1)
See Franços Leuret, Du traitement morale de la
folie (Paris: J.B. Bailliere, 1840), and Foucault, Maladie mentale et
psychologie, 3rd ed. (Paris: PUF, 1966), 85-86; Mental Illness and
Psychology, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 72.
2)
Edmund Husserl, Méditations Cartésiennes,
translated by Gabrielle Peiffer and Emmanuel Lewis (Paris: Arman Colin, 1931);
Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, translated by Dorian
Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973)
3)
“where society plays the role of subject”
[Howison].
4)
“So much for the general project. Now a few
words on Methodology. For this kind of research, the History of Science
constitutes a privileged point of view. This might seem paradoxical. After all,
the genealogy of the self does not take place within a field of scientific
Knowledge, as if we were nothing else than that which rational Knowledge could
tell us about ourselves. While the History of Science is without doubt an
important testing ground for the Theory of Knowledge, as well as for the
analysis of meaningful systems, it is also fertile ground for studying the
genalogy of subject. There are two reasons for this. All the practices by which
the subject is defined and transformed are accompnied by the formation of
certain types of Knowledge, and in the West, for a variety of reasons,
Knowledge tends to be organised around forms and norms that are more or less
scientific. There is also another reason maybe more fundamental and more
specific to our societies. I mean the fact that one of the main Moral
obligations for any subject is to know oneself, to tell the truth about
oneself, and to constitute oneself as an object of Knowledge both for other
people and for oneself. The truthobligation for individuals and a scientific
organisation of Knowledge; those are the two reasons why the History of
Knowledge constitutes a privileged point of view for the gnealogy of the
subject
Hence, it follows that I am not trying to do
History of Sciences in general, but only of those which sought to construct a
scientific Knowledge of the subject. Another consequence. I am not trying to
mesure the objective value of these Sciences, nor to know if they can become universally
valid. That is the task of an epistemological historian. Rather, I am working
on a History of Science that is, to some extent, regressive History that seeks
to discover the discursive, the institutional, and the social practices from
which these Sciences arose. This would be an archaeological History. Finally,
the third consequence, this project seeks to discover the point at which these
practices became coherent reflective techniques with definite goals, the point
at which a particular discourse emerged from those techniques and came to be
seen as true, the point at which they are linked with the obligation of
searching for the truth and telling the truth. In sum, the aim of my project is
to construct a genealogy of the subject. The method is an archaeology of
Knowledge, and the precise domain of the analysis is what I should call
technologies. I mean the articulation of certain techniques and certain kinds
of discourse about the subject.
I would like to add one final word about the
practical significance of this form of analysis. For Heidegger, it was through
an increasing obsession with techné as the only way to arrive at an
understanding of objects, that the West lost touch with the Being. Let’s turn
the question around and ask which techniques and practices from the western
concept of the subject, giving it its characteristic split of truth and error,
freedom and constraint. I think that it is here where we will find the real
possibility of constructing a History of what we have done and, at the same
time, a diagnosis of what we are. This would be a theretical analysis which
has, at the same time, a political dimension. By this word ‘political
dimension,’ I mean an anlysis that related to what we are willing to accept in
our world, to accept, to refuse, and to change, both in ourselves and in our
circumstances. In sum, it is a question of searching for another kind of
critical Philo. Not a critical Philo. that seeks to determine the conditions
and the limits of our possible Knowledge of the object, but a critical Philo.
that seeks the conditions and the indefinite possibilities of transforming the
subject, of transforming ourselves” [Howison]
5)
Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966);
The Order of Things, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1970).
6)
Naissance de la clinique (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1963, 1972); The Birth of the Clinic, translated by
Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon, 1973) and Surveiller et punir (Paris:
Gallimard, 1975); Discipline and Punish, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York:
Pantheon, 1977)
7)
La Volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976);
The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley
(New York: Pantheon, 1978); L’Usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); The
Use of Pleasure, translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Le
Souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); The Care of the self, translated by
Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1986).
8)
Jürgen Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkmap Verlag, 1968) and appendix in Technik und
Wissenschaft als “Ideologie” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968);
Knowledge and Human Interests, translated by Jeremy Shapiro (Boston: Beacon,
1971), esp. “Appendix: Knowledge and Human Interests, A General Perspective,”
313.
9)
Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel
Foucault, edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton
(Amherst: University of massachusetts Press, 1988)
10)
“and known” [Howison].
11)
“and know themselves” [Howison].
12)
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality,
edited by Graham Burchell et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
13)
“as they spoke of it in the sixteenth century,
of governing children, or governing family, or governing souls” [Howison].
14)
Resumé de cours, 1970-1982 (Paris: Julliard,
1989), 133-66; “Sexuality and Solitude,” London Review of Books 3, no. 9 (May
21-June 3, 1981): 3, 5-6.
15)
Seneca, “On Anger,” Moral Essays, Volume 1,
translated by John W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1958), 340-41.
