Subjectivity and Truth
In a work consecrated to the
Moraltreatment of madness and published in 1840, a french psychiatrist, Leuret,
tells of the manner in which he has treated one of his patients, treated and,
as you can imagine, of course, cured. One morning Dr. Leuret takes Mr. A., his
patient, into a showerroom. He makes him recount in detail his delirium.
“Well, all that,” says the
doctor, “is nothing but madness. Promise me not to believe in it anymore.”
The patient hesitates, then
promises.
“That’s not enough,” replies
the doctor. “You have already made similar promises, and you haven’t kept
them.” And the doctor turns on a cold shower above the patient’s head.
“Yes, Yes! I am mad!” the
patient cries.
The shower is turned off, and
the interrogation is resumed.
“Yes, I recognise that I am
mad,” the patient repeats, adding, “I recognise, because you are forcing me to
do so.”
Another shower. Another
confession. The interrogation is taken up again.
“I assure you, however,” says
the patient, “that I have heard voices and seen enemies around me.”
Another shower.
“Well,” says Mr. A., the
patient, “I admit it. I am mad; all that was madness” (1)
To make someone suffering from
mentalillness recognise that he is mad is a veryancient procedure. Everybody in
the oldMedicine, before the middle of thenineteenthcentury, everybody was
convinced of the incompatibility between madness and recognition of madness.
And in the works, for instance, of the seventeenth and of the
eighteenthcenturies, one finds many examples of what one might call
truththerapites. The mad would be cured if one managed to show them that their
delirium is without any relation toReality.
But, as you see, the technique
used by Leuret is altogether different. He is not trying to persuade his
patient that his ideas are false or unreasonable. What
happens in the head of Mr.A is a matter of indiffernce for the doctor. Leuret wishes to obtain a precise act: the explicit
affirmation, I am mad. It is easy to recognise here the transposition
within psychiatric therapy of procedures which have been used for a long time
in judicial and religious institutions. To declare aloud and intelligibly the
truth about oneself, I mean to confess, has in the western world has been
considered for a long time either as a condition for redemption for one’s sins
or as an essential item in the condemnation of the guilty. The bizarre therapy
of Leuret may be read as an episode in the progressive culpabilisation of
madness. But, I would wish, rather, to take it as a point of departure for a
more general reflection on this practice of confession, and on the postulate,
which is generally accepted in western societies, that one needs for his own
salavation to know as exactly as possible who he is and also, which is
something rather different, that he needs to tell it as explicitly as possible
to some other people. The anecdote of Leuret is here only as an example of the
strange and complex relationships developed in our societies between
individually, discourse, truth, and coercion.
In order to justify the
attention I am giving to what is seemingly so specialised a subject, let me
take a step back for a moment. All that, after all is only for me a means that
I will use to take on a much more general theme, that is, the geneaology of the
modern subject.
In the years that preceded
theSecondWar, and even more so after theSecondWar, Philo. in France, I think,
in all continentalEurope, was dominated by the Philo. of the subject. I mean
that Philo. set as its task par excellence the foundation of all Knowledge and
the principle of all signification as stemming from the meaningful subject. The
importance given to this question of the meaningful subject was of course due
to the impact of Husserl, only his Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis were
generally known in France (2), but the centrality of the subject was also tied
to an institutional context. For the french university, since Philo. began with
Descartes, it could only advance in a Cartesian manner. But we must also into
account the political conjuncture. Given the absurdity of wars, slaughters, and
Despotism, it seemed then to be up to the individual subject to give meaning to
his existential choices.
With the leisure and distances
that came after the war, this emphasis on the philosophicalsubject no longer
seemed so selfevident. Two hithertohidden theoretical paradoxes could no longer
be avoided. Thefirstone was that the Philo. of consciousness had failed to
found a Philo.OfKnowledge, and especially scientificKnowledge, and thesecond
was that thisPhilo. Of meaning paradoxically had failed to take into account
the formative Mechanisms of signification and the structure of systems of
meaning. I am aware that another form of thought claimed then to have gone beyond
the Philo. of the subject – this, of course, was Marxism. It goes without
saying – and it goes indeed better if we say it- that neither Materialism nor
the theory of Ideologies succesfully constituted a theory of objectivity or of
signification. Marxism put itself forward as a humanistic discourse that could
replace the abstract subject with an appeal to the real man, to the concrete
man. It should have been clear at the time that Marxism carried with it a
fundamental theoretical and practical weakness: the humanistic discourse hid
the political Reality that the Marxists of this period nonetheless supported.
With the all-too-easy clarity
of hindsight, what you call, I think, the “mondaymorningquarterback”, let me
say that there were two possible paths that led beyond this Philo. Of the
subject. First, the theory of objectiveKnowledge and, two, an analysis of
systems of meaning, or Semiology. The first of these was the path of
logicalPositivism. The second was that of a certain school of Linguistics, Psychoanalysis,
and Anthropology, all generally grouped under the rubric of Structuralism.
These were not the directions I
took. Let me announce once and for all that I am not a structuralist, and I
confess with the appropriate chagrin that I am not an analyticphilosopher –
nobody is perfect. I have tried to explore another direction. I have tried to
get out from the Philo. of the subject through a genealogy of this subject, by
studying the constitution of the subject across History which has led us up to
the modern concept of the self. This has not always been an easy task, since
most historians prefer a History of social processes, (3) and most philosophers
prefer a subject without History. This has neither prevented me from using the
same material that certain social historians have used, nor from recognising my
theoretical debt to those philosophers who, like Nietzsche, have posed the
question of the historicity of the subject. (4)
Up to the present I have
preceeded with this general project in two ways. I have dealt with the modern
theoretical constitutions that were concerned with the subject in general. I
have tried to analyse in a previous book theories of the subject as a speaking,
living, working being. (5) I have also dealt with the more practical understanding
formed in those institutions like hospitals, asylums, and prisons, where
certain subjects became objects of Knowledge and at the same time objects of
domination. (6) And now, I wish to study those forms of understanding which the
subject creates about himself. Those forms of self-understanding are important
I think to analyse the modern experience of Sexuality. (7)
But since I have started with
this last type of project I have been obliged to change my mind on several
important points. Let me introduce a kind of autocritique. It seems, according
to some suggestions by habermas, that one can distinguish three major types of
techniques in human societies: the techniques which permit one to produce, to
transform, to manipulate things; the techniques which permit one to use sign
systems; and the techniques which permit one to determine the conduct of
individuals, to impose certain wills on them, and to submit them to certain
ends or objectives. That is to say, there are techniques of production, techniques
of signification, and techniques of domination. (8)
Of course, if one wants to
study the History of NaturalSciences, it is useful if not necessary to take
into account the techniques of production and semiotic techniques. But since my
project was concerned with the Knowledge of the subject, I thought that the
techniques of domination were the most important, without any exclusions of the
rest. But, analysing the experience of Sexuality, I became more and more aware
that there is in all societies, I think, in all societies whatever they are,
another type of techniques: techniques which permit individuals to effect, by
their own means, a certain number of operations on their own bodies, on their
own souls, on their own thoughts, on their own conduct, and this in a manner so
as to transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state of
perfection, of happiness, of purity, of supernatural power, and so on. Let’s
call this kind of techniques a techniques or technology of the self. (9)
I think that if one wants to
analyse the geneaology of the subject in western civilisation, he has to take
into account not only techniques of dominiation but also techniques of the
self. Let’s say: he has to take into account the interaction between those two
types of techniques – techniques of domination and techniques of the self. He
has to take into account the points where the technologies of domination of
individuals over one another have recourse to processes by which the individual
acts upon himself. And conversely, he has to take into account the points where
the techniques of the self are integrated into structures of coercion or
domination. The contact point, where the individuals are driven (10) by others
is tied to the way they conduct themselves, (11) is what we can call, I think,
Government. Governing people, in the broad meaning of the word, (13) governing
people is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always
a versatile equilibrium, with complementary and conflicts between techniques
which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed or
modified by himself.
