundamentally memory; history is one way in which a society recognises and develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably linked.

To be brief, then, let us say that history, in its traditional form, undertook to 'memorise' the monuments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in silence something other than what they actually say; in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments. In that area where, in the past, history deciphered the traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities. There was a time when archaeology, as a discipline devoted to silent monuments, inert traces, objects without context, and things left by the past, aspired to the condition of history, and attained meaning only through the restitution of a historical discourse; it might be said, to play on words a little, that in our time history aspires to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...nowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro.html (2 of 7)19/5/2005 10:18:31 πμ

Archaeology Of Knowledge, Introduction

the condition of archaeology, to the intrinsic description of the monument.

This has several consequences. First of all, there is the surface effect already mentioned: the proliferation of discontinuities in the history of ideas, and the emergence of long periods in history proper. In fact, in its traditional form, history proper was concerned to define relations (of simple causality, of circular determination, of antagonism, of expression) between facts or dated events: the series being known, it was simply a question of defining the position of each element in relation to the other elements in the series. The problem now is to constitute series: to define the elements proper to each series, to fix its boundaries, to reveal its own specific type of relations, to formulate its laws, and, beyond this, to describe the relations between different series, thus constituting series of series, or 'tables': hence the ever-increasing number of strata, and the need to distinguish them, the specificity of their time and chronologies; hence the need to distinguish not only important events (with a long chain of consequences) and less important ones, but types of events at quite different levels (some very brief, others of average duration, like the development of a particular technique, or a scarcity of money, and others of a long-term nature, like a demographic equilibrium or the gradual adjustment of an economy to climatic change); hence the possibility of revealing series with widely spaced intervals formed by rare or repetitive events.

The appearance of long periods in the history of today is not a return to the philosophers of history, to the great ages of the world, or to the periodisation dictated by the rise and fall of civilisations; it is the effect of the methodologically concerted development of series. In the history of ideas, of thought and of the sciences, the same mutation has brought about the opposite effect; it has broken up the long series formed by the progress of consciousness, or the teleology of reason, or the evolution of human thought; it has questioned the themes of convergence and culmination; it has doubted the possibility of creating totalities. It has led to the individualisation of different series, which are juxtaposed to one another, follow one another, overlap and intersect, without one being able to reduce them to a linear schema. Thus, in place of the continuous chronology of reason, which was invariably traced back to some inaccessible origin, there have appeared scales that are sometimes very brief, distinct from one another, irreducible to a single law, scales that bear a type of history peculiar to each one, and which cannot be reduced to the general model of a consciousness that acquires, progresses, and remembers.

Second consequence: the notion of discontinuity assumes a major role in the historical disciplines. For history in its classical form, the discontinuous was both the given and the unthinkable: the raw material of history, which presented itself in the form of dispersed events - decisions, accidents, initiatives, discoveries; the material, which, through analysis, had to be rearranged, reduced, effaced in order to reveal the continuity of events. Discontinuity was the stigma of temporal dislocation that it was the historian's task to remove from history. It has now become one of the basic elements of historical analysis. its role is threefold. First, it constitutes a deliberate operation on the part of the historian (and not a quality of the material with which he has to deal): for he must, at least as a systematic hypothesis, distinguish the possible levels of analysis, the methods proper to each, and the periodisation that best suits them. Secondly, it is the result of his description (and not something that must be eliminated by means of his analysis): for he is trying to discover the limits of a process, the point of inflection of a curve, the inversion of a regulatory movement, the boundaries of an oscillation, the threshold of a function, the instant at which a circular causality breaks down. Thirdly, it is the concept that the historian's work never ceases to specify (instead of neglecting it as a uniform, indifferent blank between two positive figures); it assumes a specific form and function according to the field and the level to which it is assigned: one does not speak of the same discontinuity when describing an epistemological threshold, the point of reflexion in a population curve, or the replacement of one technique by another. The notion of discontinuity is a paradoxical one: because it is both an instrument and an object of research; because it divides up the field of which it is the effect; because it enables the historian to individualise different domains but can be established only by comparing those domains. And because, in the final analysis, perhaps, it is not simply a concept present in the discourse of the historian, but something that the historian secretly supposes to be present: on what basis, in fact, could he speak without this discontinuity that offers him history - and his own history - as an object? One of the most essential features of the new history is probably this displacement of the discontinuous: its transference from the obstacle to the work itself; its integration into the discourse of the historian, where it no longer plays the role of an external condition that must be reduced, but that of a working concept; and therefore the inversion of signs by which it is no longer the negative of the historical reading (its underside, its failure, the limit of its power), but the positive element that determines its object and validates its analysis.

Third consequence: the theme and the possibility of a total history begin to disappear, and we see the emergence of something very different that might be called a general history. The project of a total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of a civilisation, the principle material or spiritual - of a society, the significance common to all the phenomena of a period, the law that accounts for their cohesion - what is called metaphorically the 'face' of a period. Such a project is linked to two or three hypotheses; - it is supposed that between all the events of a well-defined spatio-temporal area, between all the phenomena of which traces have been found, it file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...nowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro.html (3 of 7)19/5/2005 10:18:31 πμ

Archaeology Of Knowledge, Introduction

must be possible to establish a system of homogeneous relations: a network of causality that makes it possible to derive each o them, relations of analogy that show how they symbolise one another, or how they all express one and the same central core; it is also supposed that one and the same form of historicity operates upon economic structures, social institutions and customs, the inertia of mental attitudes, technological practice, political behaviour, and subjects them all to the same type of transformation; lastly, it is supposed that history itself may be articulated into great units - stages or phases - which contain within themselves their own principle of cohesion.

These are the postulates that are challenged by the new history when it speaks of series, divisions, limits, differences of level, shifts, chronological specificities, particular forms of rehandling, possible types of relation.

This is not because it is trying to obtain a plurality of histories juxtaposed and independent of one another: that of the economy beside that of institutions, and beside these two those of science, religion, or literature; nor is it because it is merely trying to discover between these different histories coincidences of dates, or analogies of form and meaning. The problem that now presents itself- and which defines the task of a general history - is to determine what form of relation may be legitimately described between these different series; what vertical system they are capable of forming; what interplay of correlation and dominance exists between them; what may be the effect of shifts, different temporalities, and various rehandlings; in what distinct totalities certain elements may figure simultaneously; in short, not only what series, but also what 'series of series' - or, in other words, what 'tables' it is possible to draw up. A total description draws all phenomena around a single centre - a principle, a meaning, a spirit, a world-view, an overall shape; a general history, on the contrary, would deploy the space of a dispersion.

Fourth and last consequence: the new history is confronted by a number of methodological problems, several of which, no doubt, existed long before the emergence of the new history, but which, taken together, characterise it.

These include: the building-up of coherent and homogeneous corpora of documents (open or closed, exhausted or inexhaustible corpora), the establishment of a principle of choice (according to whether one wishes to treat the documentation exhaustively, or adopt a sampling method as in statistics, or try to determine in advance which are the most representative elements); the definition of the level of analysis and of the relevant elements (in the material studied, one may extract numerical indications; references - explicit or not - to events, institutions, practices; the words used, with their grammatical rules and the semantic fields that they indicate, or again the formal structure of the propositions and the types of connection that unite them); the specification of a method of analysis (the quantitative treatment of data, the breaking-down of the material according to a number of assignable features whose correlations are then studied, interpretative decipherment, analysis of frequency and distribution); the delimitation of groups and sub-groups that articulate the material (regions, periods, unitary processes); the determination of relations that make it possible to characterise a group (these may be numerical or logical relations; functional, causal, or analogical relations; or it may be the relation of the 'signifier' (signs) to the 'signified' (signifé).

All these problems are now part of the methodological field of history. This field deserves attention, and for two reasons. First, because one can see to what extent it has freed itself from what constituted, not so long ago, the philosophy of history, and from the questions that it posed (on the rationality or teleology of historical development (devenir), on the relativity of historical knowledge, and on the possibility of discovering or constituting a meaning in the inertia of the past and in the unfinished totality of the present). Secondly, because it intersects at certain points problems that are met with in other fields - in linguistics, ethnology, economics, literary analysis, and mythology, for example. These problems may, if one so wishes, be labelled structuralism. But only under certain conditions: they do not, of themselves, cover the entire methodological field of history, they occupy only one part of that field - a part that varies in importance with the area and level of analysis; apart from a number of relatively limited cases, they have not been imported from linguistics or ethnology (as is often the case today), but they originated in the field of history itself - more particularly, in that of economic history and as a result of the questions posed by that discipline; lastly, in no way do they authorise us to speak of a structuralism of history, or at least of an attempt to overcome a 'conflict' or 'opposition' between structure and historical development: it is a long time now since historians uncovered, described, and analysed structures, without ever having occasion to wonder whether they were not allowing the living, fragile, pulsating 'history' to slip through their fingers. The structure/ development opposition is relevant neither to the definition of the historical field, nor, in all probability, to the definition of a structural method.

This epistemological mutation of history is not yet complete. But it is not of recent origin either, since its first phase can no doubt be traced back to Marx. But it took a long time to have much effect. Even now - and this is especially true in the case of the history of thought - it has been neither registered nor reflected upon, while other, more recent transformations - those of linguistics, for example - have been. It is as if it was particularly difficult, in the history in which men retrace their own ideas and their own knowledge, to formulate a general theory of discontinuity, of series, of limits, unities, specific orders, and differentiated autonomies and dependences. As if, in file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...nowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro.html (4 of 7)19/5/2005 10:18:31 πμ

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that field where we had become used to seeking origins, to pushing back further and further the line of antecedents, to reconstituting traditions, to following evolutive curves, to projecting teleologies, and to having constant recourse to metaphors of life, we felt a particular repugnance to conceiving of difference, to describing separations and dispersions, to dissociating the reassuring form of the identical. Or, to be more precise, as if we found it difficult to construct a theory, to draw general conclusions, and even to derive all the possible implications of these concepts of thresholds, mutations, independent systems, and limited series - in the way in which they had been used in fact by historians. As if we were afraid to conceive of the Other in the time of our own thought.

There is a reason for this. If the history of thought could remain the locus of uninterrupted continuities, if it could endlessly forge connections that no analysis could undo without abstraction, if it could weave, around everything that men say and do, obscure synthesis that anticipate for him, prepare him, and lead him endlessly towards his future, it would provide a privileged shelter for the sovereignty of consciousness. Continuous history is the indispensable correlative of the founding function of the subject: the guarantee that everything that has eluded him may be restored to him; the certainty that time will disperse nothing without restoring it in a reconstituted unity; the promise that one day the subject - in the form of historical consciousness - will once again be able to appropriate, to bring back under his sway, all those things that are kept at a distance by difference, and find in them what might be called his abode. Making historical analysis the discourse of the continuous and making human consciousness the original subject of all historical development and all action are the two sides of the same system of thought. In this system, time is conceived in terms of totalisation and revolutions are never more than moments of consciousness.

In various forms, this theme has played a constant role since the nineteenth century: to preserve, against all decentrings, the sovereignty of the subject, and the twin figures of anthropology and humanism. Against the decentring operated by Marx - by the historical analysis of the relations of reduction, economic determinations, and the class struggle - it gave place towards the end of the nineteenth century, to the search for a total history, in which all the differences of a society might be reduced to a single form, to the organisation of a world-view, to the establishment of a system of values, to a coherent type of civilisation. To the decentring operated by the Nietzschean genealogy, it opposed the search for an original foundation that would make rationality the telos of mankind, and link the whole history of thought to the preservation of this rationality, to the maintenance of this teleology, and to the ever necessary return to this foundation. Lastly, more recently, when the researches of psychoanalysis, linguistics, and ethnology have decentred the subject in relation to the laws of his desire, the forms of his language, the rules of his action, or the games of his mythical or fabulous discourse, when it became clear that man himself, questioned as to what he was, could not account for his sexuality and his unconscious, the systematic forms of his language, or the regularities of his fictions, the theme of a continuity of history has been reactivated once again; a history that would be not division, but development (devenir); not an interplay of relations, but an internal dynamic; not, a system, but the hard work of freedom; not form, but the unceasing effort of a consciousness turned upon itself, trying to grasp itself in its deepest conditions: a history that would be both an act of long, uninterrupted patience and the vivacity of a movement, which, in the end, breaks all bounds. If one is to assert this theme, which, to the 'immobility' of structures, to their 'closed' system, to their necessary 'synchrony', opposes the living openness of history, one must obviously deny in the historical analyses themselves the use of discontinuity, the definition of levels and limits, the description of specific series, the uncovering of the whole interplay of differences. One is led therefore to anthropologise Marx, to make of him a historian of totalities, and to rediscover in him the message of humanism; one is led therefore to interpret Nietzsche in the terms of transcendental philosophy, and to reduce his genealogy to the level of a search for origins; lastly, one is led to leave to one side, as if it had never arisen, that whole field of methodological problems that the new history is now presenting.- For, if it is asserted that the question of discontinuities, systems and transformations, series and thresholds, arises in all the historical disciplines (and in those concerned with ideas or the sciences no less than those concerned with economics and society), how could one oppose with any semblance of legitimacy 'development' and 'system', movement and circular regulations, or, as it is sometimes put crudely and unthinkingly, 'history' and 'structure'?

The same conservative function is at work in the theme of cultural totalities (for which Marx has been criticised, then travestied), in the theme of a search for origins (which was opposed to Nietzsche, before an attempt was made to transpose him into it), and in the theme of a living, continuous, open history. The cry goes up that one is murdering history whenever, in a historical analysis - and especially if it is concerned with thought, ideas, or knowledge - one is seen to be using in too obvious a way the categories of discontinuity and difference, the notions of threshold, rupture and transformation, the description of series and limits. One will be denounced for attacking the inalienable rights of history and the very foundations of any possible historicity. But one must not be deceived: what is being bewailed with such vehemence is not the disappearance of history, but the eclipse of that form of history that was secretly, but entirely related to the synthetic activity of the subject-, what is being bewailed ' is file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...nowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro.html (5 of 7)19/5/2005 10:18:31 πμ

Archaeology Of Knowledge, Introduction

the 'development' (devenir) that was to provide the sovereignty of the consciousness with a safer, less exposed shelter than myths kinship systems, languages, sexuality, or desire; what is being bewailed is the possibility of reanimating through the project, the work of meaning, or the movement of totalisation, the interplay of material determinations, rules of practice, unconscious systems, rigorous but unreflected relations, correlations that elude all lived experience; what is being bewailed, is that ideological use of history by which one tries to restore to man everything that has unceasingly eluded him for over a hundred years. All the treasure of bygone days was crammed into the old citadel of this history; it was thought to be secure; it was secularised; it was made the last restingplace of anthropological thought; it was even thought that its most inveterate enemies could be captured and turned into vigilant guardians. But the historians had long ago deserted the old fortress and gone to work elsewhere; it was realised that neither Marx nor Nietzsche were carrying out the guard duties that had been entrusted to them. They could not be depended on to preserve privilege; nor to affirm once and for all - and God knows it is needed in the distress of today - that history, at least, is living and continuous, that it is, for the subject in question, a place of rest, certainty, reconciliation, a place of tranquillised sleep.

At this point there emerges an enterprise of which my earlier books Histoire de la role (Madness and Civilisation), Naissance de la clinique, and Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things) were a very imperfect sketch. An enterprise by which one tries to measure the mutations that operate in general in the field of history; an enterprise in which the methods, limits, and themes proper to the history of ideas are questioned; an enterprise by which one tries to throw off the last anthropological constraints; an enterprise that wishes, in return, to reveal how these constraints could come about. These tasks were outlined in a rather disordered way, and their general articulation was never clearly defined. It was time that they were given greater coherence - or, at least, that an attempt was made to do so. This book is the result.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, I should like to begin with a few observations.

- My aim is not to transfer to the field of history, and more particularly to the history of knowledge (connaissances), a structuralist method that has proved valuable in other fields of analysis. My aim is to uncover the principles and consequences of an autochthonous transformation that is taking place in the field of historical knowledge. It may well be that this, transformation, the problems that it raises, the tools that it uses, the concepts that emerge from it, and the results that it obtains are not entirely foreign to what is called structural analysis. But this kind of analysis is not specifically used; - my aim is most decidedly not to use the categories of cultural totalities (whether world-views, ideal types, the particular spirit of an age) in order to impose on history, despite itself, the forms of structural analysis. The series described, the limits fixed, the comparisons and correlations made are based not on the old philosophies of history, but are intended to question teleologies and totalisations; - in so far as my aim is to define a method of historical analysis freed from the anthropological theme, it is clear that the theory that I am about to outline has a dual relation with the previous studies. It is an attempt to formulate, in general terms (and not without a great deal of rectification and elaboration), the tools that these studies have used or forged for themselves in the course of their work. But, on the other hand, it uses the results already obtained to define a method of analysis purged of all anthropologism. The ground on which it rests is the one that it has itself discovered. The studies of madness and the beginnings of psychology, of illness and the beginnings of a clinical medicine, of the sciences of life, language, and economics were attempts that were carried out, to some extent, in the dark: but they gradually became clear, not only because little by little their method became more precise, but also because they discovered - in this debate on humanism and anthropology - the point of its historical possibility.

In short, this book, like those that preceded it, does not belong - at least directly, or in the first instance - to the debate on structure (as opposed to genesis, history, development); it belongs to that field in which the questions of the human being, consciousness, origin, and the subject emerge, intersect, mingle, and separate off. But it would probably not be incorrect to say that the problem of structure arose there too.

This work is not an exact description of what can be read in Madness and Civilisation, Naissance de la clinique, or The Order of Things. It is different on a great many points. It also includes a number of corrections and internal criticisms. Generally speaking, Madness and Civilisation accorded far too great a place, and a very enigmatic one too, to what I called an 'experiment', thus showing to what extent one was still close to admitting an anonymous and general subject of history; in Naissance de la clinique, the frequent recourse to structural analysis threatened to bypass the specificity of the problem presented, and the level proper to archaeology; lastly, in The Order of Things, the absence of methodological signposting may have given the impression that my analyses were being file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...nowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.00_intro.html (6 of 7)19/5/2005 10:18:31 πμ

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conducted in terms of cultural totality. It is mortifying that I was unable to avoid these dangers: I console myself with the thought that they were intrinsic to the enterprise itself, since, in order to carry out its task, it had first to free itself from these various methods and forms of history; moreover, without the questions that I was asked,' without the difficulties that arose, without the objections that were made, I may never have gained so clear a view of the enterprise to which I am now inextricably linked. Hence the cautious, stumbling manner of this text: at every turn, it stands back, measures up what is before it, gropes towards its limits, stumbles against what it does not mean, and digs pits to mark out its own path. At every turn, it denounces any possible confusion. It rejects its identity, without previously stating: I am neither this nor that. It is not critical, most of the time; it is not a way of saying that everyone else ' is wrong. It is an attempt to define a particular site by the exteriority of its vicinity; rather than trying to reduce others to silence, by claiming that what they say is worthless, I have tried to define this blank space from which I speak, and which is slowly taking shape in a discourse that I still feel to be so precarious and so unsure.

'Aren't you sure of what you're saying? Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you, are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being?

Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you're now doing: no, no, I'm not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?'

'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing - with a rather shaky hand - a labyrinth into which I can venture, in which I can move my discourse, opening up underground passages, forcing it to go far from itself, finding overhangs that reduce and deform its itinerary, in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.'

Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), publ. Routledge, 1972. Introduction, by Foucault.

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Chapter - 1. The Unities of Discourse

Foucault.info | Chapter - 1. The Unities of Discourse

The use of concepts of discontinuity, rupture, threshold, limit, series, and transformation present all historical analysis not only with questions of procedure, but with theoretical problems. It is these problems that will be studied here (the questions of procedure will be examined in later empirical studies - if the opportunity, the desire, and the courage to undertake them do not desert me). These theoretical problems too will be examined only in a particular field: in those disciplines - so unsure of their frontiers, and so vague in content - that we call the history of ideas, or of thought, or of science, or of knowledge.

But there is a negative work to be carried out first: we must rid ourselves of a whole mass of notions, each of which, in its own way, diversifies the theme of continuity. They may not have a very rigorous conceptual structure, but they have a very precise function. Take the notion of tradition: it is intended to give a special temporal status to a group of phenomena that are both successive and identical (or at least similar); it makes it possible to rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the same; it allows a reduction of the difference proper to every beginning, in order to pursue without discontinuity the endless search for the origin; tradition enables us to isolate the new against a background of permanence, and to transfer its merit to originality, to genius, to the decisions proper to individuals. Then there is the notion of influence, which provides a support - of too magical a kind to be very amenable to analysis - for the facts of transmission and communication; which refers to an apparently causal process (but with neither rigorous delimitation nor theoretical definition) the phenomena of resemblance or repetition; which links, at a distance and through time - as if through the mediation of a medium of propagation such defined unities as individuals, œuvres, notions, or theories. There are the notions of development and evolution: they make it possible to group a succession of dispersed events, to link them to one and the same organising principle, to subject them to the exemplary power of life (with its adaptations, its capacity for innovation, the incessant correlation of its different elements, its systems of assimilation and exchange), to discover, already at work in each beginning, a principle of coherence and the outline of a future unity, to master time through a perpetually reversible relation between an origin and a term that are never given, but are always at work. There is the notion of 'spirit', which enables us to establish between the simultaneous or successive phenomena of a given period a community of meanings, symbolic links, an interplay of resemblance and reflexion, or which allows the sovereignty of collective consciousness to emerge as the principle of unity and explanation. We must question those ready-made syntheses, those groupings that we normally accept before any examination, those links whose validity is recognised from the outset; we must oust those forms and obscure forces by which we usually link the discourse of one man with that of another; they must be driven out from the darkness in which they reign.

And instead of according them unqualified, spontaneous value, we must accept, in the name of methodological rigour, that, in the first instance, they concern only a population of dispersed events.

We must also question those divisions or groupings with which we have become so familiar. Can one accept, as such, the distinction between the major types of discourse, or that between such forms or genres as science, literature, philosophy, religion, history, fiction, etc., and which tend to create certain great historical individualities? We are not even sure of ourselves when we use these distinctions in our own world of discourse, let alone when we are analysing groups of statements which, when first formulated, were distributed, divided, and characterised in a quite different way: after all, 'literature' and 'politics' are recent categories, which can be applied to medieval culture, or even classical culture, only by a retrospective hypothesis, and by an interplay of formal analogies or semantic resemblances; but neither literature, nor politics, nor philosophy and the sciences articulated the field of discourse, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, as they did in the nineteenth century.

In any case, these divisions - whether our own, or those contemporary with the discourse under examination - are always themselves reflexive categories, principles of classification, normative rules, institutionalised types: they, in turn, are facts of discourse that deserve to be analysed beside others; of course, they also have complex relations with each other, but they are not intrinsic, autochthonous, and universally recognisable characteristics.

But the unities that must be suspended above all are those that emerge in the most immediate way: those of the book and the œuvre. At first sight, it would seem that one could not abandon these unities without extreme artificiality. Are they not given in the most definite way? There is the material individualisation of the book, which occupies a determined space which has an economic value, and which itself indicates, by a number of signs, the limits of its beginning and its end; and there is the establishment of an oeuvre, which we recognise and delimit by attributing a certain number of texts to an author. And yet as soon as one looks at the matter a little more closely the difficulties begin. The material unity of the book? Is this the same in the case of an anthology of poems, a collection of posthumous fragments, Desargues' Traité des Coniques, or a volume of Michelet's Histoire de France? Is it the same in the case of Mallarmé's Un Coup de dés, the trial of Gilles de Rais, Butor's San Marco, or a Catholic file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o1.html (1 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:32 πμ

Chapter - 1. The Unities of Discourse

missal? In other words, is not the material unity of the volume a weak, accessory unity in relation to the discursive unity of which it is the support? But is this discursive unity itself homogeneous and uniformly applicable? A novel by Stendhal and a novel by Dostoyevsky do not have the same relation of individuality as that between two novels belonging to Balzac's cycle La Comédie humaine; and the relation between Balzac's novels is not the same as that existing between Joyce's Ulysses and the Odyssey. The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network. And this network of references is not the same in the case of a mathematical treatise, a textual commentary, a historical account, and an episode in a novel cycle; the unity of the book, even in the sense of a group of relations, cannot be regarded as identical in each case. The book is not simply the object that one holds in one's hands; and it cannot remain within the little parallelepiped that contains it: its unity is variable and relative. As soon as one questions that unity, it lows its self-evidence; it indicates itself, constructs itself, only on the basis Of a complex field of discourse.

The problems raised by the œuvre are even more difficult. Yet, at first sight, what could be more simple? A collection of texts that can be designated by the sign of a proper name. But this designation (even leaving to one side problems of attribution) is not a homogeneous function: does the name of an author designate in the same way a text that he has published under his name, a text that he has presented under a pseudonym, another found after his death in the form of an unfinished draft, and another that is merely a collection of jottings, a notebook? The establishment of a complete oeuvre presupposes a number of choices that are difficult to justify or even to formulate: is it enough to add to the texts published by the author those that he intended for publication but which remained unfinished by the fact of his death? Should one also include all his sketches and first drafts, with all their corrections and crossings out? Should one add sketches that he himself abandoned? And what status should be given to letters, notes, reported conversations, transcriptions of what he said made by those present at the time, in short, to that vast mass of verbal traces left by an individual at his death, and which speak in an endless confusion so many different languages (langages)? In any case, the name 'Mallarmé' does not refer in the same way to his themes (translation exercises from French into English), his translations of Edgar Allan Poe, his poems, and his replies to questionnaires; similarly, the same relation does not exist between the name Nietzsche on the one hand and the youthful autobiographies, the scholastic dissertations, the philological articles, Zarathustra, Ecco Homo, the letters, the last postcards signed 'Dionysos' or 'Kaiser Nietzsche', and the innumerable notebooks with their jumble of laundry bills and sketches for aphorisms. In fact, if one speaks, so undiscriminately and unreflectingly of an author's œuvre, it is because one imagines it to be defined by a certain expressive function. One is admitting that there must be a level (as deep as it is necessary to imagine it) at which the oeuvre emerges, in all its fragments, even the smallest, most inessential ones, as the expression of the thought, the experience, the imagination, or the unconscious of the author, or, indeed, of the historical determinations that operated upon him.

But it is at once apparent that such a unity, far from being given immediately is the result of an operation; that this operation is interpretative (since it deciphers, in the text, the transcription of something that it both conceals and manifests); and that the operation that determines the opus, in its unity, and consequently the œuvre itself, will not be the same in the case of the author of the Théâtre et son Double (Artaud) and the author of the Tractatus (Wittgenstein), and therefore when one speaks of an œuvre in each case one is using the word in a different sense.

The œuvre can be regarded neither as an immediate unity, nor as a certain unity, nor as a homogeneous unity.

One last precaution must be taken to disconnect the unquestioned continuities by which we organise, in advance, the discourse that we are to analyse: we must renounce two linked, but opposite themes. The first involves a wish that it should never be possible to assign, in the order of discourse, the irruption of a real event; that beyond any apparent beginning, there is always a secret origin - so secret and so fundamental that it can never be quite grasped in itself. Thus one is led inevitably, through the naïvety of chronologies, towards an ever-receding point that is never itself present in any history; this point is merely its own void; and from that point all beginnings can never be more than recommencements or occultation (in one and the same gesture, this and that). To this theme is connected another according to which all manifest discourse is secretly based on an 'already-said'; and that this 'already said' is not merely a phrase that has already been spoken, or a text that has already been written, but a 'never-said', an incorporeal discourse, a voice as silent as a breath, a writing that is merely the hollow of its own mark. It is supposed therefore that everything that is formulated in discourse was already articulated in that semisilence that precedes it, which continues to run obstinately beneath it, but which it covers and silences. The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this 'notsaid' is a hollow that undermines from w thin all that is said. The first theme sees the historical analysis of discourse as the quest for and the repetition of an origin that eludes all historical determination; the second sees it as the interpretation of 'hearing' of an 'already-said' that is at the same time a 'not-said'. We must renounce all those themes whose function is to ensure the infinite continuity of discourse and its secret presence to itself in the interplay of a constantly recurring absence. We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption; in that punctuality in which it appears, and in that temporal dispersion that enables it to be repeated, file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o1.html (2 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:32 πμ

Chapter - 1. The Unities of Discourse

known, forgotten, transformed, utterly erased, and hidden, far from all view, in the dust of books. Discourse must not be referred to the distant presence of the origin, but treated as and when it occurs.

These pre-existing forms of continuity, all these syntheses that are accepted without question, must remain in suspense. They must not be rejected definitively of course, but the tranquillity with which they are accepted must be disturbed; we must show that they do not come about of themselves, but are always the result of a construction the rules of which must be known, and the justifications of which must be scrutinised: we must define in what conditions and in view of which analyses certain of them are legitimate; and we must indicate which of them can never be accepted in any circumstances. It may be, for example, that the notions of 'influence' or 'evolution' belong to a criticism that puts them - for the foreseeable future - out of use. But need we dispense for ever with the 'œuvre', the 'book', or even such unities as 'science' or 'literature'? Should we regard them as illusions, illegitimate constructions, or ill-acquired results? Should we never make use of them, even as a temporary support, and never provide them with a definition? What we must do, in fact, is to tear away from them their virtual self-evidence, and to free the problems that they pose; to recognise that they are not the tranquil locus on the basis of which other questions (concerning their structure, coherence, systematicity, transformations) may be posed, but that they themselves pose a whole cluster of questions (What are they? How can they be defined or limited? What distinct types of laws can they obey? What articulation are they capable of? What sub-groups can they give rise to? What specific phenomena do they reveal in the field of discourse?). We must recognise that they may not, in the last resort, be what they seem at first sight. In short, that they require a theory, and that this theory cannot be constructed unless the field of the facts of discourse on the basis of which those facts are built up appears in its non-synthetic purity.

And I, in turn, will do no more than this: of course, I shall take as my starting-point whatever unities are already given (such as psychopathology, medicine, or political economy); but I shall not place myself inside these dubious unities in order to study their internal configuration or their secret contradictions. I shall make use of them just long enough to ask myself what unities they form; by what right they can claim a field that specifies them in space and a continuity that individualises them in time; according to what laws they are formed; against the background of which discursive events they stand out; and whether they are not, in their accepted and quasi-institutional individuality, ultimately the surface effect of more firmly grounded unities. I shall accept the groupings that history suggests only to subject them at once to interrogation; to break them up and then to see whether they can be legitimately reformed; or whether other groupings should be made; to replace them in a more general space which, while dissipating their apparent familiarity, makes it possible to construct a theory of them.

Once these immediate forms of continuity are suspended, an entire field is set free. A vast field, but one that can be defined nonetheless: this field is made up of the totality of all effective statements (whether spoken or written), in their dispersion as events and in the occurrence that is proper to them. Before approaching, with any degree of certainty, a science, or novels, or political speeches, or the œuvre of an author, or even a single book, the material with which one is dealing is, in its raw, neutral state, a population of events in the space of discourse in general.

One is led therefore to the project of a pure description of discursive events as the horizon for the search for the unities that form within it. This description is easily distinguishable from an analysis of the language. Of course, a linguistic system can be established (unless it is constructed artificially) only by using a corpus of statements, or a collection of discursive facts; but we must then define, on the basis of this grouping, which has value as a sample, rules that may make it possible to construct other statements than these: even if it has long since disappeared, even if it is no longer spoken, and can be reconstructed only on the basis of rare fragments, a language (langue) is still a system for possible statements, a finite body of rules that authorises an infinite number of performances. The field of discursive events, on the other hand, is a grouping that is always finite and limited at any moment to the linguistic sequences that have been formulated; they may be innumerable, they may, in sheer size, exceed the capacities of recording, memory, or reading: nevertheless they form a finite grouping. The question posed by language analysis of some discursive fact or other is always: according to what rules has a particular statement been made, and consequently according to what rules could other similar statements be made? The description of the events of discourse poses a quite different question: how is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?

It is also clear that this description of discourses is in opposition to the history of thought. There too a system of thought can be reconstituted only on the basis of a definite discursive totality. But this totality is treated in such a way that one tries to rediscover beyond the statements themselves the intention of the speaking subject, his conscious activity, what he meant, or, again, the unconscious activity that took place, despite himself, in what he said or in the almost imperceptible fracture of his actual words; in any case, we must reconstitute another discourse, rediscover the silent murmuring, the inexhaustible speech that animates from within the voice that one hears, re-establish the tiny, invisible text that runs between and sometimes collides with them. The analysis of file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o1.html (3 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:32 πμ

Chapter - 1. The Unities of Discourse

thought is always allegorical in relation to the discourse that it employs. Its question is unfailingly: what was being said in what was said? The analysis of the discursive field is orientated in a quite different way; we must grasp the statement in the exact specificity of its occurrence; determine its conditions of existence, fix at least its limits, establish its correlations with other statements that may be connected with it, and show what other forms of statement it excludes. We do not seek below what is manifest the half silent murmur of another discourse; we must show why it could not be other than it was, in what respect it is exclusive of any other, how it assumes, in the midst of others and in relation to them, a place that no other could occupy. The question proper to such an analysis might be formulated in this way: what is this specific existence that emerges from what is said and nowhere else?

We must ask ourselves what purpose is ultimately served by this suspension of all the accepted unities, if, in the end, we return to the unities that we pretended to question at the outset. In fact, the systematic erasure of all given unities enables us first of all to restore to the statement the specificity of its occurrence, and to show that discontinuity is one of those great accidents that create cracks not only in the geology of history, but also in the simple fact of the statement; it emerges in its historical irruption; what we try to examine is the incision that it makes, that irreducible - and very often tiny - emergence. However banal it may be, however unimportant its consequences may appear to be, however quickly it may be forgotten after its appearance, however little heard or however badly deciphered we may suppose it to be, a statement is always an event that neither the language (langue) nor the meaning can quite exhaust. It is certainly a strange event: first, because on the one hand it is linked to the gesture of writing or to the articulation of speech, and also on the other hand it opens up to itself a residual existence in the field of a memory, or in the materiality of manuscripts, books, or any other form of recording; secondly, because, like every event, it is unique, yet subject to repetition, transformation, and reactivation; thirdly, because it is linked not only to the situations that provoke it, and to the consequences that it gives rise to, but at the same time, and in accordance with a quite different modality, to the statements that precede and follow it.

But if we isolate, in relation to the language and to thought, the occurrence of the statement/event, it is not in order to spread over everything a dust of facts. it is in order to be sure that this occurrence is not linked with synthesising operations of a purely psychological kind (the intention of the author,, the form of his mind, the rigour of his thought, the themes that obsess him, the project that traverses his existence and gives it meaning) and to be able to grasp other forms of regularity, other types of relations. Relations between statements (even if the author is unaware of them; even if the statements do not have the same author; even if the authors were unaware of each other's existence); relations between groups of statements thus established (even if these groups do not concern the same, or even adjacent, fields; even if they do not possess the same formal level; even if they are not the locus of assignable exchanges); relations between statements and groups of statements and events of a quite different kind (technical, economic, social, political). To reveal in all its purity the space in which discursive events are deployed is not to undertake to re-establish it in an isolation that nothing could overcome; it is not to close it upon itself; it is to leave oneself free to describe the interplay of relations within it and outside it.

The third purpose of such a description of the facts of discourse is that by freeing them of all the groupings that purport to be natural, immediate, universal unities, one is able to describe other unities, but this time by means of a group of controlled decisions., Providing one defines the conditions clearly, it might be legitimate to constitute, on the basis of correctly described relations, discursive groups that are not arbitrary, and yet remain invisible. Of course, these relations would never be formulated for themselves in the statements in question (unlike, for example, those explicit relations that are posed and spoken in discourse itself, as in the form of the novel, or a series of mathematical theorems). But in no way would they constitute a sort of secret discourse, animating the manifest discourse from within; it is not therefore an interpretation of the facts of the statement that might reveal them, but the analysis of their coexistence, their succession, their mutual functioning, their reciprocal determination, and their independent or correlative transformation.

However, it is not possible to describe all the relations that may emerge in this way without some guide-lines. A provisional division must be adopted as an initial approximation: an initial region that analysis will subsequently demolish and, if necessary, reorganise. But how is such a region to be circumscribed? on the one hand, we must choose, empirically, a field in which the relations are likely to be numerous, dense, and relatively easy to describe: and in what other region do discursive events appear to be more closely linked to one another, to occur in accordance with more easily decipherable relations, than in the region usually known as science? But, on the other hand, what better way of grasping in a statement, not the moment of its formal structure and laws of construction, but that of its existence and the rules that govern its appearance, if not by dealing with relatively uniformalised groups of discourses, in which the statements do not seem necessarily to be built on the rules of pure syntax? How can we be sure of avoiding such divisions as the œuvre, or such categories as 'influence', unless, from the very outset, we adopt sufficiently broad fields and scales that are chronologically vast enough? Lastly, how can we be file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o1.html (4 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:32 πμ

Chapter - 1. The Unities of Discourse

sure that we will not find ourselves in the grip of all those over-hasty unities or syntheses concerning the speaking subject, or the author of the text, in short, all anthropological categories? Unless, perhaps, we consider all the statements out of which these categories are constituted - all the statements that have chosen the subject of discourse (their own subject) as their 'object' and have undertaken to deploy it as their field of knowledge?

This explains the de facto privilege that I have accorded to those discourses that, to put it very schematically, define the 'sciences of man'. But it is only a provisional privilege. Two facts must be constantly borne in mind: that the analysis of discursive events is in no way limited to such a field; and that the division of this field itself cannot be regarded either as definitive or as absolutely valid; it is no more than an initial approximation that must allow relations to appear that may erase the limits of this initial outline.

Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), publ. Routledge, 1972. First 3 Chapters , by Foucault.

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Chapter - 2. Discursive Formations

Foucault.info | Chapter - 2. Discursive Formations

I have undertaken, then, to describe the relations between statements. I have been careful to accept as valid none of the unities that would normally present themselves to anyone embarking on such a task. I have decided to ignore no form of discontinuity, break, threshold, or limit. I have decided to describe statements in the field of discourse and the relations of which they are capable. As I see it, two series of problems arise at the outset: the first, which I shall leave to one side for the time being and shall return to later, concerns the indiscriminate use that I have made of the terms statement, event, and discourse; the second concerns the relations that may legitimately be described between the statements that have been left in their provisional, visible grouping.

There are statements, for example, that are quite obviously concerned and have been from a date that is easy enough to determine - with political economy, or biology, or psychopathology; there are others that equally obviously belong to those age-old continuities known as grammar or medicine. But what are these unities? How can we say that the analysis of headaches carried out by Willis or Charcot belong to the same order of discourse? That Petty's inventions are in continuity with Neumann's econometry? That the analysis of judgement by the Port-Royal grammarians belongs to the same domain as the discovery of vowel gradations in the Indo-European languages?

What, in fact, are medicine, grammar, or political economy? Are they merely a retrospective regrouping by which the contemporary sciences deceive themselves as to their own past? Are they forms that have become established once and for all and have gone on developing through time? Do they conceal other unities? And what sort of links can validly be recognised between all these statements that form, in such a familiar and insistent way, such an enigmatic mass?

First hypothesis - and the one that, at first sight, struck me as being the most likely and the most easily proved: statements different in form, and dispersed in time, form a group if they refer to one and the same object. Thus, statements belonging to psychopathology all seem to refer to an object that emerges in various ways in individual or social experience and which may be called madness. But I soon realised that the unity of the object 'madness' does not enable one to individualise a group of statements, and to establish between them a relation that is both constant and describable. There are two reasons for this. It would certainly be a mistake to try to discover what could have been said of madness at a particular time by interrogating the being of madness itself, its secret content, its silent, self-enclosed truth; mental illness was constituted by all that was said in all the statements that named it, divided it up, described it, explained it, traced its developments, indicated its various correlations, judged it, and possibly gave it speech by articulating, in its name, discourses that were to be taken as its own.

Moreover, this group of statements is far from referring to a single object, formed once and for all, and to preserving it indefinitely as its horizon of inexhaustible ideality; the object presented as their correlative by medical statements of the seventeenth or eighteenth century is not identical with the object that emerges in legal sentences or police action; similarly, all the objects of psychopathological discourses were modified from Pinel or Esquirol to Bleuler: it is not the same illnesses that are at issue in each of these cases; we are not dealing with the same madmen.

One might, perhaps one should, conclude from this multiplicity of objects that it is not possible to accept, as a valid unity forming a group of statements, a 'discourse, concerning madness'. Perhaps one should confine one's attention to those groups of statements that have one and the same object: the discourses on melancholia, or neurosis, for example. But one would soon realise that each of these discourses in turn constituted its object and worked it to the point of transforming it altogether. So that the problem arises of knowing whether the unity of a discourse is based not so much on the permanence and uniqueness of an object as on the space in which various objects emerge and are continuously transformed. Would not the typical relation that would enable us to individualise a group of statements concerning madness then be: the rule of simultaneous or successive emergence of the various objects that are named, described, analysed, appreciated, or judged in that relation? The unity of discourses on madness would not be based upon the existence of the object 'madness', or the constitution of a single horizon of objectivity; it would be the interplay of the rules that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time: objects that are shaped by measures of discrimination and repression, objects that are differentiated in daily practice, in law, in religious casuistry, in medical diagnosis, objects that are manifested in pathological descriptions, objects that are circumscribed by medical codes, practices, treatment, and care.

Moreover, the unity of the discourses on madness would be the interplay of the rules that define the transformations of these d' rent objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence. Paradoxically, to define a group of statements in terms of its individuality would be to define the dispersion of these objects, to grasp all the interstices that separate them, to measure the distances that reign between them - in other words, to formulate their law of division. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o2.html (1 of 4)19/5/2005 10:18:33 πμ

Chapter - 2. Discursive Formations

Second hypothesis to define a group of relations between statements: their form and type of connection. It seemed to me, for example, that from the nineteenth century medical science was characterised not so much by its objects or concepts as by a certain style, a certain constant manner of statement. For the first time, medicine no longer consisted of a group of traditions, observations, and heterogeneous practices, but of a corpus of knowledge that presupposed the same way of looking at things, the same division of the perceptual field, the same analysis of the pathological fact in accordance with the visible space of the body, the same system of transcribing what one perceived in what one said (same vocabulary, same play of metaphor); in short, it seemed to me that medicine was organised as a series of descriptive statements. But, there again, I had to abandon this hypothesis at the outset and recognise that clinical discourse was just as much a group of hypotheses about life and death, of ethical choices, of therapeutic decisions, of institutional regulations, of teaching models, as a group of descriptions; that the descriptions could not, in any case, be abstracted from the hypotheses, and that the descriptive statement was only one of the formulations present in medical discourse. I also had to recognise that this description has constantly been displaced: either because, from Bichat to cell pathology, the scales and guide-lines have been displaced; or because from visual inspection, auscultation and palpation to the use of the microscope and biological tests, the information system has been modified; or, again, because, from simple anatomo-clinical correlation to the delicate analysis of physio-pathological processes, the lexicon of signs and their decipherment has been entirely reconstituted; or, finally, because the doctor has gradually ceased to be himself the locus of the registering and interpretation of information, and because, beside him, outside him, there have appeared masses of documentation, instruments of correlation, and techniques of analysis, which, of course, he makes use of, but which modify his position as an observing subject in relation to the patient.

All these alterations, which may now lead to the threshold of a new medicine, gradually appeared in medical discourse throughout the nineteenth century. If one wished to define this discourse by a codified and normative system of statement, one would have to recognise that this medicine disintegrated as soon as it appeared and that it really found its formulation only in Bichat and Laennec. If there is a unity, its principle is not therefore a determined form of statements; is it not rather the group of rules, which, simultaneously or in turn, have made possible purely perceptual descriptions, together with observations mediated through instruments, the procedures used in laboratory experiments, statistical calculations, epidemiological or demographic observations, institutional regulations, and therapeutic practice? What one must characterise and individualise is the coexistence of these dispersed and heterogeneous statements; the system that governs their division, the degree to which they depend upon one another, the way in which they interlock or exclude one another, the transformation that they undergo, and the play of their location, arrangement, and replacement.

Another direction of research, another hypothesis: might it not be possible to establish groups of statements, by determining the system of permanent and coherent concepts involved? For example, does not the Classical analysis of language and grammatical facts (from Lancelot to the end of the eighteenth century) rest on a definite number of concepts whose content and usage had been established once and for all: the concept of judgement defined as the general, normative form of any sentence, the concepts of subject and predicate regrouped under the more general category of noun, the concept of verb used as the equivalent of that of logical copula, the concept of word defined as the sign of a representation, etc.? In this way, one might reconstitute the conceptual architecture of Classical grammar. But there too one would soon come up against limitations: no sooner would one have succeeded in describing with such elements the analyses carried out by the Port-Royal authors than one would no doubt be forced to acknowledge the appearance of new concepts; some of these may be derived from the first, but the others are heterogeneous and a few even incompatible with them. The notion of natural or inverted syntactical order, that of complement (introduced in the eighteenth century by Beauzée), may still no doubt be integrated into the conceptual system of the Port-Royal grammar. But neither the idea of an originally expressive value of sounds, nor that of a primitive body of knowledge enveloped in words and conveyed in some obscure way by them, nor that of regularity in the mutation of consonants, nor the notion of the verb as a mere name capable of designating an action or operation, is compatible with the group of concepts used by Lancelot or Duclos. Must we admit therefore that grammar only appears to form a coherent figure; and that this group of statements, analyses, descriptions, principles and consequences, deductions that has been perpetrated under this name for over a century is no more than a false unity? But perhaps one might discover a discursive unity if one sought it not in the coherence of concepts, but in their simultaneous or successive emergence, in the distance that separates them and even in their incompatibility. One would no longer seek an architecture of concepts sufficiently general and abstract to embrace all others and to introduce them into the same deductive structure; one would try to analyse the interplay of their appearances and dispersion.

Lastly, a fourth hypothesis to regroup the statements, describe their interconnection and account for the unitary forms under which they are presented: the identity and persistence of themes. In 'sciences' like economics or

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Chapter - 2. Discursive Formations

biology, which are so controversial in character, so open to philosophical or ethical options, so exposed in certain cases to political manipulation, it is legitimate in the first instance to suppose that a certain thematic is capable of linking, and animating a group of discourses, like an organism with its own needs, its own internal force, and its own capacity for survival. Could one not, for example, constitute as a unity everything that has constituted the evolutionist theme from Buffon to Darwin? A theme that in the first instance was more philosophical, closer to cosmology than to biology; a theme that directed research from afar rather than named, regrouped, and explained results; a theme that always presupposed more than one was aware Of, but which, on the basis of this fundamental choice, forcibly transformed into discursive knowledge what had been outlined as a hypothesis or as a necessity.

Could one not speak of the Physiocratic theme in the same way? An idea that postulated, beyond all demonstration and prior to all analysis, the natural character of the three ground rents; which consequently presupposed the economic and political primacy of agrarian property; which excluded all analysis of the mechanisms of industrial production; which implied, on the other hand, the description of the circulation of money within a state, of its distribution between different social categories, and of the channels by which it flowed back into production; which finally led Ricardo to consider those cases in which this triple rent did not appear, the conditions in which it could form, and consequently to denounce the arbitrariness of the Physiocratic theme?

But on the basis of such an attempt, one is led to make two inverse and complementary observations. In one case, the same thematic is articulated on the basis of two sets of concepts, two types of analysis, two perfectly different fields of objects: in its most general formulation, the evolutionist idea is perhaps the same in the work of Benoit de Maillet, Borden or Diderot, and in that of Darwin; but, in fact, what makes it possible and coherent is not at all the same thing in either case. In the eighteenth century, the evolutionist idea is defined on the basis of a kinship of species forming a continuum laid down at the outset (interrupted only by natural catastrophes) or gradually built up by the passing of time. In the nineteenth century the evolutionist theme concerns not so much the constitution of a continuous table of species, as the description of discontinuous groups and the analysis of the modes of interaction between an organism whose elements are interdependent and an environment that provides its real conditions of life. A single theme, but based on two types of discourse. In the case of Physiocracy, on the other hands Quesnay's choice rests exactly on the same system of concepts as the opposite opinion held by those that might be called utilitarists. At this period the analysis of wealth involved a relatively limited set of concepts that was accepted by all (coinage was given the same definition; prices were given the same explanation; and labour costs were calculated in the same way). But, on the basis of this single set of concepts, there were two ways of explaining the formation of value, according to whether it was analysed on the basis of exchange, or on that of remuneration for the day's work. These two possibilities contained within economic theory, and in the rules of its set of concepts, resulted, on the basis of the same elements, in two different options.

It would probably be wrong therefore to seek in the existence of these themes the principles of the individualisation of a discourse. Should they not be sought rather in the dispersion of the points of choice that the discourse leaves free? In the different possibilities that it opens of reanimating already existing themes, of arousing opposed strategies, of giving way to irreconcilable interests, of making it possible, with a particular set of concepts, to play different games? Rather than seeking the permanence of themes, images, and opinions through time, rather than retracing the dialectic of their conflicts in order to individualise groups of statements, could one not rather mark out the dispersion of the points of choice, and define prior to any option, to any thematic preference, a field of strategic possibilities?

I am presented therefore with four attempts, four failures - and four successive hypotheses. They must now be put to the test. Concerning those large groups of statements with which we are so familiar - and which we call medicine, economics, or grammar - I have asked myself on what their unity could be based. On a full, tightly packed, continuous, geographically well-defined field of objects? What appeared to me were rather series full of gaps, intertwined with one another, interplays of differences, distances, substitutions, transformations. On a definite, normative type of statement? I found formulations of levels that were much too different and functions that were much too heterogeneous to be linked together and arranged in a single figure, and to simulate, from one period to another, beyond individual œuvres, a sort of great uninterrupted text. On a well-defined alphabet of notions? One is confronted with concepts that differ in structure and in the rules governing their use, which ignore or exclude one another, and which cannot enter the unity of a logical architecture. On the permanence of a thematic? What one finds are rather various strategic possibilities that permit the activation of incompatible themes, or, again, the establishment of the same theme in different groups of statement. Hence the idea of describing these dispersions themselves; of discovering whether, between these elements, which are certainly not organised as a progressively deductive structure, nor as an enormous book that is being gradually and continuously written, nor as the œuvre of a collective subject, one cannot discern a regularity: an order in their successive appearance, correlations in their simultaneity, assignable positions in a common space, a reciprocal functioning, linked and hierarchised transformations. Such an analysis would not try to isolate small islands of coherence in file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o2.html (3 of 4)19/5/2005 10:18:33 πμ

Chapter - 2. Discursive Formations

order to describe their internal structure; it would not try to suspect and to reveal latent conflicts; it would study forms of division. Or again: instead of reconstituting chains of inference (as one often does in the history of the sciences or of philosophy), instead of drawing up tables of differences (as the linguists do), it would describe systems of dispersion.

Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation - thus avoiding words that are already overladen with conditions and consequences, and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a dispersion, such as 'science' 'ideology', 'theory', or 'domain of objectivity'. The conditions to which the elements of this division (objects, mode of statement, concepts, thematic choices) are subjected we shall call the rules of formation. The rules of formation are conditions of existence (but also of coexistence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance) in a given discursive division.

This, then, is the field to be covered; these the notions that we must put to the test and the analyses that we must carry out. I am well aware that the risks are considerable. For an initial probe, I made use of certain fairly loose, but familiar, groups of statement: I have no proof that I shall find them again at the end of the analysis, nor that I shall discover the principle of their delimitation and individualisation; I am not sure that the discursive formations that I shall isolate will define medicine in its overall unity, or economics and grammar in the overall curve of their historical destination; they may even introduce unexpected boundaries and divisions. Similarly, I have no proof that such a description will be able to take account of the scientificity (or non-scientificity) of the discursive groups that I have taken as an attack point and which presented themselves at the outset with a certain pretension to scientific rationality; I have no proof that my analysis will not be situated at a quite different level, constituting a description that is irreducible to epistemology or to the history of the sciences. Moreover, at the end of such an enterprise, one may not recover those unities that, out of methodological rigour, one initially held in suspense: one may be compelled to dissociate certain œuvres, ignore influences and traditions, abandon definitively the question of origin, allow the commanding presence of authors to fade into the background; and thus everything that was thought to be proper to the history of ideas may disappear from view. The danger, in short, is that instead of providing a basis for what already exists, instead of going over with bold strokes lines that have already been sketched, instead of finding reassurance in this return and final confirmation, instead of completing the blessed circle that announces, after innumerable stratagems and as many nights, that all is saved, one is forced to advance beyond familiar territory, far from the certainties to which one is accustomed, towards an as yet uncharted land and unforeseeable conclusion. Is there not a danger that everything that has so far protected the historian in his daily journey and accompanied him until nightfall (the destiny of rationality and the teleology of the sciences, the long, continuous labour of thought from period to period, the awakening and the progress of consciousness, its perpetual resumption of itself, the uncompleted, but uninterrupted movement of totalisations, the return to an ever-open source, and finally the historico-transcendental thematic) may disappear, leaving for analysis a blank, indifferent space, lacking in both interiority and promise?

Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), publ. Routledge, 1972. First 3 Chapters , by Foucault.

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Chapter - 3. The Formation of Objects

Foucault.info | Chapter - 3. The Formation of Objects

We must now list the various directions that lie open to us, and see whether this notion of 'rules of formation' - of which little more than a rough sketch has so far been provided - can be given real content. Let us look first at the formation of objects. And in order to facilitate our analysis, let us take as an example the discourse of psychopathology from the nineteenth century onwards - a chronological break that is easy enough to accept in a first approach to the subject. There are enough signs to indicate it, but let us take just two of these: the establishment at the beginning of the century of a new mode of exclusion and confinement of the madman in a psychiatric hospital; and the possibility of tracing certain present-day notions back to Esquirol, Heinroth, or Pinel (paranoia can be traced back to monomania, the intelligence quotient to the initial notion of imbecility, general paralysis to chronic encephalitis, character neurosis to nondelirious madness); whereas if we try to trace the development of psychopathology beyond the nineteenth century, we soon lose our way, the path becomes confused, and the projection of Du Laurens or even Van Swicten on the pathology of Kraepelin or Bleuler provides no more than chance coincidences. The objects with which psychopathology has dealt since this break in time are very numerous, mostly very new, but also very precarious, subject to change and, in some cases, to rapid disappearance: in addition to motor disturbances, hallucinations, and speech disorders (which were already regarded as manifestations of madness, although they were recognised, delimited, described, and analysed in a different way), objects appeared that belonged to hitherto unused registers: minor behavioural disorders, sexual aberrations and disturbances, the phenomena of suggestion and hypnosis, lesions of the central nervous system, deficiencies of intellectual or motor adaptation, criminality. And on the basis of each of these registers a variety of objects were named, circumscribed, analysed, then rectified, re-defined, challenged, erased. Is it possible to lay down the rule to which their appearance was subject? Is it possible to discover according to which non-deductive system these objects could be juxtaposed and placed in succession to form the fragmented field - showing at certain points great gaps, at others a plethora of information - of psychopathology? What has ruled their existence as objects of discourse? (a) First we must map the first surfaces of their emergence: show where these individual differences, which, according to the degrees of rationalisation, conceptual codes, and types of theory, will be accorded the status of disease, alienation, anomaly, dementia, neurosis or psychosis, degeneration, etc., may emerge, and then be designated and analysed. These surfaces of emergence are not the same for different societies, at different periods, and in different forms of discourse. In the case of nineteenth-century psychopathology, they were probably constituted by the family, the immediate social group, the work situation, the religious community (which are all normative, which are all susceptible to deviation, which all have a margin of tolerance and a threshold beyond which exclusion is demanded, which all have a mode of designation and a mode of rejecting madness, which all transfer to medicine if not the responsibility for treatment and cure, at least the burden of explanation); although organised according to a specific mode, these surfaces of emergence were not new in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it was no doubt at this period that new surfaces of appearance began to function: art with its own normativity, sexuality (its deviations in relation to customary prohibitions become for the first time an object of observation, description, and analysis for psychiatric discourse), penality (whereas in previous periods madness was carefully distinguished from criminal conduct and was regarded as an excuse, criminality itself becomes - and subsequent to the celebrated 'homicidal monomanias' - a form of deviance more or less related to madness). In these fields of initial differentiation, in the distances, the discontinuities, and the thresholds that appear within it, psychiatric discourse finds a way of limiting its domain, of defining what it is talking about, of giving it the status of an object - and therefore of making it manifest, nameable, and describable. (b) We must also describe the authorities of delimitation: in the nineteenth century, medicine (as an institution possessing its own rules, as a group of individuals constituting the medical profession, as a body of knowledge and practice, as an authority recognised by public opinion, the law, and government) became the major authority in society that delimited, designated, named, and established madness as an object; but it was not alone in this: the law and penal law in particular (with the definitions of excuse, non-responsibility, extenuating circumstances, and with the application of such notions as the crime passional, heredity, danger to society), the religious authority (in so far as it set itself up as the authority that divided the mystical from the pathological, the spiritual from the corporeal, the supernatural from the abnormal, and in so far as it practised the direction of conscience with a view to understanding individuals rather than carrying out a casuistical classification of actions and circumstances), literary and art criticism (which in the nineteenth century treated the work less and less as an object of taste that had to be judged, and more and more as a language that had to be interpreted and in which the author's tricks of expression had to be recognised).

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Chapter - 3. The Formation of Objects

(c) Lastly, we must analyse the grids of specification: these are the systems according to which the different 'kinds of madness' are divided, contrasted, related, regrouped, classified, derived from one another as objects of psychiatric discourse (in the nineteenth century, these grids of differentiation were: the soul, as a group of hierarchised, related, and more or less interpenetrable faculties; the body, as a three-dimensional volume of organs linked together by networks of dependence and communication; the life and history of individuals, as a linear succession of phases, a tangle of traces, a group of potential reactivations, cyclical repetitions; the interplays of neuropsychological correlations as systems of reciprocal projections, and as a field of circular causality).

Such a description is still in itself inadequate. And for two reasons. These planes of emergence, authorities of delimitation, or forms of specification do not provide objects, fully formed and armed, that the discourse of psychopathology has then merely to list, classify, name, select, and cover with a network of words and sentences: it is not the families - with their norms, their prohibitions, their sensitivity thresholds - that decide who is mad, and present the 'patients' to the psychiatrists for analysis and judgement; it is not the legal system itself that hands over certain criminals to psychiatry, that sees paranoia beyond a particular murder, or a neurosis behind a sexual offence. It would be quite wrong to see discourse as a place where previously established objects are laid one after another like words on a page. But the above enumeration is inadequate for a second reason. it has located, one after another, several planes of differentiation in which the objects of discourse may appear. But what relations exist between them? Why this enumeration rather than another? What defined and closed group does one imagine one is circumscribing in this way? And how can one speak of a 'system of formation' if one knows only a series of different, heterogeneous determinations, lacking attributable links and relations? in fact, these two series of questions refer back to the same point. In order to locate that point, let us re-examine the previous example. In the sphere with which psychopathology dealt in the nineteenth century, one sees the very early appearance (as early as Esquirol) of a whole series of objects belonging to the category of delinquency: homicide (and suicide), crimes passionels, sexual offences, certain forms of theft, vagrancy - and then, through them, heredity, the neurogenic environment, aggressive or self-punishing behaviour, perversions, criminal impulses, suggestibility, etc. It would be inadequate to say that one was dealing here with the consequences of a discovery: of the sudden discovery by a psychiatrist of a resemblance between, criminal and pathological behaviour, a discovery of the presence in certain delinquents of the classical signs of alienation, or mental derangement. Such facts lie beyond the grasp of contemporary research: indeed, the problem is how to decide what made them possible, and how these 'discoveries' could lead to others that took them up, rectified them, modified them, or even disproved them. Similarly, it would be irrelevant to attribute the appearance of these new objects to the norms of nineteenth-century bourgeois society, to a reinforced police and penal framework, to the establishment of a new code of criminal justice, to the introduction and use of extenuating circumstances, to the increase in crime.

No doubt, all these processes were at work; but they could not of themselves form objects for psychiatric discourse; to pursue the description at this level one would fall short of what one was seeking.

If, in a particular period in the history of our society, the delinquent was psychologised and pathologised, if criminal behaviour could give rise to a whole series of objects of knowledge, this was because a group of particular relations was adopted for use in psychiatric discourse. The relation between planes of specification like penal categories and degrees of diminished responsibility, and planes of psychological characterisation (faculties, aptitudes, degrees of development or involution, different ways of reacting to the environment, character types, whether acquired, innate, or hereditary). The relation between the authority of medical decision and the authority of judicial decision (a really complex relation since medical decision recognises absolutely the authority of the judiciary to define crime, to determine the circumstances in which it is committed, and the punishment that it deserves; but reserves the right to analyse its origin and to determine the degree of responsibility involved). The relation between the filter formed by judicial interrogation, police information, investigation, and the whole machinery of judicial information, and the filter formed by the medical questionnaire, clinical examinations, the search for antecedents, and biographical accounts. The relation between the family, sexual and penal norms of the behaviour of individuals, and the table of pathological symptoms and diseases of which they are the signs. The relation between therapeutic confinement in hospital (with its own thresholds, its criteria of cure, its way of distinguishing the normal from the pathological) and punitive confinement in prison (with its system of punishment and pedagogy, its criteria of good conduct, improvement, and freedom). These are the relations that, operating in psychiatric discourse, have made possible the formation of a whole group of various objects.

Let us generalise: in the nineteenth century, psychiatric discourse is characterised not by privileged objects, but by the way in which it forms objects that are in fact highly dispersed. This formation is made possible by a group of relations established between authorities of emergence, delimitation, and specification. One might say, then, that a discursive formation is defined (as far as its objects are concerned, at least) if one can establish such a group; if one can show how any particular object of discourse finds in it its place and law of emergence; if one can show that file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o3.html (2 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:34 πμ

Chapter - 3. The Formation of Objects

it may give birth simultaneously or successively to mutually exclusive objects, without having to modify itself.

Hence a certain number of remarks and consequences.

1. The conditions necessary for the appearance of an object of discourse, the historical conditions required if one is to 'say anything' about it, and if several people are to say different things about it, the conditions necessary if it is to exist in relation to other objects, if it is to establish with them relations of resemblance, proximity, distance, difference, transformation - as we can see, these conditions are many and imposing. Which means that one cannot speak of anything at any time; it is not easy to say something new; it is not enough for us to open our eyes, to pay attention, or to be aware, for new objects suddenly to light up and emerge out of the ground. But this difficulty is not only a negative one; it must not be attached to some obstacle whose power appears to be, exclusively, to blind, to hinder, to prevent discovery, to conceal the purity of the evidence or the dumb obstinacy of the things themselves; the object does not await in limbo the order that will free it and enable it to become embodied in a visible and prolix objectivity; it does not pre-exist itself, held back by some obstacle at the first edges of light. It exists under the positive conditions of a complex group of relations.

2. These relations are established between institutions, economic and social processes, behavioural patterns, systems of norms, techniques, types of classification, modes of characterisation; and these relations are not present in the object; t is not they that are deployed when the object is being analysed; they do not indicate the web, the immanent rationality, that 'deal nervure that reappears totally or in part when one conceives of the object in the truth of its concept. They do not define its internal constitution, but what enables it to appear, to juxtapose itself with other objects, to situate itself in relation to them, to define its difference, its irreducibility, and even perhaps its heterogeneity, in short, to be placed in a field of exteriority.

3. These relations must be distinguished first from what we might call primary relations, and which, independently of all discourse or all object of discourse, may be described between institutions, techniques, social forms, etc.

After all, we know very well that relations existed between the bourgeois family and the functioning of judicial authorities and categories in the nineteenth century that can be analysed in their own right. They cannot always be superposed upon the relations that go to form objects: the relations of dependence that may be assigned to this primary level are not necessarily expressed in the formation of relations that makes discursive objects possible. But we must also distinguish the secondary relations that are formulated in discourse itself. what, for example, the psychiatrists of the nineteenth century could say about the relations between the family and criminality does not reproduce, as we know, the interplay of real dependencies; but neither does it reproduce the interplay of relations that make possible and sustain the objects of psychiatric discourse. Thus a space unfolds articulated with possible discourses: a system of real or primary relations, a system of reflexive or secondary relations, and a system t of relations that might properly be called discursive. The problem is to reveal the specificity of these discursive relations, and their interplay with the other two kinds.

4. Discursive relations are not, as we can see, internal to discourse: they do not connect concepts or words with one another; they do not establish a deductive or rhetorical structure between propositions or sentences. Yet they are not relations exterior to discourse, relations that might limit it, or impose certain forms upon it, or force it, in certain circumstances, to state certain things. They are, in a sense, at the limit of discourse: they offer it objects of which it can speak, or rather (for this image of offering presupposes that objects are formed independently of discourse), they determine the group of relations that discourse must establish in order to speak of this or that object, in order to deal with them, name them, analyse them, classify them, explain them, etc. These relations characterise not the language (langue) used by discourse, nor the circumstances in which it is deployed, but discourse itself as a practice.

We can now complete the analysis and see to what extent it fulfils, and to what extent it modifies, the initial project.

Taking those group figures which, in an insistent but confused way, presented themselves as psychology, economics, grammar, medicine, we asked on what kind of unity they could be based: were they simply a reconstruction after the event, based on particular works, successive theories, notions and themes some of which had been abandoned, others maintained by tradition, and again others fated to fall into oblivion only to be revived at a later date? Were they simply a series of linked enterprises?

We sought the unity of discourse in the objects themselves, in their distribution, in the interplay of their differences, in their proximity or distance - in short, in what is given to the speaking subject; and, in the end, we file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o3.html (3 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:34 πμ

Chapter - 3. The Formation of Objects

are sent back to a setting-up of relations that characterises discursive practice itself; and what we discover is neither a configuration, nor a form, but a group of rules that are immanent in a practice, and define it in its specificity. We also used, as a point of reference, a unity like psychopathology: if we had wanted to provide it with a date of birth and precise limits, it would no doubt have been necessary to discover when the word was first used, to what kind of analysis it could be applied, and how it achieved its separation from neurology on the one hand and psychology on the other. What has emerged is a unity of another type, which does not appear to have the same dates, or the same surface, or the same articulations, but which may take account of a group of objects for which the term psychopathology was merely a reflexive, secondary, classificatory rubric. Psychopathology finally emerged as a discipline in a constant state of renewal, subject to constant discoveries, criticisms, and corrected errors; the system of formation that we have defined remains stable. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not the objects that remain constant, nor the domain that they form; it is not even their point of emergence or their mode of characterisation; but the relation between the surfaces on which they appear, on which they can be delimited, on which they can be analysed and specified.

In the descriptions for which I have attempted to provide a theory, there can be no question of interpreting discourse with a view to writing a history of the referent. In the example chosen, we are not trying to find out who was mad at a particular period, or in what his madness consisted, or whether his disturbances were identical with those known to us today. We are not asking ourselves whether witches were unrecognised and persecuted madmen and madwomen, or whether, at a different period, a mystical or aesthetic experience was not unduly medicalised.

We are not trying to reconstitute what madness itself might be, in the form in which it first presented itself to some primitive, fundamental, deaf, scarcely articulated' experience, and in the form in which it was later organised (translated, deformed, travestied, perhaps even repressed) by discourses, and the oblique, often twisted play of their operations. Such a history of the referent is no doubt possible; and I have no wish at the outset to exclude any effort to uncover and free these 'prediscursive' experiences from the tyranny of the text. But what we are concerned with here is not to neutralise discourse, to make it the sign of something else, and to pierce through its density in order to reach what remains silently anterior to it, but on the contrary to maintain it in its consistency, to make it emerge in its own complexity. What, in short, we wish to do is to dispense with 'things'. To 'depresentify' them. To conjure up their rich, heavy, immediate plenitude, which we usually regard as the primitive law of a discourse that has become divorced from it through error, oblivion, illusion, ignorance, or the inertia of beliefs and traditions, or even the perhaps unconscious desire not to see and not to speak. To substitute for the enigmatic treasure of 'things' anterior to discourse, the regular formation of objects that emerge only in discourse. To define these objects without reference to the ground, the foundation of things, but by relating them to the body of rules that enable them to form as objects of a discourse and thus constitute the conditions of their historical appearance.

To write a history of discursive objects that does not plunge them into the common depth of a primal soil, but deploys the nexus of regularities that govern their dispersion.

However, to suppress the stage of 'things themselves' is not necessarily to return to the linguistic analysis of meaning. When one describes the formation of the objects of a discourse, one tries to locate the relations that characterise a discursive practice, one determines neither a lexical organisation, nor the scansions of a semantic field: one does not question the meaning given at a particular period to such words as 'melancholia' or madness without delirium', nor the opposition of content between psychosis' and 'neurosis'. Not, I repeat, that such analyses are regarded as illegitimate or impossible; but they are not relevant when we are trying to discover, for example, how criminality could become an object of medical expertise, or sexual deviation a possible object of psychiatric discourse. The analysis of lexical contents defines either the elements of meaning at the disposal of speaking subjects in a given period, or the semantic structure that appears on the surface of a discourse that has already been spoken; it does not concern discursive practice as a place in which a tangled plurality - at once superposed and incomplete - of objects is formed and deformed, appears and disappears.

The sagacity of the commentators is not mistaken: from the kind of analysis that I have undertaken, words are as deliberately absent as things themselves; any description of a vocabulary is as lacking as any reference to the living plenitude of experience. We shall not return to the state anterior to discourse - in which nothing has yet been said, and in which things are only just beginning to emerge out of the grey light; and we shall not pass beyond discourse in order to rediscover the forms that it has created and left behind it; we shall remain, or try to remain, at the level of discourse itself. Since it is sometimes necessary to dot the 'i's of even the most obvious absences, I will say that in all these searches, in which I have still progressed so little, I would like to show that 'discourses', in the form in which they can be heard or read, are not, as one might expect, a mere intersection of things and words: an obscure web of things, and a manifest, visible, Coloured chain of words; I would like to show that discourse is not a slender surface of contact, or confrontation, between a reality and a language (langue), the intrication of a lexicon and an experience; I would like to show with precise examples that in analysing discourses themselves, one sees the loosening of the embrace, apparently so tight, of words and things, and the emergence of a group of rules proper to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...fKnowledge/foucault.archaeologyOfKnowledge.ch-o3.html (4 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:34 πμ

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discursive practice. These rules define not the dumb existence of a reality, nor the canonical use of a vocabulary, but the ordering of objects. 'Words and things' is the entirely serious title of a problem; it is the ironic title of a work that modifies its own form, displaces its own data, and reveals, at the end of the day, a quite different task. A task that consists of not - of no longer treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. it is this 'more' that we must reveal and describe.

Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), publ. Routledge, 1972. First 3 Chapters , by Foucault.

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Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

Foucault.info | Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism III. DISCIPLINE 3. Panopticism From Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books 1995) pp. 195-228 translated from the French by Alan Sheridan © 1977

The following, according to an order published at the end of the seventeenth century, were the measures to be taken when the plague appeared in a town.l First, a strict spatial partitioning: the closing of the town and its outlying districts, a prohibition to leave the town on pain of death, the killing of all stray animals; the division of the town into distinct quarters, each governed by an intendant. Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street, he will be condemned to death. On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors: it is forbidden to leave on pain of death. The syndic himself comes to lock the door of each house from the outside; he takes the key with him and hands it over to the intendant of the quarter; the intendant keeps it until the end of the quarantine.

Each family will have made its own provisions; but, for bread and wine, small wooden canals are set up between the street and the interior of the houses, thus allowing each person to receive his ration without communicating with the suppliers and other residents; meat, fish and herbs will be hoisted up into the houses with pulleys and baskets. If it is absolutely necessary to leave the house, it will be done in turn, avoiding any meeting. Only the intendants, syndics and guards will move about the streets and also, between the infected houses, from one corpse to another, the 'crows', who can be left to die: these are 'people of little substance who carry the sick, bury the dead, clean and do many vile and abject offices'. It is a segmented, immobile, frozen space. Each individual is fixed in his place. And, if he moves, he does so at the risk of his life, contagion or punishment.

Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere: 'A considerable body of militia, commanded by good officers and men of substance', guards at the gates, at the town hall and in every quarter to ensure the prompt obedience of the people and the most absolute authority of the magistrates, 'as also to observe all disorder, theft and extortion'. At each of the town gates there will be an observation post; at the end of each street sentinels.

Every day, the intendant visits the quarter in his charge, inquires whether the syndics have carried out their tasks, whether the inhabitants have anything to complain of; they 'observe their actions'. Every day, too, the syndic goes into the street for which he is responsible; stops before each house: gets all the inhabitants to appear at the windows (those who live overlooking the courtyard will be allocated a window looking onto the street at which no one but they may show themselves); he calls each of them by name; informs himself as to the state of each and every one of them - 'in which respect the inhabitants will be compelled to speak the truth under pain of death'; if someone does not appear at the window, the syndic must ask why: 'In this way he will find out easily enough whether dead or sick are being concealed.' Everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked - it is the great review of the living and the dead.

This surveillance is based on a system of permanent registration: reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or mayor At the beginning of the 'lock up', the role of each of the inhabitants present in the town is laid down, one by one; this document bears 'the name, age, sex of everyone, notwithstanding his condition': a copy is sent to the intendant of the quarter, another to the office of the town hall, another to enable the syndic to make his daily roll call. Everything that may be observed during the course of the visits deaths, illnesses, complaints, irregularities is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates. The magistrates have complete control over medical treatment; they have appointed a physician in charge; no other practitioner may treat, no apothecary prepare medicine, no confessor visit a sick person without having received from him a written note 'to prevent anyone from concealing and dealing with those sick of the contagion, unknown to the magistrates'. The registration of the pathological must be constantly centralized. The relation of each individual to his disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power, the registration they make of it, the decisions they take on it.

Five or six days after the beginning of the quarantine, the process of purifying the houses one by one is begun. All the inhabitants are made to leave; in each room 'the furniture and goods' are raised from the ground or suspended from the air; perfume is poured around the room; after carefully sealing the windows, doors and even the keyholes with wax, the perfume is set alight. Finally, the entire house is closed while the perfume is consumed; those who have carried out the work are searched, as they were on entry, 'in the presence of the residents of the house, to see that they did not have something on their persons as they left that they did not have on entering'. Four hours file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (1 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

later, the residents are allowed to re-enter their homes.

This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in l which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead - all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism. The plague is met by order; its function is to sort out every possible confusion: that of the disease, which is transmitted when bodies are mixed together; that of the evil, which is increased when fear and death overcome prohibitions. It lays down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of the individual, of what characterizes him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to him. Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power, which is one of analysis. A whole literary fiction of the festival grew up around the plague: suspended laws, lifted prohibitions, the frenzy of passing time, bodies mingling together without respect, individuals unmasked, abandoning their statutory identity and the figure under which they had been recognized, allowing a quite different truth to appear. But there was also a political dream of the plague, which was exactly its reverse: not the collective festival, ''but strict divisions; not laws transgressed, but the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life through the mediation of the complete hierarchy that assured the capillary functioning of power; not masks that were put on and taken off, but the assignment to each individual of his 'true' name, his 'true' place, his 'true' body, his 'true' disease. The plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had as its medical and political correlative discipline. Behind the disciplinary mechanisms can be read the haunting memory of 'contagions', of the plague, of rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder.

If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion, which to a certain extent provided the model for and general form of the great Confinement, then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects. Rather than the massive, binary division between one set of people and another, it called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and a ramification of power.

The leper was caught up in a practice of rejection, of exile-enclosure; he was left to his doom in a mass among which it was useless to differentiate; those sick of the plague were caught up in a meticulous tactical partitioning in which individual differentiations were the constricting effects of a power that multiplied, articulated and subdivided itself; the great confinement on the one hand; the correct training on the other. The leper and his separation; the plague and its segmentations. The first is marked; the second analysed and distributed. The exile of the leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring with them the same political dream. The first is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined society. Two ways of exercising power over men, of controlling their relations, of separating out their dangerous mixtures. The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies - this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city. The plague (envisaged as a possibility at least) is the trial in the course of which one may define ideally the exercise of disciplinary power. In order to make rights and laws function according to pure theory, the jurists place themselves in imagination in the state of nature; in order to see perfect disciplines functioning, rulers dreamt of the state of plague. Underlying disciplinary projects the image of the plague stands for all forms of confusion and disorder; just as the image of the leper, cut off from all human contact, underlies projects of exclusion.

They are different projects, then, but not incompatible ones. We see them coming slowly together, and it is the peculiarity of the nineteenth century that it applied to the space of exclusion of which the leper was the symbolic inhabitant (beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the disorderly formed the real population) the technique of power proper to disciplinary partitioning. Treat 'lepers' as 'plague victims', project the subtle segmentations of discipline onto the confused space of internment, combine it with the methods of analytical distribution proper to power, individualize the excluded, but use procedures of individualization to mark exclusion - this is what was operated regularly by disciplinary power from the beginning of the nineteenth century in the psychiatric asylum, the penitentiary, the reformatory, the approved school and, to some extent, the hospital. Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized; how he is to be recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way, etc.). On the one hand, the lepers are treated as plague victims; the tactics of individualizing disciplines are imposed on the excluded; and, on the other hand, the universality of disciplinary controls makes it possible to brand the 'leper' and to bring into play against him the dualistic mechanisms of exclusion. The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subjected, brings us back to our own time, by applying the binary branding and exile of the leper to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (2 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

quite different objects; the existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms to which the fear of the plague gave rise. All the mechanisms of power which, even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him, are composed of those two forms from which they distantly derive.

Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.

To begin with, this made it possible - as a negative effect - to avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses that were to be found in places of confinement, those painted by Goya or described by Howard. Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication. The arrangement of his room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are madmen there is no risk of their committing violence upon one another; if they are schoolchildren, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers, there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or cause accidents. The crowd, a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together, a collective effect, is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities. From the point of view of the guardian, it is replaced by a multiplicity that can be numbered and supervised; from the point of view of the inmates, by a sequestered and observed solitude (Bentham, 60-64).

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.

It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power. Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up. The ceremonies, the rituals, the marks by which the sovereign's surplus power was manifested are useless. There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants (Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet, the file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (3 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

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malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.

A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks; all that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the openings well arranged. The heaviness of the old 'houses of security', with their fortress-like architecture, could be replaced by the simple, economic geometry of a 'house of certainty'. The efficiency_of power, its constraining force have, in a sense, passed over to the other side - to the side of its surface of application. He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects: it is a perpetual victory that avoids any physical confrontation and which is always decided in advance.

Bentham does not say whether he was inspired, in his project, by Le Vaux's menagerie at Versailles: the first menagerie in which the different elements are not, as they traditionally were, distributed in a park (Loisel, 104-7).

At the centre was an octagonal pavilion which, on the first floor, consisted of only a single room, the king's salon; on every side large windows looked out onto seven cages (the eighth side was reserved for the entrance), containing different species of animals. By Bentham's time, this menagerie had disappeared. But one finds in the programme of the Panopticon a similar concern with individualizing observation, with characterization and classification, with the analytical arrangement of space. The Panopticon is a royal menagerie; the animal is replaced by man,, individual distribution by specific grouping and the king by the machinery of a furtive power. With this exception, the Panopticon also does the work of a naturalist. It makes it possible to draw up differences: among patients, to observe the symptoms of each individual, without the proximity of beds, the circulation of miasmas, the effects of contagion confusing the clinical tables; among school-children, it makes it possible to observe performances (without there being any imitation or copying), to map aptitudes, to assess characters, to draw up rigorous classifications and, in relation to normal development, to distinguish 'laziness and stubbornness' from 'incurable imbecility'; among workers, it makes it possible to note the aptitudes of each worker, compare the time he takes to perform a task, and if they are paid by the day, to calculate their wages (Bentham, 60-64).

So much for the question of observation. But the Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects. To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, and to seek the most effective ones. To teach different techniques simultaneously to the workers, to decide which is the best. To try out pedagogical experiments - and in particular to take up once again the well-debated problem of secluded education, by using orphans. One would see what would happen when, in their sixteenth or eighteenth year, they were presented with other boys or girls; one could verify whether, as Helvetius thought, anyone could learn anything; one would follow 'the genealogy of every observable idea'; one could bring up different children according to different systems of thought, making certain children believe that two and two do not make four or that the moon is a cheese, then put them together when they are twenty or twenty-five years old; one would then have discussions that would be worth a great deal more than the sermons or lectures on which so much money is spent; one would have at least an opportunity of making discoveries in the domain of metaphysics. The Panopticon is a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analysing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them. The Panopticon may even provide an apparatus for supervising its own mechanisms. In this central tower, the director may spy on all the employees that he has under his orders: nurses, doctors, foremen, teachers, warders; he will be able to judge them continuously, alter their behaviour, impose upon them the methods he thinks best; and it will even be possible to observe the director himself. An inspector arriving unexpectedly at the centre of the Panopticon will be able to judge at a glance, without anything being concealed from him, how the entire establishment is functioning. And, in any case, enclosed as he is in the middle of this architectural mechanism, is not the - 5 director's own fate entirely bound up with it? The incompetent physician who has allowed contagion to spread, the incompetent prison governor or workshop manager will be the first victims of an epidemic or a revolt. ' "By every tie I could devise", said the master of the Panopticon, "my own fate had been bound up by me with theirs"' (Bentham, 177). The Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power.

Thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men's behaviour; file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (4 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

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knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised.

The plague-stricken town, the panoptic establishment - the differences are important. They mark, at a distance of a century and a half, the transformations of the disciplinary programme. In the first case, there is an exceptional situation: against an extraordinary evil, power is mobilized; it makes itself everywhere present and visible; it invents new mechanisms; it separates, it immobilizes, it partitions constructs for a time what is both a counter-city and the perfect society; it imposes an ideal functioning, but one that is reduced, in the final analysis, like the evil that it combats, to a simple dualism of life and death: that which moves brings death, and one kills that which moves. The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men. No doubt Bentham presents it as a particular institution, closed in upon itself. Utopias, perfectly closed in upon themselves, are common enough. As opposed to the ruined prisons, littered with mechanisms of torture, to be seen in Piranese's engravings, the Panopticon presents a cruel, ingenious cage. The fact that it should have given rise, even in our own time, to so many variations, projected or realized, is evidence of the imaginary intensity that it has possessed for almost two hundred years. But the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of l power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use.

It is polyvalent in its applications; it serves to reform prisoners, but also to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. It is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of intervention of power, which can be implemented in hospitals, workshops, schools, prisons. Whenever one is dealing with a multiplicity of individuals on whom a task or a particular form of behaviour must be imposed, the panoptic schema may be used. It is - necessary modifications apart - applicable 'to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection' (Bentham, 40; although Bentham takes the penitentiary house as his prime example, it is because it has many different functions to fulfil - safe custody, confinement, solitude, forced labour and instruction).

In each of its applications, it makes it possible to perfect the exercise of power. It does this in several ways: because it can reduce the number of those who exercise it, while increasing the number of those on whom it is exercised. Because it is possible to intervene at any moment and because the constant pressure acts even before the offences, mistakes or crimes have been committed. Because, in these conditions, its strength is that it never intervenes, it is exercised spontaneously and without noise, it constitutes a mechanism whose effects follow from one another. Because, without any physical instrument other than architecture and geometry, it acts directly on individuals; it gives 'power of mind over mind'. The panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense: it assures its economy (in material, in personnel, in time); it assures its efficacity by its preventative character, its continuous functioning and its automatic mechanisms. It is a way of obtaining from power 'in hitherto unexampled quantity', 'a great and new instrument of government . . .; its great excellence consists in the great strength it is capable of giving to any institution it may be thought proper to apply it to' (Bentham, 66).

It's a case of 'it's easy once you've thought of it' in the political sphere. It can in fact be integrated into any function (education, medical treatment, production, punishment); it can increase the effect of this function, by being linked closely with it; it can constitute a mixed mechanism in which relations of power (and of knowledge) may be precisely adjusted, in the smallest detail, to the processes that are to be supervised; it can establish a direct proportion between 'surplus power' and 'surplus production'. In short, it arranges things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a rigid, heavy constraint, to the functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to increase their efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact. The panoptic mechanism is not simply a hinge, a point of exchange between a mechanism of power and a function; it is a way of making power relations function in a function, and of making a function function through these power relations.

Bentham's Preface to Panopticon opens with a list of the benefits to be obtained from his 'inspection-house': 'Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated - instruction diffused -public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in architecture!' (Bentham, 39) Furthermore, the arrangement of this machine is such that its enclosed nature does not preclude a permanent presence from the outside: we have seen that anyone may come and exercise in the central tower the functions of surveillance, and that, this being the case, he can gain a clear idea of the way in which the surveillance is file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (5 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

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practised. In fact, any panoptic institution, even if it is as rigorously closed as a penitentiary, may without difficulty be subjected to such irregular and constant inspections: and not only by the appointed inspectors, but also by the public; any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how the schools, hospitals, factories, prisons function. There is no risk, therefore, that the increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny; he disciplinary mechanism will be democratically controlled, since it will be constantly accessible 'to the great tribunal committee of the world'. This Panopticon, subtly arranged so that an observer may observe, at a glance, so many different individuals, also enables everyone to come and observe any of the observers. The seeing machine was once a sort of dark room into which individuals spied; it has become a transparent building in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole.

The panoptic schema, without disappearing as such or losing any of its properties, was destined to spread throughout the social body; its vocation was to become a generalized function. The plague-stricken town provided an exceptional disciplinary model: perfect, but absolutely violent; to the disease that brought death, power opposed its perpetual threat of death; life inside it was reduced to its simplest expression; it was, against the power of death, the meticulous exercise of the right of the sword. The Panopticon, on the other hand, has a role of amplification; although it arranges power, although it is intended to make it more economic and more effective, it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces - to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply.

How is power to be strengthened in such a way that, far from impeding progress, far from weighing upon it with its rules and regulations, it actually facilitates such progress? What intensificator of power will be able at the same time to be a multiplicator of production? How will power, by increasing its forces, be able to increase those of society instead of confiscating them or impeding them? The Panopticon's solution to this problem is that the productive increase of power can be assured only if, on the one hand, it can be exercised continuously in the very foundations of society, in the subtlest possible way, and if, on the other hand, it functions outside these sudden, violent, discontinuous forms that are bound up with the exercise of sovereignty. The body of the king, with its strange material and physical presence, with the force that he himself deploys or transmits to some few others, is at the opposite extreme of this new physics of power represented by panopticism; the domain of panopticism is, on the contrary, that whole lower region, that region of irregular bodies, with their details, their multiple movements, their heterogeneous forces, their spatial relations; what are required are mechanisms that analyse distributions, gaps, series, combinations, and which use instruments that render visible, record, differentiate and compare: a physics of a relational and multiple power, which has its maximum intensity not in the person of the king, but in the bodies that can be individualized by these relations. At the theoretical level, Bentham defines another way of analysing the social body and the power relations that traverse it; in terms of practice, he defines-a procedure of subordination of bodies and forces that must increase the utility of power while practising the economy of the prince. Panopticism is the general principle of a new 'political anatomy' whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline. The celebrated, transparent, circular cage, with its high towers powerful and knowing, may have been for Bentham a project of perfect disciplinary institution; but he also set out to show how one may 'unlock' the disciplines and get them to function in a diffused, multiple, polyvalent way throughout the whole social body. These disciplines~ which the classical age had elaborated in specific, relatively enclosed places - barracks, schools, workshops - and whose total implementation had been imagined only at the limited and temporary scale of a plague-stricken town, Bentham dreamt of transforming into a network of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always alert, running through society without interruption in space or in time. The panoptic arrangement provides the formula for this generalization. It programmes, at the level of an elementary and easily transferable mechanism, the basic functioning of a society penetrated through and through with disciplinary mechanisms.

There are two images, then, of discipline. At one extreme, the discipline-blockade, the enclosed institution, established on the edges of society, turned inwards towards negative functions: arresting evil, breaking communications, suspending time. At the other extreme, with panopticism, is the discipline-mechanism: a functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for a society to come. The movement from one project to the other, from a schema of exceptional discipline to one of a generalized surveillance, rests on a historical transformation: the gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their spread throughout the whole social body, the formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society.

A whole disciplinary generalization - the Benthamite physics of power represents an acknowledgement of this - had operated throughout the classical age. The spread of disciplinary institutions, whose network was beginning to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (6 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

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cover an ever larger surface and occupying above all a less and less marginal position, testifies to this: what was an islet, a privileged place, a circumstantial measure, or a singular model, became a general formula; the regulations characteristic of the Protestant and pious armies of William of Orange or of Gustavus Adolphus were transformed into regulations for all the armies of Europe; the model colleges of the Jesuits, or the schools of Batencour or Demia, following the example set by Sturm, provided the outlines for the general forms of educational discipline; the ordering of the naval and military hospitals provided the model for the entire reorganization of hospitals in the eighteenth century.

But this extension of the disciplinary institutions was no doubt only the most visible aspect of various, more profound processes.

1. The functional inversion of the disciplines. At first, they were expected to neutralize dangers, to fix useless or disturbed populations, to avoid the inconveniences of over-large assemblies; now they were being asked to play a positive role, for they were becoming able to do so, to increase the possible utility of individuals. Military discipline is no longer a mere means of preventing looting, desertion or failure to obey orders among the troops; it has become a basic technique to enable the army to exist, not as an assembled crowd, but as a unity that derives from this very unity an increase in its forces; discipline increases the skill of each individual, coordinates these skills, accelerates movements, increases fire power, broadens the fronts of attack without reducing their vigour, increases the capacity for resistance, etc. The discipline of the workshop, while remaining a way of enforcing respect for the regulations and authorities, of preventing thefts or losses, tends to increase aptitudes, speeds, output and therefore profits; it still exerts a moral influence over behaviour, but more and more it treats actions in terms of their results, introduces bodies into a machinery, forces into an economy. When, in the seventeenth century, the provincial schools or the Christian elementary schools were founded, the justifications given for them were above all negative: those poor who were unable to bring up their children left them 'in ignorance of their obligations: given the difficulties they have in earning a living, and themselves having been badly brought up, they are unable to communicate a sound upbringing that they themselves never had'; this involves three major inconveniences: ignorance of God, idleness (with its consequent drunkenness, impurity, larceny, brigandage); and the formation of those gangs of beggars, always ready to stir up public disorder and 'virtually to exhaust the funds of the HotelDieu' (Demia, 60-61). Now, at the beginning of the Revolution, the end laid down for primary education was to be, among other things, to 'fortify', to 'develop the body', to prepare the child 'for a future in some mechanical work', to give him 'an observant eye, a sure hand and prompt habits' (Talleyrand's Report to the Constituent Assembly, lo September 1791, quoted by Leon, 106). The disciplines function increasingly as techniques for making useful individuals. Hence their emergence from a marginal position on the confines of society, and detachment from the forms of exclusion or expiation, confinement or retreat. Hence the slow loosening of their kinship with religious regularities and enclosures. Hence also their rooting in the most important, most central and most productive sectors of society. They become attached to some of the great essential functions: factory production,~the transmission of knowledge, the diffusion of aptitudes and skills, the war-machine. Hence, too, the double tendency one sees developing throughout the eighteenth century to increase the number of disciplinary institutions and to discipline the existing apparatuses.

2. The swarming of disciplinary mechanisms. While, on the one hand, the disciplinary establishments increase, their mechanisms have a certain tendency to become 'de-institutionalized', to emerge from the closed fortresses in which they once functioned and to circulate in a 'free' state; the massive, compact disciplines are broken down into flexible methods of control, which may be transferred and adapted. Sometimes the closed apparatuses add to their internal and specific function a role of external surveillance, developing around themselves a whole margin of lateral controls. Thus the Christian School must not simply train docile children; it must also make it possible to supervise the parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their resources, their piety, their morals. The school tends to constitute minute social observatories that penetrate even to the adults and exercise regular supervision over them: the bad behaviour of the child, or his absence, is a legitimate pretext, according to Demia, for one to go and question the neighbours, especially if there is any reason to believe that the family will not tell the truth; one can then go and question the parents themselves, to find out whether they know their catechism and the prayers, whether they are determined to root out the vices of their children, how many beds there are in the house and what the sleeping arrangements are; the visit may end with the giving of alms, the present of a religious picture, or the provision of additional beds (Demia, 39-40). Similarly, the hospital is increasingly conceived of as a base for the medical observation of the population outside; after the burning down of the Hotel-Dieu in 1772, there were several demands that the large buildings, so heavy and so disordered, should be replaced by a series of smaller hospitals; their function would be to take in the sick of the quarter, but also to gather information, to be alert to any endemic or epidemic phenomena, to open dispensaries, to give advice to the inhabitants and to keep the authorities informed ,of the sanitary state of the region.

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One also sees the spread of disciplinary procedures, not in the form of enclosed institutions, but as centres of observation disseminated throughout society. Religious groups and charity organizations had long played this role of 'disciplining' the population. From the Counter-Reformation to the philanthropy of the July monarchy, initiatives of this type continued to increase; their aims were religious (conversion and moralization), economic (aid and encouragement to work) or political (the struggle against discontent or agitation). One has only to cite by way of example the regulations for the charity associations in the Paris parishes. The territory to be covered was divided into quarters and cantons and the members of the associations divided themselves up along the same lines. These members had to visit their respective areas regularly. 'They will strive to eradicate places of ill-repute, tobacco shops, life-classes, gaming house, public scandals, blasphemy, impiety, and any other disorders that may come to their knowledge.' They will also have to make individual visits to the poor; and the information to be obtained is laid down in regulations: the stability of the lodging, knowledge of prayers, attendance at the sacraments, knowledge of a trade, morality (and 'whether they have not fallen into poverty through their own fault'); lastly, 'one must learn by skilful questioning in what way they behave at home. Whether there is peace between them and their neighbours, whether they are careful to bring up their children in the fear of God . . . whether they do not have their older children of different sexes sleeping together and with them, whether they do not allow licentiousness and cajolery in their families, especially in their older daughters. If one has any doubts as to whether they are married, one must ask to see their marriage certificate'.5 3. The state-control of the mechanisms of discipline. In England, it was private religious groups that carried out, for a long time, the functions of social discipline (cf. Radzinovitz, 203-14); in France, although a part of this role remained in the hands of parish guilds or charity associations, another - and no doubt the most important part - was very soon taken over by the police apparatus.

The organization of a centralized police had long been regarded, even by contemporaries, as the most direct expression of absolutism; the sovereign had wished to have 'his own magistrate to whom he might directly entrust his orders, his commissions, intentions, and who was entrusted with the execution of orders and orders under the King's private seal' (a note by Duval, first secretary at the police magistrature, quoted in Funck-Brentano, 1). In effect, in taking over a number of pre-existing functions - the search for criminals, urban surveillance, economic and political supervision the police magistratures and the magistrature-general that presided over them in Paris transposed them into a single, strict, administrative machine: 'All the radiations of force and information that spread from the circumference culminate in the magistrate-general. . . . It is he who operates all the wheels that together produce order and harmony. The effects of his administration cannot be better compared than to the movement of the celestial bodies' (Des Essarts, 344 and 528).

But, although the police as an institution were certainly organized in the form of a state apparatus, and although this was certainly linked directly to the centre of political sovereignty, the type of power that it exercises, the mechanisms it operates and the elements to which it applies them are specific. It is an apparatus that must be coextensive with the entire social body_and not only by the extreme limits that it embraces, but by the minuteness of the details it is concerned with. Police power must bear 'over everything': it is not however the totality of the state nor of the kingdom as visible and invisible body of the monarch; it is the dust of events, actions, behaviour, opinions - 'everything that happens';' the police are concerned with 'those things of every moment', those 'unimportant things', of which Catherine II spoke in her Great Instruction (Supplement to the Instruction for the drawing up of a new code, 1769, article 535). With the police, one is in the indefinite world of a supervision that seeks ideally to reach the most elementary particle, the most passing phenomenon of the social body: 'The ministry of the magistrates and police officers is of the greatest importance; the objects that it embraces are in a sense definite, one may perceive them only by a sufficiently detailed examination' (Delamare, unnumbered Preface): the infinitely small of political power.

And, in order to be exercised, this power had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible, as long as it could itself remain invisible. It had to be like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception: thousands of eyes posted everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the alert, a long, hierarchized network which, according to Le Maire, comprised for Paris the forty-eight commissaires, the twenty inspecteurs, then the 'observers', who were paid regularly, the 'basses mouches', or secret agents, who were paid by the day, then the informers, paid according to the job done, and finally the prostitutes. And this unceasing observation had to be accumulated in a series of reports and registers; throughout the eighteenth century, an immense police text increasingly covered society by means of a complex documentary organization (on the police registers in the eighteenth century, cf. Chassaigne). And, unlike the methods of judicial or administrative writing, what was registered in this way were forms of behaviour, attitudes, possibilities, suspicions - a permanent account of individuals' behaviour.

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Now, it should be noted that, although this police supervision was entirely 'in the hands of the king', it did not function in a single direction. It was in fact a double-entry system: it had to correspond, by manipulating the machinery of justice, to the immediate wishes of the king, but it was also capable of responding to solicitations from below; the celebrated lettres de cachet, or orders under the king's private seal, which were long the symbol of arbitrary royal rule and which brought detention into disrepute on political grounds, were in fact demanded by families, masters, local notables, neighbours, parish priests; and their function was to punish by confinement a whole infra-penality, that of disorder, agitation, disobedience, bad conduct; those things that Ledoux wanted to exclude from his architecturally perfect city and which he called 'offences of non-surveillance'. In short, the eighteenth-century police added a disciplinary function to its role as the auxiliary of justice in the pursuit of criminals and as an instrument for the political supervision of plots, opposition movements or revolts. It was a complex function since it linked the absolute power of the monarch to the lowest levels of power disseminated in society; since, between these different, enclosed institutions of discipline (workshops, armies, schools), it extended an intermediary network, acting where they could not intervene, disciplining the non-disciplinary spaces; but it filled in the gaps, linked them together, guaranteed with its armed force an interstitial discipline and a metadiscipline. 'By means of a wise police, the sovereign accustoms the people to order and obedience' (Vattel, 162).

The organization of the police apparatus in the eighteenth century sanctioned a generalization of the disciplines that became co-extensive with the state itself. Although it was linked in the most explicit way with everything in the royal power that exceeded the exercise of regular justice, it is understandable why the police offered such slight resistance to the rearrangement of the judicial power; and why it has not ceased to impose its prerogatives upon it, with everincreasing weight, right up to the present day; this is no doubt because it is the secular arm of the judiciary; but it is also because to a far greater degree than the judicial institution, it is identified, by reason of its extent and mechanisms, with a society of the disciplinary type. Yet it would be wrong to believe that the disciplinary functions were confiscated and absorbed once and for all by a state apparatus.

'Discipline' may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a 'physics' or an 'anatomy' of power, a technology. And it may be taken over either by 'specialized' institutions (the penitentiaries or 'houses of correction' of the nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals), or by pre-existing authorities that find in it a means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power (one day we should show how intra-familial relations, essentially in the parents-children cell, have become 'disciplined', absorbing since the classical age external schemata, first educational and military, then medical, psychiatric, psychological, which have made the family the privileged locus of emergence for the disciplinary question of the normal and the abnormal); or by apparatuses that have made discipline their principle of internal functioning (the disciplinarization of the administrative apparatus from the Napoleonic period), or finally by state apparatuses whose major, if not exclusive, function is to assure that discipline reigns over society as a whole (the police).

On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social 'quarantine', to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of 'panopticism'. Not because the disciplinary modality of power has replaced all the others; but because it has infiltrated the others, sometimes undermining them, but serving as an intermediary between them, linking them together, extending them and above all making it possible to bring the effects of power to the most minute and distant elements. It assures an infinitesimal distribution of the power relations.

A few years after Bentham, Julius gave this society its birth certificate (Julius, 384-6). Speaking of the panoptic principle, he said that there was much more there than architectural ingenuity: it was an event in the 'history of the human mind'. In appearance, it is merely the solution of a technical problem; but, through it, a whole type of society emerges. Antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. 'To render accessible to a multitude of men the inspection of a small number of objects': this was the problem to which the architecture of temples, theatres and circuses responded. With spectacle, there was a predominance of public life, the intensity of festivals, sensual proximity. In these rituals in which blood flowed, society found new vigour and formed for a moment a single great body. The modern age poses the opposite problem: 'To procure for a small number, or even for a single individual, the instantaneous view of a great multitude.' In a society in which the principal elements are no longer the community and public life, but, on the one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state, relations can be regulated only in a form that is the exact reverse of the spectacle: 'It was to the modern age, to the ever-growing influence of the state, to its ever more profound intervention in all the details and all the relations of social life, that was reserved the task of increaSing and perfecting its guarantees, by using and directing towards that great aim the building and distribution of buildings intended to observe a great multitude of men at the same time.'

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Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

Julius saw as a fulfilled historical process that which Bentham had described as a technical programme. Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete training of useful forces; tbe circuits of communication are the supports of an accumulation and a centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies. We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power2 which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism. The importance, in historical mythology, of the Napoleonic character probably derives from the fact that it is at the point of junction of the monarchical, ritual exercise of sovereignty and the hierarchical, permanent exercise of indefinite discipline. He is the individual who looms over everything with a single gaze which no detail, however minute, can escape: 'You may consider that no part of the Empire is without surveillance, no crime, no offence, no contravention that remains unpunished, and that the eye of the genius who can enlighten all embraces the whole of this vast machine, without, however, the slightest detail escaping his attention' (Treilhard, 14). At the moment of its full blossoming, the disciplinary society still assumes with the Emperor the old aspect of the power of spectacle. As a monarch who is at one and the same time a usurper of the ancient throne and the organizer of the new state, he combined into a single symbolic, ultimate figure the whole of the long process by which the pomp of sovereignty, the necessarily spectacular manifestations of power, were extinguished one by one in the daily exercise of surveillance, in a panopticism in which the vigilance of intersecting gazes was soon to render useless both the eagle and the sun.

The formation of the disciplinary society is connected with a number of broad historical processes - economic, juridico-political and, lastly, scientific - of which it forms part.