16)
La Souci de soi, 77-79; The Care of the Self,
60-62; “L’écriture de soi,” Crops écrit 5 (February 1983): 21.
17)
“all of them being a way to incorporate in a
constant attitude a code of actions and reactions, whatever situation may
occur” [Howison].
18)
Galen, “On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s
Passions,” in On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, translated by Paul W.
Harkins (Ohio State University Press, 1963).
19)
Plutarch, “How a Man May Become Aware of His
Progress in Virtue,” in Moralia, Volume 1, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt,
Loeb Classical Library (New York: Putnam, 1927), 400-57, esp. 436-57.
20)
Seneca, “On Tranquility of Mind,” in Moral
Essays, Volume 2, translated by John W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library
(Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press, 1935), 202-85, esp. 202-13.
21)
“But, through this confession, through this
description of his own state, he asks Seneca to tell him the truth about his
own state. Seneca is at the same time confessing the truth and lacking in
truth” [Howison].
22)
“If the role of confession and consultation is
to give place to truth as a force, it is easy to understand that
selfexamination has nearly the same role. We have seen that if Seneca recalls
every evening his mistakes, it is to memorise the Moralprecepts of the conduct,
and Memory is nothing else than the force of the truth when it is permanently
present and active in the soul. A permanent Memory in the individual and in his
inner discourse, a persuasive Rhetorics in the master’s advice, those are the
aspects of truth considered as a force. Then we may conclude selfexamination
and confession may be in ancientPhilo. considered as truthgame, and important
truthgame, but the objective of this truthgame is not to discover a secret
Reality inside the individual. The objective of this truthgame is to make of
the individual a place where truth can appear and act as a real force through
the presence of Memory and the efficiency of discourse” [Howison].
23)
“In the earliest form of greekPhilo., poets and
divine men told the truth to ordinary mortals through this kind of gnomé.
Gnomai were very short, very imperative, and so deeply illuminated by the
poetical light that it was impossible to forget them and to avoid their power.
Well, I think you can see that self-examination, confession, as you find them,
for instance, in Seneca, but also in Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and so on,
even as lte as the first century A.D., self-examination and confession were
still a kind of development of the gnomé” [Howison].
24)
“the mnemonic aptitue of the individual and”
[Howison].
25)
“These depends in part on Arts of Memory and
acts of persuasion. So, technologies of the self in the ancient world are not
linked with an art of interpretation, but with arts such as Mnemotechniques and
Rhetoric. Selfobservation, selfinterpretation, selfhermeneutics won’t intervene
in the technologies of the self before Christianity” [Howison].
26)
[At the beginning of the second Howison lecture,
Foucault said the following:] “Well, several persons asked me to give a short
résumé of what I said last night. I will try to do it as if it were a good TV
series. So, what happend in the first episode? Very few important things. I
have tried to explain why I was interested in the practice of self-examination
and confession. Those two practices seem to me to be good witnesses for a major
problem, which is the genealogy of the modern self. The genealogy has been my
obsession for years because it is one of the possible ways to get rid of a
traditional Philo. of the subject. I would like to outline this genealogy from
the point of view of techniques, what I call techniques of the self. Among
these techniques of the self, the most important, in modern societies, is, I
think, that which deals with the interpretive analysis of the subject, with the
hermeneutics of the self. How was the hermeneutics of the self formed? This is
the theme of the two lectures. Yesterday night, I spoke about Greek and Roman
techniques of the self, or at least about two of these techniques, confession
and self-examination. It is a fact that we meet confession and self-examination
very often in the late Hellenistic and Roman Philo. Are they the archetypes of
Christian confession and self-examination? Are they the early forms of the
modern hermeneutics of the self? I have tried to show that they are quite
different from that. Their aim is not, I think, to decipher a hidden truth in
the depth of the individual. Their aim is something else. It is to give force
to truth in the individual. Their aim is to constitute the self as the ideal
unity of the will and the truth. Well, now let us turn toward Christianity as
the cradle of the western hermeneutics of the self.”
27)
“at least in the catholic branch of
Christianity” [Howison].
28)
“obligations not only to believe in certain
things but also to show that one believes in them. Every christian is obliged
to manifest his fath” [Howison].
29)
“If the gnomic self of the Greek philosophers,
of which I spoke yesterday evening, had to be built as an identification
between the force of the truth and the form of the will, we could say that
there is a gnostic self. This is the gnostic self that we can find described in
Thomas Evangilium or the Manicean texts. This gnostic self has to be discovered
inside the individual, but as a part, as a forgotten sparkle of the primitive
light” [Howison].
30)
Technologies of the Self, 39-43.
31)
Tertullian, “On Repetance,” in the Ante-Nicene
Fathers, edited by A.Roberts and J.Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmands,
n.d., repr. 1979), 657-68, esp. “Exomologesis,” chaps. 9-12, 664-66.
32)
Jerome, “Letter LXXVII, to Oceanus,” in the
Principal Works of St.Jerome, translated by W.H.Freemantle, vol. 6 in A Select
Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (New York: Christian Literature Co.,
1893), 157-62, esp. 159-60.