When I was studying asylums,
prisons, and so on, I insisted, I think, too much on the techniques of
domination. What we call discipline is something really important in these
kinds of institutions, but it is only at one aspect of the art of governing
people in our society. We must not understand the exercise of power as pure
violence or strict coercion. Power consists in complex relations: these
relations involve a set of rational techniques, and the efficiency of those
techniques is due to a subtle integration of coercion-technologies and
self-technologies. I think that we have to get rid of the more or less Freudian
schema, you know it, the schema of interiorisation of the Law by the self.
Fortunately, from a thereotical point of view, and maybe unfortunately from a
practical point of view, things are much more complicated than that. In short,
having studied the field of Government by taking as my point of departure
techniques of domination, I would like in years to come to study Government –
especially in the field of Sexuality – starting from the techniques of the
self. (14)
Among those techniques of the
self in this field of the selftechnology, I think that the techniques oriented
toward the discovery and the formulation of the truth concerning oneself are
extremely important; and, if for the Government of people in our societies
every had not only to obey but also to produce and publish the truth about
oneself, then examiniation of conscience and confession are among the most
important of those procedures. Of course, there is a very long and very complex
History, from the Delphic precept, gnothi seauton (“know yourself”) to the
strange therapeutics promoted by Leuret, about which I was speaking in the
beginning of this lecture. There is a very long way from one to the other, and
I don’t want, of course, to give you even a survey this evening. I’d like only
to underline a transformation of those practices, a tranformation which took
place at the beginning of the Christian era, of the Christian period, when the
ancient obligation of knowing oneself became the monastic precet “confess, to
your spiritual guide, each of your thoughts.” This transformation is, I think,
of some importance in the genealogy of modern subjectivity. With this
transformation starts what we would call the hermeneutics of the self. This
evening I’ll try to outline the way confession and self-examination were
conceived by paganphilosophers, and next week I’ll try to show you what it
became in the early Christianity.
It is well known that the main
objective of the greek schools of Philo. did not consist of the elaboration,
the teaching, of theory. The goal of the greek schools of Philo. was the
transformation of the individual. The goal of the greek Philo. was to give the
individual the quality which would premit him to live differently, better, more
happily, than other people. What place did the self-examination and the confession
have in this? At first glance, in all the ancient philosophical practices, the
obligation to tell the truth about oneself occupies a rather restrained place.
And this for two reasons, both of which remain valid throughout the whole Greek
and Hellenistic Antiquity. The first of those reasons is that the objective of
philosophical training was to arm the individual with a certain number of
precepts which permit him to conduct himself in all circumstances of life
without his losing mastery of himself or without losing tranquility of spirit,
purity of body and soul. From this principle stems the importance of the
master’s discourse. The master’s discourse has to talk, to explain, to
persuade; he has to give the disciple a universal code for all his life, so
that the verbalisation takes place on the side of the master and not on the
side of the disciple.
There is also another reason
why the obligation to confess does not have a lot of importance in the
direction of the antique conscience. The tie with the master was then
circumstantial or, in any case, provisional. It was a relationship between two
wills, which does not imply a complete or a definitive obedience. One solicits
or one accepts the advice of a master or of a friend in order to endure an ordeal,
a bereavement, an exile, or a reversal of fortune, and so on. Or again, one
places oneself under the direction of a master for a certain time of one’s life
so as one day to be able to behave autonomously and no longer have need of
advice. Ancient direction tends toward the autonomy of the directed. In these
conditions, one can understand that the necessity for exploring oneself in
exhaustive depth does not present itself. It is not indispensable to say
everything about oneself, to reveal one’s least secrets, so that the master may
exert complete power over one. The exhaustive and continual presentation of
oneself under the eyes of an all-powerful director is not an essential feature
in this technique of direction.
But, despite this general
orientation which has so little emphasis on selfexamination and on confession,
one finds well before Christianity already elaborated techniques for
discovering and formulating the truth about oneself. And their role, it would
seem, became more and more important. The growing importance of these
techniques is no doubt tied to the development of communal life in the
philosophical school, as with the Pythagoreans or the Epicureans, and it is
also tied to the value accorded to the medical model, either in the Epicurean or
the Stoician schools.
Since it is not possible in so
short a time even to give a sketch of this evolution of greek and hellenist
civilisation, I’ll take only two passages of []Seneca.
They may be considered as rather good witnesses on the practice of selfexamination
and confession as it existed with the Stoics of the imperial period at the time
of the birth of Christianity. The first passage is to be found in the De Ira of
Seneca. Here is the passage. I’ll read it to you. “What
could be more beautiful than to conduct an inquest on one’s day? What sleep
better than that which follows this review of one’s actions? How calm it is,
deep and free, when the soul has received its portion of praise and blame, and
has submitted itself to its own examination, to its own censure. Secretly, it
makes the trial of its own conduct. I exercise this authority over myself, and
each day I will myself as witness before myself. When my light is lowered and
my wife is at leats is silent, I reason with myself and take the measure of my
acts and of my words. I hide nothing from myself; I spare myself nothing. Why,
in effect, should I fear anything at all from amongst my errors whilst I can
say: “Be vigilant in not beginning it again; today I will forgive you. In a
certain discussion you spoke too aggressively or you did not correct the person
you were reproaching, you offended him,...” etc. (15)
There is something paradoxical
in seeing the stoics, such as Seneca and also Sextus, Epictetus,
MarcusAurelius, and so on, according so much importance to the examination of conscience
whilst, according to the terms of their doctrine, all faults were supposed
equal. It should not therefore be necessary to interrogate themselves on each
one of them.