1. Generally speaking, it might be said that the disciplines are techniques for assuring the ordering of human multiplicities. It is true that there is nothing exceptional or even characteristic in this; every system of power is presented with the same problem. But the peculiarity of the disciplines is that they try to define in relation to the multiplicities a tactics of power that fulfils three criteria: firstly, to obtain the exercise of power at the lowest possible cost (economically, by the low expenditure it involves; politically, by its discretion, its low exteriorization, its relative invisibility, the little resistance it arouses); secondly, to bring the effects of this social power to their maximum intensity and to extend them as far as possible, without either failure or interval; thirdly, to link this 'economic' growth of power with the output of the apparatuses (educational, military, industrial or medical) within which it is exercised; in short, to increase both the docility and the utility of all the elements of the system. This triple objective of the disciplines corresponds to a well-known historical conjuncture. One aspect of this conjuncture was the large demographic thrust of the eighteenth century; an increase in the floating population (one of the primary objects of discipline is to fix; it is an anti-nomadic technique); a change of quantitative scale in the groups to be supervised or manipulated (from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the eve of the French Revolution, the school population had been increasing rapidly, as had no doubt the hospital population; by the end of the eighteenth century, the peace-time army exceeded 200,000 men). The other aspect of the conjuncture was the growth in the apparatus of production, which was becoming more and more extended and complex, it was also becoming more costly and its profitability had to be increased. The development of the disciplinary methods corresponded to these two processes, or rather, no doubt, to the new need to adjust their correlation. Neither the residual forms of feudal power nor the structures of the administrative monarchy, nor the local mechanisms of supervision, nor the unstable, tangled mass they all formed together could carry out this role: they were hindered from doing so by the irregular and inadequate extension of their network, by their often conflicting functioning, but above all by the 'costly' nature of the power that was exercised in them. It was costly in several senses: because directly it cost a great deal to the Treasury; because the system of corrupt offices and farmed-out taxes weighed indirectly, but very heavily, on the population; because the resistance it encountered forced it into a cycle of perpetual reinforcement; because it proceeded essentially by levying (levying on money or products by royal, seigniorial, ecclesiastical taxation; levying on men or time by corvées of press-ganging, by locking up or banishing vagabonds). The development of the disciplines marks the appearance of elementary techniques belonging to a quite different economy: mechanisms of power which, instead of proceeding by deduction, are integrated into the productive efficiency of the apparatuses from within, into the growth of this efficiency and into the use of what it produces. For the old principle of 'levying-violence', which governed the economy of power, the disciplines substitute the principle of 'mildness-production-profit'. These are the techniques that make it possible to adjust the multiplicity of men and the multiplication of the apparatuses of production (and this means not only 'production' in the strict sense, but also the production of knowledge and skills in the school, the production of health in the hospitals, the production of destructive force in the army).

In this task of adjustment, discipline had to solve a number of problems for which the old economy of power was file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...dPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (10 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

not sufficiently equipped. It could reduce the inefficiency of mass phenomena: reduce what, in a multiplicity, makes it much less manageable than a unity; reduce what is opposed to the use of each of its elements and of their sum; reduce everything that may counter the advantages of number. That is why discipline fixes; it arrests or regulates movements; it clears up confusion; it dissipates compact groupings of individuals wandering about the country in unpredictable ways; it establishes calculated distributions. It must also master all the forces that are formed from the very constitution of an organized multiplicity; it must neutralize the effects of counter-power that spring from them and which form a resistance to the power that wishes to dominate it: agitations, revolts, spontaneous organizations, coalitions - anything that may establish horizontal conjunctions. Hence the fact that the disciplines use procedures of partitioning and verticality, that they introduce, between the different elements at the same level, as solid separations as possible, that they define compact hierarchical networks, in short, that they oppose to the intrinsic, adverse force of multiplicity the technique of the continuous, individualizing pyramid. They must also increase the particular utility of each element of the multiplicity, but by means that are the most rapid and the least costly, that is to say, by using the multiplicity itself as an instrument of this growth. Hence, in order to extract from bodies the maximum time and force, the use of those overall methods known as time-tables, collective training, exercises, total and detailed surveillance. Furthermore, the disciplines must increase the effect of utility proper to the multiplicities, so that each is made more useful than the simple sum of its elements: it is in order to increase the utilizable effects of the multiple that the disciplines define tactics of distribution, reciprocal adjustment of bodies, gestures and rhythms, differentiation of capacities, reciprocal coordination in relation to apparatuses or tasks. Lastly, the disciplines have to bring into play the power relations, not above but inside the very texture of the multiplicity, as discreetly as possible, as well articulated on the other functions of these multiplicities and also in the least expensive way possible: to this correspond anonymous instruments of power, coextensive with the multiplicity that they regiment, such as hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration, perpetual assessment and classification. In short, to substitute for a power that is manifested through the brilliance of those who exercise it, a power that insidiously objectifies those on whom it is applied; to form a body of knowledge about these individuals, rather than to deploy the ostentatious signs of sovereignty. In a word, the disciplines are the ensemble of minute technical inventions that made it possible to increase the useful size of multiplicities by decreasing the inconveniences of the power which, in order to make them useful, must control them. A multiplicity, whether in a workshop or a nation, an army or a school, reaches the threshold of a discipline when the relation of the one to the other becomes favourable.

If the economic take-off of the West began with the techniques that made possible the accumulation of capital, it might perhaps be said that the methods for administering the accumulation of men 220 Panopticism made possible a political take-off in relation to the traditional, ritual, costly, violent forms of power, which soon fell into disuse and were superseded by a subtle, calculated technology of subjection. In fact, the two processes - the accumulation of men and the accumulation of capital - cannot be separated; it would not have been possible to solve the problem of the accumulation of men without the growth of an apparatus of production capable of both sustaining them and using them; conversely, the techniques that made the cumulative 'rnultiplicity of men useful accelerated the accumulation of capital. At~a' less general level, the technological mutations of the apparatus of production, the division of labour and the elaboration of the disciplinary techniques sustained an ensemble of very close relations (cf. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, chapter XIII and the very interesting analysis in Guerry and Deleule). Each makes the other possible and necessary; each provides a model for the other. The disciplinary pyramid constituted the small cell of power within which the separation, coordination and supervision of tasks was imposed and made efficient; and analytical partitioning of time, gestures and bodily forces constituted an operational schema that could easily be transferred from the groups to be subjected to the mechanisms of production; the massive projection of military methods onto industrial organization was an example of this modelling of the division of labour following the model laid down by the schemata of power. But, on the other hand, the technical analysis of the process of production, its 'mechanical' breaking-down, were projected onto the labour force whose task it was to implement it: the constitution of those disciplinary machines in which the individual forces that they bring together are composed into a whole and therefore increased is the effect of this projection. Let us say that discipline is the unitary technique by which the body is reduced as a 'political' force at the least cost and maximized as a useful force. The growth of a capitalist economy gave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary power whose general formulas, techniques of submitting forces and bodies, in short, 'political anatomy', could be operated in the most diverse political regimes, apparatuses or institutions.

2. The panoptic modality of power - at the elementary, technical, merely physical level at which it is situated - is not under the immediate dependence or a direct extension of the great juridico-political structures of a society; it is nonetheless not absolutely independent. Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...dPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (11 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. And although, in a formal way, the representative regime makes it possible, directly or indirectly, with or without relays, for the will of all to form the fundamental authority of sovereignty, the disciplines provide, at the base, a guarantee of the submission of forces and bodies.

The real, corporal disciplines constituted the foundation of the formal, juridical liberties. The contract may have been regarded as the ideal foundation of law and political power; panopticism constituted the technique, universally widespread, of coercion. It continued to work in depth on the juridical structures of society, in order to make the effective mechanisms of power function in opposition to the formal framework that it had acquired. The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

In appearance, the disciplines constitute nothing more than an infra-law. They seem to extend the general forms defined by law to the infinitesimal level of individual lives; or they appear as methods of training that enable individuals to become integrated into these general demands. They seem to constitute the same type of law on a different scale, thereby making it more meticulous and more indulgent. The disciplines should be regarded as a sort of counter-law They have the precise role of introducing insuperable asymmetries and excluding reciprocities. First, because discipline creates between individuals a 'private' link, which is a relation of constraints entirely different from contractual obligation; the acceptance of a discipline may be underwritten by contract; the way in which it is imposed, the mechanisms it brings into play, the non-reversible subordination of one group of people by another, the 'surplus' power that is always fixed on the same side, the inequality of position of the different 'partners' in relation to the common regulation, all these distinguish the disciplinary link from the contractual link, and make it possible to distort the contractual link systematically from the moment it has as its content a mechanism of discipline. We know, for example, how many real procedures undermine the legal fiction of the work contract: workshop discipline is not the least important. Moreover, whereas the juridical systems define juridical subjects according to universal norms, the disciplines characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate. In any case, in the space and during the time in which they exercise their control and bring into play the asymmetries of their power, they effect a suspension of the law that is never total, but is never annulled either. Regular and institutional as it may be, the discipline, in its mechanism, is a 'counter-law'. And, although the universal juridicism of modern society seems to fix limits on the exercise of power, its universally widespread panopticism enables it to operate, on the underside of the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute, which supports, reinforces, multiplies the asymmetry of power and undermines the limits that are traced around the law. The minute disciplines, the panopticisms of every day may well be below the level of emergence of the great apparatuses and the great political struggles. But, in the genealogy of modern society, they have been, with the class domination that traverses it, the political counterpart of the juridical norms according to which power was redistributed. Hence, no doubt, the importance that has been given for so long to the small techniques of discipline, to those apparently insignificant tricks that it has invented, and even to those 'sciences' that give it a respectable face; hence the fear of abandoning them if one cannot find any substitute; hence the affirmation that they are at the very foundation of society, and an element in its equilibrium, whereas they are a series of mechanisms for unbalancing power relations definitively and everywhere; hence the persistence in regarding them as the humble, but concrete form of every morality, whereas they are a set of physico-political techniques.

To return to the problem of legal punishments, the prison with all the corrective technology at its disposal is to be resituated at the point where the codified power to punish turns into a disciplinary power to observe; at the point where the universal punishments of the law are applied selectively to certain individuals and always the same ones; at the point where the redefinition of the juridical subject by the penalty becomes a useful training of the criminal; at the point where the law is inverted and passes outside itself, and where the counter-law becomes the effective and institutionalized content of the juridical forms. What generalizes the power to punish, then, is not the universal consciousness of the law in each juridical subject; it is the regular extension, the infinitely minute web of panoptic techniques.

3. Taken one by one, most of these techniques have a long history behind them. But what was new, in the eighteenth century, was that, by being combined and generalized, they attained a level at which the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process. At this point, the disciplines crossed the 'technological' threshold. First the hospital, then the school, then, later, the workshop were not simply 'reordered' by the disciplines; they became, thanks to them, apparatuses such that any mechanism of objectification could be used in them as an instrument of subjection, and any growth of power could give rise in them to possible branches of knowledge; it was this link, proper to the technological systems, that made possible within the disciplinary element the formation of clinical medicine, psychiatry, child psychology, educational psychology, the rationalization of labour. It is a double process, then: an epistemological 'thaw' through a refinement of power relations; a multiplication of the effects of power through the formation and accumulation of file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...dPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (12 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

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new forms of knowledge.

The extension of the disciplinary methods is inscribed in a broad historical process: the development at about the same time of many other technologies - agronomical, industrial, economic. But it must be recognized that, compared with the mining industries, the emerging chemical industries or methods of national accountancy, compared with the blast furnaces or the steam engine, panopticism has received little attention. It is regarded as not much more than a bizarre little utopia, a perverse dream - rather as though Bentham had been the Fourier of a police society, and the Phalanstery had taken on the form of the Panopticon. And yet this represented the abstract formula of a very real technology, that of individuals. There were many reasons why it received little praise; the most obvious is that the discourses to which it gave rise rarely acquired, except in the academic classifications, the status of sciences; but the real reason is no doubt that the power that it operates and which it augments is a direct, physical power that men exercise upon one another. An inglorious culmination had an origin that could be only grudgingly acknowledged. But it would be unjust to compare the disciplinary techniques with such inventions as the steam engine or Amici's microscope. They are much less; and yet, in a way, they are much more. If a historical equivalent or at least a point of comparison had to be found for them, it would be rather in the inquisitorial' technique.

The eighteenth century invented the techniques of discipline and the examination, rather as the Middle Ages invented the judicial investigation. But it did so by quite different means. The investigation procedure, an old fiscal and administrative technique, had developed above all with the reorganization of the Church and the increase of the princely states in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At this time it permeated to a very large degree the jurisprudence first of the ecclesiastical courts, then of the lay courts. The investigation as an authoritarian search for a truth observed or attested was thus opposed to the old procedures of the oath, the ordeal, the judicial duel, the judgement of God or even of the transaction between private individuals. The investigation was the sovereign power arrogating to itself the right to establish the truth by a number of regulated techniques. Now, although the investigation has since then been an integral part of western justice (even up to our own day), one must not forget either its political origin, its link with the birth of the states and of monarchical sovereignty, or its later extension and its role in the formation of knowledge. In fact, the investigation has been the no doubt crude, but fundamental element in the constitution of the empirical sciences; it has been the juridico-political matrix of this experimental knowledge, which, as we know, was very rapidly released at the end of the Middle Ages. It is perhaps true to say that, in Greece, mathematics were born from techniques of measurement; the sciences of nature, in any case, were born, to some extent, at the end of the Middle Ages, from the practices of investigation. The great empirical knowledge that covered the things of the world and transcribed them into the ordering of an indefinite discourse that observes, describes and establishes the 'facts' (at a time when the western world was beginning the economic and political conquest of this same world) had its operating model no doubt in the Inquisition - that immense invention that our recent mildness has placed in the dark recesses of our memory. But what this politico-juridical, administrative and criminal, religious and lay, investigation was to the sciences of nature, disciplinary analysis has been to the sciences of man. These sciences, which have so delighted our 'humanity' for over a century, have their technical matrix in the petty, malicious minutiae of the disciplines and their investigations. These investigations are perhaps to psychology, psychiatry, pedagogy, criminology, and so many other strange sciences, what the terrible power of investigation was to the calm knowledge of the animals, the plants or the earth. Another power, another knowledge. On the threshold of the classical age, Bacon, lawyer and statesman, tried to develop a methodology of investigation for the empirical sciences. What Great Observer will produce the methodology of examination for the human sciences? Unless, of course, such a thing is not possible. For, although it is true that, in becoming a technique for the empirical sciences, the investigation has detached itself from the inquisitorial procedure, in which it was historically rooted, the examination has remained extremely close to the disciplinary power that shaped it. It has always been and still is an intrinsic element of the disciplines. Of course it seems to have undergone a speculative purification by integrating itself with such sciences as psychology and psychiatry. And, in effect, its appearance in the form of tests, interviews, interrogations and consultations is apparently in order to rectify the mechanisms of discipline: educational psychology is supposed to correct the rigours of the school, just as the medical or psychiatric interview is supposed to rectify the effects of the discipline of work. But we must not be misled; these techniques merely refer individuals from one disciplinary authority to another, and they reproduce, in a concentrated or formalized form, the schema of power-knowledge proper to each discipline (on this subject, cf.

Tort). The great investigation that gave rise to the sciences of nature has become detached from its politicojuridical model; the examination, on the other hand, is still caught up in disciplinary technology.

In the Middle Ages, the procedure of investigation gradually superseded the old accusatory justice, by a process initiated from above; the disciplinary technique, on the other hand, insidiously and as if from below, has invaded a penal justice that is still, in principle, inquisitorial. All the great movements of extension that characterize modern penality - the problematization of the criminal behind his crime, the concern with a punishment that is a file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/d...dPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html (13 of 14)19/5/2005 10:18:36 πμ

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correction, a therapy, a normalization, the division of the act of judgement between various authorities that are supposed to measure, assess, diagnose, cure, transform individuals - all this betrays the penetration of the disciplinary examination into the judicial inquisition.

What is now imposed on penal justice as its point of application, its 'useful' object, will no longer be the body of the guilty man set up against the body of the king; nor will it be the juridical subject of an ideal contract; it will be the disciplinary individual. The extreme point of penal justice under the Ancien Regime was the infinite segmentation of the body of the regicide: a manifestation of the strongest power over the body of the greatest criminal, whose total destruction made the crime explode into its truth. The ideal point of penality today would be an indefinite discipline: an interrogation without end, an investigation that would be extended without limit to a meticulous and ever more analytical observation, a judgement that would at the same time be the constitution of a file that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination, a procedure that would be at the same time the permanent measure of a gap in relation to an inaccessible norm and the asymptotic movement that strives to meet in infinity. The public execution was the logical culmination of a procedure governed by the Inquisition. The practice of placing individuals under 'observation' is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures. Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

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Discipline & Punish (1975), Torture

Foucault.info | Discipline & Punish (1975), Torture I. Torture.

1. The Body of the Condemned From Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage Books 1995) pp. 3-8 translated from the French by Alan Sheridan © 1977

On 1 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned "to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris", where he was to be "taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds"; then, "in the said cart, to the Place de Grève, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and claves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds" (Pièces originales..., 372-4).

"Finally, he was quartered," recounts the Gazette d'Amsterdam of 1 April 1757. "This last operation was very long, because the horses used were not accustomed to drawing; consequently, instead of four, six were needed; and when that did not suffice, they were forced, in order to cut off the wretch's thighs, to sever the sinews and hack at the joints...

"It is said that, though he was always a great swearer, no blashemy escaped his lips; but the excessive pain made him utter horrible cries, and he often repeated: 'My God, have pity on me! Jesus, help me!' The spectators were all edified by the solicitude of the parish priest of St Paul's who despite his great age did not spare himself in offering consolation to the patient."

Bouton, an officer of the watch, left us his account: "The sulphur was lit, but the flame was so poor that only the top skin of the hand was burnt, and that only slightly. Then the executioner, his sleeves rolled up, took the steel pincers, which had been especially made for the occasion, and which were about a foot and a half long, and pulled first at the calf of the right leg, then at the thigh, and from there at the two fleshy parts of the right arm; then at the breasts. Though a strong, sturdy fellow, this executioner found it so difficult to tear away the pieces of flesh that he set about the same spot two or three times, twisting the pincers as he did so, and what he took away formed at each part a wound about the size of a six-pound crown piece.

"After these tearings with the pincers, Damiens, who cried out profusely, though without swearing, raised his head and looked at himself; the same executioner dipped an iron spoon in the pot containing the boiling potion, which he poured liberally over each wound. Then the ropes that were to be harnessed to the horses were attached with cords to the patient's body; the horses were then harnessed and placed alongside the arms and legs, one at each limb.

"Monsieur Le Breton, the clerk of the court, went up to the patient several times and asked him if he had anything to say. He said he had not; at each torment, he cried out, as the damned in hell are supposed to cry out, 'Pardon, my God! Pardon, my Lord.' Despite all this pain, he raised his head from time to time and looked at himself boldly.

The cords had been tied so tightly by the men who pulled the ends that they caused him indescribable pain.

Monsieur le [sic] Breton went up to him again and asked him if he had anything to say; he said no. Several confessors went up to him and spoke to him at length; he willingly kissed the crucifix that was held out to him; he opened his lips and repeated: 'Pardon, Lord.'

"The horses tugged hard, each pulling straight on a limb, each horse held by an executioner. After a quarter of an hour, the same ceremony was repeated and finally, after several attempts, the direction of the horses had to be changed, thus: those at the arms were made to pull towards the head, those at the thighs towards the arms, which broke the arms at the joints. This was repeated several times without success. He raised his head and looked at himself. Two more horses had to be added to those harnessed to the thighs, which made six horses in all. Without success.

"Finally, the executioner, Samson, said to Monsieur Le Breton that there was no way or hope of succeeding, and told him to ask their Lordships if they wished him to have the prisoner cut into pieces. Monsieur Le Breton, who had file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...eAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.torture.en.html (1 of 4)19/5/2005 10:18:37 πμ

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come down from the town, ordered that renewed efforts be made, and this was done; but the horses gave up and one of those harnessed to the thighs fell to the ground. The confessors returned and spoke to him again. He said to them (I heard him): 'Kiss me, gentlemen.' The parish priest of St Paul's did not dare to, so Monsieur de Marsilly slipped under the rope holding the left arm and kissed him on the forehead. The executioners gathered round and Damiens told them not to swear, to carry out their task and that he did not think ill of them; he begged them to pray to God for him, and asked the parish priest of St Paul's to pray for him at the first mass.

"After two or three attempts, the executioner Samson and he who had used the pincers each drew out a knife from his pocket and cut the body at the thighs instead of severing the legs at the joints; the four horses gave a tug and carried off the two thighs after them, namely, that of the right side first, the other following; then the same was done to the arms, the shoulders, the arm-pits and the four limbs; the flesh had to be cut almost to the bone, the horses pulling hard carried off the right arm first and the other afterwards.

"When the four limbs had been pulled away, the confessors came to speak to him; but his executioner told them that he was dead, though the truth was that I saw the man move, his lower jaw moving from side to side as if he were talking. One of the executioners even said shortly afterwards that when they had lifted the trunk to throw it on the stake, he was still alive. The four limbs were untied from the ropes and thrown on the stake set up in the enclosure in line with the scaffold, then the trunk and the rest were covered with logs and faggots, and fire was put to the straw mixed with this wood. "...In accordance with the decree, the whole was reduced to ashes. The last piece to be found in the embers was still burning at half-past ten in the evening. The pieces of flesh and the trunk had taken about four hours to burn.

The officers of whom I was one, as also was my son, and a detachment of archers remained in the square until nearly eleven o'clock.

"There were those who made something of the fact that a dog had lain the day before on the grass where the fire had been, had been chased away several times, and had always returned. But it is not difficult to understand that an animal found this place warmer than elsewhere" (quoted in Zevaes, 201-14). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eighty years later, Léon Faucher drew up his rules "for the House of young prisoners in Paris": "Art. 17. The prisoners' day will begin at six in the morning in winter and at five in summer. They will work for nine hours a day throughout the year. Two hours a day will be devoted to instruction. Work and the day will end at nine o'clock in winter and at eight in summer.

Art. 18. Rising. At the first drum-roll, the prisoners must rise and dress in silence, as the supervisor opens the cell doors. At the second drum-roll, they must be dressed and make their beds. At the third, they must line up and proceed to the chapel for morning prayer. There is a five-minute interval between each drum-roll.

Art. 19. The prayers are conducted by the chaplain and followed by a moral or religious reading. This exercise must not last more than half an hour.

Art. 20. Work. At a quarter to six in the summer, a quarter to seven in winter, the prisoners go down into the courtyard where they must wash their hands and faces, and receive their first ration of bread. Immediately afterwards, they form into work-teams and go off to work, which must begin at six in summer and seven in winter.

Art. 21. Meal. At ten o'clock the prisoners leave their work and go to the refectory; they wash their hands in their courtyards and assemble in divisions. After the dinner, there is recreation until twenty minutes to eleven.

Art. 22. School. At twenty minutes to eleven, at the drum-roll, the prisoners form into ranks, and proceed in divisions to the school. The class lasts two hours and consists alternately of reading, writing, drawing and arithmetic.

Art. 23. At twenty minutes to one, the prisoners leave the school, in divisions, and return to their courtyards for recreation. At five minutes to one, at the drum-roll, they form into workteams.

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Art. 24. At one o'clock they must be back in the workshops: they work until four o'clock.

Art. 25. At four o'clock the prisoners leave their workshops and go into the courtyards where they wash their hands and form into divisions for the refectory.

Art. 26. Supper and the recreation that follows it last until five o'clock: the prisoners then return to the workshops.

Art. 27. At seven o'clock in the summer, at eight in winter, work stops; bread is distributed for the last time in the workshops. For a quarter of an hour one of the prisoners or supervisors reads a passage from some instructive or uplifting work. This is followed by evening prayer.

Art. 28. At half-past seven in summer, half-past eight in winter, the prisoners must be back in their cells after the washing of hands and the inspection of clothes in the courtyard; at the first drum-roll, they must undress, and at the second get into bed. The cell doors are closed and the supervisors go the rounds in the corridors, to ensure order and silence" (Faucher, 274, 82).

school prison

We have, then, a public execution and a time-table. They do not punish the same crimes or the same type of delinquent. But they each define a certain penal style. Less than a century separates them. It was a time when, in Europe and in the United States, the entire economy of punishment was redistributed. It was a time of great "scandals" for traditional justice, a time of innumerable projects for reform. It saw a new theory of law and crime, a new moral or political justification of the right to punish; old laws were abolished, old customs died out. "Modern" codes were planned or drawn up: Russia, 1769; Prussia, 1780; Pennsylvania and Tuscany, 1786; Austria, 1788; France, 1791, Year IV, 1808 and 1810. It was a new age for penal justice.

Among so many changes, I shall consider one: the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle. Today we are rather inclined to ignore it; perhaps, in its time, it gave rise to too much inflated rhetoric; perhaps it has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of "humanization", thus dispensing with the need for further analysis. And, in any case, how important is such a change, when compared with the great institutional transformations, the formulation of explicit, general codes and unified rules of procedure; with the almost universal adoption of the jury system, the definition of the essentially corrective character of the penalty and the tendency, which has become increasingly marked since the nineteenth century, to adapt punishment to the individual offender? Punishment of a less immediately physical kind, a certain discretion in the art of inflicting pain, a combination of more subtle, more subdued sufferings, deprived of their visible display, should not all this be treated as a special case, an incidental effect of deeper changes? And yet the fact remains that a few decades saw the disappearance of the tortured, dismembered, amputated body, symbolically branded on face or shoulder, exposed alive or dead to public view. The body as the major target of penal repression disappeared. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...eAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.torture.en.html (3 of 4)19/5/2005 10:18:37 πμ

Discipline & Punish (1975), Torture

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Foucault, Michel: Überwachen und Strafen, S. 251-294. Frankfurt am Main 1994.

3. Der Panoptismus Nach einem Reglement vom Ende des I7. Jahrhunderts mußten folgende Maßnahmen ergriffen werden, wenn sich die Pest in einer Stadt ankündigte.

Vor allem ein rigoroses Parzellieren des Raumes: Schließung der Stadt und des dazugehörigen Territoriums; Verbot des Verlassens unter Androhung des Todes; Tötung aller herumlaufenden Tiere; Aufteilung der Stadt in verschiedene Viertel, in denen die Gewalt jeweils einem Intendanten übertragen wird. Jede Straße wird unter die Autorität eines Syndikus gestellt, der sie überwacht; würde er sie verlassen, verlöre er sein Leben. Am bezeichneten Tage muß sich jeder in seinem Haus einschließen: Herausgehen wird mit dem Tode bestraft. Der Syndikus schließt selber die Tür eines jeden Hauses von außen ab; den Schlüssel überbringt er dem Intendanten, der ihn bis zum Ende der Quarantäne verwahrt.

Jede Familie muß ihre Vorräte gespeichert haben; aber für die Versorgung mit Wein und Brot werden zwischen der Straße und dem Inneren der Häuser kleine hölzerne Kanäle angelegt, die eine Verteilung der Rationen ohne Berührung zwischen den Zulieferern und den Bewohnern ermöglichen; für die Zuteilung von Fleisch, Fisch und Gemüse verwendet man Rollen und Körbe. Müssen Leute unbedingt aus dem Haus gehen, so geschieht es nach einem Turnus, damit jedes Zusammentreffen vermieden wird. Auf den Straßen bewegen sich nur die Intendanten, die Syndizi, die Gardesoldaten und zwischen den infizierten Häusern, von einem Leichnam zum andern auch die »Raben«, die man ohne weiteres dem Tode ausliefern kann: es handelt sich um Leute von geringem Wert, welche die Kranken tragen, die Toten bestatten und Reinigungs- sowie andere niedere Arbeiten verrichten. Der Raum erstarrt zu einem Netz von undurchlässigen Zellen. Jeder ist an seinen Platz gebunden. Wer sich rührt, riskiert sein Leben: Ansteckung oder Bestrafung.

Die Überwachung ist lückenlos. Überall ist der Blick auf der Hut: »Ein ansehnliches Milizkorps, das von guten Offizieren und ordentlichen Männern kommandiert wird«, Gardekorps an den Stadttoren, am Rathaus und in allen Stadtvierteln zur Gewährleistung des öffentlichen Gehorsams und die unbedingteste Autorität der Verwaltung, »um ebenfalls alle Ruhestörungen, Diebereien und Plünderungen zu verhindern«. An den Stadttoren Wachposten, desgleichen an allen Straßenenden. Jeden Tag sucht der Intendant das ihm übertragene Stadtviertel auf, erkundigt sich, ob die Syndizi ihre Aufgaben erfüllen, ob sich die Bewohner zu beklagen haben; sie »überwachen ihre Handlungen«. Jeden Tag geht der Syndikus durch die Straße, für die er verantwortlich ist; er hält vor jedem Haus und läft die Bewohner an die Fenster kommen (denjenigen, die im Hinterhof wohnen, wird ein Fenster an der Straßenseite zugewiesen, wo nur sie sich zeigen dürfen); er ruft jeden bei seinem Namen und informiert sich nach dem Zustand jedes einzelnen, »wobei die Bewohner die Wahrheit sagen müssen, unter Androhung der Todesstrafe«; wenn sich jemand nicht am Fenster präsentiert, muß der Syndikus nach den Gründen fragen. »Auf diese Weise wird er leicht entdekken, ob man Tote oder Kranke verbirgt.« Jeder ist in seinen Käfig eingesperrt, jeder an seinem Fenster, bei Nennung seines Namens antwortend und zeigend, worum man ihn fragt - das ist die große Parade der Lebenden und der Toten.

Diese Überwachung stützt sich auf ein lückenloses Registrierungssystem: Berichte der Syndizi an die Intendanten, der Intendanten an die Schöffen oder an den Bürgermeister. Zu Beginn der »Einschließung« wird das Verzeichnis erstellt, das jeden in der Stadt anwesenden Bewohner erfaßt; »eingetragen werden darin Name, Alter, Geschlecht ausnahmslos aller«: ein Exemplar für den Intendanten des Viertels, ein zweites für das Büro des Rathauses und ein weiteres für den Syndikus, der den täglichen Appell durchführen muß. Alles, was im Laufe dieser Besuche beobachtet wird - Todesfälle, Krankheiten, Beschwerden, Ruhestörungen - wird notiert und den Intendanten sowie den Verwaltungsbeamten übermittelt. Diese sind auch für die ärztliche Versorgung zuständig: sie haben einen

verantwortlichen Arzt ernannt, ohne dessen schriftliche Bestätigung kein Arzt etwas unternehmen, kein Apotheker Medikamente herstellen und kein Beichtvater einen Kranken besuchen darf, »um zu verhindern, daß man ohne Wissen der Behörden ansteckend Kranke versteckt oder behandelt«. Die Registrierung des Pathologischen muß lückenlos und zentral gelenkt sein. Die Beziehung jedes einzelnen zu seiner Krankheit und zu seinem Tod läuft über die Instanzen der Macht: ihre Registrierungen und ihre Entscheidungen.

Fünf oder sechs Tage nach Beginn der Quarantäne geht man daran, ein Haus nach dem andern zu säubern. Man schafft die Bewohner hinaus; in jedem Zimmer hebt oder hängt man »die Möbel und die Waren« auf; man versprüht Riechstoff und läßt ihn verbrennen, nachdem man die Fenster und Türen bis zu den Schlüssellöchern, die man mit Wachs verstopit, abgedichtet hat. Am Ende schließt man das gesamte Haus ab, während sich der Riechstoff verzehrt. Ebenso wie beim Betreten des Hauses durchsucht man die Riechstoffhändler »in Gegenwart der Hausbewohner, um zu sehen, ob sie nicht beim Hinausgehen etwas bei sich haben, was sie zuerst nicht hatten«. Vier Stunden später können die Leute wieder einziehen.

Dieser geschlossene, parzellierte, lückenlos überwachte Raum, innerhalb dessen die Individuen in feste Plätze eingespannt sind, die geringsten Bewegungen kontrolliert und sämtliche Ereignisse registriert werden, eine ununterbrochene Schreibarbeit das Zentrum mit der Peripherie verbindet, die Gewalt ohne Teilung in einer bruchlosen Hierarchie ausgeübt wird, jedes Individuum ständig erfaßt, geprüft und unter die Lebenden, die Kranken und die Toten aufgeteilt wird - dies ist das kompakte Modell einer Disziplinierungsanlage. Auf die Pest antwortet die Ordnung, die alle Verwirrungen zu entwirren hat: die Verwirrungen der Krankheit, welche sich überträgt, wenn sich die Körper mischen, und sich vervielfältigt, wenn Furcht und Tod die Verbote auslöschen. Die Ordnung schreibt jedem seinen Platz, jedem seinen Körper, jedem seine Krankheit und seinen Tod, jedem sein Gut vor: kraft einer allgegenwärtigen und allwissenden Macht, die sich einheitlich bis zur letzten Bestimmung des Individuums verzweigt - bis zur Bestimmung dessen, was das Individuum charakterisiert, was ihm gehört, was ihm geschieht. Gegen die Pest, die Vermischung ist, bringt die Disziplin ihre Macht, die Analyse ist, zur Geltung. Es gab um die Pest eine ganze Literatur, die ein Fest erträumte: die Aufhebung der Gesetze und Verbote; das Rasen der Zeit; die respektlose Vermischung der Körper; das Fallen der Masken und der Einsturz der festgelegten und anerkannten Identitäten, unter denen eine ganz andere Wahrheit der Individuen zum Vorschein kommt. Jedoch gab es auch einen entgegengesetzten, einen politischen Traum von der Pest: nicht das kollektive Fest, sondern das Eindringen des Reglements bis in die feinsten Details der Existenz vermittels einer perfekten Hierarchie, welche das Funktionieren der Macht bis in ihre letzten Verzweigungen sicherstellt. Hier geht es nicht um Masken, die man anlegt oder fallen läft, sondern um den »wahren« Namen, den »wahren" Platz, den »wahren« Körper und die »wahre« Krankheit, die man einem jeden zuweist. Der Pest als zugleich wirklicher und erträumter Unordnung steht als medizinische und politische Antwort die Disziplin gegenüber. Hinter den Disziplinarmaßnahmen steckt die Angst vor den »Ansteckungen«, vor der Pest, vor den Aufständen, vor den Verbrechen, vor der Landstreicherei, vor den Desertionen, vor den Leuten, die ungeordnet auftauchen und verschwinden, leben und sterben.

Wenn es wahr ist, daß die Ausschließungsrituale, mit denen man auf die Lepra antwortete, bis zu einem gewissen Grad das Modell für die große Einsperrung im I7. Jahrhundert abgegeben haben, so hat die Pest das Modell der Disziplinierungen herbeigerufen. Anstelle einer massiven und zweiteilenden Grenzziehung zwischen den einen und den andern verlangt die Pest nach vielfältigen Trennungen, nach individualisierenden Aufteilungen, nach einer in die Tiefe gehenden Organisation der Überwachungen und der Kontrollen, nach einer Intensivierung und Verzweigung der Macht. Der Leprakranke wird verworfen, ausgeschlossen, verbannt: ausgesetzt; draußen läßt man ihn in einer Masse verkommen, die zu differenzieren sich nicht lohnt. Die Pestkranken hingegen werden sorgfältig erfaßt und individuell differenziert - von einer Macht, die sich vervielfältigt, sich gliedert und verzweigt. Die große Einsperrung auf der einen Seite und die gute Abrichtung auf der andern; die Aussetzung der Lepra und die Aufgliederung der Pest; die Stigmatisierung des Aussatzes und die Analyse der Pest. Die Verbannung der Lepra und die Bannung der Pest -

das sind nicht dieselben politischen Träume. Einmal ist es der Traum von einer reinen Gemeinschaft, das andere Mal der Traum von einer disziplinierten Gesellschaft. Es handelt sich um zwei Methoden, Macht über die Menschen auszuüben, ihre Beziehungen zu kontrollieren und ihre gefährlichen Vermischungen zu entflechten. Die verpestete Stadt, die von Hierarchie und Überwachung, von Blick und Schrift ganz durchdrungen ist, die Stadt, die im allgemeinen Funktionieren einer besonderen Macht über alle individuellen Körper erstarrt - diese Stadt ist die Utopie der vollkommen regierten Stadt/Gesellschaft. Die Pest (jedenfalls die zu erwartende) ist die Probe auf die ideale Ausübung der Disziplinierungsmacht. Versetzten sich die Juristen in den Naturzustand, um die Rechte und Gesetze in der reinen Theorie funktionieren zu lassen, so träumten die Regierenden vom Pestzustand, um die perfekten Disziplinen funktionieren zu lassen. Im Hintergrund der Disziplinierungsmodelle steht das Bild der Pest für alle Verwirrungen und Unordnungen, wie das Bild des Aussatzes hinter den Modellen der Ausschließung steht.

Die beiden Grundmodelle unterscheiden sich voneinander, sind aber nicht unvereinbar. Es läßt sich beobachten, wie sie sich allmählich annähern. Das Eigentümliche des I9. Jahrhunderts ist es, auf den Raum der Ausschließung, der symbolisch vom Aussätzigen (und tatsächlich von den Bettlern, den Landstreichern, den Irren, den Gewalttätigen) bewohnt war, die Machttechnik der parzellierenden Disziplin anzuwenden. Seit dem Beginn des I9.

Jahrhunderts arbeitet die Disziplinargewalt daran, die »Aussätzigen« wie »Pestkranke« zu behandeln, die sublimen Unterteilungen der Disziplin auf den amorphen Raum der Einsperrung zu projizieren, diesen Raum mit den Methoden der analytischen Machtverteilung zu durchsetzen, die Ausgeschlossenen zu individualisieren, aber auch mit Hilfe der Individualisierungsprozeduren die Auszuschließenden zu identifizieren. Das psychiatrische Asyl, die Strafanstalt, das Besserungshaus, das Erziehungsheim und zum Teil auch die Spitäler - alle diese der Kontrolle des Individuums dienenden Inseanzen funkrionieren gleichermaßen als Zweiteilung und Stigmatisierung (wahnsinnig nichtwahnsinnig, gefährlich - harmlos, normal - anormal) sowie als zwanghafte Einstufung und disziplinierende Aufteilung. (Um wen handelt es sich? Wohin gehört er? Wodurch ist er zu charakterisieren, woran zu erkennen? Wie läßt er sich einer individuellen und stetigen Überwachung unterziehen?) Auf der einen Seite »verpestet« man die Aussätzigen, indem man auf die Ausgeschlossenen die Taktik der individualisierenden Disziplinen anwendet, und auf der anderen Seite dient die Vielfalt und Allgegenwart der disziplinierenden Kontrollen dazu, den »Aussätzigen« zu stigmatisieren und die dualistischen Ausschließungsmechanismen gegen ihn einzusetzen. Die hartnäckige Grenzziehung zwischen dem Normalen und dem Anormalen, der jedes Individuum unterworfen ist, verewigt und verallgemeinert die zweiteilende Stigmatisierung und die Aussetzung des Aussätzigen. Die Existenz zahlreicher Techniken und Institutionen, die der Messung, Kontrolle und Besserung der Anormalen dienen, hält die Disziplinierungsverfahren am Leben, die einst von der Furcht vor der Pest herbeigerufen worden sind. Alle Machtmechanismen, die heute das Anormale umstellen, um es zu identifizieren und modifizieren, setzen sich aus jenen beiden Formen zusammen, von denen sie sich herleiten.

Das Panopticon von Bentham ist die architektonische Gestalt dieser Zusammensetzung. Sein Prinzip ist bekannt: an der Peripherie ein ringförmiges Gebäude; in der Mitte ein Turm, der von breiten Fenstern durchbrochen ist, welche sich nach der Innenseite des Ringes öffnen; das Ringgebäude ist in Zellen unterteilt, von denen jede durch die gesamte Tiefe des Gebäudes reicht; sie haben jeweils zwei Fenster, eines nach innen, das auf die Fenster des Turms gerichtet ist, und eines nach außen, so daß die Zelle auf beiden Seiten von Licht durchdrungen wird. Es genügt demnach, einen Aufseher im Turm aufzustellen und in jeder Zelle, einen Irren, einen Kranken, einen Sträfling, einen Arbeiter oder einen Schüler unterzubringen. Vor dem Gegenlicht lassen sich vom Turm aus die kleinen Gefangenensilhouetten in den Zellen des Ringes genau ausnehmen. Jeder Käfig ist ein kleines Theater, in dem jeder Akteur allein ist, vollkommen individualisiert und ständig sichtbar. Die panoptische Anlage schafft Raumeinheiten, die es ermöglichen, ohne Unterlaß zu sehen und zugleich zu erkennen. Das Prinzip des Kerkers wird umgekehrt, genauer gesagt: von seinen drei Funktionen- einsperren, verdunkeln und verbergen - wird nur die erste aufrechterhalten, die beiden anderen fallen weg. Das volle Licht und der Blick des Aufsehers erfassen besser als das Dunkel, das auch schützte. Die Sichtbarkeit ist eine Falle.

Zunächst wird damit jene dicht gedrängte und ruhelose Masse von Eingekerkerten vermieden, wie sie Goya gemalt und Howard beschrieben hat. Jeder ist an seinem Platz sicher in eine Zelle eingesperrt, wo er dem Blick des Aufsehers ausgesetzt ist; aber die seitlichen Mauern hindern ihn daran, mit seinen Gefährten in Kontakt zu treten. Er wird gesehen, ohne selber zu sehen; er ist Objekt einer Information, niemals Subjekt in einer Kommunikation. Die Lage seines Zimmers gegenüber dem Turm zwingt ihm eine radiale Sichtbarkeit auf; aber die Unterteilungen des Ringes, diese wohlgeschiedenen Zellen, bewirken eine seitliche Unsichtbarkeit, welche die Ordnung garantiert. Sind die Gefangenen Sträflinge, so besteht keine Gefahr eines Komplottes, eines kollektiven Ausbruchsversuches, neuer verbrecherischer Pläne für die Zukunft, schlechter gegenseitiger Einflüsse; handelt es sich um Kranke, besteht keine Ansteckungsgefahr; sind es Irre, gibt es kein Risiko gegenseitiger Gewalttätigkeiten; sind es Kinder, gibt es kein Abschreiben, keinen Lärm, kein Schwätzen, keine Zerstreuung; handelt es sich um Arbeiter, gibt es keine Schlägereien, keine Diebstähle, keine Verbindungen und keine Zerstreuungen, welche die Arbeit verzögern und weniger vollkommen machen oder zu Unfällen führen. Die dicht gedrängte Masse, die vielfältigen Austausch mit sich bringt und die Individualitäten verschmilzt, dieser Kollektiv-Effekt wird durch eine Sammlung von getrennten Individuen ersetzt. Vom Standpunkt des Aufsehers aus handelt es sich um eine abzählbare und kontrollierbare Vielfalt; vom Standpunkt der Gefangenen aus um eine erzwungene und beobachtete Einsamkeit.

Daraus ergibt sich die Hauptwirkung des Panopticon: die Schaffung eines bewußten und permanenten Sichtbarkeitszustandes beim Gefangenen, der das automatische Funktionieren der Macht sicherstellt. Die Wirkung der Überwachung ist permanent, auch wenn ihre Durchführung sporadisch ist<; die Perfektion der Macht vermag ihre tatsächliche Ausübung überflüssig zu machen; der architektonische Apparat ist eine Maschine, die ein Machtverhältnis schaffen und aufrechterhalten kann, welches vom Machtausübenden unabhängig ist; die Häftlinge sind Gefangene einer Machtsituation, die sie selber stützen. Im Hinblick darauf ist es sowohl zu viel wie auch zu wenig, daß der Häftling ohne Unterlaß von einem Aufseher überwacht wird: zu wenig ist es, weil es darauf ankommt, daß er sich ständig überwacht weiß; zu viel ist es, weil er nicht wirklich überwacht werden muß. Zu diesem Zweck hat Bentham das Prinzip aufgestellt, daß die Macht sichtbar, aber uneinsehbar sein muß; sichtbar, indem der Häftling ständig die hohe Silhouette des Turms vor Augen hat, von dem aus er bespäht wird; uneinsehbar, sofern der Häftling niemals wissen darf, ob er gerade überwacht wird; aber er muß sicher sein, daß er jederzeit überwacht werden kann.

Damit die Anwesenheit oder Abwesenheit des Aufsehers verborgen bleibt, damit die Häftlinge von ihrer Zelle aus auch nicht einen Schatten oder eine Silhouette wahrnehmen können, hat Bentham nicht nur feste Jalousien an den Fenstern des zentralen Überwachungssaales vorgesehen, sondern auch Zwischenwände, die den Saal im rechten Winkel unterteilen, und für den Durchgang von einem Abteil ins andere keine Türen: denn das geringste Schlagen, jeder Lichtschein durch eine angelehnte Tür hindurch könnten die Anwesenheit des Aufsehers verraten. Das Panopticon ist eine Maschine zur Scheidung des Paares Sehen/Gesehenwerden: im Außenring wird man vollständig gesehen, ohne jemals zu sehen; im Zentralturm sieht man alles, ohne je gesehen zu werden.

Diese Anlage ist deswegen so bedeutend, weil sie die Macht automatisiert und entindividualisiert. Das Prinzip der Macht liegt weniger in einer Person als vielmehr in einer konzertierten Anordnung von Körpern, Oberflächen, Lichtern und Blicken; in einer Apparatur, deren innere Mechanismen das Verhältnis herstellen, in welchem die Individuen gefangen sind. Die Zeremonien, Rituale und Stigmen, in denen die Übermacht des Souveräns zum Ausdruck kam, erweisen sich als ungeeignet und überflüssig, wenn es eine Maschinerie gibt, welche die Asymmetrie, das Gefälle, den Unterschied sicherstellt. Folglich hat es wenig Bedeutung, wer die Macht ausübt.

Beinahe jedes beliebige Individuum kann die Maschine in Gang setzen: anstelle des Direktors auch seine Familie, seine Umgebung, seine Besucher, seine Dienstboten sogar., Ebensowenig spielt das Motiv eine Rolle: die Zudringlichkeit eines Neugierigen, die Schalkhaftigkeit eines Kindes, der Wissensdurst eines Philosophen, der dieses Museum der

menschlichen Natur durchwandern möchte, oder die Bosheit jener, denen das Bespähen und Bestrafen Vergnügen bereitet. Je zahlreicher diese anonymen und wechselnden Beobachter sind um so größer wird für den Häftling das Risiko des Überraschtwerdens und um so unruhiger sein Bewußtsein des Beobachtetseins. Das Panopticon ist eine wundersame Maschine, die aus den verschiedensten Begehrungen gleichförmige Machtwirkungen erzeugt.

Eine wirkliche Unterwerfung geht mechanisch aus einer fiktiven Beziehung hervor, so daß man auf Gewaltmittel verzichten kann, um den Verurteilten zum guten Verhalten, den Wahnsinnigen zur Ruhe, den Arbeiter zur Arbeit, den Schüler zum Eifer und den Kranken zur Befolgung der Anordnungen zu zwingen. Bentham wunderte sich selber darüber, daß die panoptischen Einrichtungen so zwanglos sein können: es gibt keine-Gittertore mehr, keine Ketten, keine schweren Schlösser; es genügt, wenn die Trennungen sauber und die Offnungen richtig sind. Die Wucht der alten »Sicherheitshäuser« mit ihrer Festungsarchitektur läft sich durch die einfache und sparsame Geometrie eines »Gewißheitshauses« ersetzen. Die Wirksamkeit der Macht und ihre Zwingkraft gehen sozusagen auf ihre Zielscheibe über. Derjenige, welcher der Sichtbarkeit unterworfen ist und dies weiß, übernimmt die Zwangsmittel der Macht und spielt sie gegen sich selber aus; er internalisiert das Machtverhältnis, in welchem er gleichzeitig beide Rollen spielt; er wird zum Prinzip seiner eigenen Unterwerfung. Aus diesem Grunde kann ihn die äußere Macht von physischen Beschwerden befreien. Die Macht wird tendenziell unkörperlich und je mehr sie sich diesem Grenzwert annähert, um so beständiger, tiefer, endgültiger und anpassungsfähiger werden ihre Wirkungen: der immerwährende Sieg vermeidet jede physische Konfrontation und ist immer schon im vorhinein gewiß.

Bentham sagt nicht, ob er sich zu seinem Projekt von der Menagerie hat inspirieren lassen, die Le Vaux in Versailles erbaut hatte: es handelte sich um die erste Tierschau, die nicht wie früher üblich auf einen Park verstreut war.6 In der Mitte stand ein achteckiger Pavillon, der im ersten Geschoß nur einen einzigen Raum enthielt, nämlich den Salon des Königs. Alle Seiten öffneten sich durch breite Fenster auf sieben ummauerte Gehege (die achte Seite war dem Eingang vorbehalten), in denen verschiedene Arten von Tieren eingesperrt waren. Zur Zeit von Bentham war diese Menagerie bereits verschwunden. Aber im Programm des Panopticon findet man dieselbe Bemühung um individualisierende Beobachtung, um Charakterisierung und Klassifizierung, um analytische Aufteilung des Raumes. Das Panopticon ist eine königliche Menagerie, in der das Tier durch den Menschen ersetzt ist, die Gruppierung der Arten durch die Verteilung der Individuen und der König durch die Maschinerie einer sich verheimlichenden Macht. Von diesen Abweichungen einmal abgesehen, betreibt auch das Panopticon Naturforschung; es stellt die Unterschiede fest: bei den Kranken beobachtet es die Symptome eines jeden, ohne daß die Nähe der Betten, das Zirkulieren der giftigen Ausdünstungen und die Wirkungen der Anstekkung die klinischen Tableaus beeinträchtigt; bei den Kindern registriert es die Leistungen (ohne daß Nachahmen oder Abschreiben möglich ist), erfaßt die Fähigkeiten, schätzt die Charaktere ab, nimmt strenge Klassifizierungen vor und unterscheidet vor dem Hintergrund einer normalen Entwicklung »Faulheit und Trotz« von »unheilbarem Schwachsinn«; bei den Arbeitern registriert es die Fähigkeiten eines jeden, vergleicht die Arbeitszeiten und berechnet danach die Tageslöhne.

Aber nicht nur als Garten, auch als Laboratorium kann das Panopticon dienen: als Maschine für Experimente, zur Veränderung des Verhaltens, zur Dressur und Korrektur von Individuen. Man kann Medikamente ausprobieren und ihre Wirkungen überprüfen; man kann an den Gefangenen verschiedene Bestrafungen versuchen, je nach ihrem Verbrechen und ihrem Charakter, und die wirksamsten heraussuchen; man kann den Arbeitern gleichzeitig verschiedene Techniken beibringen und feststellen. welche die beste ist: man kann pädagogische Experimente anstellen - und vor allem das berühmte Problem der Klausur-Erziehung wieder behandeln, wozu man Findelkinder verwendet; man könnte dann sehen, was geschieht, wenn man sie im Alter von 16 oder 18 Jahren mit anderen Menschen in Verbindung bringt; man könnte feststellen, ob, wie Helvetius denkt, jeder beliebige alles

beliebige lernen kann; man könnte »die Genealogie jeder beobachtbaren Idee« verfolgen; man könnte verschiedene Kinder in verschiedenen Denksystemen aufziehen und einige glauben machen, daß zwei und zwei nicht vier ist und daß der Mond ein Käse ist, und sie später, wenn sie 20 oder 25 Jahre alt sind, zusammenführen; man würde dann Diskussionen erleben, welche die Predigten und Vorträge, für die man soviel Geld ausgibt, durchaus aufwögen; man hätte jedenfalls Gelegenheit, Entdeckungen im Bereich der Metaphysik zu machen. Das Panopticon ist ein bevorzugter Ort für Experimente an den Menschen und für die zuverlässige Analyse der Veränderungen, die man an ihnen vornehmen kann. Das Panopticon vermag sogar seine eigenen Mechanismen zu kontrollieren. In seinem Zentralturm kann der Direktor alle Angestellten beobachten, die seinem Befehl unterstehen: Pfleger, Ätrzte, Werkmeister, Lehrer, Wärter; er kann sie stetig beurteilen, ihr Verhalten ändern, ihnen die besten Methoden aufzwingen; und er selbst kann ebenfalls leicht beobachtet werden. Ein Inspektor, der unversehens im Zentrum des Panopticon auftaucht, kann mit einem Blick, ohne daß ihm etwas verborgen bleibt, darüber urteilen, wie die gesamte Anstalt funktioniert. Und ist nicht der Direktor, der inmitten dieser architektonischen Anlage eingeschlossen ist, mit ihr auf Gedeih und Verderb verbunden? Der unfähige Arzt, der die Ansteckung nicht unterbunden hat, der ungeschickte Gefängnis- oder Fabrikdirektor - sie werden die ersten Opfer der Epidemie oder der Revolte sein. »Mein Geschick«, sagt der Herr des Panopticon, »ist mit allen Banden, die ich erfunden habe, an das Geschick der Häftlinge geknüpft.« Das Panopticon funktioniert als eine Art Laboratorium der Macht. Dank seinen Beobachtungsmechanismen gewinne es an Wirksamkeie und dringt immer tiefer in das Verhalten der Menschen ein; auf jedem Machtvorsprung sammelt sich Wissen an und deckt an allen Oberflächen, an denen sich Macht entfaltet, neue Erkenntnisgegenstände auf.

Die Unterschiede zwischen der verpesteten Stadt und der panoptischen Anstalt sind beträchtlich. Sie bezeichnen die Transformationen des Disziplinarprogramms über anderthalb Jahrhunderte hinweg. Das eine Mal handelt es sich um eine Ausnahmesituation: die Macht formiert sich zur Abwehr eines außerordentlichen Übels; sie macht sich überall gegenwärtig und sichtbar; sie erfindet neue Räderwerke; sie errichtet Barrieren und Blockaden, mit denen sie den Raum durchsetzt; sie baut für eine gewisse Zeit eine Gegengesellschaft auf, die zugleich vollkommene Gesellschaft ist; sie etabliert ein ideales Funktionssystem, das sich jedoch letzten Endes ebenso wie das von ihm bekämpfte Übel auf den einfachen Dualismus Leben/Tod reduziert: was sich noch regt, ist dem Tode verfallen und wird in den Tod gestoßen. Das Panopticon hingegen ist als eir~ verallgemeinerungsfähiges Funktionsmodell zu verstehen, das die Beziehungen der Macht zum Alltagsleben der Menschen definiert. Zwar wird es von Bentham als eine besondere, in sich geschlossene Institution präsentiert, weshalb man auch oft eine Utopie der perfekten Einsperrung daraus gemacht hat: gegenüber den verfallenden und von Gemarterten wimmelnden Kerkern Piranesis erscheint das Panopticon als ein unerbittliches und wohldurchdachtes Gehäuse: ein wissenschaftliches Gefängnis. Daß es bis heute zu zahlreichen projektierten oder realisierten Variationen Anlaß gab, beweist die Kraft seiner Einbildungsmacht seit bald zwei Jahrhunderten. Aber das Panopticon ist nicht als Traumgebäude zu verstehen: es ist das Diagramm eines auf seine ideale Form reduzierten Machtmechanismus; sein Funktionieren, das von jedem Hemmnis, von jedem Widerstand und jeder Reibung abstrahiert, kann zwar als ein rein architektonisches und optisches System vorgestellt werden: tatsächlich ist es eine Gestalt politischer Technologie, die man von ihrer spezifischen Verwendung ablösen kann und muß.

Das Panopticon ist vielseitig einsetzbar: es dient zur Besserung von Sträflingen, aber auch zur Heilung von Kranken, zur Belehrung von Schülern, zur Überwachung von Wahnsinnigen, zur Beaufsichtigung von Arbeitern, zur Arbeitsbeschaffung für Bettler und Müßiggänger. Es handelt sich um einen bestimmten Typ der Einpflanzung von Körpern im Raum, der Verteilung von Individuen in ihrem Verhältnis zueinander, der hierarchischen Organisation, der Anordnung von Machtzentren und -kanälen, der Definition von Instrumenten und Interventionstaktiken der Macht - und diesen Typ kann man in den Spitälern, den Werkstätten, den Schulen und Gefängnissen zur Anwendung bringen. Wann immer man es mit einer Vielfalt von Individuen zu tun hat, denen eine Aufgabe oder ein Verhalten aufzuzwingen ist, kann das panoptische Schema Verwendung finden. Unter dem

Vorbehalt notwendiger Anpassungen erstreckt sich seine Anwendbarkeit »auf alle Anstalten, in denen innerhalb eines nicht allzu ausgedehnten Raumes eine bestimmte Anzahl von Personen unter Aufsicht zu halten ist«.

In jeder dieser Anwendungen ermöglicht es die Perfektionierung der Machtausübung: weil es die Möglichkeit schafft, daß von immer weniger Personen Macht über immer mehr ausgeübt wird; weil es Interventionen zu jedem Zeitpunkt erlaubt 1 und weil der ständige Druck bereits vor der Begehung von Fehlern, Irrtümern, Verbrechern wirkt; ja weil unter diesen Umständen seine Stärke gerade darin besteht, niemals eingreifen zu müssen. sich automatisch und geräuschlos durchzusetzen, einen Mechanismus von miteinander verketteten Effekten zu bilden; weil es außer einer Architektur und einer Geometrie kein physisches Instrument braucht, um direkt auf die Individuen einzuwirken. Es »gibt dem Geist Macht über [~ den Geist«. Das panoptische Schema ist ein Verstärker für . jeden beliebigen Machtapparat: es gewährleistet seine Ökonomie (den rationellen Einsatz von Material, Personal, Zeit); es -sichert seine Präventivwirkung, sein stetiges Funktionieren 18 und seine automatischen Mechanismen. Es ist eine Methode der Machterlangung »in einem bisher beispiellosen Ausmaß«, »ein großes und neues Regierungsinstrument...; seine Außerordentlichkeit besteht in der großen Kraft, die es jeder Institution, auf welche man es anwendet, zu geben imstande ist« Also so etwas wie ein Ei des Kolumbus im Bereich der Politik. -Das Panopticon kann sich wirklich in jede Funktion integrieren (Erziehung, Heilung, Produktion, Bestrafung); es kann jede Funktion steigern, indem es sich mit ihr innig vereint; es kann ein Mischsystem konstituieren, in welchem sich die Macht- (und Wissens-)beziehungen genauestens und bis ins [ Detail in die zu kontrollierenden Prozesse einpassen; es kann eine direkte Beziehung zwischen der Machtsteigerung und der Produktionssteigerung herstellen. Die Machtausübung setzt -sich somit nicht von außen, als strenger Zwang oder drückendes Gewicht, gegenüber den von ihr besetzten Funktionen durch, vielmehr ist die Macht in den Funktionen so sublim gegenwärtig, daß sie deren Wirksamkeit steigert, indem sie ihren eigenen Zugriff verstärkt. Die panoptische Anlage ist nicht einfach ein Scharnier oder ein Austauschregler zwischen einem Machtmechanismus und einer Funktion; sie bringt Machtbeziehungen innerhalb einer Funktion zur Geltung und steigert dadurch diese Funktion. Der Panoptismus ist imstande, »die Moral zu reformieren, die Gesundheit zu bewahren, die Ökonomie wie auf einen Felsen zu bauen, den Gordischen Knoten der Armengesetze zu entflechten anstatt zu durchhauen - und all das dank einer einfachen architektonischen Idee«.

Noch dazu ist die Anordnung dieser Maschine eine solche, daß ihre Geschlossenheit eine ständige Anwesenheit der Außenwelt gar nicht ausschließt. Wir haben bereits gesehen, daß jeder beliebige kommen kann, um die Überwachungsfunktionen im Zentralturm wahrzunehmen, und daß er bei dieser Rf. Gelegenheit erahnen kann, wie diese Aufsicht funktioniert. Jede panoptische Institution, mag sie so geschlossen sein wie eine Strafanstalt, kann ohne weiteres diesen zufälligen und unaufhörlichen Inspektionen zugänglich sein, und zwar nicht nur für beauftragte Kontrolleure' sondern für das Publikum; jedes beliebige Mitglied der Gesellschaft hat das Recht, mit seinen eigenen Augen wahrzunehmen, wie die Schulen, die Spitäler, die Fabriken, die Gefängnisse funktionieren. Es besteht also keine Gefahr, daß die der panoptischen Maschine zu verdankende Machtsteigerung in Tyrannei entarten könnte; die Disziplinaranlage wird demokratisch kontrolliert, da sie für »den großen Ausschuß des Weltgerichts«i, ständig zugänglich ist. Das Panopticon, das so sorgfältig geplant worden ist, damit ein Aufseher mit einem Blick so viele verschiedene Individuen beobachten kann, erlaubt es jedermann, den kleinsten Wächter zu überwachen.

Die Sehmaschine, die eine Art Dunkelkammer zur Ausspähung der Individuen war, wird ein Glaspalast, in dem die Ausübung der Macht von der gesamten Gesellschaft durchschaue und kontrolliert werden kann. Das panoptische Schema ist dazu bestimmt, sich im Gesellschaftskörper auszubreiten, ohne irgendeine seiner Eigenschaften aufzugeben, es ist dazu berufen, im Gesellschaftskörper zu einer verallgemeinerten Funktion zu werden. Die ~verpestete-Stadt bilde~ein Disziplinarmodell des Ausnahmezustandes: vollkommen und gewaltsam; der todbringenden Krankheit setzte die Macht eine ständige Todesdrohung entgegen; das Leben war auf seinen elementarsten Ausdruck reduziert; gegen die Macht des Todes war es nur mehr die peinlich genaue Durchsetzung des Kriegsrechts. Das Panopticon hingegen hat verstärkend und steigernd zu wirken; nicht um der Macht willen und nicht,

um einer bedrohten Gesellschaft das Leben zu retten, organisiert es die Macht und macht sie ökonomischer und wirksamer: es geht darum, die Gesellschaftskräfte zu steigern - die Produktion zu erhöhen, die Wirtschaft zu entwickeln, die Bildung auszudehnen, das Niveau der öffentlichen Moral zu heben; zu Wachstum und Mehrung beizutragen.

Wie läßt sich die Macht so verstärken, daß sie diesen Fortschritt nicht stört, durch Anforderung und Schwerfälligkeit nicht behindert, sondern ihn sogar erleichtert? Welcher Machtverstärker kann zugleich ein Produktionsmehrer sein? Wie kann die Macht durch Vermehrung ihrer Kräfte die Kräfte der Gesellschaft stärken, anstatt sie zu enteignen oder zu fesseln? Das Panopticon bietet dafür die Lösung an, daß die Produktionssteigerung der Macht nur möglich ist, wenn die Macht ohne Unterbrechung bis in die elementarsten und feinsten Bestandteile der Gesellschaft eindringen kann und wenn sie auf die jähen, gewalttätigen und lückenhaften Verfahren der Souveränität verzichtet. Der Körper des Königs mit seiner merkwürdigen materiellen und mythischen Gegenwart, mit seiner Kraft, die er selber entfaltet oder anderen überträgt, bildet den extremen Gegensatz zur neuen Physik der Macht, wie sie vom Panoptismus definiert wird; ihr Bereich ist jene Niederung der ungeordneten Körper mit ihren Einzelheiten und vielfältigen Bewegungen, mit ihren heterogenen Kräften und räumlichen Beziehungen; es handelt sich um Mechanismen, welche Verteilungen, Verschiebungen, Serien, Kombinationen analysieren und Instrumente einsetzen, um sichtbar zu machen, zu registrieren, zu differenzieren und zu vergleichen: es ist die Physik einer beziehungsreichen und vielfältigen Macht, die ihre größte Intensität nicht in der Person des Königs hat, sondern in den Körpern, die durch eben diese Beziehungen individualisiert werden. Auf der Ebene der Theorie definiert Bentham einen Typ der Analyse des Gesellschaftskörpers und der ihn durchkreuzenden Machtbeziehungen; auf der Ebene der Praxis definiert er eine Prozedur der Unterordnung von Körpern und Kräften, welche die Nützlichkeit der Macht erhöht, indem sie sich den Fürsten erspart. Der Panoptismus ist das allgemeine Prinzip einer neuen »politischen Anatomie«, die es nicht mit dem Verhältnis der Souveränität, sondern mit den Beziehungen der Disziplin zu tun hat.

In seinem durchsichtigen kreisrunden Käfig auf dem hohen Turm von Wissen und Macht mag es Bentham darum gehen, eine vollkommene Disziplinarinstitution zu entwerfen; aber es geht auch um den Aufweis, wie man die Disziplinen »entsperren« und diffus, vielseitig, polyvalent im gesamten Gesellschaftskörper wirken lassen kann. Aus den Disziplinen, die im klassischen Zeitalter des I7. und I8. Jahrhunderts an bestimmten, relativ geschlossenen Orten - Kasernen, Kollegs, Manufakturen - ausgearbeitet worden sind und deren umfassenden Einsatz man sich nur im begrenzten und vorübergehenden Rahmen einer verpesteten Stadt vorstellen konnte, aus diesen Disziplinen ein die Gesamtgesellschaft lückenlos überwachendes und durchdringendes Netzwerk zu machen, ist der Traum Benthams. Das Panopticon liefert die Formel für diese Verallgemeinerung. Es programmiert auf der Ebene eines einfachen und leicht zu übertragenden Mechanismus das elementare Funktionieren einer von Disziplinarmechanismen vollständig durchsetzten Gesellschaft.

Wir haben es also mit zwei entgegengesetzten Bildern von Disziplin zu tun: auf der einen Seite die Disziplin als Blockade, als geschlossene Anstalt, die innerhalb bestimmter Grenzen auf negierende Funktionen ausgerichtet ist: Bannung des Übels, Unterbrechung der Beziehungen, Aufhebung der Zeit. Auf der anderen Seite die Disziplin als panoptischer Betrieb, als Funktionszusammenhang, der die Ausübung der Macht verbessern, d. h. beschleunigen, erleichtern, effektiver machen soll: ein Entwurf subtiler Zwangsmittel für eine künftige Gesellschaft. Der Übergang von einem Projekt zum anderen, vom Modell der Ausnahmedisziplin zu dem der verallgemeinerten Überwachung, beruht auf einer historischen Transformation: der fortschreitenden Ausweitung der Disziplinarsysteme im Laufe des I7. und I8. Jahrhunderts, ihrer Vervielfältigung durch den gesamten Gesellschaftskörper hindurch, der Formierung der »Disziplinargesellschaft«.

Eine umfassende Verallgemeinerung der Disziplinen, die in Benthams Machtphysik zu Protokoll gegeben wird, hat sich im Laufe des klassischen Zeitalters vollzogen. Die Disziplinarinstitutionen haben sich vervielfältigt, ihr Netz ist immer umfassender geworden und immer mehr sind sie aus ihrer Randlage herausgerückt: was einst eine Insel war, ein bevorzugter Platz, eine vorübergehende Maßnahme oder ein besonderes Modell, wird jetzt

zur allgemeinen Formel. Die Reglementierungen der frommen protestantischen Heerscharen eines Wilhelm von Oranien oder eines Gustav Adolf von Schweden sind zu den Reglements aller Armeen Europas geworden; in den Musterkollegs der Jesuiten oder in den Schulen eines Sturm, Batencour oder Demia zeichnen sich die allgemeinen Formen der Schuldisziplin ab; die Neuordnung der Hafen- und Militärspitäler dient der gesamten Reorganisation des Spitalwesens im I8. Jahrhundert als Vorbild.

Diese Ausweitung der Disziplinarinstitutionen ist jedoch nur der augenfälligste Aspekt verschiedener tieferer Prozesse: 1. Die Funktionsumkehr bei den Disziplinen. Erwartete man von den Disziplinen ursprünglich die Bannung von Gefahren, die Bindung unnützer oder unruhiger Bevölkerungen, das In-Schach-Halten großer Menschenansammlungen, so fordert man nun von ihnen, daß sie, wozu sie auch fähig werden, eine positive Rolle spielen und die mögliche Nützlichkeit von Individuen vergrößern. Die militärische Disziplin ist nicht mehr einfach ein Mittel, mit dem das Plündern, die Desertion und die Befehlsverweigerung verhindert werden sollen; sie wird zu einer technischen Voraussetzung dafür, daß die Armee nicht mehr als ein zusammengelesener Haufen existiert sondern als eine Einheit, die gerade aus ihrer Einheit eine Steigerung ihrer Kräfte schöpft; die Disziplin vergrößert die Geschicklichkeit eines jeden, koordiniert diese Geschicklichkeiten, beschleunigt die Bewegungen, vervielfacht die Feuerkraft, erweitert die Angriffsfronten, ohne die Angriffskraft zu schwächen, stärkt die Widerstandskraft usw. Die Arbeitsdisziplin hat zwar weiterhin die Aufgabe, den Respekt der Reglements und Autoritäten zu sichern sowie Diebstähle und Verschwendung zu verhindern, aber sie soll auch die Fähigkeiten, die Geschwindigkeiten, die Arbeitserträge und damit die Gewinne erhöhen; sie hat die Verhaltensweisen sittlich zu heben, aber sie soll sie vor allem auf ihr Ziel ausrichten und die Körper in eine Maschinerie, die Kräfte in eine Ökonomie integrieren. Als sich im I7. Jahrhundert die Provinzschulen und die christlichen Elementarschulen entwickelten, verwies man zur Rechtfertigung vornehmlich auf Übelstände: die Armen, die nicht über die Mittel verfügten, um ihre Kinder zu erziehen, ließen diese »in Unwissenheit über ihre Verpflichtungen; da sie sich nur mit Mühe durchbringen, sind sie nicht imstande, eine gute Erziehung zu vermitteln, die sie selber nie genossen haben«; das führt zu drei bedeutenden Mißständen: Unwissenheit von Gott, Müfiggang (mitsamt Trunksucht, Unzucht, Diebstahl, Straßenraub) und die Entstehung jener Bettlerhorden, »die jederzeit öffentliche Unruhen heraufbeschwören und gerade gut genug sind, um die Vorräte des Hotel-Dieu aufzubrauchen«. Zu Beginn der Revolution hingegen erwartet man vom Elementarunterricht unter anderem, »den Körper zu entwickeln und zu stärken«, das Kind »für die Zukunft zu einer mechanischen Arbeit zu befähigen«, ihm »einen scharfen Blick, eine sichere Hand und nützliche Fertigkeiten« zu vermitteln. Die Disziplinen werden immer mehr zu Techniken, welche nutzbringende Individuen fabrizieren. Darum rücken sie von den Rändern der Gesellschaft weg und von ihrer Rolle als Ausschliedung oder Sühnung, Einsperrung oder Rückzug, immer mehr ab; darum lösen sie allmählich ihre Verwandtschaft mit den religiösen Regeln und Klausuren. Und darum tendieren sie dazu, sich in die wichtigeren, zentraleren, produktiveren Bereiche der Gesellschaft, in ihre großen Hauptfunktionen einzuschalten: in die manufakturmäßige Produktion, die Vermittlung von Kenntnissen und Fähigkeiten, den Kriegsapparat. Daraus ergibt sich auch die im I8.

Jahrhundert zu beobachtende Tendenz, die Zahl der Disziplinarinstitutionen zu vermehren und die bestehenden Apparate zu disziplinieren.

2. Die Ausweitung der Disziplinarmechanismen. Während sich auf der einen Seite die Disziplinarinstitutionen vervielfältigen, tendieren ihre Mechanismen dazu, sich über die Institutionen hinaus auszuweiten, sich zu »desinstitutionalisieren«, ihre geschlossenen Festungen zu verlassen und »frei« zu wirken. Die massiven und kompakten Disziplinen lockern sich zu weichen, geschmeidigen, anpassungsfähigen Kontrollverfahren auf.

Gelegentlich handelt es sich um geschlossene Apparate, die neben ihrer spezifischen inneren Funktion auch nach außen hin eine Überwachungsrolle wahrnehmen, indem sie die Zone um sich herum kontrollieren. So muß die christliche Schule nicht einfach gelehrige Kinder heranbilden; sie hat auch zur Überwachung der Eltern beizutragen, indem sie sich über deren Lebensweise, Einkommensverhältnisse, Frömmigkeit und Sitten informiert. Die Schule

bildet winzige Gesellschaftsobservatorien und übt auch über die Erwachsenen eine regelmäßige Kontrolle aus: das schlechte Betragen eines Schülers oder sein Fehlen berechtigt nach Demia dazu, bei den Nachbarn nachzufragen, vor allem, wenn man annehmen muß, daß die Familie nicht die Wahrheit sagt; dann fragt man die Eltern selbst, um herauszufinden, ob sie den Katechismus und die Gebete kennen, ob sie die Laster ihrer Kinder ausrotten wollen, wie viele Betten es gibt und wie man sich nachts darin verteilt; am Ende eines solchen Besuchs steht vielleicht ein Almosen, ein geschenktes Bild oder die Zuteilung zusätzlicher Betten.', In ähnlicher Weise wird das Spital immer mehr als Stützpunkt für die medizinische Überwachung der Bevölkerung aufgefaft. Nach dem Brand des Hotel-Dieu im Jahre I772 wollen einige die große Anstalt, die so schwerfällig und unübersichtlich war, durch eine Reihe kleinerer Spitäler ersetzt wissen; diese sollen nicht nur die Kranken des Viertels aufnehmen, sondern auch Informationen sammeln, endemische oder epidemische Erscheinungen im Auge behalten, den Einwohnern Ratschläge und ambulante Behandlung erteilen und die Autoritäten bezüglich des Sanitätszustandes der Region auf dem laufenden halten.

Nicht nur von geschlossenen Institutionen, sondern auch von Kontrollpunkten aus, die in der Gesellschaft verstreut sind, schwärmen die Disziplinarprozeduren aus. Lange Zeit haben religiöse Gruppen und Mildtätigkeitsvereine diese Rolle der Disziplinierung der Bevölkerung gespielt. Von der Gegenreformation bis zur Juli-Monarchie haben sich die Initiativen dieses Typs vervielfältigt; ihre Aufgaben waren religiös (Bekehrung und Moralisierung), wirtschaftlich (Hilfeleistung oder Anhaltung zur Arbeit), politisch (Kampf gegen Unzufriedenheit oder Aufruhr). Beispielshalber sei aus den Reglements von Mildtätigkeitsvereinen in Pariser Pfarreien zitiert: das jeweils zu erfassende Territorium wird in Viertel und Kantone gegliedert, welche die Mitglieder des Vereins auf sich verteilen; bei ihren regelmäßigen Besuchen, arbeiten sie daran, verrufene Lokale und Spielhäuser zu überwachen und öffentliche Skandale, Gotteslästerungen, Ruchlosigkeiten sowie andere Ruhestörungen zu verhindern«; sie müssen auch Armenbesuche machen, um Erkundigungen einzuziehen, wie sie in den Reglemenes vorgeschrieben sind: Zustand der Wohnung, Kenntnis der Gebete, Besuch der Sakramente, Ausbildung in einem Handwerk, Sittlichkeit (und »ob sie nicht durch eigene Schuld in Armut geraten sind«); schließlich muß man sich »auf unverfängliche Weise danach erkundigen, wie sie sich in ihrer Familie verhalten, ob sie in Frieden miteinander und mit ihren Nachbarn leben, ob sie sich bemühen, ihre Kinder in Gottesfurcht zu erziehen... ob sie nicht ihre großen Kinder verschiedenen Geschlechts miteinander oder bei sich schlafen lassen, ob sie nicht Liederlichkeiten und Liebkosungen in der Familie, vor allem bei den großen Töchtern, erlauben. Zweifelt man daran, daß sie verheiratet sind, so ist nach ihrem Trauschein zu fragen«.

3. Die Verstaatlichung der Disziplinarmechanismen. In England haben private Gruppen religiöser Inspiration sehr lange die Funktionen gesellschaftlicher Disziplin wahrgenommen.

In Frankreich ist ein Teil dieser Aufgaben in den Händen von Wohltätigkeitsvereinen verblieben, doch der weitaus bedeutsamere Teil wurde ziemlich früh vom Polizeiapparat übernommen.

Die Organisation einer zentralisierten Polizei galt lange, auch in den Augen der Zeitgenossen, als der unmittelbarste Ausdruck des königlichen Absolutismus. Der Souverän wollte »eine ihm eigene Behörde, der er seine Befehle, seine Aufträge, seine Absichten anvertrauen konnte und die seine Anordnungen und Haftbefehle zu vollstrecken hatte«.

Tatsächlich war es so, daß die Polizeileutnantstellen und die sie krönende Generalleutnantstelle in Paris,. indem sie eine Reihe bereits bestehender Funktionen (Verfolgung von Verbrechern, Stadtwache, wirtschaftliche und politische Kontrolle) übernahmen, sie damit in eine einheitliche und rigorose Verwaltungsmaschine überführten: »Alle Kraft- und Informationsstrahlen, die von der Peripherie ausgehen, müssen zum Generalleutnant führen... Er setzt all die Räder in Bewegung, deren Gesamtheit die Ordnung und die Harmonie hervorbringt. Die Wirkungen seiner Verwaltung sind mit nichts besser zu vergleichen als mit der Bewegung der Himmelskörper.« Gewiß ist die Polizei als Staatsapparat organisiert und direkt ans Zentrum der politischen Souveränität angeschlossen worden. Aber ihr Machttyp, ihre Einsatzmechanismen und

-bereiche sind von unverkennbarer Eigenart. Es handelt sich um einen Apparat, der mit dem gesamten Gesellschaftskörper koextensiv ist - und zwar nicht nur aufgrund seiner äußeren Grenzen, sondern aufgrund seines Eingehens auf jedes einzelne Detail. Die Polizeigewalt muß »alles« erfassen: allerdings nicht die Gesamtheit des Staates oder des Königreiches als des sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Körpers des Monarchen, sondern den Staub der Ereignisse, der Handlungen, der Verhaltensweisen, der Meinungen - »alles, was passiert«.2~ Der Gegenstand der Polizei sind jene »Dinge eines jeden Augenblicks«, jene »geringfügigen Dinge«, von denen Katharina II. in ihrer Großen Instruktion sprach. Mit der Polizei befindet man sich in einer infinitesimalen Kontrolle, welche die oberflächlichsten und flüchtigsten Erscheinungen des Gesellschaftskörpers zu erfassen sucht. »Der Dienst der Polizeibeamten und -offiziere gehört zu den wichtigsten; seine Aufgabenbereiche sind gewissermaßen unbegrenzt und können nur in hinreichend detaillierter Prüfung wahrgenommen werden« das unendlich Kleine der politischen Gewalt.

Zu ihrer Durchsetzung muß sich diese Macht mit einer ununterbrochenen, erschöpfenden, allgegenwärtigen Überwachung ausstatten, die imstande ist, alles sichtbar zu machen, sich selber aber unsichtbar. Ein gesichtsloser Blick, der den Gesellschaftskörper zu seinem Wahrnehmungsfeld macht: Tausende von Augen, die überall postiert sind; bewegliche und ständig wachsame Aufmerksamkeiten; ein weites hierarchisiertes Netz, das nach Le Maire allein in Paris 48 Kommissare, 20 Inspektoren, dann die regelmäßig bezahlten »Beobachter«, die tageweise entlohnten Spitzel, die für Sonderaufgaben eingesetzten Denunzianten, und schließlich die Prostituierten umfaßt. Und diese unaufhörliche Beobachtung muß in einer Reihe von Berichten und Registern angehäuft werden; im I8, Jahrhundert versucht ein unermeßlicher Polizeitext die Gesellschaft mittels einer komplexen dokumentarischen Organisation abzudecken.24 Im Unterschied zur Gerichts- oder Verwaltungsschreiberei werden hier Verhaltensweisen, Einstellungen, Anlagen, Verdächtigkeiten von Individuen ununterbrochen registriert.

Wenngleich sich diese Polizeikontrolle insgesamt »in der Hand des Königs« befand, so funktionierte sie doch nicht nur in einer einzigen Richtung. Es handelt sich um ein System mit zwei Eingängen: einerseits hat es den unmittelbaren Willensäußerungen des Königs Folge zu leisten, indem es den Justizapparat umgeht; es hat aber auch von unten kommenden Gesuchen zu entsprechen: in ihrer überwiegenden Mehrheit gingen die berüchtigten Haftbefehle, die lange Zeit das Symbol königlicher Willkür waren und die Praxis der Haft politisch disqualifizierten, auf Ansuchen von seiten der Familien, der Werkmeister, der Notablen, der Nachbarn, der Pfarrherrn zurück; diese Haftbefehle hatten eine »Sub-Delinquenz« durch Internierung zu sanktionieren: die Vergehen der Ruhestörung, des Aufruhrs, des Ungehorsams, des schlechten Benehmens - also die »Delikte der Nicht-Überwachung«, die Ledoux aus seiner architektonisch vollkommenen Stadt verbannen wollte. Im I8. Jahrhundert fungiert die Polizei nicht mehr nur als Hilfstrupp der Justiz bei der Verfolgung von Verbrechern und als Instrument der politischen Kontrolle von Aufstandsbewegungen oder Revolten; sie übernimmt auch eine Disziplinierungsfunktion.

Diese Funktion ist komplex, weil sie die absolute Macht des Monarchen an die kleinsten in der Gesellschaft verstreuten Machtinstanzen knüpft und weil sie zwischen den geschlossenen Disziplinarinstitutionen (Werkstätten, Armee, Schulen) ein Verbindungsnetz spannt, das die von jenen offengelassenen Lücken füllt und die nichtdisziplinierten Räume diszipliniert, abdeckt, miteinander verbindet und mit ihrer bewaffneten Gewalt schützt: Interdisziplin und Metadisziplin. »Der Souverän gewöhnt das Volk durch eine kluge Polizey zur Ordnung und zum Gehorsam.« Die Organisation des Polizeiapparats im I8. Jahrhundert besiegelt eine die Dimensionen des Staates erreichende Verallgemeinerung der Disziplinen. Es wird nun verständlich, wie es möglich war, daß die Polizei, die unverhohlen der Seite der königlichen Macht nahestand, welche über die reguläre Justiz hinausging, mit einem Minimum an Modifikationen den Umbau der Justizgewalt überlebt hat und daß sie bis heute nicht aufgehört hat, der Justizgewalt ihr eigenes Übergewicht aufzuzwingen; gewiß ist sie der weltliche Arm der Justiz; aber vor allem ist sie kraft ihrer Reichweite und ihrer Mechanismen viel besser und viel enger als die Justiz ein Herz und eine Seele - oder vielmehr ein Körper - mit der Disziplinargesellschaft.

Gleichwohl wäre es nicht ganz richtig zu glauben, daß die Disziplinarfunktionen ein für allemal von einem Staatsapparat konfisziert und absorbiert worden sind.

Die »Disziplin« kann weder mit einer Institution noch mit einem Apparat identifiziert werden. Sie ist ein Typ von Macht; eine Modalität der Ausübung von Gewalt; ein Komplex von Instrumenten, Techniken, Prozeduren, Einsatzebenen, Zielscheiben; sie ist eine »Physik« oder eine »Anatomie« der Macht, eine Technologie. Und sie kann von »spezialisierten« Institutionen (Strafanstalten oder Besserungshäuser des I9. Jahrhunderts) eingesetzt werden; oder von Institutionen, die sich ihrer zur Erreichung ganz bestimmter Ziele bedienen (Erziehungsheime, Spitäler); oder auch von vorgegebenen Institutionen, die ihre inneren Machtmechanismen damit verstärken oder verändern (so wird eines Tages zu zeigen sein, wie sich die innerfamiliären Beziehungen, vor allem in der Zelle Eltern/Kinder, »diszipliniert« haben, indem sie seit dem klassischen Zeitalter äußere Modelle (schulische, militärische, dann ärztliche, psychiatrische, psychologische Modelle) übernommen haben, wodurch die Familie zum Hauptort der Disziplinarfrage nach dem Normalen und Anormalen geworden ist); oder durch Apparate, die aus der Disziplin ihr inneres Funktionsprinzip gemacht haben (Disziplinarisierung des Verwaltungsapparats seit der napoleonischen Zeit); oder schließlich durch Staatsapparate, die nicht ausschließlich aber wesentlich die Aufgabe haben, die Disziplin in einer ganzen Gesellschaft durchzusetzen (Polizei).

Eine Disziplinargesellschaft formiert sich also in der Bewegung, die von den geschlossenen Disziplinen, einer Art gesellschaftlicher »Quarantäne«, zum endlos verallgemeinerungsfähigen Mechanismus des »Panoptismus« führt. Es ist nicht so, daß die Disziplinarfunktion der Macht alle übrigen Funktionen ersetzt hätte; vielmehr hat sie sich in sie und zwischen sie eingeschlichen und, indem sie sie gelegentlich modifizierte, sie miteinander verband und sie erweiterte, ließ sie die Machtwirkungen bis in die feinsten und entlegensten Elemente dringen. Die Disziplinarfunktion gewährleistet eine infinitesimale Verteilung der Machtbeziehungen.

Wenige Jahre nach Bentham verfaßte Julius die Geburtsurkunde dieser Gesellschaft. Vom panoptischen Prinzip sprechend sagte er, es sei »eine in der Geschichte, nicht allein der Baukunst, sondern des menschlichen Geistes überhaupt, höchst bemerkenswerte Erscheinung«. In der Lösung eines technischen Problems zeichnet sich ein Gesellschaftstyp ab. Die Antike war eine Zivilisation des Schauspiels gewesen. ». . . der Menge den Anblick und die Überschauung Weniger verschaffen« - diesem Problem wurde die Architektur der Tempel, der Theater, der Zirkusse gerecht. Mit dem Schauspiel dominierten die »öffentliche Lebensweise«, die Intensität der Feste, die sinnliche Nähe. In diesen von Blut triefenden Ritualen gewann die Gesellschaft ihre Kraft und bildete für einen Augenblick gleichsam einen einzigen großen Körper. Die neuere Zeit stellt das umgekehrte Problem: »Wenigen oder einem Einzelnen die Übersicht Vieler zu gewähren«. In einer Gesellschaft, in der die Hauptelemente nicht mehr die Gemeinschaft und das öffentliche Leben sind, sondern die privaten Individuen einerseits und der Staat anderseits, können die Beziehungen nur in einer Form geregelt werden, die dem Schauspiel genau entgegengesetzt ist. »Erst der neueren Zeit blieb es aufbehalten, mit der umfassenderen Lenkung des Staates, und dessen stets tieferem Eindringen in die Zustände und Verhältnisse des bürgerlichen Lebens, zu den Hilfsmitteln der Vervollständigung jener auch schon die auf Überschauung berechnete Banart und Einrichtung für eine zahlreiche Menschenmenge bestimmter Wohn- und Aufenthaltsorte mitwirkend herbeizuziehen und in Anspruch zu nehmen.« Julius verstand als einen historischen Prozeß, was Bentham als ein technisches Programm beschrieben hatte. Unsere Gesellschaft ist nicht eine des Schauspiels, sondern eine Gesellschaft der Überwachung. Unter der Oberfläche der Bilder werden in der Tiefe die Körper eingeschlossen. Hinter der großen Abstraktion des Tausches vollzieht sich die minutiöse und konkrete Dressur der nutzbaren Kräfte. Die Kreise der Kommunikation sind die Stützpunkte einer Anhäufung und Zentralisierung des Wissens. Das Spiel der Zeichen definiert die Verankerungen der Macht. Die schöne Totalität des Individuums wird von unserer Gesellschaftsordnung nicht verstüm melt, unterdrückt, entstellt; vielmehr wird das Individuum darin dank einer Taktik der Kräfte und der Körper sorgfältig fabriziert. Wir sind

weit weniger Griechen, als wir glauben. Wir sind nicht auf der Bühne und nicht auf den Rängen. Sondern eingeschlossen in das Räderwerk der panoptischen Maschine, das wir selber in Gang halten - jeder ein Rädchen. Die Bedeutung Napoleons in der historischen Mythologie hat vielleicht darin einen ihrer Ursprünge: er steht an dem Punkt, wo sich der monarchische und rituelle Vollzug der Souveränität mit dem hierarchischen und steten Vollzug der unbegrenzten Disziplin trifft. Er ist derjenige, der alles mit einem einzigen Blick überragt, aber dem kein Detail, wie winzig es 1; auch sein mag, jemals entkommt: »Sie können glauben, daß kein Teil des Reichs der Überwachung entgeht, daß kein Verbrechen, kein Vergehen, kein Verstoß ohne Verfolgung bleiben kann und daß das Auge des Genius, der alles zu erleuchten weiß, die Gesamtheit dieser riesigen Maschine umfaßt, ohne daß ihm doch das geringste Detail entrinnen kann.« Im Augenblick ihres Hervortretens erscheint die Disziplinargesellschaft mit dem Kaiser noch im Gewande der Prunkherrschaft. Als Monarch, der gleichzeitig den alten Thron usurpiert und den neuen Staat organisiert, rafft er in einer symbolischen und letzten Gestalt einen langen Prozeß zusammen: das allmähliche Verlöschen der glänzenden Feste der Souveränität, das Verstummen der spektakulären Kundgebungen der Macht in einem alltäglichen Verfahren der Überwachung, im Panoptismus, in dem die Wachsamkeit der einander kreuzenden Beobachtungen den Blick des Adler-Sonnen-Auges bald überflüssig machen wird.

Die Formierung der Disziplinargesellschaft vollzieht sich innerhalb breiter historischer Prozesse, die ökonomischer, rechtlich-politischer und wissenschaftlicher Art sind.

I. Allgemein kann man sagen, daß die Disziplinen Techniken sind, die das Ordnen menschlicher Vielfältigkeiten sicherstellen sollen. Daran ist nichts charakteristisch, geschweige denn 5 außerordentlich. Jedem Machtsystem stellt sich dasselbe Problem. Das Eigenartige der Disziplinen ist, daß sie versuchen, angesichts der Vielfältigkeiten eine Machttaktik zu definieren, die drei Kriterien entspricht: die Ausübung der Macht soll möglichst geringe Kosten verursachen (wirtschaftlich ist das möglich durch geringe Ausgaben; politisch durch Diskretion, geringes Aufsehen, relative Unsichtbarkeit, Erregung von möglichst wenig Widerstand); die Wirkung der gesellschaftlichen Macht soll möglichst intensiv sein und sich so weit wie möglich erstrecken, ohne Niederlagen oder Lücken zu riskieren; schließlich soll sich diese »ökonomische« Steigerung der Macht mit der Leistungsfähigkeit der Apparate verbinden, innerhalb derer sie ausgeübt wird (ob es sich um pädagogische, militärische, industrielle, medizinische Apparate handelt). Es gilt also gleichzeitig die Fügsamkeit und die Nützlichkeit aller Elemente des Systems zu steigern.

Dieser dreifache Zweck der Disziplinen entspricht einer bekannten historischen Situation. Da ist einmal der demographische Wachstumsstoß des I8. Jahrhunderts: Vermehrung der nichtseßhaften Bevölkerung (eines der ersten Ziele der Disziplin ist das Festsetzen - sie ist ein gegen das Nomadentum gerichtetes Verfahren); rasche Vergrößerung der zu kontrollierenden und zu manipulierenden Gruppen (vom Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts bis zum Vorabend der Französischen Revolution hat sich die Zahl der Schüler vervielfacht, eben so die der Krankenhausinsassen; am Ende des I8. Jahrhunderts zählte die Armee in Friedenszeiten über 200 000 Mann). Der andere Aspekt der historischen Konstellation ist das Anwachsen des Produktionsapparates, der immer ausgedehnter, komplexer, kostspieliger wird und dessen Rentabilität darum gesteigert werden -muß. Die Entwicklung der Disziplinarprozeduren entspricht diesen beiden Prozessen oder vielmehr der Notwendigkeit ihrer gegenseitigen Anpassung. Die Relikte der Feudalmacht, die Strukturen der monarchischen Verwaltung oder die lokalen Kontrollmechanismen waren zur Erfüllung dieser Aufgabe ebensowenig fähig wie die unsichere Verflechtung dieser Strukturen: dazu war die Ausdehnung ihres Netzes zu lükkenhaft und regellos, war ihr Funktionieren zu konfliktträchtig und war vor allem die Art ihrer Machtausübung zu »kostspielig« im eigentlichen Sinn des Wortes: nicht nur, weil sie die Staatskasse viel kostete; weil das System der käuflichen Ämter und der Verpachtungen auf der Bevölkerung schwer lastete; weil sie aufgrund der Widerstände, die sie hervorrief, sich ständig wieder verstärken mußte; weil sie sich wesentlich kraft »Enthebung« durchsetzte: Eintreibung von Geld oder von Naturalien durch die Steuererhebung des Monarchen, des Grundherrn, der Kirche; Beschlagnahme von Menschen oder ihrer Zeit durch Fronarbeit oder Aushebung; Einsperrung oder Ausweisung von Landstreichern. Die Entwicklung der Disziplinen markiert das Auftreten elementarer Machttechniken, die einer ganz anderen Ökonomie zugehören: es handelt sich um

Machtmechanismen, die nicht durch Abschöpfung wirken, sondern im Gegenteil durch Wertschöpfung, indem sie sich in die Produktivität der Apparate, in die Steigerung dieser Produktivität und in die Ausnutzung der Produkte vollständig integrieren. An die Stelle des Prinzips von Gewalt/ Beraubung setzen die Disziplinen das Prinzip von Milde/Produktion/Profit. Die Disziplinen sind Techniken, die gemäß diesem Prinzip die Vielfältigkeit der Menschen und die Vervielfältigung der Produktionsapparate in Übereinstimmung bringen (wobei unter Produktion auch die Produktion von Wissen und Fähigkeiten in der Schule, die Produktion von Gesundheit in den Spitälern, die Produktion von Zerstörungskraft mit der Armee zu verstehen ist).

Bei dieser Anpassungsaufgabe hat die Disziplin verschiedene Probleme zu lösen, für welche die alte Machtökonomie schlecht gerüstet war. Die Disziplin vermag die Widrigkeit der Massenphänomene zu verringern: sie kann an der Vielfältigkeit dasjenige reduzieren, was sie unhandlicher als eine Einheit macht; sie kann dasjenige einschränken, was sich der Ausnutzung ihrer Elemente sowie ihrer Summe widersetzt; sie kann alles reduzieren, was in ihr die Vorteile der Zahl zu vernichten droht; darum ist die Disziplin festsetzend; sie bringt Bewegungen zum Stillstand oder unter Regeln; sie löst Verwirrungen und kompakte Zusammenballungen in sichere Kreisläufe und kalkulierte Verteilungen auf. Sie muß auch all die Kräfte bewältigen, die sich mit der Bildung einer organisierten Vielfalt formieren; sie muß die Wirkungen der Gegenmacht neutralisieren, die der beherrschenden Macht Widerstand entgegensetzen: Unruhen, Aufstände, spontane Organisationen, Zusammenschlüsse - alle Formen horizontaler Verbindung. Darum treffen die Disziplinen die Vorkehrungen der Scheidewand und der Vertikalität; darum installieren sie zwischen den verschiedenen Elementen einer Ebene möglichst dichte Abschottungen; darum spannen sie enge Netze straffer Hierarchie: der inneren Widerstandskraft der Vielfältigkeit setzen sie das Verfahren der stetigen und individualisierenden Pyramide entgegen. Die Disziplinen müssen auch die besondere Nützlichkeit eines jeden Elements der Vielfältigkeit steigern, und zwar mit möglichst schnellen und kostensparenden Methoden - d. h. unter Verwendung der Vielfältigkeit selbst als Instrument dieser Steigerung: um aus den Körpern das Maximum an Zeit und an Kräften herauszuholen, werden die komplexen Methoden der Zeiteinteilung, der kollektiven Dressuren, der Übungen, der zugleich globalen und detaillierten Überwachung eingesetzt. Überdies müssen die Disziplinen den Nützlichkeitseffekt der Vielfältigkeiten steigern und jede von ihnen noch vorteilhafter machen, als es die bloße Summe ihrer Elemente wäre; zur Erhöhung der Nutzbarkeit des Vielfältigen definieren die Disziplinen Taktiken der Anordnung, der wechselseitigen Anpassung der Körper, der Gesten und Rhythmen, Taktiken der Differenzierung und wechselseitigen Koordinierung von Fähigkeiten im Hinblick auf Apparate oder Aufgaben. Schließlich hat die Disziplin die Machtbeziehungen nicht oberhalb der Vielfältigkeiten Spiel zu bringen, sondern in deren eigenem Gewebe und so diskret wie möglich, möglichst gut eingefügt in die übrigen Funktionen dieser Vielfältigkeiten und möglichst kostensparend: dem entsprechen Machtinstrumente, die anonym und mit der von ihnen organisierten Vielfältigkeit koextensiv sind, wie die hierarchische Überwachung, die lückenlose Registrierung, die immerwährende Beurteilung und Klassifizierung. An die Stelle einer Macht, die sich durch das unübersehbare Auftreten der Machtausübenden manifestiert, setzen die Disziplinen eine Macht, welche die Objekte ihrer Machtausübung insgeheim heimtückisch vergegenständlicht; anstatt prunkvolle Zeichen von Souveränität zu entfalten, formieren sie ein Wissen von den unterworfenen Subjekten. Die Disziplinen sind also die Gesamtheit der winzigen technischen Erfindungen, welche die nutzbare Größe der Vielfältigkeiten vergrößern halfen, indem sie die nachteiligen Wirkungen der Macht verringerten, die sie beherrschen muß, um sie richtig nützlich zu machen. Eine Vielfältigkeit - ob es sich um eine Werkstätte oder um eine Nation, um eine Armee oder um eine Schule handelt - erreicht die Schwelle der Disziplin, wenn das Verhältnis zwischen ihrer nützlichen Größe und ihrem Machteinsatzvorteilhaftwird.

Wenn der ökonomische Aufstieg des Abendlandes auf die Verfahren zurückzuführen ist, welche die Akkumulation des Kapitals ermöglicht haben, so kann man vielleicht sagen, daß die Methoden zur Bewältigung der Akkumulation von Menschen die politische Überholung der traditionellen, rituellen, kostspieligen, gewaltsamen Machtformen ermöglicht haben, die alsbald obsolet wurden und von einer verfeinerten und kalkulierten Technologie der

Unterwerfung/Subjektivierung abgelöst wurden. Die beiden Prozesse, Akkumulation der Menschen und Akkumulation des Kapitals, können indes nicht getrennt werden; das Problem der Anhäufung der Menschen wäre nicht zu lösen gewesen, ohne das Anwachsen eines Produktionsapparates, der diese Menschen sowohl erhalten wie nutzbar gemacht hat; umgekehrt wird die Bewegung der Kapitalakkumulation von den Techniken beschleunigt, welche die angehäufte Vielfalt der Menschen nutzen. Insbesondere waren die technologischen Veränderungen des Produktionsapparats, die Arbeitsteilung und die Ausarbeitung von Disziplinarprozeduren sehr eng miteinander verflochten. Jedes Element hat das andere möglich und notwendig gemacht und ihm als Modell gedient. Die Disziplinarpyramide hat die kleine Machtzelle gebildet, innerhalb derer die Teilung, die Koordinierung und die Kontrolle der Aufgaben durchgesetzt und wirksam gemacht wurden; und die analytische Einteilung der Zeit der Gesten, der Kräfte und der Körper hat ein Operationsschema gebildet, das man leicht von zu unterwerfenden Gruppen auf die Mechanismen der Produktion übertragen konnte; die massive Projektion von militärischen Methoden auf die industrielle Organisation war ein Beispiel für diese Modellierung der Arbeitsteilung durch Muster der Macht. Aber umgekehrt hat sich die technische Analyse des Produktionsprozesses mit seiner maschinenmäßigen Zerlegung auf die Arbeitskraft projiziert, die den Produktionsprozeß sicherzustellen hatte: die Konstitution jener Disziplinarmaschinen, in denen die individuellen Kräfte zusammengefügt und damit erweitert werden, ist das Ergebnis dieser Projektion. Wir können sagen, daß die Disziplin das einheitliche technische Verfahren ist, durch welches die Kraft des Körpers zu den geringsten Kosten als »politische« Kraft zurückgeschraubt und als nutzbare Kraft gesteigert wird. Das Wachstum einer kapitalistischen Wirtschaft hat die Eigenart der Disziplinargewalt hervorgerufen, deren allgemeine Formeln, deren Prozeduren zur Unterwerfung der Kräfte und der Körper, deren »politische Anatomie« in sehr unterschiedlichen politischen Regimen, Apparaten oder Institutionen eingesetzt werden können.

2. Die panoptische Spielart der Macht- die auf einer elementaren, technischen, materiellen Ebene liegt - ist nicht direkt von den großen rechtlich-politischen Strukturen einer Gesellschaft abhängig und bildet auch nicht deren unmittelbare Verlängerung. Sie ist aber auch nicht ganz unabhängig davon. Der historische Prozeß, durch den die Bourgeeisie im Laufe des I8. Jahrhunderts zur politisch dominierenden Klasse wurde, hat sich hinter der Einführung eines ausdrücklichen, kodifizierten und formell egalitären rechtlichen Rahmens verstellt und ist als Organisation eines parlamentarischen und repräsentativen Regimes aufgetreten. Die Entwicklung und Verallgemeinerung der Disziplinaranlagen bildeten jedoch die dunkle Kehrseite dieser Prozesse. Die allgemeine Rechtsform, die ein System prinzipiell gleicher Rechte garantierte, ruhte auf jenen unscheinbaren, alltäglichen und physischen Mechanismen auf, auf jenen wesenhaft ungleichen und asymmetrischen Systemen einer Mikromacht- den Disziplinen. Wenn es das repräsentative Regime formell ermöglicht, daß der Wille aller, direkt oder indirekt, mit oder ohne Vermittlung, die fundamentale Instanz der Souveränität bildet, so garantieren doch die Disziplinen im Unterbau die Unterwerfung der Kräfte und der Körper. Die wirklichen und körperlichen Disziplinen bildeten die Basis und das Untergeschoß zu den formellen und rechtlichen Freiheiten. Mochte auch der Vertrag als ideale Grundlegung des Rechts und der politischen Macht erdacht werden: der Panoptismus stellte das allgemein verbreitete technische Zwangsverfahren dar. Und er hat nicht aufgehört, an den Rechtsstrukturen der Gesellschaft von unten her zu arbeiten, um die wirklichen Machtmechanismen im Gegensatz zu ihrem formellen Rahmen wirken zu lassen. Die »Aufklärung«, welche die Freiheiten entdeckt hat, hat auch die Disziplinen erfunden.

