RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING

S. Joel Garver

CHAPTER SIX

Going Along with the Crowd:
Discursive Formations and Responsibility

Section I

Foucault approaches ethics historically and structurally, analyzing various periods in history in four directions. I will briefly recount this fourfold analysis in respect to the ancient Greeks with some reference to Foucault's interpretation of Christianity and the modern period (which were to be the subjects of future volumes of his unfinished History of Sexuality). Foucault's analysis employs the following four categories: [1] the determination of the ethical substance (substance ethique); [2] the mode of subjection (mode d'assujettissement); [2] the elaboration of ethical work (travail ethique or pratique de soi); and [4] the telos (teleologie). Let us examine these in some more detail (these and the following points are drawn mostly from Foucault 1983:238ff. and 1985:24ff.).

The determination of the ethical substance answers the question: What is the aspect or part of the self or one's behavior which is concerned with moral conduct? Foucault saw the Greeks as focusing on "aphrodisia," various acts linked to pleasure and desire. In Christianity, he suggested, the focus shifted from the acts to the desires themselves which were conceptualized as concupiscence or "the flesh." In the modern period, on the other hand, the Christian conception has been reduced to a focus on feelings (I think a quick survey of daytime talk shows will give some confirmation to this).

The mode of subjection answers the question: In what way are people invited or incited to recognize their moral obligations? Foucault saw the Greeks as valorizing an aesthetics of existence. The moral life is the one that will give one's life the most beautiful form possible (and, therefore, within the Greek society the best life was accessible only to upper class males). For the Christians, Foucault suggested, moral obligations were recognized primarily in divine law as revealed in an authoritative text. In the modern period, Foucault would see the mode of subjection in more clinical terms: mental health (though, I think, there are also dominant corporate metaphors at work as well--as in "anger management" or "stress management" which lead to an efficient and productive lifestyle).

The elaboration of ethical work answers the question: What are the means by which we can change ourselves to become ethical subjects? For the Greeks it was largely a question of moderation--and so Socrates was virtuous since he lusted after the beautiful Alciabides without making any advances (Symposium 196c) and Aristotle praised the man who was angry "at the right things and with the right people, and, further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought" (Nichomachean Ethics IV.5 1125b28). Virtuous desire and pleasure are properly regulated and maintained, not suppressed or eradicated. In Christianity, on the other hand, Foucault saw an attempt to eradicate desire and pleasure (leading to what the Greek fathers called "apatheia"). This was achieved through "mortification" of the flesh and, in the Latin West, at least, through the highly developed confessional system in which the penitent learned to decipher himself so to eradicate desire. In the modern period, thought Foucault (who was originally trained as a psychologist), the confessional has been transformed into the analyst's couch and the deciphering of the self has taken on a "scientific" and clinical status.

The telos answers the question: Which is the kind of being to which we aspire when we behave in a moral way? The Greeks wanted to become masters of themselves. Foucault writes that to the Greeks

For the Christians, however, the telos was, Foucault suggests, to become a pure immortal being free from any fleshly desire. In the modern period, the telos has, perhaps, shifted to simply "freedom" as that notion has emerged from the Enlightenment and is achieved through mental health.

A more comprehensive picture emerges from these considerations. Within Greek society the idea is not that a subject has a certain set of XYZ obligations, but that if a subject wants to have a beautiful existence, a good reputation, and the ability to rule, that individual must perform certain tasks XYZ and arrange his life in certain XYZ patterns. Foucault sees this picture shift in the period of the later Stoics (under the Romans). In the decline of the polis and hierarchialized Hellenism, the notion of an aesthetics of self becomes universalized so that one does XYZ because that is what any rational human being would do. In Christianity that rationality finds its source in the Divine Logos and thus XYZ becomes inscripturated divine law. In modern times XYZ becomes largely a medical, scientific, and juridical matter.

Foucault formulated these points in a triad of "actes," "plaisir," and "desir" (acts, pleasure, desire). For the Greeks, acts were primary, though essentially linked to pleasure and desire. For the Christians desire is emphasized in order to be eradicated, acts are done out of pure duty, and pleasure is excluded (e.g., sexual intercourse is for carrying out reproductive duties--and that is all). In the modern period the only thing left is desire since acts are unimportant and, as Foucault says only somewhat facetiously, no one knows what pleasure is.