But let’s look at this text a
little more closely. First of all, Seneca employs a vocabulary which at first
glance appears, above all, judicial. He uses expressions like cognoscere de
moribus suis, and me causam dico – all that is typical judicial vocabulary. It
seems, therefore, that the subject is, with regard to himself, both the judge
and the accused. In this examination of conscience it seems that the subject
divides itself in two and organises a judicial scene, where it plays both roles
at once. Seneca is like an accused confessing his crime to the judge, and the
judge is Seneca himself. But, if we look more closely, we see that the
vocabulary used by Seneca is much more adminsitrative than judicial. It is the
vocabulary of the direction of goods or territory. Seneca says, for instance,
that he is speculator sui, that he inspects himself, that he examines with
himself the past day, totum diem meum scrutor; or that he takes the measure of
things said and done; he uses the word remetior. With regard to himself, he is
not a judge who has to punish; he is, rather, an administrator who, once the
work has been done or the year’s business finished, does the accounts, takes
stock of things, and sees if everything has been done correctly. Seneca is a
permanent administrator of himself, more than a judge of his own past. (16)
The examples of the faults
committed by Seneca and with which he reproaches himself are significant from
this point of view. He says and he reproaches himself for having criticised
someone and instead of correcting him has hurt him; or again, he says that he
has discussed with people who were in any case incapable of understanding him.
These faults, as he says himself, are not really faults; they are mistakes. And
why mistakes? Either because he did not have in his mind the aims which the
sage should set himself or because he had not applied in the correct manner the
rules of conduct to be deduced from them. The faults are mistakes in that sense
that they are bad adjustments between aims and means. Significant is also the
fact that Seneca does not recall those faults in order to punish himself; he
has as a goal only to memorise exactly the rules which he had to apply. This
memorisation has for an object a reactivation of fundamental philosophical
principles and the readjustement of their application. In the Christian confession
the penitent has to memorise the Law in order to discover his own sins, but in
this Stoic exercise the sage has to memorise acts in order to reactivate the
fundamental rules.
One can therefore characterise
this examination in a few words. First, this examination, it’s not at all a
question of discovering the truth hidden in the subject. It is rather a
question of recalling the truth forgotten by the subject. Two, what the subject
forgets is not himself, nor his nature, nor his origin, nor a supernatural
affinity. What the subject forgets is what he ought to have done, that is, a
collection of rules of conduct that he had learned. Three, the recollection of
errors committed during the day serves to measure the distance which separates
what has been done from what should have been done. And four, the subject who
practices this examination on himself is not the operating ground for a process
more or less obscure which has to be deciphered. He is the point where the
rules of conduct come together and register themselves in the form of memories.
He is at the same time the point of departure for actions more or less in
conformity with these rules. He constitues, the subject constitues, the point
of intersection between a set of memories which must be brought into the
present and acts which have to be regulated.
This evening examination has
its logical place among a set of other stoic exercises (17) : continual
reading, for instance, of the manual of precepts (that’s for the present); the
examination of the evils which could happen in life, the wellknown premeditatio
malorum (that was for the possible); the enumeration each morning of the tasks
to be accomplished during the day (that was for the future); and finally, the
evening examination of conscience (so much for the past). As you see, the self
in all those exercises is not considered as a field of subjective data which
have to be interpreted. It submits itself to the trial of possible or real
action.
Well, after this examination of
conscience, which constitutes a kind of confession to one’s self, I would like
to speak about the confession to others: I mean to say the exposé of one’s soul
which one makes to someone, who may be a friend, an adviser, a guide. This was
a practice not very developed in philosophical life, but it had been developed
in some philosophical schools, for instance among the Epicurean schools, and it
was also a very well known medical practice. The medicallitterature is rich in
such examples of confession or exposé of the self. For instance, the treatise
of Galen, On the
Passions of the Soul (18) quotes an example like that; or Plutarch, in the De
Profectibus in Virtute writes, “There are many
sick people who accept Medicine and others who refuse them; the man who hides
the shame of soul, his desire, his unpleasantness, his avarice, his
concupiscence, has little chance of making progress. Indeed, to speak one’s
evil reveals one[‘s] nastiness; to recognise it instead of taking pleasure in
hiding it. All this is a sign of progress.” (19)
Well, another text of Seneca
might also serve us as an example here of what was confession in the Late Antiquity.
It is in the beginning of De Tranquillitate Animi.
(20) Serenus, a young friend of Seneca, comes to ask him for advice. It is very
explicitly a medicalconsultation on his own state of soul. “Why,” says Serenus, “should I not confess to you the truth,
as to a doctor?... I do not feel altogether ill but nor do I feel entirely in
good health.” Serenus feels himself in a state of malaise, rather as he
says, like on a boat which does not advance, but is tossed about by the rolling
of the ship. And, he fears staying at sea in this condition, in view of firm
land and of the virtues which remain inaccessible. In order to escape this
state, Serenus therefore decides to consult Seneca and to confess his state to
Seneca. He says that he wants verum fateri, to tell the truth, to Seneca. (21)
Now what is the truth, what is
this verum, that he wants to confess? Does he confess faults, secret thoughts,
shameful desires, and things like that? Not at all. The
text of Serenus appears as an accumulation of relatively unimportant, at least
for us unimportant, details; for instance, Serenus confesses to Seneca that he
uses the earthenware inherited from his father, that he gets easily carried
away when he makes publicspeecehs, and so on and so on. But, it is easy, beneath this apparent disorder, to
recognise three distinct domains for this confession: the domain of riches, the
domain of politicallife, and the domain of glory; to acquire riches, to
participate in the affairs of the city, to gain publicopinion. These are, these
were, the three types of activity possible for a freeman, the three commonplace
Moralquestions that are asked by the major philosophical schools of the period.