Scheinbar sind die Disziplinen nichts anderes als ein Subsystem des Rechts. Sie scheinen die allgemeinen Rechtsformen auf die infinitesimale Ebene der Einzelexistenzen hin fortzuschreiben; oder sie erscheinen als Anlernmöglichkeiten, die das Individuum zur Integration in die allgemeinen Anforderungen befähigen. Somit würden sie die eine Rechtsform fortsetzen, indem sie sie auf Einzelfälle anwendeten und dabei kleinlicher und auch nachsichtiger würden. Tatsächlich sind die Disziplinen eher als eine Art Gegenrecht zu betrachten. Sie haben nämlich gerade die Aufgabe, unübersteigbare Asymmetrien einzuführen und Gegenseitigkeiten auszuschließen. Zunächst schafft die Disziplin zwischen den Individuen ein »privates« Band, das ein von der vertraglichen Verpflichtung gänzlich

unterschiedenes Zwangsverhältnis ist; zwar kann die Zustimmung zu einer Disziplin durch Vertrag besiegelt werden; aber die Art ihrer Durchsetzung, die Spielregeln ihrer Mechanismen, die unumkehrbare Unterordnung der einen li unter die anderen, die immer an eine Seite gebundene Übermacht, die ungleichen Positionen der verschiedenen »Partner« hinsichtlich der gemeinsamen Regelung setzen die Disziplinarbande dem Vertragsband scharf entgegen und führen zur systematischen Verfälschung des Vertragsbandes, sobald es einen Disziplinarmechanismus zum Inhalt hat. Es ist bekannt, wie viele wirkliche Verfahren die Rechtsfiktion des Arbeitsvertrages verbiegen: die Disziplin am Arbeitsplatz ist davon nicht die unwichtigste. Dazu kommt, daß die rechtlichen Systeme nach allgemeinen Normen Rechtssubjekte qualifizieren, während die Disziplinen charakterisieren, klassifizieren, spezialisieren; sie verteilen die Individuen entlang einer Skala, ordnen sie um eine Norm herum an, hierarchisieren sie untereinander und am Ende disqualifizieren sie sie zu Invaliden. Wo sie und solange sie ihre Kontrolle ausüben und die Asymmetrien ihrer Macht ins Spiel bringen, vollziehen die Disziplinen jedenfalls eine Suspension des Rechts, die zwar niemals total ist, aber auch niemals ganz eingestellt wird. Wie geregelt und institutionalisiert sie auch sein mag, in ihrem tatsächlichen Mechanismus ist die Disziplin immer ein »Gegenrecht«. Und wenn das allgemeingültige Rechtssystem der modernen Gesellschaft den Machtausübungen Grenzen zu setzen scheint, so hält doch ihr allgegenwärtiger Panoptismus im Gegensatz zum Recht eine sowohl unabsehbare wie unscheinbare Maschinerie in Gang, welche die Asymmetrie der Mächte unterstützt, verstärkt, vervielfältigt und die ihr gezogenen Grenzen unterläuft. Die unscheinbaren Disziplinen, die alltäglichen Panoptismen mögen unterhalb der großen Apparate und unterhalb der großen politischen Kämpfe liegen: in der Genealogie der modernen Gesellschaft bildeten sie zusammen mit der sie durchkreuzenden Klassenherrschaft das Gegenstück zu den Rechtsnormen der Machtverteilung. Zweifellos liegt hier der Grund dafür, daß man den kleinen Disziplinarprozeduren seit so langer Zeit eine solche Bedeutung zumißt: ihren kleinlichen listenreichen Erfindungen wie auch den Wissenschaften, die ihnen ein ehrenvolles Ansehen verschaffen; hier liegt auch der Grund dafür, daß man sich scheut, sie ersatzlos abzuschaffen; und daß man behauptet, sie bildeten die Grundlage für die Gesellschaft und ihr Gleichgewicht, wo ihre Mechanismen doch die Machtbeziehungen für immer und überall ins Ungleichgewicht bringen; und daß man sich hartnäckig darauf versteift, sie für die bescheidene aber konkrete Form jeder Moral auszugeben, wo sie doch ein Bündel von physisch-politischen Techniken sind.

Um aufs Problem der gesetzlichen Strafen zurückzukommen: das Gefängnis mit seiner ganzen Besserungstechnik hat hier seinen Platz, wo sich die kodifizierte Strafgewalt in eine Disziplinargewalt der Überwachung verbiegt; wo die allgemeingültigen Gesetzesstrafen selektiv auf bestimmte Individuen und immer auf dieselben treffen; wo die Wiedereinbürgerung des Rechtssubjekts durch die Strafe zu einer nutzbringenden Abrichtung des Kriminellen wird; wo das Recht in sein Gegenteil umschlägt, indem es sich zu einer bloßen Form veräußert, deren tatsächlicher und institutionalisierter Inhalt das Gegenrecht wird. Die Verallgemeinerung der Strafgewalt beruht nicht auf dem universellen Gesetzesbewußtsein der Rechtssubjekte, sondern auf dem endlos weit gespannten und unendlich eng geknüpften Netz der panoptischen Verfahren.

3. Einzeln genommen haben die meisten dieser Verfahren eine eigene Geschichte hinter sich.

Das Neue im I8. Jahrhundert liegt darin, daß sie durch ihre Zusammenfügung und Verallgemeinerung ein Niveau erreichen, auf dem die Formierung des Wissens und die Steigerung der Macht sich gegenseitig in einem geregelten Prozeß verstärken. Die Disziplinen treten damit über die Schwelle der »Technologie«. Zunächst das Spital, dann die Schule, noch später die Werkstatt: sie sind durch die Disziplinen nicht einfach »in Ordnung gebracht« worden; vielmehr sind sie dank ihnen solchermaßen zu Apparaten geworden, daß jeder Objektivierungsmechanismus darin als Subjektivierungs/Unterwerfungsinstrument funktioniert und daß jede Machtsteigerung neue Erkenntnisse ermöglicht.

Aufgrund dieser Verbindungen, die den technologischen Systemen eigen sind, konnten sich im Element der Disziplin die klinische Medizin, die Psychiatrie, die Entwicklungspsychologie, die pädagogische Psychologie, die Rationalisierung der Arbeit formieren. Es handelt sich also um einen zweifachen Prozeß: um eine epistemologische Enthemmung aufgrund

einer Verfeinerung der Machtbeziehungen und um eine Vervielfältigung der Machtwirkungen dank der Formierung und Anhäufung neuer Kenntnisse.

Die Ausweitung der Disziplinarmethoden gehört in eine breite historische Strömung hinein: die ungefähr gleichzeitige Entwicklung anderer Technologien - agronomischer, industrieller, ökonomischer Technologien. Auffallend ist jedoch, daß man neben der Montanindustrie, neben der beginnenden Chemie, neben den Methoden der staatlichen Finanzverwaltung, neben den Hochöfen und der Dampfmaschine den Panoptismus nur wenig gefeiert hat. Man sieht in ihm kaum mehr als eine kleine bizarre Utopie, einen boshaften Traum - als wäre Bentham der Fourier einer Polizeigesellschaft gewesen, mit dem Panopticon als Lebensgemeinschaft. Und doch hatte man mit dem Panopticon die abstrakte Formel einer sehr wirklichen Technologie: der Technologie der Individuen. Daß man wenig Lobreden darauf verwandte, hat seine Gründe; der offensichtlichste Grund ist der, daß die vom Panopticon eröffneten Diskurse dieser Technologie außer für akademische Klassifikationen nur selten den Status von Wissenschaften erreicht haben; der entscheidendste Grund aber ist wohl der, daß die von ihr eingesetzte und gesteigerte Macht eine unmittelbare und physische Macht ist, welche die Menschen gegeneinander ausüben. Für ein ruhmloses Ende ein schwer ein zugestehender Ursprung. Doch wäre es ungerecht, die Disziplinarprozeduren solchen Erfindungen wie der Dampfmaschine oder dem Mikroskop von Amici gegenüberzustellen. Sie sind viel weniger; in gewisser Weise sind sie allerdings viel mehr.

Ein historisches Äquivalent oder zumindest ein Vergleichspunkt ließe sich eher in der Technik der »Inquisition« finden.

Hat das I8. Jahrhundert die Techniken der Disziplin und der Prüfung erfunden, so läßt sich vielleicht sagen, daß das Mittelalter die Gerichtsuntersuchung erfunden hat. Allerdings auf ganz anderen Wegen. Das Untersuchungsverfahren, eine alte Technik der Steuererhebung und Verwaltung, entwickelte sich vor allem mit der Reorganisation der Kirche und dem Anwachsen der Fürstenstaaten im I2. und I3. Jahrhundert Damals konnte es in der Rechtsprechung der kirchlichen und dann der weltlichen Gerichtshöfe breiten Eingang finden. Die Untersuchung als autoritatives Erforschen einer festzustellen den oder zu bezeugenden Wahrheit setzte sich den alten Verfahren des Eides, des Gottesurteils, des Kampfgerichts, oder auch des Vergleichs zwischen einzelnen entgegen. Mit der Untersuchung nahm die souveräne Macht das Recht in Anspruch, das Wahre mittels gewisser geregelter Techniken zu ermitteln. Wenn die Untersuchung seither (und bis heute) mit der abendländischen Justiz eng verknüpft ist, so sollte man doch nicht ihren politischen Ursprung, ihre Verbindung mit der Geburt der Staaten und der monarchischen Souveränität vergessen und ebensowenig ihre weitere Entwicklung und ihre Rolle bei der Formierung des Wissens. Tatsächlich war die Gerichtsuntersuchung der erste aber grundlegende Ansatz zur Konstituierung der empirischen Wissenschaften; sie war die juristisch-politische Matrix des experimentellen Wissens, das am Ende des Mittelalters plötzlich entriegelt worden ist Die Mathematik mag in Griechenland aus den Techniken des Messens entstanden sein; die Wissenschaften von der Natur sind jedenfalls zu einem Teil am Ende des Mittelalters aus den Techniken der Gerichtsuntersuchung hervorgegangen. Das große empirische Erkennen, das die Dinge der Welt überzogen hat und in die Ordnung eines unbegrenzten, die »Tatsachen« feststellenden, beschreibenden und sichernden Diskurses transkribiert hat (und das in dem Augenblick, in dem die abendländische Welt mit der ökonomischen und politischen Eroberung eben dieser Welt begann), dieses empirische Erkennen hat zweifellos sein Operationsmodell in der Inquisition - jener unermeßlichen Erfindung, die unsere moderne Verzärtelung in einer schattigen Ecke unseres Gedächtnisses abgestellt hat. Was nun damals die politisch-juristische Untersuchung, die Verwaltungs- und Kriminalerhebung, die religiöse und die weltliche Ermittlung für die Wissenschaften von der Natur bedeuteten, das bedeutete die Disziplinaranalyse für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Diese Wissenschaften, an denen sich unsere »Menschlichkeit« seit über einem Jahr hundert be~eistert1 haben ihren Mutterboden und ihr Muster in der kleinlichen und boshaften Gründlichkeit der Disziplinen und ihrer Nachforschungen. Diese spielen vielleicht für die Psychologie, die Psychiatrie, die Pädagogik, die Kriminologie und so viele andere seltsame Kenntnisse eben die Rolle, die einst die schreckliche Macht der Inquisition für das ruhige Wissen von den Tieren, den Pflanzen, der Erde gespielt hat. Andere Macht, anderes Wissen.

An der Schwelle zum klassischen Zeitalter hat Bacon, der Jurist und Staatsmann, versucht,

für die empirischen Wissenschaften eine Methodologie der Untersuchung zu definieren.

Welcher Großsiegelbewahrer und Oberaufseher wird die Methodologie der Prüfung für die Humanwissenschaften verfassen? Aber vielleicht ist das gar nicht möglich. Während sich nämlich die Untersuchung aus ihrer historischen Verwurzelung im Inquisitionsverfahren gelöst hat, um eine Technik der empirischen Wissenschaften zu werden, ist die Überprüfung der Disziplinarmacht, in der sie sich ausgebildet hat, ganz nahe geblieben. Sie ist immer noch ein inneres Element der Disziplinen. Gewiß scheint sie eine spekulative Läuterung erfahren zu haben, indem sie sich in Wissenschaften wie die Psychiatrie und Psychologie integriert hat. Und in der Form von Tests, Gesprächen, Befragungen oder Konsultationen scheint sie die Disziplinarmechanismen zu korrigieren: die Schulpsychologie muß die Strenge der Schule ebenso kompensieren, wie das ärztliche oder psychiatrische Gespräch die Wirkungen der Arbeitsdisziplin zu korrigieren hat. Aber man täusche sich nicht: diese Techniken verweisen das Individuum nur von einer Disziplinarinstanz zur anderen und in konzentrierter oder formalisierter Spielart reproduzieren sie das jeder Disziplin eigene Schema von Macht/Wissen. Die Untersuchung wurde zum Ort der Naturwissenschaften, indem sie sich von ihrem politisch-juristischen Modell löste. Die Prüfung hingegen ist immer noch in die Disziplinartechnologie integriert.

Das Untersuchungsverfahren wurde im Mittelalter von oben an die Stelle der alten Anklagejustiz gesetzt. Die Disziplinartechnik hingegen ist heimtückisch und gleichsam von unten in eine Strafjustiz eingedrungen, die immer noch zum Typ der Inquisition gehört. Alle großen und charakteristischen Entwicklungen der modernen Strafjustiz- die Problematisierung des Verbrechers hinter seinem Verbrechen, das Bemühen um eine Bestrafung, die bessert, heilt und normalisiert, sowie die Aufteilung des Urteilsaktes auf verschiedene Instanzen, die das Individuum messen, abschätzen, diagnostizieren, heilen, umformen sollen - all das verrät das Eindringen der Disziplinarprüfung in die gerichtliche Inquisition.

Was sich nunmehr der Strafjustiz als ihr Zielpunkt, ihr »nützlicher« Gegenstand, anbietet, ist nicht mehr der gegen den Körper des Königs ausgespielte Körper des Schuldigen; und auch nicht das Rechtssubjekt eines idealen Vertrags; sondern das Disziplinarindividuum. Im Ancien Regime war der Grenzfall der Strafjustiz die endlose Zerstückelung des Körpers des Königsmörders: die Manifestation der stärksten Macht am Körper des größten Verbrechers, dessen vollkommene Zerstörung das Verbrechen in seiner Wahrheit aufblitzen läßt. Der Idealfall des heutigen Strafsystems wäre die unbegrenzte Disziplin: eine Befragung ohne Ende; eine Ermittlung, die bruchlos in eine minutiöse und immer analytischer werdende Beobachtung überginge; ein Urteil, mit dem ein nie abzuschließendes Dossier eröffnet würde; die kalkulierte Milde einer Strafe, die von der erbitterten Neugier einer Überprüfung durchsetzt wäre; ein Verfahren, das sowohl andauerndes Messen des Abstandes zu einer unerreichbaren Norm wäre wie auch die asymptotische Bewegung, die endlos zur Einholung dieser Norm zwänge. Die Marter ist der logische Abschluß eines von der Inquisition angeordneten Verfahrens. Das »Unter-Beobachtung-Stellen« ist die natürliche Verlängerung einer von den Disziplinarmethoden und Überprüfungsverfahren erfaßten Justiz. Daß das Zellengefängnis mit seinem Zeitrhythmus, seiner Zwangsarbeit, seinen Überwachungs- und Registrierungsinstanzen, seinen Normalitätslehrern, welche die Funktionen des Richters fortsetzen und vervielfältigen, zur modernen Strafanlage geworden ist - was ist daran verwunderlich? Was ist daran verwunderlich, wenn das Gefängnis den Fabriken, den Schulen, den Kasernen, den Spitälern gleicht, die allesamt den Gefängnissen gleichen?

Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias

Foucault.info | Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias

This text, entitled "Des Espace Autres," and published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité in October, 1984, was the basis of a lecture given by Michel Foucault in March 1967. Although not reviewed for publication by the author and thus not part of the official corpus of his work, the manuscript was relaeased into the public domain for an exhibition in Berlin shortly before Michel Foucault's death.

Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec.

The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth century found its essential mythological resources in the second principle of thermaldynamics- The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment. I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein. One could perhaps say that certain ideological conflicts animating present-day polemics oppose the pious descendents of time and the determined inhabitants of space. Structuralism, or at least which is grouped under this slightly too general name, is the effort to establish, between elements that could have been connected on a temporal axis, an ensemble of relations that makes them appear as juxtaposed, set off against one another, implicated by each otherthat makes them appear, in short, as a sort of configuration. Actually, structuralism does not entail denial of time; it does involve a certain manner of dealing with what we call time and what we call history.

Yet it is necessary to notice that the space which today appears to form the horizon of our concerns, our theory, our systems, is not an innovation; space itself has a history in Western experience, and it is not possible to disregard the fatal intersection of time with space. One could say, by way of retracing this history of space very roughly, that in the Middle Ages there was a hierarchic ensemble of places: sacred places and profane plates: protected places and open, exposed places: urban places and rural places (all these concern the real life of men). In cosmological theory, there were the supercelestial places as opposed to the celestial, and the celestial place was in its turn opposed to the terrestrial place. There were places where things had been put because they had been violently displaced, and then on the contrary places where things found their natural ground and stability. It was this complete hierarchy, this opposition, this intersection of places that constituted what could very roughly be called medieval space: the space of emplacement.

This space of emplacement was opened up by Galileo. For the real scandal of Galileo's work lay not so much in his discovery, or rediscovery, that the earth revolved around the sun, but in his constitution of an infinite, and infinitely open space. In such a space the place of the Middle Ages turned out to be dissolved. as it were; a thing's place was no longer anything but a point in its movement, just as the stability of a thing was only its movement indefinitely slowed down. In other words, starting with Galileo and the seventeenth century, extension was substituted for localization.

Today the site has been substituted for extension which itself had replaced emplacement. The site is defined by relations of proximity between points or elements; formally, we can describe these relations as series, trees, or grids. Moreover, the importance of the site as a problem in contemporary technical work is well known: the storage of data or of the intermediate results of a calculation in the memory of a machine, the circulation of discrete elements with a random output (automobile traffic is a simple case, or indeed the sounds on a telephone line); the identification of marked or coded elements inside a set that may be randomly distributed, or may be arranged according to single or to multiple classifications.

In a still more concrete manner, the problem of siting or placement arises for mankind in terms of demography.

This problem of the human site or living space is not simply that of knowing whether there will be enough space for men in the world -a problem that is certainly quite important - but also that of knowing what relations of propinquity, what type of storage, circulation, marking, and classification of human elements should be adopted in a given situation in order to achieve a given end. Our epoch is one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites.

In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time. Time probably appears to us only as one of the various distributive operations that are possible for the elements that are spread out in space,

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Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias

Now, despite all the techniques for appropriating space, despite the whole network of knowledge that enables us to delimit or to formalize it, contemporary space is perhaps still not entirely desanctified (apparently unlike time, it would seem, which was detached from the sacred in the nineteenth century). To be sure a certain theoretical desanctification of space (the one signaled by Galileo's work) has occurred, but we may still not have reached the point of a practical desanctification of space. And perhaps our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred.

Bachelard's monumental work and the descriptions of phenomenologists have taught us that we do not live in a homogeneous and empty space, but on the contrary in a space thoroughly imbued with quantities and perhaps thoroughly fantasmatic as well. The space of our primary perception, the space of our dreams and that of our passions hold within themselves qualities that seem intrinsic: there is a light, ethereal, transparent space, or again a dark, rough, encumbered space; a space from above, of summits, or on the contrary a space from below of mud; or again a space that can be flowing like sparkling water, or space that is fixed, congealed, like stone or crystal.

Yet these analyses, while fundamental for reflection in our time, primarily concern internal space. I should like to speak now of external space.

The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives. our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.

Of course one might attempt to describe these different sites by looking for the set of relations by which a given site can be defined. For example, describing the set of relations that define the sites of transportation, streets, trains (a train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by).

One could describe, via the cluster of relations that allows them to be defined, the sites of temporary relaxation cafes, cinemas, beaches. Likewise one could describe, via its network of relations, the closed or semi-closed sites of rest - the house, the bedroom, the bed, el cetera. But among all these sites, I am interested in certain ones that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect. These spaces, as it were, which are linked with all the others, which however contradict all the other sites, are of two main types.

HETEROTOPIAS First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. I believe that between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror. The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass

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Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias

through this virtual point which is over there.

As for the heterotopias as such, how can they be described? What meaning do they have? We might imagine a sort of systematic description - I do not say a science because the term is too galvanized now -that would, in a given society, take as its object the study, analysis, description, and 'reading' (as some like to say nowadays) of these different spaces, of these other places. As a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live, this description could be called heterotopology.

Its first principle is that there is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute heterotopias.

That is a constant of every human group. But the heterotopias obviously take quite varied forms, and perhaps no one absolutely universal form of heterotopia would be found. We can however class them in two main categories.

In the so-called primitive societies, there is a certain form of heterotopia that I would call crisis heterotopias, i.e., there are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women. the elderly, etc. In out society, these crisis heterotopias are persistently disappearing, though a few remnants can still be found. For example, the boarding school, in its nineteenth-century form, or military service for young men, have certainly played such a role, as the first manifestations of sexual virility were in fact supposed to take place "elsewhere" than at home. For girls, there was, until the middle of the twentieth century, a tradition called the "honeymoon trip" which was an ancestral theme. The young woman's deflowering could take place "nowhere" and, at the moment of its occurrence the train or honeymoon hotel was indeed the place of this nowhere, this heterotopia without geographical markers.

But these heterotopias of crisis are disappearing today and are being replaced, I believe, by what we might call heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed. Cases of this are rest homes and psychiatric hospitals, and of course prisons, and one should perhaps add retirement homes that are, as it were, on the borderline between the heterotopia of crisis and the heterotopia of deviation since, after all, old age is a crisis, but is also a deviation since in our society where leisure is the rule, idleness is a sort of deviation.

The second principle of this description of heterotopias is that a society, as its history unfolds, can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion; for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society and the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs, have one function or another.

As an example I shall take the strange heterotopia of the cemetery. The cemetery is certainly a place unlike ordinary cultural spaces. It is a space that is however connected with all the sites of the city, state or society or village, etc., since each individual, each family has relatives in the cemetery. In western culture the cemetery has practically always existed. But it has undergone important changes. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery was placed at the heart of the city, next to the church. In it there was a hierarchy of possible tombs.

There was the charnel house in which bodies lost the last traces of individuality, there were a few individual tombs and then there were the tombs inside the church. These latter tombs were themselves of two types, either simply tombstones with an inscription, or mausoleums with statues. This cemetery housed inside the sacred space of the church has taken on a quite different cast in modern civilizations, and curiously, it is in a time when civilization has become 'atheistic,' as one says very crudely, that western culture has established what is termed the cult of the dead.

Basically it was quite natural that, in a time of real belief in the resurrection of bodies and the immortality of the soul, overriding importance was not accorded to the body's remains. On the contrary, from the moment when people are no longer sure that they have a soul or that the body will regain life, it is perhaps necessary to give much more attention to the dead body, which is ultimately the only trace of our existence in the world and in language. In any case, it is from the beginning of the nineteenth century that everyone has a right to her or his own little box for her or his own little personal decay, but on the other hand, it is only from that start of the nineteenth century that cemeteries began to be located at the outside border of cities. In correlation with the individualization of death and the bourgeois appropriation of the cemetery, there arises an obsession with death as an 'illness.' The dead, it is supposed, bring illnesses to the living, and it is the presence and proximity of the dead right beside the houses, next to the church, almost in the middle of the street, it is this proximity that propagates death itself. This major theme of illness spread by the contagion in the cemeteries persisted until the end of the eighteenth century, until, during the nineteenth century, the shift of cemeteries toward the suburbs was initiated. The cemeteries then came to constitute, no longer the sacred and immortal heart of the city, but the other city, where each family file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (3 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:39 πμ

Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias

possesses its dark resting place.

Third principle. The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Thus it is that the theater brings onto the rectangle of the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places that are foreign to one another; thus it is that the cinema is a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space, but perhaps the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites is the garden. We must not forget that in the Orient the garden, an astonishing creation that is now a thousand years old, had very deep and seemingly superimposed meanings. The traditional garden of the Persians was a sacred space that was supposed to bring together inside its rectangle four parts representing the four parts of the world, with a space still more sacred than the others that were like an umbilicus, the navel of the world at its center (the basin and water fountain were there); and all the vegetation of the garden was supposed to come together in this space, in this sort of microcosm. As for carpets, they were originally reproductions of gardens (the garden is a rug onto which the whole world comes to enact its symbolic perfection, and the rug is a sort of garden that can move across space).

The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world. The garden has been a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia since the beginnings of antiquity (our modern zoological gardens spring from that source).

Fourth principle. Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time - which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance.

From a general standpoint, in a society like ours heterotopias and heterochronies are structured and distributed in a relatively complex fashion. First of all, there are heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time, for example museums and libraries, Museums and libraries have become heterotopias in which time never stops building up and topping its own summit, whereas in the seventeenth century, even at the end of the century, museums and libraries were the expression of an individual choice. By contrast, the idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity. The museum and the library are heterotopias that are proper to western culture of the nineteenth century.

Opposite these heterotopias that are linked to the accumulation of time, there are those linked, on the contrary, to time in its most flowing, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival. These heterotopias are not oriented toward the eternal, they are rather absolutely temporal [chroniques]. Such, for example, are the fairgrounds, these' marvelous empty sites on the outskirts of cities that teem once or twice a year with stands, displays, heteroclite objects, wrestlers, snakewomen, fortune-tellers, and so forth. Quite recently, a new kind of temporal heterotopia has been invented: vacation villages, such as those Polynesian villages that offer a compact three weeks of primitive and eternal nudity to the inhabitants of the cities. You see, moreover, that through the two forms of heterotopias that come together here, the heterotopia of the festival and that of the eternity of accumulating time, the huts of Djerba are in a sense relatives of libraries and museums. for the rediscovery of Polynesian life abolishes time; yet the experience is just as much the,, rediscovery of time, it is as if the entire history of humanity reaching back to its origin were accessible in a sort of immediate knowledge, Fifth principle. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures. Moreover, there are even heterotopias that are entirely consecrated to these activities of purification -purification that is partly religious and partly hygienic, such as the hammin of the Moslems, or else purification that appears to be purely hygienic, as in Scandinavian saunas.

There are others, on the contrary, that seem to be pure and simple openings, but that generally hide curious exclusions. Everyone can enter into thew heterotopic sites, but in fact that is only an illusion- we think we enter where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded. I am thinking for example, of the famous bedrooms that existed on the great farms of Brazil and elsewhere in South America. The entry door did not lead into the central room where the family lived, and every individual or traveler who came by had the right to ope this door, to enter file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (4 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:39 πμ

Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias

into the bedroom and to sleep there for a night. Now these bedrooms were such that the individual who went into them never had access to the family's quarter the visitor was absolutely the guest in transit, was not really the invited guest. This type of heterotopia, which has practically disappeared from our civilizations, could perhaps be found in the famous American motel rooms where a man goes with his car and his mistress and where illicit sex is both absolutely sheltered and absolutely hidden, kept isolated without however being allowed out in the open.

Sixth principle. The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains.

This function unfolds between two extreme poles. Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory (perhaps that is the role that was played by those famous brothels of which we are now deprived). Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled. This latter type would be the heterotopia, not of illusion, but of compensation, and I wonder if certain colonies have not functioned somewhat in this manner. In certain cases, they have played, on the level of the general organization of terrestrial space, the role of heterotopias. I am thinking, for example, of the first wave of colonization in the seventeenth century, of the Puritan societies that the English had founded in America and that were absolutely perfect other places. I am also thinking of those extraordinary Jesuit colonies that were founded in South America: marvelous, absolutely regulated colonies in which human perfection was effectively achieved. The Jesuits of Paraguay established colonies in which existence was regulated at every turn.

The village was laid out according to a rigorous plan around a rectangular place at the foot of which was the church; on one side, there was the school; on the other, the cemetery-, and then, in front of the church, an avenue set out that another crossed at fight angles; each family had its little cabin along these two axes and thus the sign of Christ was exactly reproduced. Christianity marked the space and geography of the American world with its fundamental sign.

The daily life of individuals was regulated, not by the whistle, but by the bell. Everyone was awakened at the same time, everyone began work at the same time; meals were at noon and five o'clock-, then came bedtime, and at midnight came what was called the marital wake-up, that is, at the chime of the churchbell, each person carried out her/his duty.

Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.

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Des espaces autres (1967), Hétérotopies

Foucault.info | Des espaces autres (1967), Hétérotopies

Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits 1984 ," Des espaces autres " (conférence au Cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967), Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n " 5, octobre 1984, pp. 46-49.

M. Foucault n'autorisa la publication de ce texte écrit en Tunisie en 1967 qu'au printemps 1984.

La grande hantise qui a obsédé le XIX' siècle a été, on le sait, l'histoire thèmes du développement et de l'arrêt, thèmes de la crise et du cycle, thèmes de l'accumulation du passé, grande surcharge des morts, refroidissement menaçant du monde. C'est dans le second principe de thermodynamique que le XIXe siècle a trouvé l'essentiel de ses ressources mythologiques. L'époque actuelle serait peut-être plutôt l'époque de l'espace. Nous sommes à l'époque du simultané, nous sommes à l'époque de la juxtaposition, à l'époque du proche et du ,lointain, du côte à côte, du dispersé. Nous sommes à un moment où le monde s'éprouve, je crois, moins comme une grande vie qui se développerait à travers le temps que comme un réseau qui relie des points et qui entrecroise son écheveau. Peutêtre pourrait-on dire que certains des conflits idéologiques qui animent les polémiques d'aujourd'hui se déroulent entre les pieux descendants du temps et les habitants acharnés de l'espace. Le structuralisme, ou du moins ce qu'on groupe sous ce nom un petit peu général, c'est l'effort pour établir, entre des éléments qui peuvent avoir été répartis à travers le temps, un ensemble de relations qui les fait apparaître comme juxtaposés, opposés, impliqués l'un par l'autre, bref, qui les fait apparaître comme une sorte de configuration; et à vrai dire, il ne s'agit pas par là de nier le temps; c'est une certaine manière de traiter ce qu'on appelle le temps et ce qu'on appelle l'histoire.

Il faut cependant remarquer que l'espace qui apparaît aujourd'hui à l'horizon de nos soucis, de notre théorie, de nos systèmes n'est pas une innovation; l'espace lui-même, dans l'expérience occidentale, a une histoire, et il n'est pas possible de méconnaître cet 'entrecroisement fatal du temps avec l'espace. On pourrait dire, pour retracer très grossièrement cette histoire de l'espace, qu'il était au Moyen Age un ensemble hiérarchisé de lieux : lieux sacrés et lieux profanes, lieux protégés et lieux au contraire ouverts et sans défense, lieux urbains et lieux campagnards (voilà pour la vie réelle des hommes); pour la théorie cosmologique, il y avait les lieux supra-célestes opposés au lieu céleste; et le lieu céleste à son tour s'opposait au lieu terrestre; il y avait les lieux où les choses se trouvaient placées parce qu'elles avaient été déplacées violemment et puis les lieux, au contraire, où les choses trouvaient leur emplacement et leur repos naturels. C'était toute cette hiérarchie, cette opposition, cet entrecroisement de lieux qui constituait ce qu'on pourrait appeler très grossièrement l'espace médiéval : espace de localisation.

Cet espace de localisation s'est ouvert avec Galilée, car le vrai scandale de l'ouvre de Galilée, ce n'est pas tellement d'avoir découvert, d'avoir redécouvert plutôt que la Terre tournait autour du soleil, mais d'avoir constitué un espace infini, et infiniment ouvert; de telle sorte que le lieu du Moyen Age s'y trouvait en quelque sorte dissous, le lieu d'une chose n'était plus qu'un point dans son mouvement, tout comme le repos d'une chose n'était que son mouvement indéfiniment ralenti. Autrement dit, à partir de Galilée, à partir du XVIIe siècle, l'étendue se substitue à la localisation.

De nos jours, l'emplacement se substitue à l'étendue qui elle-même remplaçait la localisation. L'emplacement est défini par les relations de voisinage entre points ou éléments; formellement, on peut les décrire comme des séries, des arbres, des treillis.

D'autre part, on sait l'importance des problèmes d'emplacement dans la technique contemporaine : stockage de l'information ou des résultats partiels d'un calcul dans la mémoire d'une machine, circulation d'éléments discrets, à sortie aléatoire (comme tout simplement les automobiles ou après tout les sons sur une ligne téléphonique), repérage d'éléments, marqués ou codés, à l'intérieur d'un ensemble qui est soit réparti au hasard, soit classé dans un classement univoque, soit classé selon un classement plurivoque, etc.

D'une manière encore plus concrète, le problème de la place ou de l'emplacement se pose pour les hommes en termes de démographie; et ce dernier problème de l'emplacement humain, ce n'est pas simplement la question de savoir s'il y aura assez de place pour l'homme dans le monde - problème qui est après tout bien important -, c'est aussi le problème de savoir quelles relations de voisinage, quel type de stockage, de circulation, de repérage, de classement des éléments humains doivent être retenus de préférence dans telle ou telle situation pour venir à telle ou telle fin. Nous sommes à une époque où l'espace se donne à nous sous la forme de relations d'emplacements.

En tout cas, je crois que l'inquiétude d'aujourd'hui concerne fondamentalement l'espace, sans doute beaucoup plus que le temps; le temps n'apparaît probablement que comme l'un des jeux de distribution possibles entre les éléments qui se répartissent dans l'espace.

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Des espaces autres (1967), Hétérotopies

Or, malgré toutes les techniques qui l'investissent, malgré tout le réseau de savoir qui permet de le déterminer ou de lei formaliser, l'espace contemporain n'est peut-être, pas encore entièrement désacralisé - à la différence sans doute du temps qui, lui, a été désacralisé au XIXe siècle. Certes, il y a bien eu une certaine désacralisation théorique de l'espace (celle à laquelle l'ouvre de Galilée a donné le signal), mais nous n'avons peut-être pas encore accédé à une désacralisation pratique de l'espace. Et peut-être notre vie est-elle encore commandée par un certain nombre d'oppositions auxquelles on ne peut pas toucher, auxquelles l'institution et la pratique n'ont pas encore osé porter atteinte : des oppositions que nous admettons comme toutes données : par exemple, entre l'espace privé et l'espace public, entre l'espace de la famille et l'espace social, entre l'espace culturel et l'espace utile, entre. l'espace de loisirs et l'espace de travail; toutes sont animées encore par une sourde sacralisation.

L'oeuvre - immense - de Bachelard, les descriptions des phénoménologues nous ont appris que nous ne vivons pas dans un espace homogène et vide, mais, au contraire, dans un espace qui est tout chargé de qualités, un espace, qui est peut-être aussi hanté de fantasme; l'espace de notre perception première, celui de nos rêveries, celui de nos passions détiennent en eux-mêmes des qualités qui sont comme intrinsèques; c'est un espace léger, éthéré, transparent, ou bien c'est un espace obscur, rocailleux, encombré : c'est un espace d'en haut, c'est un espace des cimes, ou c'est au contraire un espace d'en bas, un espace de la boue, c'est un espace qui peut être courant comme l'eau vive, c'est un espace qui peut être fixé, figé comme la pierre ou comme le cristal.

Cependant, ces analyses, bien que fondamentales pour la réflexion contemporaine, concernent surtout l'espace du dedans. C'est de l'espace du dehors que je voudrais parler maintenant.

L'espace dans lequel nous vivons, par lequel nous sommes attirés hors de nous-mêmes dans lequel, se déroule précisément l'érosion de notre vie, e notre temps et e notre histoire, cet espace qui nous ronge et nous ravine est en lui-même aussi un espace hétérogène. Autrement dit, nous ne vivons pas dans une sorte de vide, à l'intérieur duquel on pourrait situer des individus et des choses. Nous ne vivons pas à l'intérieur d'un vide qui se colorerait de différents chatoiements, nous vivons à l'intérieur d'un ensemble de relations qui définissent des emplacements irréductibles les uns aux autres et absolument non superposables.

Bien sûr, on pourrait sans doute entreprendre la description de ces différents emplacements, en cherchant quel est l'ensemble de relations par lequel on peut définir cet emplacement. Par exemple, décrire l'ensemble des relations qui définissent les emplacements de passage, les rues, les trains (c'est un extraordinaire faisceau de relations qu'un train, puisque c'est quelque chose à travers quoi on passe, c est quelque chose également par quoi on peut passer d'un oint à un autre et puis c'est quelque chose également qui passe). On pourrait décrire, par le faisceau des relations qui permettent de les définir, ces emplacements de halte provisoire que sont les cafés, les cinémas, les plages. On pourrait également définir, par son réseau de relations, l'emplacement de repos, fermé ou à demi fermé, que constituent la maison, la chambre, le lit, etc. Mais ce qui m'intéresse, ce sont, parmi tous ces emplacements, certains d'entre qui ont la curieuse propriété d'être en rapport avec tous les autres emplacements, mais sur un mode tel qu'ils suspendent, neutralisent ou inversent l'ensemble des rapports qui se trouvent, par eux, désignés, reflétés ou réfléchis. Ces espaces, en quelque sorte, qui sont en liaison avec tous les autres, qui contredisent pourtant us les autres emplacements, sont de deux grands types.

HETEROTOPIAS Il y a d'abord les utopies. Les utopies, ce sont les emplacements sans lieu réel. Ce sont les emplacements qui entretiennent avec 1'espace réel de la société un rapport général d'analogie directe ou inversée. C'est la société elle-même perfectionnée ou c'est l'envers de a société, mais, de toute façon, ces utopies sont des espaces qui sont fondamentalement essentiellement irréels.

Il y a également, et ceci probablement dans toute culture, dans toute civilisation, des lieux réels, des lieux effectifs, des lieux qui ont dessinés dans l'institution même de la société, et qui sont des sortes de contreemplacements, sortes d'utopies effectivement réalisées dans lesquelles les emplacements réels, tous les autres emplacements réels que l'on peut trouver à l'intérieur de la culture sont à la fois représentés, contestés et inversés, des sortes de lieux qui sont hors de tous les lieux, bien que pourtant ils soient effectivement localisables. Ces lieux, parce qu'ils sont absolument autres que tous les emplacements qu'ils reflètent et dont ils parlent, je les appellerai, par opposition aux utopies, les hétérotopies ; et je crois qu'entre les utopies et ces emplacements absolument autres, ces hétérotopies, il y aurait sans doute une sorte d'expérience mixte, mitoyenne, qui serait le miroir. Le miroir, après tout, c'est une utopie, puisque c'est un lieu sans lieu. Dans le miroir, je me vois là où je ne suis pas, dans un espace irréel qui s'ouvre virtuellement derrière la surface, je suis là-bas, là où je ne suis pas, une sorte d'ombre qui me donne à moi-même ma propre visibilité, qui me permet de me regarder là où je suis absent - utopie du miroir. Mais c'est également une hétérotopie, dans la mesure où le miroir existe réellement, et où il a, sur la place que j'occupe, une sorte d'effet en retour ; c'est à partir du miroir que je me découvre absent à la place où je suis puisque je me vois là-bas. À partir de ce regard qui en quelque sorte se porte sur moi, du fond de cet espace virtuel qui est de l'autre côté de la glace, je reviens vers moi et je recommence à porter mes yeux vers moi-même file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.fr.html (2 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:41 πμ

Des espaces autres (1967), Hétérotopies

et à me reconstituer là où je suis; le miroir fonctionne comme une hétérotopie en ce sens qu'il rend cette place que j'occupe au moment où je me regarde dans la glace, à la fois absolument réelle, en liaison avec tout l'espace qui l'entoure, et absolument irréelle, puisqu'elle est obligée, pour être perçue, de passer par ce point virtuel qui est làbas.

Quant aux hétérotopies proprement dites, comment pourrait-on les décrire, quel sens ont-elles? On pourrait supposer, je ne dis pas une science parce que c'est un mot qui est trop galvaudé maintenant, mais une sorte de description systématique qui aurait pour objet, dans une société donnée, l'étude, l'analyse, la description, la " lecture " , comme on aime à dire maintenant, de ces espaces différents, ces autres lieux, une espèce de contestation à la fois mythique et réelle de l'espace où nous vivons; cette description pourrait s'appeler l'hétérotopologie.

Premier principe, c'est qu'il n'y a probablement pas une seule culture au monde qui ne constitue des hétérotopies.

C'est là une constante de tout groupe humain. Mais les hétérotopies prennent évidemment des formes qui sont très variées, et peut-être ne trouverait-on pas une seule forme d'hétérotopie qui soit absolument universelle. On peut cependant les classer en deux grands types.

Dans les sociétés dites " primitives " , il y a une certaine forme d'hétérotopies que j'appellerais hétérotopies de crise, c'est-à-dire qu'il y a des lieux privilégiés, ou sacrés, ou interdits, réservés aux individus qui se trouvent, par rapport à la société, et au milieu humain à l'intérieur duquel ils vivent, en état de crise. Les adolescents, les femmes à l'époque des règles, les femmes en couches, les vieillards, etc.

Dans notre société, ces hétérotopies de crise ne cessent de disparaître, quoi qu'on en trouve encore quelques restes. Par exemple, le collège, sous sa forme du XIXe siècle, ou le service militaire pour les garçons ont joué certainement un tel rôle, les premières manifestations de la sexualité virile devant avoir lieu précisément " ailleurs " que dans la famille. Pour les jeunes filles, il existait, jusqu'au milieu du XX siècle, une tradition qui s'appelait le " voyage de noces " ; c'était un thème ancestral. La défloration de la jeune fille ne pouvait avoir lieu " nulle part " et, à ce moment-là, le train, l'hôtel du voyage de noces, c'était bien ce lieu de nulle part, cette hétérotopie sans repères géographiques.

Mais ces hétérotopies de crise disparaissent aujourd'hui et sont remplacées, je crois, par des hétérotopies qu'on pourrait appeler de déviation : celle dans laquelle on place les individus dont le comportement est déviant par rapport à la moyenne ou à la norme exigée. Ce sont les maisons de repos, les cliniques psychiatriques; ce sont, bien entendu aussi, les prisons, et il faudrait sans doute y joindre les maisons de retraite, qui sont en quelque sorte à la limite de l'hétérotopie de crise et de l'hétérotopie de déviation, puisque, après tout, la vieillesse, c'est une crise, mais également une déviation, puisque, dans notre' société où le loisir est la règle, l'oisiveté forme une sorte de déviation.

Le deuxième principe de cette description des hétérotopies, c'est que, au cours de son histoire, une société peut faire fonctionner d'une façon très différente une hétérotopie qui existe et qui n'a pas cessé d'exister; en effet, chaque hétérotopie a un fonctionnement précis et déterminé à l'intérieur de la société, et la même hétérotopie peut, selon la synchronie de la culture dans laquelle elle se trouve, avoir un fonctionnement ou un autre.

Je prendrai pour exemple la curieuse hétérotopie du cimetière. Le cimetière est certainement un lieu autre par rapport aux espaces culturels ordinaires, c'est un espace qui est pourtant en liaison avec l'ensemble de tous les emplacements de la cité ou de la société ou du village, puisque chaque individu, chaque famille se trouve avoir des parents au cimetière. Dans la culture occidentale, le cimetière a pratiquement toujours existé. Mais il a subi des mutations importantes. jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, le cimetière était placé au cour même de la cité, à côté de l'église. Là il existait toute une hiérarchie de sépultures possibles. Vous aviez le charnier dans le lequel les cadavres perdaient jusqu'à la dernière trace d'individualité, il y avait quelques tombes individuelles, et puis il y avait à l'intérieur de l'église des tombes. Ces tombes étaient elles-mêmes de deux espèces. Soit simplement des dalles avec une marque, soit des mausolées avec statues. Ce cimetière, qui se logeait dans l'espace sacré de l'église, a pris dans les civilisations modernes une tout autre allure, et, curieusement, c'est à l'époque où la civilisation est devenue, comme on dit très grossièrement, " athée " que la culture occidentale a inauguré ce qu'on appelle le culte des morts.

Au fond, il était bien naturel qu'à l'époque où l'on croyait effectivement à la résurrection des corps et à l'immortalité de l'âme on n'ait pas prêté à la dépouille mortelle une importance capitale. Au contraire, à partir du moment où l'on n'est plus très sûr d'avoir une âme, que le corps ressuscitera, il faut peut-être porter beaucoup plus d'attention à cette dépouille mortelle, qui est finalement la seule trace de notre existence parmi le monde et parmi les mots.

En tout cas, c'est à partir du XIXe siècle que chacun a eu droit à sa petite boîte pour sa petite décomposition file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.fr.html (3 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:41 πμ

Des espaces autres (1967), Hétérotopies

personnelle; mais, d'autre part, c'est à partir du XIXe siècle seulement que l'on a commencé à mettre les cimetières à la limite extérieure des villes. Corrélativement à cette individualisation de la mort et à l'appropriation bourgeoise du cimetière est née une hantise de la mort comme " maladie " . Ce sont les morts, suppose-t-on, qui apportent les maladies aux vivants, et c'est la présence et la proximité des morts tout à côté des maisons, tout à côté de l'église, presque au milieu de la rue, c'est cette proximité-là qui propage la mort elle-même. Ce grand thème de la maladie répandue par la contagion des cimetières a persisté à la fin du XVIIIe siècle; et c'est simplement au cours du XIXe siècle qu'on a commencé à procéder aux déplacements des cimetières vers les faubourgs. Les cimetières constituent alors non plus le vent sacré et immortel de la cité, mais l' " autre ville " , où chaque famille possède sa noire demeure.

Troisième principe. L'hétérotopie a le pouvoir de juxtaposer en un seul lieu réel plusieurs espaces, plusieurs emplacements qui sont en eux-mêmes incompatibles. C'est ainsi que le théâtre fait succéder sur le rectangle de la scène toute une série de lieux qui sont étrangers les uns aux autres; c'est ainsi que le cinéma est une très curieuse salle rectangulaire, au fond de laquelle, sur un écran à deux dimensions, on voit se projeter un espace à trois dimensions; mais peut-être est-ce que l'exemple le plus ancien de ces hétérotopies, en forme d'emplacements contradictoires, l'exemple le plus ancien, c'est peut-être le jardin. Il ne faut oublier que le jardin, étonnante création maintenant millénaire, avait en Orient des significations très profondes et comme superposées. Le jardin traditionnel des persans était un espace sacré qui devait réunir à l'intérieur de son rectangle quatre parties représentant les quatre parties du monde, avec un espace plus sacré encore que les autres qui était comme l'ombilic, le nombril du monde en son milieu, (c'est là qu'étaient la vasque et le jet d'eau); et toute la végétation du jardin devait se répartir dans cet espace, dans cette sorte de microcosme. Quant aux tapis, ils étaient, à l'origine, des reproductions de jardins. Le jardin, c'est un tapis où le monde tout entier vient accomplir sa perfection symbolique, et le tapis, c'est une sorte de jardin mobile à travers l'espace. Le jardin, c'est la plus petite parcelle du monde et puis c'est la totalité du monde. Le jardin, c'est, depuis le fond de l'Antiquité, une sorte d'hétérotopie heureuse et universalisante (de là nos jardins zoologiques).

Quatrième principe. Les hétérotopies sont liées, le plus souvent, à des découpages du temps, c'est-à-dire qu'elles ouvrent sur ce qu'on pourrait appeler, par pure symétrie, des hétérochronies ; l'hétérotopie se met à fonctionner à plein lorsque les hommes se trouvent dans une sorte de rupture absolue avec leur temps traditionnel; on voit par là que le cimetière est bien un lieu hautement hétérotopique, puisque le cimetière commence avec cette étrange hétérochronie qu'est, pour un individu, la perte de la vie, et cette quasi éternité où il ne cesse pas de se dissoudre et de s'effacer.

D'une façon générale, dans une société comme la nôtre, hétérotopie et hétérochronie s'organisent et s'arrangent d'une façon relativement complexe. Il y a d'abord les hétérotopies du temps qui s'accumule à l'infini, par exemple les musées, les bibliothèques; musées et bibliothèques sont des hétérotopies dans lesquelles le temps ne cesse de s'amonceler et de se jucher au sommet de lui-même, alors qu'au XVIIe, jusqu'à la fin du XVIIe siècle encore, les musées et les bibliothèques étaient l'expression d'un choix individuel. En revanche, l'idée de tout accumuler, l'idée de constituer une sorte d'archive générale, la volonté d'enfermer dans un lieu tous les temps, toutes les époques, toutes les formes, tous les goûts, l'idée de constituer un lieu de tous les temps qui soit lui-même hors du temps, et inaccessible à sa morsure, le projet d'organiser ainsi une sorte d'accumulation perpétuelle et indéfinie du temps dans un lieu qui ne bougerait pas, eh bien, tout cela appartient à notre modernité. Le musée et la bibliothèque sont des hétérotopies qui sont propres à la culture occidentale du XIX' siècle.

En face de ces hétérotopies, qui sont liées à l'accumulation du temps, il y a des hétérotopies qui sont liées, au contraire, au temps dans ce qu'il a de plus futile, de plus passager, de plus précaire, et cela sur le mode de la fête.

Ce sont des hétérotopies non plus éternitaires, mais absolument chroniques. Telles sont les foires, ces merveilleux emplacements vides au bord des villes, qui se peuplent, une ou deux fois par an, de baraques, d'étalages, d'objets hétéroclites, de lutteurs, de femmes-serpent, de diseuses de bonne aventure. Tout récemment aussi, on a inventé une nouvelle hétérotopie chronique, ce sont les villages de vacances; ces villages polynésiens qui offrent trois petites semaines d'une nudité primitive et éternelle aux habitants des villes; et vous voyez d'ailleurs que, par les deux formes d'hétérotopies, se rejoignent celle de la fête et celle de l'éternité du temps qui s'accumule, les paillotes de Djerba sont en un sens parentes des bibliothèques et des musées, car, en retrouvant la vie polynésienne, on abolit le temps, mais c'est tout aussi bien le temps qui se retrouve, c'est toute l'histoire de l'humanité qui remonte jusqu'à sa source comme dans une sorte de grand savoir immédiat.

Cinquième principe. Les hétérotopies supposent toujours un système d'ouverture et de fermeture qui, à la fois, les isole et les rend pénétrables. En général, on n'accède pas à un emplacement hétérotopique comme dans un moulin.

Ou bien on y est contraint, c'est le cas de la caserne, le cas de la prison, ou bien il faut se soumettre à des rites et à des purifications. On ne peut y entrer qu'avec une certaine permission et une fois qu'on a accompli un certain nombre de gestes. Il y a même d'ailleurs des hétérotopies qui sont entièrement consacrées à ces activités de purification, purification mi-religieuse, mi-hygiénique comme dans les hammams des musulmans, ou bien file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.fr.html (4 of 5)19/5/2005 10:18:41 πμ

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purification en apparence purement hygiénique comme dans les saunas scandinaves.

Il y en a d'autres, au contraire, qui ont l'air de pures et simples ouvertures, mais qui, en général, cachent de curieuses exclusions; tout le monde peut entrer dans ces emplacements hétérotopiques, mais, à vrai dire, ce n'est qu'une illusion : on croit pénétrer et on est, par le fait même qu'on entre, exclu. je songe, par exemple, à ces fameuses chambres qui existaient dans les grandes fermes du Brésil et, en général, de l'Amérique du Sud. La porte pour y accéder ne donnait pas sur la pièce centrale où vivait la famille, et tout individu qui passait, tout voyageur avait le droit de pousser cette Porte, d'entrer dans la chambre et puis d'y dormir une nuit. Or ces chambres étaient telles que l'individu qui y passait n'accédait jamais au cour même de la famille, il était absolument l'hôte de passage, il n'était pas véritablement l'invité. Ce type d'hétérotopie, qui a pratiquement disparu maintenant dans nos civilisations, on pourrait peut-être le retrouver dans les fameuses chambres de motels américains où on entre avec sa voiture et avec sa maîtresse et où la sexualité illégale se trouve à la fois absolument abritée et absolument cachée, tenue à l'écart, sans être cependant laissée à l'air libre.

Sixième principe. Le dernier trait des hétérotopies, c'est qu'elles ont, par rapport à l'espace restant, une fonction.

Celle-ci se déploie entre deux pôles extrêmes. Ou bien elles ont pour rôle de créer un espace d'illusion qui dénonce comme plus illusoire encore tout l'espace réel, tous les emplacements à l'intérieur desquels la vie humaine est cloisonnée. Peut-être est-ce ce rôle qu'ont joué pendant longtemps ces fameuses maisons closes dont on se trouve maintenant privé. Ou bien, au contraire, créant un autre espace, un autre espace réel, aussi parfait, aussi méticuleux, aussi bien arrangé que le nôtre est désordonné, mal agencé et brouillon. Ça serait l'hétérotopie non pas d'illusion mais de compensation, et je me demande si ce n'est pas un petit peu de cette manière-là qu'ont fonctionné certaines colonies.

Dans certains cas, elles ont joué, au niveau de l'organisation générale de l'espace terrestre, le rôle d'hétérotopie. je pense par exemple, au moment de la première vague de colonisation, au XVIIe siècle, à ces sociétés puritaines que les Anglais avaient fondées en Amérique et qui étaient des autres lieux absolument parfaits.

Je pense aussi à ces extraordinaires colonies de jésuites qui ont été fondées en Amérique du Sud : colonies merveilleuses, absolument réglées, dans lesquelles la perfection humaine était effectivement accomplie. Les jésuites du Paraguay avaient établi des colonies dans lesquelles l'existence était réglée en chacun de ses points. Le village était réparti selon une disposition rigoureuse autour d'une place rectangulaire au fond de laquelle il y avait l'église; sur un côté, le collège, de l'autre, le cimetière, et puis, en face de l'église, s'ouvrait une avenue qu'une autre venait croiser à angle droit; les familles avaient chacune leur petite cabane le long de ces deux axes, et ainsi se retrouvait exactement reproduit le signe du Christ. La chrétienté marquait ainsi de son signe fondamental l'espace et la géographie du monde américain.

La vie quotidienne des individus était réglée non pas au sifflet, mais à la cloche. Le réveil était fixé pour tout le monde à la même heure, le travail commençait pour tout le monde à la même heure; les repas à midi et à cinq heures; puis on se couchait, et à minuit il y avait ce qu'on appelait le réveil conjugal, c'est-à-dire que, la cloche du couvent sonnant, chacun accomplissait son devoir.

Maisons closes et colonies, ce sont deux types extrêmes de l'hétérotopie, et si l'on songe, après tout, que le bateau, c'est un morceau flottant d'espace, un lieu sans lieu, qui vit par lui-même, qui- est fermé sur soi et qui est livré en même temps à l'infini de la mer et qui, de port en port, de bordée en bordée, de maison close en maison close, va jusqu'aux colonies chercher ce qu'elles recèlent de plus précieux en leurs jardins, vous comprenez pourquoi le bateau a été pour notre civilisation, depuis le XVIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours, à la fois non seulement, bien sûr, le plus grand instrument de développement économique (ce n'est pas de cela que je parle aujourd'hui), mais la plus grande réserve d'imagination. Le navire, c'est l'hétérotopie par excellence. Dans les civilisations sans bateaux les rêves se tarissent, l'espionnage y remplace l'aventure, et la police, les corsaires.

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Notes sur Manet.

Foucault.info | Notes sur Manet.

Manet by Nadar (1874) Dans le cadre de l'histoire de l'art, on peut situer Edouard Manet comme un précurseur de l'impressionnisme mais aussi sans doute de toute la peinture du XXème siècle, à travers laquelle se développe l'art contemporain.

Cependant la rupture en profondeur de Manet est plus difficile à situer que l'ensemble des modifications qui ont rendu possible l'impressionnisme, à savoir, de nouvelles techniques de la couleur avec l'utilisation de couleurs pures ainsi que de nouvelles formes d'éclairage et de luminosité. Tout de même on peut résumer ainsi les modifications profondes : Manet est celui qui, pour la 1ère fois dans l'art occidental, au moins depuis la Renaissance, s'est permis d'utiliser et de faire jouer, en quelque sorte à l'intérieur même de ses tableaux, de ce qu'il représentait, les propriétés matérielles de l'espace sur lequel il peignait.

Depuis le XVème siècle, depuis le Quattrocento, c'était une tradition d'essayer de faire oublier, de masquer ou d'esquiver le fait que la peinture était déposée ou inscrite sur un certain fragment d'espace qui pouvait être un mur dans le cas de la fresque ou un panneau de bois ou encore une toile ou un morceau de papier.

C'est ainsi que la peinture a essayé de représenter les 3 dimensions alors qu'elle reposait sur un plan à 2 dimensions.

C'est une peinture qui privilégiait les grandes lignes obliques et les spirales pour masquer et nier le fait que la peinture était pourtant inscrite à l'intérieur d'un carré ou d'un rectangle de lignes droites se coupant à angle droits.

La peinture essayait de représenter un éclairage intérieur à la toile ou encore un éclairage extérieur, venant du fond ou de droite ou de gauche, de manière à nier ou à esquiver le fait que la peinture reposait sur une surface rectangulaire, éclairée réellement par le jour. Elle fixait aussi une place idéale pour regarder.

Manet réinvente, ou peut-être invente-t-il le tableau-objet, comme matérialité, comme chose colorée que vient éclairer une lumière extérieure et devant lequel et autour duquel vient tourner le spectateur.

Je voudrait maintenant essayer de vous montrer cela sur les tableaux mêmes. Une douzaine de tableaux en 3 rubriques : 1. La manière dont Manet a traité l'espace même de la toile, comment il a fait jouer les propriétés matérielles de la toile, la superficie, la hauteur, la largeur ; de quelle manière il a fait jouer les propriétés spatiales de la toile dans ce qu'il représentait sur cette toile.

2. Comment Manet a traité le problème de l'éclairage, comment il a utilisé, non pas une lumière représentée qui éclairerait de l'intérieur du tableau, mais la lumière extérieure réelle.

3. Comment Manet a fait jouer la place du spectateur par rapport au tableau. (pour ce point je n'étudierai qu'une seule toile qui résume toute l'œuvre de Manet, une des plus bouleversante : le bal aux Folies-Bergères)

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Notes sur Manet.

Atelier aux Batignolles par Fantin Latour 1870, Musée d'Orsay.

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notes sur Manet I.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet I. I. Espace

1. La musique aux Tuileries (1862) London National Gallery Encore très classique.

2. Bal masqué à l'Opéra (1973) Washington National Gallery.

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notes sur Manet I.

Autre version du même tableau mais l'espace est fermé par derrière par le mur qui empêche la profondeur, le rectangle de la toile se trouve répété à l'intérieur du tableau. La seule ouverture tout en haut, sur des pieds, des pantalons etc. : effet ironique de papier peint. Manet a entièrement refermé l'espace : ce sont les propriétés matérielles de la toile qui sont représentées dans le tableau.

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notes sur Manet II.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet II.

3. Exécution de Maximilien (1867) Même caractéristiques que le précédent, tous les personnages se tiennent sur un même et étroit petit rectangle (sorte de marche d'escalier). Tous très resserrés, pas de distance entre peloton d'exécution et victimes mais les personnages du groupe à gauche sont plus petits que les autres alors qu'ils sont pourtant sur le même plan : technique pour représenter la distance par un signe purement graphique. Espace pictural où la perception n'est plus celle de tous les jours, mais celle qui découle des rapports arbitraires de la peinture.

4. Port de Bordeaux (1871) Jeux de verticales et d'horizontales qui sont la représentation géométrique de la géométrie même de la toile dans ce qu'elle a de matériel (effet de tissu).

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notes sur Manet III.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet III.

5. Argenteuil (1874), musée des Beaux-Arts, Tournai.

Même jeu de tissu.

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notes sur Manet III.

6. Dans la serre (1979), Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Résumé des précedents: -- tapisserie de plantes vertes, pas de profondeur.

-- énorme visage trop près pour être vu.

-- jeu de diagonales très courtes, écrasées par les horizontales et les verticales (le banc, la robe, le parapluie).

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notes sur Manet IV.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet IV.

Mais il existe une autre façon pour Manet de jouer des propriétés matérielles de la toile, car la toile, c'est bien en effet une surface à horizontales et verticales mais aussi une surface à deux faces, verso/recto.

7. La serveuse de bocks (1879) Musée d'Orsay.

Les 2 regards sont représentés dans deux directions opposées verso et recto, sans qu'aucun des deux spectacles ne nous soit donné. La toile ne dit au fond que l'invisible.

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notes sur Manet IV.

8. Gare St. Lazare (1872-73) National Art Gallery DC. Le spectateur se trouve en quelque sorte forcé à tourner autour de la toile, le spectacle est invisible au dessus des épaules des personnages.

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notes sur Manet V.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet V. II. Eclairage et lumière.

9. Le fifre (1866) Musée d'Orsay.

La profondeur a été supprimée, le fifre semble nulle part. L'éclairage vient de l'extérieur de la toile et plein face comme le prouvent la petite ombre de la main ainsi que celle du pied qui forme une diagonale avec le fourreau.

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notes sur Manet V.

10. Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) Musée d'Orsay.

Deux systèmes discordants et hésitants d'éclairage en profondeur.

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notes sur Manet VI.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet VI.

11. Olympia (1863) Musée d'Orsay.

Pourquoi ce tableau a-t-il fait scandale ? A la difference de la Vénus du Titien, où la source lumineuse à gauche crée un jeu entre la lumière et la nudité, dans l'Olympia, il n'y a pas ces trois éléments: la nudité, l'éclairage et le spectateur: c'est notre regard qui éclaire l'Olympia. Tout spectateur se trouve ainsi impliqué dans la nudité de la toile .

Vénus, Le Titien

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notes sur Manet VI.

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notes sur Manet VI.

12. Le balcon (1868-1869). Musée d'Orsay.

Combinaison du jeu sur l'espace et l'éclairage, pas de clair-obscur: toute la lumière en avant du tableau, toute l'ombre de l'autre coté. Les trois personnages se tiennent à la limite ombre/lumière, intérieur/extérieur, vie/mort.

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notes sur Manet VII.

Foucault.info | notes sur Manet VII. III. Jeu sur la place du spectateur.

13. Bar aux Folies Bergères (1881) London Courtland Institute.

Le reflet du miroir est infidèle, il y a distorsion entre ce qui est représenté dans le miroir et ce qui devrait y être. Trois systèmes d'incompatibilités: 1. Le peintre doit être ici et là.

2. Il doit y avoir quelqu'un et personne.

3. Il y a un regard descendant et ascendant.

Il est impossible de savoir où le peintre s'est placé et où nous placer nous-mêmes, rupture avec la peinture classique qui fixe un lieu précis pour le peintre et le spectateur.

Il s'agit là de la toute dernière technique de Manet: la propriété du tableau d'être non pas un espace normatif mais un espace par rapport auquel on peut se déplacer. Le spectateur est mobile devant le tableau que la lumière frappe de plein fouet, les verticales et horizontales sont perpétuellement redoublées, la profondeur est supprimée. Manet n'a pas inventé la peinture non-représentative mais la peinture-objet dans ses éléments matériels.

Edité pour Foucault.info Mars 2002, les notes parfois lacunaires ont été adaptées pour une lecture plus aisée, il est donc possible que des écarts apparaissent avec le texte original de la conférence, disponible sur bande audio à l'IMEC, Paris.

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Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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Parrhesia and Frankness

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Parrhesia and Truth

[TXT] 04.parrhesiadanger.html

Parrhesia and Danger

[TXT] 05.parrhesiacriticism.html Parrhesia and Criticism [TXT] 06.parrhesiaduty.html

Parrhesia and Duty

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Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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Parrhesia and Politics

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Parrhesia and Philosophy

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Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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Parrhesia in the Tragedies of Euripides

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Hippolytus [428 BC]

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The Bacchae [c.407-406 BC]

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Electra [415 BC]

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Ion [c.418-4171]

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Orestes [408 BC]

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The ‘Problematization’ of parrhesia

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Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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19K Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

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Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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Parrhesia and Community Life: Epictetus

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Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

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Parrhesia and Personal Relationships: Plutarch an>

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Discourse and Truth

Foucault.info | Discourse and Truth

Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) " My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. " Discourse & Truth, Concluding remarks by Foucault.

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Conclusion of Techniques

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Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia. (six lectures given by Michel Foucault at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983)

THE MEANING OF THE WORD "PARRHESIA" 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Parrhesia and Frankness Parrhesia and Truth Parrhesia and Danger Parrhesia and Criticism Parrhesia and Duty

THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORD “PARRHESIA” 1. Parrhesia and Rhetoric 2. Parrhesia and Politics 3. Parrhesia and Philosophy PARRHESIA IN THE TRAGEDIES OF EURIPIDES 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Phoenician Women Hippolytus The Bacchae Electra Ion Orestes Problematization of parrhesia

PARRHESIA AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS PRACTICES OF PARRHESIA 1.

2.

3.

4.

Socratic Parrhesia Parrhesia and Community Life Parrhesia and Public Life Parrhesia and Personal Relationships

TECHNIQUES OF THE PARRHESIASTIC GAMES 1.

2.

3.

4.

Seneca & evening examination Serenus & general self-scrutiny Epictetus & control of representations Conclusion

CONCLUDING REMARKS

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The Meaning of the Word " Parrhesia " The word "parrhesia" [παρρησία] appears for the first time in Greek literature in Euripides [c.484-407 BC], and occurs throughout the ancient Greek world of letters from the end of the Fifth Century BC. But it can also still be found in the patristic texts written at the end of the Fourth and during the Fifth Century AD -dozens of times, for instance, in Jean Chrisostome [AD 345-407] .

There are three forms of the word : the nominal form " parrhesia " ; the verb form "parrhesiazomai" [παρρησιάζοµαι]; and there is also the word "parrhesiastes"[παρρησιαστής] --which is not very frequent and cannot be found in the Classical texts. Rather, you find it only in the Greco-Roman period -in Plutarch and Lucian, for example. In a dialogue of Lucian, " The Dead Come to Life, or The Fisherman ", one of the characters also has the name " Parrhesiades "."[Παρρησιαδής] "Parrhesia" is ordinarily translated into English by "free speech" (in French by "francparler", and in German by "Freimüthigkeit"). "Parrhesiazomai" or “parrhesiazesthai” is to use parrhesia, and the parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., is the one who speaks the truth.

In the first part of today's seminar, I would like to give a general aperçu about the meaning of the word "parrhesia", and the evolution of this meaning through Greek and Roman culture.

1. Parrhesia and Frankness To begin with, what is the general meaning of the word " parrhesia "? Etymologically, "parrhesiazesthai" means " to say everything --from " pan " [πάυ] (everything) and " rhema " [δήµα] (that which is said). The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind : he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed 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. The word " parrhesia " then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician's own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people's mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.

If we distinguish between the speaking subject (the subject of the enunciation) and the grammatical subject of the enounced, we could say that there is also the subject of the enunciandum -which refers to the held belief or opinion of the speaker. In parrhesia the speaker emphasizes the fact that he is both the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciandum -that he himself is the subject of the opinion to which he refers. The specific " speech activity " of the parrhesiastic enunciation thus takes the form : " I am the one who thinks this and that " I use the phrase " speech activity " rather than John Searle's " speech act "(or Austin's " performative utterance ") in order to distinguish the parrhesiastic utterance and its commitments from the usual sorts of commitment which obtain between someone and what he or she says. For, as we shall see, the commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a

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certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk, and so on.

2. Parrhesia and Truth There are two types of parrhesia which we must distinguish. First ,there is a pejorative sense of the word not very far from " chattering " and which consists in saying any or everything one has in mind without qualification. This pejorative sense occurs in Plato, for example, as a characterization of the bad democratic constitution where everyone has the right to address himself to his fellow citizens and to tell them anything -even the most stupid or dangerous things for the city. This pejorative meaning is also found more frequently in Christian literature where such " bad " parrhesia is opposed to silence as a discipline or as the requisite condition for the contemplation of God. As a verbal activity which reflects every movement of the heart and mind, parrhesia in this negative sense is obviously an obstacle to the contemplation of God. Most of the time, however, parrhesia does not have this pejorative meaning in the classical texts, but rather a positive one. " parrhesiazesthai " means " to tell the truth. " But does the parrhesiastes say what he thinks is true, or does he say what is really true ? To my mind, the parrhesiastes says what is true because he knows that it is true ; and he knows that it is true because it is really true. The parrhesiastes is not only sincere and says what is his opinion, but his opinion is also the truth. He says what he knows to be true. The second characteristic of parrhesia, then, is that there is always an exact coincidence between belief and truth.

It would be interesting to compare Greek parrhesia with the modern (Cartesian) conception of evidence. For since Descartes, the coincidence between belief and truth is obtained in a certain (mental) evidential experience. For the Greeks, however, the coincidence between belief and truth does not take place in a (mental) experience , but in a verbal activity, namely, parrhesia. It appears that parrhesia, in his Greek sense, can no longer occur in our modern epistemological framework.

I should note that I never found any texts in ancient Greek culture where the parrhesiastes seems to have any doubts about his own possession of the truth. And indeed, that is the difference between the Cartesian problem and the Parrhesiastic attitude. For before Descartes obtains indubitable clear and distinct evidence, he is not certain that what he believes is , in fact, true. In the Greek conception of parrhesia, however, there does not seem to be a problem about the acquisition of the truth since such truth-having is guaranteed by the possession of certain moral qualities :when someone has certain moral qualities, then that is the proof that he has access to truth--and vice-versa. The " parrhesiastic game " presupposes that the parrhesiastes is someone who has the moral qualities which are required, first, to know the truth, and secondly, to convey such truth to others .

If there is a kind of " proof " of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage.

The fact that a speaker says something dangerous -different from what the majority believesis a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes. If we raise the question of how we can know whether someone is a truth-teller, we raise two questions. First, how is it that we can know whether some particular individual is a truth-teller ; and secondly, how is it that the alleged parrhesiastes can be certain that what he believes is, in fact, truth. The first question recognizing someone as a parrhesiastes - was a very important one in Greco-Roman society, and, as we shall see, was explicitly raised and discussed by Plutarch, Galen, and others. The second skeptical question, however, is a particularly modern one which, I believe, is foreign to the Greeks.

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3. Parrhesia and Danger Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him or her in telling the truth. For instance, from the ancient Greek perspective, a grammar teacher may tell the truth to the children that he teaches, and indeed may have no doubt that what he teaches is true. But in spite of this coincidence between belief and truth , he is not a parrhesiastes. However, when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and, more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him). And that was exactly Plato's situation with Dionysius in Syracuse -concerning which there are very interesting references in Plato's Seventh Letter , and also in The Life of Dion by Plutarch. I hope we shall study these texts later.

So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk. Of course, this risk is not always a risk of life . When, for example, you see a friend doing something wrong and you risk incurring his anger by telling him he is wrong, you are acting as a parrhesiastes. In such a case, you do not risk your life, but you may hurt him by your remarks, and your friendship may consequently suffer for it. If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority's opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrhesia. Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger : it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the " game " of life or death.

It is because the parrhesiastes must take a risk in speaking the truth that the king or tyrant generally cannot use parrhesia ; for he risks nothing.

When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself : you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to himself : he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.

4. Parrhesia and Criticism If, during a trial , you say something which can be used against you, you may not be using parrhesia in spite of the fact that you are sincere, that you believe what you say is true, and you are endangering yourself in so speaking. For in parrhesia the danger always comes from the fact that the said truth is capable of hurting or angering the interlocutor. Parrhesia is thus always a "game" between the one who speaks the truth and the interlocutor. The parrhesia involved, for example, may be the advice that the interlocutor should behave in a certain way, or that he is wrong in what he thinks, or in the way he acts, and so on. Or the parrhesia may be a confession to someone who exercises power over him, and is able to censure or punish him for what he has done. So you see, the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism : criticism of the interlocutor or of the speaker himself. " This is what you do and this is what you think ; but this is what you should not do and should not think . " "This is the way you behave, but that is the way you ought to behave. " " This is what I have done, and was wrong in so doing. " Parrhesia is a form of criticism, either towards another or towards oneself, but always in a situation where the speaker or confessor is in a position of inferiority with respect to the interlocutor. The

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parrhesiastes is always less powerful than the one with whom he or she speaks . The parrhesia comes from " below ", as it were, and is directed towards " above". This is why an ancient Greek would not say that a teacher or father who criticizes a child uses parrhesia . But when a philosopher criticizes a tyrant, when a citizen criticizes the majority, when a pupil criticizes his or her teacher, then such speakers may be using parrhesia.

This is not to imply, however, that anyone can use parrhesia . For although there is a text in Euripides where a servant uses parrhesia, most of the time the use of parrhesia requires that the parrhesiastes know his own genealogy, his own status ; i.e., usually one must first be a male citizen to speak the truth as a parrhesiastes. Indeed, someone who is deprived of parrhesia is in the same situation as a slave to the extent that he or she cannot take part in the political life of the city, nor play the " parrhesiastic game ". In "democratic parrhesia " -where one speaks to the assembly, the ekklesia-- one must be a citizen ; in fact, one must be one of the best among the citizens, possessing those specific personal, moral, and social qualities which grant one the privilege to speak.

However, the parrhesiastes risks his privilege to speak freely when he discloses a truth which threatens the majority . For it was a well-known juridical situation when Athenian leaders were exiled only because they proposed something which was opposed by the majority, or even because the assembly thought that the strong influence of certain leaders limited its own freedom. And so the assembly was, in this manner, " protected " against the truth. That, then, is the institutional background of " democratic parrhesia "--which must be distinguished from that " monarchic parrhesia " where an advisor gives the sovereign honest and helpful advice.

5. Parrhesia and Duty The last characteristic of parrhesia is this : in parrhesia, telling the truth is regarded as a duty. The orator who speaks the truth to those who cannot accept his truth, for instance, and who may be exiled, or punished in some way, is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak ; but he feels that it is his duty to do so. When, on the other hand, someone is compelled to tell the truth (as, for example, under duress of torture), then his discourse is not a parrhesiastic utterance . A criminal who is forced by his judges to confess his crime does not use parrhesia. But if he voluntarily confesses his crime to someone else out of a sense of moral obligation, then he performs a parrhesiastic act to criticize a friend who does not recognize his wrongdoing, or insofar as it is a duty towards the city to help the king to better himself as a sovereign. Parrhesia is thus related to freedom and to duty.

To summarize the foregoing, parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty.

More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia , 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 flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

That, then, quite generally ; is the positive meaning of the word " parrhesia " in most of the Greek texts where it occurs from the Fifth Century BC to the Fifth Century AD.

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The Evolution of the Word " parrhesia " Now what I would like to do in this seminar is not to study and analyze all the dimensions and features of parrhesia, but rather to show and to emphasize some aspects of the evolution of the parrhesiastic game in ancient culture (from the Fifth Century BC) to the beginnings of Christianity. And I think that we can analyze this evolution from three points of view.

1. Parrhesia and Rhetoric The first concerns the relationship of parrhesia to rhetoric--a relationship which is problematic even in Euripides. In the Socratic-Platonic tradition, parrhesia and rhetoric stand in a strong opposition ; and this opposition appears very clearly in the Gorgias, for example, where the word " parrhesia " occurs. The continuous long speech is a rhetorical or sophistical device, whereas the dialogue through questions and answers is typical for parrhesia ; i.e., dialogue is a major technique for playing the parrhesiastic game.

The opposition of parrhesia and rhetoric also runs through the Phaedrus-- where, as you know, the main problem is not about the nature of the opposition between speech and writing, but concerns the difference between the logos which speaks the truth and the logos which is not capable of such truth-telling. This opposition between parrhesia and rhetoric, which is so clear-cut in the Fourth Century BC throughout Plato 's writings, will last for centuries in the philosophical tradition. In Seneca, for example, one finds the idea that personal conversations are the best vehicle for frank speaking and truth-telling insofar as one can dispense, in such conversations, with the need for rhetorical devices and ornamentation. And even during the Second Century AD the cultural opposition between rhetoric and philosophy is still very clear and important.

However, one can also find some signs of the incorporation of parrhesia within the field of rhetoric in the work of rhetoricians at the beginning of the Empire. In Quintillian's Institutio Oratoria, for example (Book IX, Chapter II), Quintillian explains that some rhetorical figures are specifically adapted for intensifying the emotions of the audience ; and such technical figures he calls by the name " exclamatio ". Related to these exclamations is a kind of natural exclamation which, Quintillian notes, is not " simulated or artfully designed. " This type of natural exclamation he calls " free speech " [libera oratione] which, he tells us, was called " license " [licentia] by Cornificius, and " parrhesia " by the Greeks. Parrhesia is thus a sort of " figure " among rhetorical figures, but with this characteristic : that it is without any figure since it is completely natural. Parrhesia is the zero degree of those rhetorical figures which intensify the emotions of the audience.

2. Parrhesia and Politics The second important aspect of the evolution of parrhesia is related to the political field.

As it appears in Euripides plays and also in the texts of the Fourth Century BC, parrhesia is an essential characteristic of Athenian democracy. Of course, we still have to investigate the role of parrhesia in the Athenian constitution. But we can say quite generally that parrhesia was a guideline for democracy as well as an ethical and personal attitude characteristic of the good citizen. Athenian democracy was defined very explicitly as a constitution (politeia) in which people enjoyed demokratia, isegoria ( the equal right of speech), isonomia (the equal participation of all citizens in the exercise of power), and parrhesia. Parrhesia, which is a requisite for public speech, takes place between citizens as individuals, and also between citizens construed as an assembly . Moreover, the agora is the place where parrhesia appears.

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During the Hellenistic period this political meaning changes with the rise of the Hellenic monarchies. Parrhesia now becomes centered in the relationship between the sovereign and his advisors or court men . In the monarchic constitution of the state, it is the advisor's duty to use parrhesia to help the king with his decisions, and to prevent him from abusing his power . Parrhesia is necessary and useful both for the king and for the people under his rule . The sovereign himself is not a parrhesiastes, but a touchstone of the good ruler is his ability to play the parrhesiastic game. Thus , a good king accepts everything that a genuine parrhesiastes tells him, even if it turns out to be unpleasant for him to hear criticism of his decisions. A sovereign shows himself to be a tyrant if he disregards his honest advisors, or punishes them for what they have said . The portrayal of a sovereign by most Greek historians takes into account the way he behaves towards his advisors--as if such behavior were an index of his ability to hear the parrhesiastes .

There is also a third category of players in the monarchic parrhesiastic game, viz., the silent majority : the people in general who are not present at the exchanges between the king and his advisors, but to whom, and on behalf of whom, the advisors refer when offering advice to the king.

The place where parrhesia appears in the context of monarchic rule is the king's court, and no longer the agora.

3. Parrhesia and Philosophy Finally, parrhesia's evolution can be traced through its relation to the field of philosophy -- regarded as an art of life (techne tou biou).

In the writings of Plato, Socrates appears in the role of the parrhesiastes. Although the word " parrhesia " appears several times in Plato, he never uses the word " parrhesiastes "-- a word which only appears later as part of the Greek vocabulary. And yet the role of Socrates is typically a parrhesiastic one, for he constantly confronts Athenians in the street and, as noted in the Apology, points out the truth to them, bidding them to care for wisdom, truth, and the perfection of their souls .And in the Alcibiades Major as well, Socrates assumes a parrhesiastic role in the dialogue. For whereas Alcibiades friends and lovers all flatter him in their attempt to obtain his favors, Socrates risks provoking Alcibiades anger when he leads him to this idea : that before Alcibiades will be able to accomplish what he is so set on achieving, viz., to become the first among the Athenians to rule Athens and become more powerful than the King of Persia, before he will be able to take care of Athens, he must first learn to take care of himself. Philosophical parrhesia is thus associated with the theme of the care of oneself (epimeleia heautou).

By the time of the Epicureans, parrhesia's affinity with the care of oneself developed to the point where parrhesia itself was primarily regarded as a techne of spiritual guidance for the " education of the soul ". Philodemus [110-140 BC], for example (who, with Lucretius [99-55 BC], was one of the most significant Epicurian writers during the First Century BC), wrote a book about parrhesia [Περί παρρησίας] which concern technical practices useful for teaching and helping one another in the Epicurean community. We shall examine some of these parrhesiastic technique as they developed in , for example, the Stoic philosophies of Epictetus, Seneca, and others .

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PARRHESIA IN THE TRAGEDIES OF EURIPIDES Today I would like to begin analyzing the first occurrences of the word "parrhesia" in Greek literature-specifically, as the word appears in the following six tragedies of Euripides: (1) Phoenician women; (2)Hippolytus; (3) The Bacchae; (4) Electra; (5) Ion; (6) Orestes.

In the first four plays, parrhesia does not constitute an important topic or motif; but the word itself generally occurs within a precise context which aids our understanding of its meaning. In the last two plays—Ion and Orestes-- parrhesia does assume a very important role. Indeed, I think that Ion is entirely devoted to the problem of parrhesia since it pursues the question: who has the right, the duty, and the courage to speak the truth? This parrhesiastic problem in Ion is raised in the framework of the relations between the gods and human beings. In Orestes-which was written ten years later, and therefore is one of Euripides’ last plays --the role of parrhesia is not nearly as significant. And yet the play still contains a parrhesiastic scene which warrants attention insofar as it is directly related to political issues that the Athenians were then raising. Here, in this parrhesiastic scene, there is a transition regarding the question of parrhesia as it occurs in the context of human institutions.

Specifically, parrhesia is seen as both a political and a philosophical issue.

Today, then, I shall first try to say something about the occurrences of the word "Parrhesia" in the first four plays mentioned in order to throw some more light on the meaning of the word. And then I shall attempt a global analysis of Ion as the decisive parrhesiastic play where we see human beings taking upon themselves the role of truth-tellers—a role which the gods are no longer able to assume.

1. The Phoenician Women [c.411-409 BC] Consider, first, The Phoenician Women. The major theme of this play concerns the fight between Oedipus’ two sons: Eteocles and Polyneices. Recall that after Oedipus’ fall, in order to avoid their father’s curse that they should divide his inheritance "’by sharpened steel", Eteocles and Polyneices make a pact to rule over Thebes alternately, year by year, with Eteocles (who was older) reigning first. But after his initial year of reign, Eteocles refuses to hand over the crown and yield power to his brother, Polyneices. Eteocles thus represents tyranny, and Polyneices—who lives in exile—represents the democratic regime. Seeking his share of his father’s crown, Polyneices returns with an army of Argives in order to overthrow Eteocles and lay siege to the city of Thebes. It is in the hope of avoiding this confrontation that Jocasta—the mother of Polyneices and Eteocles, and the wife and mother of Oedipus— persuades her two sons to meet in a truce. When Polyneices arrives for this meeting, Jocasta asks him about his suffering during the time he was exiled from Thebes. ‘Is it really hard to be exiled’ asks Jocasta. And Polyneices answers, "worse than anything" And when Jocasta asks why exile is so hard, Polyneices replies that it is because one cannot enjoy parrhesia: IOCASTA: This above all I long to know: What is an exile’s life? Is it great misery?

POLYNEICES: The greatest; worse in reality than in report.

JOCASTA: Worse in what way? What chiefly galls an exile’s heart?

POLYNEICES: The worst is this: right of free speech does not exist.

IOCASTA: That’s a slave’s life—to be forbidden to speak one’s mind.

POLYNEICES: One has to endure the idiocy of those who rule.

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IOCASTA: To join fools in their foolishness—that makes one sick.

POLYNEICES: One finds it pays to deny nature and be a slave.

As you can see from these few lines, parrhesia is linked, first of all, to Polyneices’ social status. For if you are not a regular citizen in the city, if you are exiled, then you cannot use parrhesia. That is quite obvious. But something else is also implied, viz., that if you do not have the right of free speech, you are unable to exercise -any kind of power- and thus you are in the same situation as a slave. Further: if such citizens cannot use parrhesia, they cannot oppose a ruler’s power. And without the right of criticism, the power exercised by a sovereign is without limitation. Such power without limitation is characterized by Jocasta as "joining fool in their foolishness". For power without limitation is directly related to madness. The man who exercises power is wise only insofar as there exists someone who can use parrhesia to criticize him, thereby putting some limit to his power, to his command.

2. Hippolytus [428 BC] The second passage from Euripides I want to quote comes from Hyppolitus. As you know, the play is about Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus. And the passage concerning parrhesia occurs just after Phaedra’s confession: when Phaedra , early on in the play, confesses her love for Hippolytus to her nurse (without, however, actually saying his name). But the word "parrhesia" does not concern this confession, but refers to something quite different. For just after her confession of her love for Hippolytus, Phaedra speaks of those noble and high-born women from royal households who first brought shame upon their own family, upon their husband and children, by committing adultery with other men. And Phaedra says she does not want to do the same since she wants her sons to live in Athens, proud of their mother, and exercising parrhesia. And she claims that if a man is conscious of a stain in his family, he becomes a slave: PHAEDRA: I will never be known to bring dishonor on my husband or my children. I want my two sons to go back and live in glorious Athens, hold their heads high there, and speak their minds there like free men , honored for their mother’s name. One thing can make the most bold-spirited man a slave: to know the secret of a parent’s shameful act.

In this text we see, once again, a connection between the lack of parrhesia and slavery. For if you cannot speak freely because you are of dishonor in your family, then you are enslaved.

Also, citizenship by itself does not appear to be sufficient to obtain and guarantee exercise of free speech. Honor, a good reputation for oneself and one’s family, is also needed before one can freely address the people of the city. Parrhesia thus requires both moral and social qualifications which come from a noble birth and a respectful reputation.

3. The Bacchae [c.407-406 BC] In The Bacchae there is a very short passage, a transitional moment, where the word appears. One of Pentheus’ servants --a herdsman and messenger to the king--has come to report about the confusion and disorder the Maenads are generating in the community, and the fantastic deeds they are committing. But, as you know, it is an old tradition that messengers who bring glad tidings are rewarded for the news they convey, whereas those who bring bad news are exposed to punishment. And so the king’s servant is very reluctant to deliver his ill tidings to Pentheus. But he asks the king whether he may use parrhesia and tell him

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everything he knows, for he fears the king’s wrath. And Pentheus promises that he will not get into trouble so long as he speaks the truth.

HERDSMAN: I have seen the holy Bacchae, who like a flight of spears went streaming bare-limbed, frantic, out of the city gate. I have come with the intention of telling you, my lord, and the city, of their strange and terrible doings--things beyond all wonder.

But first I would learn whether I may speak freely of what is going on there, or if I should trim my words. I fear your hastiness, my lord, your anger, your too potent royalty.

PENTHEUS: From me fear nothing. Say all that you have to say; anger should not grow hot against the innocent. The more dreadful your story of these Bacchic rites, the heavier punishment I will inflict upon this man who enticed our women to their evil ways.

These lines are interesting because they show a case where the parrhesiastes, the one "who speaks the truth " is not an entirely free man, but a servant to the king --one who cannot use parrhesia if the king is not wise enough to enter into the parrhesiastic game and grant him permission to speak openly. For if the king lacks self-mastery, if he is carried away by his passions and gets mad at the messenger then he does not hear the truth, and will also be a bad ruler for the city. But Pentheus, as a wise king, offers his servant what we can call a "parrhesiastic contract."

The "parrhesiastic contract"—which became relatively important in the political life of rulers in the Greco-Roman world—consists in the following. The sovereign, the ones who has power but lacks the truth, addresses himself to the one who has the truth but lacks power, and tells him : if you tell me the truth, no matter what this truth turns out to be, you won’t be punished; and those who are responsible for any injustices will be punished, but not those who speak the truth about such injustices. This idea of the "Parrhesiastic contract" became associated with parrhesia as a special privilege granted to the best and most honest citizens of the city. Of course, the parrhesiastic contract between Pentheus and his messenger is only a moral obligation since it lacks all institutional foundation. As the kings servant, the messenger is still quite vulnerable, and still takes a risk in speaking. But, although he is courageous, he is also not reckless, and is cautious about the consequences of what he might say. The "contract" is intended to limit the risk he takes in speaking.

4. Electra [415 BC] In Electra the word "parrhesia" occurs in the confrontation between Electra and her mother, Clytemnestra. I do not need to remind you of this famous story, but only to indicate that prior to the moment in the play when the word appears, Orestes has just killed the tyrant Aegisthus--Clytemnestra’s lover and co-murderer (with Clytemnestra) of Agamemnon (Clytenmestra’s husband and father to Orestes and Electra). But right before Clytemnestra appears on the scene, Orestes hides himself and Aegisthus’ body. So when Clytemnestra makes her entry, she is not aware of what has just transpired, i.e., she does not know that Aegisthus has just been killed. And her entry is very beautiful and solemn, for she is riding in a royal chariot surrounded by the most beautiful of the captive maidens of Troy --all of whom are now her slaves. And Electra, who is there when her mother arrives, also behaves like a slave in order to hide the fact that the moment of revenge for her father’s death is at hand. She is also there to insult Clytemnestra, and to remind her of her crime. This dramatic scene gives way to a confrontation between the two. A discussion begins, and we have two parallel

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speeches, both equally long (forty lines), the first one by Clytemnestra, and the second by Electra.

Clytemnestra’s speech begins with the words "λέξω δέ"—“I will speak”[l.1013]. And she proceeds to tell the truth, confessing that she killed Agamemnon as a punishment for the sacrificial death of her daughter, Iphigeneia. Following this speech, Electra replies, beginning with the symmetrical formulation "λέγοιµ’ άυ" —“then, I will speak”[l. 1060]. In spite of this symmetry, however, there is a clear difference between the two. For at the end of her speech, Clytemnestra addresses Electra directly and says to her, “use your parrhesia to prove that I was wrong to kill your father": CLYTEMNESTRA: ... I killed him. I took the only way open to me—turned for help to his enemies. Well, what could I do? None of your father’s friends would have helped me murder him. So, if you’re anxious to refute me, do it now; speak freely; prove your father’s death not justified.

And, after the Chorus speaks, Electra replies, ‘Do not forget your latest words, mother. You gave me parrhesia towards you’: ELECTRA: Mother, remember what you said just now. You promised that I might state my opinion freely without fear And Clytemnestra answers: "I said so, daughter, and I meant it" [l.1057] But Electra is still wary and cautious, for she wonders whether her mother will listen to her only to hurt her afterwards: ELECTRA: Do you mean you’ll listen first, and get your own back afterwards?

CLYTEMNESTRA: No, no; you’re free to say what your heart wants to say.

ELECTRA: I’ll say it, then. This is where I’ll begin ...

And Electra proceeds to speak openly, blaming her mother for what she has done.

There is another asymmetrical aspect between these two discourses which concerns the difference in status of the two speakers. For Clytemnestra is the queen, and does not use or require parrhesia to plead for her own defense in killing Agamemnon. But Electra—who is in the situation of a slave, who plays the role of a slave in this scene, who can no longer live in her father’s house under her father’s protection, and who addresses her mother just as a servant would address the queen—Electra needs the right of parrhesia.

And so another parrhesiastic contract is drawn between Clytemnestra and Electra: Clytemnestra promises she will not punish Electra for her frankness just as Pentheus promised his messenger in The Bacchae. But in Electra, the parrhesiastic contract is subverted. It is not subverted by Clytemnestra (who, as the queen, still has the power to punish Electra); it is subverted by Electra herself. Electra asks her mother to promise her that she will not be punished for speaking frankly, and Clytemnestra makes such a promise—without knowing that she, Clytemnestra herself, will be punished for her confession. For, a few minutes later, she is subsequently killed by her children, Orestes and Electra. Thus the parrhesiastic contract is subverted: the one who was granted the privilege of parrhesia is not hammed, but the one who granted the right of parrhesia is—and by the very person who, in the inferior position, was asking for parrhesia. The parrhesiastic contract became a subversive trap for Clytemnestra.

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5. Ion [c.418-4171] We turn now to Ion, a parrhesiastic play.

The mythological framework of the play involves the legendary founding of Athens.

According to Attic myth, Erectheus was the first king of Athens-born a son of Earth and returning to Earth in death. Erectheus thus personifies that of which the Athenians were so proud, viz., their autochtony: that they literally were sprung from Athenian soil . In 418 B. C. , about the time when this play was written, such mythological reference had political meaning. For Euripides wanted to remind his audience that the Athenians are native to Athenian soil; but through the character of Xuthus (husband to Erectheus’ daughter Creusa, and a foreigner to Athens since he comes from Phithia), Euripides also wanted to indicate to his audience that the Athenians are related, through this marriage, to the people of the Peloponese, and specifically to Achaia—named from one of the sons of Xuthus and Creusa: Achaeus. For Euripides’ account of the Pan-Hellenic nature of Athenian genealogy makes Ion the son of Apollo and Creusa (daughter to Athens ancient king Eretheus). Creusa later marries Xuthus (who was an ally of the Athenians in their war against the Euboeans [ls. 58-62]. Two sons are born from this marriage: Dorus and Achaeus. Ion was said to be the founder of the Ionic people; Dorus, the founder of the Dorians; and Achaeus, the founder of the Achaeans.

Thus all of the ancestors of the Greek race are depicted as descended from the royal house of Athens.

Euripides’ reference to Creusa’s relationship with Apollo, as well as his placement of the play’s setting at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, is meant to exhibit the close relationship between Athens and Phoebus Apollo: the pan-Hellenic god of the Delphic sanctuary. For at the historical moment of the play’s production in ancient Greece, Athens was trying to forge a pan-Hellenic coalition against Sparta. Rivalry existed between Athens and Delphi since the Delphic priests were primarily on the side of the Spartans. But, to put Athens in the favorable position of leader of the Hellenic world, Euripides wished to emphasize the relations of mutual parenthood between the two cities. These mythological genealogies, then, are meant, in part, to justify Athens’ imperialistic politics towards other Greek cities at a time when Athenian leaders still thought an Athenian empire was possible.

I shall not focus on the political and mythological aspects of the play, but on the theme of the shift of the place of truth’s disclosure from Delphi to Athens. As you know, the oracle at Delphi was supposed to be the place in Greece where human beings were told the truth by the gods through the utterances of the Pythia. But in this play we see a very explicit shift from the oracular truth at Delphi to Athens: Athens becomes the Place where truth now appears. And, as a part of this shift, truth is no longer disclosed by the gods to human beings (as at Delphi), but is disclosed to human beings by human beings through Athenian parrhesia.

Euripides’ Ion is a play praising Athenian autochtony, and affirming blood-affinity with most other Greek states; but it is primarily a story of the movement of truth-telling from Delphi to Athens, from Phoebus Apollo to the Athenian Citizen. And that is the reason why I think the play is the story of parrhesia: the decisive Greek parrhesiastic play.

Now I would like to give the following schematic aperçu of the play: SILENCE Delphi Apollo

TRUTH Athens Erectheus Creusa

DECEPTION Foreign countries Xuthus

Ion

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We shall see that Apollo keeps silent throughout the drama; that Juthus is deceived by the god, but is also a deceiver. And we shall also see how Creusa and Ion both speak the truth against Apollo’s silence, for only they are connected to the Athenian earth which endows them with parrhesia. a. Hermes’ Prologue I would first like to briefly recount the events, given in Hermes’ prologue, which have taken place before the play begins.

After the death of Erectheus’ other children (Cecrops, Orithyia, and Procris), Creusa is the only surviving offspring of the Athenian dynasty. One day, as a young girl, while picking yellow flowers by the Long Rocks, Apollo rapes or seduces her.

Is it a rape or a seduction? For the Greeks, the difference is not as crucial as it is for us.

Clearly, when someone rapes a woman, a girl, or boy, he uses physical violence; whereas when someone seduces another, he uses words, his ability to speak, his superior status, and so on. For the Greeks, using one’s psychological, social, or intellectual abilities to seduce another person is not so different from using physical violence. Indeed, from the perspective of the law, seduction was considered more criminal than rape. For when someone is raped, it is against his or her will but when someone is seduced, then that constitutes the proof that at a specific moment, the seduced individual chose to be unfaithful to his or her wife or husband, or parents or family. Seduction was considered more of an attack against a spouse’s power, or a family’s power, since the one who was seduced chose to act against the wishes of his or her spouse, parents, or family.

In any case, Creusa is raped or seduced by Apollo, and she becomes pregnant. And when she is about to give birth, she returns to the place where she was led by Apollo, viz., a cave beneath Athens’ acropolis — beneath the Mount of Pallas under the center of the Athenian city. And here she hides herself until, all alone, she gives birth to a son . But because she does not want her father, Erectheus, to find out about the child (for she was ashamed of what happened), she exposes it, leaving the child to wild beasts. Apollo then sends his brother, Hermes, to bring the child, his cradle and clothes, to the temple at Delphi.

And the boy is raised as a servant of the god in the sanctuary; and he is regarded as a foundling. For no one in Delphi (except Apollo himself) knows who he is or where he comes from; and Ion himself does not know. Ion thus appears, on the schema I outlined, between Delphi and Athens, Apollo and Creusa . For he is the son of Apollo and Creusa, and was born in Athens but lives his life in Delphi.

In Athens, Creusa does not know whatever became of her child; and she wonders whether it is dead or alive. Later she marries Xuthus, a foreigner whose alien presence immensely complicates the continuity of autochtony—which is why it is so important for Creusa to have an heir with Xuthus. However, after their marriage, Xuthus and Creusa were unable to have any children. At the end of the play, the birth of Dorus and Achaeus are promised to them by Apollo; but at the beginning of the play they remain childless, even though they desperately need children to endow Athens with dynastic continuity. And so both of them come to Delphi to ask Apollo if they shall ever have children. And so the play begins. b. Apollo’s Silence But, of course, Creusa and Xuthus do not have exactly the same question to ask the god Apollo. Xuthus’ question is very clear and simple: “I’ve never had children. Shall I have any with Creusa?”. Creusa, however, has another question to ask. She must know whether she will ever have children with Xuthus. But she also wishes to ask: ‘With you, Apollo, I had a child.

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And I need to know now whether he is still living or not. What, Apollo, has become of our son?’

Apollo’s temple, the oracle at Delphi, was the place where the truth was told by the gods to any mortals who came to consult it. Both Xuthus and Creusa arrive together in front of the temple door and, of course, the first person they meet is Ion-Apollo’s servant and son to Creusa. But naturally Creusa does not recognize her son, nor does Ion recognize his mother.

They are strangers to one another, just as Oedipus and Jocasta were initially in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.

Remember that Oedipus was also saved from death in spite of the will of his mother. And he, too, was unable to recognize his real father and mother. The structure of Ion’s plot is somewhat similar to the Oedipus story. But the dynamics of truth in the two plays are exactly reversed.

For in Oedipus the King, Phoebus Apollo speaks the truth from the very beginning, truthfully foretelling what will happen. And human beings are the ones who continually hide from or avoid seeing the truth, trying to escape the destiny foretold by the god. But in the end, through the signs Apollo has given them, Oedipus and Jocasta discover the truth in spite of themselves. In the present play, human beings are trying to discover the truth: Ion wants to know who he is and where he comes from; Creusa wants to know the fate of her son. Yet it is Apollo who voluntarily conceals the truth. The Oedipal problem of truth is resolved by showing how mortals, in spite of their own blindness, will see the light of truth which is spoken by the god, and which they do not wish to see. The Ionic problem of truth is resolved by showing how human beings, in spite of the silence of Apollo, will discover the truth they are so eager to know.

The theme of god’s silence prevails throughout Ion. It appears at the beginning of the tragedy when Creusa encounters Ion. Creusa is still ashamed of what happened to her, so she speaks to Ion as if she had come to consult the oracle for her ‘friend’. She then tells him part of her own story, attributing it to her alleged girlfriend, and asks him whether he thinks Apollo will give her ‘friend’ an answer to her questions. As a good servant to the god, Ion tells her that Apollo will not give an answer. For if he has done what Creusa’s ‘friend’ claims, then he will be too ashamed: ION: ... is Apollo to reveal what he intends should remain a mystery?

CREUSA: Surely his oracle is open for every Greek to question?

ION: No. His honor is involved; you must respect his feelings.

CREUSA: What of his victim’s feelings? What does this involve for her?

ION: There is no one who will ask this question for you. Suppose it were proved in Apollo’s own temple that he had behaved so badly, he would be justified in making your interpreter suffer for it. My lady, let the matter drop. We must not accuse Apollo in his own court. That is what our folly would amount to, if we try to force a reluctant god to speak, to give signs in sacrifice or the flight of birds. Those ends we pursue against the gods’ will can do us little good when we gain them...

So at the very beginning of the play, Ion tells why Apollo will not tell the truth. And, in fact, he himself never answers Creusa’s questions. This is a hiding-god.

What is even more significant and striking is what occurs at the end of the play when everything has been said by the various characters of the play, and the truth is known to everyone. For everyone then waits for Apollo’s appearance —whose presence was not visible throughout the entire Play (in spite of the fact that he is a main character in the dramatic events that unfold). It was traditional in ancient Greek tragedy for the god who constituted the main divine figure to appear last. Yet, at the end of the play Apollo—the shining god-,does

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not appear. Instead, Athene arrives to convey his message. And she appears above the roof of the Delphic temple, for the temple doors are not open. Explaining why she has come, she says: ATHENE: ... I am your friend here as in Athens, the city whose name I bear—I am Athene! I have come in haste from Apollo. He thought it right not to appear to you himself, lest there be reproaches openly uttered for what is past; so he sends me with this message to you. Ion, this is your mother, and Apollo is your father. Xuthus did not beget you, but Apollo gave you to him so that you might become the recognized heir of an illustrious house. When Apollo’s purpose in this matter was disclosed he contrived a way to save each of you from death at each other’s hands. His intention has been to keep the truth secret for a while, and then in Athens to reveal Creusa as your mother, and you as her son by Apollo ...