Foucault's analyses are naturally more detailed and well-argued than this summary, at least in respect to the Greeks, Romans, and the modern shift to a therapeutic model. These are, nevertheless, the main outlines. While his specific analyses have been much discussed and criticized, I find his broad outlines to be at least suggestively accurate, though they certainly do not cover every case and every feature of the various periods of history he examines. For example, it is difficult to lump together in any useful manner the ethics and spirituality of the desert Fathers, Celtic Christianity, the medieval Latin Church, the Eastern hesychasts, and other various movements and figures--the spiritual Franciscans, Meister Eckhart, the Brethren of the Common Life, etc. Over a period of at least 1300 years and despite near unanimity on specific ethical principles, Christianity has had far too much variation in style for the purposes of detailed general analysis of its social forms and structures of subjectivity. Similar, though less severe, problems arise in respect to the Greeks and Romans (compare, for instance, Plato and Aristotle, not to mention the Stoics, Epicureans, Cynics, Skeptics, Peripatetics, Eclectics, Platonists, Neo-pythagoreans, etc.).

Our interest, therefore, is not so much with the details of the ethical systems that Foucault elaborates, but rather with what Foucault must take to be the case concerning human volition and responsibility in order for him to make the elaborations that he does. A couple of preliminary points must be kept in mind. First, Foucault's concept of "ethics" is broader than what we might ordinarily think of as encompassing the ethical, including, in various cases, an "aesthetics of existence," the political, etiquette, social forms, conceptualizations of the soul, the emotions, passions, desires, and pleasures, health, the scientific, the medical, and the juridical. Thus it connects quite easily with his concerns as presented in the previous chapter.

Second, Foucault's elaboration of ethics ranges over the entire realm of human value, responsibility, and normativity (aesthetics, morals, etiquette, etc.), and though he does not expressly enter into every area his analysis may, quite easily, be extended to cover areas that include and affect responsible epistemic normativity.

What, then, does Foucault's account presuppose regarding human volition, responsibility, and the nature of responsible action? We should first note that, as Foucault envisions it, the shift in ethical (normative, evaluative) systems from one period to another does not constitute a complete shift in terms of basic desires and pleasures. Granted, different systems conceptualize those basic desires and pleasures differently--linking them in various ways to acts, sometimes placing them at the center of ethical technique, and so on--but the desires and pleasures themselves remain relatively constant. The shifts that Foucault sees in these systems, however, are, at least in part, shifts in higher order pleasures, desires, conceptualizations, evaluative discourses, and so on.

For example, to be good tempered for the earlier Greeks--e.g., Aristotle--is for a person to have a certain kind of effective desire to shape his desire for revenge and the pleasures that attend that desire in the face of a conspicuous hurt. That higher order desire is directed towards moderation and self-mastery and thus the ability to rule and to produce a particular aesthetics of existence. Foucault, I think, would suggest that in the later period of Stoicism, anger was conceived in a similar way, but the desire to shape the anger is linked not so much to an aesthetics of existence or ability to rule, but to self-mastery as an expression of ideal human rationality. Whether this is an accurate portrayal of ancient ethical systems is not so much our interest as is the fact that Foucault consistently presents responsible human practices and human freedom within a context of a hierarchy of desires. This fact is alluded to in Foucault's very definition of ethics as a "relation to oneself." And so for Foucault freedom and responsibility must be understood in terms of relations between various orders of desires and the connections between those desires, their orderings, and the evaluative environment (the discursive formation). There is here, I will contend, an essential insight into the nature of human responsibility.

Throughout his works Foucault constantly builds on Nietzschean foundations. This is true also in his ethics, most obviously so in his appropriation of the notion of "genealogy" (which Foucault applies to fields far wider than just ethics). A deeper understanding of Foucault's assesment of responsibility will be greatly assisted by an examination of its Nietzschean underpinnings. Let us, then, turn briefly to Nietzsche and explore some connected themes that may have influenced Foucault and will shed light on his account.