The framework of the exposé of Serenus is not therefore defined by the
real course of his existence; it is not defined by his real experiences, nor by
a theory of the soul or of its elements, but only by a classification of the
different types of activity which one can exercise and the ends which one can
pursue. In each one of these fields, Serenus reveals his attitude by
enumerating that which pleases him and that which displeases him. The
expression “it pleases me” (placet me) is the leading thread in his analysis.
It pleases him to do favours for his friends. It pleases him to eat simply, and
to have not other than that which he has inherited, but the spectacle of luxury
in others pleases him. He takes pleasure also in inflating his oraticalstyle
with the hope that posterity will retain his words. In thus exposing what pleases
him, Serenus is not seeking to reveal what are his profound desires. His
pleasures are not the means of revealing what Christians later call
concupiscensia. For him, it is a question of his own state and of adding
something to the Knowledge of the Moral precepts. This addition to what is
already known is a force, the force which would be able to transform pure
Knowledge and simple consciousness in a real way of living. And that is what
Seneca tries to do when he uses a set of persuasive arguments, demonstrations,
examples, in order not to discover a still unknown truth inside and in the
depth of Serenus’s soul but in order to explain, if I may say, to which extent
truth in general is true. Seneca’s discourse has for an objective not to add to
some theoretical principle a force of coercion coming from elsewhere but to
transform them in a victorious force. Seneca has to give a place to truth as a
force.
Here, I think, several
consequences. First, in this game between Serenus’s confession and Seneca’s consultation,
truth, as you see, is not defined by a correspondence toReality but as a force
inherent to principles and which has to be developed in a discourse. Two, this
truth is not something which is hidden behind or under the consciousness in the
deepest and most obscure part of the soul. It is something which is before the
individual as a point of attraction, a kind of magnetic force which attracts
him towards a goal. Three, this truth is not obtained by an analytical
exploration of what is supposed to be real in the individual but by rhetorical
explanation of what is good for anyone who wants to approach the life of a
sage. Four, the confession is not oriented toward an individualisation of
Serenus by the discovery of some personal characteristics but towards the
constitution of a self which could be at the same time and without any
discontinuity subject of Knowledge and subject of will. Five, (22) we can see
that such a practice of confession and consultation remains within the
framework of what the Greeks for a long time called the gnomé. The term gnomé
designates the unity of wil and Knowledge; it designates also a brief piece of
discourse through which truth appeared with all its force and encrusts itself
in the soul of people. (23) Then, we could say that even as late as the first
century A.D., the type of subject which is proposed as a model and as a target
in the Greek, or in the Hellenistic or Roman, Philo., is a gnomic self, where
force of the truth is one with the form of the will.
In this model of the gnomic
self, we found several constitutive elements: the necessity of telling truth
about oneself, the role of the master and the master’s discourse, the long way
that leads finally to the emergence of the self. All those elements, we find
them also in the Christian technologies of the self, but with a very different
organisation. I should say, in sum, and I’ll conclude here, that as far as we
followed the practices of self-examination and confession in the Hellenistic or
Roman Philo., you see that the self is not something that has to be discovered
or deciphered as a very obscure text. You see that the task is not to put in
the light what would be the most obscure part of our selves. The self has, on
the contrary, not to be discovered but to be constituted, to be constituted
through the force of truth. This force lies in (24) the rhetorical quality of
the master’s discourse, and this rhetorical quality depends for a part on the
exposé of the disciple, who has to explain how far he is in his way of living
from the true principles that he knows. (25) And I think that this organisation
of the self as a target, the organisation of what I call the gnomic self, as
the objective, the aim, towards which the confession and the self-examination
is oriented, is something deeply different of what we meet in the Christian
technologies of the self. In the Christian technologies of the self, the
problem is to discover what is hidden inside the self; the self is like a text
or like a book that we have to decipher, and not something which has to be
constructed by the superposition, the superimposition, of the will and the
truth. This organisation, this Christian organisation, so different from the
pagan one, is something which is I think quite decisive for the genealogy of
the modern self, and that’s point I’ll try to explain next week when we meet
again. Thank you.
Christianity and Confession
The theme of this lecture is
the same as the theme of last week’s lecture. (26) The theme is: How was formed
in our societies what I would like to call the interpretive analysis of the
self; or, how was formed the hermeneutics of the self in the modern, or at
least in the Christian and the modern, societies? In spite of the fact that we
can find very early in the Greek, in the Hellenistic, in the Latin cultures,
techniques such as self-examination and confession, I think that there are very
large difference between the Latin and Greek – the Classical – techniques of
the self and the techniques developed in Christiniaty. And I’ll try to show
this evening that the modern hermeneutics of the self is rooted much more in
those Christian techniques than in the Classical ones. The gnothi seauton is, I
think, much less influental in our societies, in our culture, than is supposed
to be.
As everybody knows,
Christianity is a confession. That means that Christianity belongs to a very
special type of Religion, the Religions which impose on those who practice them
obligation of truth. Such obligations in Christianity are numerous; for instance,
a Christian has the obligation to hole as true a set of props. which
constitutes a dogma; or, he has the obligation to hold certain books as a
permanent source of truth; or, (27) he has the obligation to accept the
decisions of certain authorities in matters of truth. (28)
But Christianity requires
another form of truth obligation quite different from those I just mentioned.
Everyone, every christian, has the duty to know who he is, what is happening to
him. He has to know the faults he may have committed: he has to know the
temptations to which he is exposed. And, moreover, everyone in Christianity is
obliged to say these things to other people, to tell these things to other
people, and hence, to bear witness against himself.
A few remarks. These two
ensembles of obligations, those regarding the faith, the book, the dogma, and
the obligations regarding the self, the soul, the heart, are linked together. A
christian is always supposed to be supported by the light of faith if he wants
to explore himself, and conversely, access to the truth of the faith cannot be
conceived of without the purification of the soul. As Augustine said, in a
Latin formula I’m sure you’ll understand, qui facit veritatem venit ad lucem.
That means, facite veritatem, “To make truth inside onself,” and venire ad
lucem, “to get access to the light.” Well, to make truth inside of oneself, and
to get access to the light of God, and so on, those two processes are strongly
connected in the Christian experience. But those two relationships to truth,
you can find them equally connected, as you know, in Buddhism, and they were
also connected in all the Gnostic movements of the first centuries. But there,
either in Buddhism or in the Gnostic movements, those two relationships to
truth were connected in such a way that they were almost identified. To
discover the truth inside oneself, to decipher the real nature and the
authentic origin of the soul, was considered by the Gnosticists as one thing
with coming through to the light. (29)
On the contrary, one of the
main characteristics of orthodox Christianity, one of the main differences
between Christianity and Buddhism, or between Christianity and Gnosticism, one
of the main reasons of the mistrust of Christianity toward Mystics, and one of
the most constant historical features of Christianity, is that those two
systems of obligation, of truth obligation, the one concerned with access to
light and the one concerned with the making of truth, the discovering of truth
inside oneself, those two systems of obligation have always maintained a
relative autonomy. Even after Luther, even in Prostetantism, the secrets of the
soul and the mysteries of the faith, the self and the book, are not in
Christianity enlightened by exactly the same type of light. They demand
different methods and put into operation particular techniques.