So even at this final moment, when everything has come to light, Apollo does not dare to appear and speak the truth. He hides, while Athene speaks instead. We must remember that Apollo is the prophetic god in charge of speaking the truth to mortals. Yet he is unable to play this role because he is ashamed of his guilt. Here, in Ion, silence and guilt are linked on the side of the god Apollo. In Oedipus the King, silence and guilt are linked on the side of mortals. The main motif of Ion concerns the human fight for truth against god’s silence: human beings must manage, by themselves, to discover and to tell the truth. Apollo does not speak the truth, he does not reveal what he knows perfectly well to be the case, he deceives mortals by his silence or tells pure lies, he is not courageous enough to speak himself, and he uses his power, his freedom, and his superiority to cover-up what he has done. Apollo is the anti-parrhesiastes.

In this struggle against god’s silence, Ion and Creusa are the two major parrhesiastic figures. But they do not play the role of the parrhesiastes in the same way. For as a male born of Athenian earth, Ion has the right to use parrhesia. Creusa, on the other hand, plays the parrhesiastic role as a woman who confesses her thoughts. I would like now to, examine these two parrhesiastic roles, noting the nature of their difference. c. Ion’s Parrhesiastic Role First, Ion. Ion’s Parrhesiastic role is evident in the very long scene which takes place between Ion and Xuthus early on in the play. When Xuthus and Creusa came to consult the oracle, Xuthus enters the sanctuary first since he is the husband and the man. He asks Apollo his question, and the god tells him that the first person he meets when he comes out of the temple will be his son. And, of course, the first one he meets is Ion since, as Apollo’s servant, he is always at the door of the temple. Here we have to pay attention to the Greek expression, which is not literally translated in either the French or English editions. The Greek words are: παίδ’ έµόυ πεφυиέυαι the use of the word " πεφυиέυαι " indicates that Ion is said to be Xuthus’s son "by nature": ION: What was Apollo’s oracle?

XUTHUS: He said, whoever met me as I came out of the temple— ION: Whoever met you—yes: what about him?

XUTHUS: —is my son! [ παίδ’ έµόυ πεφυиέυαι] ION: Your son by birth, or merely by gift?

XUTHUS: A gift, yes; but mine by birth too

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So you see that Apollo does not give an obscure and ambiguous oracular pronouncement as he was wont to do with indiscrete questioners. The god’s answer is a pure lie. For Ion is not Xuthus’ son "by nature" or "by birth". Apollo is not an ambiguous truth-teller in this case. He is a liar. And Xuthus, deceived by Apollo, candidly believes that Ion-the first person he met-is really, by nature, his own son.

What follows is the first main parrhesiastic scene of the play, which can be divided into three parts.

The first part concerns the misunderstanding between Ion and Xuthus. Xuthus leaves the temple, sees Ion, and-in light of Apollo’s answer—believes that he is his son. Full of cheer, he goes to him and wants to kiss him . Ion— who does not know who Xuthus is, and does not know why he wants to kiss him—misunderstands Xuthus behavior and thinks that Xuthus wants to have sex with him (as any young Greek boy would if a man tried to kiss him) . Most of the commentators, if they are even willing to recognize the sexual interpretation Ion attributes to Xuthus’ behavior, say that this is a ‘comic scene ’— which sometimes occurs in Euripides’ tragedies. In any case, Ion says to Xuthus: ‘If you continue harassing me, I’ll shoot an arrow in your chest.’ This is similar to Oedipus the King, where Oedipus does not know that Laius , King of Thebes , is his father. And he also misunderstands the nature of his encounter with him; a quarrel ensues, and Laius is killed by Oedipus. But in Ion there is this reversal: Xuthus, King of Athens, does not know that Ion is not his son, and Ion does not know that Xuthus thinks that he is Ion’s father. So as a consequence of Apollo’s lies we are in a world of deception.

The second part of this scene concerns the mistrust of Ion towards Xuthus. Xuthus tells Ion: ‘Take it easy; if I want to kiss you, it is because I am your father.’ But rather than rejoicing at the discovery of knowing who his father is, Ion’s first question to Xuthus is: ‘Who, then, is my mother?’. For some unknown reason, Ion’s principle concern is the knowledge of his mother’s identity. But then he asks Xuthus: ‘How can I be your son?’ And Xuthus replies: ‘I don’t know how; I refer you to the god Apollo for what he has said’. Ion then utters a very interesting line which has been completely mistranslated in the French version. The Greek is [l.544] : φέρε λόγωυ άψώµεθ’ άλλωυ The French edition translates as : ‘Come, let’s speak about something else.’ A more accurate rendition might be: "Let us try another kind of discourse." So in answer to Ion’s question of how he could be his son, Xuthus replies that he does not know, but was told as much by Apollo. And Ion tells him, in effect, then let’s try another kind of discourse more capable of telling the truth: ION: How could I be yours?

XUTHUS: Apollo, not I, has the answer.

ION (after a pause): Let us try another tack XUTHUS: Yes, that will help us more.

Abandoning the oracular formulation of the god, Xuthus and Ion take up an inquiry involving the exchange of questions and answers. As the inquirer, Ion questions Xuthus-his alleged father-to try to discover with whom, when, and how it was possible for him to have a child such that Ion might be his son. And Xuthus answers him: ‘Well, I think I had sex with a Delphian girl.’ When? ‘Before I was married to Creusa.’ Where? Maybe in Delphi.’ How? ‘One day when I was drunk while celebrating the Dionysian torch feast.’ And of course, as an explanation of Ions birth, this entire train of thought is pure baloney; but they take this inquisitive method seriously, and try, as best they can, to discover the truth by their own

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means-led as they are by Apollo’s lies. Following this inquiry, Ion rather reluctantly and unenthusiastically accepts Xuthus’ hypothesis: he considers himself to be Xuthus’ son.

The third part of the parrhesiastic scene between Xuthus and Ion concerns Ion’s political destiny, and his potential political misfortunes if he arrives in Athens as the son and heir of Xuthus . For after persuading Ion that he is his son, Xuthus promises to bring Ion back to Athens where, as the son of a king, he would be rich and powerful. But Ion is not very enthusiastic about this prospect; for he knows that he would be coming to Athens as the son of Xuthus (a foreigner to Athenian earth), and with an unknown mother. And according to Athenian legislation, one cannot be a regular citizen in Athens if one is not the offspring of parents both of whom were born in Athens. So Ion tells Xuthus that he would be considered a foreigner and a bastard, i.e., as a nobody.

This anxiety gives place to a long development which at first glance seems to be a digression, but which presents Euripides’ critical portrayal of Athenian political life: both in a democracy and concerning the political life of a monarch.

Ion explains that in a democracy there are three categories of citizens: (1) those Athenian citizens who have neither power nor wealth, and who hate all who are superior to them; (2) good Athenians who are capable of exercising power, because they are wise , they keep silent and do not worry about the political affairs of the city (3) those reputable men who are powerful, and use their discourse and reason to participate in public political life. Envisioning the reactions of these three groups to his appearance in Athens as a foreigner and a bastard, Ion says that the first group will hate him; the second group, the wise, will laugh at the young man who wishes to be regarded as one of the First Citizens of Athens; and the last group, the politicians, will be jealous of their new competitor and will try to get rid of him. So coming to a democratic Athens is not a cheerful prospect for Ion. Following this portrayal of democratic life, Ion speaks of the negative aspects of a family life- with a stepmother who, herself childless, would not accept his- presence as heir to the Athenian throne. But then Ion returns to the political picture, giving his portrayal of the life of a monarch: ION: ...As for being a king, it is overrated. Royalty conceals a life of torment behind a pleasant façade. To live in hourly fear, looking over your shoulder for the assassins— is that paradise? Is it even good fortune? Give me the happiness of a plain man, not the life of a king, who loves to fill his court with criminals, and hates honest men for fear of death. You may tell me the pleasure of being rich outweighs everything. But to live surrounded by scandal, holding on to your money with both hands, beset by worry—has no appeal for me.

These two descriptions of Athenian democratic life and the life of a monarch seem quite out of place in this scene, for Ion’s problem is to discover who his mother is so as to arrive in Athens without shame or anxiety. We must find a reason for the inclusion of these two portrayals.

The play continues and Xuthus tells Ion not to worry about his life in Athens, and for the time being proposes that Ion pretend to be a visiting houseguest and not disclose the ‘fact’ that he is Xuthus’ son. Later on, when a suitable time arrives, Xuthus proposes to make Ion his inheritor; for now, nothing will be said to Creusa. Ion would like to come to Athens as the real successor to the second dynastic family of Erectheus, but what Xuthus proposes—for him to pretend to be a visitor to the city—does not address Ion’s real concerns. So the scene seems crazy, makes no sense. Nonetheless, Ion accepts Xuthus’s proposal but claims that without knowing who his mother is, life will be impossible:

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ION: Yes, I will go. But one piece of good luck eludes me still: unless I find my mother, my life is worthless.

Why is it impossible for Ion to live without finding his mother? He continues : ION: ... If I may do so, I pray my mother is Athenian, so that through her I may have rights of speech [παρρησία] . For when a stranger comes into the city of pure blood, though in name a citizen, his mouth remains a slave: he has no right of speech [παρρησία] .

So you see, Ion needs to know who his mother is so as to determine whether she is descended from the Athenian earth; for only thus will he be endowed with parrhesia. And he explains that someone who comes to Athens as a foreigner—even if he is literally and legally considered a citizen-still cannot enjoy parrhesia. What, then, does the seemingly digressive critical portrayal of democratic and monarchic life mean, culminating as they do in this final reference to parrhesia just when Ion accepts Xuthus’ offer to return with him to Athensespecially given the rather obscure terms Xuthus proposes?

The digressive critical portrayals Ion gives of democracy and monarchy (or tyranny) are easy to recognize as typical instances of parrhesiastic discourse. For you can find almost exactly the same sorts of criticisms later on coming from Socrates’ mouth in the works of either Plato or Xenophon. Similar critiques are given later by Isocrates. So the critical depiction of democratic and monarchic life as presented by Ion is part of the constitutional character of the parrhesiastic individual in Athenian political life at the end of the Fifth and the beginning of the Fourth Centuries. Ion is just such a parrhesiastes, i.e., the sort individual who is so valuable to democracy or monarchy since he is courageous enough to explain either to the demos or to the king just what the shortcomings of their life really are. Ion is a parrhesiastic individual and shows himself to be such both in these small digressive political critiques, as well as afterwards when he states that he needs to know whether his mother is an Athenian since he needs parrhesia. For despite the fact that it is in the nature of his character to be a parrhesiastes, he cannot legally or institutionally use this natural parrhesia with which he is endowed if his mother is not Athenian. Parrhesia is thus not a right given equally to all Athenian citizens, but only to those who are especially prestigious through their family and their birth. And Ion appears as a man who is, by nature, a parrhesiastic individual, yet who is, at the same time, deprived of the right of free speech.

And why is this parrhesiastic figure deprived of his parrhesiastic right? Because the god Apollo—the prophetic god who’s duty it is to speak the truth to mortals-is not courageous enough to disclose his own faults and to act as a parrhesiastes. In order for Ion to conform to his nature and to play the parrhesiastic role in Athens, something more is needed which he lacks but which will be given to him by the other parrhesiastic figure in the play, viz., his mother, Creusa. And Creusa will be able to tell him the truth, thus freeing her parrhesiastic son to use his natural parrhesia. d. Creusa’s Parrhesiastic Role Creusa’s parrhesiastic role in the play is quite different from Ion’s; for as a woman, Creusa will not use parrhesia to speak the truth about Athenian political life to the king, but rather to publicly accuse Apollo for his misdeeds.

For when Creusa is told by the Chorus that Xuthus alone has been given a son by Apollo, she realizes that not only will she not find the son she is searching for, but also that when she returns to Athens she will have in her own home a step-son who is a foreigner to the city, yet

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who will nonetheless succeed Xuthus as king. And for these two reasons she is infuriated not only against her husband, but especially against Apollo. For after being raped by Apollo, and deprived by him of her son, to learn that now she will also not have her questions answered while Xuthus receives a son from the god-this proves to be too much for her to take. And her bitterness, her despair, and her anger bursts forth in an accusation made against Apollo: she decides to speak the truth. Truth thus comes to light as an emotional reaction to the god’s injustice and his lies.

In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, mortals do not accept Apollo’s prophetic utterances since their truth seems incredible; and yet they are led to the truth of the god’s words in spite of their efforts to escape the fate that has been, foretold by him. In Euripides’ Ion, however, mortals are led to the truth in the face of the gods lies or silence, in spite of the fact that they are deceived by Apollo. As a consequence of Apollo’s lies, Creusa believes that Ion is Xuthus’ natural son. But in her emotional reaction to what she thinks is true, she ends by disclosing the truth.

Creusa’s main parrhesiastic scene consists of two parts which differ in their poetic structure and in the type of parrhesia manifested. The first part takes the form of a beautiful long speech-a tirade against Apollo-while the second part is in the form of a stichomythia, i.e., involves a dialogue between Creusa and her servant consisting of alternate lines, one after the other.

First, the tirade. Creusa appears at this moment in front of the temple steps accompanied by an old man who is a trusted servant of the family (and who remains silent during Creusa’s speech). Creusa’s tirade against Apollo is that form of parrhesia where someone publicly accuses another of a crime, or of a fault, or of an injustice that has been committed. And this accusation is an instance of parrhesia insofar as the one who is accused is more powerful than the one who accuses. For there is the danger that because of the accusation made, the accused may retaliate in some way against his or her accuser. So Creusa’s parrhesia first takes the form of a public reproach or criticism against a being to whom she is inferior in power, and upon whom she is in a relation of dependence. It is in this vulnerable situation that Creusa decides to make her accusation: CREUSA: 0 my heart, how be silent? Yet how can I speak of that secret love, strip myself of all shame? is one barrier left still to prevent me? Whom have I now as my rival in virtue? Has not my husband become my betrayer? I am cheated of home, cheated of children, hopes are gone which I could not achieve, the hopes of arranging things well by hiding the facts, by hiding the birth which brought sorrow. No! No! But I swear by the starry abode of Zeus, by the goddess who reigns on our peaks and by the sacred shore of the lake of Tritonis, I will no longer conceal it: when I have put away the burden, my heart will be easier. Tears fall from my eyes, and my spirit is sick, evilly plotted against by men and gods; I will expose them, ungrateful betrayers of women.

0 you who give the seven-toned lyre a voice which rings out of the lifeless, rustic horn the lovely sound of the Muses’ hymns, on you, Latona’s son, here in daylight I will lay blame. You came with hair flashing gold, as I gathered into my cloak flowers ablaze with their golden light. Clinging to my pale wrists as I cried for my mother’s help you led me to bed in a cave, a god and my lover, with no shame, submitting to the Cyprian’s will. In misery I bore you a son, whom in fear of my mother I placed in chat bed where you cruelly forced me. Ah! He is lost now, snatched as food for birds, my son and yours; 0 lost! But you play the lyre, chanting your paens.

0 hear me, son of Latona, who assign your prophesies from the golden throne and the temple at the earth’s center, I will proclaim my words in your ears: you are an evil

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lover; though you owed no debt to my husband, you have set a son in his house. But my son, yes and yours, hard-hearted, is lost, carried away by birds, the cloches his mother put on him abandoned. Delos hates you and the young laurel which grows by the palm with its delicate leaves, where Latona bore you, a holy child, fruit of Zeus.

Regarding this tirade, I would like to emphasize the following three points: (1) As you can see, Creusa’s accusation is a public malediction against Apollo where, for example, the references to Apollo as Latona’s (Leto’s) son is meant to convey the thought that Apollo was a bastard: the son of Latona and Zeus . (2) There is also a clear metaphorical opposition drawn between Phoebus Apollo as the god of light with his golden brightness, who, at the same time, draws a young girl into the darkness of a cave to rape her, is the son of Latona—a divinity of the night, and so on. (3) And there is a contrast drawn between the music of Apollo, with his seven-chord lyre, and the cries and shouts of Creusa (who cries for help as Apollo’s victim, and who also must, through her shouting malediction, speak the truth the god will not utter). For Creusa delivers her accusations before the Delphic temple doors—which are closed. The divine voice is silent while Creusa proclaims the truth herself.

The second part of Creusa’s parrhesiastic scene directly follows this tirade when her old servant and guardian, who has heard all that she has said, takes up an interrogative inquiry which is exactly symmetrical to the stichomythic dialogue that occurred between Ion and Xuthus. In the same way, Creusa’s servant asks her to tell him her story while he asks her questions such as when did these events happen, where, how, and so on.

Two things are worthy of note about this exchange. First, this interrogative inquiry is the reversal of the oracular disclosure of truth. Apollo’s oracle is usually ambiguous and obscure, never answers a set of precise questions directly, and cannot proceed as an inquiry; whereas the method of question and answer brings the obscure to light. Secondly, Creusa’ s parrhesiastic discourse is now no longer an accusation directed towards Apollo, i.e., is no longer the accusation of a woman towards her rapist; but takes the form of a self-accusation where she reveals her own faults, weaknesses, misdeeds; (exposing the child), and so forth.

And Creusa confesses the events that transpired in a manner similar to Phaedra’s confession of love for Hippolytus. For like Phaedra, she also manifests the same reluctance to say everything, and manages to let her servant pronounce those aspects of her story which she does not want to confess directly—employing a somewhat indirect confessional discourse which is familiar to everyone from Euripides’ Hippolytus or Racine’s Phaedra.

In any case, I think that Creusa’s truth-telling is what we could call an instance of personal (as opposed to political) parrhesia. Ion’s Parrhesia takes the form of truthful political criticism, while Creusa’s parrhesia takes the form of a truthful accusation against another more powerful than she, and as a confession of the truth about herself.

It is the combination of the parrhesiastic figures of Ion and Creusa which makes possible the full disclosure of truth at the end of the play. For following Creusa’s parrhesiastic scene, no one except the god knows that the son Creusa had with Apollo is Ion, just as Ion does not know that Creusa is his mother and that he is not Xuthus’ son. Yet to combine the two parrhesiastic discourses requires a number of other episodes which, unfortunately, we have no time now to analyze. For example, there is the very interesting episode where Creusa—still believing that Ion is Xuthus’ natural son—tries to kill Ion; and when Ion discovers this plot, he tries to kill Creusa— a peculiar reversal of the Oedipal situation.

Regarding the schema we outlined, however, we can now see that the series of truths descended from Athens (Erectheus-Creusa-Ion) is complete at the end of the play. Xuthus, also, is deceived by Apollo to the end, for he returns to Athens still believing Ion is his natural son. And Apollo never appears anywhere in the play: he continually remains silent.

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6. Orestes [408 BC] A final occurrence of the word "parrhesia" can be found in Euripides’ Orestes—a play written, or at least performed, in 408 BC, just a few Years before Euripides’ death, and at a moment of political crisis in Athens when there were numerous debates about the democratic regime. This text is interesting because it is the only passage in Euripides where the word "parrhesia" is used in a pejorative sense. The word occurs on line 905 and is translated here as "ignorant outspokenness. " The text in the play where the word appears is in the narrative of a messenger who has come to the royal palace at Argos to tell Electra what has happened in the Pelasgian court at Orestes’ trial. For, as you know from Electra, Orestes and Electra have killed their mother, Clytemnestra, and thus are on trial for matricide.

The narrative I wish to quote reads as follows: "MESSENGER: ... When the full roll of citizens was present, a herald stood up and said ‘Who wishes to address the court, to say whether or not Orestes ought to die for matricide?’ At this Talthybius rose, who was your father’s colleague in the victory over Troy. Always subservient to those in power, he made an ambiguous speech, with fulsome praise of Agamemnon and cold words for your brother, twisting eulogy and censure both together—laying down a law useless to parents; and with every sentence gave ingratiating glances towards Aegisthus’ friends. Heralds are like that—their whole race have learnt to jump to the winning side; their friend is anyone who has power or a government office. Prince Diomedes spoke up next. He urged them not to sentence either you or your brother to death, but satisfy piety by banishing you. Some shouted in approval; others disagreed.

Next there stood up a man with a mouth like a running spring, a giant in impudence, an enrolled citizen, yet no Argive; a mere cat’s-paw; putting his confidence in bluster and ignorant outspokenness , and still persuasive enough to lead his hearers into trouble. He said you and Orestes should be killed with stones; yet, as he argued for your death, the words he used were not his own, but all prompted by Tyndareos.

Another rose, and spoke against him—one endowed with little beauty, but a courageous man; the sort not often found mixing in street or market-place, a manual labourer —the sole backbone of the land; shrewd, when he chose, to come to grips in argument; a man of blameless principle and integrity.

He said, Orestes son of Agamemnon should be honored with crowns for daring to avenge his father by taking a depraved and godless woman’s life—one who corrupted custom; since no man would leave his home, and arm himself, -and march to war, if wives left there in trust could be seduced by stay-at-homes, and brave men cuckolded.

His words seemed sensible to honest judges; and there were no more speeches."

As you can see, the narrative starts with a reference to the Athenian procedure for criminal trials: when all the citizens are present, a herald rises and cries: "who wishes to speak?" For that is the Athenian right of equal speech (isegoria) .Two orators then speak, both of whom are borrowed from Greek mythology, from the Homeric world. The first speaker is Talthybius, who was one of Agamemnon’s companions during the war against the Trojans; specifically, his herald. Talthybius is followed by Diomedes --one of the most famous Greek heroes, known for his unmatched courage, bravery, skill in battle, physical strength, and eloquence.

The messenger characterizes Talthybius as someone who is not completely free, but dependent upon those more powerful than he is. The Greek text states that he is "under the

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power of the powerful" ("subservient to those in power’) . There are two other plays where Euripides criticizes this type of human being, the herald. In The Women of Troy, the very same Talthybius appears after the city of Troy has been captured by the Greek army to tell Cassandra that she is to be the concubine of Agamemnon. Cassandra gives her reply to the herald’s news by predicting that she will bring ruin to her enemies. And, as you know, Cassandra’s prophecies are always true. Talthybius, however, does not believe her predictions. Since, as a herald, he does not know what is true (he is unable to recognize the truth of Cassandra’s utterances), but merely repeats what his master—Agamemnon—tells him to say, he thinks that Cassandra is simply mad; for he tells her: "your mind is not in the right place" ("you’re not in your right mind"). And to this Cassandra answers: CASSANDRA: ‘Servant’! You hear this servant? He’s a herald. What are heralds, then, but creatures universally loathed—lackeys and menials to governments and kings? You say my mother is destined for Odysseus’ home: what then of Apollo’s oracles, spelt out to me, that she shall die here ?

And in fact, Cassandra’s mother, Hecuba, dies in Troy.

In Euripides’ The Suppliant Women, there is also a discussion between an unnamed herald (who comes from Thebes) and Theseus (who is not exactly the king, but the First Citizen of Athens). When the herald enters he asks, ‘Who is the King in Athens?’ And Theseus tells him that he will not be able to find the Athenian king since there is no tyrannos in the city: THESEUS: ... This state is not subject to one man’s will, but is a free city. The king here is the people, who by yearly office govern in turn. We give no special power to wealth; the poor man’s voice commands equal authority.

This sets off an argumentative discussion about which form of government is best: monarchy or democracy ? The herald praises the monarchic regime, and criticizes democracy as subject to the whims of the rabble. Theseus’ reply is in praise of the Athenian democracy where, because the laws are written down, the poor and rich have equal rights, and where everyone is free to speak in the ekklēsia: THESEUS: ... Freedom lives in this formula: ‘Who has good counsel which he would offer to the city?’ He who desires to speak wins fame; he who does not is silent. Where could greater equality be found ?

The freedom to speak is thus synonymous with democratic equality in Theseus’ eyes, which he cites in opposition to the herald-the representative of tyrannical power.

Since freedom resides in the freedom to speak the truth, Talthybius cannot speak directly and frankly at Orestes’ trial since he is not free, but dependent upon those who are more powerful than he is. Consequently, he "speaks ambiguously" , utilizing a discourse which means two opposite things at the same time. So we see him praising Agamemnon (for he was Agamemnon’s herald), but also condemning Agamemnon’s son Orestes (since he does not approve of his actions) . Fearful of the power of both factions, and therefore wishing to please everybody, he speaks two-facedly; but since Aegisthus’ friends have come to power, and are calling for Orestes’ death (Aegisthus, you remember from Electra, was also killed by Orestes), in the end Talthybius condemns Orestes.

Following this negative mythological character is a positive one: Diomedes. Diomedes was famous as a Greek warrior both for his courageous exploits and for his noble eloquence: his skill in speaking, and his wisdom. Unlike Talthybius, Diomedes is independent; he says

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what he thinks, and proposes a moderate solution which has no political motivation: it is not a revengeful retaliation. On religious grounds, "to satisfy piety", he urges that Orestes and Electra be exiled to purify the country of Clytemnestra’s and Aegisthus’ deaths according to the traditional religious punishment for murder. But despite Diomedes’ moderate and reasonable verdict, his opinion divides the assembly: same agree, others disagree.

We then have two other speakers who present themselves. Their names are not given, they do not belong to the mythological world of Homer, they are not heroes; but from the precise description which the reporting messenger gives of them, we can see that they are two "social types". The first one (who is symmetrical to Talthybius, the bad orator) is the sort of orator who is so harmful for a democracy. And I think we should determine carefully his specific characteristics.

His first trait is that he has "a mouth like a running spring"—which translates the Greek word "athuroglossos" . "Athuroglossos" literally refers to someone who has a tongue but not a door. Hence it implies someone who cannot shut his or her mouth.

The metaphor of the mouth, teeth, and lips as a door that is closed when one is silent is a frequent one in ancient Greek literature. It occurs in the Sixth Century BC, in Theognis’ Elegies who writes that there are too many garrulous people: Too many tongues have gates which fly apart Too easily, and care for many things That don’t concern them. Better to keep bad news Indoors, and only let the good news out.

In the Second Century AD, in his essay "Concerning Talkativeness", Plutarch also writes that the teeth are a fence or gate such that "if the tongue does not obey or restrain itself, we may check its incontinence by biting it till it bleeds."

This notion of being athuroglossos, or of being athurostomia (one who has a mouth without a door), refers to someone who is an endless babbler, who cannot keep quiet, and is prone to say whatever comes to mind. Plutarch compares the talkativeness of such people with the Black Sea—which has neither doors nor gates to impede the flow of its waters into the Mediterranean: ... those who believe that storerooms without doors and purses without fastenings are of no use to their owners, yet keep their mouths without lock or door, maintaining as perpetual an outflow as the mouth of the Black Sea, appear to regard speech as the least valuable of all things. They do not, therefore, meet with belief, which is the object of all speech.

As you can see, athuroglossos is characterized by the following two traits: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. Thus Theognis states that garrulous people are unable to differentiate when one should give voice to good or bad news, or how to demarcate their own from other peoples affairs—since they indiscreetly intervene in the cares of others. (2) As Plutarch notes, when you are athuroglossos you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth. Athuroglossos is thus almost synonymous with parrhesia taken in its pejorative sense, and exactly the opposite of parrhesia’s positive sense (since it is a sign of wisdom to be able to use parrhesia without falling into the garrulousness of athuroglossos) . One of the problems which the parrhesiastic

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character must resolve, then, is how to distinguish that which must be said from that which should be kept silent. For not everyone can draw such a distinction, as the following example illustrates.

In his treatise "The Education of Children", Plutarch gives an anecdote of Theocritus, a sophist, as an example of athuroglossos and of the misfortunes incurred by intemperate speech. The king of the Macedonians, Antigonus, sent a messenger to Theocritus asking him to come to his court to engage in discussion. And it so happened that the messenger he sent was his chief cook, Eutropian. King Antigonus had also lost an eye in battle, so he was oneeyed. Now Theocritus was not pleased to hear from Eutropian, the king’s cock, that he had to go and visit Antigonus; so he said to the cook: "I know very well that you want to serve me up raw to your Cyclops" —thus subjecting the king’s disfigurement and Eutropian’s profession to ridicule. To which the cook replied: "Then you shall not keep your head on, but you shall pay the penalty for reckless talk [athurostomia] and madness of yours." And when Eutropian reported Theocritus remark to the king, he sent and had Theocritus put to death.

As we shall see in the case of Diogenes, a really fine and courageous philosopher can use parrhesia towards a king; however, in Theocritus’ case, his frankness is not parrhesia but athurostomia since to joke about a king’s disfigurement or a cook’s profession has no noteworthy philosophical significance. Athuroglossos or athurostomia, then, is the first trait of the third orator in the narration of Orestes’ trial.

His second trait is that he is "ίσχύωυ θράρει"--"a giant in impudence"[l.903]. The word "ίσχύω" denotes someone’s strength, usually the physical strength which enables one to overcome others in competition. So this speaker is strong, but he is strong " θράρει"—which means strong not because of his reason, or his rhetorical ability to speak, or his ability to pronounce the truth, but only because he is arrogant. He is strong only by his bold arrogance.

A third characteristic: "an enrolled citizen, yet no Argive." He is not native to Argos, but comes from elsewhere and has been integrated into the city. The expression "ήυαγиασµέυος" refers to someone who has been imposed upon the members of the city as a citizen by force or by dishonorable means [What gets translated as “a mere cat’s paw”].

His fourth trait is given by the phrase "putting is confidence in bluster". He is confident in "thorubos", which refers to the noise made by a strong voice, by a scream, a clamor, or uproar. When, for instance, in battle, the soldiers scream in order to bring forth their own courage or to frighten the enemy, the Greeks used the word "thorubos". Or the tumultuous noise of a crowded assembly when the people shouted was called "thorubos". So the third orator is not confident in his ability to formulate articulate discourse, but only in his ability to generate an emotional reaction from his audience by his strong and loud voice. This direct relationship between the voice and the emotional effect it produces on the ekklésia is thus opposed to the rational sense of articulate speech.

The final characteristic of the third (negative) speaker is that he also puts his confidence in "ignorant outspokenness” [parrhesia]." The phrase "ignorant outspokenness” repeats the expression "athuroglossos", but with its political implications. For although this speaker has been imposed upon the citizenry, he nonetheless possesses parrhesia as a formal civic right guaranteed by the Athenian constitution. What designates his parrhesia as parrhesia in its pejorative or negative sense, however, is that it lacks mathesis —learning or wisdom. In order for parrhesia to have positive political effects, it must now be linked to a good education, to intellectual and moral formation, to paideia or mathesis. Only then will parrhesia be more than thorubos or sheer vocal noise. For when speakers use parrhesia without mathesis, when they use ignorant outspokenness, the city is led into terrible situations.

You may recall a similar remark of Plato’s, in his Seventh Letter [336b], concerning the lack of mathesis. For there Plato explains that Dion was not able to succeed with his enterprise in Sicily (viz., to realize in Dionysius both a ruler of a great city and a philosopher

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devoted to reason and justice) for two reasons. The first is that some daimon or evil spirit may have been jealous and wanted vengeance. And secondly, Plato explains that ignorance broke out in Sicily. And of ignorance Plato says that it is "the soil in which all manner of evil to all men takes root and flourishes and later produces a fruit most bitter for those who sowed it.

The characteristics, then, of the third speaker—a certain social type employs parrhesia in its pejorative sense—are these: he is violent, passionate, a foreigner to the city, lacking in mathesis, and therefore dangerous.

And now we come to the fourth, and final speaker at Orestes’ trial. He is analogous to Diomedes: what Diomedes was in the Homeric world, this last orator is in the political world of Argos. An exemplification of the positive parrhesiastes as a "social type", he has the following traits.

The first is that he is "one endowed with little beauty, but a courageous man". Unlike a woman, he is not fair to look at, but a "manly man", i.e., a courageous man. For the Greeks, the courage is a virile quality which women were said not to possess.

Secondly, he is "the sort not often found mixing in street or marketplace. So this representative of the positive use of parrhesia is not the sort of professional politician who spends most of his time in the agora—the place where the people, the assembly, met for political discussion and debate. Nor is he one of those poor persons who, without any other means to live by, would come to the agora in order to receive the sums of money given to those taking part in the ekklesia. He takes part in the assembly only to participate in important decisions at critical moments. He does not live off of politics for politics’ sake.

Thirdly, he is an "autourgos"—"a manual labourer" The word "autourgos’ refers to someone who works his own land. The word denotes specific social category—neither the great land-owner nor the peasant, but the landowner who lives and works with his own hands on his own estate, occasionally with the help of a few servants or slaves. Such landowners— who spent most of their time working the fields and supervising the work of their servants— were highly praised by Xenophon in his Oeconomicus. What is most interesting in Orestes is that Euripides emphasizes the political competence of such landowners by mentioning three aspects of their character The first is that they are always willing to march to war and fight for the city, which they do better than anyone else. Of course, Euripides does not give any rational explanation of why this should be so; but if we refer to Xenophon’s Oeconomicus where the autourgos is depicted, there are a number of reasons given. A major explanation is that the landowner who works his own land is, naturally, very interested in the defense and protection of the lands of the country—unlike the shopkeepers and the people living in the city who do not own their own land, and hence do not care as much if the enemy pillages the countryside. But those who work as farmers simply cannot tolerate the thought that the enemy might ravage the farms, burn the crops, kill the flocks and herds, and so on; and hence they make good fighters.

Secondly, the autourgos is able "to come to grips in argument" i.e., is able to use language to propose good advice for the city. As Xenophon explains, such landowners are used to giving orders to their servants, and making decisions about what must be done in various circumstances. So not only are they good soldiers, they also make good leaders. Hence when they do speak to the ekklēsia, they do not use thorubos; but what they say is important, reasonable, and constitutes good advice.

In addition, the last orator is a man of moral integrity: "a man of blameless principle and integrity".

A final point about the autourgos is this: whereas the previous speaker wanted Electra and Orestes to be put to death by stoning, not only does this landowner call for Orestes’ acquittal, he believes Orestes should be "honored with crowns" for what he has done. To understand the significance of the autourgos’ statement, we need to realize that what is at

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issue in Orestes’ trial for the Athenian audience-living in the midst of the Peloponnesian waris the question of war or peace: will the decision concerning Orestes be an aggressive one that will institute the continuation of hostilities, as in war, or will the decision institute peace? The autourgos’ proposal of an acquittal symbolizes the will for peace. But he also states that Orestes should be crowned for killing Clytemnestra "since no man would leave his home, and arm himself, and march to war, if wives left there in trust could be seduced by stay-at-homes, and brave men cuckolded". We must remember that Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus just after he returned home from the Trojan War; for while he was fighting the enemy away from home, Clytemnestra was living in adultery with Aegisthus.

And now we can see the precise historical and political context for this scene. The year of the play’s production is 408 BC, a time when the competition between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian war was still very sharp. The two cities have been fighting now for twentythree long years, with short intermittent periods of truce. Athens in 408 BC, following several bitter and ruinous defeats in 413, had recovered some of its naval power. But on land the situation was not good, and Athens was vulnerable to Spartan invasion. Nonetheless, Sparta made several offers of Peace to Athens so that the issue of continuing the war or making peace was vehemently discussed.

In Athens the democratic party was in favor of war for economic reasons which are quite clear; for the party was generally supported by merchants, shop-keepers, businessmen, and those who were interested in the imperialistic expansion of Athens. The conservative aristocratic party was in favor of peace since they gained their support from the landowners and others who wanted a peaceful co-existence with Sparta, as well as an Athenian constitution which was closer, in some respects, to the Spartan constitution.

The leader of the democratic party was Cleophon—who was not native to Athens, but a foreigner who registered as a citizen. A skillful and influential speaker, he was infamously portrayed in his life by his own contemporaries (for example, it was said he was not courageous enough to become a soldier, that he apparently played the passive role in his sexual relations with other men, and so on) . So you see that all of the characteristics of the third orator, the negative parrhesiastes, can be attributed to Cleophon .

The leader of the conservative party was Theramenes—who wanted to return to a SixthCentury Athenian constitution that would institute a moderate oligarchy. Following his proposal, the main civil and political rights would have been reserved for the landowners. The traits of the autourgos, the positive parrhesiastes, thus correspond to Theramenes.

So one of the issues clearly present in Orestes’ trial is the question that was then being debated by the democratic and conservative parties about whether Athens should continue the war with Sparta, or opt for peace.

7. The ‘Problematization’ of parrhesia in Euripides In Euripides’ Ion, written ten years earlier than Orestes, around 418 BC, parrhesia was presented as having only a positive sense or value. And, as we saw, it was both the freedom to speak one’s mind, and a privilege conferred on the first citizens of Athens—a privilege which Ion wished to enjoy. The parrhesiastes spoke the truth precisely because he was a good citizen, was well-born, had a respectful relation to the city, to the law, and to truth. And for Ion, the problem was that in order for him to assume the parrhesiastic role which came naturally to him, the truth about his birth had to be disclosed. But because Apollo did not wish to reveal this truth, Creusa had to disclose his birth by using parrhesia against the god in a public accusation. And thus Ion’s parrhesia was established, was grounded in Athenian soil, in the game between the gods and mortals. So there was no ‘problematization’ of the parrhesiastes as such within this first conception.

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In Orestes, however, there is a split within parrhesia itself between its positive and negative senses; and the problem of parrhesia occurs solely within the field of human parrhesiastic roles. This crisis of the function of parrhesia has two major aspects.

The first concerns the question: ‘Who is entitled to use parrhesia?’ Is it enough simply to accept parrhesia as a civil right such that any and every citizen can speak in the assembly if and when he or she wishes? or should parrhesia be exclusively granted to some citizens only, according to their social status or personal virtues? There is a discrepancy between an egalitarian system which enables everyone to use parrhesia, and the necessity of choosing among the citizenry those who are able (because of their social or personal qualities) to use parrhesia in such a way that it truly benefits the city. And this discrepancy generates the emergence of parrhesia as a problematic issue. For unlike isonomia (the equality of all citizens in front of the law) and isegoria (the legal right given to everyone to speak his or her own opinion), parrhesia was not clearly defined in institutional terms. There was no law, for example, protecting the parrhesiastes from potential retaliation or punishment for what he or she said. And thus there was also a problem in the relation between nomos and aletheia: how is it possible to give legal form to someone who relates to truth? There are formal laws of valid reasoning, but no social, political, or institutional laws determining who is able to speak the truth.

The second aspect of the crisis concerning the function of parrhesia has to do with the relation of parrhesia to mathesis, to knowledge and education—which means that parrhesia in and of itself is no longer considered adequate to disclose the truth. The parrhesiastes’ relation to truth can no longer simply be established by pure frankness or sheer courage, for the relation now requires education or, more generally, some sort of personal formation. But the precise sort of personal formation or education needed is also an issue (and is contemporaneous with the problem of sophistry). In Orestes, it seems more likely that the mathesis required is not that of the Socratic or Platonic conception, but the kind of experience that an autourgos would get through his own life.

And now I think we can begin to see that the crisis regarding parrhesia is a problem of truth: for the problem is one of recognizing who is capable of speaking the truth within the limits of an institutional system where everyone is equally entitled to give his or her own opinion. Democracy by itself is not able to determine who has the specific qualities which enable him or her to speak the truth (and thus should possess the right to tell the truth). And parrhesia, as a verbal activity, as pure frankness in speaking, is also not sufficient to disclose truth since negative parrhesia, ignorant outspokenness, can also result.

The crisis of parrhesia, which emerges at the crossroads of an interrogation about democracy and an interrogation about truth, gives rise to a problematization of some hitherto unproblematic relations between freedom, power, democracy, education, and truth in Athens at the end of the Fifth Century. From the previous problem of gaining access to parrhesia in spite of the silence of god, we move to a problematization of parrhesia, i.e., parrhesia itself becomes problematic, split within itself.

I do not wish to imply that parrhesia, as an explicit notion, emerges at this moment of crisis—as if the Greeks did not have any coherent idea of the freedom of speech previously, or of the value of free speech. What I mean is that there is a new problematization of the relations between verbal activity, education, freedom, power, and the existing political institutions which marks a crisis in the way freedom of speech is understood in Athens. And this problematization demands a new way of taking care of and asking questions about these relations.

I emphasize this point for at least the following methodological reason. I would like to distinguish between the "history of ideas" and the "history of thought". Most of the time a historian of ideas tries to determine when a specific concept appears, and this moment is often

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identified by the appearance of a new word. But what I am attempting to do as a historian of thought is something different. I am trying to analyze the way institutions, practices, habits, and behavior become a problem for people who behave in specific sorts of ways, who have certain types of habits, who engage in certain kinds of practices, and who put to work specific kinds of institutions. The history of ideas involves the analysis of a notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of other ideas which constitute its context. The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience, or a set of practices which were accepted without question, which were familiar and out of discussion, becomes a problem, raises discussion and debate, incites new reactions, and induces a crisis in the previously silent behavior, habits, practices, and institutions. The history of thought, understood in this way, is the history of the way people begin to take care of something, of the way they became anxious about this or that for example, about madness, about crime, about sex, about themselves, or about truth.

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PARRHESIA AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS Today I would like to complete what I began last time about parrhesia and the crisis of democratic institutions in the Fourth Century BC; and then I would like to move on to the analysis of another form of parrhesia, viz., parrhesia in the field of personal relations (to oneself and to others) , or parrhesia and the care of the self.

The explicit criticism of speakers who utilized parrhesia in its negative sense became a commonplace in Greek political thought since the Peloponnesian War; and a debate emerged concerning the relationship of parrhesia to democratic institutions. The problem, very roughly put, was the following. Democracy is founded by a politeia, a constitution, where the demos, the people, exercise power, and where everyone is equal in front of the law. Such a constitution, however, is condemned to give equal place to all forms of parrhesia, even the worst. Because parrhesia is given even to the worst citizens, the overwhelming influence of bad, immoral, or ignorant speakers may lead the citizenry into tyranny, or may otherwise endanger the city. Hence parrhesia may be dangerous for democracy itself. Thus this problem seems coherent and familiar, but for the Greeks the discovery of this problem, of a necessary antinomy between parrhesiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;freedom of speechâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and democracy, inaugurated a long impassioned debate concerning the precise nature of the dangerous relations which seemed to exist between democracy, logos, freedom, and truth.

We must take into account the fact that we know one side of the discussion much better than the other for the simple reason that most of the texts which have been preserved from this period come from writers who were either more or less directly affiliated with the aristocratic party, or at least distrustful of democratic or radically democratic institutions. And I would like to quote a number of these texts as examples of the problem we are examining.

The first one I would like to quote is an ultra-conservative, ultra-aristocratic lampooning of the democratic Athenian constitution, probably written during the second half of the Fifth Century. And for a long this lampoon was attributed to Xenophon. But now scholars agree that this attribution was not correct, and the Anglo-American classicists even have a nice nickname for this Pseudo-Xenophon, the unnamed author of this lampoon. They call him, the "Old Oligarch". This text must come from one of those aristocratic circles or political clubs which were so active in Athens at the end of the Fifth Century. Such circles were very influential in the anti-democratic revolution of 411 BC during the Peloponnesian War. The lampoon takes the form of a paradoxical praise or eulogyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a genre very familiar to the Greeks. The writer is supposed to be an Athenian democrat who focuses on some of the most obvious imperfections, shortcomings, blemishes, failures, etc. , of Athenian democratic institutions and political life; and he praises these imperfections as if they were qualities with the most positive consequences. The text is without any real literary value since the writer is more aggressive than witty. But the main thesis which is at the root of most criticisms of Athenian democratic institutions can be found in this text, and is, I think, significant for this type of radically aristocratic attitude.

This aristocratic thesis is the following. The demos, the people, are the most numerous.

Since they are the most numerous, the demos is also comprised of the most ordinary, and indeed, even the worst, citizens. Therefore the demos cannot be comprised of the best citizens.

And so, what is best for the demos cannot be what is best for the polis, for the city. With this general argument as a background, the "Old Oligarch" ironically praises Athenian democratic institutions; and there are some lengthy passages caricaturing freedom of speech: Now one might say that the right thing would be that [the people] not allow all to speak on an equal footing, nor to have a seat in the council, but only the cleverest men

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and the best. But on this point, too, they have determined on the perfectly right thing by also allowing the vulgar people to speak. For if only the aristocracy were allowed to speak and took part in the debate, it would be good to them and their peers, but not to the proletarians. But now that any vulgar person who wants to do so may step forward and speak, he will just express that which is good to him and his equals.

One might ask: How should such a person be able to understand what is good to him or to the people? Well, the masses understand that this manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ignorance, vulgarity, and sympathy are more useful to them than all the morals, wisdom, and antipathy of the distinguished man. With such a social order, it is true, a state will not be able to develop into perfection itself, but democracy will be best maintained in this manner. For the people do not want to be in the circumstances of slaves in a state with an ideal constitution, but to be free and be in power; whether the constitution is bad or no, they do not care very much. For what you think is no ideal constitution, is just the condition for the people being in power and being free. For if you seek an ideal constitution you will see that in the first place the laws are made by the most skillful persons; further the aristocracy will consult about the affairs of the state and put a stop to unruly persons having a seat in the council or speaking or taking part in the assembly of the people. But the people, well, they will as a consequence of these good reforms rather sink into slavery.

Now I would like to switch to another text which presents a much more moderate position.

It is a text written by Isocrates in the middle of the Fourth Century; and Isocrates refers several times to the notion of parrhÄ&#x201C;sia and to the problem of free speech in a democracy. At the beginning of his great oration, "On the Peace", written in 355 BC, Isocrates contrasts the Athenian peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attitude towards receiving advice about their private business when they consult reasonable, well-educated individuals with the way they consider advice when dealing with public affairs and political activities: ...whenever you take counsel regarding your private business you seek out as counselors men who are your superiors in intelligence, but whenever you deliberate on the business of the state you distrust and dislike men of that character and cultivate, instead, the most depraved of the orators who come before you on this platform; and you prefer as being better friends of the people those who are drunk to those who are sober, those who are witless to those who are wise, and those who dole out the public money to those who perform public services at their own expense. So that we may well marvel that anyone can expect a state which employs such counselors to advance to better things.

But not only do Athenians listen to the most depraved orators; they are not even willing to hear truly good speakers, for they deny them the possibility of being heard: I observe ... that you do not hear with equal favour the speakers who address you, but that, while you give your attention to some, in the case of others you do not even suffer their voice to be heard. And it is not surprising that you do this; for in the past you have formed the habit of driving all the orators from the platform except those who support your desire.

And that, I think, is important. For you see that the difference between the good and the bad orator does not lie primarily in the fact that one gives good while the other gives bad advice. The difference lies in this: the depraved orators, who are accepted by the people, only say what the people desire to hear. Hence, Isocrates calls such speakers "flatterers". The honest orator, in contrast, has the ability, and is courageous enough, to oppose the demos. He

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has a critical and pedagogical role to play which requires that he attempt to transform the will of the citizens so that they will serve the best interests of the city. This opposition between the people’s will and the city’s best interests is fundamental to Isocrates’ criticism of the democratic institutions of Athens. And he concludes that because it is not even possible to be heard in Athens if one does not parrot the demos’ will, there is democracy— which is a good thing—but the only parrhesiastic or outspoken speakers left who have an audience are "reckless orators" and "comic poets": I know that it is hazardous to oppose your views and that, although this is a free government, there exists no ‘freedom of speech’ [parrhesia] except that which is enjoyed in this Assembly by the most reckless orators, who care nothing for your welfare, and in the theatre by the comic poets.

Hence real parrhesia, parrhesia in its positive, critical sense, does not exist where democracy exists.

In the "Areopagiticus" [355 BC], Isocrates draws a set of distinctions which similarly expresses this general idea of the incompatibility of true democracy and critical parrhesia.

For he compares the old Solonian and Cleisthenean constitutions to present Athenian political life, and praises the older polities on the grounds that they gave to Athens democracy, liberty, happiness, and equality in front of the law . All of these positive features of the old democracy, however, he claims have become perverted in the present Athenian democracy.

Democracy has become lack of self-restraint liberty has become lawlessness; happiness has become the freedom to do whatever one pleases and equality in front of the law has become parrhesia. Parrhesia in this text has only a negative, pejorative sense. So, as you can see, in Isocrates there is a constant positive evaluation of democracy in general, but coupled with the assertion that it is impossible to enjoy both democracy and parrhesia (understood in its positive sense) . Moreover, there is the same distrust of the demos’ feelings, opinions, and desires which we encountered, in more radical form, in the Old Oligarchs lampoon.

A third text I would like to examine comes from Plato’s Republic, where Socrates explains how democracy arises and develops. For he tells Adeimantus that: When the poor win, the result is democracy. They kill some of the opposite party, banish others, and grant the rest an equal share in civil rights and government, officials being usually appointed by lot.

Socrates then asks: ‘What is the character of this new regime ?’ And he says of the people in a democracy: First of all, they are free. Liberty and free speech [parrhesia] are rife everywhere; anyone is allowed to do what he likes ... That being so, every man will arrange his own manner of life to suit his pleasure.

What is interesting about this text is that Plato does not blame parrhesia for endowing everyone with the possibility of influencing the city, including the worst citizens. For Plato, the primary danger of parrhesia is not that it leads to bad decisions in government, or provides the means for some ignorant or corrupt leader to gain power, to become a tyrant. The primary danger of liberty and free speech in a democracy is what results when everyone has his own manner of life, his own style of life . For then there can be no common logos, no possible unity, for the city. Following the Platonic principle that there is an analogous relation between the way a human being behaves and the way a city is ruled, between the hierarchical

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organization of the faculties of a human being and the constitutional make-up of the polis, you can see very well that if everyone in the city behaves just as he or she wishes, with each person following his own opinion, his own will or desire, then there are in the city as many constitutions, as many small autonomous cities, as there are citizens doing whatever they please. And you can see that Plato also considers parrhesia not only as the freedom to say whatever one wishes, but as linked with the freedom to do whatever one wants. It is a kind of anarchy involving the freedom to choose one’s own style of life without limit.

Well, there are numerous other things to say about the political problematization of parrhesia in Greek culture, but I think that we can observe two main aspects of this problematization during the Fourth Century.

First, as is clear in Plato’s text for example, the problem of the freedom of speech becomes increasingly related to the choice of existence, to the choice of one’ s way of life.

Freedom in the use of logos increasingly becomes freedom in the choice of bios. And as a result, parrhesia is regarded more and more as a personal attitude, a personal quality, as a virtue which is useful for the city’s political life in the case of positive or critical parrhesia, or as a danger for the city in the case of negative, pejorative parrhesia. In Demosthenes, for example, one can find a number of references to parrhesia but parrhesia is usually spoken of as a personal quality, and not as an institutional right. Demosthenes does not seek, or make an issue of institutional guarantees for parrhesia, but insists on the fact that he, as a personal citizen, will use parrhesia because he must boldly speak the truth about the city’s bad politics.

And he claims that in so doing, he runs a great risk. For it is dangerous for him to speak freely, given that the Athenians in the Assembly are so reluctant to accept any criticism.

Secondly, we can observe another transformation in the, problematization of parrhesia: parrhesia is increasingly linked to another kind of political institution, viz., monarchy.

Freedom of speech must now be used towards king. But obviously, in such a monarchic situation, parrhesia is much more dependent upon the personal qualities both of the king (who must choose to accept or reject the use of parrhesia), and of the king’s advisors.

Parrhesia is no longer an institutional right or privilege—as in a democratic city—but is much more a personal attitude, a choice of bios. This transformation is evident, for example, in Aristotle. The word "parrhesia" is rarely used by Aristotle, but it occurs in four or five places. There is, however, no political analysis of the concept of parrhesia as connected with any political institution. For when the word occurs, it is always either in relation to monarchy, or as a personal feature of the ethical, moral character.

In the Constitution of Athens, Aristotle gives an example of positive, critical parrhesia in the tyrannical administration of Pisistratus. As you know, Aristotle considered Pisistratus to be a humane and beneficent tyrant whose reign was very fruitful for Athens. And Aristotle gives the following account of how Pisistratus met a small, landowner after he had imposed a ten percent tax on all produce: ... [Pisistratus] often made expeditions in person into the country to inspect it and to settle disputes between individuals, that they might not come into the city and neglect their farms. It was in one of the progresses that, as the story goes, Pisistratus had his adventure with the man of Hymettus, who was cultivating the spot afterwards known as ‘Tax-free Farm’. He saw a man digging and working at a very stony piece of ground, and being surprised he sent his attendant to ask what he got out of this plot of land. ‘Aches and pains’, said the man; ‘and that’s what Pisistratus ought to have his tenth of’. The man spoke without knowing who his questioner was; but Pisistratus was so pleased with his frank speech and his industry that he granted him exemption from all taxes.

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So parrhesia occurs here in the monarchic situation.

The word is also used by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics [Book IV, 1124b28], not to characterize a political practice or institution, but as a trait of the magnanimous man, the megalopsychos . Some of the other characteristics of the magnanimous man are more or less related to the parrhesiastic character and attitude. For example, the megalopsychos is courageous, but he is not someone who likes danger so much that he runs out to greet it. His courage is rational [1124b7-9]. He prefers aletheia to doxa, truth to opinion. He does not like flatterers. And since he looks down on other men, he is "outspoken and frank" [1124b28]. He uses parrhesia to speak the truth because he is able to recognize the faults of others: he is conscious of his own difference from them, of his own superiority. So you see that for Aristotle, parrhesia is either a moral-ethical quality, or pertains to free speech as addressed to a monarch. Increasingly, these personal. and moral features of parrhesia become more pronounced.

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The Practices of Parrhesia In this session and next week--in the last seminar meeting--I would like to analyze philosophical parrhesia from the standpoint of its practices. By the " practice " of parrhesia I mean two things :first, the use of parrhesia in specific types of human relationships (which I shall address this evening) ; and secondly, the procedures and techniques employed in such relationships (which will be the topic of our last session).

Because of the lack of time, and to assist on the clarity of the presentation, I would like to distinguish three kinds of human relationships which are implied in the use of this new philosophical parrhesia. But, of course, this is only a general schema, for there are several intermediate forms.

First, parrhesia occurs as an activity in the framework of small groups of people, or in the context of community life. Secondly, parrhesia can be see in human relationships occurring in the framework of public life. And finally, parrhesia occurs in the context of individual personal relationships. More specifically, we can say that parrhesia as a feature of community life was highly regarded by the Epicureans ; parrhesia as a public activity or public demonstration was a significant aspect of Cynicism, as well as that type of philosophy that was a mixture of Cynicism and Stoicism ; and parrhesia as an aspect of personal relationships is found more frequently either in Stoicism or in a generalized or common Stoicism characteristic of such writers as Plutarch.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Socratic Parrhesia Parrhesia and Community Life Parrhesia and Public Life Parrhesia and Personal Relationships

1. Socratic Parrhesia I would now like to analyze a new form of parrhesia which was emerging and developing even before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. There are, of course, important similarities and analogous relationships between the political parrhesia we have been examining and this new form of parrhesia. But in spite of these similarities, a number of specific features, directly related to the figure of Socrates, characterize and differentiate this new Socratic Parrhesia.

In selecting a testimony about Socrates as a parrhesiastic figure, I have chosen Plato's Laches (or "On Courage") and this, for several reasons. First, although this Platonic dialogue, the Laches, is rather short, the word "parrhesia" appears three times [178a5, &79c1, 189a1]-which is rather a lot when one takes into account how infrequently Plato uses the word.

At the beginning of the dialogue, it is also interesting to note that the different participants are characterized by their parrhesia. Lysimachus and Melesias, two of the participants, say that they will speak their minds freely, using parrhesia to confess that they have done or accomplished nothing very important, glorious, or special in their own lives.

And they make this confession to two other older citizens, Laches and Nicias (both of them quite famous generals) in the hope that they, too, will speak openly and frankly--for they are old enough, influential enough, and glorious enough to be frank and not hide what they truly think. But this passage [178a5] is not the main one I would like to quote since it employs parrhesia in an everyday sense, and is not an instance of Socratic parrhesia.

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From a strictly theoretical point of view the dialogue is a failure because no one in the dialogue is able to give a rational, true, and satisfactory definition of "courage"--which is the topic of the piece. But in spite of the fact that even Socrates himself is not able to give such a definition, at the end of the dialogue Nicias, Laches, Lysimachus, and Melesias all agree that Socrates would be the best teacher for their sons. And so Lysimachus and Melesias ask him to adopt this role. Socrates accepts, saying that everyone should try to take care of himself and of his sons [201b4]. And here you find a notion which, as some of you know, I like a lot: the concept of "epimeleia heautou", the "care of the self". We have, then, I think, a movement visible throughout this dialogue from the parrhesiastic figure of Socrates to the problem of the care of the self.

Before we read the specific passages in the text that I would like to quote, however, we need to recall the situation at the beginning of the dialogue. But since the Laches is very complex and interwoven, I shall do so only briefly and schematically.

Two elderly men, Lysimachus and Melesias, are concerned about the kind of education they should give to their sons. Both of them belong to eminent Athenian families; Lysimachus is the son of Aristeides "the Just" and Melesias is the son of Thucydides the Elder. But although their own fathers were illustrious in their own day, Lysimachus and Melesias have accomplished nothing very special or glorious in their own lives: no important military campaigns, no significant political roles. They use parrhesia to admit this publicly. And they have also asked themselves the question, "how is it that from such a good genos, from such good stock, from such a noble family, they were both unable to distinguish themselves?"

Clearly, as their own experience shows, having a high birth and belonging to a noble Athenian house are not sufficient to endow someone with the aptitude and the ability to assume a prominent position or role in the city. They realize that something more is needed, viz., education.

But what kind of education? When we consider that the dramatic date of the Laches is around the end of the Fifth Century, at a time when a great many individuals--most of them presenting themselves as sophists--claimed that they could provide young people with a good education, we can recognize here a problematic which is common to a number of Platonic dialogues. The educational techniques that were being propounded around this time often dealt with several aspects of education, e.g., rhetoric (learning how to address a jury or a political assembly), various sophistic techniques, and occasionally military education and training. In Athens at this time there was also a major problem being debated regarding the best way to educate and train the infantry soldiers--who were largely inferior to the Spartan hoplites. And all of the political, social, and institutional concerns about education, which for, the general context of this dialogue, are related to the problem of parrhesia. In the political field we saw that there was a need for a parrhesiastes who could speak the truth about political institutions and decisions, and the problem there was knowing how to recognize such a truth-teller. In its basic form, this same problem now reappears in the field of education. For if you yourself are not well-educated, how then can you decide what constitutes a good education? And if people are to be educated, they must receive the truth from a competent teacher. But how can we distinguish the good, truth-telling teachers from the bad or inessential ones?

It is in order to help them come to such a decision that Lysimachus and Melesius ask Nicias and Laches to witness a performance given by Stesilaus--a man who claims to be a teacher of hoplomachia or the art of fighting with heavy arms. This teacher is an athlete, technician, actor, and artist. Which means that although he is very skillful in handling weapons, he does not use his skill to actually fight the enemy, but only to make money by giving public performances and teaching the young men. The man is a kind of sophist for the martial arts. After seeing his skills demonstrated in this public performance, however, neither

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Lysimachus nor Melesius is able to decide whether this sort of skill in fighting would constitute part of a good education. So they turn to well-known figures of their time, Nicias and Laches, and ask their advice [178a-181d].

Nicias is an experienced military general who won several victories on the battlefield, and was an important political leader. Laches is also a respected general, although he does not play as significant a role in Athenian politics. Both of them give their opinions about Stesilaus' demonstration and it turns out that they are in complete disagreement regarding the value of this military skill. Nicias thinks that this military technician has done well, and that his skill may be able to provide the young with a good military education [181e-182d].

Laches disagrees and argues that the Spartans--who are the best soldiers in Greece--never have recourse to such teachers. Moreover, he thinks that Stesilaus is not a soldier since he has never won any real victories in battle [182d-184c] Through this disagreement we see that not only ordinary citizens without any special qualities are unable to decide what is the best kind of education, and who is able to teach skills worth learning, but even those who have long military and political experience, like Nicias and Laches, cannot come to a unanimous decision.

In the end, however, Nicias and Laches both agree that despite their fame, their important role in Athenian affairs, their age, their experience, and so on, they should refer to Socrates--who has been there all along--to see what he thinks. And after Socrates reminds them that education concerns the care of the soul [185d], Nicias explains why he will allow his soul to be "tested" by Socrates, i.e., why he will play the Socratic parrhesiastic game. And this explanation of Nicias is, I think, a portrayal of Socrates as a parrhesiastes: NICIAS : You strike me as not being aware that, whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and has any talk with him face to face, is bound to be drawn round and round by him in the course of the argument--though it may have started at first on a quite different theme--and cannot stop until he is led into giving an account of himself, of the manner in which he now spends his days, and of the kind of life he has lived hitherto ;and when once he has been led into that, Socrates will never let him go until he has thoroughly and properly put all his ways to the test. Now I am accustomed to him, and so I know that one is bound to be thus treated by him, and further, that I myself shall certainly get the same treatment also. For I delight, Lysimachus, in conversing with the man, and see no harm in our being reminded of any past and present misdoing: nay, one must needs take more careful though for the rest of one's life, if one does not fly from his words but is willing, as Solon said, and zealous to learn as long as one lives, and does not expect to get good sense by the mere arrival of old age. So to me there is nothing unusual, or unpleasant either, in being tried and tested by Socrates; in fact, I knew pretty well all the time that our argument would not be about the boys if Socrates were present, but about ourselves.

Let me therefore repeat that there is no objection on my part to holding a debate with Socrates after the fashion that he likesâ&#x20AC;Ś Nicias' speech describes the parrhesiastic game of Socrates from the point of view of the one who is "tested". But unlike the parrhesiastes who addresses the demos in the Assembly, for example, here we have a parrhesiastic game which requires a personal, face to face relationship. Thus the beginning of the quote states: "whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and has any talk with him face to faceâ&#x20AC;Ś"[187e]. Socrates' interlocutor must get in touch with him, establish some proximity to him in order to play the parrhesiastic game. That is the first point.

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Secondly, in this relationship to Socrates, the listener is led by Socrates' discourse. The passivity of the Socratic hearer, however, is not the same kind of passivity as that of a listener in the Assembly. The passivity of a listener in the political parrhesiastic game consists in being persuaded by what he listens to. Here, the listener is led by the Socratic logos into "giving an account"--didonai logon--of himself, "of the manner in which he now spends his days, and of the kind of life he has lived hitherto" [187e-188a]. Because we are inclined to read such texts through the glasses of our Christian culture, however, we might interpret this description of the Socratic game as a practice where the one who is being led by Socrates' discourse must give an autobiographical account of his life, or a confession of his faults. But such an interpretation would miss the real meaning of the text. For when we compare this passage with similar descriptions of Socrates' method of examination--as in the Apology, Alcibiades Major, or the Gorgias, Where we also find the idea that to be led by the Socrates logos is to "give an account" of oneself--we see very clearly that what is involved is not a confessional autobiography. In Plato's or Xenophon's portrayals of him, we never see Socrates requiring an examination of conscience or a confession of sins. Here, giving an account of your life, your bios, is also not to give a narrative of the historical events that have taken place in your life, but rather to demonstrate whether you are able to show that there is a relation between the rational discourse, the logos, you are able to use, and the way that you live.

Socrates is inquiring into the way that logos gives form to a person's style of life; for he is interested in discovering whether there is a harmonic relation between the two. Later on in this same dialogue [190d-194b] for example, when Socrates asks Laches to give the reason for his courage, he does not want a narrative of Laches' exploits in the Peloponnesian War, but for Laches to attempt to disclose the logos which gives rational, intelligible form to his courage. Socrates' role, then, is to ask for a rational accounting of a person's life.

This role is characterized in the text as that of a "basanos" or "touchstone" which tests the degree of accord between a person's life and its principle of intelligibility or logos: "â&#x20AC;ŚSocrates will never let [his listener] go until he has thoroughly and properly put all his ways to the test [188a]. The Greek word "basanos" refers to a "touchstone", i.e., a black stone which is used to test the genuineness of gold by examining the streak left on the stone when "touched" by the gold in question. Similarly, Socrates' "basanic" role enables him to determine the true nature of the relation between the logos and bios of those who come into contact with him.

Then, in the second part of this quotation, Nicias explains that as a result of Socrates' examination one becomes willing to care for the manner in which he lives the rest of his life, wanting now to live in the best possible way; and this willingness takes the form of a zeal to learn and to educate oneself no matter what one's age.

Laches' speech, which immediately follows, describes Socrates' parrhesiastic game from the perspective of one who has inquired into Socrates' role as a touchstone. For the problem arises of knowing how we can be sure that Socrates himself is a good basanos for testing the relation between logos and bios in his listener's life.

LACHES: I have but a single mind, Nicias, in regard to discussions, or if you like, a double rather than a single one. For you might think me a lover, and yet also a hater, of discussions: for when I hear a man discussing virtue or any kind of wisdom, one who is truly a man and worthy of his argument, I am exceedingly delighted; I take the speaker and his speech together, and observe how they sort and harmonize with each other. Such a man is exactly what I understand by "musical", he has tuned himself with the fairest harmony, not that of a lyre or other entertaining instrument, but has made a true concord of his own life between his words and his deeds, not in the Ionian, no , nor in the Phrygian nor in the Lydian, but simply in the Dorian mode,

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which is the sole Hellenic harmony. Such a man makes me rejoice with his utterance, and anyone would judge me then a lover of discussion, so eagerly do I take in what he says: but a man who shows the opposite character gives me pain, and the better he seems to speak, the more I am pained, with the result, in this case, that I am judged a hater of discussion. Now of Socrates' words I have no experience, but formerly , I fancy, I have made trial of his deeds; and there I found him living up to any fine words however freely spoken. So if he has that gift as well, his wish is mine, and I should be very glad to be cross-examinated by such a man, and should not chafe at learningâ&#x20AC;Ś As you can see, this speech in part answers the question of how to determine the visible criteria, the personal qualities, which entitle Socrates to assume the role of the basanos of other people's lives. From information given at the beginning of the Laches we have learned that by the dramatic date of the dialogue, Socrates is not very well-known, that he is not regarded as an eminent citizen, that he is younger than Nicias and Laches, and that he has no special competence in the field of military training--with this exception: he exhibited great courage in the battle at Delium where Laches was the commanding general. Why, then, would two famous and older generals submit to Socrates' cross-examinations ? Laches, who is not as interested in philosophical or political discussions, and who prefers deeds to words throughout the dialogue (in contrast to Nicias), gives the answer. For he says that there is a harmonic relation between what Socrates says an what he does, between his words (logoi) and his deeds (erga). Thus, not only is Socrates himself able to give an account of his own life, such an account is already visible in his behavior since there is not the slightest discrepancy between what he says and what he does. He is a "mousikos aner". In Greek culture, and in most of Plato's other dialogues, the phrase "mousikos aner" denotes a person who is devoted to the Muses--a cultured person of the liberal arts. Here the phrase refers to someone who exhibits a kind of ontological harmony where the logos and bios of such a person is in harmonic accord. And this harmonic relation is also a Dorian harmony.

As you know, there were four kinds of Greek harmony: the Lydian mode which Plato dislikes because it is too solemn; the Phrygian mode which Plato associates with the passions; the Ionian mode which is too soft and effeminate; and the Dorian mode which is courageous.

The harmony between word and deed in Socrates' life is Dorian, and was manifested in the courage he showed at Delium. This harmonic accord is what distinguishes Socrates from a sophist: the Sophist can give very fine and beautiful discourses on courage, but is not courageous himself. This accord is also why Laches can say of Socrates: "I found him living up to any fine words however freely spoken". Socrates is able to use rational, ethically valuable, fine, and beautiful discourse; but unlike the sophist, he can use parrhesia and speak freely because what he says accords exactly with what he thinks, and what he thinks accords exactly with what he does. And so Socrates--who is truly free and courageous--can therefore function as a parrhesiastic figure. Just as was the case in the political field, the parrhesiastic figure of Socrates also discloses the truth in speaking, is courageous in his life an in his speech, and confronts his listener's opinion in a critical manner. But Socratic parrhesia differs from political parrhesia in a number of ways. It appears in a personal relationship between two human beings, and not in the parrhesiastes' relation to the demos, or the king. And in addition to the relationships we noticed between logos, truth, and courage in political parrhesia, with Socrates a new element now emerges, viz., bios. Bios is the focus of Socratic parrhesia. On Socrates' or the philosopher's side, the bios-logos relation is a Dorian harmony which grounds Socrates' parrhesiastic role, and which, at the same time, constitutes the visible criterion for his function as the basanos or touchstone. On the interlocutor's side, the bioslogos relation is disclosed when the interlocutor gives an account of his life, and its harmony tested by contact with Socrates . Since he possesses in his relation to truth all the qualities that

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need to be disclosed in the interlocutor, Socrates can test the relation to truth of the interlocutor's existence. The aim of this Socratic parrhesiastic activity, then, is to lead the interlocutor to the choice of that kind of life (bios) that will be in Dorian-harmonic accord with logos, virtue, courage, and truth.

In Euripides' Ion we saw the problematization of parrhesia in the form of a game between logos, truth, and genos (birth) in the relations between the gods and mortals; and Ion's parrhesiastic role was grounded in a mythical genealogy descended from Athens. In the realm of political institutions the problematization of parrhesia involved a game between logos, truth, and nomos (law); and the parrhesiastes was needed to disclose those truths which would ensure the salvation of welfare of the city. Parrhesia here was the personal quality of an advisor to the king. And now with Socrates the problematization of parrhesia takes the form of a game between logos, truth, and bios (life) in the realm of a personal teaching relation between two human beings. And the truth that the parrhesiastic discourse discloses is the truth of someone's life, i.e., the kind of relation someone has to truth: how he constitutes himself as someone who has to know the truth through mathesis, and how this relation to truth is ontologically and ethically manifest in his own life. Parrhesia, in turn, becomes an ontological characteristic of the basanos, whose harmonic relation to truth can function as a touchstone. The objective of the cross-examinations Socrates conducts in his role of the touchstone, then, is to test the specific relation to truth of the other's existence.

In Euripides' Ion, parrhesia was opposed to Apollo's silence; in the political sphere parrhesia was opposed to the demos' will, or to those who flatter the desires of the majority or the monarch. In this third, Socratic-philosophical game, parrhesia is opposed to selfignorance and the false teachings of the sophists.

Socrates' role as a basanos appears very clearly in the Laches; but in other Platonic texts--the Apology, for example--this role is presented as a mission assigned to Socrates by the oracular deity at Delphi, viz., Apollo--the same god who kept silent in Ion. And just as Apollo's oracle was open to all who wished to consult it , so Socrates offered himself up to anyone as a questioner. The Delphic oracle was also so enigmatic and obscure that one could not understand it without knowing what sort of question one was asking, and what kind of meaning the oracular pronouncement could take in one's life. Similarly, Socrates' discourse requires that one overcome self-ignorance about one's own situation. But of course, there are major differences. For example, the oracle foretold what would happen to you, whereas Socratic parrhesia means to disclose who you are--not your relation to future events, but your present relation to truth.

I do not mean to imply that there is any strict chronological progression among the various forms of parrhesia we have noted. Euripides died in 407 BC and Socrates was put to death in 399 BC. In ancient culture the continuation of ideas and themes is also more pronounced. And we are also quite limited in the number of documents available from this period. So there is no precise chronology. The forms of parrhesia we see in Euripides did not generate a very long tradition. And as the Hellenistic monarchies grew and developed, political parrhesia increasingly assumed the form of a personal relation between the monarch and his advisors, thereby coming closer to Socratic form. Increased emphasis was placed on the royal art of statesmanship and the moral education of the king. And the Socratic type of parrhesia had a long tradition through the Cynics and other Socratic Schools. So the divisions are almost contemporary when then appear, but the historical destiny of the three are not the same.

In Plato, and in what we know of Socrates through Plato, a major problem concerns the attempt to determine how to bring he political parrhesia involving logos, truth, and nomos so that it coincides with the ethical parrhesia involving logos, truth, and bios. How can philosophical truth and moral virtue relate to the city through the nomos? You see this issue in

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the Apology, the Crito, the Republic, and in the Laws. There is a very interesting text in the Laws, for example, where Plato says that even in the city ruled by good laws there is still a need for someone who will use parrhesia to tell the citizens what moral conduct they must observe. Plato distinguishes between the Gardians of the Laws and the parrhesiastes -who does not monitor the application of the laws, but, like Socrates, speaks the truth about the good of the city, and gives advice from an ethical, philosophical standpoint. And, as far as I know, it is the only text in Plato where the one who uses parrhesia is a kind of political figure in the field of the law.

In the Cynic tradition--which also derives from Socrates--the problematic relation between nomos and bios will become a direct opposition. For in this tradition, the Cynic philosopher is regarded as the only one capable of assuming the role of the parrhesiastes.

And, as we shall see in the case of Diogenes, he must adopt a permanent negative and critical attitude towards any kind of political institution, and towards any kind of nomos.

You remember last time we met we analyzed some texts from Plato's Laches where we saw the emergence, with Socrates, of a new "philosophical" parrhesia very different from the previous forms we examined. In the Laches we had a game with five main players. Two of them, Lysimachus and Melesius, were well-born Athenian citizens from noble houses who were unable to assume a parrhesiastic role--for they did not know how to educate their own children, Laches and Nicias, who were also unable to play the role of parrhesiastes. Laches and Nicias, in turn, were then obliged to appeal to Socrates for help--who appears as the real parrhesiastic figure. So we can see in these transitional moves a successive displacement of the parrhesiastic role from the well-born Athenian and the political leader--who formerly possessed the role--to the philosopher, Socrates. Taking the Laches as our point of departure, we can now observe in Greco-Roman culture the rise and development of this new kind of parrhesia which, I think, can be characterized as follows.

First, this parrhesia is philosophical, and has been put into practice for centuries by the philosophers. Indeed, a large part of the philosophical activity that transpired in GrecoRoman culture required playing certain parrhesiastic games. Very schematically, I think that this philosophical role involved three types of parrhesiastic activity, all of them related to one another. Insofar as the philosopher had to discover and to teach certain truths about the world, nature, etc., he or she assumed a epistemic role. Taking a stand towards the city, the laws, political institutions, and so on, required, in addition, a political role. And parrhesiastic activity also endeavored to elaborate the nature of the relationships between truth and one's style of life, or truth and an ethics and aesthetics of the self. Parrhesia as it appears in the field of philosophical activity in Greco-Roman culture is not primarily a concept or theme, but a practice which tries to shape the specific relations individuals have to themselves. And I think that our own moral subjectivity is rooted, at least in part, in these practices. More precisely, I think that the decisive criterion which identifies the parrhesiastes is not to be found in his birth, nor in his citizenship, nor in his intellectual competence, but in the harmony which exists between his logos and his bios.

Secondly, the target of this new parrhesia is not to persuade the Assembly, but to convince someone that he must take care of himself and of others; and this means that he must change his life. This theme of changing one's life, of conversion, becomes very important from the Fourth Century BC to the beginnings of Christianity. It is essential to philosophical parrhesiastic practices. Of course conversion is not completely different from the change of mind that an orator, using his parrhesia, wished to bring about when he asked his fellow citizens to wake up, to refuse what they previously accepted, or to accept what they previously refused. But in philosophical practice the notion of changing one's mind takes on a more general and expanded meaning since it is no longer just a matter of altering one's belief

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or opinion, but of changing one's style of life, one's relation to others, and one's relation to oneself.

Thirdly, these new parrhesiastic practices imply a complex set of connections between the self and truth. For not only are these practices supposed to endow the individual with selfknowledge, this self-knowledge in turn is supposed to grant access to truth for further knowledge. The circle implied in knowing the truth about oneself in order to know the truth is characteristic of parrhesiastic practice since the Fourth Century, and has been one of the problematic enigmas of Western Thought--e.g., as in Descartes or Kant.

And a final point I would like to underscore about this philosophical parrhesia is that it has recourse to numerous techniques quite different from the techniques of persuasive discourse previously utilized; and it is no longer specifically linked to the agora, or to the king's court, but can now be utilized in numerous diverse places.

2. Parrhesia and community life Although the Epicureans, with the importance they gave to friendship, emphasized community life more than other philosophers at this time, nonetheless one can also find some stoic groups, as well as Stoic or Stoico-Cynic philosophers who acted as moral and political advisors to various circles and aristocratic clubs. For example, Musonius Rufus was spiritual advisor to Nero's cousin, Rubellius Plautus, and his circle ; and the Stoico-Cynic philosopher Demetrius was advisor to a liberal anti-aristocratic group around Thrasea Paetus. Thrasea Paetus, a roman senator, committed suicide after being condemned to death by the senate during Nero's reign. And Demetrius was the rĂŠgisseur, I would say, of his suicide. So besides the community life of the Epicureans there are other intermediate forms.

There is also the very interesting case of Epictetus?. Epictetus was a Stoic for whom the practice of speaking openly and frankly was also very important. He directed a school about which we know a few things from the four surviving volumes of Epictetus' Discourses as recorded by Arrian. We know, for example, that Epictetus' school was located at Nicopolis in a permanent structure which enabled students to share in a real community life. Public lectures and teaching sessions were given where the public was invited, and where individuals could ask questions--although sometimes such individuals were mocked and twitted by the masters. We also know that Epictetus conducted both public conversations and interviews.

His school was a kind of ĂŠcole normale for those who wanted to become philosophers or moral advisors.

So when I tell you that philosophical parrhesia occurs as an activity in three types of relationship, it must be clear that the forms I have chosen are only guiding examples ; the actual practices were, of course, much more complicated and interrelated.

First, then, the example of the Epicurean groups regarding the practice of parrhesia in community life. Unfortunately, we know very few things about the Epicurean communities, and even less about the parrhesiastic practices in these communities--which explains the brevity of my exposition. But we do have a text entitled " On Frank Speaking " written by Philodemus (who is recording the lectures of Zeno of Sidon). The text is not complete in its entirety, but the existing manuscript pieces come from the ruins of the Epicurean library discovered at Herculaneum near the end of the Nineteenth Century. What has been preserved is very fragmentary and rather obscure ; and I must confess that without some commentary from the Italian scholar, Marcello Gigante, I would not have understood much of this fragmentary Greek text.

I would like to underline the following points from this treatise.

First, Philodemus regards parrhesia not only as a quality, virtue, or personal attitude, but also as a techne comparable both to the art of medicine and to the art of piloting a boat. As

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you know, the comparison between medicine and navigation is a very traditional one in Greek culture. But even without this reference to parrhesia, the comparison of medicine and navigation is interesting for the following two reasons.

(1) The reason why the pilot's techne of navigation is similar to the physician's techne of medicine is that in both cases, the necessary theoretical knowledge required also demands practical training in order to be useful. Furthermore, in order to put these techniques to work, one has to take into account not only the general rules and principles of the art, but also particular data which are always specific to a given situation. One must take into account the particular circumstances, and also what the Greeks called the " kairos ", or the critical moment. The concept of the kairos--the decisive or crucial moment or opportunity--has always had a significant role in Greek though for epistemological, moral and technical reasons. What is of interest here is that since Philodemus is now associating parrhesia with piloting and medicine, it is also being regarded as a technique which deals with individual cases, specific situations, and the choice of the kairos or decisive moment. Utilizing our modern vocabulary, we can say that navigation, medicine, and the practice of parrhesia are all 'clinical techniques'.

(2) Another reason why the Greeks often associated medicine and navigation is that in the case of both techniques, one person (the pilot or physician) must make the decisions, give orders and instructions, exercise power and authority, while the others--the crew, the patient, the staff--must obey if the desired end is to be achieved. Hence navigation and medicine are also both related to politics. For in politics the choice of the opportunity, the best moment, is also crucial ; and someone is also supposed to be more competent than the others--and therefore has the right to give the orders that the others must obey. In politics, then, there are indispensable techniques which lie at the root of statesmanship considered as the art of governing people.

If I mention this ancient affinity between medicine, navigation, and politics, it is in order to indicate that with the addition of the parrhesiastic techniques of 'spiritual guidance', a corpus of interrelated clinical technai was constituted during the Hellenistic period. Of course, the techne of piloting or navigation is primarily of metaphorical significance. But an analysis of the various relations which Greco-Roman culture believed existed between the three clinical activities of medicine, politics, and the practice of parrhesia would be important.

Several centuries later, Gregory of Nazianzus would call spiritual guidance the 'technique of techniques'--'ars artium', 'techne technon'. This expression is significant since statesmanship or political techne was previously regarded as the techne technon or the Royal Art. But from the Fourth Century A. D. to the Seventeenth Century in Europe, the expression 'techne technon' usually refers to spiritual guidance as the most significant clinical technique.

This characterization of parrhesia as a techne in relation to medicine, piloting, and politics is indicative of the transformation of parrhesia into a philosophical practice. From the physician's art of governing patients and the king's art of governing the city and its subjects, we move to the philosopher's art of governing himself and acting as a kind of 'spiritual guide' for other people.

Another aspect of Philodemus' text concerns the references it contains about the structure of the Epicurean communities ; but commentators on Philodemus disagree about the exact form, complexity, and hierarchical organization of such communities. DeWitt thinks that the existing hierarchy was very well-established and complex ; whereas Gigante thinks that it was much simpler. It seems that there were at least two categories of teachers and two types of teaching in the Epicurean schools and groups.

There was 'classroom' teaching where a teacher addressed a group of students ; and there was also instruction in the form of personal interviews where a teacher would give advice and precepts to individual community members. Whereas the lower-ranked teachers only taught

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classes, the higher-level teachers both taught classes and gave personal interviews. Thus a distinction was drawn between general teaching and personal instruction or guidance. This distinction is not a difference in content, as between theoretical and practical subject matters-especially since studies in physics, cosmology, and natural law had ethical significance for the Epicureans. Nor is it a difference in instruction contrasting ethical theory with its practical application. Rather the difference marks a distinction in the pedagogical relationship between teacher and disciple or student. In the Socratic situation, there was one procedure which enabled the interlocutor to discover thee truth about himself, the relation of his bios to logos ; and this same procedure, at the same time, also enabled him to gain access to additional truths (about the world, ideas, the nature of the soul, and so on). With the Epicurean schools, however, there is the pedagogical relation of guidance where the master helps the disciple to discover the truth about himself, but there is now, in addition, a form of 'authoritarian' teaching in a collective relation where someone speaks the truth to a group of others. These two types of teaching became a permanent feature of western culture. And in the Epicurean schools we know that it was the role of the 'spiritual guide' for others that was more highly valued that that of group lecturer.

I do not wish to conclude the discussion of Philodemus' text without mentioning a practice which they engaged in--what we might call 'mutual confession' in a group. Some of the fragments indicate that there were group confessions or meetings where each of the community members in turn would disclose their thoughts, faults, misbehavior, and so on. We know very little about such meetings, but referring to this practice Philodemus uses an interesting expression. He speaks of this practice as 'the salvation by one another 'to di' allelon sozesthai'. The word 'sozesthai'--to save oneself--in the Epicurean tradition means to gain access to a good, beautiful, and happy life. It does not refer to any kind of afterlife or divine judgment. In one's own salvation, other members of the Epicurean community [The Garden] have a decisive role to play as necessary agents enabling one to discover the truth about oneself, and in helping one to gain access to a happy life?. Hence the very important emphasis on friendship in the Epicurean groups.

3. Parrhesia and public life Now I would like to move on to the practice of parrhesia in public life through the example of the Cynic philosophers. In the case of the Epicurean communities, we know very little about their style of life but have some idea of their doctrine as it is expressed in various texts. With the Cynics the situation is exactly reversed ; for we know very little about Cynic doctrine--even if there ever was such an explicit doctrine. But we do possess numerous testimonies regarding the Cynic way of life. And there is nothing surprising about this state of affairs ; for even though Cynic philosophers wrote books just like other philosophers, they were far more interested in choosing and practicing a certain way of life.

A historical problem concerning the origin of Cynicism is this. Most of the Cynics from the First Century B. C. and thereafter refer to either Diogenes or Antisthenes as the founder of the Cynic philosophy, and though these founder of Cynicism they relate themselves back to the teachings of Socrates. According to Farrand Sayre, however, the Cynic Sect appeared only in the Second Century B. C., or two centuries after Socrates' death. We might be a bit skeptical about a traditional explanation given for the rise of the Cynic Sects--an explanation which has been given so often to account for so many other phenomena ; but it is that Cynicism is a negative form of aggressive individualism which arose with the collapse of the political structures of the ancient world. A more interesting account is given by Sayre, who explains the appearance of the Cynics on the Greek philosophical scene as a consequence of expanding conquest of the Macedonian Empire. More specifically, he notes that with

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Alexander's conquests various Indian philosophies--especially the monastic and ascetic teaching of Indian Sects like the Gymnosophists--became more familiar to the Greeks.

Regardless of what we can determine about the origins of Cynicism, it is a fact that the Cynics were very numerous and influential from the end of the First Century BC to the Fourth Century A. D. Thus in A. D. 165 Lucian--who did not like the Cynics--writes : " The city swarms with these vermin, particularly those who profess the tenets of Diogenes, Antisthenes, and Crates. " It seems, in fact, that the self-styled 'Cynics' were so numerous that the Emperor Julian, in his attempt to revive classical Greek culture, wrote a lampoon against them scorning their ignorance, their coarseness, and portraying them as a danger for the Empire and for Greco-Roman culture. One of the reasons why Julian treated the Cynics so Harshly was due to their general resemblance to the early Christians. And some of the similarities may have been more than mere superficial resemblance. For example, Peregrinus (a well-known Cynic at the end of the Second Century A. D. ) was considered a kind of saint by his Cynic followers, especially by those who regarded his death as a heroic emulation of the death of Heracles. To display his Cynic indifference to death, Peregrinus committed suicide by cremating himself immediately following the Olympic Games of AD 167. Lucian, who witnessed the event, gives a satirical, derisive account. Julian was also disappointed that the Cynics were not able to represent ancient Greco-Roman culture, for he hoped that there would be something like a popular philosophical movement which would compete with Christianity.

The high value which the Cynics attributed to a person's way of life does not mean that they had no interest in theoretical philosophy, but reflects their view that the manner in which a person lived was a touchstone of his or her relation to truth--as we saw was also the case in the Socratic tradition. The conclusion they drew from this Socratic idea, however, was that in order to proclaim the truths they accepted in a manner that would be accessible to everyone, they though that their teachings had to consist in a very public, visible, spectacular, provocative, and sometimes scandalous way of life. The Cynics thus taught by way of examples and the explanations associated with them. They wanted their own lives to be a blazon of essential truths which would then serve as a guideline, or as an example for others to follow. But there is nothing in this Cynic emphasis on philosophy as an art of life which is alien to Greek philosophy. So even if we accept Sayre's hypothesis about the Indian philosophical influence on Cynic doctrine and practice, we must still recognize that the Cynic attitude is, in its basic form, just an extremely radical version of the very Greek conception of the relationship between one's way of life and knowledge of the truth. The Cynic idea that a person is nothing else but his relation to truth, and that this relation to truth takes shape or is given form in his own life--that is completely Greek.

In the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic traditions, philosophers referred mainly to a doctrine, text, or at least to some theoretical principles for their philosophy. In the Epicurean tradition, the followers of Epicurus refer both to a doctrine and also to the personal example set by Epicurus-whom every Epicurean tried to imitate. Epicurus originated the doctrine and was also a personification of it. But now in the Cynic tradition, the main references for the philosophy are not to the texts or doctrines, but to exemplary lives. Personal examples were also important in other philosophical schools, but in the Cynic movement-where there were no established texts, no settled, recognizable doctrine- reference was always made to certain real or mythical personalities who were taken to be the sources of Cynicism as a mode of life.

Such personalities were the starting point for Cynic reflection and commentary. The mythical characters referred to included Heracles [Hercules], Odysseus [Ulysses], and Diogenes.

Diogenes was an actual, historical figure, but his life became so legendary that he developed into a kind of myth as anecdotes, scandals, etc., were added to his historical life. About his actual life we do not know all that much, but it is clear that he became a kind of philosophical hero. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno of Citiun, etc., were philosophical authors and authorities, for

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example; but they were not considered heroes. Epicurus was both a philosophical author and treated by his followers as a kind of hero. But Diogenes was primarily a heroic figure. the idea that a philosopher's life should be exemplary and heroic is important in understanding the relationship of Cynicism to Christianity, as well as for understanding Cynic parrhesia as a public activity.

This brings us to Cynic parrhesia. The main types of parrhesiastic practice utilized by the Cynics were. (1) critical preaching; (2) scandalous behavior; and (3) what I shall call the "Provocative dialogue. " First, the critical preaching of the Cynics. Preaching is a form of continuous discourse.

And, as you know, most of the early philosophers--especially the Stoics--would occasionally deliver speeches where they presented their doctrines. Usually, however they would lecture in front of a rather small audience. The Cynics, in contrast, disliked this kind of elitist exclusion and preferred to address a large crowd. For example, they liked to speak in a theater, or at a place where people had gathered for a feast, religious event, athletic contest, etc. They would sometimes stand up in the middle of a theater audience and deliver a speech.

This public preaching was not their own innovation, for we have testimonies of similar practices as early as the Fifth Century BC Some of the sophists we see in the Platonic dialogues, for example, also engage in preaching to some extent. Cynic preaching, however, had its own specific characteristics, and is historically significant since it enabled philosophical themes about one's way of life to become popular, i.e., to come to the attention of people who stood outside the philosophical elect. From this perspective, Cynic preaching about freedom, the renunciation of luxury, Cynic criticisms of political institutions; and existing moral codes, and so on, also opened the way for some Christian themes. But Christian proselytes not only spoke about themes which were often similar to the Cynics; they also took over the practice of preaching.

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.

There is, however, very little positive doctrine in Cynic preaching: no direct affirmation of the good or bad. Instead, the Cynics refer to freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) as the basic criteria by which to assess any kind of behavior or mode of life. For the Cynics, the main condition for human happiness is autarkeia, self-sufficiency or independence, where what you need to have or what you decide to do is dependent on nothing other than you yourself. As, a consequence--since the Cynics had the most radical of attitudes-- they preferred a completely natural life-style. A natural life was supposed to eliminate all of the dependencies introduced by culture, society, civilization, opinion, and so on. Consequently, most of their preaching seems to have been directed against social institutions, the arbitrariness of rules of law, and any sort of life-style that was dependent upon such institutions or laws. In short, their preaching was against all social institutions insofar as such institutions hindered one's freedom and independence.

Cynic parrhesia also had recourse to scandalous behavior or attitudes which called into question collective habits, opinions, standards of decency, institutional rules, and so on.

Several procedures were used. One of them was the inversion of roles, as can be seen from Dio Chrysostom's Fourth Discourse where the famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander is depicted. This encounter, which was often referred to by the Cynics, does not take place in the privacy of Alexander's court but in the street, in the open. The king stands up while Diogenes sits back in his barrel. Diogenes orders Alexander to step out of his light so that he can bask in the sun. Ordering Alexander to step aside so that the sun' s light can reach Diogenes is an affirmation of the direct and natural relation the philosopher has to the sun in

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contrast to the mythical genealogy whereby the king, as descended from a god, was supposed to personify the sun.

The Cynics also employed the technique of displacing or transposing a rule from a domain where the rule was accepted to a domain where it was not in order to show how arbitrary the rule was. Once, during the athletic contests and horse-races of the Isthmian festival, Diogenes--who was bothering everyone with his frank remarks--took a crown of pine and put it on his head as if he had been victorious in an athletic competition. And the magistrates were very happy about this gesture because they thought it was, at last, a good occasion to punish him, to exclude him, to get rid of him. But he explained that he placed a crown upon his head because he had won a much more difficult victory against poverty, exile, desire, and his own vices than athletes who were victorious in wrestling, running, and hurling a discus. And later on during the games, he saw two horses fighting and kicking each other until one of them ran off. So Diogenes went up and put a crown on the head of the horse who stood its ground . These two symmetrical displacements have the effect of raising the question: "What are you really doing when you award someone with a crown in the Isthmian games? " For if the crown is awarded to someone as a moral victory, then Diogenes deserves a crown. But if it is only a question of superior physical strength, then there is no reason why the horse should not be given a crown.

Cynic parrhesia in its scandalous aspects also utilized the practice of bringing together two rules of behavior which seem contradictory and remote from one another. For example, regarding the problem of bodily needs. You eat. There is no scandal in eating, so you can eat in public (although, for the Greeks, this is not obvious and Diogenes was sometimes reproached for eating in the agora). Since Diogenes ate in the agora, he thought that there was no reason why he should not also masturbate in the agora; for in both cases he was satisfying a bodily need (adding that "he wished it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly") . Well, I will not try to conceal the shamelessness (anaideia) of the Cynics as a scandalous practice or technique.

As you know, the word "cynic" comes from the Greek word meaning "dog-like" (kynikoi); and Diogenes was called "The Dog". In fact, the first and only contemporary reference to Diogenes is found in Aristotle's Rhetoric, where Aristotle does not even mention the name "Diogenes" but just call him , "The Dog". The noble philosophers of Greece, who usually comprised an elite group, almost always disregarded the Cynics.

The Cynics also used another parrhesiastic technique, viz., the "provocative dialogue". To give you a more precise example of this type of dialogue--which derives from Socratic parrhesia--I have chosen a passage from the Fourth Discourse on Kingship of Dio Chrysostom of Prusa (c.A.D.40-110).

Do you all know who Dio Chrysostom is? Well, he is a very interesting guy from the last half of the First Century and the beginning of the Second Century of our era. He was born at Prusa in Asia Minor of a wealthy Roman family who played a prominent role in the city-life.

Dio's family was typical of the affluent provincial notables that produced so many writers, officers, generals, even emperors, for the Roman Empire. He came to Rome possibly as a professional rhetorician, but there are some disputes about this. An American scholar, C.P. Jones, has written a very interesting book about Dio Chrysostom which depicts the social life of an intellectual in the Roman Empire of Dio's time. In Rome Dio Chrysostom became acquainted with Musonius Rufus, the Stoic philosopher, and possibly through him he became involved with some liberal circles generally opposed to personal tyrannical power. He was subsequently exiled by Domitian--who disliked his views--and thus he began a wandering life where he adopted the costume and the attitudes of the Cynics for several years. When he was finally authorized to return to Rome following Domitian's assassination, he started

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a new career. His former fortune was returned to him, and he became a wealthy and famous teacher. For a while, however, he had the life-style, the attitude, the habits, and the philosophical views of a Cynic philosopher. But we must keep in mind the fact that Dio Chrysostom was not a "pure" cynic; and perhaps with his intellectual background his depiction of the Cynic parrhesiastic game puts it closer to the Socratic tradition than most of the actual Cynic practices.

In the Fourth Discourse of Dio Chrysostom, I think you can find all three forms of Cynic parrhesia. The end of the Discourse is a kind of preaching, and throughout there are references to Diogenes' scandalous behavior and examples illustrating the provocative dialogue of Diogenes with Alexander. The topic of the Discourse is the famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great which actually took place at Corinth. The Discourse begins with Dio's thoughts concerning this meeting (1-14) then a fictional dialogue follows portraying the nature of Diogenes' and Alexander's conversation (15-81) and the Discourse ends with a long, continuous discussion--fictionally narrated by Diogenes-regarding three types of faulty and self-deluding styles of life (82-139).

At the very beginning of the Discourse, Dio criticizes those who present the meeting of Diogenes and Alexander as an encounter between equals: one man famous for his leadership and military victories, the other famous for his free and self-sufficient life-style, and his austere and naturalistic moral virtue. Dio does not want people to praise Alexander just because he, as a powerful king, did not disregard a poor guy like Diogenes. He insists that Alexander actually felt inferior to Diogenes, and was also a bit envious of his reputation; for unlike Alexander, who wanted to conquer the world, Diogenes did not need anything to do what he wanted to do : [Alexander] himself needed his Macedonian phalanx, his Thessalian cavalry, Thracians, Paeonians, and many others if he was to go where he wished and get what he desired; but Diogenes went forth unattended in perfect safety by night as well as by day whithersoever he cared to go. Again, he himself required huge sums of gold and silver to carry out any of his projects; and what is more, if he expected to keep the Macedonians and the other Greeks submissive, must time and again curry favor of their rulers and the general populace by words and gifts; whereas Diogenes cajoled no man by flattery, but told everybody the truth and, even though he possessed not a single drachma, succeeded in doing as he pleased, failed in nothing he set before himself, was the only man who lived the life he considered the best and happiest, and would not have accepted Alexander's throne or the wealth of the Medes and Persians in exchange for his own poverty.

So it is clear that Diogenes appears here as the master of truth; and from this point of view, Alexander is both inferior to him, and is aware of this inferiority. But although Alexander has some vices and faults of character, he is not a bad king, and he chooses to play Diogenes' parrhesiastic game: So the king came up to [Diogenes] as he sat there and greeted him, whereat the other looked up at him with a terrible glare like that of a lion and ordered him to step aside a little, for Diogenes happened to be warming himself in the sun. Now Alexander was at once delighted with the man's boldness and composure in not being awestruck in his presence. For it is somehow natural for the courageous to love the courageous, while cowards eye them with misgiving and hate them as enemies, but welcome the base and like them. And so to the one class truth and frankness [parrhesia] are the most agreeable things in the world, to the other, flattery and deceit. The latter lend a willing

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ear to those who in their intercourse seek to please, the former, to those who have regard for the truth.

The Cynic parrhesiastic game which begins is, in some respects, not unlike the Socratic dialogue since there is an exchange of questions and answers. But there are at least two significant differences. First, in the Cynic parrhesiastic game it is Alexander who tends to ask the questions and Diogenes, the philosopher, who answers--which is the reverse of the Socratic dialogue. Secondly, whereas Socrates plays with his interlocutor's ignorance, Diogenes wants to hurt Alexander's pride. For example, at the beginning of the exchange, Diogenes calls Alexander a bastard (181), and tells him that someone who claim to be a king is not so very different from a child who, after winning a game, puts a crown on his head and declares that he is king [47-49]. Of course, all that is not very pleasant for Alexander to hear.

But that's Diogenes' game: hitting his interlocutor's pride, forcing him to recognize that he is not what he claims to be which is something quite different from the Socratic attempt to show someone that he is ignorant of what he claims to know. In the Socratic dialogues, you sometimes see that someone's pride has been hurt when he is compelled to recognize that he does not know what he claims to know. For example, when Callicles is led to an awareness of his ignorance, he renounces all discussion because his pride has been hurt. But this is only a side effect, as it were, of the main target of Socratic irony, which is: to show someone that he is ignorant of his own ignorance. In the case of Diogenes, however, pride is the main target, and the ignorance/knowledge game is a side effect.

From these attacks on an interlocutor's pride, you see that the interlocutor is brought to the limit of the first parrhesiastic contract, viz., to agree to play the game, to choose to engage in discussion. Alexander is willing to engage Diogenes in discussion, to accept his insolence and insults, but there is a limit. And every time that Alexander feels insulted by Diogenes, he becomes angry and is close to quitting off , even to brutalizing Diogenes. So you see that the Cynic parrhesiastic game is played at the very limits of the parrhesiastic contract. It borders on transgression because the parrhesiastes may have made too many insulting remarks. Here is an example of this play at the limit of the parrhesiastic agreement to engage in discussion: ... [Diogenes] went on to tell the king that he did not even possess the badge of royalty. . ."And what badge is that?" said Alexander. "It is the badge of the bees, "he replied, "that the king wears. Have you not heard that there is a king among the bees, made so by nature, who does not hold office by virtue of what you people who trace your descent from Heracles call inheritance? " "What is this badge ?" inquired Alexander. "Have you not heard farmers say, "asked the other, "that this is the only bee that has no sting since he requires no weapon against anyone? For no other bee will challenge his right to be king or fight him when he has this badge. I have an idea, however, that you not only go about fully armed but even sleep that way. Do you not know," he continued, "that is a sign of fear in a man for him to carry arms? And no man who is afraid would ever have a chance to become king any more than a slave would. " Diogenes reasons: if you bear arms, you are afraid. No one who is afraid can be a king.

So, since Alexander bears arms he cannot be a real king. And, of course, Alexander is not very pleased by this logic' and Dio continues: "At these words Alexander came near hurling his spear". That gesture, of course, would have been the rupture, the transgression, of the parrhesiastic game. When the dialogue arrives at this point, there are two possibilities available to Diogenes for bringing Alexander back into the game. One way is the following.

Diogenes says, in effect, 'Well,alright. I know that you are outraged and you are also free.

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You have both the ability and the legal sanction to kill me. But will you be courageous enough to hear the truth from me, or are you such a coward that you must kill me?' And, for example, after Diogenes insults Alexander at one point in the dialogue, he tells him: "...In view of what I say rage and prance about ... and think me the greatest blackguard and slander me to the world and, if it be your pleasure, run me through with your spear; for I am the only man from whom you will get the truth, and you will learn it from no one else. For all are less honest than I am and more servile."

Diogenes thus voluntarily angers Alexander, and then says, 'Well, you can kill me; but if you do so, nobody else will tell you the truth.' And there is an exchange, a new parrhesiastic contract is drawn up with a new limit imposed by Diogenes: either you kill me, or you'll know the truth. This kind of courageous 'blackmailing' of the interlocutor in the name of truth makes a positive impression upon Alexander: "Then was Alexander amazed at the courage and fearlessness of the man" [76]. So Alexander decides to stay in the game, and a new agreement is thereby achieved.

Another means Diogenes employs for bringing Alexander back into the game is more subtle than the previous challenge: Diogenes also uses trickery. This trickery is different from Socratic irony; for, as you all know, in Socratic irony, Socrates feigns to be as ignorant as his interlocutor so that his interlocutor would not be ashamed of disclosing his own ignorance, and thus not reply to Socrates' questions. That, at least, was the principle of Socratic irony.

Diogenes' trick is somewhat different; for at the moment when his interlocutor is about to terminate the exchange, Diogenes says something which his interlocutor believes is complimentary. For example, after Diogenes calls Alexander a bastard--which was not very well-received by Alexander--Diogenes tells him: "... is it not olympias who said that Philip is not your father, as it happens, but a dragon or Ammon or some god or other or demigod or wild animal? And yet in that case you would certainly be a bastard."

Thereupon Alexander smiled and was pleased as never before, thinking that Diogenes, so far from being rude, was the most tactful of men and the only one who really knew how to pay a compliment.

Whereas the Socratic dialogue traces an intricate and winding path from an ignorant understanding to an awareness of ignorance, the Cynic dialogue is much more like a fight, a battle, or a war, with peaks of great agressivity and moments of peaceful calm--peaceful exchanges which, of course, are additional traps for the interlocutor. In the Fourth Discourse Dio Chrysostom explains the rationale behind this strategy of mixing aggressivity and sweetness; Diogenes asks Alexander: "Have you not heard the Libyan myth ? " And the king replied that he had not. Then Diogenes told him with zest and charm, because he wanted to put him in a good humor, just as nurses, after giving the children a whipping, tell them a story to comfort and please them.

And a bit further on, Dio adds: When Diogenes perceived that [Alexander] was greatly excited and quite keyed up in mind with expectancy, he toyed with him and pulled him about in the hope that somehow he might be moved from his pride and thirst for glory and be able to sober

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up a little. For he noticed that at one moment he was delighted, and at another grieved, at the same thing, and that his soul was as unsettled as the weather at the solstices when both rain and sunshine come from the very same cloud.

Diogenes' charm, however, is only a means of advancing the game and of preparing the way for additional aggressive exchanges. Thus, after Diogenes pleases Alexander with his remarks about his 'bastard' genealogy, and considers the possibility that Alexander might be the son of Zeus, he goes even further: he tells Alexander that when Zeus has a son, he gives his son marks of his divine birth. Of course, Alexander thinks that he has such marks.

Alexander then asks Diogenes how one can be a good king. And Diogenes reply is a purely moral portrayal of kingship: "No one can be a bad king any more than he can be a bad good man; for the king is the best one among men, since he is most brave and righteous and humane, and cannot be overcome by any toil or by any appetite. Or do you think a man is a charioteer if he can not drive, or that one is a pilot if he is ignorant of steering, or is a physician if he knows not how to cure? It is impossible, nay, though all the Greeks and barbarians acclaim him as such and load him with diadems and scepters and tiaras like so many necklaces that are put on castaway children lest they fail of recognition.

Therefore, just as one cannot pilot except after the manner of pilots, so no one can be king except in a kingly way. " We see here the analogy of statesmanship with navigation and medicine that we have already noted. As the "son of Zeus," Alexander thinks that he has marks or signs to show that he is a king with a divine birth. But Diogenes shows Alexander that the truly royal character is not linked to special status, birth, power, and so on. Rather, the only way of being a true king is to behave like one. And when Alexander asks how he might learn this art of kingship, Diogenes tells him that it cannot be learned, for one is noble by nature [26-31].

Here the game reaches a point where Alexander does not become conscious of his lack of knowledge, as in a Socratic dialogue. He discovers, instead, that he is not in any way what he thought he was--viz., a king by royal birth, with marks of his divine status, or king because of his superior power, and so on. He is brought to a point where Diogenes tells him that the only way to be a real king is to adopt the same type of ethos as the Cynic philosopher. And at this point in the exchange there is nothing more for Alexander to say.

In the case of Socratic dialogue, it also sometimes happens that when the person Socrates has been questioning no longer knows what to say, Socrates resumes the discourse by presenting a positive thesis, and then the dialogue ends. In this text by Dio Chrysostom, Diogenes begins a continuous discourse; however his discussion does not present the truth of a positive thesis, but is content to give a precise description of three faulty modes of life linked to the royal character. The first one is devoted to wealth, the second to physical pleasure, and the third to glory and political power. And these three life-styles are personified by three daimones or spirits.

The concept of the daimon was popular in Greek culture, and also became a philosophical concept--in Plutarch, for example. The fight against evil daimones in Christian asceticism has precursors in the Cynic tradition. Incidentally, the concept of the "demon" has been elaborated in an excellent article in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dictionnaire de Spiritualitâ&#x20AC;?' [F.Vandenbrouke vol.3, 1957] Diogenes gives an indication of the three daimones which Alexander must fight throughout his life, and which constitute the target of a permanent "spiritual struggle"--

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"Combat spirituel". Of course, this phrase does not occur in Dio's text; for here it is not so much a specific content which is specific and important, but the idea of a parrhesiastic practice which enables someone to fight a spiritual war within himself.

And I think we can also see in the aggressive encounter between Alexander and Diogenes a struggle occurring between two kinds of power: political power and the power of truth. In this struggle, the parrhesiastes accepts and confronts a permanent danger: Diogenes exposes himself to Alexander's power from the beginning to the end of the Discourse. And the main effect of this parrhesiastic struggle with power is not to bring the interlocutor to a new truth, or to a new level of self-awareness; it is to lead the interlocutor to internalize this parrhesiastic struggle-to fight within himself against his own faults, and to be with himself in the same way that Diogenes was with him.

4. Parrhesia and Personal Relationships I would now like to analyze the parrhesiastic game in the framework of personal relationships, selecting some examples from Plutarch and Galen which I think illustrate some of the technical problems which can arise.

In Plutarch there is a text which is explicitly devoted to the problem of parrhesia.

Addressing certain aspects of the parrhesiastic problem, Plutarch tries to answer the question: 'How is it possible to recognize a true parrhesiastes or truth-teller?' And similarly: 'How is it possible to distinguish a parrhesiastes from a flatterer?' The title of this text, which comes from Plutarch's Moralia, is "How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend".

I think we need to underline several points from this essay. First, why do we need, in our personal lives, to have some friend who plays the role of a parrhesiastes of a truth-teller? The reason Plutarch gives is found in the predominant kind of relationship we often have to ourselves, viz., a relation of "philautiaâ&#x20AC;? or "self-love". This relation of self-love is, for us, the ground of a persistent illusion about what we really are : It is because of this self-love that everybody is himself his own foremost and greatest flatterer, and hence finds no difficulty in admitting the outsider to witness with him and to confirm his own conceits and desires. For the man who is spoken of with opprobrium as a lover of flatterers is in high degree a lover of self, and, because of his kindly feeling toward himself, he desires and conceives himself to be endowed with all manner of good qualities; but although the desire for these is not unnatural, yet the conceit that one possesses them is dangerous and must be carefully avoided.

Now If Truth is a thing divine, and, as Plato puts it, the origin "of all good for gods and all good for men" [Laws,730c], then the flatterer is in all likelihood an enemy to the gods and particularly to the Pythian god. For the flatterer always takes a position over against the maxim "Know Thyself," by creating in every man deception towards himself and ignorance both of himself and of the good and evil that concerns himself; the good he renders defective and incomplete, and the evil wholly impossible to amend.

We are our own flatterers, and it is in order to disconnect this spontaneous relation we have to ourselves, to rid ourselves of our philautia, that we need a parrhesiastes.

But it is difficult to recognize and to accept a Parrhesiastes. For not only is it difficult to distinguish a true parrhesiastes from a flatterer; because of our philautia we are also not interested in recognizing a parrhesiastes. So at stake in this text is the problem of determining the indubitable criteria which enables us to distinguish the genuine parrhesiastes we need so badly to rid ourselves of our own philautia from the flatterer who "plays the part of friend

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with the gravity of tragedian" [50e] . And this implies that we are in possession of a kind of "semiology" of the real parrhesiastes.

To answer the question: 'How can we recognize a true parrhesiastes?', Plutarch proposes two major criteria. First, there is a conformity between what the real truth-teller says with how he behaves--and here you recognize the Socratic harmony of the Laches, where Laches explains that he could trust Socrates as a truth-teller about courage since he saw that Socrates really was courageous at Deliun, and thus, that he exhibited a harmonious accord between what he said and what he did.

There is also a second criterion, which is: the permanence, the continuity, the stability and steadiness of the true parrhesiastes, the true friend, regarding his choices, his opinions, and his thoughts: ... it is necessary to observe the uniformity and permanence of his tastes, whether he always takes delight in the same things, and commends always the same things, and whether he directs and ordains his own life according to one pattern, as becomes a freeborn man and a lover of congenial friendship and intimacy; for such is the conduct of a friend. But the flatterer, since he has no abiding place of character to dwell in, and since he Leads a life not of his own choosing but another's, moulding and adapting himself to suit another, is not simple, not one, but variable and many in one, and, like water that is poured into one receptacle after another, he is constantly on the move from place to place,and changes his shape to fit his receiver.

Of course there are a lot of other very interesting things about this essay. But I would like to underscore two major themes. First, the theme of self-delusion, and its link with philautia--Which is not something completely new. But in Plutarch's text you can see that his notion of self-delusion as a consequence of self-love is clearly different from being in a state of ignorance about one's own lack of self-knowledge--a state which Socrates attempted to overcome. Plutarch's conception emphasizes the fact that not only are we unable to know that we know nothing, but we are also unable to know, exactly, what we are. And I think that this theme of self-delusion becomes increasingly important in Hellenistic culture. In Plutarch's period it is something really significant.

A second theme which I would like to stress is the steadiness of mind. This is also not something new, but for late Stoicism the notion of steadiness takes on great importance. And there is an obvious relation between these two themes--the theme of self-delusion and the theme of constancy or persistency of mind. For destroying self-delusion and acquiring and maintaining continuity of mind are two ethico-moral activities which are linked to one another. The self-delusion which prevents you from knowing who or what you are, and all the shifts in your thoughts, feelings, and opinions which force you to move from one thought to another, one feeling to another, or one opinion to another, demonstrate this linkage. For if you are able to discern exactly what you are, then you will stick to the same point, and you will not be moved by anything. If you are moved by any sort of stimulation, feeling, passion, etc., then you are not able to stay close to yourself, you are dependent upon something else, you are driven to different concerns, and consequently you are not able to maintain complete selfpossession.

These two elements--being deluded about yourself and being moved by changes in the world and in your thoughts--both developed and gained significance in the Christian tradition.

In early Christian spirituality, Satan is often represented as the agent both of self-delusion (as opposed to the renunciation of self) and of the mobility of mind--the instability or unsteadiness of the soul as opposed to firmitas in the contemplation of God. Fastening one's mind to God was a way, first, of renouncing one's self so as to eliminate any kind of self-

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delusion. And it was also a way to acquire an ethical and an ontological steadiness. So I think, that we can see in Plutarch's text--in the analysis of the relation between parrhesia and flattery--some elements which also became significant for the Christian tradition.

I would like to refer now, very briefly, to a text by Galen [A.D.130-200]--the famous physician at the end of the Second Century--where you can see the same problem: how is it possible to recognize a real parrhesiastes? Galen raises this question :in his essay "The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul's Passions", where he explains that in order for a man to free himself from his passions, he needs a parrhesiastes; for just as in Plutarch a century previously, philautia, self-love, is the root of self-delusion: ... we see the faults of others but remain blind to those which concern ourselves.

All men admit the truth of this and, furthermore, Plato gives the reason for it [Laws,731e]. He says that the lover is blind in the case of the object of his love. If, therefore, each of us loves himself most of all, he must be blind in his own case...

There are passions of the soul which everybody knows: anger, wrath, fear, grief, envy, and violent lust. In my opinion, excessive vehemence in loving or hating anything is also a passion; I think the saying 'moderation is best' is correct, since no immoderate action is good. How, then, could a man cut out these passions if he did not first know that he had them? But as we said, it is impossible to know them, since we love ourselves to excess. Even if this saying will not permit you to judge yourself, it does allow that you can judge others whom you neither love nor hate. Whenever you hear anyone in town being praised because he flatters no man, associate with that man and judge from your own experience whether he is the sort of man they say he is...

When a man does not greet the powerful and wealthy by name, when he does not visit them, when he does not dine with them, when he lives a disciplined life, expect that man to speak the truth; try, too, to come to a deeper knowledge of what kind of man he is (and this comes about through long association). If you find such a man, summon him and talk with him one day in private; ask him to reveal straightaway whatever of the above mentioned passions he may see in you. Tell him you will be most grateful for this service and that you will look on him as your deliverer more than if he had saved you from an illness of the body. Have him promise to reveal it whenever he sees you affected by any of the passions I have mentioned.

It is interesting to note that in this text, the parrhesiastes--which everyone needs in order to get rid of his own self-delusion--does not need to be a friend, someone you know someone with whom you are acquainted. And this, I think, constitutes a very important difference between Galen and Plutarch. In Plutarch, Seneca, and the tradition which derives from Socrates, the parrhesiastes always needs to be a friend. And this friend relation was always at the root of the parrhesiastic game. As far as I know, for the first time with Galen, the parrhesiastes no longer needs to be a friend. Indeed, it is much better, Galen tells us, that the Parrhesiastes be someone whom you do not know in order for him to be completely neutral. A good truth-teller who gives you honest counsel about yourself does not hate you, but he does not love you either. A good parrhesiastes is someone with whom you have previously had no particular relationship.

But of course you cannot choose him at random. You must check some criteria in order to know whether he really is capable of revealing your faults. And for this you must have heard of him. Does he have a good reputation? Is he old enough? Is he rich enough? It is very important that the one who plays the role of the parrhesiastes be at least as rich, or richer than

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you are. For if he is poor and you are rich, then the chances will be greater that he will be a flatterer--since it is now in his interest to do so.

The Cynics, of course, would have said that someone who is rich, who has a positive relation to wealth, cannot really be wise; so it is not worthwhile selecting him as a parrhesiastes. Galen's idea of selecting someone who is richer than you to act as your truthteller would seem ridiculous to a Cynic.

But it is also interesting to note that in this essay, the truth-teller does not need to be a physician or doctor. For in spite of the fact that Galen himself was a physician, was often obliged to 'cure' the excessive passions of others, and often succeeded in doing so, he does not require of a parrhesiastes that he be a doctor, or that he possess the ability to cure you of your passions. All that is required is that he be able to tell you the truth about yourself.

But it is still not enough to know that the truth-teller is old enough, rich enough, and has a good reputation. He must also be tested. And Galen gives a program for testing the potential parrhesiastes. For example, you must ask him questions about himself and see how he responds to determine whether he will be severe enough for the role. You have to be suspicious when the would-be parrhesiastes congratulates you, when he is not severe enough, and so on.

Galen does not elaborate upon the precise role of the parrhesiastes in "The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul's Passions"; he only gives a few examples of the sort of advice he himself gave while assuming this role for others. But, to summarize the foregoing, in this text the relationship between parrhesia and friendship no longer seems to obtain, and there is a kind of trial or examination required of the potential parrhesiastes by his 'patron' or 'client'.

I apologize for being so brief about these texts from Plutarch and Galen; but they are not very difficult to read, only difficult to find.

Techniques of the parrhesiastic games I would now like to turn to the various techniques of the parrhesiastic games which can be found in the philosophical and moral literature of the first two centuries of our era. Of course, I do not plan to enumerate or discuss all of the important practices that can be found in the writings of this period. To begin with, I would like to make three preliminary remarks.

First, I think that these techniques manifest a very interesting and important shift from that truth game which--in the classical Greek conception of parrhesia--was constituted by the fact that someone was courageous enough to tell the truth to other people. For there is a shift from that kind of parrhesiastic game to another truth game which now consists in being courageous enough to disclose the truth about oneself.

Secondly, this new kind of parrhesiastic game--where the problem is to confront the truth about yourself --requires what the Greeks called "askesis". Although our word "asceticism" derives from the Greek word "askesis" (since the meaning of the word changes as it becomes associated with various Christian practices), for the Greeks the word does not mean "ascetic", but has a very broad sense denoting any kind of practical training or exercise. For example, it was a commonplace to say that any kind of art or technique had to be learned by mathesis and askesis--by theoretical knowledge and practical training. And, for instance, when Musonius Rufus says that the art of living, techne tou biou, is like the other arts, i.e., an art which one could not learn only through theoretical teachings, he is repeating a traditional doctrine. This techne tou biou, this art of living, demands practice and training: askesis. But the Greek conception of askesis differs from Christian ascetic practices in at least two ways: (1) Christian asceticism has its ultimate aim or target the renunciation of the self, whereas the Foucault.info

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moral askesis of the Greco-Roman philosophies has as its goal the establishment of a specific relationship to oneself--a relationship of self possession and self-sovereignty; (2) Christian asceticism takes as its principle theme detachment from the world, whereas the ascetic practices of the Greco-Roman philosophies are generally concerned with endowing the individual with the preparation and the moral equipment that will permit him to fully confront the world in an ethical and rational manner.

Thirdly, these ascetic practices implied numerous different kinds of specific exercises; but they were never specifically catalogued, analyzed, or described. Some of them were discussed and criticized, but most of them were well-known. Since most people recognized them, they were usually used without any precise theory about the exercise. And indeed, often when someone now reads these Greek and Latin authors as they discuss such exercises in the context of specific theoretical topics (such as time, death, the world, life, necessity, etc.), he or she gets a mistaken conception about them. For these topics usually function only as a schema or matrix for the spiritual exercise. In fact, most of these texts written in late antiquity about ethics are not at all concerned with advancing a theory about the foundations of ethics, but are practical books containing specific recipes and exercises one had to read, to reread, to meditate upon, to learn, in order to construct a lasting matrix for one's own behavior.

I now turn to the kinds of exercises where someone had to examine the truth about himself, and tell this truth to someone else.

Most of the time when we refer to such exercises, we speak of practices involving the "examination of conscience." But I think that the expression examination of conscience" as a blanket term meant to characterize all these different exercises misleads and oversimplifies.

For we have to define very precisely the different truth games which have been put into work and applied in these practices of the Greco-Roman tradition. I would like to analyze five of these truth games commonly described as "examinations of conscience" in order to show you (1) how some of the exercises differ from one another; (2) what aspects of the mind , feelings, behavior, etc., were considered in these different exercises; and (3) that these exercises, despite their differences, implied a relation between truth and the self which is very different from what we find in the Christian tradition.

1. Seneca & evening examination The first text I would like to analyze comes from Seneca's De ira ["On Anger"] All our senses ought to be trained to endurance. They are naturally long-suffering, if only the mind desists from weakening them. This should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: "What bad habit have you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In what respects are you better?" Anger will cease and become controllable if it finds that it must appear before a judge every day. Can anything be more excellent that this practice of thoroughly sifting the whole day? And how delightful the sleep that follows this self-examination-how tranquil it is, how deep and untroubled, when the soul has either praised or admonished itself, and when this secret examiner and critic of self has given report of its own character! I avail myself of this privilege, and every day I plead my cause before the bar of self. When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words.

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I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing. For why should I shrink from any of my mistakes, when I may commune thus with my self? "See what you never do that again; I will pardon you this time. In that dispute you spoke too offensively; after this don't have encounters with ignorant people; those who have never learned do not want to learn. You reproved that man more frankly than you ought, and consequently you have not so much mended him as offended him. In the future, consider not only the truth of what you say, but also whether the man to whom you are speaking can endure the truth. A good man accepts reproof gladly; the worse a man is the more bitterly he resents it" We know from several sources that this kind of exercise was a daily requirement, or at least a habit, in the Pythagorean tradition. Before they went to sleep, the Pythagoreans had to perform this kind of examination, recollecting the faults they had committed during the day.

Such faults consisted in those sorts of behavior which transgressed the very strict rules of the Pythagorean Schools. And the purpose of this examination, at least in the Pythagorean tradition, was to purify the soul.

Such purification was believed necessary since the Pythagoreans considered sleep to be a state of being whereby the soul could get in contact with the divinity through dream. And, of course, one had to keep one's soul as pure as possible both to have beautiful dreams, and also to came into contact with benevolent deities. In this text of Seneca's we can clearly see that this Pythagorean tradition survives in the exercise he describes (as it also does later on in similar practices utilized by the Christians) .The idea of employing sleep and dream as a possible means of apprehending the divine can also be found in Plato's Republic [Book IX, 57le-572b] . Seneca tells us that by means of this exercise we are able to procure good and delightful sleep: "How delightful the sleep that follows this examination--how tranquil it is, how deep and untroubled. " And we know from Seneca himself that under his teacher, Sotio, his first training was partly Pythagorean. Seneca relates this practice, however, not to Pythagorean custom, but to Quintus Sextius--who was one of the advocates of Stoicism in Rome at the end of the First Century B. C. And it seems that this exercise, despite its purely Pythagorean origin, was utilized and praised by several philosophical sects and schools: the Epicureans, Stoics, Cynics, and others. There are references in Epictetus, for example, to this kind of exercise. And it would be useless to deny that Seneca's self-examination is similar to the kinds of ascetic practices used for centuries in the Christian tradition. But if we look at the text more closely, I think we can see some interesting differences.

First, there is the question of Seneca's attitude towards himself. What kind of operation is Seneca actually performing in this exercise? What is the practical matrix he uses and applies in relation to himself? At first glance, it seems to be a judiciary practice which is close to the Christian confessional: there are thoughts, these thoughts are confessed, there is an accused (namely, Seneca) , there is an accuser or prosecutor (who is also Seneca), there is a judge (also Seneca), and it seems that there is a verdict. The entire scene seems to be judiciary; and Seneca employs typical judiciary expressions ("appear before a judge", 'plead my cause before the bar of self", etc.) . Closer scrutiny shows, however, that it is a question of something different from the court, or from judicial procedure. For instance, Seneca says that he is an "examiner" of himself [speculator sui] . The word "speculator" means that he is an "examiner" or " inspector"--typically someone who inspects the freight on a ship, or the work being done by builders constructing a house, etc. Seneca also says " totum diem meum scrutor"--"I examine, inspect, the whole of my day. " " Here the verb "scrutor" belongs, not to judicial vocabulary, but to the vocabulary of administration. Seneca states further on: "factaque ac dicta mea remetior"--"and I retrace, recount, all my deeds and words". The verb "remetiri" is, again, a technical term used in bookkeeping, and which has the sense of

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checking whether there is any kind of miscalculation or error in the accounts. So Seneca is not exactly a judge passing sentence upon himself. He is much more of an administrator who, once the work is finished, or when the year's business is completed, now draws up the accounts, takes stock of things, and sees whether everything has been done correctly. It is more of an administrative scene than a judiciary one.

And if we turn to the faults that Seneca retraces, and which he gives as examples in this examination, we can see that they are not the sort of faults we would call "sins". He does not confess, for example, that he drinks too much, or has committed financial fraud, or has bad feelings for someone else--faults Seneca was very familiar with as one of Nero's ring. He reproaches himself for very different things. He has criticized someone, but instead of his criticism helping the man, it has hurt him. Or he criticizes himself for being disgusted by people who were, in any case, incapable of understanding him. Behaving in such fashion, he commits "mistakes" [errores] ; but these mistakes are only inefficient actions requiring adjustments between ends and means. He criticizes himself for not keeping the aim of his actions in mind, for not seeing that it is useless to blame someone if the criticism given will not improve things, and so on. The point of the fault concerns a practical error in his behavior since he was unable to establish an effective rational relation between the principles of conduct he knows, and the behavior he actually engaged in. Seneca's faults are not transgressions of a code or law. They express, rather, occasions where his attempt to coordinate rules of behavior (rules he already accepts, recognizes, and knows) with his own actual behavior in a specific situation has proven to be unsuccessful or inefficient.

Seneca also does not react to his own errors as if they were sins. He does not punish himself; there is nothing like penance. The retracing of his mistakes has as its object the reactivation of practical rules of behavior which, now reinforced, may be useful for future occasions. He thus tells himself : 'See that you never do that again; ' ' Don't have encounters with ignorant people;' 'In the future, consider not only the truth of what you say, but also whether the man to whom you are speaking can endure the truth;' and so on. Seneca does not analyze his responsibility or feelings of guilt; it is not, for him, a question of purifying himself of these faults. Rather, he engages in a kind of administrative scrutiny which enables him to reactivate various rules and maxim in order to make them more vivid, permanent, and effective for future behavior.

2. Serenus & general self-scrutiny The second text I would like to discuss comes from Seneca's De tranquillitate animi ["On the Tranquillity of Mind"]. The De tranquillitate animi is one of a number of texts written about a theme we have already encountered, viz., the constancy or steadiness of mind.

To put it very briefly, the Latin word "tranquillitas" denotes stability of soul or mind. It is a state where the mind is independent of any kind of external event, and is free as well from any internal excitation or agitation that could induce an involuntary movement of mind. Thus it denotes stability, self-sovereignty, and independence. But "tranquillitas" also refers to a certain feeling of pleasurable calm which has its source, its principle, in this self-sovereignty or self-possession of the self.

At the beginning of the De tranquillitate animi, Annaeus Serenus asks Seneca for a consultation. Serenus is a young friend of Seneca's who belonged to the same family, and who started his political career under Nero as Nero's night watchman. For both Seneca and Serenus there is no incompatibility between philosophy and a political career since a philosophical life is not merely an alternative to a political life. Rather, philosophy must accompany a political life in order to provide a moral framework for public activity. Serenus, who was initially an Epicurean, later turned towards Stoicism. But even after he became a Stoic, he felt

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uncomfortable; for he had the impression that he was not able to improve himself, that he had reached a dead end, and was unable to make any progress. I should note that for the Old Stoa, for Zeno of Citium, for example, when a person knew the doctrines of the Stoic philosophy he did not really need to progress anymore, for he has thereby succeeded in becoming a Stoic.

What is interesting here is the idea of progress occurring as a new development in the evolution of Stoicism. Serenus knows the Stoic doctrine and its practical rules, but still lacks tranquillitas. And it is in this state of unrest that he turns to Seneca and asks him for help. Of course, we cannot be sure that this depiction of Serenus' state reflects his real historical situation; we can only be reasonably sure that Seneca wrote this text. But the text is supposed to be a letter written to Serenus incorporating the latter's request for moral advice. And it exhibits a model or pattern for a type of self-examination.

Serenus examines what he is or what he has accomplished at the moment when he requests this consultation: SERENUS: When I made examination of myself, it became evident, Seneca, that some of my vices are uncovered and displayed so openly that I can put my hand upon them, some are more hidden and lurk in a corner, some are not always present but recur at intervals; and I should say that the last are by far the most troublesome, being like roving enemies that spring upon one when the opportunity offers, and allow one neither to be ready as in war, nor to be off guard as in peace.

Nevertheless the state in which I find myself most of all--for why should I not admit the truth to you as to a physician? --is that I have neither been honestly set free from the things I hated and feared, nor, on the other hand, am I in bondage to them; while the condition in which I am placed is not the worst, yet I am complaining and fretful--I am neither sick nor well.

As you can see, Serenus' request takes the form of a 'medical' consultation of his own spiritual state. For he says, 'why should I not admit the truth to you as to a physician?'; 'I am neither sick nor well;' and so on. These expressions are clearly related to the well-known metaphorical identification of moral discomfort with physical illness. And what is also important to underline here is that in order for Serenus to be cured of his illness, he first needs to "admit the truth" [verum fatear] to Seneca. But what are the truths that Serenus must 'confess'? We shall see that he discloses no secret faults, no shameful desires, nothing like that. It is something entirely different from a Christian confession. And this 'confession' can be divided into two parts. First, there is Serenus' very general exposĂŠ about himself; and secondly, there is an exposĂŠ of his attitude in different fields of activity in his life.

The general exposĂŠ about his condition is the following: There is no need for you to say that all the virtues are weakly at the beginning, that firmness and strength are added by time. I am well aware also that the virtues that struggle for outward show, I mean for position and the fame of eloquence and all that comes under the verdict of others, do grow stronger as time passes--both those that provide real strength and those that trick us out with a sort of dye with a view to pleasing, must wait long years until gradually length of time develops color--but I greatly fear that habit, which brings stability to most things, may cause this fault of mine to become more deeply implanted. Of things evil as well as good long intercourse induces love.

The nature of this weakness of mind that halts between two things and inclines strongly neither to the right nor to the wrong, I cannot show you so well all at once as a part at a time; I shall tell you what befalls me--you will find a name for my malady.

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Serenus tells us that the truth about himself that he will now expose is descriptive of the malady he suffers from. And from these general remarks and other indications he gives later on, we can see that this malady is compared throughout to the seasickness caused by being aboard a boat which no longer advances, but rolls and pitches at sea. Serenus is afraid of remaining at sea in this condition, in full view of the dry land which remains inaccessible to him. The organization of the themes Serenus describes, with its implicit and, as we shall see, its explicit metaphorical reference to being at sea, involves the traditional association in moral-political philosophy of medicine and piloting a boat or navigation--which we have already seen. Here we also have the same three elements- a moral-philosophical problem, reference to medicine, and reference to piloting. Serenus is on the way towards acquiring the truth like a ship at sea in sight of dry land. But because he lacks complete self-possession or self-mastery, he has the feeling that he cannot advance. Perhaps because he is too weak, perhaps his course is not a good one. He does not know exactly what is the reason for his wavering, but he characterizes his malaise as a kind of perpetual vacillating motion which has no other movement than "rocking". The boat cannot advance because it is rocking. So Serenus' problem is: how can he replace this wavering motion of rocking--which is due to the instability, the unsteadiness of his mind--with a steady linear movement that will take him to the coast and to the firm earth? It is a problem of dynamics, but very different from the Freudian dynamics of an unconscious conflict between two psychic forces. Here we have an oscillating motion of rocking which prevents the movement of the mind from advancing towards the truth, towards steadiness, towards the ground. And now we have to see how this metaphorical dynamic grid organizes Serenus' description of himself in the following long quotation: (1) I am possessed by the very greatest love of frugality, I must confess; I do not like a couch made up for display, nor clothing, brought forth from a chest or pressed by weights and a thousand mangles to make it glossy, but homely and cheap, that is neither preserved nor to be put on with anxious care; the food that I like is neither prepared nor watched by a household of slaves, it does not need to be ordered many days before nor to be served by many hands, but is easy to get and abundant; there is nothing far-fetched or costly about it, nowhere will there be any lack of it, it is burdensome neither to the purse nor to the body, nor will it return by the way it entered; the servant that I like is a young home-born slave without training or skill; the silver is my country--bred father's heavy plate bearing no stamp of the maker's name, and the table is not notable for the variety of its markings or known to the town from the many fashionable owners through whose hands it has passed, but one that stands for use, and will neither cause the eyes of any guest to linger upon it with pleasure nor fire them with envy. Then, after all these things have had my full approval, my mind [animus] is dazzled by the magnificence of some training schools for pages, by the sight of slaves bedecked with gold and more carefully arrayed than the leaders of a public procession, and a whole regiment of glittering attendants; by the sight of a house where one even treads on precious stones and riches are scattered about in every corner, where the very roofs glitter, and the whole town pays court and escorts an inheritance on the road to ruin. And what shall I say of the waters, transparent to the bottom, that flow around the guests even as they banquet, what of the feasts that are worthy of their setting? Coming from a long abandonment to thrift, luxury has poured around me the wealth of its splendor, and echoed around me on every side. My sight falters a little, for I can lift up my heart towards it more easily than my eyes. And so I come back, not worse, but sadder, and I do not walk among my

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paltry possessions with head erect as before, and there enters a secret sting and the doubt whether the other life is not better. None of these things changes me, yet none of them fails to disturb me.

(2) I resolve to obey the commands of my teachers and plunge into the midst of public life; I resolve to try to gain office and the consulship, attracted of course, not by the purple or by the lictor's rods, but by the desire to be more serviceable and useful to my friends and relatives and all my countrymen and then to all mankind. Ready and determined, I follow Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, of whom none the less not one failed to urge others to do so. And then, whenever something upsets my mind, which is unused to meeting shocks, whenever something happens that is either unworthy of me, and many such occur in the lives of all human beings, or that does not proceed very easily, or when things that are not to be accounted of great value demand much of my time, I turn back to my leisure, and just as wearied flocks too do, I quicken my pace towards home. I resolve to confine my life within its own walls: "Let no one, "I say, "who will make me no worthy return for such a loss rob me of a single day; let my mind be fixed upon itself, let it cultivate itself, let it busy itself with nothing outside, nothing that looks towards an umpire; let it love the tranquility that is remote from public and private concern." But when my mind [animus] has been aroused by reading of great bravery, and noble examples have applied the spur, I want to rush into the forum, to lend my voice to one man; to offer such assistance to another as, even if it will not help, will be an effort to help; or to check the pride of someone in the forum who has been unfortunately puffed up by his successes.

(3) And in my literary studies I think that it is surely better to fix my eyes on the theme itself, and, keeping this uppermost when I speak, to trust meanwhile to the theme to supply the words so that unstudied language may follow it wherever it leads.

I say: "What need is there to compose something that will last for centuries? Will you not give up striving to keep posterity silent about you? You were born for death; a silent funeral is less troublesome! And so to pass the time, write something in simple style, for your own use, not for publication; they that study for the day have less need to labour." Then again, when my mind has been uplifted by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious of words, and with higher aspirations it desires higher expression, and language issues forth to match the dignity of the theme; forgetful then of my rule and of my more restrained judgment, I am swept to loftier heights by an utterance that is no longer my own.

Not to indulge longer in details, I am all things attended by this weakness of good intention. In fact I fear that I am gradually losing ground, or, what causes me even more worry, that I am hanging like one who is always on the verge of falling, and that perhaps I am in a more serious condition than I myself perceive; for we take a favorable view of our private matters, and partiality always hampers our judgment. I fancy that many men would have arrived at wisdom if they had not fancied that they had already arrived, if they had not dissembled about certain traits in their character and passed by others with their eyes shut. For there is no reason for you to suppose that the adulation of other people is more ruinous to us than our own. Who dares to tell himself the truth? Who, though he is surrounded by a horde of applauding sycophants, is not for all that his own greatest flatterer? I beg you, therefore, if you have any remedy by which you could stop this fluctuation of mine, to deem me worthy of being indebted to you for tranquility. I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in

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apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness. Do you, then, take from me this trouble, whatever it be, and rush to the rescue of one who is struggling in full sight of land.

At first glance, Serenus' long description appears to be an accumulation of relatively unimportant details about his likes and dislikes, descriptions of trifles such as his father's heavy plates, how he likes his food, and so on. And it also seem to be in a great disorder, a mess of details. But behind this apparent disorder you can easily discern the real organization of the text. There are three basic parts to the discourse. The first part, the beginning of the quote, is devoted to Serenus' relation to wealth, possessions, his domestic and private life. The second part-which begins "I resolve to obey the commands of my teachers. . ."--this paragraph deals with Serenus' relation to public life and his political character. And the third part--which starts at "And in my literary studies... "--Serenus speaks of his literary activity, the type of language he prefers to employ, and so on. But he can also recognize here the relation between death and immortality, or the question of an enduring life in people's memories after death. So the three themes treated in these paragraphs are (1) private or domestic life; (2) public life; and (3) immortality or afterlife.

In the first part Serenus explains what he is willing to do, and what he likes to do. He thereby also shows what he considers unimportant and to which he is indifferent. And all these descriptions show Serenus' positive image and character. He does not have great material needs in his domestic life, for he is not attached to luxury. In the second paragraph he says he is not enslaved by ambition, he does not want a great political career, but to be of service to others. And in the third paragraph he states that he is not seduced by high-flown rhetoric, but prefers instead to adhere to useful speech. You can see that in this way Serenus draws up a balance sheet of his choices, of his freedom, and the result is not bad at all. Indeed, it is quite positive. Serenus is attached to what is natural, to what is necessary, to what is useful (either for himself or his friends), and is usually indifferent to the rest. Regarding these three fields (private life, public life, and afterlife), well, all tolled, Serenus is rather a good fellow. And his account also shows us the precise topic of his examination, which is: what are the things that are important to me, and what are the things to which I am indifferent? And he considers important things which really are important.

But each of the three paragraphs is also divided into two parts. After Serenus explains the importance or indifference he attributes to things, there is a transitional moment when he begins to make an objection to himself, when his mind begins to waver. These transitional moments are marked by his use of the word "animus". Regarding the three topics already noted, Serenus explains that despite the fact that he makes good choices, that he disregards unimportant things, he nonetheless feels that his mind, his animus, is involuntarily moved.

And as a result, although he is not exactly inclined to behave in an opposite fashion, he is still dazzled or aroused by the things he previously thought unimportant. These involuntary feelings are indications, he believes, that his animus is not completely tranquil or stable, and this motivates his request for a consultation. Serenus knows the theoretical principles and practical rules of Stoicism, is usually able to put them into operation, yet he still feels that these rules are not a permanent matrix for his behavior, his feelings, and his thoughts.

Serenus' instability does not derive from his 'sins,' or from the fact that he exists as a temporal being--as in Augustine, for example. It stems from the fact that he has not yet succeeded in harmonizing his actions and thoughts with the ethical structure he has chosen for himself. It is as if Serenus were a good pilot, he knows how to sail, there is no storm on the horizon, yet he is stuck at sea and cannot reach the solid earth because he does not possess the tranquillitas, the firmitas, which comes from complete self-sovereignty. And Seneca's reply to this selfexamination and moral request is an exploration of the nature of this stability of mind.

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3. Epictetus & the control of representations A third text, which also shows some of the differences in the truth games involved in these self-examination exercises, comes from the Discourses of Epictetus--where I think you can find a third type of exercise quite different from the previous ones. There are numerous types of self-examination techniques and practices in Epictetus, some of them resembling both the evening examinations of Sextius and the general self-scrutiny of Serenus. But there is one form of examination which, I think, is very characteristic of Epictetus, and which takes the form of a constant putting on trial of all our representations. This technique is also related to the demand for stability; for given the constant stream of representations which flow into the mind, Epictetus' problem consists in knowing how to distinguish those representations that he can control from those that he cannot control, that incite involuntary emotions, feelings, behavior, etc., and which must therefore be excluded from his mind. Epictetus' solution is that we must adopt an attitude of permanent surveillance with regard to all our representations, and he explains this attitude by employing two metaphors: the metaphor of the night watchman or doorkeeper who does not admit anyone into his house or palace without first checking his identity; and the metaphor of the "money-changer" who, when a coin is very difficult to read, verifies the authenticity of the currency, examines it, weighs it, verifies the metal and effigy, and so on: The third topic has to do with cases of assent; it is concerned with the things that are plausible and attractive. For, just as Socrates used to tell us not to live a life unsubjected to examination, so we ought not to accept a sense-impression unsubjected to examination, but should say, "Wait, allow me to see who you are and whence you come" (just as the night-watch say, "Show me your tokens"). "Do you have your token from nature, the ones which every sense-impression which is to be accepted must have?"

These two metaphors are also found in early Christian texts. Johannes Cassian [A.D.360435], for example, asked his monks to scrutinize and test their own representations like a doorkeeper or a money-changer. In the case of Christian self-examination, the monitoring of representations has the specific intention of determining whether, under an apparently innocent guise, the devil himself is not hiding. For in order not to be trapped by what only seems to be innocent, in order to avoid the devil's counterfeit coins, the Christian must determine where his thoughts and sense-impressions come from, and what relation actually exists between a representation's apparent and real value. For Epictetus, however, the problem is not to determine the source of the impression (God or Satan) so as to judge whether it conceals something or not; his problem is rather to determine whether the impression represents something which depends upon him or not, i.e., whether it is accessible or not to his will. Its purpose is not to dispel the devil's illusions, but to guarantee self-mastery.

To foster mistrust of our representations, Epictetus proposes two kinds of exercises. One form is borrowed directly from the Sophists. And in this classical game of the sophistic schools, one of the students asked a question , and another student had to answer it without falling into the sophistic trap. An elementary example of this sophistic game is this one: Question: 'Can a chariot go through a mouth?' Answer: 'Yes. You yourself said the word "chariot", and it went through your mouth.' Epictetus criticized such exercises as unhelpful, and proposed another for the purpose of moral training. In this game there are also two partners. One of the partners states a fact, an event, and the other has to answer, as quickly as

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possible, whether this fact or event is good or evil, i.e., is within or beyond our control. We can see this exercise, for example, in the following text: As we exercise ourselves to meet the sophistical interrogations, so we ought also to exercise ourselves daily to meet the impression of our senses, because these too put interrogations to us. So-and-so's son is dead. Answer, "That lies outside the sphere of the moral purpose, it is not an evil." His father has disinherited So-and-so; what do you think of it? That lies outside the sphere of the moral purpose, it is not an evil. " Caesar has condemned him. "That lies outside the sphere of the moral purpose, it is not an evil." He was grieved at all this. "That lies within the sphere of the moral purpose, it is an evil. " He has borne up under it manfully. "That lies within the sphere of the moral purpose, it is a good." Now if we acquire this habit, we shall make progress; for we shall never give our assent to anything but that of which we get a convincing sense-impression.

There is another exercise Epictetus describes which has the same object, but the form is closer to those employed later in the Christian tradition. It consists in walking through the streets of the city and asking yourself whether any representation that happens to come to your mind depends upon your will or not. If it does not lie within the province of moral purpose and will, then it must be rejected: Go out of the house at early dawn, and no matter whom you see or whom you hear, examine him and then answer as you would to a question. What did you see? A handsome man or a handsome woman? Apply your rule. Is it outside the province of the moral purpose, or inside? Outside. Away with it. What did you see? A man in grief over the death of his child? Apply your rule. Death lies outside the province of the moral purpose. Out of the way with it. Did a Consul meet you? Apply your rule. What sort of thing is a consulship? Outside the province of the moral purpose, or inside?

Outside. Away with it, too, it does not meet the test; throw it away, it does not concern you. If we had kept doing this and had exercised ourselves from dawn till dark with this principle in mind--by the gods, something would have been achieved !

As you can see, Epictetus wants us to constitute a world of representations where nothing can intrude which is not subject to the sovereignty of our will. So, again, self-sovereignty is the organizing principle of this form of self-examination.

I would have liked to have analyzed two more texts from Marcus Aurelius, but given the hour, I have no time left for this. So I would now like to turn to my conclusions.

Conclusion: In reading these texts about self-examination and underlining the differences between them, I wanted to show you, first, that there is a noticeable shift in the parrhesiastic practices between the 'master' and the 'disciple'. Previously, when parrhesia appeared in the context of spiritual guidance, the master was the one who disclosed the truth about the disciple. In these exercises, the master still uses frankness of speech with the disciple in order to help him became aware of the faults he cannot see (Seneca uses parrhesia towards Serenus, Epictetus uses parrhesia towards his disciples) ; but now the use of parrhesia is put increasingly upon the disciple as his own duty towards himself. At this point the truth about the disciple is not disclosed solely through the parrhesiastic discourse of the master, or only in the dialogue between the master and the disciple or interlocutor. The truth about the disciple emerges from

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a personal relation which he establishes with himself; and this truth can now be disclosed either to himself (as in the first example from Seneca) or to someone else (as in the second example from Seneca) . And the disciple must also test himself, and check to see whether he is able to achieve self-mastery (as in the examples from Epictetus) .

Secondly, it is not sufficient to analyze this personal relation of self-understanding as merely deriving from the general principle "gnothi seauton"--"know thyself". Of course, in a certain general sense it can be derived from this principle, but we cannot stop at this point. For the various relationships which one has to oneself are embedded in very precise techniques which take the form of spiritual exercises--some of them dealing with deeds, others with states of equilibrium of the soul, others with the flow of representations, and so on.

Third point. In all these different exercises, what is at stake is not the disclosure of a secret which has to excavated from out of the depths of the soul. What is at stake is the relation of the self to truth or to some rational principles. Recall that the question which motivated Seneca's evening self- examination was: 'Did I bring into play those principles of behavior I know very well, but, as it sometimes happens, I do not always conform to or always apply? Another question was: 'Am I able to adhere to the principles I am familiar with, I agree with, and which I practice most of the time? ' For that was Serenus' question. Or the question Epictetus raised in the exercises I was just discussing: 'Am I able to react to any kind of representation which shows itself to me in conformity with my adopted rational rules?

What we have to underline here is this: if the truth of the self in these exercises is nothing other than the relation of the self to truth, then this truth is not purely theoretical. The truth of the self involves, on the one hand, a set of rational principles which are grounded in general statements about the world, human life, necessity, happiness, freedom, and so on, and, on the other hand, practical rules for behavior. And the question which is raised in these different exercises is oriented towards the following problem: Are we familiar enough with these rational principles? Are they sufficiently well-established in our minds to become practical rules for our everyday behavior? And the problem of memory is at the heart of these techniques, but in the form of an attempt to remind ourselves of what we have done, thought, or felt so that we may reactivate our rational principles, thus making them as permanent and as effective as possible in our life.

These exercises are part of what we could call an "aesthetics of the self. " For one does not have to take up a position or role towards oneself as that of a judge pronouncing a verdict.

One can comport oneself towards oneself in the role of a technician, of a craftsman, of an artist, who--from time to time--stops working, examines what he is doing, reminds himself of the rule of his art, and compares these rules with what he has achieved thus far. This metaphor of the artist who stops working, steps back, gains a distant perspective, and examines what he is actually doing with the principles of his art can be found in Plutarch's essay, "On the Control of Anger".

Concluding remarks : And now a few words about this seminar. The point of departure. My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role. But even in the framework of this general question of the role of the truth-teller in a society, there were several possible ways to conduct the analysis. For instance, I could have compared the role and status of the truth-tellers in

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Greek society, Christian societies, non-Christian societies--the role of the prophet as a truthteller, the role of the oracle as a truth-teller, the role of the poet, of the expert, of the preacher, and so on. But, in fact, my intention was not to conduct a sociological description of the different possible roles for truth-tellers in different societies. What I wanted to analyze was how the truth-teller's role was variously problematized in Greek philosophy. And what I wanted to show you was that if Greek philosophy has raised the question of truth from the point of view of the criteria for true statements and sound reasoning, this same Greek philosophy has also raised the problem of truth from the point of view of truth-telling as an activity. It has raised questions like : Who is able to tell the truth ? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller ? About what topics is it important to tell the truth ? (About the world ? About nature ? About the city ? About behavior ? About man ? ) What are the consequences of telling the truth ? What are its anticipated positive effects for the city, for the city's rulers, for the individual, etc. ? And finally : what is the relation between the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of power, or should these activities be completely independent and kept separate ? Are they separable, or do they require one another ? These four questions about truth-telling as an activity--who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relation to power--seem to have emerged as philosophical problems towards the end of the Fifth Century around Socrates, especially through his confrontations with the Sophists about politics, rhetorics, and ethics.

And I would say that the problematization of truth which characterizes both the end of Presocratic philosophy and the beginning of the kind of philosophy which is still ours today, this problematization of truth has two sides, two major aspects. One side is concerned with insuring that the process of reasoning is correct in determining whether a statement is true (or concern itself with our ability to gain access to the truth). And the other side is concerned with the question : what is the importance for the individual and for the society of telling the truth, of knowing the truth, of having people who tell the truth, as well as knowing how to recognize them. With that side which is concerned with determining how to insure that a statement is true we have the roots of the great tradition in Western philosophy which I would like to call the " analytics of truth ". And on the other side, concerned with the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the " critical " tradition in the West. And here you will recognize one of my targets in this seminar, namely, to construct a genealogy of the critical attitude in the Western philosophy . That constituted the general objective target of this seminar.

From the methodological point of view, I would like to underscore the following theme.

As you may have noticed, I utilized the word " problematization " frequently in this seminar without providing you with an explanation of its meaning. I told you very briefly that what I intended to analyze in most of my work was neither past people's behavior (which is something that belongs to the field of social history), nor ideas in their representative values.

What I tried to do from the beginning was to analyze the process of " problematization "-which means : how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes) became a problem. Why, for example, certain forms of behavior were characterized and classified as " madness " while other similar forms were completely neglected at a given historical moment ; the same thing for crime and delinquency, the same question of problematization for sexuality.

Some people have interpreted this type of analysis as a form of " historical idealism ", but I think that such an analysis is completely different. For when I say that I am studying the " problematization " of madness, crime, or sexuality, it is not a way of denying the reality of such phenomena . On the contrary, I have tried to show that it was precisely some real

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existent in the world which was the target of social regulation at a given moment. The question I raise is this one : how and why were very different things in the world gatherer together, characterized, analyzed, and treated as, for example, " mental illness " ? What are the elements which are relevant for a given " problematization " ? And even if I won't say that what is characterized as " schizophrenia " corresponds to something real in the world, this has nothing to do with idealism. For I think there is a relation between the thing which is problematized and the process of problematization. The problematization is an " answer " to a concrete situation which is real.

There is also a mistaken interpretation according to which my analysis of a given problematization is without any historical context, as if it were a spontaneous process coming from anywhere. In fact, however, I have tried to show, for instance, that the new problematization of illness or physical disease at the end of the 18th Century was very directly linked to a modification in various practices, or to the development of a new social reaction to diseases, or to the challenge posed by certain processes, and so on. But we have to understand very clearly, I think, that a given problematization is not an effect or consequence of a historical context or situation, but is an answer given by definite individuals (although you may find this same answer given in a series of texts, and at a certain point the answer may become so general that it also becomes anonymous).

For example, with regard to the way that parrhesia was problematized at a given moment, we can see that there are specific Socratic-Platonic answers to the questions : How can we recognize someone as a parrhesiastes ? What is the importance of having a parrhesiastes in the city ? What is the training of a good parrhesiastes ? -answers which were given by Socrates or Plato. These answers are not collective ones from any sort of collective unconscious. And the fact that an answer is neither a representation nor an effect of a situation does not mean that it answers to nothing, that it is pure dream, or an " anti-creation ". A problematization is always a kind of creation ; but a creation in the sense that, given a certain situation, you cannot infer that this kind of problematization will follow. Given a certain problematization, you can only understand why this kind of answer appears as a reply to some concrete and specific aspect of the world. There is the relation of though and reality in the process of problematization. And that is the reason why I think that it is possible to give an answer--the original, specific, and singular answer of thought--to a certain situation. And it is this kind of specific relation between truth and reality which I tried to analyze in the various problematizations of parrhesia.

Note: Discourse and truth: the problematization of parrhesia. (six lectures given at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983) Ed. by Joseph Pearson in 1985 :" The text was compiled from tape-recordings made of six lectures delivered, in English, by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley in the Fall Term of 1983. The lectures were given as part of Foucault's seminar, entitled "Discourse and Truth". Since Foucault did not write, correct, or edit any part of the text which follows, it lacks his imprimatur and does not present his own lecture notes. What is given here constitutes only the notes of one of his auditors. Although the present text is primarily a verbatim transcription of the lectures, repetitive sentences or phrases have been eliminated, responses to questions have been incorporated--whenever possible--into the lectures themselves, and numerous sentences have been revised --all in the hope of producing a more readable set of notes."

Reedited in 1999 for www.foucault.info ; the footnotes and bibliography added by J.Pearson are missing .

Available in photocopy and audiotapes. [BdS nยบ D213.]

(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University, 1985).

Dutch translation: Parresia (Amsterdam: Krisis, 1989).

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Concluding Remarks to the Seminar

Foucault.info | Concluding Remarks to the Seminar

And now a few words about this seminar.

The point of departure. My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity. By this I mean that, for me, it was not a question of analyzing the internal or external criteria that would enable the Greeks and Romans, or anyone else, to recognize whether a statement or proposition is true or not. At issue for me was rather the attempt to consider truth-telling as a specific activity, or as a role.

But even in the framework of this general question of the role of the truth-teller in a society, there were several possible ways to conduct the analysis. For instance, I could have compared the role and status of the truth-tellers in Greek society, Christian societies, non-Christian societies —the role of the prophet as a truth-teller, the role of the oracle as a truth-teller, the role of the poet, of the expert, of the preacher, and so on.

But, in fact, my intention was not to conduct a sociological description of the different possible roles for truthtellers in different societies. What I wanted to analyze was how the truth-teller's role was variously problematized in Greek philosophy. And what I wanted to show you was that if Greek philosophy has raised the question of truth from the point of view of the criteria for true statements and sound reasoning, this same Greek philosophy has also raised the problem of truth from the point of view of truth-telling as an activity. It has raised questions like: Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to tell the truth?

(About the world? About nature? About the city? About behavior? About man? ) What are the consequences of telling the truth? What are its anticipated positive effects for the city, for the city's rulers, for the individual, etc.? And finally: what is the relation between the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of power, or should these activities be completely independent and kept separate? Are they separable, or do they require one another? These four questions about truth-telling as an activity--who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relation to power--seem to have emerged as philosophical problems towards the end of the Fifth Century around Socrates, especially through his confrontations with the Sophists about politics, rhetorics, and ethics.

And I would say that the problematization of truth which characterizes both the end of Presocratic philosophy and the beginning of the kind of philosophy which is still ours today, this problematization of truth has two sides, two major aspects. One side is concerned with insuring that the process of reasoning is correct in determining whether a statement is true (or concern itself with our ability to gain access to the truth). And the other side is concerned with the question: what is the importance for the individual and for the society of telling the truth, of knowing the truth, of having people who tell the truth, as well as knowing how to recognize them. With that side which is concerned with determining how to insure that a statement is true we have the roots of the great tradition in Western philosophy which I would like to call the "analytics of truth". And on the other side, concerned with the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the "critical" tradition in the West. And here you will recognize one of my targets in this seminar, namely, to construct a genealogy of the critical attitude in the Western philosophy. That constituted the general objective target of this seminar.

From the methodological point of view, I would like to underscore the following theme. As you may have noticed, I utilized the word "problematization" frequently in this seminar without providing you with an explanation of its meaning. I told you very briefly that what I intended to analyze in most of my work was neither past people's behavior (which is something that belongs to the field of social history), nor ideas in their representative values.

What I tried to do from the beginning was to analyze the process of "problematization" -which means: how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes) became a problem. Why, for example, certain forms of behavior were characterized and classified as "madness" while other similar forms were completely neglected at a given historical moment; the same thing for crime and delinquency, the same question of problematization for sexuality.

Some people have interpreted this type of analysis as a form of "historical idealism", but I think that such an analysis is completely different. For when I say that I am studying the "problematization" of madness, crime, or sexuality, it is not a way of denying the reality of such phenomena . On the contrary, I have tried to show that it was precisely some real existent in the world which was the target of social regulation at a given moment. The question I raise is this one: how and why were very different things in the world gatherer together, characterized, analyzed, and treated as, for example, "mental illness"? What are the elements which are relevant for a given "problematization"? And even if I won't say that what is characterized as "schizophrenia" corresponds to something real in the world, this has nothing to do with idealism. For I think there is a relation between the thing which is file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/remarks.conclusions.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:18:53 πμ

Concluding Remarks to the Seminar

problematized and the process of problematization. The problematization is an "answer" to a concrete situation which is real.

There is also a mistaken interpretation according to which my analysis of a given problematization is without any historical context, as if it were a spontaneous process coming from anywhere. In fact, however, I have tried to show, for instance, that the new problematization of illness or physical disease at the end of the 18th Century was very directly linked to a modification in various practices, or to the development of a new social reaction to diseases, or to the challenge posed by certain processes, and so on. But we have to understand very clearly, I think, that a given problematization is not an effect or consequence of a historical context or situation, but is an answer given by definite individuals (although you may find this same answer given in a series of texts, and at a certain point the answer may become so general that it also becomes anonymous).

For example, with regard to the way that parrhesia was problematized at a given moment, we can see that there are specific Socratic-Platonic answers to the questions: How can we recognize someone as a parrhesiastes? What is the importance of having a parrhesiastes in the city? What is the training of a good parrhesiastes? -answers which were given by Socrates or Plato. These answers are not collective ones from any sort of collective unconscious. And the fact that an answer is neither a representation nor an effect of a situation does not mean that it answers to nothing, that it is pure dream, or an "anti-creation". A problematization is always a kind of creation; but a creation in the sense that, given a certain situation, you cannot infer that this kind of problematization will follow. Given a certain problematization, you can only understand why this kind of answer appears as a reply to some concrete and specific aspect of the world. There is the relation of though and reality in the process of problematization. And that is the reason why I think that it is possible to give an answer -the original, specific, and singular answer of thoughtto a certain situation. And it is this kind of specific relation between truth and reality which I tried to analyze in the various problematizations of parrhesia.

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Le courage de la vérité

Foucault.info | Le courage de la vérité

Extraits du cours de Foucault au collège de France: "Le courage de la vérité" 1984. (notes exactes mais en désordre)

4 attitudes philosophiques fondamentales composées ou s'excluant: Attitude prophétique: promet et prédit le moment et la forme où la production de la vérité, l'exercice du pouvoir, la formation morale (ethos) viendront enfin exactement à coïncidence.

Attitude sagesse: prétend dire dans un discours fondamental et unique à la fois l'unité de la vérité, de la politheia et de l'ethos.

Attitude technicienne ou d'enseignement: discours de l'hétérogénéité et de la séparation entre vérité, politheia et ethos (condition formelle du dire-vrai (logique), économie politique, morale).

Attitude parrhésiastique: discours de l'irréductibilité de la vérité, du pouvoir et de l'ethos, de leur nécessaire relation, de l'impossibilité où l'on est de les penser sans relation fondamentale les uns avec les autres.

Analyse de la vie cynique sous 4 aspects : vie non dissimulée vie indépendante vie droite vie souveraine La pratique du cynisme retourne ces 4 aspects jusqu'au scandale.

1 Alethos bios, vraie vie = non dissimulée, dont on ne rougit pas Le véritable amour (Platon) Sénèque : vie comme si toujours sous le regard des autres (surtout de l'ami) : rôle de la correspondance.

Thème repris mais altéré dans le cynisme : dramatisation et passage à la limite par la mise en scène de la vie sous le regard du plus grand nombre possible d'autre.

Absence de maison (lieu secret), de vêtements : voyage à Corinthe car ville très publique. Mort dans un gymnase enveloppé dans un manteau.

Retournement des effets : vie irréductible à toute les autres : scandale.

Non pas limite de la pudeur mais faire apparaître sans limite ce qui dans l'être humain est de l'ordre de la nature.

Donc non-dissimulation = éclat de la naturalité de l'être humain sous le regard de tous. SCANDALE. 2 Vie sans mélange, sans lien, sans dépendance: 2 stylistiques d'existence > pureté (Platon) > indépendance (Stoïciens, Épicuriens) Pauvreté. Sénèque : ne pas se soucier de la fortune, de l'argent ; se préparer aux changements de fortune.

En revanche, la pauvreté cynique est réelle, active, indéfinie : réelle : dépouillement de l'existence.(non pas exercices virtuels des Stoïciens)

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Le courage de la vérité

active : non pas indifférente à la fortune (Socrate) mais opération sur soi-même, élaboration de soi-même, conduite de pauvreté.

Infinie,indéfinie : ne s'arrête pas à un stade, cherche avec inquiétude les limites de l'absolument indispensable.

(Anecdote : Diogène se sépare de son écuelle et bois à la main)

Dramaturgie >effets paradoxaux : vie de laideur, de dépendance, d'humiliation donc retournement avec acceptation positive de l'esclavage.

Adoxia : pratique systématique du déshonneur. Ex. Ingals the seeking of deshonor. Recherche de situations humiliantes pour résister au phénomène d'opinions... (ex :Diogène reçoit un coup de bâton sur la tête « la prochaine fois je mettrais un casque », les passants : « Diogène, tu mange comme un chien ! D. :Mais vous aussi vous êtes des chiens car il n'y a que des chiens pour faire cercle autour d'un chien qui mange » -Humiliation cynique- -Humilité chrétienneJeu sur les conventions = orgueil État, habitude = renonciation 3 vie droite,en conformité avec la nature(non pas logos ou loi)

refus du mariage, de la famille, des tabous alimentaires (viande crue) vie indexée sur la nature : valorisation de l'animosité, l'animalité (pôle traditionnel de la différentiation abstraite pour l'être humain) animalité : un modèle de comportement (Diogène observe les souris, l'escargot...) exercice, tâche,vie nue.

4 vie souveraine,vraie volupté trouvée en soi vraie volupté trouvée en soi (stoïque) mais aussi relations aux autres de type personnel (aide, appui à Lucilius) thème de la maîtrise de soi repris, intensifié, poussé à la limite, dramatisé sous l'affirmation arrogante que le cynique est roi.

Affirmation simple et insolente : le cynique est le seul roi, le vrai roi anti-roi.

Conclusion

Vie non-dissimulée -->vie sans pudeur, sans honte, sans respect humain Vie indépendante -->vie indifférente sans besoin sauf immédiat Vie droite -->vie qui aboît, se bat, qui discerne (diacritique) Vie souveraine -->vie de chien de garde, sauve les autres, les maîtres.

4 caractères de la «vraie vie » de Platon : écho, continuation mais passage à la limite et retournement scandaleux de la vie non-dissimulée, éhontée : le chien cynique.

CYNISME : mouvement par lequel la vie devient «autre ». (mouvement par lequel on se détache). Le cynisme se présente comme une parrhesia manifestée dans une forme d'existence.

2 principes du cynisme : connais-toi toi-même et réévalue ta monnaie.

Etre soi-même monnaie : fausse monnaie de l'opinion, vraie monnaie du souci de soi, de sa véritable existence à condition de se connaître soi-même.

Fonde une modalité de vie bienheureuse et une pratique de la vérité manifestée et à manifester. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesiasts/foucault.diogenes.fr.html (2 of 3)19/5/2005 10:18:54 πμ

Le courage de la vérité

Enseignement philosophique non pas pour transmettre des connaissances mais entraînement pour les individus, armature pour la vie. Diogène enseigne les sciences sous la forme de résumés et d'abrégés, dans les principes essentiels et apprentissage de l'indépendance, de la simplicité.

Contre la logique,la physique, la géométrie et la musique ; pour la morale.

Contre les coutumes, les lois,contre un « état » : vice des hommes à la racine d'habitudes.

Contre la laideur de l'humanité.

Contre soi et pour soi, contre les autres et pour les autres : thème inversé de la vie souveraine en vie « militante » en milieu ouvert (pas de prosélytisme).

Héraclès : héros cynique toujours représenté souffrant,combattant; royauté misérable et posthume.

'Militantisme' comme vie révolutionnaire sous 3 formes (XIXè) -- de la socialité du secret (association,complot) -- de l'organisation instituée (syndicat ou parti) -- du style d'existence, en rupture avec les conventions, les habitudes, les valeurs, et manifeste par la forme visible de son existence immédiate la valeur évidente d'une autre vie qui est la vraie vie.

Voie courte vers la vertu : droit vers le sommet,exercices et askesis ; voie longue sans effort à travers l'apprentissage scolaire et doctrinal du logos.(Parménide) Charpente théorique très rudimentaire à la manière du scepticisme,transmis comme une attitude, une manière d'être,plus que par une doctrine.

Transmission des schémas de vie par des exemples, des souvenirs, des anecdotes, des plaisanteries : pas de traditionnalité doctrinale.

Vie philosophique comme vie héroïque transmise par le cynisme jusqu'au jour où la philosophie devient un métier de professeur au xixeme.

Aux coups et aux insultes, le cynique réplique qu'il aime le genre humain tout entier.

Mariage interdit :le lien avec tous les hommes est la tâche la plus haute.

Mission cynique : sacrifier soi-même sa propre vie pour pouvoir s'occuper des autres,mission « sacrificielle » mais aussi joie.

Mission : interventionnisme physique et social, médication,instrument du bonheur.

Forme du combat : bienfaiteur agressif, il attaque,mord.

Profession cynique : on reconnaîtra que l'on est fait pour le métier de cynique si on s'exerce à la vie cynique et si on est capable d'en supporter l'épreuve.

Histoire possible du cynisme comme attitude tenant sur elle-même un discours justificatif.

Le courage d'être soi-même non-créateur.

Du fait que les principes philosophiques informent la vie, cette vie devient autre que celle des hommes en général et des philosophes.

Parménide : l'être est : vérité et certitudes ; l'être n'est pas : étroit sentier où on ne peut rien apprendre.

3 catégories de philosophes : -- qui se taisent, parce-qu'ils pensent que la foule n'est pas capable d'entendre la vérité.

-- qui réservent leurs propos à un public choisi.

-- cyniques qui jouent de la crédulité des gens de la rue,faisant rire et gâchant la philosophie selon Dion de Chrisostome.

Laideur, saleté de certains cyniques critiquée par Épictète ; statue visible de la vérité,dépouillée de ce qui serait pour le corps l'équivalent de la rhétorique.

Forme d'existence comme scandale vivant de la vérité, comme lieu d'émergence de la vérité.

Surveillance des autres(inspection perpétuelle), non pas mettre son nez partout, mais se soucier de ce qui chez les autres relève du genre humain en général.

Le cynique se soucie des autres pour savoir ce dont il se soucie.

Surveillance qui a pour fin un changement dans la conduite des individus et dans la configuration du monde.

Les gens cherchent la nature du bien et du mal où elle ne se trouve pas,dans un ailleurs,dans une route 'autre' ; « l'altérité de ma vie vous montre que c'est vous qui menez une vie autre. » Est-ce que la vraie vie ne doit pas être radicalement autre ?

2 aspects de la connaissance de soi sur soi : -- estimer ce dont on est capable, mesure de soi-même avant d'affronter les épreuves.

-- vigilance de soi sur soi, matière première : l'âme, le mouvement des représentations.

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The Cynic Philosophers and their techniques

Foucault.info | The Cynic Philosophers and their techniques [excerpt from the seminar given by Foucault in 1983] Now I would like to move on to the practice of parrhesia in public life through the example of the Cynic philosophers. In the case of the Epicurean communities, we know very little about their style of life but have some idea of their doctrine as it is expressed in various texts. With the Cynics the situation is exactly reversed; for we know very little about Cynic doctrine —even if there ever was such an explicit doctrine. But we do possess numerous testimonies regarding the Cynic way of life. And there is nothing surprising about this state of affairs; for even though Cynic philosophers wrote books just like other philosophers, they were far more interested in choosing and practicing a certain way of life.

A historical problem concerning the origin of Cynicism is this. Most of the Cynics from the First Century B. C. and thereafter refer to either Diogenes or Antisthenes as the founder of the Cynic philosophy, and though these founder of Cynicism they relate themselves back to the teachings of Socrates. According to Farrand Sayre, however, the Cynic Sect appeared only in the Second Century B. C. , or two centuries after Socrates' death. We might be a bit skeptical about a traditional explanation given for the rise of the Cynic Sects —an explanation which has been given so often to account for so many other phenomena; but it is that Cynicism is a negative form of aggressive individualism which arose with the collapse of the political structures of the ancient world. A more interesting account is given by Sayre, who explains the appearance of the Cynics on the Greek philosophical scene as a consequence of expanding conquest of the Macedonian Empire. More specifically, he notes that with Alexander's conquests various Indian philosophies -especially the monastic and ascetic teaching of Indian Sects like the Gymnosophists- became more familiar to the Greeks.

Regardless of what we can determine about the origins of Cynicism, it is a fact that the Cynics were very numerous and influential from the end of the First Century BC to the Fourth Century A. D. Thus in A. D. 165 Lucian -who did not like the Cynics- writes:"The city swarms with these vermin, particularly those who profess the tenets of Diogenes, Antisthenes, and Crates." It seems, in fact, that the self-styled 'Cynics' were so numerous that the Emperor Julian, in his attempt to revive classical Greek culture, wrote a lampoon against them scorning their ignorance, their coarseness, and portraying them as a danger for the Empire and for Greco-Roman culture. One of the reasons why Julian treated the Cynics so Harshly was due to their general resemblance to the early Christians.

And some of the similarities may have been more than mere superficial resemblance. For example, Peregrinus (a well-known Cynic at the end of the Second Century A. D. ) was considered a kind of saint by his Cynic followers, especially by those who regarded his death as a heroic emulation of the death of Heracles. To display his Cynic indifference to death, Peregrinus committed suicide by cremating himself immediately following the Olympic Games of AD 167. Lucian, who witnessed the event, gives a satirical, derisive account. Julian was also disappointed that the Cynics were not able to represent ancient Greco-Roman culture, for he hoped that there would be something like a popular philosophical movement which would compete with Christianity.

The high value which the Cynics attributed to a person's way of life does not mean that they had no interest in theoretical philosophy, but reflects their view that the manner in which a person lived was a touchstone of his or her relation to truth -as we saw was also the case in the Socratic tradition. The conclusion they drew from this Socratic idea, however, was that in order to proclaim the truths they accepted in a manner that would be accessible to everyone, they though that their teachings had to consist in a very public, visible, spectacular, provocative, and sometimes scandalous way of life. The Cynics thus taught by way of examples and the explanations associated with them. They wanted their own lives to be a blazon of essential truths which would then serve as a guideline, or as an example for others to follow. But there is nothing in this Cynic emphasis on philosophy as an art of life which is alien to Greek philosophy. So even if we accept Sayre's hypothesis about the Indian philosophical influence on Cynic doctrine and practice, we must still recognize that the Cynic attitude is, in its basic form, just an extremely radical version of the very Greek conception of the relationship between one's way of life and knowledge of the truth. The Cynic idea that a person is nothing else but his relation to truth, and that this relation to truth takes shape or is given form in his own life —that is completely Greek.

In the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic traditions, philosophers referred mainly to a doctrine, text, or at least to some theoretical principles for their philosophy. In the Epicurean tradition, the followers of Epicurus refer both to a doctrine and also to the personal example set by Epicurus-whom every Epicurean tried to imitate. Epicurus originated the doctrine and was also a personification of it. But now in the Cynic tradition, the main references for the philosophy are not to the texts or doctrines, but to exemplary lives. Personal examples were also important in file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesiasts/foucault.diogenes.en.html (1 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:55 πμ

The Cynic Philosophers and their techniques

other philosophical schools, but in the Cynic movement -where there were no established texts, no settled, recognizable doctrine- reference was always made to certain real or mythical personalities who were taken to be the sources of Cynicism as a mode of life. Such personalities were the starting point for Cynic reflection and commentary. The mythical characters referred to included Heracles [Hercules], Odysseus [Ulysses], and Diogenes.

Diogenes was an actual, historical figure, but his life became so legendary that he developed into a kind of myth as anecdotes, scandals, etc., were added to his historical life. About his actual life we do not know all that much, but it is clear that he became a kind of philosophical hero. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno of Citiun, etc., were philosophical authors and authorities, for example; but they were not considered heroes. Epicurus was both a philosophical author and treated by his followers as a kind of hero. But Diogenes was primarily a heroic figure. the idea that a philosopher's life should be exemplary and heroic is important in understanding the relationship of Cynicism to Christianity, as well as for understanding Cynic parrhesia as a public activity.

This brings us to Cynic parrhesia. The main types of parrhesiastic practice utilized by the Cynics were. (1) critical preaching; (2) scandalous behavior; and (3) what I shall call the "Provocative dialogue."

Critical Preaching : First, the critical preaching of the Cynics. Preaching is a form of continuous discourse. And, as you know, most of the early philosophers -especially the Stoics- would occasionally deliver speeches where they presented their doctrines. Usually, however they would lecture in front of a rather small audience. The Cynics, in contrast, disliked this kind of elitist exclusion and preferred to address a large crowd. For example, they liked to speak in a theater, or at a place where people had gathered for a feast, religious event, athletic contest, etc. They would sometimes stand up in the middle of a theater audience and deliver a speech. This public preaching was not their own innovation, for we have testimonies of similar practices as early as the Fifth Century BC Some of the sophists we see in the Platonic dialogues, for example, also engage in preaching to some extent. Cynic preaching, however, had its own specific characteristics, and is historically significant since it enabled philosophical themes about one's way of life to become popular, i.e., to come to the attention of people who stood outside the philosophical elect. From this perspective, Cynic preaching about freedom, the renunciation of luxury, Cynic criticisms of political institutions; and existing moral codes, and so on, also opened the way for some Christian themes. But Christian proselytes not only spoke about themes which were often similar to the Cynics; they also took over the practice of preaching.

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.

There is, however, very little positive doctrine in Cynic preaching: no direct affirmation of the good or bad.

Instead, the Cynics refer to freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) as the basic criteria by which to assess and kind of behavior or mode of life. For the Cynics, the main condition for human happiness is autarkeia, self-sufficiency or independence, where what you need to have or what you decide to do is dependent on nothing other than you yourself. As, a consequence -since the Cynics had the most radical of attitudes- they preferred a completely natural life-style. A natural life was supposed to eliminate all of the dependencies introduced by culture, society, civilization, opinion, and so on. Consequently, most of their preaching seems to have been directed against social institutions, the arbitrariness of rules of law, and any sort of life-style that was dependent upon such institutions or laws. In short, their preaching was against all social institutions insofar as such institutions hindered one's freedom and independence.

Scandalous Behavior : Cynic parrhesia also had recourse to scandalous behavior or attitudes which called into question collective habits, opinions, standards of decency, institutional rules, and so on. Several procedures were used. One of them was the inversion of roles, as can be seen from Dio Chrysostom's Fourth Discourse where the famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander is depicted. This encounter, which was often referred to by the Cynics, does not take place in the privacy of Alexander's court but in the street, in the open. The king stands up while Diogenes sits back in his barrel. Diogenes orders Alexander to step out of his light so that he can bask in the sun. Ordering Alexander to step aside so that the sun' s light can reach Diogenes is an affirmation of the direct and natural relation the philosopher has to the sun in contrast to the mythical genealogy whereby the king, as descended from a god, was supposed to personify the sun.

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The Cynic Philosophers and their techniques

The Cynics also employed the technique of displacing or transposing a rule from a domain where the rule was accepted to a domain where it was not in order to show how arbitrary the rule was. Once, during the athletic contests and horse-races of the Isthmian festival, Diogenes -who was bothering everyone with his frank remarkstook a crown of pine and put it on his head as if he had been victorious in an athletic competition. And the magistrates were very happy about this gesture because they thought it was, at last, a good occasion to punish him, to exclude him, to get rid of him. But he explained that he placed a crown upon his head because he had won a much more difficult victory against poverty, exile, desire, and his own vices than athletes who were victorious in wrestling, running, and hurling a discus. And later on during the games, he saw two horses fighting and kicking each other until one of them ran off. So Diogenes went up and put a crown on the head of the horse who stood its ground . These two symmetrical displacements have the effect of raising the question: "What are you really doing when you award someone with a crown in the Isthmian games? " For if the crown is awarded to someone as a moral victory, then Diogenes deserves a crown. But if it is only a question of superior physical strength, then there is no reason why the horse should not be given a crown.

Cynic parrhesia in its scandalous aspects also utilized the practice of bringing together two rules of behavior which seem contradictory and remote from one another. For example, regarding the problem of bodily needs. You eat.

There is no scandal in eating, so you can eat in public (although, for the Greeks, this is not obvious and Diogenes was sometimes reproached for eating in the agora). Since Diogenes ate in the agora, he thought that there was no reason why he should not also masturbate in the agora; for in both cases he was satisfying a bodily need (adding that "he wished it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly") . Well, I will not try to conceal the shamelessness (anaideia) of the Cynics as a scandalous practice or technique.

As you know, the word "cynic" comes from the Greek word meaning "dog-like" (kynikoi); and Diogenes was called "The Dog". In fact, the first and only contemporary reference to Diogenes is found in Aristotle's Rhetoric, where Aristotle does not even mention the name "Diogenes" but just call him , "The Dog". The noble philoso-phers of Greece, who usually comprised an elite group, almost always disregarded the Cynics.

Provocative Dialogue : The Cynics also used another parrhesiastic technique, viz., the "provocative dialogue". To give you a more precise example of this type of dialogue -which derives from Socratic parrhesia- I have chosen a passage from the Fourth Discourse on Kingship of Dio Chrysostom of Prusa (c.A.D.40-110).

Do you all know who Dio Chrysostom is? Well, he is a very interesting guy from the last half of the First Century and the beginning of the Second Century of our era. He was born at Prusa in Asia Minor of a wealthy Roman family who played a prominent role in the city-life. Dio's family was typical of the affluent provincial notables that produced so many writers, officers, generals, even emperors, for the Roman Empire. He came to Rome possibly as a professional rhetorician, but there are some disputes about this. An American scholar, C.P. Jones, has written a very interesting book about Dio Chrysostom which depicts the social life of an intellectual in the Roman Empire of Dio's time. In Rome Dio Chrysostom became acquainted with Musonius Rufus, the Stoic philosopher, and possibly through him he became involved with some liberal circles generally opposed to personal tyrranic power. He was subsequently exiled by Domitian -who disliked his views- and thus he began a wandering life where he adopted the costume and the attitudes of the Cynics for several years. When he was finally authorized to return to Rome following Domitian's assassination, he started a new career. His former fortune was returned to him, and he became a wealthy and famous teacher. For a while, however, he had the life-style, the attitude, the habits, and the philosophical views of a Cynic philosopher. But we must keep in mind the fact that Dio Chrysostom was not a "pure" cynic; and perhaps with his intellectual background his depiction of the Cynic parrhesiastic game puts it closer to the Socratic tradition than most of the actual Cynic practices.

In the Fourth Discourse of Dio Chrysostom I think you can find all three forms of Cynic parrhesia. The end of the Discourse is a kind of preaching, and throughout there are references to Diogenes' scandalous behavior and examples illustrating the provocative dialogue of Diogenes with Alexander. The topic of the Discourse is the famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great which actually took place at Corinth. The Discourse begins with Dio's thoughts concerning this meeting (1-14) then a fictional dialogue follows portraying the nature of Diogenes' and Alexander's conversation (15-81) and the Discourse ends with a long, continuous discussion--fictionally narrated by Diogenes--regarding three types of faulty and self-deluding styles of life (82-139).

At the very beginning of the Discourse, Dio criticizes those who present the meeting of Diogenes and Alexander as an encounter between equals: one man famous for his leadership and military victories, the other famous for his free and self-sufficient life-style, and his austere and naturalistic moral virtue. Dio does not want people to praise file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesiasts/foucault.diogenes.en.html (3 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:55 πμ

The Cynic Philosophers and their techniques

Alexander just because he, as a powerful king, did not disregard a poor guy like Diogenes. He insists that Alexander actually felt inferior to Diogenes, and was also a bit envious of his reputation; for unlike Alexander, who wanted to conquer the world, Diogenes did not need anything to do what he wanted to do : [Alexander] himself needed his Macedonian phalanx, his Thessalian cavalry, Thracians, Paeonians, and many others if he was to go where he wished and get what he desired; but Diogenes went forth unattended in perfect safety by night as well as by day whithersoever he cared to go. Again, he himself required huge sums of gold and silver to carry out any of his projects; and what is more, if he expected to keep the Macedonians and the other Greeks submissive, must time and again curry favor of their rulers and the general populace by words and gifts; whereas Diogenes cajoled no man by flattery, but told everybody the truth and, even though he possessed not a single drachma, succeeded in doing as he pleased, failed in nothing he set before himself, was the only man who lived the life he considered the best and happiest, and would not have accepted Alexander's throne or the wealth of the Medes and Persians in exchange for his own poverty.

So it is clear that Diogenes appears here as the master of truth; and from this point of view, Alexander is both inferior to him, and is aware of this inferiority. But although Alexander has some vices and faults of character, he is not a bad king, and he chooses to play Diogenes' parrhesiastic game: So the king came up to [Diogenes] as he sat there and greeted him, whereat the other looked up at him with a terrible glare like that of a lion and ordered him to step aside a little, for Diogenes happened to be warming himself in the sun. Now Alexander was at once delighted with the man's boldness and composure in not being awestruck in his presence. For it is somehow natural for the courageous to love the courageous, while cowards eye them with misgiving and hate them as enemies, but welcome the base and like them. And so to the one class truth and frankness [parrhesia] are the most agreeable things in the world, to the other, flattery and deceit. The latter lend a willing ear to those who in their intercourse seek to please, the former, to those who have regard for the truth.

The Cynic parrhesiastic game which begins is, in some respects, not unlike the Socratic dialogue since there is an exchange of questions and answers. But there are at least two significant differences. First, in the Cynic parrhesiastic game it is Alexander who tends to ask the questions and Diogenes, the philosopher, who answers —which is the reverse of the Socratic dialogue. Secondly, whereas Socrates plays with his interlocutor's ignorance, Diogenes wants to hurt Alexander's pride. For example, at the beginning of the exchange, Diogenes calls Alexander a bastard (181), and tells him that someone who claim to be a king is not so very different from a child who, after winning a game, puts a crown on his head and declares that he is king [47-49]. Of course, all that is not very pleasant for Alexander to hear. But that's Diogenes' game: hitting his interlocutor's pride, forcing him to recognize that he is not what he claims to be which is something quite different from the Socratic attempt to show someone that he is ignorant of what he claims to know. In the Socratic dialogues, you sometimes see that someone's pride has been hurt when he is compelled to recognize that he does not know what he claims to know. For example, when Callicles is led to an awareness of his ignorance, he renounces all discussion because his pride has been hurt.

But this is only a side effect, as it were, of the main target of Socratic irony, which is: to show someone that he is ignorant of his own ignorance. In the case of Diogenes, however, pride is the main target, and the ignorance/ knowledge game is a side effect.

From these attacks on an interlocutor's pride, you see that the interlocutor is brought to the limit of the first parrhesiastic contract, viz., to agree to play the game, to choose to engage in discussion. Alexander is willing to engage Diogenes in discussion, to accept his insolence and insults, but there is a limit. And every time that Alexander feels insulted by Diogenes, he becomes angry and is close to quitting off , even to brutalizing Diogenes.

So you see that the Cynic parrhesiastic game is played at the very limits of the parrhesiastic contract. It borders on transgression because the parrhesiastes may have made too many insulting remarks. Here is an example of this play at the limit of the parrhesiastic agreement to engage in discussion: ... [Diogenes] went on to tell the king that he did not even possess the badge of royalty. . ."And what badge is that?" said Alexander. "It is the badge of the bees, "he replied, "that the king wears. Have you not heard that there is a king among the bees, made so by nature, who does not hold office by virtue of what you people who trace your descent from Heracles call inheritance? " "What is this badge ?" inquired Alexander. "Have you not heard farmers say, "asked the other, "that this is the only bee that has no sting since he requires no weapon against anyone? For no other bee will challenge his right to be king or fight him when he has this badge. I have an idea, however, that you not only go about fully armed but even sleep that way. Do you not know," he continued, "that is a sign of fear in a man for him to carry arms? And no man who is afraid would ever have a chance to become king any more than a slave would. "

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The Cynic Philosophers and their techniques

Diogenes reasons: if you bear arms, you are afraid. No one who is afraid can be a king. So, since Alexander bears arms he cannot be a real king. And, of course, Alexander is not very pleased by this logic' and Dio continues: "At these words Alexander came near hurling his spear". That gesture, of course, would have been the rupture, the transgression, of the parrhesiastic game. When the dialogue arrives at this point, there are two possibilities available to Diogenes for bringing Alexander back into the game. One way is the following. Diogenes says, in effect, 'Well, allright. I know that you are outraged and you are also free. You have both the ability and the legal sanction to kill me. But will you be courageous enough to hear the truth from me, or are you such a coward that you must kill me?' And, for example, after Diogenes insults Alexander at one point in the dialogue, he tells him: "... In view of what I say rage and prance about ... and think me the greatest blackguard and slander me to the world and, if it be your pleasure, run me through with your spear; for I am the only man from whom you will get the truth, and you will learn it from no one else. For all are less honest than I am and more servile."

Diogenes thus voluntarily angers Alexander, and then says, 'Well, you can kill me; but if you do so, nobody else will tell you the truth.' And there is an exchange, a new parrhesiastic contract is drawn up with a new limit imposed by Diogenes: either you kill me, or you'll know the truth. This kind of courageous 'blackmailing' of the interlocutor in the name of truth makes a positive impression upon Alexander: "Then was Alexander amazed at the courage and fearlessness of the man" [76]. So Alexander decides to stay in the game, and a new agreement is thereby achieved.

Another means Diogenes employs for bringing Alexander back into the game is more subtle than the previous challenge: Diogenes also uses trickery. This trickery is different from Socratic irony; for, as you all know, in Socratic irony, Socrates feigns to be as ignorant as his interlocutor so that his interlocutor would not be ashamed of disclosing his own ignorance, and thus not reply to Socrates' questions. That, at least, was the principle of Socratic irony. Diogenes' trick is somewhat different; for at the moment when his interlocutor is about to terminate the exchange, Diogenes says something which his interlocutor believes is complimentary. For example, after Diogenes calls Alexander a bastard--which was not very well-received by Alexander--Diogenes tells him: "... is it not olympias who said that Philip is not your father, as it happens, but a dragon or Ammon or some god or other or demigod or wild animal? And yet in that case you would certainly be a bastard."

Thereupon Alexander smiled and was pleased as never before, thinking that Diogenes, so far from being rude, was the most tactful of men and the only one who really knew how to pay a compliment.

Whereas the Socratic dialogue traces an intricate and winding path from an ignorant understanding to an awareness of ignorance, the Cynic dialogue is much more like a fight, a battle, or a war, with peaks of great agressivity and moments of peaceful calm--peaceful exchanges which, of course, are additional traps for the interlocutor. In the Fourth Discourse Dio Chrysostom explains the rationale behind this strategy of mixing aggressivity and sweetness; Diogenes asks Alexander: "Have you not heard the Libyan myth ? " And the king replied that he had not. Then Diogenes told him with zest and charm, because he wanted to put him in a good humor, just as nurses, after giving the children a whipping, tell them a story to comfort and please them.

And a bit further on, Dio adds: When Diogenes perceived that [Alexander] was greatly excited and quite keyed up in mind with expectancy, he toyed with him and pulled him about in the hope that somehow he might be moved from his pride and thirst for glory and be able to sober up a little. For he noticed that at one moment he was delighted, and at another grieved, at the same thing, and that his soul was as unsettled as the weather at the solstices when both rain and sunshine come from the very same cloud.

Diogenes' charm, however, is only a means of advancing the game and of preparing the way for additional aggressive exchanges. Thus, after Diogenes pleases Alexander with his remarks about his 'bastard' genealogy, and considers the possibility that Alexander might be the son of Zeus, he goes even further: he tells Alexander that when Zeus has a son, he gives his son marks of his divine birth. Of course, Alexander thinks that he has such marks.

Alexander then asks Diogenes how one can be a good king. And Diogenes reply is a purely moral portrayal of kingship: "No one can be a bad king any more than he can be a bad good man; for the king is the best one among men, since he is most brave and righteous and humane, and cannot be overcome by any toil or by any appetite. Or do you think a man is a charioteer if he can not drive, or that one is a pilot if he is ignorant of steering, or is a physician if he file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesiasts/foucault.diogenes.en.html (5 of 6)19/5/2005 10:18:55 πμ

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knows not how to cure? It is impossible, nay, though all the Greeks and barbarians acclaim him as such and load him with diadems and scepters and tiaras like so many necklaces that are put on castaway children lest they fail of recognition. Therefore, just as one cannot pilot except after the manner of pilots, so no one can be king except in a kingly way. " We see here the analogy of statesmanship with navigation and medicine that we have already noted. As the "son of Zeus," Alexander thinks that he has marks or signs to show that he is a king with a divine birth. But Diogenes shows Alexander that the truly royal character is not linked to special status, birth, power, and so on. Rather, the only way of being a true king is to behave like one. And when Alexander asks how he might learn this art of kingship, Diogenes tells him that it cannot be learned, for one is noble by nature [26-31].

Here the game reaches a point where Alexander does not become conscious of his lack of knowledge, as in a Socratic dialogue. He discovers, instead, that he is not in any way what he thought he was-viz., a king by royal birth, with marks of his divine status, or king because of his superior power, and so on. He is brought to a point where Diogenes tells him that the only way to be a real king is to adopt the same type of ethos as the Cynic philosopher. And at this point in the exchange there is nothing more for Alexander to say.

In the case of Socratic dialogue, it also sometimes happens that when the person Socrates has been questioning no longer knows what to say, Socrates resumes the discourse by presenting a positive thesis, and then the dialogue ends. In this text by Dio Chrysostom, Diogenes begins a continuous discourse; however his discussion does not present the truth of a positive thesis, but is content to give a precise description of three faulty modes of life linked to the royal character. The first one is devoted to wealth, the second to physical pleasure, and the third to glory and political power. And these three life-styles are personified by three daimones or spirits.

The concept of the daimon was popular in Greek culture, and also became a philosophical concept —in Plutarch, for example. The fight against evil daimones in Christian asceticism has precursors in the Cynic tradition. Incidentally, the concept of the "demon" has been elaborated in an excellent article in the 'Dictionnaire de Spiritualite' [F. Vandenbrouke vol3, 1957] Diogenes gives an indication of the three daimones which Alexander must fight throughout his life, and which constitute the target of a permanent "spiritual struggle"—"Combat spirituel". Of course, this phrase does not occur in Dio's text; for here it is not so much a specific content which is specific and important, but the idea of a parrhesiastic practice which enables someone to fight a spiritual war within himself.

And I think we can also see in the aggressive encounter between Alexander and Diogenes a struggle occurring between two kinds of power: political power and the power of truth. In this struggle, the parrhesiastes accepts and confronts a permanent danger: Diogenes exposes himself to Alexander's power from the beginning to the end of the Discourse. And the main effect of this parrhesiastic struggle with power is not to bring the interlocutor to a new truth, or to a new level of self-awareness; it is to lead the interlocutor to internalize this parrhesiastic struggle-to fight within himself against his own faults, and to be with himself in the same way that Diogenes was with him.

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Foreword to 'I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother...'

Foucault.info | Foreword to 'I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother...'

We had in mind a study of the practical aspects of the relations between psychiatry and criminal justice. In the course of our research we came across Pierre Riviere's case.

It was reported in the Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale in 1836. Like all other reports published in that journal, this comprised a summary of the facts and the medico-legal experts' reports. There were, however, a number of unusual features about it.

A series of three medical reports which did not reach similar conclusions and did not use exactly the same kind of analysis, each coming from a different source and each with a different status within the medical institution: a report by a country general practitioner, a report by an urban physician in charge of a large asylum, and a report signed by the leading figures in contemporary psychiatry and forensic medicine (Esquirol, Marc, Orfila, etc.). A fairly large collection of court exhibits including statements by witnesses - all of them from a small village in Normandy - when questioned about the life, behavior, character, madness or idiocy of the author of the crime.

Lastly, and most notably, a memoir, or rather the fragment of a memoir, written by the accused himself, a peasant some twenty years of age who claimed that he could "only barely read and write" and who had undertaken during his detention on remand to give "particulars and an explanation" of his crime, the premeditated murder of his mother, his sister, and his brother. A collection of this sort seemed to us unique among the contemporary printed documentation. To what do we owe it?

Almost certainly not to the sensation caused by the case itself. Cases of parricide were fairly common inn the assize courts in that period (ten to fifteen yearly, sometimes more). Moreover, Fieschi's attempted assassination of the king and his trial and his sentencing and execution of Lacenaire and the publication of his memoirs practically monopolized the space devoted to criminal cases in the press at the time. The Gazette des Tribunaux never gave the Riviere case more than a brief mention, in the main producing the Pilote du Calvados, the Riviere case never became a classic of criminal psychiatry like those of Henriette Cornier, Papavoine, or Leger. Apart from the article in the Annales d'hygiène, we have found practically no references to Riviere. And Riviere's counsel, Berthauld, who was later to become fairly well known, seems never to have alluded to his former client in his writings.

Riviere's case was not, then, a "notable crime." The unusually full treatment in the Annales may be accounted for by a combination of chance circumstances and general considerations. Probably a doctor or some local notable in the Caen area drew the contemporary Paris experts' attention to the sentencing to death on November 12, 1835, of a parricide considered by many to be a madman. They must have agreed to intervene when the petition of mercy was presented, on the basis of the records compiled for the purpose; in any event, they drew up their certificate on the basis of the material evidence without ever seeing Pierre Riviere. And once the commutation of the sentence had been granted, what they published in the Annales d'hygiène was the whole or part of the dossier on the case.

Over and above these circumstances, however, a more general debate emerges, in which the publication of this dossier by Esquirol and his colleagues was to have its effect. In 1836 they were in the very midst of the debate on the use of psychiatric concepts in criminal justice. To be more precise, they were at a specific point in this debate, for lawyers such as Collard de Montigny, doctors such as Urbain Coste, and more especially the judges and the courts had been very strongly resisting (especially since 1827) the concept of "monomania" advanced by Esquirol (in 1808). So much so that medical experts and counsel for the defense hesitated to use a concept which had somewhat dubious connotation of "materialism" in the minds of the courts and some juries. Around 1835 it looks as if doctors rather tended to produce medical reports based less directly on the concept of monomania, as if they wished to show simultaneously that reluctance to use it might lead ro serious miscarriages of justices and that mental illness could be manifested through a far wider symptomatology. In any case, the Riviere dossier as published by the Annales is extremely discreet in its references to "monomania"; on the other hand, it makes very considerable use of signs, symptoms, and the despositions of witnesses, and very diverse types of evidence.

There is, however, one fact about all this that is truly surprising, that while "local" or general circumstances led to the publication of a remarkably full documentation, full not only for that period, but even our own, on it and on the unique document that is Riviere's memoir, an immediate and complete silence ensued. What could have disconcerted the doctors and their knowledge after so strongly eliciting their attention?

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Foreword to 'I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother...'

To be frank, however, it was not this, perhaps, that led us to spend more than a year on these documents. It was simply the beauty of Riviere's memoir. The utter astonishment it produced in us was the starting point.

But we were still faced with the question of publication. I think that what committed us to the work, despite our differences of interests and approaches, was that it was a "dossier", that is to say, a case, an affair, an event that provided the intersection of discourses that differed in origin, form, organization and function - the discourses of the cantonal judge, the prosecutor, the presiding judge of the assize court, and the Minister of Justice; those too of the country general practitioner and of Esquirol; and those of the villagers, with their mayor and parish priest; and, last but not least, that of the murderer himself. All of them speak, or appear to be speaking, of one and the same thing; at any rate, the burden of all these discourses is the occurrence on June 3. But in their totality and their variety they form neither a composite work nor an exemplary text, but rather a strange contest, a confrontation, a power relation, a battle among discourses and through discourses. And yet, it cannot simply be described as a single battle; for several separate combats were being fought out at the same time and intersected each other: The doctors were engaged in a combat, among themselves, with the judges and prosecution, and with Riviere himself (who had trapped them by saying that he had feigned madness); the crown lawyers had their own separate combat as regards the testimony of the medical experts, the comparatively novel use of extenuating circumstances, and a range of cases of parricide that had been coupled with regicide (Fieschi and Louis-Philippe stand in the wings); the villagers of Aunay had their own combat to diffuse the terror of a crime committed in their midst and to "preserve the honor of a family" by ascribing the crime to bizarre behavior or singularity; and, lastly, at the very center, there was Pierre Riviere, with his innumerable and complicated engines of war; his crime, made to be written and talked about and thereby to secure him glory in death, his narrative , prepared in advance and for the purpose of leading on to the crime, his oral explanations to obtain credence for his madness, his text, written to dispel this lie, to explain, and to summon death, a text in whose beauty some were to see as a proof of rationality (and hence grounds for condemning him to death) and others a sign of madness (and hence grounds for shutting him up for life).

I think the reason we decided to publish these documents was to draw a map, so to speak, of those combats, to reconstruct these confrontations and battles, to rediscover the interaction of those discourses as weapons of attack and defense in the relations of power and knowledge.

More specifically, we thought that the publication of the dossier might furnish an example of existing records that are available for potential analysis. (a) Since the principle governing their existence and coherence is neither that of a composite work nor a legal text, the outdated academic methods of textual analysis and all the concepts which are the appanage of the dreary and scholastic prestige of writing can very well be eschewed in studying them. (b) Documents like those in the Riviere case should provide material for a thorough examination of the way in which a particular kind of knowledge (e.g. medicine, psychiatry, psychology) is formed and acts in relation to institutions and the roles prescribed in them (e.g., the law with respect to the expert, the accused, the criminally insane, and so on). (c) They give us a key to the relations of power, domination, and conflict within which discourses emerge and function, and hence provide material for a potential analysis of discourse (even of scientific discourses) which may be both tactical and political, and therefore strategic. (d) Lastly, they furnish a means for grasping the power of derangement peculiar to a discourse such as Riviere's and the whole range of tactics by which we can try to reconstitute it, situate it, and give it its status as the discourse of either a madman or a criminal.

Our approach to this publication can be explained as follows: 1. We tried to discover all the material evidence in the case, and by this we mean not only the exhibits in evidence (only some were published in the Annales d'hygiene publique), but also newspaper articles and especially Riviere's memoir in its entirety. (The Annales reprinted only the second part of it.) Most of these documents were to be found in the Departemental Archives at Caen; Jean-Pierre Peter did most of the research. (with the exception of a few documents of minor interest, we are therefore publishing everything we could find written by or about Pierre Riviere, whether in print or in manuscript.)

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Foreword to 'I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother...'

2. In presenting the documents, we have refrained from employing a typological method (the court file followed by the medical file). We have rearranged them more or less in chronological order around the events they are bound up with - the crime, the examining judge's investigation, the proceedings in the assize court, and the commutation of the sentence. This throws a good deal of light on the confrontation of various types of discourse and the rules and results of this confrontation.

And, placed as it is at the time of its writing, Riviere's memoir comes to assume a central position which is in its due, as a mechanism which holds the whole together; triggered secretly beforehand, it leads on to all the earlier episodes; then, once it comes into the open, it lays a trap for everyone, including contriver, since it is first taken as proof that Riviere is not mad and then becomes, in the hands of Esquirol, Marc, and Orfila, a means of averting that death penalty which Riviere had gone to such lengths to call down upon himself.

3. As to Riviere's discourse, we decided not to interpret it and not to subject it to any psychiatric or psychoanalytic commentary. In the first place because it was what we used as the zero benchmark to gauge the distance between the other discourses and the relations arising among them. Secondly, because we could hardly speak of it without involving it in one of the discourses (medical, legal, psychological, criminological) which we wished to use as our starting point in talking about it. If we had done so, we should have brought it within the power relation whose reductive effect we wished to show, and we ourselves should have fallen into the trap it set.

Thirdly, and most importantly, owing to a sort of reverence and perhaps, too, terror for a text which was to carry off four corpses along with it, we are unwilling to superimpose our own text on Riviere's memoir. We fell under the spell of the parricide with the reddish-brown eyes.

4. We have assembled a number of notes at the end of the volume, some on the psychiatric knowledge at work in the doctors' reports, others on the legal aspects of the case (extenuating circumstances, the jurisprudence of parricide), yet others on the relations between the documentary levels (depositions, records, expert opinions), and others again on the narrative of the crimes.

We are aware that we have neglected many major aspects. We could have gone into the marvellous document of peasant ethnology provided by the first part of Riviere's narrative. Or we could have brought out the popular knowledge and definition of madness whose outlines emerge through the villager's testimony.

But the main point was for us to have the documents published.

This work is the outcome of a joint research project by a team engaged in a seminar at the College de France. The authors are Blandine Barret-Kriegel, Gilbert Burlet-Tovic, Robert Castel, Jeanne Favret, Alexandre Fontana, Georgette Legee, Patricia Moulin, Jean-Pierre Peter, Philippe Riot, Maryvonne Saison, and myself.

We were aided in our research by Mme. Coisel and M. Bruno at the Bibliotheque Nationale, M. Berce at the Archives Nationales, M. G. Bernard and Mlle. Gral at the Archives departmentales du Calvados, and Mme. Anne Sohier of the Centre de Recherces historiques.

Pierre Riviere's memoir was published in pamphlet form in the same year as the trial. There is no copy in the Bibliotheque Nationale. The pamphlet contains the version published in the Annales d'hygiene publique, but published there only in part and with some errors.

The whole file is to be found in the Archives du Calvados, 2 U 907, Assises Calvados, Proces criminels, 4th quarter 1835.

[Foreword to I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother... , Michel Foucault, 1973.]

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I, Pierre Rivière... An Interview with Michel Foucault (1976)

Foucault.info | I, Pierre Rivière... An Interview with Michel Foucault (1976)

Q. If you like, we can begin by discussing your interest in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivière and in particular your interest in the fact that, at least in part, it has been made into a film.

MF. For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychology, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychiatrists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it is a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique witness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish a book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your 19th century colleagues?

In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of Rivière in their usual insipid language. Yet they were literally reduced to silence: not a single one spoke up and said: "Here is what Rivière was in reality. And I can tell you now what couldn't be said in the 19th century." Except for one fool, a psychoanalyst, who claimed that Rivière was an illustration of paranoia as defined by Lacan. With this exception no one had anything to say. But I must congratulate them for the prudence and lucidity with which they have renounced discussion of Rivière. So it was a bet won or lost, as you like...

Q. But more generally, it's difficult to discuss the event itself, both its central point which is the murder and also the character who instigates it.

MF. Yes, because I believe that Rivière's own discourse on his act so dominates, or in any case so escapes from every possible handle, that there is nothing to be said about this central point, this crime or act, that is not a step back in relation to it. We see there nevertheless a phenomenon without equivalent in either the history of crime or discourse: that is to say, a crime accompanied by a discourse so strong and so strange that the crime ends up not existing anymore; it escapes through the very fact of this discourse held about it by the one who committed it.

Q. Well how do you situate yourself in relation to the impossibility of this discourse.

MF. I have said nothing about Rivière's crime itself and once more, I don't belive anyone can say anything about it.

No, I think that one must compare Rivière with Lacenaire, who was his exact contemporary and who committed a whole heap of minor and shoddy crimes, mostly failures, hardly glorious at all, but who succeeded through his very intelligent discourse in making these crimes exist as real works of art, and in making the criminal, that is Lacenaire himself, the very artist of criminality. It's another tour de force if you like: he managed to give an intense reality, for dozens of years, for more than a century, to acts that were finally very shoddy and ignoble. As a criminal he was a rather petty type, but the splendor and intelligence of his writing gave a consistency to it all. Rivière is something altogether different: a really extraordinary crime which was revived by such an even more extraordinary discourse that the crime ended up ceasing to exist, and I think that this is what happened in the minds of the judges.

Q. Well then, do you agree with the project of Renè Allio's film, which was centered on the idea of a peasant seizing the opportunity for speech? Or had you already thought about that?