Well, let’s put aside the long History
of their complex and often conflictual relations before and after the Reformation.
I’d like this evening to focus attention on the second of those two systems of
obligation. I’d like to focus on the obliation imposed on every christian on
manifest the truth about himself. When one speaks of confession and
selfexamination in Christianity, one of course has in mind the sacrament of
penance and the canonic confession of sins. But these are rather late
innovations in Christianity. Christians of the first centuries knew completely
different forms for the showing forth of the truth about themselves, and you’ll
find these obligations of manifesting the truth about oneself in two different
institutions – in penitential rites and monastic life. And I would like first
to examine the penitential rites and the obligations of truth, the truth
obligations which are related, which are connected with those penitential
rites. I will not enter, of course, into the discussions which have taken place
and which continue until now as to the progressive development of these rites.
I would like only to underline one fundamental fact: in the first centuries of
Christianity, penance was not an act. Penance, in the first centuries of
Christianity, penance is a status, which presents several characteristics. The
function of this status is to avoid the definitive expulsion from the church of
a Christian who has committed one or several serious sins. As penitent, this
Christian is excluded from many of the ceremonies and collective rites, but he
does not cease to be a Christian, and by means of this status he can obtain his
reintegration. And this status is therefore a long-term affair. This status
affects most aspects of his life – fasting obligations, rules about clothing,
interedictions on sexual relations – and the individual is marked to such an
extent by this status that even after his reconciliation, after his reintegration
in the community, he will still suffer from a certain number of prohibitions
(for instance, he will not be able to become a priest). So penance is not an
act corresponding to a sin; it is a status, a general status in the existence.
Now, amongst the elements of
this status, the obligation to manifest the truth is fundamental. I don’t say
that enunciation of sins is fundamental; I employ a much more imprecise and
obscure expression. I say that manifestation of the truth is necessary and is
deeply connected with this status of penance. In fact, to designate the
truthgames or the truthobligations inherent to penitents, a Greek fathers used
a word, a very specific word (and very enigmatic also); the word exomologesis.
This word was so specific that even Latin writers, Latin fathers, often used
the Greek word without even translating it. (30)
What does this term
exomologesis mean? In a very general sense, the word refers to the recognition
of an act, but more precisely, in the penitential rite, what was the
exomologesis? Well, at the end of the penitential procedure, at the end and not
at the beginning, at the end of the penitential procedure, when the moment of
the reintegration came, an episode took place which the texts regularly call
exomologesis. Some descriptions are very early and some very late, but they are
quite identical. Tertullian, for instance, at
the end of the second century, describes the ceremony in the following manner.
He wrote, “The penitent wears a hair shirt and ashes.
He is wretchedly dressed. He is taken by the hand and led into the church. He
prostrates himself before the widows and the priest. He hangs on the skirts of
their garments. He kisses their knees.” (31) And much later after this,
in the beginning of the fifth century, Jerome described in the same way the
penitence of Fabiola. Fabiola was a woman, a well-known Roman noblewoman, who
had married a second time before the death of her first husband, which was
something quite bad, and she then was obliged to do penance. And Jerome describes thus this penance: “During the days
which preceded Easter,” which was the moment of the reconciliation, “During the days which preceded Easter, Fabiola was to be
found among the ranks of the penitents. The bishop, the priests, and the people
wept with her. Her hair dishelveled, her face pale, her hands dirty, her head
covered in ashes, she chastenend her naked breast and the face with which she
had seduced her second husband. She revealed to all her wound, and Rome, in
tears, contemplated the scars on her emciated body.” (32)
No doubt Jerome and Tertullian
were liable to be rather carried away by such things; however, in Ambrose and
in others one finds indications which show clearly the existence of an episode
of dramatic self-revelation at the moment of the reconciliation of the
penitent. That was, specifically, the exomologesis.
But the term of exomologesis
does not apply only to this final episode. Frequently the word exomologesis is
used to desisgnate everything that the penitent does to obtain his
reconciliation during the time in which he retains the status of penitent. The
acts by which he punishes himself must be indissociable from the acts by which
he reveals himself. The punishment of oneself and the voluntary expression of
oneself are bound together.
A
correspondent of Cyprian in the middle of the third century writes, for
instance, that those who wish to do penance must, I quote, “prove their suffering, show their shame, make visible their
humility, and exhibit their modesty.” (33) And, in the Paraenesis,
Pacian says that the true penance is accomplished not in a nominal fashion but
finds its instruments in sackcloth, ashes, fasting, affliction, and the
participation of a great number of people in prayers. In a few words, penance
in the first Christian centuries is a way of life acted out at all times out of
an obligation to show oneself. And that is, exactly, exomologesis. (34)
As you see, this exomologesis did
not obey to a judicial principle of correlation, of exact correlation,
adjusting the punishment to the crime. Exomologesis obeyed a Law of dramatic
emphasis and of maximum theatricality. And, neither did this exomologesis obey
a truthprinciple of correspondence between verbal enunciation and Reality. As
you see, no description in this exomologesis is of a penance; no confession, no
verbal enumeration of sins, no analysis of the sins, but somatic expressions
and symbolic expressions. Fabiola did not confess her fault, telling to
somebody what she has done, but she put under everybody’s eyes the flesh, the
body, which has committed the sin. And, paradoxically, the exomologesis is this
time to rub out the sin, restitute the previous purity acquired by baptism, and
this by showing the sinner as he is in his Reality – dirty, defiled, sullied.
(35)
Tertullian has a word to
translate the greek word exomologesis; he said it was publicatio sui, the
christian had to publish himself. (36) Publish oneself, that means that he has
two things to do. One has to show oneself as a sinner; that means, as somebody
who, choosing the path of the sin, preferred filthiness to purity, earth and
dust to heaven, spiritual poverty to the treasures of faith. In a word, he has
to show himself as somebody who preferred spiritual death to earthen life. And
that was the reason why exomologesis was a kind of representation of death. It
was the theatrical representation of the sinner as dead or as dying. But this
exomologesis was also a way for the sinner to express his will to get free from
this world, to get rid of his own body, to destroy his own flesh, and get
access to a new spiritual life. It is the theatrical representation of the
sinner as willing his own death as a sinner. It is the dramatic manifestation
of the renunciation to oneself.