MF. No, it's to Allio's credit to have thought of that, but I subscribe to the idea completely. For by reconstituting the crime from the outside, with actors, as if it were an event and nothing but a criminal event, the essential would be lost. It was necessary that one be situated, on the one hand, inside Rivière's discourse, that the film be a film of memory and not the film of a crime, and on the other hand, that this discourse of a little Normand peasant of 1835 be taken up in what could be the peasant discourse of that period. Yet, what is closest to that form of discourse, if not the same one that is spoken today, in the same voice, by the peasants living in the same place. And finally, across 150 years, it's the same voices, the same accents, the same maladroit and raucous speech that recounts the same thing with almost nothing transposed. In fact Allio chose to commemorate this act at the same place and almost with the same characters who were there for 150 years ago; these are the same peasants who in the same place repeat the same act. It was difficult to reduce the whole cinematic apparatus, the whole filmic apparatus, to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/docu...s/pierreRiviere/foucault.pierreRiviere.interview.en.html (1 of 3)19/5/2005 10:18:56 πμ

I, Pierre Rivière... An Interview with Michel Foucault (1976)

such a thinness, and that it is really extraordinary, rather unique I think in the history of cinema.

What's also more important in Allio's film is that he gives the peasants their tragedy. Basically, the tragedy of the peasant until the end of the 18th century was still hunger. But, beginning in the 19th century and perhaps still today, it was, like every great tragedy, the tragedy of the law, of the law and the land. Greek tragedy that recounts the birth of the law and the mortal effects of the law on men. The Rivière affair occurred in 1836, that is, twenty years after the Code Civil was set into place: a new law is imposed on the daily life of the peasant and he struggles in this new juridical universe. The whole drama of Rivière is a drama about the law, the code, legality, marriage, possessions, and so forth. Yet, it's always within this tragedy that the peasant world moves. And what is important therefore is to show peasants today in this old drama which is the same time the one of their lives: just as Greek citizens saw the representation of their own city on the stage.

Q. What role can this fact play, the fact that the Normand peasants of today can keep the spirit, thanks to the film, of this event, of this period?

MF. You know that there is a great deal of literature about the peasants, but very little peasant literature, or peasant expression. Yet, here we have a text written in 1835 by a peasant, in his own language, that is, in one that is barely literate. And here is the possibility for these peasants today to play themselves, with their own means, in a drama which is of their generation, basically. And by looking at the way Allio made his actors work you could easily see that in a sense he was very close to them, that he gave them a lot of explanations insetting them up, but that on the other side, he allowed them great latitude, in the manner of their language, their pronunciation, their gestures. And, if you like, I think it's politically important to give the peasants the possibility of acting this peasant text. Hence the importance also of actors from outside to represent the world of the law, the jurors, the lawyers, etc., all those people from the city who are basically outside of this very direct communication between the peasant of the 19th century and the one of the 20th century that Allio has managed to visualize, and, to a certain point, let these peasant actors visualize.

Q. But isn't there a danger in the fact that they begin to speak only through such a monstrous story?

MF. It's something one could fear. And Allio, when he began to speak to them about the possibility of making the film, didn't dare tell them what was really involved. And when he told them, he was very surprised to see that they accepted it very easily; the crime was no problem for them. On the contrary, instead of being an obstacle, it was a kind of space where they could meet, talk and do a whole lot of things which were actually in their daily lives. In fact, instead of blocking them , the crime liberated them. And if one had asked them to play something closer to their daily lives and their activity, they would have perhaps felt more theatrical and stagey than in playing this kind of crime, a little far away and mythical, under the shelter of which they could go all out with their own reality.

Q. I was thinking rather of a somewhat unfortunate symmetry: right now it's very fashionable to make films about the turpitudes and monstrosities of the bourgeoisie. So in this film was there a risk of falling into the trap of the indiscreet violence of the peasantry?

MF. And link up again finally with this tradition of an atrocious representation of the peasant world, as in Balzac and Zola...I don't think so. Perhaps just because this violence is never present there in a plastic or theatrical way.

What exists are intensities, rumblings, muffled things, thicknesses, repetitions, things hardly spoken, but not violence...There is none of that lyricism of violence and peasant abjection that you seem to fear. Moreover, it's like that in Allio's film, but it's also like that in the documents, in history. Of course there are some frenetic scenes, fights among children that their parents argue about, but after all, these scenes are not very frequent, and above all, running through them there is always a great finesse and acuity of feeling, a subtlety even in the wickedness, often a delicacy. Because of this, none of the characters have that touch of unrestrained savagery of brute beasts that one finds at a certain level in the literature on the peasantry. Everyone is terribly intelligent in this film, terrible delicate and, to a certain point, terribly reserved.

Translated by John Johnston From Sylvère Lotringer (ed) (1996) Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984. USA: SEMIOTEXT[E]. (pp. 203-206).

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I, Pierre Rivière... An Interview with Michel Foucault (1976)

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Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?

Foucault.info | Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?

De nos jours, quand un journal pose une question à ses lecteurs, c’est pour leur demander leur avis sur un sujet où chacun a déjà son opinion: on ne risque pas d'apprendre grand-chose. Au XVIIIème siècle, on préférait interroger le public sur des problèmes auxquels justement on n'avait pas encore de réponse. Je ne sais si c'était plus efficace; c'était plus amusant.

Toujours est-il qu'en vertu de cette habitude un périodique allemand, la Berlinische Monatsschrift, en décembre 1784, a publié une réponse à la question : Was ist Aufklärung [1] ? Et cette réponse était de Kant.

Texte mineur, peut-être. Mais il me semble qu'avec lui entre discrètement dans l'histoire de la pensée une question à laquelle la philosophie moderne n'a pas été capable de répondre, mais dont elle n'est jamais parvenue à se débarrasser. Et sous des formes diverses, voilà deux siècles maintenant qu'elle la répète. De Hegel à Horckheimer ou à Habermas, en passant par Nietzsche ou Max Weber, il n'y a guère de philosophie qui, directement ou indirectement, n'ait été confrontée à cette même question : quel est donc cet événement qu'on appelle l'Aufklärung et qui a déterminé, pour une part au moins, ce que nous sommes, ce que nous pensons et ce que nous faisons aujourd'hui? Imaginons que la Berlinische Monatsschrift existe encore de nos jours et qu'elle pose à ses lecteurs la question : « Qu'est-ce que la philosophie moderne? »; peut-être pourrait-on lui répondre en écho : la philosophie moderne, c'est celle qui tente de répondre à la question lancée, voilà deux siècles, avec tant d'imprudence: Was ist Aufk1ärung?

Arrêtons-nous quelques instants sur ce texte de Kant. Pour plusieurs raisons, il mérite de retenir l'attention.

1) À cette même question Moses Mendelssohn, lui aussi, venait de répondre dans le même journal, deux mois auparavant. Mais Kant ne connaissait pas ce texte quand il avait rédigé le sien. Certes, ce n'est pas de ce moment que date la rencontre du mouvement philosophique allemand avec les nouveaux développements de la culture juive. Il y avait une trentaine d'années déjà que Mendelssohn était à ce carrefour, en compagnie de Lessing. Mais jusqu'alors, il s'était agi de donner droit de cité à la culture juive dans la pensée allemande - ce que Lessing avait tenté de faire dans Die Juden [2] - ou encore de dégager des problèmes communs à la pensée juive et à la philosophie allemande: c'est ce que Mendelssohn avait fait dans les Entretiens sur l'immortalité de l'âme [3]. Avec les deux textes parus dans la Berlinische Monatsschrift, l'Aufklärung allemande et l'Haskala juive reconnaissent qu'elles appartiennent à la même histoire; elles cherchent à déterminer de quel processus commun elles relèvent.

Et c'était peut-être une manière d'annoncer l'acceptation d'un destin commun, dont on sait à quel drame il devait mener.

2) Mais il y a plus. En lui-même et à l'intérieur de la tradition chrétienne, ce texte pose un problème nouveau.

Ce n'est certainement pas la première fois que la pensée philosophique cherche à réfléchir sur son propre présent.

Mais, schématiquement, on peut dire que cette réflexion avait pris jusqu'alors trois formes principales - on peut représenter le présent comme appartenant à un certain âge du monde, distinct des autres par quelques caractères propres, ou séparé des autres par quelque événement dramatique. Ainsi dans Le Politique de Platon, les interlocuteurs reconnaissent qu'ils appartiennent à l'une de ces révolutions du monde où celui-ci tourne à l'envers, avec toutes les conséquences négatives que cela peut avoir; - on peut aussi interroger le présent pour essayer de déchiffrer en lui les signes annonciateurs d'un événement prochain. On a là le principe d'une sorte d'herméneutique historique dont Augustin pourrait donner un exemple; - on peut également analyser le présent comme un point de transition vers l'aurore d'un monde nouveau. C'est cela que décrit Vico dans le dernier chapitre des Principes de la philosophie de l'histoire [4] ; ce qu'il voit « aujourd'hui », c'est « la plus complète civilisation se répandre chez les peuples soumis pour la plupart à quelques grands monarques »; c'est aussi « l'Europe brillant d'une incomparable civilisation », abondant enfin « de tous les file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...tIsEnlightenment/foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (1 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:58 πμ

Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?

biens qui composent la félicité de la vie humaine ».

Or la manière dont Kant pose la question de l'Aufklärung est tout à fait différente - ni un âge du monde auquel on appartient, ni un événement dont on perçoit les signes, ni l'aurore d'un accomplissement. Kant définit l'Aufklärung d'une façon presque entièrement négative, comme une Ausgang, une « sortie », une « issue ». Dans ses autres textes sur l'histoire, il arrive que Kant pose des questions d'origine ou qu'il définisse la finalité intérieure d'un processus historique. Dans le texte sur l'Aufklärung, la question concerne la pure actualité. Il ne cherche pas à comprendre le présent à partir d'une totalité ou d'un achèvement futur. Il cherche une différence: quelle différence aujourd'hui introduit-il par rapport à hier?

3) je n'entrerai pas dans le détail du texte qui n'est pas toujours très clair malgré sa brièveté. je voudrais simplement en retenir trois ou quatre traits qui me paraissent importants pour comprendre comment Kant a posé la question philosophique du présent.

Kant indique tout de suite que cette « sortie » qui caractérise l'Aufklärung est un processus qui nous dégage de l'état de « minorité ». Et par « minorité », il entend un certain état de notre volonté qui nous fait accepter l'autorité de quelqu'un d'autre pour nous conduite dans les domaines où il convient de faire usage de la raison. Kant donne trois exemples : nous sommes en état de minorité lorsqu'un livre nous tient lieu d'entendement, lorsqu'un directeur spirituel nous tient lieu de conscience, lorsqu'un médecin décide à notre place de notre régime (notons en passant qu'on reconnaît facilement le registre des trois critiques, bien que le texte ne le dise pas explicitement). En tout cas, l'Aufklärung est définie par la modification du rapport préexistant entre la volonté, l'autorité et l'usage de la raison.

Il faut aussi remarquer que cette sortie est présentée par Kant de façon assez ambiguë. Il la caractérise comme un fait, un processus en train de se dérouler; mais il la présente aussi comme une tâche et une obligation. Dès le premier paragraphe, il fait remarquer que l'homme est lui-même responsable de son état de minorité. Il faut donc concevoir qu'il ne pourra en sortir que par un changement qu'il opérera lui-même sur lui- même. D'une façon significative, Kant dit que cette Aufklärung a une « devise » (Wahlspruch) : or la devise, c'est un trait distinctif par lequel on se fait reconnaître; c'est aussi une consigne qu'on se donne à soi-même et qu'on propose aux autres. Et quelle est cette consigne? Aude saper, « aie le courage, l'audace de savoir ». Il faut donc considérer que l'Aufklärung est à la fois un processus dont les hommes font partie collectivement et un acte de courage à effectuer personnellement. Ils sont à la fois éléments et agents du même processus. Ils peuvent en être les acteurs dans la mesure où ils en font partie; et il se produit dans la mesure où les hommes décident d'en être les acteurs volontaires.

Une troisième difficulté apparaît là dans le texte de Kant. Elle réside dans l'emploi du mot Menschheit. On sait l'importance de ce mot dans la conception kantienne de l'histoire. Faut-il comprendre que c'est l'ensemble de l'espèce humaine qui est prise dans le processus de l'Aufklärung? Et dans ce cas, il faut imaginer que l'Aufklärung est un changement historique qui touche à l'existence politique et sociale de tous les hommes sur la surface de la terre. Ou faut-il comprendre qu'il s'agit d'un changement qui affecte ce qui constitue l'humanité de l'être humain? Et la question alors se pose de savoir ce qu'est ce changement. Là encore, la réponse de Kant n'est pas dénuée d'une certaine ambiguïté. En tout cas, sous des allures simples, elle est assez complexe.

Kant définit deux conditions essentielles pour que l'homme sorte de sa minorité. Et ces deux conditions sont à la fois spirituelles et institutionnelles, éthiques et politiques.

La première de ces conditions, c'est que soit bien distingué ce qui relève de l'obéissance et ce qui relève de l'usage de la raison. Kant, pour caractériser brièvement l'état de minorité, cite l'expression courante : « Obéissez, ne raisonnez pas » : telle est, selon lui, la forme dans laquelle s'exercent d'ordinaire la discipline militaire, le pouvoir politique, l'autorité religieuse. L'humanité deviendra majeure non pas lorsqu'elle n'aura plus à obéir, mais lorsqu'on lui dira: « Obéissez, et vous pourrez raisonner autant que vous voudrez. » Il faut noter que le mot allemand ici employé est räzonieren; ce mot, qu'on trouve aussi employé dans les Critiques, ne se rapporte pas à un usage quelconque de la raison, mais à un usage de la raison dans lequel celle-ci n'a pas d'autre fin qu'elle-même; räzonieren, c'est raisonner pour raisonner. Et Kant donne des exemples, eux aussi tout à fait triviaux en apparence : payer ses impôts, mais pouvoir raisonner autant qu'on veut sur la fiscalité, voilà ce qui caractérise l'état de majorité; ou encore assurer, quand on est pasteur, le service d'une paroisse, conformément aux principes de l'Église à laquelle on appartient, mais raisonner comme on veut au sujet des dogmes religieux.

On pourrait penser qu'il n'y a là rien de bien différent de ce qu'on entend, depuis le XVI ème siècle, par la liberté de file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...tIsEnlightenment/foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (2 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:58 πμ

Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ?

conscience : le droit de penser comme on veut, pourvu qu'on obéisse comme il faut. Or c'est là que Kant fait intervenir une autre distinction et la fait intervenir d'une façon assez surprenante. Il s'agit de la distinction entre l'usage privé et l'usage public de la raison. Mais il ajoute aussitôt que la raison doit être libre dans son usage public et qu'elle doit être soumise dans son usage privé. Ce qui est, terme à terme, le contraire de ce qu'on appelle d'ordinaire la liberté de conscience.

Mais il faut préciser un peu. Quel est, selon Kant, cet usage privé de la raison? Quel est le domaine où il s'exerce?

L'homme, dit Kant, fait un usage privé de sa raison, lorsqu'il est « une pièce d'une machine »; c'est-à-dire lorsqu'il a un rôle à jouer dans la société et des fonctions à exercer : être soldat, avoir des impôts à payer, être en charge d'une paroisse, être fonctionnaire d'un gouvernement, tout cela fait de l'être humain un segment particulier dans la société; il se trouve mis par là dans une position définie, où il doit appliquer des règles et poursuivre des fins particulières. Kant ne demande pas qu'on pratique une obéissance aveugle et bête; mais qu'on fasse de sa raison un usage adapté à ces circonstances déterminées; et la raison doit alors se soumettre à ces fins particulières. Il ne peut donc pas y avoir là d'usage libre de la raison.

En revanche, quand on ne raisonne que pour faire usage de sa raison, quand on raisonne en tant qu'être raisonnable (et non pas en tant que pièce d'une machine), quand on raisonne comme membre de l'humanité raisonnable, alors l'usage de la raison doit être libre et public. L'Aufklärung n'est donc pas seulement le processus par lequel les individus se verraient garantir leur liberté personnelle de pensée. Il y a Aufklärung lorsqu'il y a superposition de l'usage universel, de l'usage libre et de l'usage public de la raison.

Or cela nous amène à une quatrième question qu'il faut poser à ce texte de Kant. On conçoit bien que l'usage universel de la raison (en dehors de toute fin particulière) est affaire du sujet lui-même en tant qu'individu; on conçoit bien aussi que la liberté de cet usage puisse être assurée de façon purement négative par l'absence de toute poursuite contre lui; mais comment assurer un usage public de cette raison? L'Aufklärung, on le voit, ne doit pas être conçue simplement comme un processus général affectant toute l'humanité; elle ne doit pas être conçue seulement comme une obligation prescrite aux individus : elle apparaît maintenant comme un problème politique.

La question, en tout cas, se pose de savoir comment l'usage de la raison petit prendre la forme publique qui lui est nécessaire, comment l'audace de savoir peut s'exercer en plein jour, tandis que les individus obéiront aussi exactement que possible. Et Kant, pour terminer, propose à Frédéric 11, en termes à peine voilés, une sorte de contrat. Ce qu'on pourrait appeler le contrat du despotisme rationnel avec la libre raison : l'usage public et libre de la raison autonome sera la meilleure garantie de l'obéissance, à la condition toutefois que le principe politique auquel il faut obéir soit lui-même conforme à la raison universelle.

Laissons là ce texte. je n'entends pas du tout le considérer comme pouvant constituer une description adéquate de l' Aufklärung; et aucun historien, je pense, ne pourrait s'en satisfaire pour analyser les transformations sociales, politiques et culturelles qui se sont produites à la fin du XVIII ème siècle.

Cependant, malgré son caractère circonstanciel, et sans vouloir lui donner une place exagérée dans l'œuvre de Kant, je crois qu'il faut souligner le lien qui existe entre ce bref article et les trois Critiques. Il décrit en effet l'Aufklärung comme le moment où l'humanité va faire usage de sa propre raison, sans se soumettre à aucune autorité; or c'est précisément à ce moment-là que la Critique est nécessaire, puisqu'elle a pour rôle de définir les conditions dans lesquelles l'usage de la raison est légitime pour déterminer ce qu'on peut connaître, ce qu'il faut faire et ce qu'il est permis d'espérer. C'est un usage illégitime de la raison qui fait naître, avec l'illusion, le dogmatisme et l'hétéronomie; c'est, en revanche, lorsque l'usage légitime de la raison a été clairement défini dans ses principes que son autonomie peut être assurée. La Critique, c'est en quelque sorte le livre de bord de la raison devenue majeure dans l'Aufklärung; et inversement, l'Aufklärung, c'est l'âge de la Critique.

Il faut aussi, je crois, souligner le rapport entre ce texte de Kant et les autres textes consacrés à l'histoire. Ceux-ci, pour la plupart, cherchent à définir la finalité interne du temps et le point vers lequel s'achemine l'histoire de l'humanité. Or l'analyse de l' Aufklärung, en définissant celle-ci comme le passage de l'humanité à son état de majorité, situe l'actualité par rapport à ce mouvement d'ensemble et ses directions fondamentales. Mais, en même temps, elle montre comment, dans ce moment actuel, chacun se trouve responsable d'une certaine façon de ce processus d'ensemble.

L'hypothèse que je voudrais avancer, c'est que ce petit texte se trouve en quelque sorte à la charnière de la réflexion critique et de la réflexion sur l'histoire. C'est une réflexion de Kant sur l'actualité de son entreprise. Sans

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doute, ce n'est pas la première fois qu'un philosophe donne les raisons qu'il a d'entreprendre son œuvre en tel ou tel moment. Mais il me semble que c'est la première fois qu'un philosophe lie ainsi, de façon étroite et de l'intérieur, la signification de son œuvre par rapport à la connaissance, une réflexion sur l'histoire et une analyse particulière du moment singulier où il écrit et à cause duquel il écrit. La réflexion sur « aujourd'hui » comme différence dans l'histoire et comme motif pour une tâche philosophique particulière me paraît être la nouveauté de ce texte.

Et, en l'envisageant ainsi, il me semble qu'on peut y reconnaître un point de départ : l'esquisse de ce qu'on pourrait appeler l'attitude de modernité.

Je sais qu'on parle souvent de la modernité comme d'une époque ou en tout cas comme d'un ensemble de traits caractéristiques d'une époque; on la situe sur un calendrier où elle serait précédée d'une prémodernité, plus ou moins naïve ou archaïque et suivie d'une énigmatique et inquiétante « postmodernité ». Et on s'interroge alors pour savoir si la modernité constitue la suite de l'Aufklärung et son développement, ou s'il faut y voir une rupture ou une déviation par rapport aux principes fondamentaux du XVIII ème siècle.

En me référant au texte de Kant, je me demande si on ne peut pas envisager la modernité plutôt comme une attitude que comme une période de l'histoire. Par attitude, je veux dire un mode de relation à l'égard de l'actualité; un choix volontaire qui est fait par certains; enfin, une manière de penser et de sentir, une manière aussi d'agir et de se conduire qui, tout à la fois, marque une appartenance et se présente comme une tâche. Un peu, sans doute, comme ce que les Grecs appelaient un êthos. Par conséquent, plutôt que de vouloir distinguer la « période moderne » des époques « pré » ou « postmoderne », je crois qu'il vaudrait mieux chercher comment l'attitude de modernité, depuis qu'elle s'est formée, s'est trouvée en lutte avec des attitudes de « contre-modernité ».

Pour caractériser brièvement cette attitude de modernité, je prendrai un exemple qui est presque nécessaire : il s'agit de Baudelaire, puisque c'est chez lui qu’on reconnaît en général l'une des consciences les plus aiguës de la modernité au XIX ème siècle.

1) On essaie souvent de caractériser la modernité par la conscience de la discontinuité du temps : rupture de la tradition, sentiment de la nouveauté, vertige de ce qui passe. Et c'est bien ce que semble dire Baudelaire lorsqu'il définit la modernité par « le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent » [5] . Mais, pour lui, être moderne, ce n'est pas reconnaître et accepter ce mouvement perpétuel; c'est au contraire prendre une certaine attitude à l'égard de ce mouvement; et cette attitude volontaire, difficile, consiste à ressaisir quelque chose d'éternel qui n'est pas au-delà de l'instant présent, ni derrière lui, mais en lui. La modernité se distingue de la mode qui ne fait que suivre le cours du temps; c'est l'attitude qui permet de saisir ce qu'il y a d' « héroïque » dans le moment présent. La modernité n'est pas un fait de sensibilité au présent fugitif; c'est une volonté d' « héroïser » le présent.

Je me contenterai de citer ce que dit Baudelaire de la peinture des personnages contemporains. Baudelaire se moque de ces peintres qui, trouvant trop laide la tenue des hommes du XIX ème siècle, ne voulaient représenter que des toges antiques. Mais la modernité de la peinture ne consistera pas pour lui à introduire les habits noirs dans un tableau. Le peintre moderne sera celui qui montrera cette sombre redingote comme « l'habit nécessaire de notre époque ». C'est celui qui saura faire voir, dans cette mode du jour, le rapport essentiel, permanent, obsédant que notre époque entretient avec la mort. « L'habit noir et la redingote ont non seulement leur beauté poétique, qui est l'expression de l'égalité universelle, mais encore leur poétique qui est l'expression de l'âme publique; une immense défilade de croque-morts, politiques, amoureux, bourgeois. Nous célébrons tous quelque enterrement [6] . » Pour désigner cette attitude de modernité, Baudelaire use parfois d'une litote qui est très significative, parce qu'elle se présente sous la forme d'un précepte : « Vous n'avez pas le droit de mépriser le présent. » 2) Cette héroïsation est ironique, bien entendu. Il ne s'agit aucunement, dans l'attitude de modernité, de sacraliser le moment qui passe pour essayer de le maintenir ou de le perpétuer. Il ne s'agit surtout pas de le recueillir comme une curiosité fugitive et intéressante : ce serait là ce que Baudelaire appelle une attitude de « flânerie ». La flânerie se contente d'ouvrir les yeux, de faire attention et de collectionner dans le souvenir. À l'homme de flânerie Baudelaire oppose l'homme de modernité : « Il va, il court, il cherche. À coup sûr, cet homme, ce solitaire doué d'une imagination active, toujours voyageant à travers le grand désert d'hommes, a un but plus élevé que celui d'un pur flâneur, un but plus général, autre que le plaisir fugitif de la circonstance. Il cherche ce quelque chose qu'on nous permettra d'appeler la modernité. Il s'agit pour lui de dégager de la mode ce qu'elle peut contenir de poétique dans l'historique. » Et comme exemple de modernité, Baudelaire cite le dessinateur Constantin Guys. En apparence, un flâneur, un collectionneur de curiosités; il reste « le dernier partout où peut resplendir la lumière, retentir la poésie, fourmiller la vie, vibrer la musique, partout où une passion peut poser son œil, partout où l'homme naturel et l'homme de convention se montrent dans une beauté bizarre, partout où le soleil éclaire les joies rapides de file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...tIsEnlightenment/foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (4 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:58 πμ

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l'animal dépravé [7] ».

Mais il ne faut pas s'y tromper. Constantin Guys n'est pas un flâneur; ce qui en fait, aux yeux de Baudelaire, le peintre moderne par excellence, c'est qu'à l'heure où le monde entier entre en sommeil, il se met, lui, au travail, et il le transfigure. Transfiguration qui n'est pas annulation du réel, mais jeu difficile entre la vérité du réel et l'exercice de la liberté; les choses « naturelles » y deviennent « plus que naturelles », les choses « belles » y deviennent « plus que belles » et les choses singulières apparaissent « dotées d'une vie enthousiaste comme l'âme de l'auteur » [8] . Pour l'attitude de modernité, la haute valeur du présent est indissociable de l’acharnement à l'imaginer, à l'imaginer autrement qu'il n'est et à le transformer non pas en le détruisant, mais en le captant dans ce qu'il est. La modernité baudelairienne est un exercice où l'extrême attention au réel est confrontée à la pratique d'une liberté qui tout à la fois respecte ce réel et le viole.

3) Cependant, pour Baudelaire, la modernité n'est pas simplement forme de rapport au présent; c'est aussi un mode de rapport qu'il faut établir à soi-même. L'attitude volontaire de modernité est liée à un ascétisme indispensable. Être moderne, ce n'est pas s'accepter soi-même tel qu'on est dans le flux de moments qui passent; c'est se prendre soi-même comme objet d'une élaboration complexe et dure: ce que Baudelaire appelle, selon le vocabulaire de l'époque, le « dandysme ». Je ne rappellerai pas des pages qui sont trop connues : celles sur la nature « grossière, terrestre, immonde »; celles sur la révolte indispensable de l'homme par rapport à lui-même; celle sur la « doctrine de l'élégance » qui impose « à ses ambitieux et humbles sectaires » une discipline plus despotique que les plus terribles des religions; les pages, enfin, sur l'ascétisme du dandy qui fait de son corps, de son comportement, de ses sentiments et passions, de son existence, une œuvre d'art. L'homme moderne, pour Baudelaire, n'est pas celui qui part à la découverte de lui- même, de ses secrets et de sa vérité cachée; il est celui qui cherche à s'inventer lui-même. Cette modernité ne libère pas l'homme en son être propre; elle l'astreint à la tâche de s'élaborer lui-même.

4) Enfin, j'ajouterai un mot seulement. Cette héroïsation ironique du présent, ce jeu de la liberté avec le réel pour sa transfiguration, cette élaboration ascétique de soi, Baudelaire ne conçoit pas qu'ils puissent avoir leur lieu dans la société elle-même ou dans le corps politique. Ils ne peuvent se produire que dans un lieu autre que Baudelaire appelle l'art.

Je ne prétends pas résumer à ces quelques traits ni l'événement historique complexe qu'a été l'Aufklärung à la fin du XVIII ème siècle ni non plus l'attitude de modernité sous les différentes formes qu'elle a pu prendre au cours des deux derniers siècles.

Je voulais, d'une part, souligner l'enracinement dans l'Aufklärung d'un type d'interrogation philosophique qui problématise à la fois le rapport au présent, le mode d'être historique et la constitution de soi-même comme sujet autonome; je voulais souligner, d'autre part, que le fil qui peut nous rattacher de cette manière à l’Aufklärung n'est pas la fidélité à des éléments de doctrine, mais plutôt la réactivation permanente d'une attitude; c'est-à-dire d'un êthos philosophique qu'on pourrait caractériser comme critique permanente de notre être historique. C'est cet êthos que je voudrais très brièvement caractériser.

A. Négativement. 1) Cet êthos implique d'abord qu'on refuse ce que j'appellerai volontiers le « chantage » à l' Aufklärung. je pense que l' Aufklärung, comme ensemble d'événements politiques, économiques, sociaux, institutionnels, culturels, dont nous dépendons encore pour une grande partie, constitue un domaine d'analyse privilégié. je pense aussi que, comme entreprise pour lier par un lien de relation directe le progrès de la vérité et l'histoire de la liberté, elle a formulé une question philosophique qui nous demeure posée. je pense enfin - j'ai essayé de le montrer à propos du texte de Kant - qu'elle a défini une certaine manière de philosopher.

Mais cela ne veut pas dire qu'il faut être pour ou contre l' Aufklärung. Cela veut même dire précisément qu'il faut refuser tout ce qui se présenterait sous la forme d'une alternative simpliste et autoritaire : ou vous acceptez l’Aufklärung, et vous restez dans la tradition de son rationalisme (ce qui est par certains considéré comme positif et par d'autres au contraire comme un reproche); ou vous critiquez l' Aufklärung et vous tentez alors d'échapper à ces principes de rationalité (ce qui peut être encore une fois pris en bonne ou en mauvaise part). Et ce n'est pas sortir de ce chantage que d'y introduire des nuances « dialectiques » en cherchant à déterminer ce qu'il a pu y avoir de bon et de mauvais dans l' Aufklärung.

Il faut essayer de faire l'analyse de nous-mêmes en tant qu'êtres historiquement déterminés, pour une certaine part, file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...tIsEnlightenment/foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (5 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:58 πμ

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par l' Aufklärung. Ce qui implique une série d'enquêtes historiques aussi précises que possible; et ces enquêtes ne seront pas orientées rétrospectivement vers le « noyau essentiel de rationalité » qu'on peut trouver dans l' Aufklärung et qu'il faudrait sauver en tout état de cause; elles seront orientées vers « les limites actuelles du nécessaire » : c'est-à-dire vers ce qui n'est pas ou plus indispensable pour la constitution de nous-mêmes comme sujets autonomes.

2) Cette critique permanente de nous-mêmes doit éviter les confusions toujours trop faciles entre l'humanisme et l' Aufklärung. Il ne faut jamais oublier que l' Aufklärung est un événement ou un ensemble d'événements et de processus historiques complexes, qui se sont situés à un certain moment du développement des sociétés européennes. Cet ensemble comporte des éléments de transformations sociales, des types d'institutions politiques, des formes de savoir, des projets de rationalisation des connaissances et des pratiques, des mutations technologiques qu'il est très difficile de résumer d'un mot, même si beaucoup de ces phénomènes sont encore importants à l'heure actuelle. Celui que j'ai relevé et qui me paraît avoir été fondateur de toute une forme de réflexion philosophique ne concerne que le mode de rapport réflexif au présent.

L'humanisme est tout autre chose : c'est un thème ou plutôt un ensemble de thèmes qui ont réapparu à plusieurs reprises à travers le temps, dans les sociétés européennes; ces thèmes, toujours liés à des jugements de valeur, ont évidemment toujours beaucoup varié dans leur contenu, ainsi que dans les valeurs qu'ils ont retenues. De plus, ils ont servi de principe critique de différenciation : il y a eu un humanisme qui se présentait comme critique du christianisme ou de la religion en général; il y a eu un humanisme chrétien en opposition à un humanisme ascétique et beaucoup plus théocentrique (cela au XVII ème siècle). Au XIX ème siècle, il y a eu un humanisme méfiant, hostile et critique à l'égard de la science; et un autre qui plaçait [au contraire] son espoir dans cette même science. Le marxisme a été un humanisme, l'existentialisme, le personnalisme l'ont été aussi; il y eut un temps où on soutenait les valeurs humanistes représentées par le national-socialisme, et où les staliniens eux-mêmes disaient qu'ils étaient humanistes.

De cela il ne faut pas tirer la conséquence que tout ce qui a pu se réclamer de l'humanisme est à rejeter; mais que la thématique humaniste est en elle-même trop souple, trop diverse, trop inconsistante pour servir d'axe à la réflexion. Et c'est un fait qu'au moins depuis le XVII ème siècle ce qu'on appelle l'humanisme a toujours été obligé de prendre son appui sur certaines conceptions de l'homme qui sont empruntées à la religion, à la science, à la politique. L'humanisme sert à colorer et à justifier les conceptions de l'homme auxquelles il est bien obligé d'avoir recours.

Or justement, je crois qu'on peut opposer à cette thématique, si souvent récurrente et toujours dépendante de l'humanisme, le principe d'une critique et d'une création permanente de nous-mêmes dans notre autonomie : c'est-à-dire un principe qui est au cœur de la conscience historique que l' Aufklärung a eue d'elle-même. De ce point de vue je verrais plutôt une tension entre Aufklärung et humanisme qu'une identité.

En tout cas, les confondre me parait dangereux; et d'ailleurs historiquement inexact. Si la question de l'homme, de l'espèce humaine, de l'humaniste a été importante tout au long du XVIII ème siècle, c’est très rarement, je crois, que l' Aufklärung s'est considérée elle-même comme un humanisme. Il vaut la peine aussi de noter que, au long du XIX ème siècle, l'historiographie de l'humanisme au XVI ème siècle, qui a été si importante chez des gens comme Sainte Beuve ou Burckhardt, a été toujours distincte et parfois explicitement opposée aux Lumières et au XVIII ème siècle.

Le XIX ème siècle a eu tendance à les opposer, au moins autant qu'à les confondre.

En tout cas, je crois que, tout comme il faut échapper au chantage intellectuel et politique « être pour ou contre l' Aufklärung », il faut échapper au confusionnisme historique et moral qui mêle le thème de l'humanisme et la question de l' Aufklärung. Une analyse de leurs relations complexes au cours des deux derniers siècles serait un travail à faire, qui serait important pour débrouiller un peu la conscience que nous avons de nous-mêmes et de notre passé.

B. Positivement. Mais, en tenant compte de ces précautions, il faut évidemment donner un contenu plus positif à ce que peut être un êthos philosophique consistant dans une critique de ce que nous disons, pensons et faisons, à travers une ontologie historique de nous-mêmes.

1) Cet êthos philosophique peut se caractériser comme une attitude limite. il ne s'agit pas d'un comportement de rejet. On doit échapper à l'alternative du dehors et du dedans; il faut être aux frontières. La critique, c'est bien l'analyse des limites et la réflexion sur elles. Mais si la question kantienne était de savoir quelles limites la connaissance doit renoncer à franchir, il me semble que la question critique, aujourd'hui, doit être retournée en file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...tIsEnlightenment/foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (6 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:58 πμ

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question positive : dans ce qui nous est donné comme universel, nécessaire, obligatoire, quelle est la part de ce qui est singulier, contingent et dû à des contraintes arbitraires. Il s'agit en somme de transformer la critique exercée dans la forme de la limitation nécessaire en une critique pratique dans la forme du franchissement possible.

Ce qui, on le voit, entraîne pour conséquences que la critique va s'exercer non plus dans la recherche des structures formelles qui ont valeur universelle, mais comme enquête historique à travers les événements qui nous ont amenés à nous constituer à nous reconnaître comme sujets de ce que nous faisons, pensons, disons. En ce sens, cette critique n'est pas transcendantale, et n'a pas pour fin de rendre possible une métaphysique - elle est généalogique dans sa finalité et archéologique dans sa méthode. Archéologique -- et non pas transcendantale - en ce sens qu'elle ne cherchera pas à dégager les structures universelles de toute connaissance ou de toute action morale possible; mais à traiter les discours qui articulent ce que nous pensons, disons et faisons comme autant d'événements historiques. Et cette critique sera généalogique en ce sens qu'elle ne déduira pas de la forme de ce que nous sommes ce qu'il nous est impossible de faire ou de connaître; mais elle dégagera de la contingence qui nous a fait être ce que nous sommes la possibilité de ne plus être, faire ou penser ce que nous sommes, faisons ou pensons.

Elle ne cherche pas à rendre possible la métaphysique enfin devenue science; elle cherche à relancer aussi loin et aussi largement que possible le travail indéfini de la liberté.

2) Mais pour qu'il ne s'agisse pas simplement de l'affirmation ou du rêve vide de la liberté, il me semble que cette attitude historico-critique doit être aussi une attitude expérimentale. je veux dire que ce travail fait aux limites de nous-mêmes doit d'un côté ouvrir un domaine d'enquêtes historiques et de l'autre se mettre à l'épreuve de la réalité et de l'actualité, à la fois pour saisir les points où le changement est possible et souhaitable et pour déterminer la forme précise à donner à ce changement. C'est dire que cette ontologie historique de nous-mêmes doit se détourner de tous ces projets qui prétendent être globaux et radicaux. En fait, on sait par expérience que la prétention à échapper au système de l'actualité pour donner des programmes d'ensemble d'une autre société, d'un autre mode de penser, d'une autre culture, d'une autre vision du monde n'ont mené en fait qu'à reconduire les plus dangereuses traditions.

Je préfère les transformations très précises qui ont pu avoir lieu depuis vingt ans dans un certain nombre de domaines qui concernent nos modes d'être et de penser, les relations d'autorité, les rapports de sexes, la façon dont nous percevons la folie ou la maladie, je préfère ces transformations même partielles qui ont été faites dans la corrélation de l'analyse historique et de l'attitude pratique aux promesses de l'homme nouveau que les pires systèmes politiques ont répétées au long du XX ème siècle.

Je caractériserai donc l'êthos philosophique propre à l'ontologie critique de nous-mêmes comme une épreuve historico-pratique des limites que nous pouvons franchir, et donc comme travail de nous-mêmes sur nous-mêmes en tant qu'êtres libres.

3) Mais sans doute serait-il tout à fait légitime de faire l'objection suivante : à se borner à ce genre d'enquêtes ou d'épreuves toujours partielles et locales, n'y a-t-il pas risque à se laisser déterminer par des structures plus générales dont on risque de n'avoir ni la conscience ni la maîtrise? À cela deux réponses. Il est vrai qu'il faut renoncer à l'espoir d'accéder jamais à un point de vue qui pourrait nous donner accès à la connaissance complète et définitive de ce qui peut constituer nos limites historiques. Et, de ce point de vue, l'expérience théorique et pratique que nous faisons de nos limites et de leur franchissement possible est toujours elle-même limitée, déterminée et donc à recommencer.

Mais cela ne veut pas dire que tout travail ne peut se faire que dans le désordre et la contingence. Ce travail a sa généralité, sa systématicité, son homogénéité et son enjeu.

Son enjeu. Il est indiqué par ce qu'on pourrait appeler « le paradoxe (des rapports) de la capacité et du pouvoir ».

On sait que la grande promesse ou le grand espoir du XVIII ème siècle, ou d'une partie du XVIII ème siècle, était dans la croissance simultanée et proportionnelle de la capacité technique à agir sur les choses, et de la liberté des individus les uns par rapport aux autres. D'ailleurs on peut voir qu'à travers toute l'histoire des sociétés occidentales (c'est peut-être là que se trouve la racine de leur singulière destinée historique - si particulière, si différente [des autres] dans sa trajectoire et si universalisante, dominante par rapport aux autres) l'acquisition des capacités et la lutte pour la liberté ont constitué les éléments permanents. Or les relations entre croissance des capacités et croissance de l'autonomie ne sont pas aussi simples que le XVIII ème siècle pouvait le croire. On a pu voir quelles formes de relations de pouvoir étaient véhiculées à travers des technologies diverses (qu'il s'agisse des productions à file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...tIsEnlightenment/foucault.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (7 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:58 πμ

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fins économiques, d'institutions à fin de régulations sociales, de techniques de communication) : les disciplines à la fois collectives et individuelles, les procédures de normalisation exercées au nom du pouvoir de l'État, des exigences de la société ou des régions de la population en sont des exemples. L'enjeu est donc : comment déconnecter la croissance des capacités et l'intensification des relations de pouvoir?

Homogénéité. Ce qui mène à l'étude de ce qu'on pourrait appeler les « ensembles pratiques ». Il s'agit de prendre comme domaine homogène de référence non pas les représentations que les hommes se donnent d'eux-mêmes, non pas les conditions qui les déterminent sans qu'ils le sachent. Mais ce qu'ils font et la façon dont ils le font.

C'est-à-dire les formes de rationalité qui organisent les manières de faire (ce qu'on pourrait appeler leur aspect technologique); et la liberté avec laquelle ils agissent dans ces systèmes pratiques, réagissant à ce que font les autres, modifiant jusqu'à un certain point les règles du jeu (c'est ce qu'on pourrait appeler le versant stratégique de ces pratiques). L'homogénéité de ces analyses historico-critiques est donc assurée par ce domaine des pratiques avec leur versant technologique et leur versant stratégique.

Systématicité. Ces ensembles pratiques relèvent de trois grands domaines : celui des rapports de maîtrise sur les choses, celui des rapports d'action sur les autres, celui des rapports à soi-même. Cela ne veut pas dire que ce sont là trois domaines complètement étrangers les uns aux autres. On sait bien que la maîtrise sur les choses passe par le rapport aux autres; et celui-ci implique toujours des relations à soi; et inversement. Mais il s'agit de trois axes dont il faut analyser la spécificité et l'intrication : l'axe du savoir, l'axe du pouvoir, l'axe de l'éthique. En d'autres termes, l'ontologie historique de nous-mêmes a à répondre à une série ouverte de questions, elle a affaire à un nombre non défini d'enquêtes qu'on peut multiplier et préciser autant qu'on voudra; mais elles répondront toutes à la systématisation suivante : comment nous sommes-nous constitués comme sujets de notre savoir; comment nous sommes-nous constitués comme sujets qui exercent ou subissent des relations de pouvoir; comment nous sommes-nous constitués comme sujets moraux de nos actions.

Généralité. Enfin, ces enquêtes historico-critiques sont bien particulières en ce sens qu'elles portent toujours sur un matériel, une époque, un corps de pratiques et de discours déterminés. Mais, au moins à l'échelle des sociétés occidentales dont nous dérivons, elles ont leur généralité : en ce sens que jusqu'à nous elles ont été récurrentes; ainsi le problème des rapports entre raison et folie, ou maladie et santé, ou crime et loi; le problème de la place à donner aux rapports sexuels, etc.

Mais, si j'évoque cette généralité, ce n'est pas pour dire qu'il faut la retracer dans sa continuité métahistorique à travers le temps, ni non plus suivre ses variations. Ce qu'il faut saisir c'est dans quelle mesure ce que nous en savons, les formes de pouvoir qui s’y exercent et l'expérience que nous y faisons de nous-mêmes ne constituent que des figures historiques déterminées par une certaine forme de problématisation qui définit des objets, des règles d'action, des modes de rapport à soi. L'étude des (modes de) problématisations (c'est-à-dire de ce qui n'est ni constante anthropologique ni variation chronologique) est donc la façon d'analyser, dans leur forme historiquement singulière, des questions à portée générale.

Un mot de résumé pour terminer et revenir à Kant. je ne sais pas si jamais nous deviendrons majeurs. Beaucoup de choses dans notre expérience nous convainquent que l'événement historique de l' Aufklärung ne nous a pas rendus majeurs; et que nous ne le sommes pas encore. Cependant, il me semble qu'on peut donner un sens à cette interrogation critique sur le présent et sur nous-mêmes que Kant a formulée en réfléchissant sur l' Aufklärung. Il me semble que c'est même là une façon de philosopher qui n'a pas été sans importance ni efficacité depuis les deux derniers siècles. L'ontologie critique de nous-mêmes, il faut la considérer non certes comme une théorie, une doctrine, ni même un corps permanent de savoir qui s'accumule; il faut la concevoir comme une attitude, un êthos, une vie philosophique où la critique de ce que nous sommes est à la fois analyse historique des limites qui nous sont posées et épreuve de leur franchissement possible.

Cette attitude philosophique doit se traduire dans un travail d'enquêtes diverses; celles-ci ont leur cohérence méthodologique dans l’étude à la fois archéologique et généalogique de pratiques envisagées simultanément comme type technologique de rationalité et jeux stratégiques des libertés; elles ont leur cohérence théorique dans la définition des formes historiquement singulières dans lesquelles ont été problématisées les généralités de notre rapport aux choses, aux autres et à nous mêmes. Elles ont leur cohérence pratique dans le soin apporté à mettre la réflexion historico-critique à l’épreuve des pratiques concrètes. Je ne sais s’il faut dire aujourd’hui que le travail critique implique encore la foi dans les Lumières ; il nécessite, je pense, toujours le travail sur nos limites, c’est-àdire un labeur patient qui donne forme à l’impatience de la liberté.

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[1]

In Bertiniscbe Monatsschrift, décembre 1784, vol. IV, pp. 481-491 « Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? », trad. Wismann, in Œuvres, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade », 1985, t. Il).

[2]

Lessing (G.), Die Juden, 1749.

[3]

Mendelssohn (M.), Phädon oder liber die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Berlin, 1767, 1768, 1769.

[4] Vico (G.), Principii di una scienza nuova d'interno alla comune natura delle nazioni, 1725 (Principes de la philosophie de l'histoire, trad. Michelet, Paris, 1835; rééd. Paris, & Colin, 1963).

[5] Baudelaire (C.),

Le Peintre de la vie moderne, in Œuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade »,

1976, t. Il, p. 695.

[6] Id., « De l'héroïsme de la vie moderne », op. cit., p.494.

[7] Baudelaire (C.), Le Peintre de la vie moderne, op. cit., pp. 693-694.

[8] Ibid., P. 694.

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Foucault: What is Enlightenment?

Foucault.info | Foucault: What is Enlightenment?

« What is Enligthenment ? » (« Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? »), in Rabinow (P.), éd., The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp.

32-50.

Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in order to collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has an opinion already; there is not much likelihood of learning anything new. In the eighteenth century, editors preferred to question the public on problems that did not yet have solutions. I don't know whether or not that practice was more effective; it was unquestionably more entertaining.

In any event, in line with this custom, in November 1784 a German periodical, Berlinische Monatschrift published a response to the question: Was ist Aufklärung? And the respondent was Kant.

A minor text, perhaps. But it seems to me that it marks the discreet entrance into the history of thought of a question that modern philosophy has not been capable of answering, but that it has never managed to get rid of, either. And one that has been repeated in various forms for two centuries now. From Hegel through Nietzsche or Max Weber to Horkheimer or Habermas, hardly any philosophy has failed to confront this same question, directly or indirectly. What, then, is this event that is called the Aufklärung and that has determined, at least in part, what we are, what we think, and what we do today? Let us imagine that the Berlinische Monatschrift still exists and that it is asking its readers the question: What is modern philosophy? Perhaps we could respond with an echo: modern philosophy is the philosophy that is attempting to answer the question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: Was ist Aufklärung?

Let us linger a few moments over Kant's text. It merits attention for several reasons.

1.

To this same question, Moses Mendelssohn had also replied in the same journal, just two months earlier. But Kant had not seen Mendelssohn's text when he wrote his. To be sure, the encounter of the German philosophical movement with the new development of Jewish culture does not date from this precise moment. Mendelssohn had been at that crossroads for thirty years or so, in company with Lessing. But up to this point it had been a matter of making a place for Jewish culture within German thought -- which Lessing had tried to do in Die Juden -- or else of identifying problems common to Jewish thought and to German philosophy; this is what Mendelssohn had done in his Phadon; oder, Über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele. With the two texts published in the Berlinische Monatschrift the German Aufklärung and the Jewish Haskala recognize that they belong to the same history; they are seeking to identify the common processes from which they stem. And it is perhaps a way of announcing the acceptance of a common destiny -- we now know to what drama that was to lead.

2.

But there is more. In itself and within the Christian tradition, Kant's text poses a new problem.

It was certainly not the first time that philosophical thought had sought to reflect on its own present. But, speaking schematically, we may say that this reflection had until then taken three main forms. ❍

❍

❍

The present may be represented as belonging to a certain era of the world, distinct from the others through some inherent characteristics, or separated from the others by some dramatic event. Thus, in Plato's Statesman the interlocutors recognize that they belong to one of those revolutions of the world in which the world is turning backwards, with all the negative consequences that may ensue.

The present may be interrogated in an attempt to decipher in it the heralding signs of a forthcoming event. Here we have the principle of a kind of historical hermeneutics of which Augustine might provide an example.

The present may also be analyzed as a point of transition toward the dawning of a new world. That is what Vico describes in the last chapter of La Scienza Nuova; what he sees 'today' is 'a complete

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Foucault: What is Enlightenment?

humanity ... spread abroad through all nations, for a few great monarchs rule over this world of peoples'; it is also 'Europe ... radiant with such humanity that it abounds in all the good things that make for the happiness of human life.' [1] Now the way Kant poses the question of Aufklärung is entirely different: it is neither a world era to which one belongs, nor an event whose signs are perceived, nor the dawning of an accomplishment. Kant defines Aufklärung in an almost entirely negative way, as an Ausgang, an 'exit,' a 'way out.' In his other texts on history, Kant occasionally raises questions of origin or defines the internal teleology of a historical process.

In the text on Aufklärung, he deals with the question of contemporary reality alone. He is not seeking to understand the present on the basis of a totality or of a future achievement. He is looking for a difference: What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?

3.

I shall not go into detail here concerning this text, which is not always very clear despite its brevity. I should simply like to point out three or four features that seem to me important if we are to understand how Kant raised the philosophical question of the present day.

Kant indicates right away that the 'way out' that characterizes Enlightenment is a process that releases us from the status of 'immaturity.' And by 'immaturity,' he means a certain state of our will that makes us accept someone else's authority to lead us in areas where the use of reason is called for. Kant gives three examples: we are in a state of 'immaturity' when a book takes the place of our understanding, when a spiritual director takes the place of our conscience, when a doctor decides for us what our diet is to be. (Let us note in passing that the register of these three critiques is easy to recognize, even though the text does not make it explicit.) In any case, Enlightenment is defined by a modification of the preexisting relation linking will, authority, and the use of reason.

We must also note that this way out is presented by Kant in a rather ambiguous manner. He characterizes it as a phenomenon, an ongoing process; but he also presents it as a task and an obligation. From the very first paragraph, he notes that man himself is responsible for his immature status. Thus it has to be supposed that he will be able to escape from it only by a change that he himself will bring about in himself. Significantly, Kant says that this Enlightenment has a Wahlspruch: now a Wahlspruch is a heraldic device, that is, a distinctive feature by which one can be recognized, and it is also a motto, an instruction that one gives oneself and proposes to others. What, then, is this instruction? Aude sapere: 'dare to know,' 'have the courage, the audacity, to know.' Thus Enlightenment must be considered both as a process in which men participate collectively and as an act of courage to be accomplished personally. Men are at once elements and agents of a single process. They may be actors in the process to the extent that they participate in it; and the process occurs to the extent that men decide to be its voluntary actors.

A third difficulty appears here in Kant's text in his use of the word 'mankind,' Menschheit. The importance of this word in the Kantian conception of history is well known. Are we to understand that the entire human race is caught up in the process of Enlightenment? In that case, we must imagine Enlightenment as a historical change that affects the political and social existence of all people on the face of the earth. Or are we to understand that it involves a change affecting what constitutes the humanity of human beings? But the question then arises of knowing what this change is. Here again, Kant's answer is not without a certain ambiguity. In any case, beneath its appearance of simplicity, it is rather complex.

Kant defines two essential conditions under which mankind can escape from its immaturity. And these two conditions are at once spiritual and institutional, ethical and political.

The first of these conditions is that the realm of obedience and the realm of the use of reason be clearly distinguished. Briefly characterizing the immature status, Kant invokes the familiar expression: 'Don't think, just follow orders'; such is, according to him, the form in which military discipline, political power, and religious authority are usually exercised. Humanity will reach maturity when it is no longer required to obey, but when men are told: 'Obey, and you will be able to reason as much as you like.' We must note that the German word used here is räsonieren; this word, which is also used in the Critiques does not refer to just any use of reason, but to a use of reason in which reason has no other end but itself: räsonieren is to reason for reasoning's sake. And Kant gives examples, these too being perfectly trivial in appearance: paying one's taxes, while being able to argue as much as one likes about the system of taxation, would be characteristic of the mature state; or again, taking responsibility for parish service, if one is a pastor, while reasoning freely about religious dogmas.

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We might think that there is nothing very different here from what has been meant, since the sixteenth century, by freedom of conscience: the right to think as one pleases so long as one obeys as one must. Yet it is here that Kant brings into play another distinction, and in a rather surprising way. The distinction he introduces is between the private and public uses of reason. But he adds at once that reason must be free in its public use, and must be submissive in its private use. Which is, term for term, the opposite of what is ordinarily called freedom of conscience.

But we must be somewhat more precise. What constitutes, for Kant, this private use of reason? In what area is it exercised? Man, Kant says, makes a private use of reason when he is 'a cog in a machine'; that is, when he has a role to play in society and jobs to do: to be a soldier, to have taxes to pay, to be in charge of a parish, to be a civil servant, all this makes the human being a particular segment of society; he finds himself thereby placed in a circumscribed position, where he has to apply particular rules and pursue particular ends. Kant does not ask that people practice a blind and foolish obedience, but that they adapt the use they make of their reason to these determined circumstances; and reason must then be subjected to the particular ends in view. Thus there cannot be, here, any free use of reason.

On the other hand, when one is reasoning only in order to use one's reason, when one is reasoning as a reasonable being (and not as a cog in a machine), when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable humanity, then the use of reason must be free and public. Enlightenment is thus not merely the process by which individuals would see their own personal freedom of thought guaranteed. There is Enlightenment when the universal, the free, and the public uses of reason are superimposed on one another.

Now this leads us to a fourth question that must be put to Kant's text. We can readily see how the universal use of reason (apart from any private end) is the business of the subject himself as an individual; we can readily see, too, how the freedom of this use may be assured in a purely negative manner through the absence of any challenge to it; but how is a public use of that reason to be assured? Enlightenment, as we see, must not be conceived simply as a general process affecting all humanity; it must not be conceived only as an obligation prescribed to individuals: it now appears as a political problem. The question, in any event, is that of knowing how the use of reason can take the public form that it requires, how the audacity to know can be exercised in broad daylight, while individuals are obeying as scrupulously as possible. And Kant, in conclusion, proposes to Frederick II, in scarcely veiled terms, a sort of contract -- what might be called the contract of rational despotism with free reason: the public and free use of autonomous reason will be the best guarantee of obedience, on condition, however, that the political principle that must be obeyed itself be in conformity with universal reason.

Let us leave Kant's text here. I do not by any means propose to consider it as capable of constituting an adequate description of Enlightenment; and no historian, I think, could be satisfied with it for an analysis of the social, political, and cultural transformations that occurred at the end of the eighteenth century.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding its circumstantial nature, and without intending to give it an exaggerated place in Kant's work, I believe that it is necessary to stress the connection that exists between this brief article and the three Critiques. Kant in fact describes Enlightenment as the moment when humanity is going to put its own reason to use, without subjecting itself to any authority; now it is precisely at this moment that the critique is necessary, since its role is that of defining the conditions under which the use of reason is legitimate in order to determine what can be known, what must be done, and what may be hoped. Illegitimate uses of reason are what give rise to dogmatism and heteronomy, along with illusion; on the other hand, it is when the legitimate use of reason has been clearly defined in its principles that its autonomy can be assured. The critique is, in a sense, the handbook of reason that has grown up in Enlightenment; and, conversely, the Enlightenment is the age of the critique.

It is also necessary, I think, to underline the relation between this text of Kant's and the other texts he devoted to history. These latter, for the most part, seek to define the internal teleology of time and the point toward which history of humanity is moving. Now the analysis of Enlightenment, defining this history as humanity's passage to its adult status, situates contemporary reality with respect to the overall movement and its basic directions. But at the same time, it shows how, at this very moment, each individual is responsible in a certain way for that overall process.

The hypothesis I should like to propose is that this little text is located in a sense at the crossroads of critical file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...hatIsEnlightenment/foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html (3 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:59 πμ

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reflection and reflection on history. It is a reflection by Kant on the contemporary status of his own enterprise. No doubt it is not the first time that a philosopher has given his reasons for undertaking his work at a particular moment. But it seems to me that it is the first time that a philosopher has connected in this way, closely and from the inside, the significance of his work with respect to knowledge, a reflection on history and a particular analysis of the specific moment at which he is writing and because of which he is writing. It is in the reflection on 'today' as difference in history and as motive for a particular philosophical task that the novelty of this text appears to me to lie.

And, by looking at it in this way, it seems to me we may recognize a point of departure: the outline of what one might call the attitude of modernity.

I know that modernity is often spoken of as an epoch, or at least as a set of features characteristic of an epoch; situated on a calendar, it would be preceded by a more or less naive or archaic premodernity, and followed by an enigmatic and troubling 'postmodernity.' And then we find ourselves asking whether modernity constitutes the sequel to the Enlightenment and its development, or whether we are to see it as a rupture or a deviation with respect to the basic principles of the 18th century.

Thinking back on Kant's text, I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history. And by 'attitude,' I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what the Greeks called an ethos. And consequently, rather than seeking to distinguish the 'modern era' from the 'premodern' or 'postmodern,' I think it would be more useful to try to find out how the attitude of modernity, ever since its formation, has found itself struggling with attitudes of 'countermodernity.'

To characterize briefly this attitude of modernity, I shall take an almost indispensable example, namely, Baudelaire; for his consciousness of modernity is widely recognized as one of the most acute in the nineteenth century.

1.

Modernity is often characterized in terms of consciousness of the discontinuity of time: a break with tradition, a feeling of novelty, of vertigo in the face of the passing moment. And this is indeed what Baudelaire seems to be saying when he defines modernity as 'the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent.' [2] But, for him, being modern does not lie in recognizing and accepting this perpetual movement; on the contrary, it lies in adopting a certain attitude with respect to this movement; and this deliberate, difficult attitude consists in recapturing something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but within it. Modernity is distinct from fashion, which does no more than call into question the course of time; modernity is the attitude that makes it possible to grasp the 'heroic' aspect of the present moment. Modernity is not a phenomenon of sensitivity to the fleeting present; it is the will to 'heroize' the present .

I shall restrict myself to what Baudelaire says about the painting of his contemporaries. Baudelaire makes fun of those painters who, finding nineteenth-century dress excessively ugly, want to depict nothing but ancient togas. But modernity in painting does not consist, for Baudelaire, in introducing black clothing onto the canvas. The modern painter is the one who can show the dark frock-coat as 'the necessary costume of our time,' the one who knows how to make manifest, in the fashion of the day, the essential, permanent, obsessive relation that our age entertains with death. 'The dress-coat and frock-coat not only possess their political beauty, which is an expression of universal equality, but also their poetic beauty, which is an expression of the public soul -- an immense cortège of undertaker's mutes (mutes in love, political mutes, bourgeois mutes...). We are each of us celebrating some funeral.' [3] To designate this attitude of modernity, Baudelaire sometimes employs a litotes that is highly significant because it is presented in the form of a precept: 'You have no right to despise the present.'

2.

This heroization is ironical, needless to say. The attitude of modernity does not treat the passing moment as sacred in order to try to maintain or perpetuate it. It certainly does not involve harvesting it as a fleeting and interesting curiosity. That would be what Baudelaire would call the spectator's posture. The flâneur, the idle, strolling spectator, is satisfied to keep his eyes open, to pay attention and to build up a storehouse of memories. In opposition to the flâneur, Baudelaire describes the man of modernity: 'Away he goes, hurrying, searching .... Be very sure that this man ... -- this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, ceaselessly journeying across the great human desert -- has an aim loftier than that of a mere flâneur, an aim more

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general, something other than the fugitive pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for that quality which you must allow me to call 'modernity.' ... He makes it his business to extract from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within history.' As an example of modernity, Baudelaire cites the artist Constantin Guys. In appearance a spectator, a collector of curiosities, he remains 'the last to linger wherever there can be a glow of light, an echo of poetry, a quiver of life or a chord of music; wherever a passion can pose before him, wherever natural man and conventional man display themselves in a strange beauty, wherever the sun lights up the swift joys of the depraved animal.' [4] But let us make no mistake. Constantin Guys is not a flâneur; what makes him the modern painter par excellence in Baudelaire's eyes is that, just when the whole world is falling asleep, he begins to work, and he transfigures that world. His transfiguration does not entail an annulling of reality, but a difficult interplay between the truth of what is real and the exercise of freedom; 'natural' things become 'more than natural,' 'beautiful' things become 'more than beautiful,' and individual objects appear 'endowed with an impulsive life like the soul of their creator.' [5] For the attitude of modernity, the high value of the present is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it, to imagine it otherwise than it is, and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is. Baudelairean modernity is an exercise in which extreme attention to what is real is confronted with the practice of a liberty that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it.

3.

However, modernity for Baudelaire is not simply a form of relationship to the present; it is also a mode of relationship that has to be established with oneself. The deliberate attitude of modernity is tied to an indispensable asceticism. To be modern is not to accept oneself as one is in the flux of the passing moments; it is to take oneself as object of a complex and difficult elaboration: what Baudelaire, in the vocabulary of his day, calls dandysme. Here I shall not recall in detail the well-known passages on 'vulgar, earthy, vile nature'; on man's indispensable revolt against himself; on the 'doctrine of elegance' which imposes 'upon its ambitious and humble disciples' a discipline more despotic than the most terrible religions; the pages, finally, on the asceticism of the dandy who makes of his body, his behavior, his feelings and passions, his very existence, a work of art. Modern man, for Baudelaire, is not the man who goes off to discover himself, his secrets and his hidden truth; he is the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity does not 'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task of producing himself.

4.

Let me add just one final word. This ironic heroization of the present, this transfiguring play of freedom with reality, this ascetic elaboration of the self -- Baudelaire does not imagine that these have any place in society itself, or in the body politic. They can only be produced in another, a different place, which Baudelaire calls art.

I do not pretend to be summarizing in these few lines either the complex historical event that was the Enlightenment, at the end of the eighteenth century, or the attitude of modernity in the various guises it may have taken on during the last two centuries.

I have been seeking, on the one hand, to emphasize the extent to which a type of philosophical interrogation -- one that simultaneously problematizes man's relation to the present, man's historical mode of being, and the constitution of the self as an autonomous subject -- is rooted in the Enlightenment. On the other hand, I have been seeking to stress that the thread that may connect us with the Enlightenment is not faithfulness to doctrinal elements, but rather the permanent reactivation of an attitude -- that is, of a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era. I should like to characterize this ethos very briefly.

A. Negatively 1.

This ethos implies, first, the refusal of what I like to call the 'blackmail' of the Enlightenment. I think that the Enlightenment, as a set of political, economic, social, institutional, and cultural events on which we still depend in large part, constitutes a privileged domain for analysis. I also think that as an enterprise for linking the progress of truth and the history of liberty in a bond of direct relation, it formulated a philosophical question that remains for us to consider. I think, finally, as I have tried to show with reference to Kant's text, that it defined a certain manner of philosophizing.

But that does not mean that one has to be 'for' or 'against' the Enlightenment. It even means precisely that

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one has to refuse everything that might present itself in the form of a simplistic and authoritarian alternative: you either accept the Enlightenment and remain within the tradition of its rationalism (this is considered a positive term by some and used by others, on the contrary, as a reproach); or else you criticize the Enlightenment and then try to escape from its principles of rationality (which may be seen once again as good or bad). And w e do not break free of this blackmail by introducing 'dialectical' nuances while seeking to determine what good and bad elements there may have been in the Enlightenment.

We must try to proceed with the analysis of ourselves as beings who are historically determined, to a certain extent, by the Enlightenment. Such an analysis implies a series of historical inquiries that are as precise as possible; and these inquiries will not be oriented retrospectively toward the 'essential kernel of rationality' that can be found in the Enlightenment and that would have to be preserved in any event; they will be oriented toward the 'contemporary limits of the necessary,' that is, toward what is not or is no longer indispensable for the constitution of ourselves as autonomous subjects.

2.

This permanent critique of ourselves has to avoid the always too facile confusions between humanism and Enlightenment.

We must never forget that the Enlightenment is an event, or a set of events and complex historical processes, that is located at a certain point in the development of European societies. As such, it includes elements of social transformation, types of political institution, forms of knowledge, projects of rationalization of knowledge and practices, technological mutations that are very difficult to sum up in a word, even if many of these phenomena remain important today. The one I have pointed out and that seems to me to have been at the basis of an entire form of philosophical reflection concerns only the mode of reflective relation to the present.

Humanism is something entirely different. It is a theme or rather a set of themes that have reappeared on several occasions over time in European societies; these themes always tied to value judgments have obviously varied greatly in their content as well as in the values they have preserved. Furthermore they have served as a critical principle of differentiation. In the seventeenth century there was a humanism that presented itself as a critique of Christianity or of religion in general; there was a Christian humanism opposed to an ascetic and much more theocentric humanism. In the nineteenth century there was a suspicious humanism hostile and critical toward science and another that to the contrary placed its hope in that same science. Marxism has been a humanism; so have existentialism and personalism; there was a time when people supported the humanistic values represented by National Socialism and when the Stalinists themselves said they were humanists.

From this we must not conclude that everything that has ever been linked with humanism is to be rejected but that the humanistic thematic is in itself too supple too diverse too inconsistent to serve as an axis for reflection. And it is a fact that at least since the seventeenth century what is called humanism has always been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from religion science or politics. Humanism serves to color and to justify the conceptions of man to which it is after all obliged to take recourse.

Now in this connection I believe that this thematic which so often recurs and which always depends on humanism can be opposed by the principle of a critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy: that is a principle that is at the heart of the historical consciousness that the Enlightenment has of itself. From this standpoint I am inclined to see Enlightenment and humanism in a state of tension rather than identity.

In any case it seems to me dangerous to confuse them; and further it seems historically inaccurate. If the question of man of the human species of the humanist was important throughout the eighteenth century this is very rarely I believe because the Enlightenment considered itself a humanism. It is worthwhile too to note that throughout the nineteenth century the historiography of sixteenth-century humanism which was so important for people like Saint-Beuve or Burckhardt was always distinct from and sometimes explicitly opposed to the Enlightenment and the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century had a tendency to oppose the two at least as much as to confuse them.

In any case I think that just as we must free ourselves from the intellectual blackmail of being for or against the Enlightenment we must escape from the historical and moral confusionism that mixes the theme of humanism with the question of the Enlightenment. An analysis of their complex relations in the course of the last two centuries would be a worthwhile project an important one if we are to bring some measure of

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clarity to the consciousness that we have of ourselves and of our past.

B. Positively Yet while taking these precautions into account we must obviously give a more positive content to what may be a philosophical ethos consisting in a critique of what we are saying thinking and doing through a historical ontology of ourselves.

1.

This philosophical ethos may be characterized as a limit-attitude. We are not talking about a gesture of rejection. We have to move beyond the outside-inside alternative; we have to be at the frontiers. Criticism indeed consists of analyzing and reflecting upon limits. But if the Kantian question was that of knowing what limits knowledge has to renounce transgressing, it seems to me that the critical question today has to be turned back into a positive one: in what is given lo us as universal necessary obligatory what place is occupied by whatever is singular contingent and the product of arbitrary constraints? The point in brief is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that lakes the form of a possible transgression.

This entails an obvious consequence: that criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value, but rather as a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying. In that sense, this criticism is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological -- and not transcendental -- in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events. And this critique will be genealogical in the sense that it will not deduce from the form of what we are what it is impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think. It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom.

2.

But if we are not to settle for the affirmation or the empty dream of freedom, it seems to me that this historico-critical attitude must also be an experimental one. I mean that this work done at the limits of ourselves must, on the one hand, open up a realm of historical inquiry and, on the other, put itself to the test of reality, of contemporary reality, both to grasp the points where change is possible and desirable, and to determine the precise form this change should take. This means that the historical ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical. In fact 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.

I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be possible in the last twenty years in a certain number of areas that concern our ways of being and thinking, relations to authority, relations between the sexes, the way in which we perceive insanity or illness; I prefer even these partial transformations that have been made in the correlation of historical analysis and the practical attitude, to the programs for a new man that the worst political systems have repeated throughout the twentieth century.

I shall thus characterize the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves as a historico-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings.

3.

Still, the following objection would no doubt be entirely legitimate: if we limit ourselves to this type of always partial and local inquiry or test, do we not run the risk of letting ourselves be determined by more general structures of which we may well not be conscious, and over which we may have no control?

To this, two responses. It is true that we have to give up hope of ever acceding to a point of view that could give us access to any complete and definitive knowledge of what may constitute our historical limits. And from this point of view the theoretical and practical experience that we have of our limits and of the possibility of moving beyond them is always limited and determined; thus we are always in the position of

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Foucault: What is Enlightenment?

beginning again .

But that does not mean that no work can be done except in disorder and contingency. The work in question has its generality, its systematicity, its homogeneity, and its stakes. (a) Its Stakes These are indicated by what might be called 'the paradox of the relations of capacity and power.' We know that the great promise or the great hope of the eighteenth century, or a part of the eighteenth century, lay in the simultaneous and proportional growth of individuals with respect to one another. And, moreover, we can see that throughout the entire history of Western societies (it is perhaps here that the root of their singular historical destiny is located -- such a peculiar destiny, so different from the others in its trajectory and so universalizing, so dominant with respect to the others), the acquisition of capabilities and the struggle for freedom have constituted permanent elements. Now the relations between the growth of capabilities and the growth of autonomy are not as simple as the eighteenth century may have believed. And we have been able to see what forms of power relation were conveyed by various technologies (whether we are speaking of productions with economic aims, or institutions whose goal is social regulation, or of techniques of communication): disciplines, both collective and individual, procedures of normalization exercised in the name of the power of the state, demands of society or of population zones, are examples.

What is at stake, then, is this: How can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power relations? (b) Homogeneity This leads to the study of what could be called 'practical systems.' Here we are taking as a homogeneous domain of reference not the representations that men give of themselves, not the conditions that determine them without their knowledge, but rather what they do and the way they do it. That is, the forms of rationality that organize their ways of doing things (this might be called the technological aspect) and the freedom with which they act within these practical systems, reacting to what others do, modifying the rules of the game, up to a certain point (this might be called the strategic side of these practices). The homogeneity of these historico-critical analyses is thus ensured by this realm of practices, with their technological side and their strategic side. (c) Systematicity These practical systems stem from three broad areas: relations of control over things, relations of action upon others, relations with oneself. This does not mean that each of these three areas is completely foreign to the others. It is well known that control over things is mediated by relations with others; and relations with others in turn always entail relations with oneself, and vice versa. But we have three axes whose specificity and whose interconnections have to be analyzed: the axis of knowledge, the axis of power, the axis of ethics. In other terms, the historical ontology of ourselves has to answer an open series of questions; it has to make an indefinite number of inquiries which may be multiplied and specified as much as we like, but which will all address the questions systematized as follows: How are we constituted as subjects of our own knowledge? How are we constituted as subjects who exercise or submit to power relations? How are we constituted as moral subjects of our own actions? (d) Generality Finally, these historico-critical investigations are quite specific in the sense that they always bear upon a material, an epoch, a body of determined practices and discourses. And yet, at least at the level of the Western societies from which we derive, they have their generality, in the sense that they have continued to recur up to our time: for example, the problem of the relationship between sanity and insanity, or sickness and health, or crime and the law; the problem of the role of sexual relations; and so on.

But by evoking this generality, I do not mean to suggest that it has to be retraced in its metahistorical continuity over time, nor that its variations have to be pursued. What must be grasped is the extent to which what we know of it, the forms of power that are exercised in it, and the experience that we have in it of ourselves constitute nothing but determined historical figures, through a certain form of problematization that defines objects, rules of action, modes of relation to oneself. The study of modes of problematization file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...hatIsEnlightenment/foucault.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html (8 of 9)19/5/2005 10:18:59 πμ

Foucault: What is Enlightenment?

(that is, of what is neither an anthropological constant nor a chronological variation) is thus the way to analyze questions of general import in their historically unique form.

A brief summary, to conclude and to come back to Kant.

I do not know whether we will ever reach mature adulthood. Many things in our experience convince us that the historical event of the Enlightenment did not make us mature adults, and we have not reached that stage yet.

However, it seems to me that a meaning can be attributed to that critical interrogation on the present and on ourselves which Kant formulated by reflecting on the Enlightenment. It seems to me that Kant's reflection is even a way of philosophizing that has not been without its importance or effectiveness during the last two centuries. The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.

This philosophical attitude has to be translated into the labor of diverse inquiries. These inquiries have their methodological coherence in the at once archaeological and genealogical study of practices envisaged simultaneously as a technological type of rationality and as strategic games of liberties; they have their theoretical coherence in the definition of the historically unique forms in which the generalities of our relations to things, to others, to ourselves, have been problematized. They have their practical coherence in the care brought to the process of putting historico-critical reflection to the test of concrete practices. I do not know whether it must be said today that the critical task still entails faith in Enlightenment; I continue to think that this task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty.

Notes: [1] Giambattista Vico, The New Science, 3rd ed., (1744), abridged trans. T. G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 370, 372.

[2] Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1964), p. 13.

[3] Charles Baudelaire, 'On the Heroism of Modern Life,' in The Mirror of Art, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1955), p. 127.

[4] Baudelaire, Painter, pp. 12, Il. [5] Ibid., p. 12.

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Kant: Qu'est-ce que les Lumieres?

Foucault.info | Kant: Qu'est-ce que les Lumieres?

"Qu'est-ce que les Lumieres ?"

Réponse à la question: "Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ?" Par Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804) Konigsberg, 30 Septembre 1784.

Qu’est-ce que les Lumières ? La sortie de l’homme de sa minorité dont il est lui-même responsable. Minorité, c’està-dire incapacité de se servir de son entendement (pouvoir de penser) sans la direction d’autrui, minorité dont il est lui-même responsable (faute) puisque la cause en réside non dans un défaut de l’entendement mais dans un manque de décision et de courage de s’en servir sans la direction d’autrui. Sapere aude ! (Ose penser) Aie le courage de te servir de ton propre entendement. Voilà la devise des Lumières.

La paresse et la lâcheté sont les causes qui expliquent qu’un si grand nombre d’hommes, après que la nature les a affranchi depuis longtemps d’une (de toute) direction étrangère, reste cependant volontiers, leur vie durant, mineurs, et qu’il soit facile à d’autres de se poser en tuteur des premiers. Il est si aisé d’être mineur ! Si j’ai un livre qui me tient lieu d’entendement, un directeur qui me tient lieu de conscience, un médecin qui décide pour moi de mon régime, etc., je n’ai vraiment pas besoin de me donner de peine moi-même. Je n’ai pas besoin de penser pourvu que je puisse payer ; d’autres se chargeront bien de ce travail ennuyeux. Que la grande majorité des hommes (y compris le sexe faible tout entier) tienne aussi pour très dangereux ce pas en avant vers leur majorité, outre que c’est une chose pénible, c’est ce à quoi s’emploient fort bien les tuteurs qui très aimablement (par bonté) ont pris sur eux d’exercer une haute direction sur l’humanité. Après avoir rendu bien sot leur bétail (domestique) et avoir soigneusement pris garde que ces paisibles créatures n’aient pas la permission d’oser faire le moindre pas, hors du parc ou ils les ont enfermé. Ils leur montrent les dangers qui les menace, si elles essayent de s’aventurer seules au dehors. Or, ce danger n’est vraiment pas si grand, car elles apprendraient bien enfin, après quelques chutes, à marcher ; mais un accident de cette sorte rend néanmoins timide, et la frayeur qui en résulte, détourne ordinairement d’en refaire l’essai.

Il est donc difficile pour chaque individu séparément de sortir de la minorité qui est presque devenue pour lui, nature. Il s’y est si bien complu, et il est pour le moment réellement incapable de se servir de son propre entendement, parce qu’on ne l’a jamais laissé en faire l’essai. Institutions (préceptes) et formules, ces instruments mécaniques de l’usage de la parole ou plutôt d’un mauvais usage des dons naturels, (d’un mauvais usage raisonnable) voilà les grelots que l’on a attachés au pied d’une minorité qui persiste. Quiconque même les rejetterait, ne pourrait faire qu’un saut mal assuré par-dessus les fossés les plus étroits, parce qu’il n’est pas habitué à remuer ses jambes en liberté. Aussi sont-ils peu nombreux, ceux qui sont arrivés par leur propre travail de leur esprit à s’arracher à la minorité et à pouvoir marcher d’un pas assuré.

Mais qu’un public s’éclaire lui-même, rentre davantage dans le domaine du possible, c’est même pour peu qu’on lui en laisse la liberté, à peu près inévitable. Car on rencontrera toujours quelques hommes qui pensent de leur propre chef, parmi les tuteurs patentés (attitrés) de la masse et qui, après avoir eux-mêmes secoué le joug de la (leur) minorité, répandront l’esprit d’une estimation raisonnable de sa valeur propre et de la vocation de chaque homme à penser par soi-même. Notons en particulier que le public qui avait été mis auparavant par eux sous ce joug, les force ensuite lui-même à se placer dessous, une fois qu’il a été incité à l’insurrection par quelques-uns de ses tuteurs incapables eux-mêmes de toute lumière : tant il est préjudiciable d’inculquer des préjugés parce qu’en fin de compte ils se vengent eux-mêmes de ceux qui en furent les auteurs ou de leurs devanciers. Aussi un public ne peut-il parvenir que lentement aux lumières. Une révolution peut bien entraîner une chute du despotisme personnel et de l’oppression intéressée ou ambitieuse, (cupide et autoritaire) mais jamais une vraie réforme de la méthode de penser ; tout au contraire, de nouveaux préjugés surgiront qui serviront, aussi bien que les anciens de lisière à la grande masse privée de pensée.

Or, pour ces lumières, il n’est rien requis d’autre que la liberté ; et à vrai dire la liberté la plus inoffensive de tout ce qui peut porter ce nom, à savoir celle de faire un usage public de sa raison dans tous les domaines. Mais j’entends présentement crier de tous côtés : « Ne raisonnez pas »! L’officier dit : Ne raisonnez pas, exécutez ! Le financier : (le percepteur) « Ne raisonnez pas, payez! » Le prêtre : « Ne raisonnez pas, croyez : » (Il n’y a qu’un seul maître au monde qui dise « Raisonnez autant que vous voudrez et sur tout ce que vous voudrez, mais obéissez ! ») Il y a partout limitation de la liberté. Mais quelle limitation est contraire aux lumières ? Laquelle ne l’est pas, et, au contraire lui est avantageuse ? - Je réponds : l’usage public de notre propre raison doit toujours être libre, et lui seul peut amener les lumières parmi les hommes ; mais son usage privé peut être très sévèrement limité, sans pour cela empêcher sensiblement le progrès des lumières. J’entends par usage public de notre propre raison celui que file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...whatIsEnlightenment/kant.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (1 of 4)19/5/2005 10:19:01 πμ

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l’on en fait comme savant devant l’ensemble du public qui lit. J’appelle usage privé celui qu’on a le droit de faire de sa raison dans un poste civil ou une fonction déterminée qui vous sont confiés. Or il y a pour maintes affaires qui concourent à l’intérêt de la communauté un certain mécanisme qui est nécessaire et par le moyen duquel quelques membres de la communauté doivent se comporter passivement afin d’être tournés, par le gouvernement, grâce à une unanimité artificielle, vers des fins publiques ou du moins pour être empêchés de détruire ces fins. Là il n’est donc pas permis de raisonner ; il s’agit d’obéir. Mais, qu’une pièce (élément) de la machine se présente en même temps comme membre d’une communauté, et même de la société civile universelle, en qualité de savant, qui, en s’appuyant sur son propre entendement, s’adresse à un public par des écrits : il peut en tout cas raisonner, sans qu’en pâtissent les affaires auxquelles il est préposé partiellement en tant que membre passif. Il serait très dangereux qu’un officier à qui un ordre a été donné par son supérieur, voulût raisonner dans son service sur l’opportunité ou l’utilité de cet ordre ; il doit obéir. Mais si l’on veut être juste, il ne peut lui être défendu, en tant que savant, de faire des remarques sur les fautes en service de guerre et de les soumettre à son public pour qu’il les juge. Le citoyen ne peut refuser de payer les impôts qui lui sont assignés : même une critique impertinente de ces charges, s’il doit les supporter, peut être punie en tant que scandale (qui pourrait occasionner des désobéissances généralisées). Cette réserve faite, le même individu n’ira pas à l’encontre des devoirs d’un citoyen, s’il s’exprime comme savant, publiquement, sa façon de voir contre la maladresse ou même l’injustice de telles impositions. De même un prêtre est tenu de faire l’enseignement à des catéchumènes et à sa paroisse selon le symbole de l’Église qu’il sert, car il a été admis sous cette condition. Mais, en tant que savant, il a pleine liberté, et même plus : il a la mission de communiquer au public toutes ses pensées soigneusement pesées et bien intentionnées sur ce qu’il y a d’incorrect dans ce symbole et de lui soumettre ses projets en vue d’une meilleure organisation de la chose religieuse et ecclésiastique. En cela non plus il n’y a rien qui pourrait être porté à charge à sa conscience. Car ce qu’il enseigne par suite de ses fonctions, comme mandataire de l’Eglise, il le présente comme quelque chose au regard de quoi il n’a pas libre pouvoir d’enseigner selon son opinion personnelle, mais en tant qu’enseignement qu’il s’est engagé à professer au nom d’une autorité étrangère.

Il dira « Notre Église enseigne telle ou telle chose. Voilà les arguments dont elle se sert ». Il tirera en cette occasion pour sa paroisse tous les avantages pratiques de propositions auxquelles il ne souscrirait pas en toute conviction, mais qu’il s’est pourtant engagé à exposer parce qu’il n’est pas entièrement impossible qu’il s’y trouve une vérité cachée, et qu’en tout cas, du moins, rien ne s’y trouve qui contredise la religion intérieure. Car, s’il croyait trouver rien de tel, il ne saurait en conscience conserver ses fonctions ; il devrait s’en démettre. Par conséquent l’usage de sa raison que fait un éducateur en exercice devant son assistance est seulement un usage privé, parce qu’il s’agit simplement d’une réunion de famille, si grande que celle-ci puisse être, et, par rapport à elle, en tant que prêtre, il n’est pas libre et ne doit non plus l’être, parce qu’il remplit une fonction étrangère. Par contre, en tant que savant, qui parle par des écrits au public proprement dit, c’est-à-dire au monde, - tel donc un membre du clergé dans l’usage public de sa raison - il jouit d’une liberté sans bornes d’utiliser sa propre raison et de parler en son propre nom. Car prétendre que les tuteurs du peuple (dans les affaires spirituelles) doivent être eux-mêmes à leur tour mineurs, c’est là une ineptie, qui aboutit à la perpétuation éternelle des inepties.

Mais une telle société ecclésiastique, en quelque sorte un synode d’Églises, ou une classe de Révérends (comme elle s’intitule elle-même chez les Hollandais), ne devrait-elle pas être fondée en droit à faire prêter serment sur un certain symbole immuable, pour faire peser par ce procédé une tutelle supérieure incessante sur chacun de ses membres, et, par leur intermédiaire, sur le peuple, et pour précisément éterniser cette tutelle ? Je dis que c’est totalement impossible. Un tel contrat qui déciderait d’écarter pour toujours toute lumière nouvelle du genre humain, est radicalement nul et non avenu ; quand bien même serait-il entériné par l’autorité suprême, par des Parlements, et par les traités de paix les plus solennels. Un siècle ne peut pas se confédérer et jurer de mettre le suivant dans une situation qui lui rendra impossible d’étendre ses connaissances (particulièrement celles qui sont d’un si haut intérêt), de se débarrasser des erreurs, et en général de progresser dans les lumières. Ce serait un crime contre la nature humaine, dont la destination originelle consiste justement en ce progrès ; et les successeurs sont donc pleinement fondés à rejeter pareils décrets, en arguant de l’incompétence et de la légèreté qui y présidèrent. La pierre de touche de tout ce qui peut être décidé pour un peuple sous forme de loi tient dans la question suivante : « Un peuple accepterait-il de se donner lui-même pareille loi ? » Éventuellement il pourrait arriver que cette loi fût en quelque manière possible pour une durée déterminée et courte, dans l’attente d’une loi meilleure, en vue d’introduire un certain ordre. Mais c’est à la condition de laisser en même temps à chacun des citoyens, et particulièrement au prêtre, en sa qualité de savant, la liberté de formuler des remarques sur les vices inhérents à l’institution actuelle, et de les formuler d’une façon publique, c’est-à-dire par des écrits, tout en laissant subsister l’ordre établi. Et cela jusqu’au jour où l’examen de la nature de ces choses aurait été conduit assez loin et assez confirmé pour que, soutenu par l’accord des voix (sinon de toutes), un projet puisse être porté devant le trône : projet destiné à protéger les communautés qui se seraient unies, selon leurs propres conceptions, pour modifier l’institution religieuse, mais qui ne contraindrait pas ceux qui voudraient demeurer fidèles à l’ancienne. Mais, s’unir par une constitution durable qui ne devrait être mise en doute par personne, ne fût-ce que

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pour la durée d’une vie d’homme, et par là frapper de stérilité pour le progrès de l’humanité un certain laps de temps, et même le rendre nuisible pour la postérité, voilà ce qui est absolument interdit.

Un homme peut bien, en ce qui le concerne, ajourner l’acquisition d’un savoir qu’il devrait posséder. Mais y renoncer, que ce soit pour sa propre personne, et bien plus encore pour la postérité, cela s’appelle voiler les droits sacrés de l’humanité et les fouler aux pieds. Or, ce qu’un peuple lui-même n’a pas le droit de décider quant à son sort, un monarque a encore bien moins le droit de le faire pour le peuple, car son autorité législative procède justement de ce fait qu’il rassemble la volonté générale du peuple dans la sienne propre. Pourvu seulement qu’il veille à ce que toute amélioration réelle ou supposée se concilie avec l’ordre civil, il peut pour le reste laisser ses sujets faire de leur propre chef ce qu’ils trouvent nécessaire d’accomplir pour le salut de leur âme ; ce n’est pas son affaire, mais il a celle de bien veiller à ce que certains n’empêchent point par la force les autres de travailler à réaliser et à hâter ce salut de toutes leurs forces en leur pouvoir. Il porte même préjudice à sa majesté même s’il s’immisce en cette affaire en donnant une consécration officielle aux écrits dans lesquels ses sujets s’efforcent de tirer leurs vues au clair, soit qu’il le fasse sous sa propre et très haute autorité, ce en quoi il s’expose au grief « César n’est pas au-dessus des grammairiens », soit, et encore plus, s’il abaisse sa suprême puissance assez bas pour protéger dans son Etat le despotisme clérical et quelques tyrans contre le reste de ses sujets.

Si donc maintenant on nous demande : « Vivons-nous actuellement dans un siècle éclairé ? », voici la réponse : « Non, mais bien dans un siècle en marche vers les lumières. » Il s’en faut encore de beaucoup , au point où en sont les choses, que les humains, considérés dans leur ensemble, soient déjà en état, ou puissent seulement y être mis, d’utiliser avec maîtrise et profit leur propre entendement, sans le secours d’autrui, dans les choses de la religion.

Toutefois, qu’ils aient maintenant le champ libre pour s’y exercer librement, et que les obstacles deviennent insensiblement moins nombreux, qui s’opposaient à l’avènement d’une ère générale des lumières et à une sortie de cet état de minorité dont les hommes sont eux-mêmes responsables, c’est ce dont nous avons des indices certains.

De ce point de vue, ce siècle est le siècle des lumières, ou siècle de Frédéric.

Un prince qui ne trouve pas indigne de lui de dire qu’il tient pour un devoir de ne rien prescrire dans les affaires de religion aux hommes, mais de leur laisser en cela pleine liberté, qui par conséquent décline pour son compte l’épithète hautaine de tolérance, est lui-même éclairé : et il mérite d’être honoré par ses contemporains et la postérité reconnaissante, eu égard à ce que le premier il sortit le genre humain de la minorité, du moins dans un sens gouvernemental, et qu’il laissa chacun libre de se servir en tout ce qui est affaire de conscience, de sa propre raison. Sous lui, des prêtres vénérables ont le droit, sans préjudice des devoirs professionnels, de proférer leurs jugements et leurs vues qui s’écartent du symbole officiel, en qualité d’érudits, et ils ont le droit de les soumettre librement et publiquement à l’examen du monde, à plus forte raison toute autre personne qui n’est limitée par aucun devoir professionnel. Cet esprit de liberté s’étend encore à l’extérieur, même là où il se heurte à des obstacles extérieurs de la part d’un gouvernement qui méconnaît son propre rôle. Cela sert au moins d’exemple à ce dernier pour comprendre qu’il n’y a pas à concevoir la moindre inquiétude pour la durée publique et l’unité de la chose commune dans une atmosphère de liberté. Les hommes se mettent d’eux-mêmes en peine peu à peu de sortir de la grossièreté, si seulement on ne s’évertue pas à les y maintenir.

J’ai porté le point essentiel dans l’avènement des lumières sur celles par lesquelles les hommes sortent d’une minorité dont ils sont eux-mêmes responsables, - surtout sur les questions de religion ; parce que, en ce qui concerne les arts et les sciences, nos maîtres n’ont aucun intérêt à jouer le rôle de tuteurs sur leurs sujets ; par dessus le marché, cette minorité dont j’ai traité est la plus préjudiciable et en même temps la plus déshonorante de toutes. Mais la façon de penser d’un chef d’État qui favorise les lumières, va encore plus loin, et reconnaît que, même du point de vue de la législation, il n’y a pas danger à permettre à ses sujets de faire un usage public de leur propre raison et de produire publiquement à la face du monde leurs idées touchant une élaboration meilleure de cette législation même au travers d’une franche critique de celle qui a déjà été promulguée; nous en avons un exemple illustre, par lequel aucun monarque n’a surpassé celui que nous honorons.

Mais aussi, seul celui qui, éclairé lui-même, ne redoute pas l’ombre (les fantômes), tout en ayant sous la main une armée nombreuse et bien disciplinée pour garantir la tranquillité publique, peut dire ce qu’un État libre ne peut oser: «Raisonnez tant que vous voudrez et sur les sujets qu’il vous plaira, mais obéissez !»

Ainsi les affaires humaines prennent ici un cours étrange et inattendu : de toutes façons, si on considère celui-ci dans son ensemble, presque tout y est paradoxal. Un degré supérieur de liberté civile paraît avantageux à la liberté de l’esprit du peuple et lui impose néanmoins des limites infranchissables ; un degré moindre lui fournit l’occasion de s’étendre de tout son pouvoir. Une fois donc que la nature sous cette rude écorce a libéré un germe, sur lequel elle veille avec toute sa tendresse, c’est-à-dire cette inclination et cette disposition à la libre pensée, cette file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...whatIsEnlightenment/kant.questcequeLesLumieres.fr.html (3 of 4)19/5/2005 10:19:01 πμ

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tendance alors agit graduellement à rebours sur les sentiments du peuple (ce par quoi le peuple augmente peu à peu son aptitude à se comporter en liberté) et pour finir elle agit même en ce sens sur les fondements du gouvernement, lequel trouve profitable pour lui-même de traiter l’homme, qui est alors plus qu’une machine, selon la dignité qu’il mérite.

Dans les Nouvelles Hebdomadaires de Bueschning du 13 septembre, je lis aujourd’hui 30 du même mois l’annonce de la Revue Mensuelle Berlinoise, où se trouve la réponse de M. Mendelssohn à la même question? Je ne l’ai pas encore eue entre les mains ; sans cela elle aurait arrêté ma présente réponse, qui ne peut plus être considérée maintenant que comme un essai pour voir jusqu’où le hasard peut réaliser l’accord des pensées.

(Traduction Piobetta)

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Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

Foucault.info | Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

"Was Ist Aufklärung ?"

Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? , Immanuel Kant Königsberg in Preußen, den 30. Septemb. 1784.

Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.

Faulheit und Feigheit sind die Ursachen, warum ein so großer Teil der Menschen, nachdem sie die Natur längst von fremder Leitung frei gesprochen (naturaliter maiorennes), dennoch gerne zeitlebens unmündig bleiben; und warum es Anderen so leicht wird, sich zu deren Vormündern aufzuwerfen. Es ist so bequem, unmündig zu sein. Habe ich ein Buch, das für mich Verstand hat, einen Seelsorger, der für mich Gewissen hat, einen Arzt, der für mich die Diät beurteilt, u.s.w., so brauche ich mich ja nicht selbst zu bemühen. Ich habe nicht nötig zu denken, wenn ich nur bezahlen kann; andere werden das verdrießliche Geschäft schon für mich übernehmen. Daß der bei weitem größte Teil der Menschen (darunter das ganze schöne Geschlecht) den Schritt zur Mündigkeit, außer dem daß er beschwerlich ist, auch für sehr gefährlich halte: dafür sorgen schon jene Vormünder, die die Oberaufsicht über sie gütigst auf sich genommen haben. Nachdem sie ihr Hausvieh zuerst dumm gemacht haben und sorgfältig verhüteten, daß diese ruhigen Geschöpfe ja keinen Schritt außer dem Gängelwagen, darin sie sie einsperrten, wagen durften, so zeigen sie ihnen nachher die Gefahr, die ihnen droht, wenn sie es versuchen allein zu gehen. Nun ist diese Gefahr zwar eben so groß nicht, denn sie würden durch einigemal Fallen wohl endlich gehen lernen; allein ein Beispiel von der Art macht doch schüchtern und schreckt gemeinhin von allen ferneren Versuchen ab.

Es ist also für jeden einzelnen Menschen schwer, sich aus der ihm beinahe zur Natur gewordenen Unmündigkeit herauszuarbeiten. Er hat sie sogar lieb gewonnen und ist vor der Hand wirklich unfähig, sich seines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen, weil man ihn niemals den Versuch davon machen ließ. Satzungen und Formeln, diese mechanischen Werkzeuge eines vernünftigen Gebrauchs oder vielmehr Mißbrauchs seiner Naturgaben, sind die Fußschellen einer immerwährenden Unmündigkeit. Wer sie auch abwürfe, würde dennoch auch über den schmalsten Graben einen nur unsicheren Sprung tun, weil er zu dergleichen freier Bewegung nicht gewöhnt ist. Daher gibt es nur Wenige, denen es gelungen ist, durch eigene Bearbeitung ihres Geistes sich aus der Unmündigkeit heraus zu wickeln und dennoch einen sicheren Gang zu tun.

Daß aber ein Publikum sich selbst aufkläre, ist eher möglich; ja es ist, wenn man ihm nur Freiheit läßt, beinahe unausbleiblich. Denn da werden sich immer einige Selbstdenkende sogar unter den eingesetzten Vormündern des großen Haufens finden, welche, nachdem sie das Joch der Unmündigkeit selbst abgeworfen haben, den Geist einer vernünftigen Schätzung des eigenen Werts und des Berufs jedes Menschen selbst zu denken um sich verbreiten werden. Besonders ist hierbei: daß das Publikum, welches zuvor von ihnen unter dieses Joch gebracht worden, sie danach selbst zwingt darunter zu bleiben, wenn es von einigen seiner Vormünder, die selbst aller Aufklärung unfähig sind, dazu aufgewiegelt worden; so schädlich ist es Vorurteile zu pflanzen, weil sie sich zuletzt an denen selbst rächen, die oder deren Vorgänger ihre Urheber gewesen sind. Daher kann ein Publikum nur langsam zur Aufklärung gelangen. durch eine Revolution wird vielleicht wohl ein Abfall von persönlichem Despotismus und gewinnsüchtiger oder herrschsüchtiger Bedrückung, aber niemals wahre Reform der Denkungsart zustande kommen; sondern neue Vorurteile werden ebensowohl als die alten zum Leitbande des gedankenlosen großen Haufens dienen.

Zu dieser Aufklärung aber wird nichts erfordert als Freiheit; und zwar die unschädlichste unter allem, was nur Freiheit heißen mag, nämlich die: von seiner Vernunft in allen Stücken öffentlichen Gebrauch zu machen. Nun höre ich aber von allen Seiten rufen: räsonniert nicht! Der Offizier sagt: räsonniert nicht, sondern exerziert! Der Finanzrat: räsonniert nicht, sondern bezahlt! Der Geistliche: räsonniert nicht, sondern glaubt! (Nur ein einziger Herr in der Welt sagt: räsonniert, so viel ihr wollt, und worüber ihr wollt; aber gehorcht!) Hier ist überall Einschränkung der Freiheit. Welche Einschränkung aber ist der Aufklärung hinderlich? welche nicht, sondern ihr wohl gar beförderlich? - Ich antworte: der öffentliche Gebrauch seiner Vernunft muß jederzeit frei sein, und der allein kann Aufklärung unter Menschen zustande bringen; der Privatgebrauch derselben aber darf öfters sehr enge eingeschränkt sein, ohne doch darum den Fortschritt der Aufklärung sonderlich zu hindern. Ich verstehe aber unter dem öffentlichen Gebrauch seiner eigenen Vernunft denjenigen, den jemand als Gelehrter von ihr vor dem ganzen Publikum der Leserwelt macht. Den Privatgebrauch nenne ich denjenigen, den er in einem gewissen ihm file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ents/whatIsEnlightenment/kant.wasIstAufklarung.de.html (1 of 4)19/5/2005 10:19:02 πμ

Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

anvertrauten bürgerlichen Posten oder Amte von seiner Vernunft machen darf. Nun ist zu manchen Geschäften, die in das Interesse des gemeinen Wesens laufen, ein gewisser Mechanism notwendig, vermittels dessen einige Glieder des gemeinen Wesens sich bloß passiv verhalten müssen, um durch eine künstliche Einhelligkeit von der Regierung zu öffentlichen Zwecken gerichtet, oder wenigstens von der Zerstörung dieser Zwecke abgehalten zu werden. Hier ist es nun freilich nicht erlaubt, zu räsonnieren; sondern man muß gehorchen. So fern sich aber dieser Teil der Maschine zugleich als Glied eines ganzen gemeinen Wesens, ja sogar der Weltbürgergesellschaft ansieht, mithin in der Qualität eines Gelehrten, der sich an ein Publikum im eigentlichen Verstande durch Schriften wendet: kann er allerdings räsonnieren, ohne daß dadurch die Geschäfte leiden, zu denen er zum Teile als passives Glied angesetzt ist. So würde es sehr verderblich sein, wenn ein Offizier, dem von seinen Oberen etwas anbefohlen wird, im Dienste über die Zweckmäßigkeit oder Nützlichkeit dieses Befehls laut vernünfteln wollte; er muß gehorchen. Es kann ihm aber billigermaßen nicht verwehrt werden, als Gelehrter über die Fehler im Kriegesdienste Anmerkungen zu machen und diese seinem Publikum zur Beurteilung vorzulegen. Der Bürger kann sich nicht weigern, die ihm auferlegten Abgaben zu leisten; sogar kann ein vorwitziger Tadel solcher Auflagen, wenn sie von ihm geleistet werden sollen, als ein Skandal (das allgemeine Widersetzlichkeiten veranlassen könnte) bestraft werden. Eben derselbe handelt demungeachtet der Pflicht eines Bürgers nicht entgegen, wenn er als Gelehrter wider die Unschicklichkeit oder auch Ungerechtigkeit solcher Ausschreibungen öffentlich seine Gedanken äußert. Ebenso ist ein Geistlicher verbunden, seinen Katechismusschülern und seiner Gemeinde nach dem Symbol der Kirche, der er dient, seinen Vortrag zu tun; denn er ist auf diese Bedingung angenommen worden. Aber als Gelehrter hat er volle Freiheit, ja sogar den Beruf dazu, alle seine sorgfältig geprüften und wohlmeinenden Gedanken über das Fehlerhafte in jenem Symbol und Vorschläge wegen besserer Einrichtung des Religions- und Kirchenwesens dem Publikum mitzuteilen. Es ist hiebei auch nichts, was dem Gewissen zur Last gelegt werden könnte. Denn was er infolge seines Amts als Geschäftträger der Kirche lehrt, das stellt er als etwas vor, in Ansehung dessen er nicht freie Gewalt hat nach eigenem Gutdünken zu lehren, sondern das er nach Vorschrift und im Namen eines anderen vorzutragen angestellt ist. Er wird sagen: unsere Kirche lehrt dieses oder jenes; das sind die Beweisgründe, deren sie sich bedient. Er zieht alsdann allen praktischen Nutzen für seine Gemeinde aus Satzungen, die er selbst nicht mit voller Überzeugung unterschreiben würde, zu deren Vortrag er sich gleichwohl anheischig machen kann, weil es doch nicht ganz unmöglich ist, daß darin Wahrheit verborgen läge, auf alle Fälle aber wenigstens doch nichts der inneren Religion Widersprechendes darin angetroffen wird. Denn glaubte er das letztere darin zu finden, so würde er sein Amt mit Gewissen nicht verwalten können; er müßte es niederlegen. Der Gebrauch also, den ein angestellter Lehrer von seiner Vernunft vor seiner Gemeinde macht, ist bloß ein Privatgebrauch: weil diese immer nur eine häusliche, obwohl noch so große Versammlung ist; und in Ansehung dessen ist er als Priester nicht frei und darf es auch nicht sein, weil er einen fremden Auftrag ausrichtet. Dagegen als Gelehrter, der durch Schriften zum eigentlichen Publikum, nämlich der Welt, spricht, mithin der Geistliche im öffentlichen Gebrauche seiner Vernunft genießt einer uneingeschränkte Freiheit, sich seiner eigenen Vernunft zu bedienen und in seiner eigenen Person zu sprechen.

Denn daß die Vormünder des Volks (in geistlichen Dingen) selbst wieder unmündig sein sollen, ist eine Ungereimtheit, die auf Verewigung der Ungereimtheiten hinausläuft.