To justify this exomologesis
and this renunciation to oneself in manifesting the truth about oneself,
ChristianFathers had recourse to several models. The well-known medical model
was very often used in paganPhilo.: one has to show his wounds to the
physicians if he wants to be healed. They also used the judicial model: one
always appeases the court when spontaneously confessing the faults. (37) But
the most important model to justify the necessity of exomologesis is the model
of martyrdom. The martyr is he who prefers to face death rather than to abandon
his faith. (38) The sinner abandons the faith in order to keep the life of here
below; he will be reinstated only if in his turn he exposes himself voluntarily
to a sort of martyrdom to which all will be witnesses, and which is penance, or
penance as exomologesis. (39) Such a demonstration does not therefore have as
its function the establishment of the personal identity. Rather, such a
demonstration serves to mark this dramatic demonstration of what one is: the
refusal of the self, the breaking off from one’s self. One recalls what was the
objective of Stoic technology: it was to superimpose, as I tried to explain to
you last week, the subject of Knowledge and the subject of will by means of the
perpetual rememorising of the rules. The formula which is at the heart of
exomologesis is, in contrary, ego non sum ego. The exomologesis seeks, in
opposition to the Stoic techniques, to superimpose by an act of violent rupture
the truth about oneself and the renunciation of oneself. In the ostentatious
gestures of maceration, self-revelation in exomologesis is, at the same time,
self-destruction.
Well, if we turn to the
confession in monastic institutions, it is of course quite different from this
exomologesis. In the christian institutions of the first centuries another form
of confession is to be found, very different from this one. It is the organised
confession in the monastic communities.. In a certain way, this confession is
close to the exercise practiced in the pagan schools of Philo. There is nothing
astonishing in this, since the monastic life presented itself as the true form
of philosophical life, and the monastery was presented as the school of Philo.
There is an obvious transfer of several technologies of the self in Christian
spirituality from practices of pagan Philo.
Concerning this continuity I’ll
quote only one witness, JohnChrysostom, who describes an examination of
conscience which has exactly the same form, the same shape, the same
administrative character, as that described by Seneca in the De Ira and which I
spoke about last week. JohnChrysostom says, and
you’ll recognise exactly (well, nearly) the same words as in Seneca. Chrysostom
writes, “It is in the morning that we must take account
of our expenses, then it is in the evening, after our meal, when we have gone
to bed and no one troubles us and disquites us, that we must ask ourselves to
render account of our conduct to ourselves. Let us examine what is to our
advantage and what is prejudicial. Let us cease spending inappropriately and
try to set aside useful funds in the place of harmful expenses, prayers in place
of indiscrete words.” (40)
You’ll recognise exactly the
same administrative selfexamination you could find last week with Seneca. But
these kinds of ancient practices were modified under the influence of two
fundamental elements of Christian spirituality: the principle of obedience, and
the principle of contemplation. First, the principle of obedience – we have
seen that in the ancient schools of Philo. the relationship between the master
and the disciple was, if I may say, instrumental and provisory. The obedience
of the disciple was founded on the capacity of the master to lead him to a
happy and autonomous life. For a long series of reasons that I haven’t time to
discuss here, obedience has very different features in the monastic life and above
all, of course, in the cenobite communities. Obedience in the monastic
institutions must bear on all the aspects of life; there is an adage, very well
known in the monastic literature, which says, “everything that one does not do
on order of one’s director, or everything that one does without his permission,
constitutes a theft.” Therefore, obedience is a permanent relationship, and
even when the monk is old, even when he became, in his turn, a master, even
then he has to keep the spirit of obedience as a permanent sacrifice of his own
will.
Another feature distinguishes
monastic discipline from the philosophical life. In the monastic life, the
supreme good is not the mastership of onself; the supreme good in the monastic
life is the contemplation of god. The obligation of the monk is continuously to
turn his thoughts to that single point which is god, and his obligation is also
to make sure that his heart, his soul, and the eye of his houl is pure enough
to see god and to receive light from him.
Placed under this principle of
obedience, and oriented towards the objective of contemplation, you understand
that the technology of the self which develops in the christianMonasticism
presents peculiar characteristics. JohnCassian’s Institutiones and Collationes
give a rather systematic and clear exposé of selfexamination and of the
confession as they were practiced among the palestinian and egyptian monks.
(41) And I’ll follow several of the indications you can find in those two
books, which were written in the beginning of the fifth century. First, about
the self-examination, the first point about the self-examination is the
monastic life is that the self-examination in this kind of Christian exercise
is much more concerned with thoughts than with actions. Since he has to turn
his thought continuously towards God, you understand very well that the monk
has to take in hand not the course of his actions, as the Stoic philosopher; he
has to take in hand the course of his thoughts. Not only the passions which might
make vacillate the firmness of his conduct; he has to take in hand the images
which present themselves to the spirit, the thoughts which come to interfere
with contemplation, the diverse suggestions which turn the attention of the
spirit away from its object, that means away from God. So much so that the
primary material for scrutiny and for the examinatino of the self is an area
anterior to actions, of course, anterior to will also, even an area anterior to
the desires – a much more tenacious material than the material the Stoic
philosopher had to examine in himself. The monk has to examine a material which
the Greek fathers call (almost always pejoratively) the logismoi, that is in
Latin, cogitationes, the nearly imperceptible movements of the thoughts, the
permanent mobility of soul. (42) That’s the material which the monk has to
continuously examine in order to maintain the eye of his spirit always directed
towards the unique point which is God. But, when the monk scrutinises his own
thoughts, what is he concerned with? Not of course with the relation between
the idea and the Reality. He is not concerned with this truthrelation which
makes an idea wrong or true. He is not interested in the relationship between
his mind and the external world. What he is concerned with is the nature, the
quality, the substance of his thoughts.
We must, I think, pause for a
moment on this important point. In order to make comprehensible what this
permanent examination consists in, Cassian uses three comparisons. He uses first
the comparison of the mill. Thought, says Cassian, thought is like a millstone
which grinds the grains. The grains are of course the ideas which present
continuously themselves in the mind. And in the comparison of the millstone, it
is up to the miller to sort out amongst the grains those which are bad and
those which can be admitted to the millstone because they are good. Cassian has
recourse also to the comparison of the officer who has the soldiers file past
him and makes them pass to the right or to the left, allotting to each his task
according to his capacities. And lastly, and that I think is the most
important, the most interesting, Cassian says that one must be with respect to
oneself like a moneychanger to whom one presents coincs, and whose task
consists in examining them, verifying their authenticity, so as to accept those
which are authentic whilst rejecting those which are not. Cassian develops this
comparison at length. When a moneychanger examines a coin, says Cassian, the
moneychanger looks at the effigy the money bears, he considers the metal of
which it is made, to know what it is and if it is pure. The moneychanger seeks
to know the workshop from which it comes, and he weights it in his hand in
order to know if it has been filed down or ill-used. In the same way, says
Cassian, one must verify the quality of one’s thoughts, one must know if they
really bear the effigy of God; that is to say, if they really permit us to
contemplate him, if their surface brilliance does not hide the impurity of a
bad thought. What is their origin? Do they come from God, or from the workshop
of the demon? Finally, even if they are of good quality and origin, have they
not been whittled away and rusted by evil sentiments?
I think that this form of
examination is at the same time new and historically important. Perhaps I have
insisted a little too much with regard to the Stoics on the fact that their
examination, the Stoicexamination, was concerned with acts and rules. One must
recognise, however, the importance of the question of truth with the Stoic, but
the question was presented in terms of true or falw opinions favourable to
forming good or bad actions. For Cassian, the problem is not to know if there
is a conformity between the idea and the order of external things; it is a
question of examining the thought in itself. Does it really show its true
origin, is it as pure as it seems, have not foreign elements insidiously mixed
themselves with it? Altogether, the question is not “Am
I wrong to think such a thing? But “Have I not been deceived by the thought
which has come to me? Is the thought which comes to me, and independently of
the truth as to the thing it represents, is there not an illusion about myself
on my part? For instance, the idea comes to me that fasting is a good
thing. The idea is certainly true, but maybe this idea has been suggested not
by God but by Satan in order to put me in competition with other monks, and
then bad feelings about the other ones can be mxied to the project of fasting
more than I do. So, the idea is true in regard to the external world, or in
regard to the rules, but the idea is impure since from is origin it is rooted
in bad sentiments. And we have to decipher our thoughts as subjective data
which have to be interpreted, which have to be scrutinised, in their roots and
in their origins.
It is impossible not to be
struck by the similarity of this general theme, and the similarity of this
image of the moneychanger, and several texts of Freud about censorship. One
could say that Freudian censorship is both the same thing and the reverse of
Cassian’s changer; both the Cassian changer and the Freudian censorship have to
control the access to consciousness – they have to let some representations in
and to reject the others. But Cassian’s changer has for a function to decipher
what is false or illusory in what presents itself to consciousness and then to
let in only what is authentic. For that purpose the Cassian moneychanger uses a
specific aptitude that the Latin fathers called discretio. (43) The Freudian
censorship is, compared to the Cassian changer, both more perverse and more
naïve. The Freudian censorship rejects that what presents itself as it is, and
the Freudian censorship accepts that what is sufficiently disguised. Cassian’s
changer is a truthoperator through discretio; Freudian cenroship is a
falsehoodoperator through symbolisation. But I don’t want to go further in such
a parallel; it’s only an indication, but I think that the relations between
Freudian practice and the Christian techniques of spirituality could be, if
seriously done, a very interesting field of research. (44)
But we have to go further, for
the problem is, how is it possible to perform, as Cassian wishes, how is it
possible to perform continuously this necessary selfexamination, this necessary
selfcontrol of the tiniest movements in the thoughts? How is it possible to
perform this necessary hermeneutics of our own thoughts? The answer given by
Cassian and his inspirators is both obvious and surprising. The answer given by
Cassian is, well, you interpret your thoughts by telling them to the master or
to your spiritual father. You interpret your thoughts by confessing not of
course your acts, not confessing your faults, but in confessing continuously the
movement you can notice in your thought. Why is this confession able to assume
this hermeneutical role? One reason comes to mind:
in exposing the movements of his heart, the disciple permits hie seigneur to
know those movements and, thanks to his greater experience, to his greater
wisdon, the seigneur, the spiritual father, can better understand what’s
happening. His seniority permits him to distinguish betwen truth and illusion
in the soul of the person he directs.
But
that is not the principal reason that Cassian invokes to explain the necessity
of confession. There is for Cassian a specific virtue of verification in this
act of verbalisation. Amongst all the examples that Cassian quotes there
is one which is particularly enlightening on this point. Cassian quotes the
following anecdote: a young monk, Serapion, incapable of enduring the
obligatory fast, stole every evening a loaf of bread. But of course he did not
dare to confess it to his spiritual director, and on day this spiritual
director, who no doubt guessed all, gives a public sermon on the necessity of
being truthful. Convinced by this sermon, the young Serapion takes out from
under his robe the bread that he has stolen and shows it to everyone. Then he
prostrates himself and confesses the secret of his daily meal, and then, not at
the moment when he showed the bread he has stolen, but at the very moment when
he confesses, verbally confesses, the secret of his daily meal, at this very
moment of the confession, a light seems to tear itself away from his body and
cross the room, in spreading a disgusting smell of sulphur.
One sees that in this anecdote
the decisive element is not that the master knows the truth. It is not even
that the young monk reveals his act and restores the object of his theft. It is
the confession, the verbal act of confession, which comes last and which makes
appear, in a certain sense, by its own Mechanics, the truth, the Reality of
what has happened. The verbal act of confession is the proof, is the
manifestation, of truth. Why? Well, I think it is because what marks the
difference between good and evil thoughts, following Cassian, is that the evil
ones cannot be referred to without difficulty. If one blushes in recounting
them, if one seeks to hide his own thoughts, if even quite simply one hesitates
to tell his thoughts, that is the proof that those thoughts are not good as
they may appear. Evil inhabits them. Thus verbalisation constitutes a way of
sorting out thoughts which present themselves. One can test their value according
to whether they resist verbalisation or not. Cassian gives the reason of this
resistance: Satan as principle of evil is incompatible with the light, and he
resists when confession drags him from the dark caverns of the conscience into
the light of explicit discourse. I quote Cassian: “A bad thought brought into
the light of day immediately loses its veneer. The terrible serpent that this
confession has forced out of its subterranean lair, to throw it out into the
light and make its shame a public spectacle, is quick to beat a retreat.” (45)
Does that mean that it would be sufficient for the monk to tell his thoughts
aloud even when alone? Of course not. The presence of somebody, even if he does
not speak, even if it is a silent presence, this presence is requested for this
kind of confession, because the abbé, or the brother, or the spiritual father,
who listens at this confession is the image of God. And the verbalisation of
thoughts is a way to put under the eyes of God all the ideas, images, suggestions,
as they come to consciousness, and under this divine light they show
necessarily what they are.