Aber sollte nicht eine Gesellschaft von Geistlichen, etwa eine Kirchenversammlung, oder eine ehrwürdige Classis (wie sie sich unter den Holländern selbst nennt), berechtigt sein, sich eidlich untereinander auf ein gewisses unveränderliches Symbol zu verpflichten, um so eine unaufhörliche Obervormundschaft über jedes ihrer Glieder und vermittels ihrer über das Volk zu führen und diese sogar zu verewigen? Ich sage: das ist ganz unmöglich. Ein solcher Kontrakt, der auf immer alle weitere Aufklärung vom Menschengeschlechte abzuhalten geschlossen würde, ist schlechterdings null und nichtig; und sollte er auch durch die oberste Gewalt, durch Reichstage und die feierlichsten Friedensschlüsse bestätigt sein. Ein Zeitalter kann sich nicht verbünden und darauf verschwören, das folgende in einen Zustand zu setzen, darin es ihm unmöglich werden muß, seine (vornehmlich so sehr angelegentliche) Erkenntnisse zu erweitern, von Irrtümern zu reinigen und überhaupt in der Aufklärung weiter zu schreiten. Das wäre ein Verbrechen wider die menschliche Natur, deren ursprüngliche Bestimmung gerade in diesem Fortschreiten besteht; und die Nachkommen sind also vollkommen dazu berechtigt, jene Beschlüsse, als unbefugter und frevelhafter Weise genommen, zu verwerfen. Der Probierstein alles dessen, was über ein Volk als Gesetz beschlossen werden kann, liegt in der Frage: ob ein Volk sich selbst wohl ein solches Gesetz auferlegen könnte. Nun wäre dieses wohl gleichsam in der Erwartung eines besseren auf eine bestimmte kurze Zeit möglich, um eine gewisse Ordnung einzuführen: indem man es zugleich jedem der Bürger, vornehmlich dem Geistlichen frei ließe, in der Qualität eines Gelehrten öffentlich, d.i. durch Schriften, über das Fehlerhafte der dermaligen Einrichtung seine Anmerkungen zu machen, indessen die eingeführte Ordnung noch immer forzdauerte, bis die Einsicht in die Beschaffenheit dieser Sachen öffentlich so weit gekommen und bewährt worden, daß sie durch Vereínigung ihrer Stimmen (wenngleich nicht aller) einen Vorschlag vor den Thron bringen könnte, um diejenigen Gemeinden in Schutz zu nehmen, die sich etwa nach ihren Begriffen der besseren Einsicht zu einer veränderten Religionseinrichtung geeinigt hätten, ohne doch diejenigen zu hindern, die es beim Alten wollten bewenden lassen.

Aber auf eine beharrliche, von Niemanden öffentlich zu bezweifelnde Religionsverfassung auch nur binnen der Lebensdauer eines Menschen sich zu einigen und dadurch einen Zeitraum in dem Fortgange der Menschheit zur Verbesserung gleichsam zu vernichten und fruchtlos, dadurch aber wohl gar der Nachkommenschaft nachteilig zu file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/do...ents/whatIsEnlightenment/kant.wasIstAufklarung.de.html (2 of 4)19/5/2005 10:19:02 πμ

Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

machen, ist schlechterdings unerlaubt. Ein Mensch kann zwar für seine Person und auch alsdann nur auf einige Zeit in dem, was ihm zu wissen obliegt, die Aufklärung aufschieben; aber auf sie Verzicht zu tun, es sei für seine Person, mehr aber noch für die Nachkommenschaft, heißt die heiligen Rechte der Menschheit verletzen und mit Füßen treten. Was aber nicht einmal ein Volk über sich selbst beschließen darf, das darf noch weniger ein Monarch über das Volk beschließen; denn sein gesetzgebendes Ansehen beruht eben darauf, daß er den gesamten Volkswillen in dem seinigen vereinigt. Wenn er nur darauf sieht, daß alle wahre oder vermeintliche Verbesserung mit der bürgerlichen Ordnung zusammen bestehe: so kann er seine Untertanen übrigens nur selbst machen lassen, was sie um ihres Seelenheils willen zu tun nötig finden; das geht ihn nichts an, wohl aber zu verhüten, daß nicht einer den andern gewalttätig hindere, an der Bestimmung und Beförderung desselben nach allem seinem Vermögen zu arbeiten. Es tut selbst seiner Majestät Abbruch, wenn er sich hier einmischt, indem er die Schriften, wodurch seine Untertanen ihre Einsichten ins Reine zu bringen suchen, seiner Regierungsaufsicht würdigt, sowohl wenn er dieses aus eigener höchster Einsicht tut, wo er sich dem Vorwurfe aussetzt: Caesar non est supra Grammaticos, als auch und noch weit mehr, wenn er seine oberste Gewalt so weit erniedrigt, den geistlichen Despotismus einiger Tyrannen in seinem Staate gegen seine übrigen Untertanen zu unterstützen.

Wenn denn nun gefragt wird: Leben wir jetzt in einem aufgeklärten Zeitalter? so ist die Antwort: Nein, aber wohl in einem Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Daß die Menschen, wie die Sachen jetzt stehen, im Ganzen genommen, schon imstande wären, oder darin auch nur gesetzt werden könnten, in Religionsdingen sich ihres eigenen Verstandes ohne Leitung eines Anderen sicher und gut zu bedienen, daran fehlt noch sehr viel. Allein daß jetzt ihnen doch das Feld geöffnet wird, sich dahin frei zu bearbeiten, und die Hindernisse der allgemeinen Aufklärung, oder des Ausganges aus ihrer selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit allmählich weniger werden, davon haben wir doch deutliche Anzeigen. In diesem Betracht ist dieses Zeitalter das Zeitalter der Aufklärung, oder das Jahrhundert Friederichs.

Ein Fürst, der es seiner nicht unwürdig findet, zu sagen: daß er es für Pflicht halte, in Religionsdingen den Menschen nichts vorzuschreiben, sondern ihnen darin volle Freiheit zu lassen, der also selbst den hochmütigen Namen der Toleranz von sich ablehnt, ist selbst aufgeklärt und verdient von der dankbaren Welt und Nachwelt als derjenige gepriesen zu werden, der zuerst das menschliche Geschlecht der Unmündigkeit wenigstens von Seiten der Regierung entschlug und Jedem frei ließ, sich in allem, was Gewissensangelegenheit ist, seiner eigenen Vernunft zu bedienen.

Unter ihm dürfen verehrungswürdige Geistliche unbeschadet ihrer Amtspflicht ihre vom angenommenen Symbol hier oder da abweichenden Urteile und Einsichten in der Qualität der Gelehrten frei und öffentlich der Welt zur Prüfung darlegen; noch mehr aber jeder andere, der durch keine Amtspflicht eingeschränkt ist. Dieser Geist der Freiheit breitet sich außerhalb aus, selbst da, wo er mit äußeren Hindernissen einer sich selbst mißverstehenden Regierung zu ringen hat. Denn es leuchtet dieser doch ein Beispiel vor, daß bei Freiheit für die öffentliche Ruhe und Einigkeit des gemeinen Wesens nicht das Mindeste zu besorgen sei. Die Menschen arbeiten sich von selbst nach und nach aus der Roheit heraus, wenn man nur nicht absichtlich künstelt, um sie darin zu erhalten.

Ich habe den Hauptpunkt der Aufklärung, d.i. des Ausgangs der Menschen aus ihrer selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit, vorzüglich in Religionssachen gesetzt: weil in Ansehung der Künste und Wissenschaften unsere Beherrscher kein Interesse haben, den Vormund über ihre Untertanen zu spielen; überdem auch jene Unmündigkeit, so wie die schädlichste, also auch die entehrendste unter allen ist. Aber die Denkungsart eines Staatsoberhaupts, der die erstere begünstigt, geht noch weiter und sieht ein: daß selbst in Ansehung seiner Gesetzgebung es ohne Gefahr sei, seinen Untertanen zu erlauben, von ihrer eigenen Vernunft öffentlichen Gebrauch zu machen und ihre Gedanken über eine bessere Abfassung derselben sogar mit einer freimütigen Kritik der schon gegebenen der Welt öffentlich vorzulegen; davon wir ein glänzendes Beispiel haben, wodurch noch kein Monarch demjenigen vorging, welchen wir verehren.

Aber auch nur derjenige, der, selbst aufgeklärt, sich nicht vor Schatten fürchtet, zugleich aber ein wohldiszipliniertes zahlreiches Heer zum Bürgen der öffentlichen Ruhe zur Hand hat, kann das sagen, was ein Freistaat nicht wagen darf: räsonniert, soviel ihr wollt, und worüber ihr wollt; nur gehorcht! So zeigt sich hier ein befremdlicher, nicht erwarteter Gang menschlicher Dinge; so wie auch sonst, wenn man ihn im Großen betrachtet, darin fast alles paradox ist. Ein größerer Grad bürgerlicher Freiheit scheint der Freiheit des Geistes des Volks vorteilhaft und setzt ihr doch unübersteigliche Schranken; ein Grad weniger von jener verschafft hingegen diesem Raum, sich nach allem seinem Vermögen auszubreiten. Wenn denn die Natur unter dieser harten Hülle den Keim, für den sie am zärtlichsten sorgt, nämlich den Hang und Beruf zum freien Denken, ausgewickelt hat: so wirkt dieser allmählig zurück auf die Sinnesart des Volks (wodurch dieses der Freiheit zu handeln nach und nach fähiger wird) und endlich auch sogar auf die Grundsätze der Regierung, die es ihr selbst zuträglich findet, den Menschen, der nun mehr als Maschine ist, seiner Würde gemäß zu behandeln.

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Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

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Kant: What is Enlightenment?

Foucault.info | Kant: What is Enlightenment?

"What is Enlightenment ? " An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?", by Immanuel Kant Konigsberg in Prussia, 30th September, 1784.

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage s man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"- that is the motto of enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.

That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind (and by the entire fair sex) - quite apart from its being arduous is seen to by those guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over them. After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials.

For any single individua1 to work himself out of the life under tutelage which has become almost his nature is very difficult. He has come to be fond of his state, and he is for the present really incapable of making use of his reason, for no one has ever let him try it out. Statutes and formulas, those mechanical tools of the rational employment or rather misemployment of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting tutelage. Whoever throws them off makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he is not accustomed to that kind of free motion.

Therefore, there are few who have succeeded by their own exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and in achieving a steady pace.

But that the public should enlighten itself is more possible; indeed, if only freedom is granted enlightenment is almost sure to follow. For there will always be some independent thinkers, even among the established guardians of the great masses, who, after throwing off the yoke of tutelage from their own shoulders, will disseminate the spirit of the rational appreciation of both their own worth and every man's vocation for thinking for himself. But be it noted that the public, which has first been brought under this yoke by their guardians, forces the guardians themselves to renain bound when it is incited to do so by some of the guardians who are themselves capable of some enlightenment - so harmful is it to implant prejudices, for they later take vengeance on their cultivators or on their descendants. Thus the public can only slowly attain enlightenment. Perhaps a fall of personal despotism or of avaricious or tyrannical oppression may be accomplished by revolution, but never a true reform in ways of thinking.

Farther, new prejudices will serve as well as old ones to harness the great unthinking masses.

For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the freedom to make public use of one's reason at every point. But I hear on all sides, "Do not argue!" The Officer says: "Do not argue but drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue but pay!" The cleric: "Do not argue but believe!" Only one prince in the world says, "Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, but obey!" Everywhere there is restriction on freedom.

Which restriction is an obstacle to enlightenment, and which is not an obstacle but a promoter of it? I answer: The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one's reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...ts/whatIsEnlightenment/kant.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html (1 of 3)19/5/2005 10:19:03 πμ

Kant: What is Enlightenment?

is entrusted to him. Many affairs which are conducted in the interest of the community require a certain mechanism through which some members of the community must passively conduct themselves with an artificial unanimity, so that the government may direct them to public ends, or at least prevent them from destroying those ends. Here argument is certainly not allowed - one must obey. But so far as a part of the mechanism regards himself at the same time as a member of the whole community or of a society of world citizens, and thus in the role of a scholar who addresses the public (in the proper sense of the word) through his writings, he certainly can argue without hurting the affairs for which he is in part responsible as a passive member. Thus it would be ruinous for an officer in service to debate about the suitability or utility of a command given to him by his superior; he must obey. But the right to make remarks on errors in the military service and to lay them before the public for judgment cannot equitably be refused him as a scholar. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes imposed on him; indeed, an impudent complaint at those levied on him can be punished as a scandal (as it could occasion general refractoriness). But the same person nevertheless does not act contrary to his duty as a citizen, when, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his thoughts on the inappropriateness or even the injustices of these levies, Similarly a clergyman is obligated to make his sermon to his pupils in catechism and his congregation conform to the symbol of the church which he serves, for he has been accepted on this condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom, even the calling, to communicate to the public all his carefully tested and well meaning thoughts on that which is erroneous in the symbol and to make suggestions for the better organization of the religious body and church. In doing this there is nothing that could be laid as a burden on his conscience. For what he teaches as a consequence of his office as a representative of the church, this he considers something about which he has not freedom to teach according to his own lights; it is something which he is appointed to propound at the dictation of and in the name of another. He will say, "Our church teaches this or that; those are the proofs which it adduces." He thus extracts all practical uses for his congregation from statutes to which he himself would not subscribe with full conviction but to the enunciation of which he can very well pledge himself because it is not impossible that truth lies hidden in them, and, in any case, there is at least nothing in them contradictory to inner religion. For if he believed he had found such in them, he could not conscientiously discharge the duties of his office; he would have to give it up. The use, therefore, which an appointed teacher makes of his reason before his congregation is merely private, because this congregation is only a domestic one (even if it be a large gathering); with respect to it, as a priest, he is not free, nor can he be free, because he carries out the orders of another. But as a scholar, whose writings speak to his public, the world, the clergyman in the public use of his reason enjoys an unlimited freedom to use his own reason to speak in his own person. That the guardian of the people (in spiritual things) should themselves be incompetent is an absurdity which amounts to the eternalization of absurdities.

But would not a society of clergymen, perhaps a church conference or a venerable classis (as they call themselves among the Dutch) , be justified in obligating itself by oath to a certain unchangeable symbol inorder to enjoy an unceasing guardianship over each of its numbers and thereby over the people as a whole , and even to make it eternal? I answer that this is altogether impossible. Such contract, made to shut off all further enlightenment from the human race, is absolutely null and void even if confirmed by the supreme power , by parliaments, and by the most ceremonious of peace treaties. An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot extend its (at best very occasional) knowledge , purify itself of errors, and progress in general enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, the proper destination of which lies precisely in this progress and the descendants would be fully justified in rejecting those decrees as having been made in an unwarranted and malicious manner.

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself. Now such religious compact might be possible for a short and definitely limited time, as it were, in expectation of a better. One might let every citizen, and especially the clergyman, in the role of scholar, make his comments freely and publicly, i.e. through writing, on the erroneous aspects of the present institution. The newly introduced order might last until insight into the nature of these things had become so general and widely approved that through uniting their voices (even if not unanimously) they could bring a proposal to the throne to take those congregations under protection which had united into a changed religious organization according to their better ideas, without, however hindering others who wish to remain in the order.

But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind. And what a people may not decree for itself can even less be decreed for them by a monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on his uniting the general public will in his own. If he only sees to it that all true or alleged improvement stands together with civil order, he can leave it to his subjects to do what they find necessary for their spiritual welfare. This is not his concern, though it is incumbent on him to prevent one of them from violently hindering another in determining and promoting this welfare to the best of his ability. To meddle in these matters lowers his own majesty, since by the writings in which his own subjects seek to file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/doc...ts/whatIsEnlightenment/kant.whatIsEnlightenment.en.html (2 of 3)19/5/2005 10:19:03 πμ

Kant: What is Enlightenment?

present their views he may evaluate his own governance. He can do this when, with deepest understanding, he lays upon himself the reproach, Caesar non est supra grammaticos. Far more does he injure his own majesty when he degrades his supreme power by supporting the ecclesiastical despotism of some tyrants in his state over his other subjects.

If we are asked , "Do we now live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No ," but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents men from being, or easily becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in religious matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely dea1 with these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release from self-imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age of enlightenment, or the century of Frederick.

A prince who does not find it unworthy of himself to say that he holds it to be his duty to prescribe nothing to men in religious matters but to give them complete freedom while renouncing the haughty name of tolerance, is himself enlightened and deserves to be esteemed by the grateful world and posterity as the first, at least from the side of government , who divested the human race of its tutelage and left each man free to make use of his reason in matters of conscience. Under him venerable ecclesiastics are allowed, in the role of scholar, and without infringing on their official duties, freely to submit for public testing their judgments and views which here and there diverge from the established symbol. And an even greater freedom is enjoyed by those who are restricted by no official duties. This spirit of freedom spreads beyond this land, even to those in which it must struggle with external obstacles erected by a government which misunderstands its own interest. For an example gives evidence to such a government that in freedom there is not the least cause for concern about public peace and the stability of the community. Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional artifices are not made to hold them in it.

I have placed the main point of enlightenment - the escape of men from their self-incurred tutelage - chiefly in matters of religion because our rulers have no interest in playing guardian with respect to the arts and sciences and also because religious incompetence is not only the most harmful but also the most degrading of all. But the manner of thinking of the head of a state who favors religious enlightenment goes further, and he sees that there is no danger to his lawgiving in allowing his subjects to make public use of their reason and to publish their thoughts on a better formulation of his legislation and even their open-minded criticisms of the laws already made. Of this we have a shining example wherein no monarch is superior to him we honor.

But only one who is himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows, and has a numerous and well-disciplined army to assure public peace, can say: "Argue as much as you will , and about what you will , only obey!" A republic could not dare say such a thing. Here is shown a strange and unexpected trend in human affairs in which almost everything, looked at in the large , is paradoxical. A greater degree of civil freedom appears advantageous to the freedom of mind of the people, and yet it places inescapable limitations upon it. A lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to extend himself to his full capacity. As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.

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The Meaning of the Word "Parrhesia"

Foucault.info | The Meaning of the Word "Parrhesia"

The word "parrhesia" appears for the first time in Greek literature in Euripides [c.484-407 BC], and occurs throughout the ancient Greek world of letters from the end of the Fifth Century BC. But it can also still be found in the patristic texts written at the end of the Fourth and during the Fifth Century AD, dozens of times, for instance, in Jean Chrisostome [AD 345-407].

There are three forms of the word: the nominal form "parrhesia"; the verb form "parrhesia-zomai"; and there is also the word "parrhresiastes" -which is not very frequent and cannot be found in the Classical texts. Rather, you find it only in the Greco-Roman period -in Plutarch and Lucian, for example. In a dialogue of Lucian, "The Dead Come to Life, or The Fisherman", one of the characters also has the name "Parrhesiades".

"Parrhesia" is ordinarily translated into English by "free speech" (in French by "franc-parler", and in German by "Freimüthigkeit"). "Parrhesiazomai" is to use parrhesia, and the parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., is the one who speaks the truth.

In the first part of today's seminar, I would like to give a general aperçu about the meaning of the word "parrhesia", and the evolution of this meaning through Greek and Roman culture.

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Parrhesia and Frankness

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Frankness

To begin with, what is the general meaning of the word "parrhesia"?

Etymologically, "parrhesiazesthai" means "to say everything -from "pan" (everything) and "rhema" (that which is said). The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed 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. The word "parrhesia" then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks.

Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician's own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people's mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.

If we distinguish between the speaking subject (the subject of the enunciation) and the grammatical subject of the enounced, we could say that there is also the subject of the enunciandum -which refers to the held belief or opinion of the speaker. In parrhesia the speaker emphasizes the fact that he is both the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciandum -that he himself is the subject of the opinion to which he refers. The specific "speech activity" of the parrhesiastic enunciation thus takes the form: "I am the one who thinks this and that" I use the phrase "speech activity" rather than John Searle's "speech act"(or Austin's "performative utterance") in order to distinguish the parrhesiastic utterance and its commitments from the usual sorts of commitment which obtain between someone and what he or she says. For, as we shall see, the commitment involved in parrhesia is linked to a certain social situation, to a difference of status between the speaker and his audience, to the fact that the parrhesiastes says something which is dangerous to himself and thus involves a risk, and so on.

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Parrhesia and Truth

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Truth

There are two types of parrhesia which we must distinguish. First,there is a pejorative sense of the word not very far from "chattering" and which consists in saying any or everything one has in mind without qualification. This pejorative sense occurs in Plato, for example, as a characterization of the bad democratic constitution where everyone has the right to address himself to his fellow citizens and to tell them anything -even the most stupid or dangerous things for the city. This pejorative meaning is also found more frequently in Christian literature where such "bad" parrhesia is opposed to silence as a discipline or as the requisite condition for the contemplation of God. As a verbal activity which reflects every movement of the heart and mind, parrhesia in this negative sense is obviously an obstacle to the contemplation of God. Most of the time, however, parrhesia does not have this pejorative meaning in the classical texts, but rather a positive one. "parrhesiazesthai" means "to tell the truth." But does the parrhesiastes say what he thinks is true, or does he say what is really true? To my mind, the parrhesiastes says what is true because he knows that it is true; and he knows that it is true because it is really true. The parrhesiastes is not only sincere and says what is his opinion, but his opinion is also the truth. He says what he knows to be true. The second characteristic of parrhesia, then, is that there is always an exact coincidence between belief and truth.

It would be interesting to compare Greek parrhesia with the modern (Cartesian) conception of evidence. For since Descartes, the coincidence between belief and truth is obtained in a certain (mental) evidential experience. For the Greeks, however, the coincidence between belief and truth does not take place in a (mental) experience, but in a verbal activity, namely, parrhesia. It appears that parrhesia, in his Greek sense, can no longer occur in our modern epistemological framework.

I should note that I never found any texts in ancient Greek culture where the parrhesiastes seems to have any doubts about his own possession of the truth. And indeed, that is the difference between the Cartesian problem and the Parrhesiastic attitude. For before Descartes obtains indubitable clear and distinct evidence, he is not certain that what he believes is, in fact, true. In the Greek conception of parrhesia, however, there does not seem to be a problem about the acquisition of the truth since such truth-having is guaranteed by the possession of certain moral qualities:when someone has certain moral qualities, then that is the proof that he has access to truth--and viceversa. The "parrhesiastic game" presupposes that the parrhesiastes is someone who has the moral qualities which are required, first, to know the truth, and secondly, to convey such truth to others.

If there is a kind of "proof" of the sincerity of the parrhesiastes, it is his courage. The fact that a speaker says something dangerous -different from what the majority believes- is a strong indication that he is a parrhesiastes. If we raise the question of how we can know whether someone is a truth-teller, we raise two questions. First, how is it that we can know whether some particular individual is a truth-teller; and secondly, how is it that the alleged parrhesiastes can be certain that what he believes is, in fact, truth. The first question - recognizing someone as a parrhesiastes - was a very important one in Greco-Roman society, and, as we shall see, was explicitly raised and discussed by Plutarch, Galen, and others. The second skeptical question, however, is a particularly modern one which, I believe, is foreign to the Greeks.

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Parrhesia and Danger

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Danger

Someone is said to use parrhesia and merits consideration as a parrhesiastes only if there is a risk or danger for him or her in telling the truth. For instance, from the ancient Greek perspective, a grammar teacher may tell the truth to the children that he teaches, and indeed may have no doubt that what he teaches is true. But in spite of this coincidence between belief and truth, he is not a parrhesiastes. However, when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and, more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him). And that was exactly Plato's situation with Dionysius in Syracuse -concerning which there are very interesting references in Plato's Seventh Letter, and also in The Life of Dion by Plutarch. I hope we shall study these texts later.

So you see, the parrhesiastes is someone who takes a risk. Of course, this risk is not always a risk of life. When, for example, you see a friend doing something wrong and you risk incurring his anger by telling him he is wrong, you are acting as a parrhesiastes. In such a case, you do not risk your life, but you may hurt him by your remarks, and your friendship may consequently suffer for it. If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority's opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrhesia. Parrhesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the "game" of life or death.

It is because the parrhesiastes must take a risk in speaking the truth that the king or tyrant generally cannot use parrhesia; for he risks nothing.

When you accept the parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself: you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth-teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.

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Parrhesia and Criticism

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Criticism

If, during a trial, you say something which can be used against you, you may not be using parrhesia in spite of the fact that you are sincere, that you believe what you say is true, and you are endangering yourself in so speaking.

For in parrhesia the danger always comes from the fact that the said truth is capable of hurting or angering the interlocutor. Parrhesia is thus always a "game" between the one who speaks the truth and the interlocutor. The parrhesia involved, for example, may be the advice that the interlocutor should behave in a certain way, or that he is wrong in what he thinks, or in the way he acts, and so on. Or the parrhesia may be a confession to someone who exercises power over him, and is able to censure or punish him for what he has done.

So you see, the function of parrhesia is not to demonstrate the truth to someone else, but has the function of criticism: criticism of the interlocutor or of the speaker himself. "This is what you do and this is what you think; but this is what you should not do and should not think. ""This is the way you behave, but that is the way you ought to behave." "This is what I have done, and was wrong in so doing." Parrhesia is a form of criticism, either towards another or towards oneself, but always in a situation where the speaker or confessor is in a position of inferiority with respect to the interlocutor. The parrhesiastes is always less powerful than the one with whom he or she speaks. The parrhesia comes from "below", as it were, and is directed towards "above". This is why an ancient Greek would not say that a teacher or father who criticizes a child uses parrhesia. But when a philosopher criticizes a tyrant, when a citizen criticizes the majority, when a pupil criticizes his or her teacher, then such speakers may be using parrhesia.

This is not to imply, however, that anyone can use parrhesia. For although there is a text in Euripides where a servant uses parrhesia, most of the time the use of parrhesia requires that the parrhesiastes know his own genealogy, his own status; i.e., usually one must first be a male citizen to speak the truth as a parrhesiastes.

Indeed, someone who is deprived of parrhesia is in the same situation as a slave to the extent that he or she cannot take part in the political life of the city, nor play the "parrhesiastic game". In "democratic parrhesia" --where one speaks to the assembly, the ekklesia-- one must be a citizen; in fact, one must be one of the best among the citizens, possessing those specific personal, moral, and social qualities which grant one the privilege to speak.

However, the parrhesiastes risks his privilege to speak freely when he discloses a truth which threatens the majority. For it was a well-known juridical situation when Athenian leaders were exiled only because they proposed something which was opposed by the majority, or even because the assembly thought that the strong influence of certain leaders limited its own freedom. And so the assembly was, in this manner, "protected" against the truth.

That, then, is the institutional background of "democratic parrhesia"--which must be distinguished from that "monarchic parrhesia" where an advisor gives the sovereign honest and helpful advice.

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Parrhesia and Duty

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Duty

The last characteristic of parrhesia is this: in parrhesia, telling the truth is regarded as a duty. The orator who speaks the truth to those who cannot accept his truth, for instance, and who may be exiled, or punished in some way, is free to keep silent. No one forces him to speak; but he feels that it is his duty to do so. When, on the other hand, someone is compelled to tell the truth (as, for example, under duress of torture), then his discourse is not a parrhesiastic utterance. A criminal who is forced by his judges to confess his crime does not use parrhesia. But if he voluntarily confesses his crime to someone else out of a sense of moral obligation, then he performs a parrhesiastic actto criticize a friend who does not recognize his wrongdoing, or insofar as it is a duty towards the city to help the king to better himself as a sovereign. Parrhesia is thus related to freedom and to duty.

To summarize the foregoing, parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, 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 flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

That, then, quite generally; is the positive meaning of the word "parrhesia" in most of the Greek texts where it occurs from the Fifth Century BC to the Fifth Century AD.

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The Evolution of the Word "parrhesia

Foucault.info | The Evolution of the Word "parrhesia

Now what I would like to do in this seminar is not to study and analyze all the dimensions and features of parrhesia, but rather to show and to emphasize some aspects of the evolution of the parrhesiastic game in ancient culture (from the Fifth Century BC) to the beginnings of Christianity. And I think that we can analyze this evolution from three points of view.

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Parrhesia and Rhetoric

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Rhetoric

The first concerns the relationship of parrhesia to rhetoric — a relationship which is problematic even in Euripides.

In the Socratic-Platonic tradition, parrhesia and rhetoric stand in a strong opposition; and this opposition appears very clearly in the Gorgias, for example, where the word "parrhesia" occurs. The continuous long speech is a rhetorical or sophistical device, whereas the dialogue through questions and answers is typical for parrhesia; i.e., dialogue is a major technique for playing the parrhesiastic game.

The opposition of parrhesia and rhetoric also runs through the Phaedrus—where, as you know, the main problem is not about the nature of the opposition between speech and writing, but concerns the difference between the logos which speaks the truth and the logos which is not capable of such truth-telling. This opposition between parrhesia and rhetoric, which is so clear-cut in the Fourth Century BC throughout Plato's writings, will last for centuries in the philosophical tradition. In Seneca, for example, one finds the idea that personal conversations are the best vehicle for frank speaking and truth-telling insofar as one can dispense, in such conversations, with the need for rhetorical devices and ornamentation. And even during the Second Century AD the cultural opposition between rhetoric and philosophy is still very clear and important.

However, one can also find some signs of the incorporation of parrhesia within the field of rhetoric in the work of rhetoricians at the beginning of the Empire. In Quintillian's Institutio Oratoria, for example (Book IX, Chapter II), Quintillian explains that some rhetorical figures are specifically adapted for intensifying the emotions of the audience; and such technical figures he calls by the name "exclamatio". Related to these exclamations is a kind of natural exclamation which, Quintillian notes, is not "simulated or artfully designed." This type of natural exclamation he calls "free speech" [libera oratione] which, he tells us, was called "license" [licentia] by Cornificius, and "parrhesia" by the Greeks. Parrhesia is thus a sort of "figure" among rhetorical figures, but with this characteristic: that it is without any figure since it is completely natural. Parrhesia is the zero degree of those rhetorical figures which intensify the emotions of the audience.

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Parrhesia and Politics

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Politics

The second important aspect of the evolution of parrhesia is related to the political field. As it appears in Euripides plays and also in the texts of the Fourth Century BC, parrhesia is an essential characteristic of Athenian democracy.

Of course, we still have to investigate the role of parrhesia in the Athenian constitution. But we can say quite generally that parrhesia was a guideline for democracy as well as an ethical and personal attitude characteristic of the good citizen. Athenian democracy was defined very explicitly as a constitution (politeia) in which people enjoyed demokratia, isegoria (the equal right of speech), isonomia (the equal participation of all citizens in the exercise of power), and parrhesia. Parrhesia, which is a requisite for public speech, takes place between citizens as individuals, and also between citizens construed as an assembly. Moreover, the agora is the place where parrhesia appears.

During the Hellenistic period this political meaning changes with the rise of the Hellenic monarchies. Parrhesia now becomes centered in the relationship between the sovereign and his advisors or court men. In the monarchic constitution of the state, it is the advisor's duty to use parrhesia to help the king with his decisions, and to prevent him from abusing his power. Parrhesia is necessary and useful both for the king and for the people under his rule.

The sovereign himself is not a parrhesiastes, but a touchstone of the good ruler is his ability to play the parrhesiastic game. Thus, a good king accepts everything that a genuine parrhesiastes tells him, even if it turns out to be unpleasant for him to hear criticism of his decisions. A sovereign shows himself to be a tyrant if he disregards his honest advisors, or punishes them for what they have said. The portrayal of a sovereign by most Greek historians takes into account the way he behaves towards his advisors—as if such behavior were an index of his ability to hear the parrhesiastes.

There is also a third category of players in the monarchic parrhesiastic game, viz., the silent majority: the people in general who are not present at the exchanges between the king and his advisors, but to whom, and on behalf of whom, the advisors refer when offering advice to the king.

The place where parrhesia appears in the context of monarchic rule is the king's court, and no longer the agora.

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Parrhesia and Philosophy

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Philosophy

Finally, parrhesia's evolution can be traced through its relation to the field of philosophy--regarded as an art of life (techne tou biou).

In the writings of Plato, Socrates appears in the role of the parrhesiastes. Although the word "parrhesia" appears several times in Plato, he never uses the word "parrhesiastes"-- a word which only appears later as part of the Greek vocabulary. And yet the role of Socrates is typically a parrhesiastic one, for he constantly confronts Athenians in the street and, as noted in the Apology, points out the truth to them, bidding them to care for wisdom, truth, and the perfection of their souls. And in the Alcibiades Majoras well, Socrates assumes a parrhesiastic role in the dialogue.

For whereas Alcibiades friends and lovers all flatter him in their attempt to obtain his favors, Socrates risks provoking Alcibiades anger when he leads him to this idea: that before Alcibiades will be able to accomplish what he is so set on achieving, viz., to become the first among the Athenians to rule Athens and become more powerful than the King of Persia, before he will be able to take care of Athens, he must first learn to take care of himself.

Philosophical parrhesia is thus associated with the theme of the care of oneself (epimeleia heautou).

By the time of the Epicureans, parrhesia's affinity with the care of oneself developed to the point where parrhesia itself was primarily regarded as a techne of spiritual guidance for the "education of the soul". Philodemus [110-140 BC], for example (who, with Lucretius [99-55 BC], was one of the most significant Epicurian writers during the First Century BC), wrote a book about parrhesia which concern technical practices useful for teaching and helping one another in the Epicurean community. We shall examine some of these parrhesiastic technique as they developed in, for example, the Stoic philosophies of Epictetus, Seneca, and others.

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Parrhesia in the Tragedies of Euripides

Foucault.info | Parrhesia in the Tragedies of Euripides

Today I would like to begin analyzing the first occurrences of the word "parrhesia" in Greek literature, as the word appears in the following six tragedies of Euripides: (1) Phoenician women; (2) Hippolytus; (3) The Bacchae; (4) Electra; (5) Ion; (6) Orestes.

In the first four plays, parrhesia does not constitute an important topic or motif; but the word itself generally occurs within a precise context which aids our understanding of its meaning. In the last two plays—Ion and Orestes-parrhesia does assume a very important role. Indeed, I think that Ion is entirely devoted to the problem of parrhesia since it pursues the question: who has the right, the duty, and the courage to speak the truth? This parrhesiastic problem in Ion is raised in the framework of the relations between the gods and human beings. In Orestes-which was written ten years later, and therefore is one of Euripides’ last plays --the role of parrhesia is not nearly as significant. And yet the play still contains a parrhesiastic scene which warrants attention insofar as it is directly related to political issues that the Athenians were then raising. Here, in this parrhesiastic scene, there is a transition regarding the question of parrhesia as it occurs in the context of human institutions. Specifically, parrhesia is seen as both a political and a philosophical issue.

Today, then, I shall first try to say something about the occurrences of the word "Parrhesia" in the first four plays mentioned in order to throw some more light on the meaning of the word. And then I shall attempt a global analysis of Ion as the decisive parrhesiastic play where we see human beings taking upon themselves the role of truthtellers—a role which the gods are no longer able to assume.

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The Phoenician Women [c.411-409 BC]

Foucault.info | The Phoenician Women [c.411-409 BC]

Consider, first, The Phoenician Women. The major theme of this play concerns the fight between Oedipus’ two sons: Eteocles and Polyneices. Recall that after Oedipus’ fall, in order to avoid their father’s curse that they should divide his inheritance "’by sharpened steel", Eteocles and Polyneices make a pact to rule over Thebes alternately, year by year, with Eteocles (who was older) reigning first. But after his initial year of reign, Eteocles refuses to hand over the crown and yield power to his brother, Polyneices. Eteocles thus represents tyranny, and Polyneices—who lives in exile—represents the democratic regime. Seeking his share of his father’s crown, Polyneices returns with an army of Argives in order to overthrow Eteocles and lay siege to the city of Thebes. It is in the hope of avoiding this confrontation that Jocasta—the mother of Polyneices and Eteocles, and the wife and mother of Oedipus—persuades her two sons to meet in a truce. When Polyneices arrives for this meeting, Jocasta asks him about his suffering during the time he was exiled from Thebes. ‘Is it really hard to be exiled’ asks Jocasta. And Polyneices answers, "worse than anything" And when Jocasta asks why exile is so hard, Polyneices replies that it is because one cannot enjoy parrhesia: IOCASTA: This above all I long to know: What is an exile’s life? Is it great misery?

POLYNEICES: The greatest; worse in reality than in report.

JOCASTA: Worse in what way? What chiefly galls an exile’s heart?

POLYNEICES: The worst is this: right of free speech does not exist.

IOCASTA: That’s a slave’s life—to be forbidden to speak one’s mind.

POLYNEICES: One has to endure the idiocy of those who rule.

IOCASTA: To join fools in their foolishness—that makes one sick.

POLYNEICES: One finds it pays to deny nature and be a slave.

As you can see from these few lines, parrhesia is linked, first of all, to Polyneices’ social status. For if you are not a regular citizen in the city, if you are exiled, then you cannot use parrhesia. That is quite obvious. But something else is also implied, viz., that if you do not have the right of free speech, you are unable to exercise -any kind of power- and thus you are in the same situation as a slave. Further: if such citizens cannot use parrhesia, they cannot oppose a ruler’s power. And without the right of criticism, the power exercised by a sovereign is without limitation.

Such power without limitation is characterized by Jocasta as "joining fool in their foolishness". For power without limitation is directly related to madness. The man who exercises power is wise only insofar as there exists someone who can use parrhesia to criticize him, thereby putting some limit to his power, to his command.

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Hippolytus [428 BC]

Foucault.info | Hippolytus [428 BC]

The second passage from Euripides I want to quote comes from Hyppolitus. As you know, the play is about Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus. And the passage concerning parrhesia occurs just after Phaedra’s confession: when Phaedra , early on in the play, confesses her love for Hippolytus to her nurse (without, however, actually saying his name).

But the word "parrhesia" does not concern this confession, but refers to something quite different. For just after her confession of her love for Hippolytus, Phaedra speaks of those noble and high-born women from royal households who first brought shame upon their own family, upon their husband and children, by committing adultery with other men. And Phaedra says she does not want to do the same since she wants her sons to live in Athens, proud of their mother, and exercising parrhesia. And she claims that if a man is conscious of a stain in his family, he becomes a slave: PHAEDRA: I will never be known to bring dishonor on my husband or my children. I want my two sons to go back and live in glorious Athens, hold their heads high there, and speak their minds there like free men , honored for their mother’s name.

One thing can make the most bold-spirited man a slave: to know the secret of a parent’s shameful act.

In this text we see, once again, a connection between the lack of parrhesia and slavery. For if you cannot speak freely because you are of dishonor in your family, then you are enslaved. Also, citizenship by itself does not appear to be sufficient to obtain and guarantee exercise of free speech. Honor, a good reputation for oneself and one’s family, is also needed before one can freely address the people of the city. Parrhesia thus requires both moral and social qualifications which come from a noble birth and a respectful reputation.

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The Bacchae [c.407-406 BC]

Foucault.info | The Bacchae [c.407-406 BC]

In The Bacchae there is a very short passage, a transitional moment, where the word appears. One of Pentheus’ servants -a herdsman and messenger to the king- has come to report about the confusion and disorder the Maenads are generating in the community, and the fantastic deeds they are committing. But, as you know, it is an old tradition that messengers who bring glad tidings are rewarded for the news they convey, whereas those who bring bad news are exposed to punishment. And so the king’s servant is very reluctant to deliver his ill tidings to Pentheus. But he asks the king whether he may use parrhesia and tell him everything he knows, for he fears the king’s wrath. And Pentheus promises that he will not get into trouble so long as he speaks the truth.

HERDSMAN: I have seen the holy Bacchae, who like a flight of spears went streaming bare-limbed, frantic, out of the city gate. I have come with the intention of telling you, my lord, and the city, of their strange and terrible doings--things beyond all wonder. But first I would learn whether I may speak freely of what is going on there, or if I should trim my words. I fear your hastiness, my lord, your anger, your too potent royalty.

PENTHEUS: From me fear nothing. Say all that you have to say; anger should not grow hot against the innocent. The more dreadful your story of these Bacchic rites, the heavier punishment I will inflict upon this man who enticed our women to their evil ways.

These lines are interesting because they show a case where the parrhesiastes, the one "who speaks the truth " is not an entirely free man, but a servant to the king —one who cannot use parrhesia if the king is not wise enough to enter into the parrhesiastic game and grant him permission to speak openly. For if the king lacks self-mastery, if he is carried away by his passions and gets mad at the messenger then he does not hear the truth, and will also be a bad ruler for the city. But Pentheus, as a wise king, offers his servant what we can call a "parrhesiastic contract."

The "parrhesiastic contract"—which became relatively important in the political life of rulers in the Greco-Roman world—consists in the following. The sovereign, the ones who has power but lacks the truth, addresses himself to the one who has the truth but lacks power, and tells him : if you tell me the truth, no matter what this truth turns out to be, you won’t be punished; and those who are responsible for any injustices will be punished, but not those who speak the truth about such injustices. This idea of the "Parrhesiastic contract" became associated with parrhesia as a special privilege granted to the best and most honest citizens of the city. Of course, the parrhesiastic contract between Pentheus and his messenger is only a moral obligation since it lacks all institutional foundation.

As the kings servant, the messenger is still quite vulnerable, and still takes a risk in speaking. But, although he is courageous, he is also not reckless, and is cautious about the consequences of what he might say. The "contract" is intended to limit the risk he takes in speaking.

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Electra [415 BC]

Foucault.info | Electra [415 BC]

In Electra the word "parrhesia" occurs in the confrontation between Electra and her mother, Clytemnestra. I do not need to remind you of this famous story, but only to indicate that prior to the moment in the play when the word appears, Orestes has just killed the tyrant Aegisthus—Clytemnestra’s lover and co murderer (with Clytemnestra) of Agamemnon (Clytenmestra’s husband and father to Orestes and Electra). But right before Clytemnestra appears on the scene, Orestes hides himself and Aegisthus’ body. So when Clytemnestra makes her entry, she is not aware of what has just transpired, i.e., she does not know that Aegisthus has just been killed. And her entry is very beautiful and solemn, for she is riding in a royal chariot surrounded by the most beautiful of the captive maidens of Troy —all of whom are now her slaves. And Electra, who is there when her mother arrives, also behaves like a slave in order to hide the fact that the moment of revenge for her father’s death is at hand. She is also there to insult Clytemnestra, and to remind her of her crime. This dramatic scene gives way to a confrontation between the two. A discussion begins, and we have two parallel speeches, both equally long (forty lines), the first one by Clytemnestra, and the second by Electra.

Clytemnestra’s speech begins with the words "-------"—“I will speak”[l. 1013] And she proceeds to tell the truth, confessing that she killed Agamemnon as a punishment for the sacrificial death of her daughter, Iphigeneia. Following this speech, Electra replies, beginning with the symmetrical formulation "-----------" —“then, I will speak”[l. 1060]. In spite of this symmetry, however, there is a clear difference between the two. For at the end of her speech, Clytemnestra addresses Electra directly and says to her, “use your parrhesia to prove that I was wrong to kill your father": CLYTEMNESTRA: ... I killed him. I took the only way open to me—turned for help to his enemies. Well, what could I do?

None of your father’s friends would have helped me murder him. So, if you’re anxious to refute me, do it now; speak freely; prove your father’s death not justified.

And, after the Chorus speaks, Electra replies, ‘Do not forget your latest words, mother. You gave me parrhesia towards you’: ELECTRA: Mother, remember what you said just now. You promised that I might state my opinion freely without fear

And Clytemnestra answers: "I said so, daughter, and I meant it" [l.1057]

But Electra is still wary and cautious, for she wonders whether her mother will listen to her only to hurt her afterwards: ELECTRA: Do you mean you’ll listen first, and get your own back afterwards?

CLYTEMNESTRA: No, no; you’re free to say what your heart wants to say.

ELECTRA: I’ll say it, then. This is where I’ll begin ...

And Electra proceeds to speak openly, blaming her mother for what she has done.

There is another asymmetrical aspect between these two discourses which concerns the difference in status of the two speakers. For Clytemnestra is the queen, and does not use or require parrhesia to plead for her own defense in killing Agamemnon. But Electra—who is in the situation of a slave, who plays the role of a slave in this scene, who can no longer live in her father’s house under her father’s protection, and who addresses her mother just as a servant would address the queen—Electra needs the right of parrhesia.

And so another parrhesiastic contract is drawn between Clytemnestra and Electra: Clytemnestra promises she will not punish Electra for her frankness just as Pentheus promised his messenger in The Bacchae. But in Electra, the parrhesiastic contract is subverted. It is not subverted by Clytemnestra (who, as the queen, still has the power to punish Electra); it is subverted by Electra herself. Electra asks her mother to promise her that she will not be punished for speaking frankly, and Clytemnestra makes such a promise—without knowing that she, Clytemnestra herself, will be punished for her confession. For, a few minutes later, she is subsequently killed by her children, Orestes and Electra. Thus the parrhesiastic contract is subverted: the one who was granted the privilege of parrhesia is not hammed, but the one who granted the right of parrhesia is—and by the very person who, in the inferior position, was asking for parrhesia. The parrhesiastic contract became a subversive trap for Clytemnestra.

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Electra [415 BC]

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Ion [c.418-4171]

Foucault.info | Ion [c.418-4171]

We turn now to Ion, a parrhesiastic play.

The mythological framework of the play involves the legendary founding of Athens. According to Attic myth, Erectheus was the first king of Athens-born a son of Earth and returning to Earth in death. Erectheus thus personifies that of which the Athenians were so proud, viz., their autochtony: that they literally were sprung from Athenian soil . In 418 B. C. , about the time when this play was written, such mythological reference had political meaning. For Euripides wanted to remind his audience that the Athenians are native to Athenian soil; but through the character of Xuthus (husband to Erectheus’ daughter Creusa, and a foreigner to Athens since he comes from Phithia), Euripides also wanted to indicate to his audience that the Athenians are related, through this marriage, to the people of the Peloponese, and specifically to Achaia—named from one of the sons of Xuthus and Creusa: Achaeus. For Euripides’ account of the Pan-Hellenic nature of Athenian genealogy makes Ion the son of Apollo and Creusa (daughter to Athens ancient king Eretheus). Creusa later marries Xuthus (who was an ally of the Athenians in their war against the Euboeans [ls. 58-62]. Two sons are born from this marriage: Dorus and Achaeus. Ion was said to be the founder of the Ionic people; Dorus, the founder of the Dorians; and Achaeus, the founder of the Achaeans.

Thus all of the ancestors of the Greek race are depicted as descended from the royal house of Athens.

Euripides’ reference to Creusa’s relationship with Apollo, as well as his placement of the play’s setting at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, is meant to exhibit the close relationship between Athens and Phoebus Apollo: the panHellenic god of the Delphic sanctuary. For at the historical moment of the play’s production in ancient Greece, Athens was trying to forge a pan-Hellenic coalition against Sparta. Rivalry existed between Athens and Delphi since the Delphic priests were primarily on the side of the Spartans. But, to put Athens in the favorable position of leader of the Hellenic world, Euripides wished to emphasize the relations of mutual parenthood between the two cities.

These mythological genealogies, then, are meant, in part, to justify Athens’ imperialistic politics towards other Greek cities at a time when Athenian leaders still thought an Athenian empire was possible.

I shall not focus on the political and mytholo-gical aspects of the play, but on the theme of the shift of the place of truth’s disclosure from Delphi to Athens. As you know, the oracle at Delphi was supposed to be the place in Greece where human beings were told the truth by the gods through the utterances of the Pythia. But in this play we see a very explicit shift from the oracular truth at Delphi to Athens: Athens becomes the Place where truth now appears.

And, as a part of this shift, truth is no longer disclosed by the gods to human beings (as at Delphi), but is disclosed to human beings by human beings through Athenian parrhesia.

Euripides’ Ion is a play praising Athenian auto-chtony, and affirming blood-affinity with most other Greek states; but it is primarily a story of the movement of truth-telling from Delphi to Athens, from Phoebus Apollo to the Athenian Citizen. And that is the reason why I think the play is the story of parrhesia: the decisive Greek parrhesiastic play.

Now I would like to give the following schematic aperçu of the play:

SILENCE

TRUTH

DECEPTION

Delphi

Athens

Foreign countries

Apollo

Erectheus

Xuthus

Ion & Creusa

We shall see that Apollo keeps silent throughout the drama; that Juthus is deceived by the god, but is also a deceiver. And we shall also see how Creusa and Ion both speak the truth against Apollo’s silence, for only they are

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Ion [c.418-4171]

connected to the Athenian earth which endows them with parrhesia.

1. Hermes’ Prologue I would first like to briefly recount the events, given in Hermes’ prologue, which have taken place before the play begins.

After the death of Erectheus’ other children (Cecrops, Orithyia, and Procris), Creusa is the only surviving offspring of the Athenian dynasty. One day, as a young girl, while picking yellow flowers by the Long Rocks, Apollo rapes or seduces her.

Is it a rape or a seduction? For the Greeks, the difference is not as crucial as it is for us. Clearly, when someone rapes a woman, a girl, or boy, he uses physical violence; whereas when someone seduces another, he uses words, his ability to speak, his superior status, and so on. For the Greeks, using one’s psychological, social, or intellectual abilities to seduce another person is not so different from using physical violence. Indeed, from the perspective of the law, seduction was considered more criminal than rape. For when someone is raped, it is against his or her will but when someone is seduced, then that constitutes the proof that at a specific moment, the seduced individual chose to be unfaithful to his or her wife or husband, or parents or family. Seduction was considered more of an attack against a spouse’s power, or a family’s power, since the one who was seduced chose to act against the wishes of his or her spouse, parents, or family.

In any case, Creusa is raped or seduced by Apollo, and she becomes pregnant. And when she is about to give birth, she returns to the place where she was led by Apollo, viz., a cave beneath Athens’ acropolis — beneath the Mount of Pallas under the center of the Athenian city. And here she hides herself until, all alone, she gives birth to a son .

But because she does not want her father, Erectheus, to find out about the child (for she was ashamed of what happened), she exposes it, leaving the child to wild beasts. Apollo then sends his brother, Hermes, to bring the child, his cradle and clothes, to the temple at Delphi. And the boy is raised as a servant of the god in the sanctuary; and he is regarded as a foundling. For no one in Delphi (except Apollo himself) knows who he is or where he comes from; and Ion himself does not know. Ion thus appears, on the schema I outlined, between Delphi and Athens, Apollo and Creusa . For he is the son of Apollo and Creusa, and was born in Athens but lives his life in Delphi.

In Athens, Creusa does not know whatever became of her child; and she wonders whether it is dead or alive. Later she marries Xuthus, a foreigner whose alien presence immensely complicates the continuity of autochtony—which is why it is so important for Creusa to have an heir with Xuthus. However, after their marriage, Xuthus and Creusa were unable to have any children. At the end of the play, the birth of Dorus and Achaeus are promised to them by Apollo; but at the beginning of the play they remain childless, even though they desperately need children to endow Athens with dynastic continuity. And so both of them come to Delphi to ask Apollo if they shall ever have children. And so the play begins.

2. Apollo’s Silence But, of course, Creusa and Xuthus do not have exactly the same question to ask the god Apollo. Xuthus’ question is very clear and simple: I’ve never had children. Shall I have any with Creusa?’ Creusa, however, has another question to ask. She must know whether she will ever have children with Xuthus. But she also wishes to ask: ‘With you, Apollo, I had a child. And I need to know now whether he is still living or not. What, Apollo, has become of our son?’

Apollo’s temple, the oracle at Delphi, was the place where the truth was told by the gods to any mortals who came to consult it. Both Xuthus and Creusa arrive together in front of the temple door and, of course, the first person they meet is Ion-Apollo’s servant and son to Creusa. But naturally Creusa does not recognize her son, nor does Ion recognize his mother. They are strangers to one another, just as Oedipus and Jocasta were initially in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.

Remember that Oedipus was also saved from death in spite of the will of his mother. And he, too, was unable to recognize his real father and mother. The structure of Ion’s plot is somewhat similar to the Oedipus story. But the dynamics of truth in the two plays are exactly reversed.

For in Oedipus the King, Phoebus Apollo speaks the truth from the very beginning, truthfully foretelling what will happen. And human beings are the ones who continually hide from or avoid seeing the truth, trying to escape the destiny foretold by the god. But in the end, through the signs Apollo has given them, Oedipus and Jocasta discover file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/06.ion.html (2 of 7)19/5/2005 10:19:13 πμ

Ion [c.418-4171]

the truth in spite of themselves. In the present play, human beings are trying to discover the truth: Ion wants to know who he is and where he comes from; Creusa wants to know the fate of her son. Yet it is Apollo who voluntarily conceals the truth. The Oedipal problem of truth is resolved by showing how mortals, in spite of their own blindness, will see the light of truth which is spoken by the god, and which they do not wish to see. The Ionic problem of truth is resolved by showing how human beings, in spite of the silence of Apollo, will discover the truth they are so eager to know.

The theme of god’s silence prevails throughout Ion. It appears at the beginning of the tragedy when Creusa encounters Ion. Creusa is still ashamed of what happened to her, so she speaks to Ion as if she had come to consult the oracle for her ‘friend’. She then tells him part of her own story, attributing it to her alleged girlfriend, and asks him whether he thinks Apollo will give her ‘friend’ an answer to her questions. As a good servant to the god, Ion tells her that Apollo will not give an answer. For if he has done what Creusa’s ‘friend’ claims, then he will be too ashamed: ION: ... is Apollo to reveal what he intends should remain a mystery?

CREUSA: Surely his oracle is open for every Greek to question?

ION: No. His honor is involved; you must respect his feelings.

CREUSA: What of his victim’s feelings? What does this involve for her?

ION: There is no one who will ask this question for you. Suppose it were proved in Apollo’s own temple that he had behaved so badly, he would be justified in making your interpreter suffer for it. My lady, let the matter drop. We must not accuse Apollo in his own court. That is what our folly would amount to, if we try to force a reluctant god to speak, to give signs in sacrifice or the flight of birds. Those ends we pursue against the gods’ will can do us little good when we gain them...

So at the very beginning of the play, Ion tells why Apollo will not tell the truth. And, in fact, he himself never answers Creusa’s questions. This is a hiding-god.

What is even more significant and striking is what occurs at the end of the play when everything has been said by the various characters of the play, and the truth is known to everyone. For everyone then waits for Apollo’s appearance —whose presence was not visible throughout the entire Play (in spite of the fact that he is a main character in the dramatic events that unfold). It was traditional in ancient Greek tragedy for the god who constituted the main divine figure to appear last. Yet, at the end of the play Apollo—the shining god-,does not appear. Instead, Athene arrives to convey his message. And she appears above the roof of the Delphic temple, for the temple doors are not open. Explaining why she has come, she says: ATHENE: ... I am your friend here as in Athens, the city whose name I bear—I am Athene! I have come in haste from Apollo.

He thought it right not to appear to you himself, lest there be reproaches openly uttered for what is past; so he sends me with this message to you. Ion, this is your mother, and Apollo is your father. Xuthus did not beget you, but Apollo gave you to him so that you might become the recognized heir of an illustrious house. When Apollo’s purpose in this matter was disclosed he contrived a way to save each of you from death at each other’s hands. His intention has been to keep the truth secret for a while, and then in Athens to reveal Creusa as your mother, and you as her son by Apollo ...

So even at this final moment, when everything has come to light, Apollo does not dare to appear and speak the truth. He hides, while Athene speaks instead. We must remember that Apollo is the prophetic god in charge of speaking the truth to mortals. Yet he is unable to play this role because he is ashamed of his guilt. Here, in Ion, silence and guilt are linked on the side of the god Apollo. In Oedipus the King, silence and guilt are linked on the side of mortals. The main motif of Ion concerns the human fight for truth against god’s silence: human beings must manage, by themselves, to discover and to tell the truth. Apollo does not speak the truth, he does not reveal what he knows perfectly well to be the case, he deceives mortals by his silence or tells pure lies, he is not courageous enough to speak himself, and he uses his power, his freedom, and his superiority to cover-up what he has done.

Apollo is the anti-Parrhesiastes.

In this struggle against god’s silence, Ion and Creusa are the two major parrhesiastic figures. But they do not play the role of the parrhesiastes in the same way. For as a male born of Athenian earth, Ion has the right to use parrhesia. Creusa, on the other hand, plays the parrhesiastic role as a woman who confesses her thoughts. I would like now to, examine these two parrhesiastic roles, noting the nature of their difference.

3. Ion’s Parrhesiastic Role First, Ion. Ion’s Parrhesiastic role is evident in the very long scene which takes place between Ion and Xuthus early on in the play. When Xuthus and Creusa came to consult the oracle, Xuthus enters the sanctuary first since he is the husband and the man. He asks Apollo his question, and the god tells him that the first person he meets when he file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/06.ion.html (3 of 7)19/5/2005 10:19:13 πμ

Ion [c.418-4171]

comes out of the temple will be his son. And, of course, the first one he meets is Ion since, as Apollo’s servant, he is always at the door of the temple. Here we have to pay attention to the Greek expression, which is not literally translated in either the French or English editions. The Greek words are: ------------ the use of the word "---------- " indicates that Ion is said to be Xuthus’s son "by nature": ION: What was Apollo’s oracle?

XUTHUS: He said, whoever met me as I came out of the temple— ION: Whoever met you—yes: what about him?

XUTHUS: —is my son!

ION: Your son by birth, or merely by gift?

XUTHUS: A gift, yes; but mine by birth too

So you see that Apollo does not give an obscure and ambiguous oracular pronouncement as he was wont to do with indiscrete questioners. The god’s answer is a pure lie. For Ion is not Xuthus’ son "by nature" or "by birth". Apollo is not an ambiguous truth-teller in this case. He is a liar. And Xuthus, deceived by Apollo, candidly believes that Ionthe first person he met-is really, by nature, his own son.

What follows is the first main parrhesiastic scene of the play, which can be divided into three parts.

The first part concerns the misunderstanding between Ion and Xuthus. Xuthus leaves the temple, sees Ion, and-in light of Apollo’s answer—believes that he is his son. Full of cheer, he goes to him and wants to kiss him . Ion— who does not know who Xuthus is, and does not know why he wants to kiss him—misunderstands Xuthus behavior and thinks that Xuthus wants to have sex with him (as any young Greek boy would if a man tried to kiss him) . Most of the commentators, if they are even willing to recognize the sexual interpretation Ion attributes to Xuthus’ behavior, say that this is a ‘comic scene ’— which sometimes occurs in Euripides’ tragedies. In any case, Ion says to Xuthus: ‘If you continue harassing me, I’ll shoot an arrow in your chest.’ This is similar to Oedipus the King, where Oedipus does not know that Laius , King of Thebes , is his father. And he also misunderstands the nature of his encounter with him; a quarrel ensues, and Laius is killed by Oedipus. But in Ion there is this reversal: Xuthus, King of Athens, does not know that Ion is not his son, and Ion does not know that Xuthus thinks that he is Ion’s father. So as a consequence of Apollo’s lies we are in a world of deception. The second part of this scene concerns the mistrust of Ion towards Xuthus. Xuthus tells Ion: ‘Take it easy; if I want to kiss you, it is because I am your father.’

But rather than rejoicing at the discovery of knowing who his father is, Ion’s first question to Xuthus is: ‘Who, then, is my mother?’. For some unknown reason, Ion’s principle concern is the knowledge of his mother’s identity. But then he asks Xuthus: ‘How can I be your son?’ And Xuthus replies: ‘I don’t know how; I refer you to the god Apollo for what he has said’. Ion then utters a very interesting line which has been completely mistranslated in the French version. The French edition translates as : ‘Come, let’s speak about something else.’ A more accurate rendition might be: "Let us try another kind of discourse." So in answer to Ion’s question of how he could be his son, Xuthus replies that he does not know, but was told as much by Apollo. And Ion tells him, in effect, then let’s try another kind of discourse more capable of telling the truth: ION: How could I be yours?

XUTHUS: Apollo, not I, has the answer.

ION (after a pause): Let us try another tack XUTHUS: Yes, that will help us more.

Abandoning the oracular formulation of the god, Xuthus and Ion take up an inquiry involving the exchange of questions and answers. As the inquirer, Ion questions Xuthus-his alleged father-to try to discover with whom, when, and how it was possible for him to have a child such that Ion might be his son. And Xuthus answers him: ‘Well, I think I had sex with a Delphian girl.’ When? ‘Before I was married to Creusa.’ Where? Maybe in Delphi.’ How? ‘One day when I was drunk while celebrating the Dionysian torch feast.’ And of course, as an explanation of Ions birth, this entire train of thought is pure baloney; but they take this inquisitive method seriously, and try, as best they can, to discover the truth by their own means-led as they are by Apollo’s lies. Following this inquiry, Ion rather reluctantly and unenthusiastically accepts Xuthus’ hypothesis: he considers himself to be Xuthus’ son.

The third part of the parrhesiastic scene between Xuthus and Ion concerns Ion’s political destiny, and his potential political misfortunes if he arrives in Athens as the son and heir of Xuthus . For after persuading Ion that he is his son, Xuthus promises to bring Ion back to Athens where, as the son of a king, he would be rich and powerful. But Ion is not very enthusiastic about this prospect; for he knows that he would be coming to Athens as the son of Xuthus (a foreigner to Athenian earth), and with an unknown mother. And according to Athenian legislation, one cannot be a regular citizen in Athens if one is not the offspring of parents both of whom were born in Athens. So Ion tells Xuthus that he would be considered a foreigner and a bastard, i.e., as a nobody. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/06.ion.html (4 of 7)19/5/2005 10:19:13 πμ

Ion [c.418-4171]

This anxiety gives place to a long development which at first glance seems to be a digression, but which presents Euripides’ critical portrayal of Athenian political life: both in a democracy and concerning the political life of a monarch.

Ion explains that in a democracy there are three categories of citizens: (1) those Athenian citizens who have neither power nor wealth, and who hate all who are superior to them; (2) good Athenians who are capable of exercising power, because they are wise , they keep silent and do not worry about the political affairs of the city (3) those reputable men who are powerful, and use their discourse and reason to participate in public political life.

Envisioning the reactions of these three groups to his appearance in Athens as a foreigner and a bastard, Ion says that the first group will hate him; the second group, the wise, will laugh at the young man who wishes to be regarded as one of the First Citizens of Athens; and the last group, the politicians, will be jealous of their new competitor and will try to get rid of him. So coming to a democratic Athens is not a cheerful prospect for Ion. Following this portrayal of democratic life, Ion speaks of the negative aspects of a family life- with a stepmother who, herself childless, would not accept his- presence as heir to the Athenian throne. But then Ion returns to the political picture, giving his portrayal of the life of a monarch: ION: ...As for being a king, it is overrated. Royalty conceals a life of torment behind a pleasant façade. To live in hourly fear, looking over your shoulder for the assassins—is that paradise? Is it even good fortune? Give me the happiness of a plain man, not the life of a king, who loves to fill his court with criminals, and hates honest men for fear of death. You may tell me the pleasure of being rich outweighs everything. But to live surrounded by scandal, holding on to your money with both hands, beset by worry—has no appeal for me.

These two descriptions of Athenian democratic life and the life of a monarch seem quite out of place in this scene, for Ion’s problem is to discover who his mother is so as to arrive in Athens without shame or anxiety. We must find a reason for the inclusion of these two portrayals.

The play continues and Xuthus tells Ion not to worry about his life in Athens, and for the time being proposes that Ion pretend to be a visiting houseguest and not disclose the ‘fact’ that he is Xuthus’ son. Later on, when a suitable time arrives, Xuthus proposes to make Ion his inheritor; for now, nothing will be said to Creusa. Ion would like to come to Athens as the real successor to the second dynastic family of Erectheus, but what Xuthus proposes—for him to pretend to be a visitor to the city—does not address Ion’s real concerns. So the scene seems crazy, makes no sense. Nonetheless, Ion accepts Xuthus’s proposal but claims that without knowing who his mother is, life will be impossible: ION: Yes, I will go. But one piece of good luck eludes me still: unless I find my mother, my life is worthless.

Why is it impossible for Ion to live without finding his mother? He continues : ION: ... If I may do so, I pray my mother is Athenian, so that through her I may have rights of speech . For when a stranger comes into the city of pure blood, though in name a citizen, his mouth remains a slave: he has no right of speech.

So you see, Ion needs to know who his mother is so as to determine whether she is descended from the Athenian earth; for only thus will he be endowed with parrhesia. And he explains that someone who comes to Athens as a foreigner—even if he is literally and legally considered a citizen-still cannot enjoy parrhesia. What, then, does the seemingly digressive critical portrayal of democratic and monarchic life mean, culminating as they do in this final reference to parrhesia just when Ion accepts Xuthus’ offer to return with him to Athens-especially given the rather obscure terms Xuthus proposes?

The digressive critical portrayals Ion gives of democracy and monarchy (or tyranny) are easy to recognize as typical instances of parrhesiastic discourse. For you can find almost exactly the same sorts of criticisms later on coming from Socrates’ mouth in the works of either Plato or Xenophon. Similar critiques are given later by Isocrates. So the critical depiction of democratic and monarchic life as presented by Ion is part of the constitutional character of the parrhesiastic individual in Athenian political life at the end of the Fifth and the beginning of the Fourth Centuries.

Ion is just such a parrhesiastes, i.e., the sort individual who is so valuable to democracy or monarchy since he is courageous enough to explain either to the demos or to the king just what the shortcomings of their life really are.

Ion is a parrhesiastic individual and shows himself to be such both in these small digressive political critiques, as well as afterwards when he states that he needs to know whether his mother is an Athenian since he needs parrhesia. For despite the fact that it is in the nature of his character to be a parrhesiastes, he cannot legally or institutionally use this natural parrhesla with which he is endowed if his mother is not Athenian. Parrhesia is thus file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/06.ion.html (5 of 7)19/5/2005 10:19:13 πμ

Ion [c.418-4171]

not a right given equally to all Athenian citizens, but only to those who are especially prestigious through their family and their birth. And Ion appears as a man who is, by nature, a parrhesiastic individual, yet who is, at the same time, deprived of the right of free speech.

And why is this parrhesiastic figure deprived of his parrhesiastic right? Because the god Apollo—the prophetic god who’s duty it is to speak the truth to mortals-is not courageous enough to disclose his own faults and to act as a parrhesiastes. In order for Ion to conform to his nature and to play the parrhesiastic role in Athens, something more is needed which he lacks but which will be given to him by the other parrhesiastic figure in the play, viz., his mother, Creusa. And Creusa will be able to tell him the truth, thus freeing her parrhesiastic son to use his natural parrhesia.

4. Creusa’s Parrhesiastic Role Creusa’s parrhesiastic role in the play is quite different from Ion’s; for as a woman, Creusa will not use parrhesia to speak the truth about Athenian political life to the king, but rather to publicly accuse Apollo for his misdeeds.

For when Creusa is told by the Chorus that Xuthus alone has been given a son by Apollo, she realizes that not only will she not find the son she is searching for, but also that when she returns to Athens she will have in her own home a step-son who is a foreigner to the city, yet who will nonetheless succeed Xuthus as king. And for these two reasons she is infuriated not only against her husband, but especially against Apollo. For after being raped by Apollo, and deprived by him of her son, to learn that now she will also not have her questions answered while Xuthus receives a son from the god-this proves to be too much for her to take. And her bitterness, her despair, and her anger bursts forth in an accusation made against Apollo: she decides to speak the truth. Truth thus comes to light as an emotional reaction to the god’s injustice and his lies.

In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, mortals do not accept Apollo’s prophetic utterances since their truth seems incredible; and yet they are led to the truth of the god’s words in spite of their efforts to escape the fate that has been, foretold by him. In Euripides’ Ion, however, mortals are led to the truth in the face of the gods lies or silence, in spite of the fact that they are deceived by Apollo. As a consequence of Apollo’s lies, Creusa believes that Ion is Xuthus’ natural son. But in her emotional reaction to what she thinks is true, she ends by disclosing the truth.

Creusa’s main parrhesiastic scene consists of two parts which differ in their poetic structure and in the type of parrhesia manifested. The first part takes the form of a beautiful long speech-a tirade against Apollo-while the second part is in the form of a stichomythia, i.e., involves a dialogue between Creusa and her servant consisting of alternate lines, one after the other.

First, the tirade. Creusa appears at this moment in front of the temple steps accompanied by an old man who is a trusted servant of the family (and who remains silent during Creusa’s speech). Creusa’s tirade against Apollo is that form of parrhesia where someone publicly accuses another of a crime, or of a fault, or of an injustice that has been committed. And this accusation is an instance of parrhesia insofar as the one who is accused is more powerful than the one who accuses. For there is the danger that because of the accusation made, the accused may retaliate in some way against his or her accuser. So Creusa’s parrhesia first takes the form of a public reproach or criticism against a being to whom she is inferior in power, and upon whom she is in a relation of dependence. It is in this vulnerable situation that Creusa decides to make her accusation: CREUSA: 0 my heart, how be silent? Yet how can I speak of that secret love, strip myself of all shame? is one barrier left still to prevent me? Whom have I now as my rival in virtue? Has not my husband become my betrayer? I am cheated of home, cheated of children, hopes are gone which I could not achieve, the hopes of arranging things well by hiding the facts, by hiding the birth which brought sorrow. No! No! But I swear by the starry abode of Zeus, by the goddess who reigns on our peaks and by the sacred shore of the lake of Tritonis, I will no longer conceal it: when I have put away the burden, my heart will be easier. Tears fall from my eyes, and my spirit is sick, evilly plotted against by men and gods; I will expose them, ungrateful betrayers of women.

0 you who give the seven-toned lyre a voice which rings out of the lifeless, rustic horn the lovely sound of the Muses’ hymns, on you, Latona’s son, here in daylight I will lay blame. You came with hair flashing gold, as I gathered into my cloak flowers ablaze with their golden light. Clinging to my pale wrists as I cried for my mother’s help you led me to bed in a cave, a god and my lover, with no shame, submitting to the Cyprian’s will. In misery I bore you a son, whom in fear of my mother I placed in chat bed where you cruelly forced me. Ah! He is lost now, snatched as food for birds, my son and yours; 0 lost! But you play the lyre, chanting your paens.

0 hear me, son of Latona, who assign your prophesies from the golden throne and the temple at the earth’s center, I will proclaim my words in your ears: you are an evil lover; though you owed no debt to my husband, you have set a son in his file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/06.ion.html (6 of 7)19/5/2005 10:19:13 πμ

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house. But my son, yes and yours, hard-hearted, is lost, carried away by birds, the cloches his mother put on him abandoned. Delos hates you and the young laurel which grows by the palm with its delicate leaves, where Latona bore you, a holy child, fruit of Zeus.

Regarding this tirade, I would like to emphasize the following three points: (1) As you can see, Creusa’s accusation is a public malediction against Apollo where, for example, the references to Apollo as Latona’s (Leto’s) son is meant to convey the thought that Apollo was a bastard: the son of Latona and Zeus . (2) There is also a clear metaphorical opposition drawn between Phoebus Apollo as the god of light with his golden brightness, who, at the same time, draws a young girl into the darkness of a cave to rape her, is the son of Latona—a divinity of the night, and so on. (3) And there is a contrast drawn between the music of Apollo, with his seven-chord lyre, and the cries and shouts of Creusa (who cries for help as Apollo’s victim, and who also must, through her shouting malediction, speak the truth the god will not utter). For Creusa delivers her accusations before the Delphic temple doors—which are closed. The divine voice is silent while Creusa proclaims the truth herself.

The second part of Creusa’s parrhesiastic scene directly follows this tirade when her old servant and guardian, who has heard all that she has said, takes up an interrogative inquiry which is exactly symmetrical to the stichomythic dialogue that occurred between Ion and Xuthus. In the same way, Creusa’s servant asks her to tell him her story while he asks her questions such as when did these events happen, where, how, and so on.

Two things are worthy of note about this exchange. First, this interrogative inquiry is the reversal of the oracular disclosure of truth. Apollo’s oracle is usually ambiguous and obscure, never answers a set of precise questions directly, and cannot proceed as an inquiry; whereas the method of question and answer brings the obscure to light.

Secondly, Creusa’ s parrhesiastic discourse is now no longer an accusation directed towards Apollo, i.e., is no longer the accusation of a woman towards her rapist; but takes the form of a self-accusation where she reveals her own faults, weaknesses, misdeeds; (exposing the child), and so forth. And Creusa confesses the events that transpired in a manner similar to Phaedra’s confession of love for Hippolytus. For like Phaedra, she also manifests the same reluctance to say everything, and manages to let her servant pronounce those aspects of her story which she does not want to confess directly — employing a somewhat indirect confessional discourse which is familiar to everyone from Euripides’ Hippolytus or Racine’s Phaedra.

In any case, I think that Creusa’s truth-telling is what we could call an instance of personal (as opposed to political) parrhesia. Ion’s Parrhesia takes the form of truthful political criticism, while Creusa’s parrhesia takes the form of a truthful accusation against another more powerful than she, and as a confession of the truth about herself.

It is the combination of the parrhesiastic figures of Ion and Creusa which makes possible the full disclosure of truth at the end of the play. For following Creusa’s parrhesiastic scene, no one except the god knows that the son Creusa had with Apollo is Ion, just as Ion does not know that Creusa is his mother and that he is not Xuthus’ son. Yet to combine the two parrhesiastic discourses requires a number of other episodes which, unfortunately, we have no time now to analyze. For example, there is the very interesting episode where Creusa—still believing that Ion is Xuthus’ natural son—tries to kill Ion; and when Ion discovers this plot, he tries to kill Creusa— a peculiar reversal of the Oedipal situation.

Regarding the schema we outlined, however, we can now see that the series of truths descended from Athens (Erectheus-Creusa-Ion) is complete at the end of the play. Xuthus, also, is deceived by Apollo to the end, for he returns to Athens still believing Ion is his natural son. And Apollo never appears anywhere in the play: he continually remains silent.

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Orestes [408 BC]

Foucault.info | Orestes [408 BC]

A final occurrence of the word "parrhesia" can be found in Euripides’ Orestes —a play written, or at least performed, in 408 BC, just a few Years before Euripides’ death, and at a moment of political crisis in Athens when there were numerous debates about the democratic regime. This text is interesting because it is the only passage in Euripides where the word "parrhesia" is used in a pejorative sense. The word occurs on line 905 and is translated here as "ignorant outspokenness. " The text in the play where the word appears is in the narrative of a messenger who has come to the royal palace at Argos to tell Electra what has happened in the Pelasgian court at Orestes’ trial.

For, as you know from Electra, Orestes and Electra have killed their mother, Clytemnestra, and thus are on trial for matricide.

The narrative I wish to quote reads as follows: "MESSENGER: ... When the full roll of citizens was present, a herald stood up and said ‘Who wishes to address the court, to say whether or not Orestes ought to die for matricide?’ At this Talthybius rose, who was your father’s colleague in the victory over Troy. Always subservient to those in power, he made an ambiguous speech, with fulsome praise of Agamemnon and cold words for your brother, twisting eulogy and censure both together—laying down a law useless to parents; and with every sentence gave ingratiating glances towards Aegisthus’ friends. Heralds are like that—their whole race have learnt to jump to the winning side; their friend is anyone who has power or a government office. Prince Diomedes spoke up next. He urged them not to sentence either you or your brother to death, but satisfy piety by banishing you. Some shouted in approval; others disagreed.

Next there stood up a man with a mouth like a running spring, a giant in impudence, an enrolled citizen, yet no Argive; a mere cat’s-paw; putting his confidence in bluster and ignorant outspokenness , and still persuasive enough to lead his hearers into trouble. He said you and Orestes should be killed with stones; yet, as he argued for your death, the words he used were not his own, but all prompted by Tyndareos.

Another rose, and spoke against him—one endowed with little beauty, but a courageous man; the sort not often found mixing in street or market-place, a manual labourer —the sole backbone of the land; shrewd, when he chose, to come to grips in argument; a man of blameless principle and integrity.

He said, Orestes son of Agamemnon should be honored with crowns for daring to avenge his father by taking a depraved and godless woman’s life —one who corrupted custom; since no man would leave his home, and arm himself, -and march to war, if wives left there in trust could be seduced by stay-at-homes, and brave men cuckolded. His words seemed sensible to honest judges; and there were no more speeches."

As you can see, the narrative starts with a reference to the Athenian procedure for criminal trials: when all the citizens are present, a herald rises and cries: "who wishes to speak?" For that is the Athenian right of equal speech (isegoria) .Two orators then speak, both of whom are borrowed from Greek mythology, from the Homeric world.

The first speaker is Talthybius, who was one of Agamemnon’s companions during the war against the Trojans; specifically, his herald. Talthybius is followed by Diomedes-one of the most famous Greek heroes, known for his unmatched courage, bravery, skill in battle, physical strength, and eloquence.

The messenger characterizes Talthybius as someone who is not completely free, but dependent upon those more powerful than he is. The Greek text states that he is "under the power of the powerful" ("subservient to those in power’). There are two other plays where Euripides criticizes this type of human being, the herald. In The Women of Troy, the very same Talthybius appears after the city of Troy has been captured by the Greek army to tell Cassandra that she is to be the concubine of Agamemnon. Cassandra gives her reply to the herald’s news by predicting that she will bring ruin to her enemies. And, as you know, Cassandra’s prophecies are always true.

Talthybius, however, does not believe her predictions. Since, as a herald, he does not know what is true (he is unable to recognize the truth of Cassandra’s utterances), but merely repeats what his master—Agamemnon—tells him to say, he thinks that Cassandra is simply mad; for he tells her: "your mind is not in the right place" ("you’re not in your right mind"). And to this Cassandra answers: CASSANDRA: ‘Servant’! You hear this servant? He’s a herald. What are heralds, then, but creatures universally loathed—lackeys and menials to governments and kings? You say my mother is destined for Odysseus’ home: what then of Apollo’s oracles, spelt out to me, that she shall die here ?

And in fact, Cassandra’s mother, Hecuba, dies in Troy. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/07.orestes.html (1 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:14 πμ

Orestes [408 BC]

In Euripides’ The Suppliant Women, there is also a discussion between an unnamed herald (who comes from Thebes) and Theseus (who is not exactly the king, but the First Citizen of Athens). When the herald enters he asks, ‘Who is the King in Athens?’ And Theseus tells him that he will not be able to find the Athenian king since there is no tyrannos in the city: THESEUS: ... This state is not subject to one man’s will, but is a free city. The king here is the people, who by yearly office govern in turn. We give no special power to wealth; the poor man’s voice commands equal authority.

This sets off an argumentative discussion about which form of government is best: monarchy or democracy ? The herald praises the monarchic regime, and criticizes democracy as subject to the whims of the rabble. Theseus’ reply is in praise of the Athenian democracy where, because the laws are written down, the poor and rich have equal rights, and where everyone is free to speak in the ekklésia: THESEUS: ... Freedom lives in this formula: ‘Who has good counsel which he would offer to the city?’ He who desires to speak wins fame; he who does not is silent. Where could greater equality be found ?

The freedom to speak is thus synonymous with democratic equality in Theseus’ eyes, which he cites in opposition to the herald-the representative of tyrannical power.

Since freedom resides in the freedom to speak the truth, Talthybius cannot speak directly and frankly at Orestes’ trial since he is not free, but dependent upon those who are more powerful than he is. Consequently, he "speaks ambiguously", utilizing a discourse which means two opposite things at the same time. So we see him praising Agamemnon (for he was Agamemnon’s herald), but also condemning Agamemnon’s son Orestes (since he does not approve of his actions) . Fearful of the power of both factions, and therefore wishing to please everybody, he speaks two-facedly; but since Aegisthus’ friends have come to power, and are calling for Orestes’ death (Aegisthus, you remember from Electra, was also killed by Orestes), in the end Talthybius condemns Orestes.

Following this negative mythological character is a positive one: Diomedes. Diomedes was famous as a Greek warrior both for his courageous exploits and for his noble eloquence: his skill in speaking, and his wisdom. Unlike Talthybius, Diomedes is independent; he says what he thinks, and proposes a moderate solution which has no political motivation: it is not a revengeful retaliation. On religious grounds, "to satisfy piety", he urges that Orestes and Electra be exiled to purify the country of Clytemnestra’s and Aegisthus’ deaths according to the traditional religious punishment for murder. But despite Diomedes’ moderate and reasonable verdict, his opinion divides the assembly: same agree, others disagree.

We then have two other speakers who present themselves. Their names are not given, they do not belong to the mythological world of Homer, they are not heroes; but from the precise description which the reporting messenger gives of them, we can see that they are two "social types". The first one (who is symmetrical to Talthybius, the bad orator) is the sort of orator who is so harmful for a democracy. And I think we should determine carefully his specific characteristics.

His first trait is that he has "a mouth like a running spring"—which translates the Greek word "athuroglossos" .

"Athuroglossos" literally refers to someone who has a tongue but not a door. Hence it implies someone who cannot shut his or her mouth.

The metaphor of the mouth, teeth, and lips as a door that is closed when one is silent is a frequent one in ancient Greek literature. It occurs in the Sixth Century BC, in Theognis’ Elegies who writes that there are too many garrulous people: Too many tongues have gates which fly apart Too easily, and care for many things That don’t concern them. Better to keep bad news Indoors, and only let the good news out

In the Second Century AD, in his essay "Concerning Talkativeness", Plutarch also writes that the teeth are a fence or gate such that "if the tongue does not obey or restrain itself, we may check its incontinence by biting it till it file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/07.orestes.html (2 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:14 πμ

Orestes [408 BC]

bleeds."

This notion of being athuroglossos, or of being athurostomia (one who has a mouth without a door), refers to someone who is an endless babbler, who cannot keep quiet, and is prone to say whatever comes to mind. Plutarch compares the talkativeness of such people with the Black Sea—which has neither doors nor gates to impede the flow of its waters into the Mediterranean: ... those who believe that storerooms without doors and purses without fastenings are of no use to their owners, yet keep their mouths without lock or door, maintaining as perpetual an outflow as the mouth of the Black Sea, appear to regard speech as the least valuable of all things. They do not, therefore, meet with belief, which is the object of all speech.

As you can see, athuroglossos is characterized by the following two traits: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. Thus Theognis states that garrulous people are unable to differentiate when one should give voice to good or bad news, or how to demarcate their own from other peoples affairs—since they indiscreetly intervene in the cares of others. (2) As Plutarch notes, when you are athuroglossos you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

Athuroglossos is thus almost synonymous with parrhesia taken in its pejorative sense, and exactly the opposite of parrhesia’s positive sense (since it is a sign of wisdom to be able to use parrhesia without falling into the garrulousness of athuroglossos). One of the problems which the parrhesiastic character must resolve, then, is how to distinguish that which must be said from that which should be kept silent. For not everyone can draw such a distinction, as the following example illustrates.

In his treatise "The Education of Children", Plutarch gives an anecdote of Theocritus, a sophist, as an example of athuroglossos and of the misfortunes incurred by intemperate speech. The king of the Macedonians, Antigonus, sent a messenger to Theocritus asking him to come to his court to engage in discussion. And it so happened that the messenger he sent was his chief cook, Eutropian. King Antigonus had also lost an eye in battle, so he was one-eyed.

Now Theocritus was not pleased to hear from Eutropian, the king’s cock, that he had to go and visit Antigonus; so he said to the cook: "I know very well that you want to serve me up raw to your Cyclops" —thus subjecting the king’s disfigurement and Eutropian’s profession to ridicule. To which the cook replied: "Then you shall not keep your head on, but you shall pay the penalty for reckless talk [athurostomia] and madness of yours." And when Eutropian reported Theocritus remark to the king, he sent and had Theocritus put to death.

As we shall see in the case of Diogenes, a really fine and courageous philosopher can use parrhesia towards a king; however, in Theocritus’ case, his frankness is not parrhesia but athurostomia since to joke about a king’s disfigurement or a cook’s profession has no noteworthy philosophical significance. Athuro-glossos or athurostomia, then, is the first trait of the third orator in the narration of Orestes’ trial.

His second trait is that he is "---------------"--"a giant in impudence". The word "------ " denotes someone’s strength, usually the physical strength which enables one to overcome others in competition. So this speaker is strong, but he is strong "--------"—which means strong not because of his reason, or his rhetorical ability to speak, or his ability to pronounce the truth, but only because he is arrogant. He is strong only by his bold arrogance.

A third characteristic: "an enrolled citizen, yet no Argive." He is not native to Argos, but comes from elsewhere and has been integrated into the city. The expression "--------------" refers to someone who has been imposed upon the members of the city as a citizen by force or by dishonorable means [What gets translated as “a mere cat’s paw”].

His fourth trait is given by the phrase "putting is confidence in bluster". He is confident in "thorubos", which refers to the noise made by a strong voice, by a scream, a clamor, or uproar. When, for instance, in battle, the soldiers scream in order to bring forth their own courage or to frighten the enemy, the Greeks used the word "thorubos". Or the tumultuous noise of a crowded assembly when the people shouted was called "thorubos". So the third orator is not confident in his ability to formulate articulate discourse, but only in his ability to generate an emotional reaction from his audience by his strong and loud voice. This direct relationship between the voice and the emotional effect it produces on the ekklésia is thus opposed to the rational sense of articulate speech.

The final characteristic of the third (negative) speaker is that he also puts his confidence in "-------------------"— "ignorant outspokenness [parrhesia]." The phrase "----------------" repeats the expression "athuroglossos", but with its political implications. For although this speaker has been imposed upon the citizenry, he nonetheless possesses parrhèsia as a formal civic right guaranteed by the Athenian constitution. What designates his parrhesia as parrhesia file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/07.orestes.html (3 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:14 πμ

Orestes [408 BC]

in its pejorative or negative sense, however, is that it lacks mathêsis —learning or wisdom. In order for parrhèsia to have positive political effects, it must now be linked to a good education, to intellectual and moral formation, to paideia or mathêsis. Only then will parrhèsia be more than thorubos or sheer vocal noise. For when speakers use parrhèsia without mathésis, when they use "------------------", the city is led into terrible situations.

You may recall a similar remark of Plato’s, in his Seventh Letter [336b], concerning the lack of mathésis. For there Plato explains that Dion was not able to succeed with his enterprise in Sicily (viz., to realize in Dionysius both a ruler of a great city and a philosopher devoted to reason and justice) for two reasons. The first is that some daimon or evil spirit may have been jealous and wanted vengeance. And secondly, Plato explains that ignorance broke out in Sicily. And of ignorance Plato says that it is "the soil in which all manner of evil to all men takes root and flourishes and later produces a fruit most bitter for those who sowed it.

The characteristics, then, of the third speaker—a certain social type employs parrhesia in its pejorative sense—are these: he is violent, passionate, a foreigner to the city, lacking in mathêsis, and therefore dangerous.

And now we come to the fourth, and final speaker at Orestes’ trial. He is analogous to Diomedes: what Diomedes was in the Homeric world, this last orator is in the political world of Argos. An exemplification of the positive parrhesiastes as a "social type", he has the following traits.

The first is that he is "one endowed with little beauty, but a courageous man". Unlike a woman, he is not fair to look at, but a "manly man", i.e., a courageous man. For the Greeks, the courage is a virile quality which women were said not to possess.

Secondly, he is "the sort not often found mixing in street or marketplace. So this representative of the positive use of parrhesia is not the sort of professional politician who spends most of his time in the agora—the place where the people, the assembly, met for political discussion and debate. Nor is he one of those poor persons who, without any other means to live by, would come to the agora in order to receive the sums of money given to those taking part in the ekklêsia. He takes part in the assembly only to participate in important decisions at critical moments. He does not live off of politics for politics’ sake.

Thirdly, he is an "autourgos" —"a manual labourer" The word "autourgos’ refers to someone who works his own land.

The word denotes specific social category—neither the great land-owner nor the peasant, but the landowner who lives and works with his own hands on his own estate, occasionally with the help of a few servants or slaves. Such landowners—who spent most of their time working the fields and supervising the work of their servants—were highly praised by Xenophon in his Oeconomicus. What is most interesting in Orestes is that Euripides emphasizes the political competence of such landowners by mentioning three aspects of their character The first is that they are always willing to march to war and fight for the city, which they do better than anyone else. Of course, Euripides does not give any rational explanation of why this should be so; but if we refer to Xenophon’s Oeconomicus where the autourgos is depicted, there are a number of reasons given. A major explanation is that the landowner who works his own land is, naturally, very interested in the defense and protection of the lands of the country—unlike the shopkeepers and the people living in the city who do not own their own land, and hence do not care as much if the enemy pillages the countryside. But those who work as farmers simply cannot tolerate the thought that the enemy might ravage the farms, burn the crops, kill the flocks and herds, and so on; and hence they make good fighters.

Secondly, the autourgos is able "to come to grips in argument" i.e., is able to use language to propose good advice for the city. As Xenophon explains, such landowners are used to giving orders to their servants, and making decisions about what must be done in various circumstances. So not only are they good soldiers, they also make good leaders. Hence when they do speak to the ekklésia, they do not use thorubos; but what they say is important, reasonable, and constitutes good advice.

In addition, the last orator is a man of moral integrity: "a man of blameless principle and integrity".

A final point about the autourgos is this: whereas the previous speaker wanted Electra and Orestes to be put to death by stoning, not only does this landowner call for Orestes’ acquittal, he believes Orestes should be "honored with crowns" for what he has done. To understand the significance of the autourgos’ statement, we need to realize that what is at issue in Orestes’ trial for the Athenian audience-living in the midst of the Peloponnesian war-is the question of war or peace: will the decision concerning Orestes be an aggressive one that will institute the file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/07.orestes.html (4 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:14 πμ

Orestes [408 BC]

continuation of hostilities, as in war, or will the decision institute peace? The autourgos’ proposal of an acquittal symbolizes the will for peace. But he also states that Orestes should be crowned for killing Clytemnestra "since no man would leave his home, and arm himself, and march to war, if wives left there in trust could be seduced by stayat-homes, and brave men cuckolded". We must remember that Agamemnon was murdered by Aegisthus just after he returned home from the Trojan War; for while he was fighting the enemy away from home, Clytemnestra was living in adultery with Aegisthus.

And now we can see the precise historical and political context for this scene. The year of the play’s production is 408 BC, a time when the competition between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian war was still very sharp. The two cities have been fighting now for twenty-three long years, with short intermittent periods of truce. Athens in 408 BC, following several bitter and ruinous defeats in 413, had recovered some of its naval power. But on land the situation was not good, and Athens was vulnerable to Spartan invasion. Nonetheless, Sparta made several offers of Peace to Athens so that the issue of continuing the war or making peace was vehemently discussed.

In Athens the democratic party was in favor of war for economic reasons which are quite clear; for the party was generally supported by merchants, shop-keepers, businessmen, and those who were interested in the imperialistic expansion of Athens. The conservative aristocratic party was in favor of peace since they gained their support from the landowners and others who wanted a peaceful co-existence with Sparta, as well as an Athenian constitution which was closer, in some respects, to the Spartan constitution.

The leader of the democratic party was Cleophon—who was not native to Athens, but a foreigner who registered as a citizen. A skillful and influential speaker, he was infamously portrayed in his life by his own contemporaries (for example, it was said he was not courageous enough to become a soldier, that he apparently played the passive role in his sexual relations with other men, and so on) . So you see that all of the characteristics of the third orator, the negative parrhesiastes, can be attributed to Cleophon .

The leader of the conservative party was Theramenes—who wanted to return to a Sixth-Century Athenian constitution that would institute a moderate oligarchy. Following his proposal, the main civil and political rights would have been reserved for the landowners. The traits of the autourgos, the positive parrhesiastes, thus correspond to Theramenes.

So one of the issues clearly present in Orestes’ trial is the question that was then being debated by the democratic and conservative parties about whether Athens should continue the war with Sparta, or opt for peace.

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The ‘Problematization’ of parrhesia in Euripides

Foucault.info | The ‘Problematization’ of parrhesia in Euripides

In Euripides’ Ion, written ten years earlier than Orestes, around 418 BC, parrhesia was presented as having only a positive sense or value. And, as we saw, it was both the freedom to speak one’s mind, and a privilege conferred on the first citizens of Athens—a privilege which Ion wished to enjoy. The parrhesiastes spoke the truth precisely because he was a good citizen, was well-born, had a respectful relation to the city, to the law, and to truth. And for Ion, the problem was that in order for him to assume the parrhesiastic role which came naturally to him, the truth about his birth had to be disclosed. But because Apollo did not wish to reveal this truth, Creusa had to disclose his birth by using parrhesia against the god in a public accusation. And thus Ion’s parrhesia was established, was grounded in Athenian soil, in the game between the gods and mortals. So there was no ‘problematization’ of the parrhesiastes as such within this first conception.

In Orestes, however, there is a split within parrhesia itself between its positive and negative senses; and the problem of parrhesia occurs solely within the field of human parrhesiastic roles. This crisis of the function of parrhesia has two major aspects.

The first concerns the question: ‘who is entitled to use parrhesia?’ Is it enough simply to accept parrhesia as a civil right such that any and every citizen can speak in the assembly if and when he or she wishes? or should parrhesia be exclusively granted to some citizens only, according to their social status or personal virtues? There is a discrepancy between an egalitarian system which enables everyone to use parrhesia, and the necessity of choosing among the citizenry those who are able (because of their social or personal qualities) to use parrhesia in such a way that it truly benefits the city. And this discrepancy generates the emergence of parrhesia as a problematic issue. For unlike isonomia (the equality of all citizens in front of the law) and isegoria (the legal right given to everyone to speak his or her own opinion), parrhesia was not clearly defined in institutional terms. There was no law, for example, protecting the parrhesiastes from potential retaliation or punishment for what he or she said. And thus there was also a problem in the relation between nomos and aletheia: how is it possible to give legal form to someone who relates to truth? There are formal laws of valid reasoning, but no social, political, or institutional laws determining who is able to speak the truth.

The second aspect of the crisis concerning the function of parrhesia has to do with the relation of parrhesia to mathesis, to knowledge and education—which means that parrhesia in and of itself is no longer considered adequate to disclose the truth. The parrhesiastes’ relation to truth can no longer simply be established by pure frankness or sheer courage, for the relation now requires education or, more generally, some sort of personal formation. But the precise sort of personal formation or education needed is also an issue (and is contemporaneous with the problem of sophistry). In Orestes, it seems more likely that the mathesis required is not that of the Socratic or Platonic conception, but the kind of experience that an autourgos would get through his own life.

And now I think we can begin to see that the crisis regarding parrhesia is a problem of truth: for the problem is one of recognizing who is capable of speaking the truth within the limits of an institutional system where everyone is equally entitled to give his or her own opinion. Democracy by itself is not able to determine who has the specific qualities which enable him or her to speak the truth (and thus should possess the right to tell the truth). And parrhesia, as a verbal activity, as pure frankness in speaking, is also not sufficient to disclose truth since negative parrhesia, ignorant outspokenness, can also result.

The crisis of parrhesia, which emerges at the crossroads of an interrogation about democracy and an interrogation about truth, gives rise to a problematization of some hitherto unproblematic relations between freedom, power, democracy, education, and truth in Athens at the end of the Fifth Century. From the previous problem of gaining access to parrhesia in spite of the silence of god, we move to a problematization of parrhesia, i.e., parrhesia itself becomes problematic, split within itself.

I do not wish to imply that parrhesia, as an explicit notion, emerges at this moment of crisis—as if the Greeks did not have any coherent idea of the freedom of speech previously, or of the value of free speech. What I mean is that there is a new problematization of the relations between verbal activity, education, freedom, power, and the existing political institutions which marks a crisis in the way freedom of speech is understood in Athens. And this problematization demands a new way of taking care of and asking questions about these relations.

I emphasize this point for at least the following methodological reason. I would like to distinguish between the file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-03/08.problemaparrhesia.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:19:15 πμ

The ‘Problematization’ of parrhesia in Euripides

"history of ideas" and the "history of thought". Most of the time a historian of ideas tries to determine when a specific concept appears, and this moment is often identified by the appearance of a new word. But what I am attempting to do as a historian of thought is something different. I am trying to analyze the way institutions, practices, habits, and behavior become a problem for people who behave in specific sorts of ways, who have certain types of habits, who engage in certain kinds of practices, and who put to work specific kinds of institutions.

The history of ideas involves the analysis of a notion from its birth, through its development, and in the setting of other ideas which constitute its context. The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience, or a set of practices which were accepted without question, which were familiar and out of discussion, becomes a problem, raises discussion and debate, incites new reactions, and induces a crisis in the previously silent behavior, habits, practices, and institutions. The history of thought, understood in this way, is the history of the way people begin to take care of something, of the way they became anxious about this or that for example, about madness, about crime, about sex, about themselves, or about truth.

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Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

Today I would like to complete what I began last time about parrhesia and the crisis of democratic institutions in the Fourth Century BC; and then I would like to move on to the analysis of another form of parrhesia, viz., parrhesia in the field of personal relations (to oneself and to others) , or parrhesia and the care of the self.

The explicit criticism of speakers who utilized parrhesia in its negative sense became a commonplace in Greek political thought since the Peloponnesian War; and a debate emerged concerning the relationship of parrhesia to democratic institutions. The problem, very roughly put, was the following. Democracy is founded by a politeia, a constitution, where the demos, the people, exercise power, and where everyone is equal in front of the law. Such a constitution, however, is condemned to give equal place to all forms of parrhesia, even the worst. Because parrhesia is given even to the worst citizens, the overwhelming influence of bad, immoral, or ignorant speakers may lead the citizenry into tyranny, or may otherwise endanger the city. Hence parrhesia may be dangerous for democracy itself. Thus this problem seems coherent and familiar, but for the Greeks the discovery of this problem, of a necessary antinomy between parrhesia —freedom of speech— and democracy, inaugu-rated a long impassioned debate concerning the precise nature of the dangerous relations which seemed to exist between democracy, logos, freedom, and truth.

We must take into account the fact that we know one side of the discussion much better than the other for the simple reason that most of the texts which have been preserved from this period come from writers who were either more or less directly affiliated with the aristocratic party, or at least distrustful of democratic or radically democratic institutions. And I would like to quote a number of these texts as examples of the problem we are examining.

The first one I would like to quote is an ultra-conservative, ultra-aristocratic lampooning of the democratic Athenian constitution, probably written during the second half of the Fifth Century. And for a long this lampoon was attributed to Xenophon. But now scholars agree that this attribution was not correct, and the Anglo-American classicists even have a nice nickname for this Pseudo-Xenophon, the unnamed author of this lampoon. They call him, the "Old Oligarch". This text must come from one of those aristocratic circles or political clubs which were so active in Athens at the end of the Fifth Century. Such circles were very influential in the anti-democratic revolution of 411 BC during the Peloponnesian War. The lampoon takes the form of a paradoxical praise or eulogy—a genre very familiar to the Greeks. The writer is supposed to be an Athenian democrat who focuses on some of the most obvious imperfections, shortcomings, blemishes, failures, etc., of Athenian democratic institutions and political life; and he praises these imperfections as if they were qualities with the most positive consequences. The text is without any real literary value since the writer is more aggressive than witty. But the main thesis which is at the root of most criticisms of Athenian democratic institutions can be found in this text, and is, I think, significant for this type of radically aristocratic attitude.

This aristocratic thesis is the following. The demos, the people, are the most numerous. Since they are the most numerous, the demos is also comprised of the most ordinary, and indeed, even the worst, citizens. Therefore the demos cannot be comprised of the best citizens. And so, what is best for the demos cannot be what is best for the polis, for the city. With this general argument as a background, the "Old Oligarch" ironically praises Athenian democratic institutions; and there are some lengthy passages caricaturing freedom of speech: Now one might say that the right thing would be that [the people] not allow all to speak on an equal footing, nor to have a seat in the council, but only the cleverest men and the best. But on this point, too, they have determined on the perfectly right thing by also allowing the vulgar people to speak. For if only the aristocracy were allowed to speak and took part in the debate, it would be good to them and their peers, but not to the proletarians. But now that any vulgar person who wants to do so may step forward and speak, he will just express that which is good to him and his equals.

One might ask: How should such a person be able to understand what is good to him or to the people? Well, the masses understand that this man’s ignorance, vulgarity, and sympathy are more useful to them than all the morals, wisdom, and antipathy of the distinguished man. With such a social order, it is true, a state will not be able to develop into perfection itself, but democracy will be best maintained in this manner.

For the people do not want to be in the circumstances of slaves in a state with an ideal constitution, but to be free and be in power; whether the constitution is bad or no, they do not care very much. For what you

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Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

think is no ideal constitution, is just the condition for the people being in power and being free. For if you seek an ideal constitution you will see that in the first place the laws are made by the most skillful persons; further the aristocracy will consult about the affairs of the state and put a stop to unruly persons having a seat in the council or speaking or taking part in the assembly of the people. But the people, well, they will as a consequence of these good reforms rather sink into slavery.

Now I would like to switch to another text which presents a much more moderate position. It is a text written by Isocrates in the middle of the Fourth Century; and Isocrates refers several times to the notion of parrhesia and to the problem of free speech in a democracy. At the beginning of his great oration, "On the Peace", written in 355 BC, Isocrates contrasts the Athenian people’s attitude towards receiving advice about their private business when they consult reasonable, well-educated individuals with the way they consider advice when dealing with public affairs and political activities: ...whenever you take counsel regarding your private business you seek out as counselors men who are your superiors in intelligence, but whenever you deliberate on the business of the state you distrust and dislike men of that character and cultivate, instead, the most depraved of the orators who come before you on this platform; and you prefer as being better friends of the people those who are drunk to those who are sober, those who are witless to those who are wise, and those who dole out the public money to those who perform public services at their own expense. So that we may well marvel that anyone can expect a state which employs such counselors to advance to better things.

But not only do Athenians listen to the most depraved orators; they are not even willing to hear truly good speakers, for they deny them the possibility of being heard: I observe ... that you do not hear with equal favour the speakers who address you, but that, while you give your attention to some, in the case of others you do not even suffer their voice to be heard. And it is not surprising that you do this; for in the past you have formed the habit of driving all the orators from the platform except those who support your desire.