From this, we can see (1) that
verbalisation in itself has an interpretive function. Verbalisation contains in
itself a power of discretio. (46) (2) This verbalisation is not a kind of
retrospection about past acts. Verbalisation, Cassian imposes to monks, this
verbalisation has to be a permanent activity, as contemporaneous as possible of
the stream of thoughts. (3) This verbalisation must go as deep as possible in
the depth of the thoughts. These, whatever they are, have an inapparent origin,
obscure roots, secret parts, and the role of verbalisation is to excavate these
origins and those secret parts. (4) As verbalisation brings to the external
light the deep movement of the thought, it leads also and by the same process
the human soul from the reign of Satan to the law of God. That means that
verbalisation is a way for the conversion (47) (for the metanoia, said the
Greek fathers), for the conversion to develop itself and to take effect. Since
under the reign of Satan the human being was attached to himself, verbalisation
as a movement toward God is a renunciation to Satan, and a renunciation to
oneself. Verbalisation is a self-sacrifice. To this permanent, exhaustive, and
sacrificial verbalisation of the thoughts which was obligatory for the monks in
the monastic institution, to this permanent verbalisation of the thoughts, the
Greek fathers gave the name of exagoreusis. (48)
Thus, as you see, in the Christianity
of the first centuries, the obligation to tell the truth about oneself was to
take two major forms, the exomologesis and the exagoreusis, and as you see they are very different
from one another. On the one hand, the exomologesis is a dramatic expression by
the penitent of his status of sinner, and this in a kind of public
manifestation. On the other hand, the exagoreusis, we have an analytical and
continuous verbalisation of the thoughts, and in this relation of complete
obedience to the will of the spiritual father. But it must be remarked that
this verbalisation, as I just told you, is also a way of renouncing self and no
longer wishing to be the subject of the will. Thus the rule of confession in
exagoreusis, this rule of permanent verbalisation, finds its parallel in the
model of martyrdom which haunts exomologesis. The ascetic maceration exercised
on the body and the rule of permanent verbalisation applied to the thoughts,
the obligation to macerate the body and the obligation of verbalising the
thoughts – those things are deeply and closely related.. They are supposed to
have the same goals and the same effect. So much that one can isolate as the
common element to both practices the following principle: the revelation of the
truth about oneself cannot, in those two early Christian experiences, the
revelation of the truth about oneself cannot be dissociated from the obligation
to renounce oneself. We have to sacrifice the self in order to discover the
truth about ourself, and we have to discover the truth about ourself in order
to sacrifice ourself. Truth and sacrifice, the truth about ourself and the
sacrifice of ourself, are deeply and closely connected. And we have to
understand this sacrifice not only as a radical change in the way of life but
as the consequence of a formula like this: you will become the subject of the
manifestation of truth when and only when you disappear or you destroy yourself
as a real body or as a real existence.
Let’s stop here. I have been
both too long and much too schematic. I would like you to consider what I have
said only as a point of departure, one of those small origins that Nietzsche
liked to discover at the beginning of great things. The great things that those
monastic practices announced are numerous. I will mention, just before I
finish, a few of them. First, as yousee, the apparition of a new kind of self,
or at least a new kind of relationship to our selves. You remember what I told
you last week: the greek technology, or the philo.techniques, or the self
tended to produced a self which could be, which should be, the permanent
superposition in the form of memory of the subject of Knowledge and the subject
of the will. (49)
I think that in Christianity we
see the development of a much more complex technology of the self. This
technology of the self maintains the difference between Knowledge and being,
Knowledge of word, Knowledge of Nature, and Knowledge of the self, and this
Knowledge of the self takes shape in the constitution of thought as a field of
subjective data which are to be interpreted. And, the role of interpreter is
assumed by the work of a continuous verbalisation of the most imperceptible
movements of the thought – that’s the reason we could say that the Christian
self which is correlated to this technique is a gnosiologic self.
And the second point which
seems to me important is this: You may notice in earlyChristianity an
oscillation between the truthtechnology of the self oriented toward the
manifestation of the sinner, the manifestation of the being, what we would call
the ontological temptation of Christianity, and that is the exomologesis, and
another truthtechnology oriented toward the discursive and permanent and
analysis of the thought, that is the exagoreusis, and we could see there the
epistemological temptation of Christianity. And, as you know, after a lot of
conflicts and flunctuaion, the second form of technology, this epistemological
technology of the self, or this technology of the self oriented toward the
permanent verbalisation and discovery of the most imperceptible movements of
our self, this form became victorious after centuries and centuries, and it is
nowadays dominating.
Even in these hermeneutical
techniques derived from the exagoreusis the production of truth could not be
met, you remember, without a very strict condition: Hermeneutics of the self
implies the sacrifice of the self. And that is, I think, the deep
contradiction, or if you want, the great richness, of christian technologies of
the self; no truth about the self without a sacrifice of the self. (50) I think
that one of the great problems of western culture has been to find the
possibility of founding the hermeneutics of the self not, as it was the case in
early Christianity, on the sacrifice of the self but, on the contrary, on a
positive, on the theoretical and practical, emergence of the self. That was the
aim of judicial institutions, []also of medical and psychiatric practices, []of
political and philosophical theory – to constitute the ground of the
subjectivity as the root of a positive self, what we could call the permanent
Anthropologism of western thought. And I think that this Anthropologism is
linked to the deep desire to substitute the positive figure of man for the
sacrifice which for Christianity was the condition for the opening of the self
as a field of indefinite interpretation. (51) During the last two centuries,
the problem has been: what could be the positive foundation for the technologies
of the self that we have been developing during centuries and centuries? But
the moment, maybe, is coming for us to ask, do we need, really this
hermeneutics of the self? (52) Maybe the problem of the self is not to discover
what it is in its positivity, maybe the problem is not to discover a positive
self or the positive foundation of the self. Maybe our blem is now to discover
that the self is nothing else than the historical correlation of the technology
built in our History. Maybe the problem is to change those technologies. (53) And
in this case, one of the main politicalproblems would be nowadays, in the
strict sense of the world, the Politics of ourselves.
Well, I thank you very much.
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