And that, I think, is important. For you see that the difference between the good and the bad orator does not lie primarily in the fact that one gives good while the other gives bad advice. The difference lies in this: the depraved orators, who are accepted by the people, only say what the people desire to hear. Hence, Isocrates calls such speakers "flatterers". The honest orator, in contrast, has the ability, and is courageous enough, to oppose the demos. He has a critical and pedagogical role to play which requires that he attempt to transform the will of the citizens so that they will serve the best interests of the city. This opposition between the people’s will and the city’s best interests is fundamental to Isocrates’ criticism of the democratic institutions of Athens. And he concludes that because it is not even possible to be heard in Athens if one does not parrot the demos’ will, there is democracy— which is a good thing—but the only parrhesiastic or outspoken speakers left who have an audience are "reckless orators" and "comic poets": I know that it is hazardous to oppose your views and that, although this is a free government, there exists no ‘freedom of speech’ [parrhesia] except that which is enjoyed in this Assembly by the most reckless orators, who care nothing for your welfare, and in the theatre by the comic poets.

Hence real parrhesia, parrhesia in its positive, critical sense, does not exist where democracy exists.

In the "Areopagiticus" [355 BC], Isocrates draws a set of distinctions which similarly expresses this general idea of the incompatibility of true democracy and critical parrhesia. For he compares the old Solonian and Cleisthenean constitutions to present Athenian political life, and praises the older polities on the grounds that they gave to Athens democracy, liberty, happiness, and equality in front of the law . All of these positive features of the old democracy, however, he claims have become perverted in the present Athenian democracy. Democracy has become lack of self-restraint liberty has become lawlessness; happiness has become the freedom to do whatever one pleases and equality in front of the law has become parrhesia. Parrhesia in this text has only a negative, pejorative sense. So, as you can see, in Isocrates there is a constant positive evaluation of democracy in general, but coupled with the assertion that it is impossible to enjoy both democracy and parrhesia (understood in its positive sense) .

Moreover, there is the same distrust of the demos’ feelings, opinions, and desires which we encountered, in more radical form, in the Old Oligarchs lampoon.

A third text I would like to examine comes from Plato’s Republic, where Socrates explains how democracy arises and develops. For he tells Adeimantus that: When the poor win, the result is democracy. They kill some of the opposite party, banish others, and grant the rest an equal share in civil rights and government, officials being usually appointed by lot. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-04/democrac.html (2 of 4)19/5/2005 10:19:16 πμ

Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

Socrates then asks: ‘What is the character of this new regime ?’ And he says of the people in a democracy: First of all, they are free. Liberty and free speech [parrhesia] are rife everywhere; anyone is allowed to do what he likes ... That being so, every man will arrange his own manner of life to suit his pleasure.

What is interesting about this text is that Plato does not blame parrhesia for endowing everyone with the possibility of influencing the city, including the worst citizens. For Plato, the primary danger of parrhesia is not that it leads to bad decisions in government, or provides the means for some ignorant or corrupt leader to gain power, to become a tyrant. The primary danger of liberty and free speech in a democracy is what results when everyone has his own manner of life, his own style of life . For then there can be no common logos, no possible unity, for the city.

Following the Platonic principle that there is an analogous relation between the way a human being behaves and the way a city is ruled, between the hierarchical organization of the faculties of a human being and the constitutional make-up of the polis, you can see very well that if everyone in the city behaves just as he or she wishes, with each person following his own opinion, his own will or desire, then there are in the city as many constitutions, as many small autonomous cities, as there are citizens doing whatever they please. And you can see that Plato also considers parrhesia not only as the freedom to say whatever one wishes, but as linked with the freedom to do whatever one wants. It is a kind of anarchy involving the freedom to choose one’s own style of life without limit.

Well, there are numerous other things to say about the political problematization of parrhesia in Greek culture, but I think that we can observe two main aspects of this problematization during the Fourth Century.

First, as is clear in Plato’s text for example, the problem of the freedom of speech becomes increasingly related to the choice of existence, to the choice of one’ s way of life. Freedom in the use of logos increasingly becomes freedom in the choice of bios. And as a result, parrhesia is regarded more and more as a personal attitude, a personal quality, as a virtue which is useful for the city’s political life in the case of positive or critical parrhesia, or as a danger for the city in the case of negative, pejorative parrhesia. In Demosthenes, for example, one can find a number of references to parrhesia but parrhesia is usually spoken of as a personal quality, and not as an institutional right. Demosthenes does not seek, or make an issue of institutional guarantees for parrhesia, but insists on the fact that he, as a personal citizen, will use parrhesia because he must boldly speak the truth about the city’s bad politics. And he claims that in so doing, he runs a great risk. For it is dangerous for him to speak freely, given that the Athenians in the Assembly are so reluctant to accept any criticism.

Secondly, we can observe another transformation in the problematization of parrhesia: parrhesia is increasingly linked to another kind of political institution, viz., monarchy. Freedom of speech must now be used towards king.

But obviously, in such a monarchic situation, parrhesia is much more dependent upon the personal qualities both of the king (who must choose to accept or reject the use of parrhesia), and of the king’s advisors. Parrhesia is no longer an institutional right or privilege—as in a democratic city—but is much more a personal attitude, a choice of bios. This transformation is evident, for example, in Aristotle. The word "parrhesia" is rarely used by Aristotle, but it occurs in four or five places. There is, however, no political analysis of the concept of parrhesia as connected with any political institution. For when the word occurs, it is always either in relation to monarchy, or as a personal feature of the ethical, moral character. In the Constitution of Athens, Aristotle gives an example of positive, critical parrhesia in the tyrannical administration of Pisistratus. As you know, Aristotle considered Pisistratus to be a humane and beneficent tyrant whose reign was very fruitful for Athens. And Aristotle gives the following account of how Pisistratus met a small, landowner after he had imposed a ten percent tax on all produce: ... [Pisistratus] often made expeditions in person into the country to inspect it and to settle disputes between individuals, that they might not come into the city and neglect their farms. It was in one of the progresses that, as the story goes, Pisistratus had his adventure with the man of Hymettus, who was cultivating the spot afterwards known as ‘Tax-free Farm’. He saw a man digging and working at a very stony piece of ground, and being surprised he sent his attendant to ask what he got out of this plot of land.

‘Aches and pains’, said the man; ‘and that’s what Pisistratus ought to have his tenth of’. The man spoke without knowing who his questioner was; but Pisistratus was so pleased with his frank speech and his industry that he granted him exemption from all taxes.

So parrhesia occurs here in the monarchic situation.

The word is also used by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics [Book IV, 1124b28], not to characterize a political practice or institution, but as a trait of the magnanimous man, the megalopsychos. Some of the other characteristics of the magnanimous man are more or less related to the parrhesiastic character and attitude. For file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-04/democrac.html (3 of 4)19/5/2005 10:19:16 πμ

Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions

example, the megalopsychos is courageous, but he is not someone who likes danger so much that he runs out to greet it. His courage is rational [1124 b7-9]. He prefers aletheia to doxa, truth to opinion. He does not like flatterers. And since he looks down on other men, he is "outspoken and frank" [1124 b28]. He uses parrhesia to speak the truth because he is able to recognize the faults of others: he is conscious of his own difference from them, of his own superiority. So you see that for Aristotle, parrhesia is either a moral-ethical quality, or pertains to free speech as addressed to a monarch. Increasingly, these personal. and moral features of parrhesia become more pronounced.

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Socratic Parrhesia

Foucault.info | Socratic Parrhesia

I would now like to analyze a new form of parrhesia which was emerging and developing even before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. There are, of course, important similarities and analogous relationships between the political parrhesia we have been examining and this new form of parrhesia. But in spite of these similarities, a number of specific features, directly related to the figure of Socrates, characterize and differentiate this new Socratic Parrhesia.

In selecting a testimony about Socrates as a parrhesiastic figure, I have chosen Plato's Laches (or "On Courage") and this, for several reasons. First, although this Platonic dialogue, the Laches, is rather short, the word "parrhesia" appears three times [178a5, 179c1, 189a1] —which is rather a lot when one takes into account how infrequently Plato uses the word.

At the beginning of the dialogue, it is also interesting to note that the different participants are characterized by their parrhesia. Lysimachus and Melesias, two of the participants, say that they will speak their minds freely, using parrhesia to confess that they have done or accomplished nothing very important, glorious, or special in their own lives. And they make this confession to two other older citizens, Laches and Nicias (both of them quite famous generals) in the hope that they, too, will speak openly and frankly--for they are old enough, influential enough, and glorious enough to be frank and not hide what they truly think. But this passage [178a5] is not the main one I would like to quote since it employs parrhesia in an everyday sense, and is not an instance of Socratic parrhesia.

From a strictly theoretical point of view the dialogue is a failure because no one in the dialogue is able to give a rational, true, and satisfactory definition of "courage" —which is the topic of the piece. But in spite of the fact that even Socrates himself is not able to give such a definition, at the end of the dialogue Nicias, Laches, Lysimachus, and Melesias all agree that Socrates would be the best teacher for their sons. And so Lysimachus and Melesias ask him to adopt this role. Socrates accepts, saying that everyone should try to take care of himself and of his sons [201b4]. And here you find a notion which, as some of you know, I like a lot: the concept of "epimeleia heautou", the "care of the self". We have, then, I think, a movement visible throughout this dialogue from the parrhesiastic figure of Socrates to the problem of the care of the self.

Before we read the specific passages in the text that I would like to quote, however, we need to recall the situation at the beginning of the dialogue. But since the Laches is very complex and interwoven, I shall do so only briefly and schematically.

Two elderly men, Lysimachus and Melesias, are concerned about the kind of education they should give to their sons. Both of them belong to eminent Athenian families; Lysimachus is the son of Aristeides "the Just" and Melesias is the son of Thucydides the Elder. But although their own fathers were illustrious in their own day, Lysimachus and Melesias have accomplished nothing very special or glorious in their own lives: no important military campaigns, no significant political roles. They use parrhesia to admit this publicly. And they have also asked themselves the question, "how is it that from such a good genos, from such good stock, from such a noble family, they were both unable to distinguish themselves?" Clearly, as their own experience shows, having a high birth and belonging to a noble Athenian house are not sufficient to endow someone with the aptitude and the ability to assume a prominent position or role in the city. They realize that something more is needed, viz., education.

But what kind of education? When we consider that the dramatic date of the Laches is around the end of the Fifth Century, at a time when a great many individuals--most of them presenting themselves as sophists--claimed that they could provide young people with a good education, we can recognize here a problematic which is common to a number of Platonic dialogues. The educational techniques that were being propounded around this time often dealt with several aspects of education, e.g., rhetoric (learning how to address a jury or a political assembly), various sophistic techniques, and occasionally military education and training. In Athens at this time there was also a major problem being debated regarding the best way to educate and train the infantry soldiers--who were largely inferior to the Spartan hoplites. And all of the political, social, and institutional concerns about education, which for, the general context of this dialogue, are related to the problem of parrhesia. In the political field we saw that there was a need for a parrhesiastes who could speak the truth about political institutions and decisions, and the problem there was knowing how to recognize such a truth-teller. In its basic form, this same problem now reappears in the field of education. For if you yourself are not well-educated, how then can you decide what constitutes a good education? And if people are to be educated, they must receive the truth from a competent teacher. But how can we distinguish the good, truth-telling teachers from the bad or inessential ones?

It is in order to help them come to such a decision that Lysimachus and Melesius ask Nicias and Laches to witness a file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/01.socratic.html (1 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:17 πμ

Socratic Parrhesia

performance given by Stesilaus—a man who claims to be a teacher of hoplomachia or the art of fighting with heavy arms. This teacher is an athlete, technician, actor, and artist. Which means that although he is very skillful in handling weapons, he does not use his skill to actually fight the enemy, but only to make money by giving public performances and teaching the young men. The man is a kind of sophist for the martial arts. After seeing his skills demonstrated in this public performance, however, neither Lysimachus nor Melesius is able to decide whether this sort of skill in fighting would constitute part of a good education. So they turn to well-known figures of their time, Nicias and Laches, and ask their advice [178a-181d].

Nicias is an experienced military general who won several victories on the battlefield, and was an important political leader. Laches is also a respected general, although he does not play as significant a role in Athenian politics. Both of them give their opinions about Stesilaus' demonstration and it turns out that they are in complete disagreement regarding the value of this military skill. Nicias thinks that this military technician has done well, and that his skill may be able to provide the young with a good military education [181e-182d]. Laches disagrees and argues that the Spartans--who are the best soldiers in Greece—never have recourse to such teachers. Moreover, he thinks that Stesilaus is not a soldier since he has never won any real victories in battle [182d-184c] Through this disagreement we see that not only ordinary citizens without any special qualities are unable to decide what is the best kind of education, and who is able to teach skills worth learning, but even those who have long military and political experience, like Nicias and Laches, cannot come to a unanimous decision.

In the end, however, Nicias and Laches both agree that despite their fame, their important role in Athenian affairs, their age, their experience, and so on, they should refer to Socrates--who has been there all along--to see what he thinks. And after Socrates reminds them that education concerns the care of the soul [185d], Nicias explains why he will allow his soul to be "tested" by Socrates, i.e., why he will play the Socratic parrhesiastic game. And this explanation of Nicias is, I think, a portrayal of Socrates as a parrhesiastes: NICIAS : You strike me as not being aware that, whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and has any talk with him face to face, is bound to be drawn round and round by him in the course of the argument--though it may have started at first on a quite different theme--and cannot stop until he is led into giving an account of himself, of the manner in which he now spends his days, and of the kind of life he has lived hitherto ;and when once he has been led into that, Socrates will never let him go until he has thoroughly and properly put all his ways to the test. Now I am accustomed to him, and so I know that one is bound to be thus treated by him, and further, that I myself shall certainly get the same treatment also. For I delight, Lysimachus, in conversing with the man, and see no harm in our being reminded of any past and present misdoing: nay, one must needs take more careful though for the rest of one's life, if one does not fly from his words but is willing, as Solon said, and zealous to learn as long as one lives, and does not expect to get good sense by the mere arrival of old age. So to me there is nothing unusual, or unpleasant either, in being tried and tested by Socrates; in fact, I knew pretty well all the time that our argument would not be about the boys if Socrates were present, but about ourselves. Let me therefore repeat that there is no objection on my part to holding a debate with Socrates after the fashion that he likes…

Nicias' speech describes the parrhesiastic game of Socrates from the point of view of the one who is "tested". But unlike the parrhesiastes who addresses the demos in the Assembly, for example, here we have a parrhesiastic game which requires a personal, face to face relationship. Thus the beginning of the quote states: "whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and has any talk with him face to face…"[187e]. Socrates' interlocutor must get in touch with him, establish some proximity to him in order to play the parrhesiastic game. That is the first point.

Secondly, in this relationship to Socrates, the listener is led by Socrates' discourse. The passivity of the Socratic hearer, however, is not the same kind of passivity as that of a listener in the Assembly. The passivity of a listener in the political parrhesiastic game consists in being persuaded by what he listens to. Here, the listener is led by the Socratic logos into "giving an account"-didonai logon-of himself, "of the manner in which he now spends his days, and of the kind of life he has lived hitherto" [187e-188a]. Because we are inclined to read such texts through the glasses of our Christian culture, however, we might interpret this description of the Socratic game as a practice where the one who is being led by Socrates' discourse must give an autobiographical account of his life, or a confession of his faults. But such an interpretation would miss the real meaning of the text. For when we compare this passage with similar descriptions of Socrates' method of examination -as in the Apology, Alcibiades Major, or the Gorgias, Where we also find the idea that to be led by the Socrates logos is to "give an account" of oneself--we see very clearly that what is involved is not a confessional autobiography. In Plato's or Xenophon's portrayals of him, we never see Socrates requiring an examination of conscience or a confession of sins. Here, giving an account of your life, your bios, is also not to give a narrative of the historical events that have taken place in your life, but rather to demonstrate whether you are able to show that there is a relation between the rational discourse, the logos, you are able to use, and the way that you live. Socrates is inquiring into the way that logos gives form to a person's style of life; for he is interested in discovering whether there is a harmonic relation between the two.

Later on in this same dialogue [190d-194b] for example, when Socrates asks Laches to give the reason for his courage, he does not want a narrative of Laches' exploits in the Peloponnesian War, but for Laches to attempt to disclose the logos which gives rational, intelligible form to his courage. Socrates' role, then, is to ask for a rational file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/01.socratic.html (2 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:17 πμ

Socratic Parrhesia

accounting of a person's life.

This role is characterized in the text as that of a "basanos" or "touchstone" which tests the degree of accord between a person's life and its principle of intelligibility or logos: "…Socrates will never let [his listener] go until he has thoroughly and properly put all his ways to the test [188a]. The Greek word "basanos" refers to a "touchstone", i. e., a black stone which is used to test the genuineness of gold by examining the streak left on the stone when "touched" by the gold in question. Similarly, Socrates' "basanic" role enables him to determine the true nature of the relation between the logos and bios of those who come into contact with him.

Then, in the second part of this quotation, Nicias explains that as a result of Socrates' examination one becomes willing to care for the manner in which he lives the rest of his life, wanting now to live in the best possible way; and this willingness takes the form of a zeal to learn and to educate oneself no matter what one's age.

Laches' speech, which immediately follows, describes Socrates' parrhesiastic game from the perspective of one who has inquired into Socrates' role as a touchstone. For the problem arises of knowing how we can be sure that Socrates himself is a good basanos for testing the relation between logos and bios in his listener's life.

LACHES: I have but a single mind, Nicias, in regard to discussions, or if you like, a double rather than a single one. For you might think me a lover, and yet also a hater, of discussions: for when I hear a man discussing virtue or any kind of wisdom, one who is truly a man and worthy of his argument, I am exceedingly delighted; I take the speaker and his speech together, and observe how they sort and harmonize with each other. Such a man is exactly what I understand by "musical", he has tuned himself with the fairest harmony, not that of a lyre or other entertaining instrument, but has made a true concord of his own life between his words and his deeds, not in the Ionian, no , nor in the Phrygian nor in the Lydian, but simply in the Dorian mode, which is the sole Hellenic harmony. Such a man makes me rejoice with his utterance, and anyone would judge me then a lover of discussion, so eagerly do I take in what he says: but a man who shows the opposite character gives me pain, and the better he seems to speak, the more I am pained, with the result, in this case, that I am judged a hater of discussion. Now of Socrates' words I have no experience, but formerly , I fancy, I have made trial of his deeds; and there I found him living up to any fine words however freely spoken. So if he has that gift as well, his wish is mine, and I should be very glad to be cross-examinated by such a man, and should not chafe at learning…

As you can see, this speech in part answers the question of how to determine the visible criteria, the personal qualities, which entitle Socrates to assume the role of the basanos of other people's lives. From information given at the beginning of the Laches we have learned that by the dramatic date of the dialogue, Socrates is not very wellknown, that he is not regarded as an eminent citizen, that he is younger than Nicias and Laches, and that he has no special competence in the field of military training—with this exception: he exhibited great courage in the battle at Delium where Laches was the commanding general. Why, then, would two famous and older generals submit to Socrates' cross-examinations ? Laches, who is not as interested in philosophical or political discussions, and who prefers deeds to words throughout the dialogue (in contrast to Nicias), gives the answer. For he says that there is a harmonic relation between what Socrates says an what he does, between his words (logoi) and his deeds (erga).

Thus, not only is Socrates himself able to give an account of his own life, such an account is already visible in his behavior since there is not the slightest discrepancy between what he says and what he does. He is a "mousikos aner". In Greek culture, and in most of Plato's other dialogues, the phrase "mousikos aner" denotes a person who is devoted to the Muses—a cultured person of the liberal arts. Here the phrase refers to someone who exhibits a kind of ontological harmony where the logos and bios of such a person is in harmonic accord. And this harmonic relation is also a Dorian harmony.

As you know, there were four kinds of Greek harmony: the Lydian mode which Plato dislikes because it is too solemn; the Phrygian mode which Plato associates with the passions; the Ionian mode which is too soft and effeminate; and the Dorian mode which is courageous.

The harmony between word and deed in Socrates' life is Dorian, and was manifested in the courage he showed at Delium. This harmonic accord is what distinguishes Socrates from a sophist: the Sophist can give very fine and beautiful discourses on courage, but is not courageous himself. This accord is also why Laches can say of Socrates: "I found him living up to any fine words however freely spoken". Socrates is able to use rational, ethically valuable, fine, and beautiful discourse; but unlike the sophist, he can use parrhesia and speak freely because what he says accords exactly with what he thinks, and what he thinks accords exactly with what he does. And so Socrates -who is truly free and courageous- can therefore function as a parrhesiastic figure. Just as was the case in the political field, the parrhesiastic figure of Socrates also discloses the truth in speaking, is courageous in his life an in his speech, and confronts his listener's opinion in a critical manner.

But Socratic parrhesia differs from political parrhesia in a number of ways. It appears in a personal relationship between two human beings, and not in the parrhesiastes' relation to the demos, or the king. And in addition to the relationships we noticed between logos, truth, and courage in political parrhesia, with Socrates a new element now emerges, viz., bios. Bios is the focus of Socratic parrhesia. On Socrates' or the philosopher's side, the bios-logos file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/01.socratic.html (3 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:17 πμ

Socratic Parrhesia

relation is a Dorian harmony which grounds Socrates' parrhesiastic role, and which, at the same time, constitutes the visible criterion for his function as the basanos or touchstone. On the interlocutor's side, the bios-logos relation is disclosed when the interlocutor gives an account of his life, and its harmony tested by contact with Socrates .

Since he possesses in his relation to truth all the qualities that need to be disclosed in the interlocutor, Socrates can test the relation to truth of the interlocutor's existence. The aim of this Socratic parrhesiastic activity, then, is to lead the interlocutor to the choice of that kind of life (bios) that will be in Dorian-harmonic accord with logos, virtue, courage, and truth.

In Euripides' Ion we saw the problematization of parrhesia in the form of a game between logos, truth, and genos (birth) in the relations between the gods and mortals; and Ion's parrhesiastic role was grounded in a mythical genealogy descended from Athens. In the realm of political institutions the problematization of parrhesia involved a game between logos, truth, and nomos (law); and the parrhesiastes was needed to disclose those truths which would ensure the salvation of welfare of the city. Parrhesia here was the personal quality of an advisor to the king.

And now with Socrates the problematization of parrhesia takes the form of a game between logos, truth, and bios (life) in the realm of a personal teaching relation between two human beings. And the truth that the parrhesiastic discourse discloses is the truth of someone's life, i.e., the kind of relation someone has to truth: how he constitutes himself as someone who has to know the truth through mathesis, and how this relation to truth is ontologically and ethically manifest in his own life. Parrhesia, in turn, becomes an ontological characteristic of the basanos, whose harmonic relation to truth can function as a touchstone. The objective of the cross-examinations Socrates conducts in his role of the touchstone, then, is to test the specific relation to truth of the other's existence.

In Euripides' Ion, parrhesia was opposed to Apollo's silence; in the political sphere parrhesia was opposed to the demos' will, or to those who flatter the desires of the majority or the monarch. In this third, Socratic-philosophical game, parrhesia is opposed to self-ignorance and the false teachings of the sophists.

Socrates' role as a basanos appears very clearly in the Laches; but in other Platonic texts--the Apology, for example-this role is presented as a mission assigned to Socrates by the oracular deity at Delphi, viz., Apollo —the same god who kept silent in Ion. And just as Apollo's oracle was open to all who wished to consult it , so Socrates offered himself up to anyone as a questioner. The Delphic oracle was also so enigmatic and obscure that one could not understand it without knowing what sort of question one was asking, and what kind of meaning the oracular pronouncement could take in one's life. Similarly, Socrates' discourse requires that one overcome self-ignorance about one's own situation. But of course, there are major differences. For example, the oracle foretold what would happen to you, whereas Socratic parrhesia means to disclose who you are--not your relation to future events, but your present relation to truth.

I do not mean to imply that there is any strict chronological progression among the various forms of parrhesia we have noted. Euripides died in 407 BC and Socrates was put to death in 399 BC. In ancient culture the continuation of ideas and themes is also more pronounced. And we are also quite limited in the number of documents available from this period. So there is no precise chronology. The forms of parrhesia we see in Euripides did not generate a very long tradition. And as the Hellenistic monarchies grew and developed, political parrhesia increasingly assumed the form of a personal relation between the monarch and his advisors, thereby coming closer to Socratic form.

Increased emphasis was placed on the royal art of statesmanship and the moral education of the king. And the Socratic type of parrhesia had a long tradition through the Cynics and other Socratic Schools. So the divisions are almost contemporary when then appear, but the historical destiny of the three are not the same.

In Plato, and in what we know of Socrates through Plato, a major problem concerns the attempt to determine how to bring he political parrhesia involving logos, truth, and nomos so that it coincides with the ethical parrhesia involving logos, truth, and bios. How can philosophical truth and moral virtue relate to the city through the nomos?

You see this issue in the Apology, the Crito, the Republic, and in the laws. There is a very interesting text in the laws, for example, where Plato says that even in the city ruled by good laws there is still a need for someone who will use parrhesia to tell the citizens what moral conduct they must observe. Plato distinguishes between the Gardians of the Laws and the parrhesiastes, who does not monitor the application of the laws, but, like Socrates, speaks the truth about the good of the city, and gives advice from an ethical, philosophical standpoint. And, as far as I know, it is the only text in Plato where the one who uses parrhesia is a kind of political figure in the field of the law.

In the Cynic tradition -which also derives from Socrates- the problematic relation between nomos and bios will become a direct opposition. For in this tradition, the Cynic philosopher is regarded as the only one capable of assuming the role of the parrhesiastes. And , as we shall see in the case of Diogenes, he must adopt a permanent negative and critical attitude towards any kind of political institution, and towards any kind of nomos.

You remember last time we met we analyzed some texts from Plato's Laches where we saw the emergence, with file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/01.socratic.html (4 of 5)19/5/2005 10:19:17 πμ

Socratic Parrhesia

Socrates, of a new "philosophical" parrhesia very different from the previous forms we examined. In the Laches we had a game with five main players. Two of them, Lysimachus and Melesius, were well-born Athenian citizens from noble houses who were unable to assume a parrhesiastic role —for they did not know how to educate their own children, Laches and Nicias, who were also unable to play the role of parrhesiastes. Laches and Nicias, in turn, were then obliged to appeal to Socrates for help, who appears as the real parrhesiastic figure. So we can see in these transitional moves a successive displacement of the parrhesiastic role from the well-born Athenian and the political leader -who formerly possessed the role- to the philosopher, Socrates. Taking the Laches as our point of departure, we can now observe in Greco-Roman culture the rise and development of this new kind of parrhesia which, I think, can be characterized as follows.

First, this parrhesia is philosophical, and has been put into practice for centuries by the philosophers. Indeed, a large part of the philosophical activity that transpired in Greco-Roman culture required playing certain parrhesiastic games. Very schematically, I think that this philosophical role involved three types of parrhesiastic activity, all of them related to one another. Insofar as the philosopher had to discover and to teach certain truths about the world, nature, etc., he or she assumed a epistemic role. Taking a stand towards the city, the laws, political institutions, and so on, required, in addition, a political role. And parrhesiastic activity also endeavored to elaborate the nature of the relationships between truth and one's style of life, or truth and an ethics and aesthetics of the self. Parrhesia as it appears in the field of philosophical activity in Greco-Roman culture is not primarily a concept or theme, but a practice which tries to shape the specific relations individuals have to themselves. And I think that our own moral subjectivity is rooted, at least in part, in these practices. More precisely, I think that the decisive criterion which identifies the parrhesiastes is not to be found in his birth, nor in his citizenship, nor in his intellectual competence, but in the harmony which exists between his logos and his bios.

Secondly, the target of this new parrhesia is not to persuade the Assembly, but to convince someone that he must take care of himself and of others; and this means that he must change his life. This theme of changing one's life, of conversion, becomes very important from the Fourth Century BC to the beginnings of Christianity. It is essential to philosophical parrhesiastic practices. Of course conversion is not completely different from the change of mind that an orator, using his parrhesia, wished to bring about when he asked his fellow citizens to wake up, to refuse what they previously accepted, or to accept what they previously refused. But in philosophical practice the notion of changing one's mind takes on a more general and expanded meaning since it is no longer just a matter of altering one's belief or opinion, but of changing one's style of life, one's relation to others, and one's relation to oneself.

Thirdly, these new parrhesiastic practices imply a complex set of connections between the self and truth. For not only are these practices supposed to endow the individual with self-knowledge, this self-knowledge in turn is supposed to grant access to truth for further knowledge. The circle implied in knowing the truth about oneself in order to know the truth is characteristic of parrhesiastic practice since the Fourth Century, and has been one of the problematic enigmas of Western Thought e.g., as in Descartes or Kant.

And a final point I would like to underscore about this philosophical parrhesia is that it has recourse to numerous techniques quite different from the techniques of persuasive discourse previously utilized; and it is no longer specifically linked to the agora, or to the king's court, but can now be utilized in numerous diverse places.

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The practice of parrhesia

Foucault.info | The practice of parrhesia

In this session and next week--in the last seminar meeting -I would like to analyze philosophical parrhesia from the standpoint of its practices. By the"practice" of parrhesia I mean two things: first, the use of parrhesia in specific types of human relationships (which I shall address this evening); and secondly, the procedures and techniques employed in such relationships (which will be the topic of our last session).

Because of the lack of time, and to assist on the clarity of the presentation, I would like to distinguish three kinds of human relationships which are implied in the use of this new philosophical parrhesia. But, of course, this is only a general schema, for there are several intermediate forms.

First, parrhesia occurs as an activity in the framework of small groups of people, or in the context of community life. Secondly, parrhesia can be see in human relationships occurring in the framework of public life. And finally, parrhesia occurs in the context of individual personal relationships. More specifically, we can say that parrhesia as a feature of community life was highly regarded by the Epicureans; parrhesia as a public activity or public demonstration was a significant aspect of Cynicism, as well as that type of philosophy that was a mixture of Cynicism and Stoicism; and parrhesia as an aspect of personal relationships is found more frequently either in Stoicism or in a generalized or common Stoicism characteristic of such writers as Plutarch.

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Parrhesia and Community Life: Epictetus

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Community Life: Epictetus

Although the Epicureans, with the importance they gave to friendship, emphasized community life more than other philosophers at this time, nonetheless one can also find some stoic groups, as well as Stoic or Stoico-Cynic philosophers who acted as moral and political advisors to various circles and aristocratic clubs. For example, Musonius Rufus was spiritual advisor to Nero's cousin, Rubellius Plautus, and his circle; and the Stoico-Cynic philosopher Demetrius was advisor to a liberal anti-aristocratic group around Thrasea Paetus. Thrasea Paetus, a roman senator, committed suicide after being condemned to death by the senate during Nero's reign. And Demetrius was the régisseur, I would say, of his suicide. So besides the community life of the Epicureans there are other intermediate forms.

There is also the very interesting case of Epictetus. Epictetus was a Stoic for whom the practice of speaking openly and frankly was also very important. He directed a school about which we know a few things from the four surviving volumes of Epictetus' Discourses as recorded by Arrian. We know, for example, that Epictetus' school was located at Nicopolis in a permanent structure which enabled students to share in a real community life. Public lectures and teaching sessions were given where the public was invited, and where individuals could ask questions--although sometimes such individuals were mocked and twitted by the masters. We also know that Epictetus conducted both public conversations and interviews. His school was a kind of école normale for those who wanted to become philosophers or moral advisors.

So when I tell you that philosophical parrhesia occurs as an activity in three types of relationship, it must be clear that the forms I have chosen are only guiding examples; the actual practices were, of course, much more complicated and interrelated.

First, then, the example of the Epicurean groups regarding the practice of parrhesia in community life.

Unfortunately, we know very few things about the Epicurean communities, and even less about the parrhesiastic practices in these communities--which explains the brevity of my exposition. But we do have a text entitled "On Frank Speaking" written by Philodemus (who is recording the lectures of Zeno of Sidon). The text is not complete in its entirety, but the existing manuscript pieces come from the ruins of the Epicurean library discovered at Herculaneum near the end of the Nineteenth Century. What has been preserved is very fragmentary and rather obscure; and I must confess that without some commentary from the Italian scholar, Marcello Gigante, I would not have understood much of this fragmentary Greek text.

I would like to underline the following points from this treatise.

First, Philodemus regards parrhesia not only as a quality, virtue, or personal attitude, but also as a techne comparable both to the art of medicine and to the art of piloting a boat. As you know, the comparison between medicine and navigation is a very traditional one in Greek culture. But even without this reference to parrhesia, the comparison of medicine and navigation is interesting for the following two reasons.

(1) The reason why the pilot's techne of navigation is similar to the physician's techne of medicine is that in both cases, the necessary theoretical knowledge required also demands practical training in order to be useful.

Furthermore, in order to put these techniques to work, one has to take into account not only the general rules and principles of the art, but also particular data which are always specific to a given situation. One must take into account the particular circumstances, and also what the Greeks called the "kairos", or the critical moment. The concept of the kairos--the decisive or crucial moment or opportunity--has always had a significant role in Greek though for epistemological, moral and technical reasons. What is of interest here is that since Philodemus is now associating parrhesia with piloting and medicine, it is also being regarded as a technique which deals with individual cases, specific situations, and the choice of the kairos or decisive moment. Utilizing our modern vocabulary, we can say that navigation, medicine, and the practice of parrhesia are all 'clinical techniques'.

(2) Another reason why the Greeks often associated medicine and navigation is that in the case of both techniques, one person (the pilot or physician) must make the decisions, give orders and instructions, exercise power and authority, while the others--the crew, the patient, the staff —must obey if the desired end is to be achieved. Hence navigation and medicine are also both related to politics. For in politics the choice of the opportunity, the best moment, is also crucial; and someone is also supposed to be more competent than the others —and therefore has the right to give the orders that the others must obey. In politics, then, there are indispensable techniques which lie at the root of statesmanship considered as the art of governing people.

If I mention this ancient affinity between medicine, navigation, and politics, it is in order to indicate that with the addition of the parrhesiastic techniques of 'spiritual guidance', a corpus of interrelated clinical technai was file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/03.communitylife.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:19:18 πμ

Parrhesia and Community Life: Epictetus

constituted during the Hellenistic period. Of course, the techne of piloting or navigation is primarily of metaphorical significance. But an analysis of the various relations which Greco-Roman culture believed existed between the three clinical activities of medicine, politics, and the practice of parrhesia would be important.

Several centuries later, Gregory of Nazianzus would call spiritual guidance the 'technique of techniques'—'ars artium', 'techne technon'. This expression is significant since statesmanship or political techne was previously regarded as the techne technon or the Royal Art. But from the Fourth Century A. D. to the Seventeenth Century in Europe, the expression 'techne technon' usually refers to spiritual guidance as the most significant clinical technique. This characteri-zation of parrhesia as a techne in relation to medicine, piloting, and politics is indicative of the transformation of parrhesia into a philosophical practice. From the physician's art of governing patients and the king's art of governing the city and its subjects, we move to the philosopher's art of governing himself and acting as a kind of 'spiritual guide' for other people.

Another aspect of Philodemus' text concerns the references it contains about the structure of the Epicurean communities; but commentators on Philodemus disagree about the exact form, complexity, and hierarchical organization of such communities. DeWitt thinks that the existing hierarchy was very well-established and complex; whereas Gigante thinks that it was much simpler. It seems that there were at least two categories of teachers and two types of teaching in the Epicurean schools and groups.

There was 'classroom' teaching where a teacher addressed a group of students; and there was also instruction in the form of personal interviews where a teacher would give advice and precepts to individual community members.

Whereas the lower-ranked teachers only taught classes, the higher-level teachers both taught classes and gave personal interviews. Thus a distinction was drawn between general teaching and personal instruction or guidance.

This distinction is not a difference in content, as between theoretical and practical subject matters—especially since studies in physics, cosmology, and natural law had ethical significance for the Epicureans. Nor is it a difference in instruction contrasting ethical theory with its practical application. Rather the difference marks a distinction in the pedagogical relationship between teacher and disciple or student. In the Socratic situation, there was one procedure which enabled the interlocutor to discover thee truth about himself, the relation of his bios to logos; and this same procedure, at the same time, also enabled him to gain access to additional truths (about the world, ideas, the nature of the soul, and so on). With the Epicurean schools, however, there is the pedagogical relation of guidance where the master helps the disciple to discover the truth about himself, but there is now, in addition, a form of 'authoritarian' teaching in a collective relation where someone speaks the truth to a group of others. These two types of teaching became a permanent feature of western culture. And in the Epicurean schools we know that it was the role of the 'spiritual guide' for others that was more highly valued that that of group lecturer.

I do not wish to conclude the discussion of Philodemus' text without mentioning a practice which they engaged in—what we might call 'mutual confession' in a group. Some of the fragments indicate that there were group confessions or meetings where each of the community members in turn would disclose their thoughts, faults, misbehavior, and so on. We know very little about such meetings, but referring to this practice Philodemus uses an interesting expression. He speaks of this practice as 'the salvation by one another'__'to di' allelon sozesthai'. The word 'sozesthai' -to save oneself- in the Epicurean tradition means to gain access to a good, beautiful, and happy life. It does not refer to any kind of afterlife or divine judgment. In one's own salvation, other members of the Epicurean community [The Garden] have a decisive role to play as necessary agents enabling one to discover the truth about oneself, and in helping one to gain access to a happy life?. Hence the very important emphasis on friendship in the Epicurean groups.

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Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

Now I would like to move on to the practice of parrhesia in public life through the example of the Cynic philosophers. In the case of the Epicurean communities, we know very little about their style of life but have some idea of their doctrine as it is expressed in various texts. With the Cynics the situation is exactly reversed; for we know very little about Cynic doctrine —even if there ever was such an explicit doctrine. But we do possess numerous testimonies regarding the Cynic way of life. And there is nothing surprising about this state of affairs; for even though Cynic philosophers wrote books just like other philosophers, they were far more interested in choosing and practicing a certain way of life.

A historical problem concerning the origin of Cynicism is this. Most of the Cynics from the First Century B. C. and thereafter refer to either Diogenes or Antisthenes as the founder of the Cynic philosophy, and though these founder of Cynicism they relate themselves back to the teachings of Socrates. According to Farrand Sayre, however, the Cynic Sect appeared only in the Second Century B. C. , or two centuries after Socrates' death. We might be a bit skeptical about a traditional explanation given for the rise of the Cynic Sects —an explanation which has been given so often to account for so many other phenomena; but it is that Cynicism is a negative form of aggressive individualism which arose with the collapse of the political structures of the ancient world. A more interesting account is given by Sayre, who explains the appearance of the Cynics on the Greek philosophical scene as a consequence of expanding conquest of the Macedonian Empire. More specifically, he notes that with Alexander's conquests various Indian philosophies -especially the monastic and ascetic teaching of Indian Sects like the Gymnosophists- became more familiar to the Greeks.

Regardless of what we can determine about the origins of Cynicism, it is a fact that the Cynics were very numerous and influential from the end of the First Century BC to the Fourth Century A. D. Thus in A. D. 165 Lucian -who did not like the Cynics- writes:"The city swarms with these vermin, particularly those who profess the tenets of Diogenes, Antisthenes, and Crates." It seems, in fact, that the self-styled 'Cynics' were so numerous that the Emperor Julian, in his attempt to revive classical Greek culture, wrote a lampoon against them scorning their ignorance, their coarseness, and portraying them as a danger for the Empire and for Greco-Roman culture. One of the reasons why Julian treated the Cynics so Harshly was due to their general resemblance to the early Christians.

And some of the similarities may have been more than mere superficial resemblance. For example, Peregrinus (a well-known Cynic at the end of the Second Century A. D. ) was considered a kind of saint by his Cynic followers, especially by those who regarded his death as a heroic emulation of the death of Heracles. To display his Cynic indifference to death, Peregrinus committed suicide by cremating himself immediately following the Olympic Games of AD 167. Lucian, who witnessed the event, gives a satirical, derisive account. Julian was also disappointed that the Cynics were not able to represent ancient Greco-Roman culture, for he hoped that there would be something like a popular philosophical movement which would compete with Christianity.

The high value which the Cynics attributed to a person's way of life does not mean that they had no interest in theoretical philosophy, but reflects their view that the manner in which a person lived was a touchstone of his or her relation to truth -as we saw was also the case in the Socratic tradition. The conclusion they drew from this Socratic idea, however, was that in order to proclaim the truths they accepted in a manner that would be accessible to everyone, they though that their teachings had to consist in a very public, visible, spectacular, provocative, and sometimes scandalous way of life. The Cynics thus taught by way of examples and the explanations associated with them. They wanted their own lives to be a blazon of essential truths which would then serve as a guideline, or as an example for others to follow. But there is nothing in this Cynic emphasis on philosophy as an art of life which is alien to Greek philosophy. So even if we accept Sayre's hypothesis about the Indian philosophical influence on Cynic doctrine and practice, we must still recognize that the Cynic attitude is, in its basic form, just an extremely radical version of the very Greek conception of the relationship between one's way of life and knowledge of the truth. The Cynic idea that a person is nothing else but his relation to truth, and that this relation to truth takes shape or is given form in his own life —that is completely Greek.

In the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic traditions, philosophers referred mainly to a doctrine, text, or at least to some theoretical principles for their philosophy. In the Epicurean tradition, the followers of Epicurus refer both to a doctrine and also to the personal example set by Epicurus-whom every Epicurean tried to imitate. Epicurus originated the doctrine and was also a personification of it. But now in the Cynic tradition, the main references for the philosophy are not to the texts or doctrines, but to exemplary lives. Personal examples were also important in other philosophical schools, but in the Cynic movement -where there were no established texts, no settled, recognizable doctrine- reference was always made to certain real or mythical personalities who were taken to be the sources of Cynicism as a mode of life. Such personalities were the starting point for Cynic reflection and

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Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

commentary. The mythical characters referred to included Heracles [Hercules], Odysseus [Ulysses], and Diogenes.

Diogenes was an actual, historical figure, but his life became so legendary that he developed into a kind of myth as anecdotes, scandals, etc., were added to his historical life. About his actual life we do not know all that much, but it is clear that he became a kind of philosophical hero. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno of Citiun, etc., were philosophical authors and authorities, for example; but they were not considered heroes. Epicurus was both a philosophical author and treated by his followers as a kind of hero. But Diogenes was primarily a heroic figure. the idea that a philosopher's life should be exemplary and heroic is important in understanding the relationship of Cynicism to Christianity, as well as for understanding Cynic parrhesia as a public activity.

This brings us to Cynic parrhesia. The main types of parrhesiastic practice utilized by the Cynics were. (1) critical preaching; (2) scandalous behavior; and (3) what I shall call the "Provocative dialogue."

Critical Preaching: First, the critical preaching of the Cynics. Preaching is a form of continuous discourse. And, as you know, most of the early philosophers -especially the Stoics- would occasionally deliver speeches where they presented their doctrines. Usually, however they would lecture in front of a rather small audience. The Cynics, in contrast, disliked this kind of elitist exclusion and preferred to address a large crowd. For example, they liked to speak in a theater, or at a place where people had gathered for a feast, religious event, athletic contest, etc. They would sometimes stand up in the middle of a theater audience and deliver a speech. This public preaching was not their own innovation, for we have testimonies of similar practices as early as the Fifth Century BC Some of the sophists we see in the Platonic dialogues, for example, also engage in preaching to some extent. Cynic preaching, however, had its own specific characteristics, and is historically significant since it enabled philosophical themes about one's way of life to become popular, i.e., to come to the attention of people who stood outside the philosophical elect. From this perspective, Cynic preaching about freedom, the renunciation of luxury, Cynic criticisms of political institutions; and existing moral codes, and so on, also opened the way for some Christian themes. But Christian proselytes not only spoke about themes which were often similar to the Cynics; they also took over the practice of preaching.

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.

There is, however, very little positive doctrine in Cynic preaching: no direct affirmation of the good or bad.

Instead, the Cynics refer to freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) as the basic criteria by which to assess and kind of behavior or mode of life. For the Cynics, the main condition for human happiness is autarkeia, self-sufficiency or independence, where what you need to have or what you decide to do is dependent on nothing other than you yourself. As, a consequence -since the Cynics had the most radical of attitudes- they preferred a completely natural life-style. A natural life was supposed to eliminate all of the dependencies introduced by culture, society, civilization, opinion, and so on. Consequently, most of their preaching seems to have been directed against social institutions, the arbitrariness of rules of law, and any sort of life-style that was dependent upon such institutions or laws. In short, their preaching was against all social institutions insofar as such institutions hindered one's freedom and independence.

Scandalous Behavior: Cynic parrhesia also had recourse to scandalous behavior or attitudes which called into question collective habits, opinions, standards of decency, institutional rules, and so on. Several procedures were used. One of them was the inversion of roles, as can be seen from Dio Chrysostom's Fourth Discourse where the famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander is depicted. This encounter, which was often referred to by the Cynics, does not take place in the privacy of Alexander's court but in the street, in the open. The king stands up while Diogenes sits back in his barrel. Diogenes orders Alexander to step out of his light so that he can bask in the sun. Ordering Alexander to step aside so that the sun' s light can reach Diogenes is an affirmation of the direct and natural relation the philosopher has to the sun in contrast to the mythical genealogy whereby the king, as descended from a god, was supposed to personify the sun.

The Cynics also employed the technique of displacing or transposing a rule from a domain where the rule was accepted to a domain where it was not in order to show how arbitrary the rule was. Once, during the athletic contests and horse-races of the Isthmian festival, Diogenes -who was bothering everyone with his frank remarkstook a crown of pine and put it on his head as if he had been victorious in an athletic competition. And the magistrates were very happy about this gesture because they thought it was, at last, a good occasion to punish him, to exclude him, to get rid of him. But he explained that he placed a crown upon his head because he had won a much more difficult victory against poverty, exile, desire, and his own vices than athletes who were victorious in file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/04.publiclife.html (2 of 6)19/5/2005 10:19:20 πμ

Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

wrestling, running, and hurling a discus. And later on during the games, he saw two horses fighting and kicking each other until one of them ran off. So Diogenes went up and put a crown on the head of the horse who stood its ground . These two symmetrical displacements have the effect of raising the question: "What are you really doing when you award someone with a crown in the Isthmian games? " For if the crown is awarded to someone as a moral victory, then Diogenes deserves a crown. But if it is only a question of superior physical strength, then there is no reason why the horse should not be given a crown.

Cynic parrhesia in its scandalous aspects also utilized the practice of bringing together two rules of behavior which seem contradictory and remote from one another. For example, regarding the problem of bodily needs. You eat.

There is no scandal in eating, so you can eat in public (although, for the Greeks, this is not obvious and Diogenes was sometimes reproached for eating in the agora). Since Diogenes ate in the agora, he thought that there was no reason why he should not also masturbate in the agora; for in both cases he was satisfying a bodily need (adding that "he wished it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly") . Well, I will not try to conceal the shamelessness (anaideia) of the Cynics as a scandalous practice or technique.

As you know, the word "cynic" comes from the Greek word meaning "dog-like" (kynikoi); and Diogenes was called "The Dog". In fact, the first and only contemporary reference to Diogenes is found in Aristotle's Rhetoric, where Aristotle does not even mention the name "Diogenes" but just call him , "The Dog". The noble philoso-phers of Greece, who usually comprised an elite group, almost always disregarded the Cynics.

Provocative Dialogue: The Cynics also used another parrhesiastic technique, viz., the "provocative dialogue". To give you a more precise example of this type of dialogue -which derives from Socratic parrhesia- I have chosen a passage from the Fourth Discourse on Kingship of Dio Chrysostom of Prusa (c.A.D.40-110).

Do you all know who Dio Chrysostom is? Well, he is a very interesting guy from the last half of the First Century and the beginning of the Second Century of our era. He was born at Prusa in Asia Minor of a wealthy Roman family who played a prominent role in the city-life. Dio's family was typical of the affluent provincial notables that produced so many writers, officers, generals, even emperors, for the Roman Empire. He came to Rome possibly as a professional rhetorician, but there are some disputes about this. An American scholar, C.P. Jones, has written a very interesting book about Dio Chrysostom which depicts the social life of an intellectual in the Roman Empire of Dio's time. In Rome Dio Chrysostom became acquainted with Musonius Rufus, the Stoic philosopher, and possibly through him he became involved with some liberal circles generally opposed to personal tyrranic power. He was subsequently exiled by Domitian -who disliked his views- and thus he began a wandering life where he adopted the costume and the attitudes of the Cynics for several years. When he was finally authorized to return to Rome following Domitian's assassination, he started a new career. His former fortune was returned to him, and he became a wealthy and famous teacher. For a while, however, he had the life-style, the attitude, the habits, and the philosophical views of a Cynic philosopher. But we must keep in mind the fact that Dio Chrysostom was not a "pure" cynic; and perhaps with his intellectual background his depiction of the Cynic parrhesiastic game puts it closer to the Socratic tradition than most of the actual Cynic practices.

In the Fourth Discourse of Dio Chrysostom I think you can find all three forms of Cynic parrhesia. The end of the Discourse is a kind of preaching, and throughout there are references to Diogenes' scandalous behavior and examples illustrating the provocative dialogue of Diogenes with Alexander. The topic of the Discourse is the famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great which actually took place at Corinth. The Discourse begins with Dio's thoughts concerning this meeting (1-14) then a fictional dialogue follows portraying the nature of Diogenes' and Alexander's conversation (15-81) and the Discourse ends with a long, continuous discussion--fictionally narrated by Diogenes--regarding three types of faulty and self-deluding styles of life (82-139).

At the very beginning of the Discourse, Dio criticizes those who present the meeting of Diogenes and Alexander as an encounter between equals: one man famous for his leadership and military victories, the other famous for his free and self-sufficient life-style, and his austere and naturalistic moral virtue. Dio does not want people to praise Alexander just because he, as a powerful king, did not disregard a poor guy like Diogenes. He insists that Alexander actually felt inferior to Diogenes, and was also a bit envious of his reputation; for unlike Alexander, who wanted to conquer the world, Diogenes did not need anything to do what he wanted to do : [Alexander] himself needed his Macedonian phalanx, his Thessalian cavalry, Thracians, Paeonians, and many others if he was to go where he wished and get what he desired; but Diogenes went forth unattended in perfect safety by night as well as by day whithersoever he cared to go. Again, he himself required huge sums of gold and silver to carry out any of his projects; and what is more, if he expected to keep the Macedonians and the other Greeks submissive, must time and again curry favor of their rulers and the general populace by words and gifts; whereas Diogenes cajoled no man by flattery, but told everybody the truth and, even though he possessed not a single drachma, succeeded in doing as he pleased, failed in

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Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

nothing he set before himself, was the only man who lived the life he considered the best and happiest, and would not have accepted Alexander's throne or the wealth of the Medes and Persians in exchange for his own poverty.

So it is clear that Diogenes appears here as the master of truth; and from this point of view, Alexander is both inferior to him, and is aware of this inferiority. But although Alexander has some vices and faults of character, he is not a bad king, and he chooses to play Diogenes' parrhesiastic game: So the king came up to [Diogenes] as he sat there and greeted him, whereat the other looked up at him with a terrible glare like that of a lion and ordered him to step aside a little, for Diogenes happened to be warming himself in the sun. Now Alexander was at once delighted with the man's boldness and composure in not being awestruck in his presence. For it is somehow natural for the courageous to love the courageous, while cowards eye them with misgiving and hate them as enemies, but welcome the base and like them. And so to the one class truth and frankness [parrhesia] are the most agreeable things in the world, to the other, flattery and deceit. The latter lend a willing ear to those who in their intercourse seek to please, the former, to those who have regard for the truth.

The Cynic parrhesiastic game which begins is, in some respects, not unlike the Socratic dialogue since there is an exchange of questions and answers. But there are at least two significant differences. First, in the Cynic parrhesiastic game it is Alexander who tends to ask the questions and Diogenes, the philosopher, who answers —which is the reverse of the Socratic dialogue. Secondly, whereas Socrates plays with his interlocutor's ignorance, Diogenes wants to hurt Alexander's pride. For example, at the beginning of the exchange, Diogenes calls Alexander a bastard (181), and tells him that someone who claim to be a king is not so very different from a child who, after winning a game, puts a crown on his head and declares that he is king [47-49]. Of course, all that is not very pleasant for Alexander to hear. But that's Diogenes' game: hitting his interlocutor's pride, forcing him to recognize that he is not what he claims to be which is something quite different from the Socratic attempt to show someone that he is ignorant of what he claims to know. In the Socratic dialogues, you sometimes see that someone's pride has been hurt when he is compelled to recognize that he does not know what he claims to know. For example, when Callicles is led to an awareness of his ignorance, he renounces all discussion because his pride has been hurt.

But this is only a side effect, as it were, of the main target of Socratic irony, which is: to show someone that he is ignorant of his own ignorance. In the case of Diogenes, however, pride is the main target, and the ignorance/ knowledge game is a side effect.

From these attacks on an interlocutor's pride, you see that the interlocutor is brought to the limit of the first parrhesiastic contract, viz., to agree to play the game, to choose to engage in discussion. Alexander is willing to engage Diogenes in discussion, to accept his insolence and insults, but there is a limit. And every time that Alexander feels insulted by Diogenes, he becomes angry and is close to quitting off , even to brutalizing Diogenes.

So you see that the Cynic parrhesiastic game is played at the very limits of the parrhesiastic contract. It borders on transgression because the parrhesiastes may have made too many insulting remarks. Here is an example of this play at the limit of the parrhesiastic agreement to engage in discussion: ... [Diogenes] went on to tell the king that he did not even possess the badge of royalty. . ."And what badge is that?" said Alexander. "It is the badge of the bees, "he replied, "that the king wears. Have you not heard that there is a king among the bees, made so by nature, who does not hold office by virtue of what you people who trace your descent from Heracles call inheritance? " "What is this badge ?" inquired Alexander. "Have you not heard farmers say, "asked the other, "that this is the only bee that has no sting since he requires no weapon against anyone? For no other bee will challenge his right to be king or fight him when he has this badge. I have an idea, however, that you not only go about fully armed but even sleep that way. Do you not know," he continued, "that is a sign of fear in a man for him to carry arms? And no man who is afraid would ever have a chance to become king any more than a slave would. "

Diogenes reasons: if you bear arms, you are afraid. No one who is afraid can be a king. So, since Alexander bears arms he cannot be a real king. And, of course, Alexander is not very pleased by this logic' and Dio continues: "At these words Alexander came near hurling his spear". That gesture, of course, would have been the rupture, the transgression, of the parrhesiastic game. When the dialogue arrives at this point, there are two possibilities available to Diogenes for bringing Alexander back into the game. One way is the following. Diogenes says, in effect, 'Well, allright. I know that you are outraged and you are also free. You have both the ability and the legal sanction to kill me. But will you be courageous enough to hear the truth from me, or are you such a coward that you must kill me?' And, for example, after Diogenes insults Alexander at one point in the dialogue, he tells him: "... In view of what I say rage and prance about ... and think me the greatest blackguard and slander me to the world and, if it be your pleasure, run me through with your spear; for I am the only man from whom you will get the truth, and you will learn it from no one else. For all are less honest than I am and more servile."

Diogenes thus voluntarily angers Alexander, and then says, 'Well, you can kill me; but if you do so, nobody else will tell you the truth.' And there is an exchange, a new parrhesiastic contract is drawn up with a new limit imposed by file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/04.publiclife.html (4 of 6)19/5/2005 10:19:20 πμ

Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

Diogenes: either you kill me, or you'll know the truth. This kind of courageous 'blackmailing' of the interlocutor in the name of truth makes a positive impression upon Alexander: "Then was Alexander amazed at the courage and fearlessness of the man" [76]. So Alexander decides to stay in the game, and a new agreement is thereby achieved.

Another means Diogenes employs for bringing Alexander back into the game is more subtle than the previous challenge: Diogenes also uses trickery. This trickery is different from Socratic irony; for, as you all know, in Socratic irony, Socrates feigns to be as ignorant as his interlocutor so that his interlocutor would not be ashamed of disclosing his own ignorance, and thus not reply to Socrates' questions. That, at least, was the principle of Socratic irony. Diogenes' trick is somewhat different; for at the moment when his interlocutor is about to terminate the exchange, Diogenes says something which his interlocutor believes is complimentary. For example, after Diogenes calls Alexander a bastard--which was not very well-received by Alexander--Diogenes tells him: "... is it not olympias who said that Philip is not your father, as it happens, but a dragon or Ammon or some god or other or demigod or wild animal? And yet in that case you would certainly be a bastard."

Thereupon Alexander smiled and was pleased as never before, thinking that Diogenes, so far from being rude, was the most tactful of men and the only one who really knew how to pay a compliment.

Whereas the Socratic dialogue traces an intricate and winding path from an ignorant understanding to an awareness of ignorance, the Cynic dialogue is much more like a fight, a battle, or a war, with peaks of great agressivity and moments of peaceful calm--peaceful exchanges which, of course, are additional traps for the interlocutor. In the Fourth Discourse Dio Chrysostom explains the rationale behind this strategy of mixing aggressivity and sweetness; Diogenes asks Alexander: "Have you not heard the Libyan myth ? " And the king replied that he had not. Then Diogenes told him with zest and charm, because he wanted to put him in a good humor, just as nurses, after giving the children a whipping, tell them a story to comfort and please them.

And a bit further on, Dio adds: When Diogenes perceived that [Alexander] was greatly excited and quite keyed up in mind with expectancy, he toyed with him and pulled him about in the hope that somehow he might be moved from his pride and thirst for glory and be able to sober up a little. For he noticed that at one moment he was delighted, and at another grieved, at the same thing, and that his soul was as unsettled as the weather at the solstices when both rain and sunshine come from the very same cloud.

Diogenes' charm, however, is only a means of advancing the game and of preparing the way for additional aggressive exchanges. Thus, after Diogenes pleases Alexander with his remarks about his 'bastard' genealogy, and considers the possibility that Alexander might be the son of Zeus, he goes even further: he tells Alexander that when Zeus has a son, he gives his son marks of his divine birth. Of course, Alexander thinks that he has such marks.

Alexander then asks Diogenes how one can be a good king. And Diogenes reply is a purely moral portrayal of kingship: "No one can be a bad king any more than he can be a bad good man; for the king is the best one among men, since he is most brave and righteous and humane, and cannot be overcome by any toil or by any appetite. Or do you think a man is a charioteer if he can not drive, or that one is a pilot if he is ignorant of steering, or is a physician if he knows not how to cure? It is impossible, nay, though all the Greeks and barbarians acclaim him as such and load him with diadems and scepters and tiaras like so many necklaces that are put on castaway children lest they fail of recognition. Therefore, just as one cannot pilot except after the manner of pilots, so no one can be king except in a kingly way. "

We see here the analogy of statesmanship with navigation and medicine that we have already noted. As the "son of Zeus," Alexander thinks that he has marks or signs to show that he is a king with a divine birth. But Diogenes shows Alexander that the truly royal character is not linked to special status, birth, power, and so on. Rather, the only way of being a true king is to behave like one. And when Alexander asks how he might learn this art of kingship, Diogenes tells him that it cannot be learned, for one is noble by nature [26-31].

Here the game reaches a point where Alexander does not become conscious of his lack of knowledge, as in a Socratic dialogue. He discovers, instead, that he is not in any way what he thought he was-viz., a king by royal birth, with marks of his divine status, or king because of his superior power, and so on. He is brought to a point where Diogenes tells him that the only way to be a real king is to adopt the same type of ethos as the Cynic philosopher. And at this point in the exchange there is nothing more for Alexander to say.

In the case of Socratic dialogue, it also sometimes happens that when the person Socrates has been questioning no longer knows what to say, Socrates resumes the discourse by presenting a positive thesis, and then the dialogue ends. In this text by Dio Chrysostom, Diogenes begins a continuous discourse; however his discussion does not file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/04.publiclife.html (5 of 6)19/5/2005 10:19:20 πμ

Parrhesia and Public Life: the Cynics

present the truth of a positive thesis, but is content to give a precise description of three faulty modes of life linked to the royal character. The first one is devoted to wealth, the second to physical pleasure, and the third to glory and political power. And these three life-styles are personified by three daimones or spirits.

The concept of the daimon was popular in Greek culture, and also became a philosophical concept —in Plutarch, for example. The fight against evil daimones in Christian asceticism has precursors in the Cynic tradition. Incidentally, the concept of the "demon" has been elaborated in an excellent article in the 'Dictionnaire de Spiritualite' [F. Vandenbrouke vol3, 1957] Diogenes gives an indication of the three daimones which Alexander must fight throughout his life, and which constitute the target of a permanent "spiritual struggle"—"Combat spirituel". Of course, this phrase does not occur in Dio's text; for here it is not so much a specific content which is specific and important, but the idea of a parrhesiastic practice which enables someone to fight a spiritual war within himself.

And I think we can also see in the aggressive encounter between Alexander and Diogenes a struggle occurring between two kinds of power: political power and the power of truth. In this struggle, the parrhesiastes accepts and confronts a permanent danger: Diogenes exposes himself to Alexander's power from the beginning to the end of the Discourse. And the main effect of this parrhesiastic struggle with power is not to bring the interlocutor to a new truth, or to a new level of self-awareness; it is to lead the interlocutor to internalize this parrhesiastic struggle-to fight within himself against his own faults, and to be with himself in the same way that Diogenes was with him.

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Parrhesia and Personal Relationships: Plutarch and Galen

Foucault.info | Parrhesia and Personal Relationships: Plutarch and Galen

I would now like to analyze the parrhesiastic game in the framework of personal relationships, selecting some examples from Plutarch and Galen which I think illustrate some of the technical problems which can arise.

In Plutarch there is a text which is explicitly devoted to the problem of parrhesia. Addressing certain aspects of the parrhesiastic problem, Plutarch tries to answer the question: 'How is it possible to recognize a true parrhesiastes or truth-teller?' And similarly: 'How is it possible to distinguish a parrhesiastes from a flatterer?' The title of this text, which comes from Plutarch's Moralia, is "How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend".

I think we need to underline several points from this essay. First, why do we need, in our personal lives, to have some friend who plays the role of a parrhesiastes of a truth-teller? The reason Plutarch gives is found in the predominant kind of relationship we often have to ourselves, viz., a relation of "philautia or "self-love". This relation of self-love is, for us, the ground of a persistent illusion about what we really are : It is because of this self-love that everybody is himself his own foremost and greatest flatterer, and hence finds no difficulty in admitting the outsider to witness with him and to confirm his own conceits and desires. For the man who is spoken of with opprobrium as a lover of flatterers is in high degree a lover of self, and, because of his kindly feeling toward himself, he desires and conceives himself to be endowed with all manner of good qualities; but although the desire for these is not unnatural, yet the conceit that one possesses them is dangerous and must be carefully avoided. Now If Truth is a thing divine, and, as Plato puts it, the origin "of all good for gods and all good for men" [Laws,730c], then the flatterer is in all likelihood an enemy to the gods and particularly to the Pythian god. For the flatterer always takes a position over against the maxim "Know Thyself," by creating in every man deception towards himself and ignorance both of himself and of the good and evil that concerns himself; the good he renders defective and incomplete, and the evil wholly impossible to amend.

We are our own flatterers, and it is in order to disconnect this spontaneous relation we have to ourselves, to rid ourselves of our philautia, that we need a parrhesiastes. But it is difficult to recognize and to accept a Parrhesiastes. For not only is it difficult to distinguish a true parrhesiastes from a flatterer; because of our philautia we are also not interested in recognizing a parrhesiastes. So at stake in this text is the problem of determining the indubitable criteria which enables us to distinguish the genuine parrhesiastes we need so badly to rid ourselves of our own philautia from the flatterer who "plays the part of friend with the gravity of tragedian" [50e] . And this implies that we are in possession of a kind of "semiology" of the real parrhesiastes. To answer the question: 'How can we recognize a true parrhesiastes?' Plutarch proposes two major criteria. First, there is a conformity between what the real truth-teller says with how he behaves--and here you recognize the Socratic harmony of the Laches, where Laches explains that he could trust Socrates as a truth-teller about courage since he saw that Socrates really was courageous at Deliun, and thus, that he exhibited a harmonious accord between what he said and what he did.

There is also a second criterion, which is: the permanence, the continuity, the stability and steadiness of the true parrhesiastes, the true friend, regarding his choices, his opinions, and his thoughts: ... it is necessary to observe the uniformity and permanence of his tastes, whether he always takes delight in the same things, and commends always the same things, and whether he directs and ordains his own life according to one pattern, as becomes a freeborn man and a lover of congenial friendship and intimacy; for such is the conduct of a friend. But the flatterer, since he has no abiding place of character to dwell in, and since he Leads a life not of his own choosing but another's, moulding and adapting himself to suit another, is not simple, not one, but variable and many in one, and, like water that is poured into one receptacle after another, he is constantly on the move from place to place,and changes his shape to fit his receiver.

Of course there are a lot of other very interesting things about this essay. But I would like to underscore two major themes. First, the theme of self-delusion, and its link with philautia —which is not something completely new. But in Plutarch's text you can see that his notion of self-delusion as a consequence of self-love is clearly different from being in a state of ignorance about one's own lack of self-knowledge —a state which Socrates attempted to overcome. Plutarch's conception emphasizes the fact that not only are we unable to know that we know nothing, but we are also unable to know, exactly, what we are. And I think that this theme of self-delusion becomes increasingly important in Hellenistic culture. In Plutarch's period it is something really significant.

A second theme which I would like to stress is the steadiness of mind. This is also not something new, but for late Stoicism the notion of steadiness takes on great importance. And there is an obvious relation between these two themes -the theme of self-delusion and the theme of constancy or persistency of mind. For destroying self-delusion and acquiring and maintaining continuity of mind are two ethico-moral activities which are linked to one another.

The self-delusion which prevents you from knowing who or what you are, and all the shifts in your thoughts, file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/05.personal.html (1 of 3)19/5/2005 10:19:21 πμ

Parrhesia and Personal Relationships: Plutarch and Galen

feelings, and opinions which force you to move from one thought to another, one feeling to another, or one opinion to another, demonstrate this linkage. For if you are able to discern exactly what you are, then you will stick to the same point, and you will not be moved by anything. If you are moved by any sort of stimulation, feeling, passion, etc., then you are not able to stay close to yourself, you are dependent upon something else, you are driven to different concerns, and consequently you are not able to maintain complete self-possession.

These two elements -being deluded about yourself and being moved by changes in the world and in your thoughtsboth developed and gained significance in the Christian tradition. In early Christian spirituality, Satan is often represented as the agent both of self-delusion (as opposed to the renunciation of self) and of the mobility of mind the instability or unsteadiness of the soul as opposed to firmitas in the contemplation of God. Fastening one's mind to God was a way, first, of renouncing one's self so as to eliminate any kind of self-delusion. And it was also a way to acquire an ethical and an ontological steadiness. So I think, that we can see in Plutarch's text -in the analysis of the relation between parrhesia and flattery- some elements which also became significant for the Christian tradition.

I would like to refer now, very briefly, to a text by Galen [A.D.130-200]- the famous physician at the end of the Second Century- where you can see the same problem: how is it possible to recognize a real parrhesiastes? Galen raises this question :in his essay "The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul's Passions", where he explains that in order for a man to free himself from his passions, he needs a parrhesiastes; for just as in Plutarch a century previously, philautia, self-love, is the root of self-delusion: ... we see the faults of others but remain blind to those which concern ourselves. All men admit the truth of this and, furthermore, Plato gives the reason for it [Laws,731e]. He says that the lover is blind in the case of the object of his love.

If, therefore, each of us loves himself most of all, he must be blind in his own case...

There are passions of the soul which everybody knows: anger, wrath, fear, grief, envy, and violent lust. In my opinion, excessive vehemence in loving or hating anything is also a passion; I think the saying 'moderation is best' is correct, since no immoderate action is good. How, then, could a man cut out these passions if he did not first know that he had them?

But as we said, it is impossible to know them, since we love ourselves to excess. Even if this saying will not permit you to judge yourself, it does allow that you can judge others whom you neither love nor hate. Whenever you hear anyone in town being praised because he flatters no man, associate with that man and judge from your own experience whether he is the sort of man they say he is...

When a man does not greet the powerful and wealthy by name, when he does not visit them, when he does not dine with them, when he lives a disciplined life, expect that man to speak the truth; try, too, to come to a deeper knowledge of what kind of man he is (and this comes about through long association). If you find such a man, summon him and talk with him one day in private; ask him to reveal straightaway whatever of the above mentioned passions he may see in you. Tell him you will be most grateful for this service and that you will look on him as your deliverer more than if he had saved you from an illness of the body. Have him promise to reveal it whenever he sees you affected by any of the passions I have mentioned.

It is interesting to note that in this text, the parrhesiastes- which everyone needs in order to get rid of his own selfdelusion- does not need to be a friend, someone you know someone with whom you are acquainted. And this, I think, constitutes a very important difference between Galen and Plutarch. In Plutarch, Seneca, and the tradition which derives from Socrates, the parrhesiastes always needs to be a friend. And this friend relation was always at the root of the parrhesiastic game. As far as I know, for the first time with Galen, the parrhesiastes no longer needs to be a friend. Indeed, it is much better, Galen tells us, that the Parrhesiastes be someone whom you do not know in order for him to be completely neutral. A good truth-teller who gives you honest counsel about yourself does not hate you, but he does not love you either. A good parrhesiastes is someone with whom you have previously had no particular relationship.

But of course you cannot choose him at random. You must check some criteria in order to know whether he really is capable of revealing your faults. And for this you must have heard of him. Does he have a good reputation? Is he old enough? Is he rich enough? It is very important that the one who plays the role of the parrhesiastes be at least as rich, or richer than you are. For if he is poor and you are rich, then the chances will be greater that he will be a flatterer- since it is now in his interest to do so.

The Cynics, of course, would have said that someone who is rich, who has a positive relation to wealth, cannot really be wise; so it is not worthwhile selecting him as a parrhesiastes. Galen's idea of selecting someone who is richer than you to act as your truth-teller would seem ridiculous to a Cynic.

But it is also interesting to note that in this essay, the truth-teller does not need to be a physician or doctor. For in spite of the fact that Galen himself was a physician, was often obliged to 'cure' the excessive passions of others, and often succeeded in doing so, he does not require of a parrhesiastes that he be a doctor, or that he possess the ability to cure you of your passions. All that is required is that he be able to tell you the truth about yourself. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/05.personal.html (2 of 3)19/5/2005 10:19:21 πμ

Parrhesia and Personal Relationships: Plutarch and Galen

But it is still not enough to know that the truth-teller is old enough, rich enough, and has a good reputation. He must also be tested. And Galen gives a program for testing the potential parrhesiastes. For example, you must ask him questions about himself and see how he responds to determine whether he will be severe enough for the role.

You have to be suspicious when the would-be parrhesiastes congratulates you, when he is not severe enough, and so on.

Galen does not elaborate upon the precise role of the parrhesiastes in "The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul's Passions"; he only gives a few examples of the sort of advice he himself gave while assuming this role for others.

But, to summarize the foregoing, in this text the relationship between parrhesia and friendship no longer seems to obtain, and there is a kind of trial or examination required of the potential parhesiastes by his 'patron' or 'client'.

I apologize for being so brief about these texts from Plutarch and Galen; but they are not very difficult to read, only difficult to find.

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Techniques of Parrhesia

Foucault.info | Techniques of Parrhesia

I would now like to turn to the various techniques of the parrhesiastic games which can be found in the philosophical and moral literature of the first two centuries of our era. Of course, I do not plan to enumerate or discuss all of the important practices that can be found in the writings of this period. To begin with, I would like to make three preliminary remarks.

First, I think that these techniques manifest a very interesting and important shift from that truth game which -in the classical Greek conception of parrhesia- was constituted by the fact that someone was courageous enough to tell the truth to other people. For there is a shift from that kind of parrhesiastic game to another truth game which now consists in being courageous enough to disclose the truth about oneself.

Secondly, this new kind of parrhesiastic game -where the problem is to confront the truth about yourself- requires what the Greeks called "askesis". Although our word "asceticism" derives from the Greek word "askesis" (since the meaning of the word changes as it becomes associated with various Christian practices), for the Greeks the word does not mean "ascetic", but has a very broad sense denoting any kind of practical training or exercise. For example, it was a commonplace to say that any kind of art or technique had to be learned by mathesis and askesis —by theoretical knowledge and practical training. And, for instance, when Musonius Rufus says that the art of living, techne tou biou, is like the other arts, i.e., an art which one could not learn only through theoretical teachings, he is repeating a traditional doctrine. This techne tou biou, this art of living, demands practice and training: askesis. But the Greek conception of askesis differs from Christian ascetic practices in at least two ways: (1) Christian asceticism has its ultimate aim or target the renunciation of the self, whereas the moral askesis of the Greco-Roman philosophies has as its goal the establishment of a specific relationship to oneself -a relationship of self possession and self-sovereignty; (2) Christian asceticism takes as its principle theme detachment from the world, whereas the ascetic practices of the Greco-Roman philosophies are generally concerned with endowing the individual with the preparation and the moral equipment that will permit him to fully confront the world in an ethical and rational manner.

Thirdly, these ascetic practices implied numerous different kinds of specific exercises; but they were never specifically catalogued, analyzed, or described. Some of them were discussed and criticized, but most of them were well-known. Since most people recognized them, they were usually used without any precise theory about the exercise. And indeed, often when someone now reads these Greek and Latin authors as they discuss such exercises in the context of specific theoretical topics (such as time, death, the world, life, necessity, etc.), he or she gets a mistaken conception about them. For these topics usually function only as a schema or matrix for the spiritual exercise. In fact, most of these texts written in late antiquity about ethics are not at all concerned with advancing a theory about the foundations of ethics, but are practical books containing specific recipes and exercises one had to read, to reread, to meditate upon, to learn, in order to construct a lasting matrix for one's own behavior.

I now turn to the kinds of exercises where someone had to examine the truth about himself, and tell this truth to someone else.

Most of the time when we refer to such exercises, we speak of practices involving the "examination of conscience."

But I think that the expression examination of conscience" as a blanket term meant to characterize all these different exercises misleads and oversimplifies. For we have to define very precisely the different truth games which have been put into work and applied in these practices of the Greco-Roman tradition.

I would like to analyze five of these truth games commonly described as "examinations of conscience" in order to show you (1) how some of the exercises differ from one another; (2) what aspects of the mind , feelings, behavior, etc., were considered in these different exercises; and (3) that these exercises, despite their differences, implied a relation between truth and the self which is very different from what we find in the Christian tradition.

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Seneca & evening examination

Foucault.info | Seneca & evening examination

The first text I would like to analyze comes from Seneca's De ira ["On Anger"] All our senses ought to be trained to endurance. They are naturally long-suffering, if only the mind desists from weakening them. This should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: "What bad habit have you cured today?

What fault have you resisted? In what respects are you better?" Anger will cease and become controllable if it finds that it must appear before a judge every day. Can anything be more excellent that this practice of thoroughly sifting the whole day? And how delightful the sleep that follows this self-examination--how tranquil it is, how deep and untroubled, when the soul has either praised or admonished itself, and when this secret examiner and critic of self has given report of its own character! I avail myself of this privilege, and every day I plead my cause before the bar of self. When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words.

I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing. For why should I shrink from any of my mistakes, when I may commune thus with my self? "See what you never do that again; I will pardon you this time. In that dispute you spoke too offensively; after this don't have encounters with ignorant people; those who have never learned do not want to learn. You reproved that man more frankly than you ought, and consequently you have not so much mended him as offended him. In the future, consider not only the truth of what you say, but also whether the man to whom you are speaking can endure the truth. A good man accepts reproof gladly; the worse a man is the more bitterly he resents it"

We know from several sources that this kind of exercise was a daily requirement, or at least a habit, in the Pythagorean tradition. Before they went to sleep, the Pythagoreans had to perform this kind of examination, recollecting the faults they had committed during the day. Such faults consisted in those sorts of behavior which transgressed the very strict rules of the Pythagorean Schools. And the purpose of this examination, at least in the Pythagorean tradition, was to purify the soul.

Such purification was believed necessary since the Pythagoreans considered sleep to be a state of being whereby the soul could get in contact with the divinity through dream. And, of course, one had to keep one's soul as pure as possible both to have beautiful dreams, and also to came into contact with benevolent deities. In this text of Seneca's we can clearly see that this Pythagorean tradition survives in the exercise he describes (as it also does later on in similar practices utilized by the Christians) .The idea of employing sleep and dream as a possible means of apprehending the divine can also be found in Plato's Republic [Book IX, 57le-572b] . Seneca tells us that by means of this exercise we are able to procure good and delightful sleep: "How delightful the sleep that follows this examination -how tranquil it is, how deep and untroubled. "

And we know from Seneca himself that under his teacher, Sotio, his first training was partly Pythagorean. Seneca relates this practice, however, not to Pythagorean custom, but to Quintus Sextius -who was one of the advocates of Stoicism in Rome at the end of the First Century B. C. And it seems that this exercise, despite its purely Pythagorean origin, was utilized and praised by several philosophical sects and schools: the Epicureans, Stoics, Cynics, and others. There are references in Epictetus, for example, to this kind of exercise. And it would be useless to deny that Seneca's self-examination is similar to the kinds of ascetic practices used for centuries in the Christian tradition. But if we look at the text more closely, I think we can see some interesting differences.

First, there is the question of Seneca's attitude towards himself. What kind of operation is Seneca actually performing in this exercise? What is the practical matrix he uses and applies in relation to himself? At first glance, it seems to be a judiciary practice which is close to the Christian confessional: there are thoughts, these thoughts are confessed, there is an accused (namely, Seneca) , there is an accuser or prosecutor (who is also Seneca), there is a judge (also Seneca), and it seems that there is a verdict. The entire scene seems to be judiciary; and Seneca employs typical judiciary expressions ("appear before a judge", 'plead my cause before the bar of self", etc.) .

Closer scrutiny shows, however, that it is a question of something different from the court, or from judicial procedure. For instance, Seneca says that he is an "examiner" of himself [speculator sui] . The word "speculator" means that he is an "examiner" or " inspector" -typically someone who inspects the freight on a ship, or the work being done by builders constructing a house, etc. Seneca also says " totum diem meum scrutor"—"I examine, inspect, the whole of my day. " " Here the verb "scrutor" belongs, not to judicial vocabulary, but to the vocabulary of administration. Seneca states further on: "factaque ac dicta mea remetior"—"and I retrace, recount, all my deeds and words". The verb "remetiri" is, again, a technical term used in bookkeeping, and which has the sense of checking whether there is any kind of miscalculation or error in the accounts. So Seneca is not exactly a judge passing sentence upon himself. He is much more of an administrator who, once the work is finished, or when the year's business is completed, now draws up the accounts, takes stock of things, and sees whether everything has file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-06/02.seneca.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:19:23 πμ

Seneca & evening examination

been done correctly. It is more of an administrative scene than a judiciary one.

And if we turn to the faults that Seneca retraces, and which he gives as examples in this examination, we can see that they are not the sort of faults we would call "sins". He does not confess, for example, that he drinks too much, or has committed financial fraud, or has bad feelings for someone else--faults Seneca was very familiar with as one of Nero's ring. He reproaches himself for very different things. He has criticized someone, but instead of his criticism helping the man, it has hurt him. Or he criticizes himself for being disgusted by people who were, in any case, incapable of understanding him. Behaving in such fashion, he commits "mistakes" [errores] ; but these mistakes are only inefficient actions requiring adjustments between ends and means. He criticizes himself for not keeping the aim of his actions in mind, for not seeing that it is useless to blame someone if the criticism given will not improve things, and so on. The point of the fault concerns a practical error in his behavior since he was unable to establish an effective rational relation between the principles of conduct he knows, and the behavior he actually engaged in. Seneca's faults are not transgressions of a code or law. They express, rather, occasions where his attempt to coordinate rules of behavior (rules he already accepts, recognizes, and knows) with his own actual behavior in a specific situation has proven to be unsuccessful or inefficient.

Seneca also does not react to his own errors as if they were sins. He does not punish himself; there is nothing like penance. The retracing of his mistakes has as its object the reactivation of practical rules of behavior which, now reinforced, may be useful for future occasions. He thus tells himself : 'See that you never do that again;' 'Don't have encounters with ignorant people;' 'In the future, consider not only the truth of what you say, but also whether the man to whom you are speaking can endure the truth;' and so on. Seneca does not analyze his responsibility or feelings of guilt; it is not, for him, a question of purifying himself of these faults. Rather, he engages in a kind of administrative scrutiny which enables him to reactivate various rules and maxim in order to make them more vivid, permanent, and effective for future behavior.

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Serenus & general self-scrutiny

Foucault.info | Serenus & general self-scrutiny

The second text I would like to discuss comes from Seneca's De tranquillitate animi ["On the Tranquillity of Mind"].

The De tranquillitate animi is one of a number of texts written about a theme we have already encountered, viz., the constancy or steadiness of mind. To put it very briefly, the latin word "tranquillitas" denotes stability of soul or mind. It is a state where the mind is independent of any kind of external event, and is free as well from any internal excitation or agitation that could induce an involuntary movement of mind. Thus it denotes stability, selfsovereignty, and independence. But "tranquillitas" also refers to a certain feeling of pleasurable calm which has its source, its principle, in this self-sovereignty or self-possession of the self.

At the beginning of the De tranquillitate animi, Annaeus Serenus asks Seneca for a consultation. Serenus is a young friend of Seneca's who belonged to the same family, and who started his political career under Nero as Nero's nightwatchman. For both Seneca and Serenus there is no incompatibility between philosophy and a political career since a philosophical life is not merely an alternative to a political life. Rather, philosophy must accompany a political life in order to provide a moral framework for public activity. Serenus, who was initially an Epicurean, later turned towards Stoicism. But even after he became a Stoic, he felt uncomfortable; for he had the impression that he was not able to improve himself, that he had reached a dead end, and was unable to make any progress. I should note that for the Old Stoa, for Zeno of Citium, for example, when a person knew the doctrines of the Stoic philosophy he did not really need to progress anymore, for he has thereby succeeded in becoming a Stoic. What is interesting here is the idea of progress occurring as a new development in the evolution of Stoicism. Serenus knows the Stoic doctrine and its practical rules, but still lacks tranquillitas. And it is in this state of unrest that he turns to Seneca and asks him for help. Of course, we cannot be sure that this depiction of Serenus' state reflects his real historical situation; we can only be reasonably sure that Seneca wrote this text. But the text is supposed to be a letter written to Serenus incorporating the latter's request for moral advice. And it exhibits a model or pattern for a type of self-examination.

Serenus examines what he is or what he has accomplished at the moment when he requests this consultation: SERENUS: When I made examination of myself, it became evident, Seneca, that some of my vices are uncovered and displayed so openly that I can put my hand upon them, some are more hidden and lurk in a corner, some are not always present but recur at intervals; and I should say that the last are by far the most troublesome, being like roving enemies that spring upon one when the opportunity offers, and allow one neither to be ready as in war, nor to be off guard as in peace.

Nevertheless the state in which I find myself most of all--for why should I not admit the truth to you as to a physician? --is that I have neither been honestly set free from the things I hated and feared, nor, on the other hand, am I in bondage to them; while the condition in which I am placed is not the worst, yet I am complaining and fretful--I am neither sick nor well.

As you can see, Serenus' request takes the form of a 'medical' consultation of his own spiritual state. For he says, 'why should I not admit the truth to you as to a physician?'; 'I am neither sick nor well;' and so on. These expressions are clearly related to the well-known metaphorical identification of moral discomfort with physical illness. And what is also important to underline here is that in order for Serenus to be cured of his illness, he first needs to "admit the truth" [verum fatear] to Seneca. But what are the truths that Serenus must 'confess'? We shall see that he discloses no secret faults, no shameful desires, nothing like that. It is something entirely different from a Christian confession. And this 'confession' can be divided into two parts. First, there is Serenus' very general exposé about himself; and secondly, there is an exposé of his attitude in different fields of activity in his life.

The general exposé about his condition is the following: There is no need for you to say that all the virtues are weakly at the beginning, that firmness and strength are added by time. I am well aware also that the virtues that struggle for outward show, I mean for position and the fame of eloquence and all that comes under the verdict of others, do grow stronger as time passes--both those that provide real strength and those that trick us out with a sort of dye with a view to pleasing, must wait long years until gradually length of time develops color -but I greatly fear that habit, which brings stability to most things, may cause this fault of mine to become more deeply implanted. Of things evil as well as good long intercourse induces love.

The nature of this weakness of mind that halts between two things and inclines strongly neither to the right nor to the wrong, I cannot show you so well all at once as a part at a time; I shall tell you what befalls me -you will find a name for my malady.

Serenus tells us that the truth about himself that he will now expose is descriptive of the malady he suffers from.

And from these general remarks and other indications he gives later on, we can see that this malady is compared throughout to the seasickness caused by being aboard a boat which no longer advances, but rolls and pitches at sea. file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-06/03.serenus.html (1 of 3)19/5/2005 10:19:24 πμ

Serenus & general self-scrutiny

Serenus is afraid of remaining at sea in this condition, in full view of the dry land which remains inaccessible to him. The organization of the themes Serenus describes, with its implicit and, as we shall see, its explicit metaphorical reference to being at sea, involves the traditional association in moral -political philosophy of medicine and piloting a boat or navigation- which we have already seen. Here we also have the same three elements: a moral-philosophical problem, reference to medicine, and reference to piloting. Serenus is on the way towards acquiring the truth like a ship at sea in sight of dry land. But because he lacks complete self-possession or self-mastery, he has the feeling that he cannot advance. Perhaps because he is too weak, perhaps his course is not a good one. He does not know exactly what is the reason for his waverings, but he characterizes his malaise as a kind of perpetual vacillating motion which has no other movement than "rocking". The boat cannot advance because it is rocking. So Serenus' problem is: how can he replace this wavering motion of rocking -which is due to the instability, the unsteadiness of his mind- with a steady linear movement that will take him to the coast and to the firm earth? It is a problem of dynamics, but very different from the Freudian dynamics of an unconscious conflict between two psychic forces. Here we have an oscillating motion of rocking which prevents the movement of the mind from advancing towards the truth, towards steadiness, towards the ground. And now we have to see how this metaphorical dynamic grid organizes Serenus' description of himself in the following long quotation: (1) I am possessed by the very greatest love of frugality, I must confess; I do not like a couch made up for display, nor clothing, brought forth from a chest or pressed by weights and a thousand mangles to make it glossy, but homely and cheap, that is neither preserved nor to be put on with anxious care; the food that I like is neither prepared nor watched by a household of slaves, it does not need to be ordered many days before nor to be served by many hands, but is easy to get and abundant; there is nothing far-fetched or costly about it, nowhere will there be any lack of it, it is burdensome neither to the purse nor to the body, nor will it return by the way it entered; the servant that I like is a young home-born slave without training or skill; the silver is my country -bred father's heavy plate bearing no stamp of the maker's name, and the table is not notable for the variety of its markings or known to the town from the many fashionable owners through whose hands it has passed, but one that stands for use, and will neither cause the eyes of any guest to linger upon it with pleasure nor fire them with envy. Then, after all these things have had my full approval, my mind [animus] is dazzled by the magnificence of some training schools for pages, by the sight of slaves bedecked with gold and more carefully arrayed than the leaders of a public procession, and a whole regiment of glittering attendants; by the sight of a house where one even treads on precious stones and riches are scattered about in every corner, where the very roofs glitter, and the whole town pays court and escorts an inheritance on the road to ruin. And what shall I say of the waters, transparent to the bottom, that flow around the guests even as they banquet, what of the feasts that are worthy of their setting? Coming from a long abandonment to thrift, luxury has poured around me the wealth of its splendor, and echoed around me on every side. My sight falters a little, for I can lift up my heart towards it more easily than my eyes. And so I come back, not worse, but sadder, and I do not walk among my paltry possessions with head erect as before, and there enters a secret sting and the doubt whether the other life is not better. None of these things changes me, yet none of them fails to disturb me.

(2) I resolve to obey the commands of my teachers and plunge into the midst of public life; I resolve to try to gain office and the consulship, attracted of course, not by the purple or by the lictor's rods, but by the desire to be more serviceable and useful to my friends and relatives and all my countrymen and then to all mankind. Ready and determined, I follow Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, of whom none the less not one failed to urge others to do so. And then, whenever something upsets my mind, which is unused to meeting shocks, whenever something happens that is either unworthy of me, and many such occur in the lives of all human beings, or that does not proceed very easily, or when things that are not to be accounted of great value demand much of my time, I turn back to my leisure, and just as wearied flocks too do, I quicken my pace towards home. I resolve to confine my life within its own walls: "Let no one," I say, "who will make me no worthy return for such a loss rob me of a single day; let my mind be fixed upon itself, let it cultivate itself, let it busy itself with nothing outside, nothing that looks towards an umpire; let it love the tranquillity that is remote from public and private concern." But when my mind [animus] has been aroused by reading of great bravery, and noble examples have applied the spur, I want to rush into the forum, to lend my voice to one man; to offer such assistance to another as, even if it will not help, will be an effort to help; or to check the pride of someone in the forum who has been unfortunately puffed up by his successes.

(3) And in my literary studies I think that it is surely better to fix my eyes on the theme itself, and, keeping this uppermost when I speak, to trust meanwhile to the theme to supply the words so that unstudied language may follow it wherever it leads. I say: "What need is there to compose something that will last for centuries? Will you not give up striving to keep posterity silent about you? You were born for death; a silent funeral is less troublesome! And so to pass the time, write something in simple style, for your own use, not for publication; they that study for the day have less need to labour."

Then again, when my mind has been uplifted by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious of words, and with higher aspirations it desires higher expression, and language issues forth to match the dignity of the theme; forgetful then of my rule and of my more restrained judgement, I am swept to loftier heights by an utterance that is no longer my own.

Not to indulge longer in details, I am all things attended by this weakness of good intention. In fact I fear that I am gradually losing ground, or, what causes me even more worry, that I am hanging like one who is always on the verge of falling, and that perhaps I am in a more serious condition than I myself perceive; for we take a favorable view of our private matters, and partiality always hampers our judgment. I fancy that many men would have arrived at wisdom if they had not fancied that they had already arrived, if they had not dissembled about certain traits in their character and passed by others with their eyes shut. For there is no reason for you to suppose that the adulation of other people is more ruinous to us than our own. Who dares to tell himself the truth? Who, though he is surrounded by a horde of applauding sycophants, is not for all that his own greatest flatterer? I beg you, therefore, if you have any remedy by which you could stop this fluctuation of mine, to deem me worthy of being indebted to you for tranquillity. I know that these mental file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-06/03.serenus.html (2 of 3)19/5/2005 10:19:24 πμ

Serenus & general self-scrutiny

disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness. Do you, then, take from me this trouble, whatever it be, and rush to the rescue of one who is struggling in full sight of land.

At first glance, Serenus' long description appears to be an accumulation of relatively unimportant details about his likes and dislikes, descriptions of trifles such as his father's heavy plates, how he likes his food, and so on. And it also seem to be in a great disorder, a mess of details. But behind this apparent disorder you can easily discern the real organization of the text. There are three basic parts to the discourse. The first part, the beginning of the quote, is devoted to Serenus' relation to wealth, possessions, his domestic and private life. The second part-which begins "I resolve to obey the commands of my teachers. . ." -this paragraph deals with Serenus' relation to public life and his political character. And the third part- which starts at "And in my literary studies... " -Serenus speaks of his literary activity, the type of language he prefers to employ, and so on. But he can also recognize here the relation between death and immortality, or the question of an enduring life in people's memories after death. So the three themes treated in these paragraphs are (1) private or domestic life; (2) public life; and (3) immortality or afterlife.

In the first part Serenus explains what he is willing to do, and what he likes to do. He thereby also shows what he considers unimportant and to which he is indifferent. And all these descriptions show Serenus' positive image and character. He does not have great material needs in his domestic life, for he is not attached to luxury. In the second paragraph he says he is not enslaved by ambition, he does not want a great political career, but to be of service to others. And in the third paragraph he states that he is not seduced by high-flown rhetoric, but prefers instead to adhere to useful speech. You can see that in this way Serenus draws up a balance sheet of his choices, of his freedom, and the result is not bad at all. Indeed, it is quite positive. Serenus is attached to what is natural, to what is necessary, to what is useful (either for himself or his friends), and is usually indifferent to the rest.

Regarding these three fields (private life, public life, and afterlife), well, all tolled, Serenus is rather a good fellow.

And his account also shows us the precise topic of his examination, which is: what are the things that are important to me, and what are the things to which I am indifferent? And he considers important things which really are important.

But each of the three paragraphs is also divided into two parts. After Serenus explains the importance or indifference he attributes to things, there is a transitional moment when he begins to make an objection to himself, when his mind begins to waver. These transitional moments are marked by his use of the word "animus". Regarding the three topics already noted, Serenus explains that despite the fact that he makes good choices, that he disregards unimportant things, he nonetheless feels that his mind, his animus, is involuntarily moved. And as a result, although he is not exactly inclined to behave in an opposite fashion, he is still dazzled or aroused by the things he previously thought unimportant. These involuntary feelings are indications, he believes, that his animus is not completely tranquil or stable, and this motivates his request for a consultation. Serenus knows the theoretical principles and practical rules of Stoicism, is usually able to put them into operation, yet he still feels that these rules are not a permanent matrix for his behavior, his feelings, and his thoughts. Serenus' instability does not derive from his 'sins,' or from the fact that he exists as a temporal being -as in Augustine, for example. It stems from the fact that he has not yet succeeded in harmonizing his actions and thoughts with the ethical structure he has chosen for himself. It is as if Serenus were a good pilot, he knows how to sail, there is no storm on the horizon, yet he is stuck at sea and cannot reach the solid earth because he does not possess the tranquillitas, the firmitas, which comes from complete self-sovereignty. And Seneca's reply to this self-examination and moral request is an exploration of the nature of this stability of mind.

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Epictetus & the Control of Representations

Foucault.info | Epictetus & the Control of Representations

A third text, which also shows some of the differences in the truth games involved in these self-examination exercises, comes from the Discourses of Epictetus -where I think you can find a third type of exercise quite different from the previous ones. There are numerous types of self-examination techniques and practices in Epictetus, some of them resembling both the evening examinations of Sextius and the general self-scrutiny of Serenus. But there is one form of examination which, I think, is very characteristic of Epictetus, and which takes the form of a constant putting on trial of all our representations.

This technique is also related to the demand for stability; for given the constant stream of representations which flow into the mind, Epictetus' problem consists in knowing how to distinguish those representations that he can control from those that he cannot control, that incite involuntary emotions, feelings, behavior, etc., and which must therefore be excluded from his mind. Epictetus' solution is that we must adopt an attitude of permanent surveillance with regard to all our representations, and he explains this attitude by employing two metaphors: the metaphor of the nightwatchman or doorkeeper who does not admit anyone into his house or palace without first checking his identity; and the metaphor of the "money-changer" who, when a coin is very difficult to read, verifies the authenticity of the currency, examines it, weighs it, verifies the metal and effigy, and so on.

The third topic has to do with cases of assent; it is concerned with the things that are plausible and attractive. For, just as Socrates used to tell us not to live a life unsubjected to examination, so we ought not to accept a senseimpression unsubjected to examination, but should say, "Wait, allow me to see who you are and whence you come" (just as the night-watch say, "Show me your tokens"). "Do you have your token from nature, the ones which every sense-impression which is to be accepted must have?"

These two metaphors are also found in early Christian texts. Johannes Cassian [A.D.360-435], for example, asked his monks to scrutinize and test their own representations like a doorkeeper or a money-changer. In the case of Christian self-examination, the monitoring of representations has the specific intention of determining whether, under an apparently innocent guise, the devil himself is not hiding. For in order not to be trapped by what only seems to be innocent, in order to avoid the devil's counterfeit coins, the Christian must determine where his thoughts and sense-impressions come from, and what relation actually exists between a representation's apparent and real value. For Epictetus, however, the problem is not to determine the source of the impression (God or Satan) so as to judge whether it conceals something or not; his problem is rather to determine whether the impression represents something which depends upon him or not, i.e., whether it is accessible or not to his will. Its purpose is not to dispel the devil's illusions, but to guarantee self-mastery.

To foster mistrust of our representations, Epictetus proposes two kinds of exercises. One form is borrowed directly from the Sophists. And in this classical game of the sophistic schools, one of the students asked a question and another student had to answer it without falling into the sophistic trap. An elementary example of this sophistic game is this one: Question: 'Can a chariot go through a mouth?' Answer: 'Yes. You yourself said the word "chariot", and it went through your mouth.' Epictetus criticized such exercises as unhelpful, and proposed another for the purpose of moral training. In this game there are also two partners. One of the partners states a fact, an event, and the other has to answer, as quickly as possible, whether this fact or event is good or evil, i.e., is within or beyond our control. We can see this exercise, for example, in the following text: As we exercise ourselves to meet the sophistical interrogations, so we ought also to exercise ourselves daily to meet the impression of our senses, because these too put interrogations to us. So-and-so's son is dead. Answer, "That lies outside the sphere of the moral purpose, it is not an evil." His father has disinherited So-and-so; what do you think of it? That lies outside the sphere of the moral purpose, it is not an evil. " Caesar has condemned him. "That lies outside the sphere of the moral purpose, it is not an evil." He was grieved at all this. "That lies within the sphere of the moral purpose, it is an evil. " He has borne up under it manfully. "That lies within the sphere of the moral purpose, it is a good." Now if we acquire this habit, we shall make progress; for we shall never give our assent to anything but that of which we get a convincing senseimpression.

There is another exercise Epictetus describes which has the same object, but the form is closer to those employed later in the Christian tradition. It consists in walking through the streets of the city and asking yourself whether any representation that happens to come to your mind depends upon your will or not. If it does not lie within the province of moral purpose and will, then it must be rejected: Go out of the house at early dawn, and no matter whom you see or whom you hear, examine him and then answer as you would to a question. What did you see? A handsome man or a handsome woman? Apply your rule. Is it outside the province of the moral purpose, or inside? Outside. Away with it. What did you see? A man in grief over the death of his child? Apply file:///C|/Οι Τοποθεσ•ες μου/Foucault/foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-06/04.epictetus.html (1 of 2)19/5/2005 10:19:24 πμ

Epictetus & the Control of Representations

your rule. Death lies outside the province of the moral purpose. Out of the way with it. Did a Consul meet you? Apply your rule. What sort of thing is a consulship? Outside the province of the moral purpose, or inside? Outside. Away with it, too, it does not meet the test; throw it away, it does not concern you. If we had kept doing this and had exercised ourselves from dawn till dark with this principle in mind--by the gods, something would have been achieved !

As you can see, Epictetus wants us to constitute a world of representations where nothing can intrude which is not subject to the sovereignty of our will. So, again, self-sovereignty is the organizing principle of this form of selfexamination.

I would have liked to have analyzed two more texts from Marcus Aurelius, but given the hour, I have no time left for this.

So I would now like to turn to my conclusions.

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Conclusion of Techniques

Foucault.info | Conclusion of Techniques

In reading these texts about self-examination and underlining the differences between them, I wanted to show you, first, that there is a noticeable shift in the parrhesiastic practices between the 'master' and the 'disciple'.

Previously, when parrhesia appeared in the context of spiritual guidance, the master was the one who disclosed the truth about the disciple. In these exercises, the master still uses frankness of speech with the disciple in order to help him became aware of the faults he cannot see (Seneca uses parrhesia towards Serenus, Epictetus uses parrhesia towards his disciples) ; but now the use of parrhesia is put increasingly upon the disciple as his own duty towards himself. At this point the truth about the disciple is not disclosed solely through the parrhesiastic discourse of the master, or only in the dialogue between the master and the disciple or interlocutor. 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 (as in the first example from Seneca) or to someone else (as in the second example from Seneca) .

And the disciple must also test himself, and check to see whether he is able to achieve self-mastery (as in the examples from Epictetus) .

Secondly, it is not sufficient to analyze this personal relation of self-understanding as merely deriving from the general principle "gnothi seauton"—"know thyself". Of course, in a certain general sense it can be derived from this principle, but we cannot stop at this point. For the various relationships which one has to oneself are embedded in very precise techniques which take the form of spiritual exercises--some of them dealing with deeds, others with states of equilibrium of the soul, others with the flow of representations, and so on.

Third point. In all these different exercises, what is at stake is not the disclosure of a secret which has to excavated from out of the depths of the soul. What is at stake is the relation of the self to truth or to some rational principles.

Recall that the question which motivated Seneca's evening self- examination was: 'Did I bring into play those principles of behavior I know very well, but, as it sometimes happens, I do not always conform to or always apply?

Another question was: 'Am I able to adhere to the principles I am familiar with, I agree with, and which I practice most of the time? ' For that was Serenus' question. Or the question Epictetus raised in the exercises I was just discussing: 'Am I able to react to any kind of representation which shows itself to me in conformity with my adopted rational rules? What we have to underline here is this: if the truth of the self in these exercises is nothing other than the relation of the self to truth, then this truth is not purely theoretical. The truth of the self involves, on the one hand, a set of rational principles which are grounded in general statements about the world, human life, necessity, happiness, freedom, and so on, and, on the other hand, practical rules for behavior. And the question which is raised in these different exercises is oriented towards the following problem: Are we familiar enough with these rational principles? Are they sufficiently well-established in our minds to become practical rules for our everyday behavior? And the problem of memory is at the heart of these techniques, but in the form of an attempt to remind ourselves of what we have done, thought, or felt so that we may reactivate our rational principles, thus making them as permanent and as effective as possible in our life.

These exercises are part of what we could call an "aesthetics of the self. " For one does not have to take up a position or role towards oneself as that of a judge pronouncing a verdict. One can comport oneself towards oneself in the role of a technician, of a craftsman, of an artist, who -from time to time- stops working, examines what he is doing, reminds himself of the rule of his art, and compares these rules with what he has achieved thus far. This metaphor of the artist who stops working, steps back, gains a distant perspective, and examines what he is actually doing with the principles of his art can be found in Plutarch's essay, "On the Control of Anger".

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