33)
Cyprian, “Letter XXXVI, from the Priests and
Deacons Abiding in Rome to Pope Cyprian,” in Saint Cyprian: Letters (1-81),
90-94 at 93, translated by Sister Rose Bernard Donna, C.S.J., vol. 51 in the
Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
1964).
34)
“This form, attested to from the end of the
second century, will subsist for an extremely long time in Christianity, since
one finds its after-effects in the orders of penitents so important in the
fifteenth and sixteenth century. One can see that the procedure for showing
forth the truth are multiple and complex in it. Certain acts of exomologesis
take place in private but most are addressed to the public” [Howison].
35)
“The greater part of the acts which constitue
penance has the role not of telling the truth about the sin; it has the role of
showing the true being of the sinner, or the true sinful being of the subject.
The Tertullian expression, publicatio sui, is not a way to say the sinner has
to explain his sin. The expression means he has to produce himself as a sinner
in his Reality of sinner. And now the question is why the showing forth of the
sinner should be efficient to efface the sins” [Howison].
36)
“On Repentance,” chap.10.
37)
“The day of judgement, the devil himself will
stand up to accuse the sinner. If the sinner has already anticipated him by
accusing himself, the enemy will be obliged to remain quiet” [Howison].
38)
“It must not be forgotten that the practice and
the theory of penitence were elaborated to a great extent around the problem of
the relapsed... The relapsed abandon the faith in order to keep the life of
here below” [Howison].
39)
“In brief, penance insofar as it is a
reproduction of martyrdom is an affirmation of change – of rupture with one’s
self, with one’s past metanoia, of a rupture with the world, and with all
previous life” [Howison]
40)
See esp. St.JohnChrysostom, “Homily XLII,” on
Matthew 12:33, in St.Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, edited
by Phillip Schaff, vol. 10 in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post Nicene
Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, repr. 1975), 271.
41)
John Cassian, De Institutiones Coenobiorum and
Collationes Patrum, edited by PhillipSchaff, in vol.11 of A Select Library of
Nicene and Postnicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: eerdmands, repr. 1973).
42)
“this is the soul that Cassian described with
two greek words [undecipherable]. It means that the soul is always moving and
moving in all directions” [Howison].
43)
“and the Greek fathers called diacrisis”
[Howison].
44)
“What I would like to insist upon this evening
is something else, or at least, something indirectly related to that. There is
something really important in the way Cassian poses the problem of truth about
the thought. First of all, thoughts (not desires, not passions, not attitudes,
not acts) appear in Cassian’s work and in all the spirituality it represents as
a field of subjective data which have to be considered and analysed as an
object. And I think that is the first time in History that thoughts are
considered as possible objects for an analysis. Second, thoughts have to be
analysed not in relation to their object, according to objective experience, or
according to logical rules, they have to be suspected since they ca ben
secretly altered, disguised in their own substance. Third, what man needs if he
does not want to be the victim of his own thoughts is a perpeutal hermeneutics
interpretation, a perpeutal work of hermeneutics. The function of this
hermeneutics is to discover the Reality hidden inside the thought. Fourth, this
Reality which is able to hide in my thoughts is a power, a power which is not
of another nature than my soul, as is, for instance, the body. The power which
hides inside my thoughts, this power is of the same nature of my thoughts and
of my soul. It is the Devil. It is the presence of somebody else in me. This
constitutions of the thoughts as a field of subjective data needing an
interpretive analysis in order to discover the power of the other in me is,
that is, I think, if we compare it to the Stoic technologies of the self, a
quite new manner to organise the relationships between truth and subjectivity.
I think that thermeneutics of the self begins there” [Howison].
45)
John Cassian, Second Conference of Abbot Moses,
chap. 11, 312-13 at 312, in vol.11 of A Select Library of Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, edited by PhiLIP Shaft and Henry
Wace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955).
46)
“a power of diacrisis, of differences”
[Howison].
47)
“for the rupture of the self” [Howison].
48)
Technologies of the Self, 43-49.
49)
“, what I call the gnomic self. In the beginning
of the lecture, I indicated that the gnostic movements were a question of
constituting an ontological unity, the Knowledge of the soul and the Knowledge
of the being. Then, what could be called the gnostic self could be constituted
in Christianity” [Howison].
50)
“The centrality of the confession of sins in
Christianity finds an explanation here. The verbalisation of the confession of
sins is institutionalised as a discursive truthgame, which is a sacrifice of
the subject” [Howison].
51)
“In addition, we can say that one of the
problems of western culture was: How could we save the hermeneutics of the self
and get rid of the necessary sacrifice of the self which was linked to this
hermeneutics since the beginning of Christianity” [Howison].
52)
“which we have inherited from the first
centuries of Christianity? Do we need a positive man who serves as the
foundation of this hermeneutics of the self?” [Howison].
53)
“or maybe to get rid of those technologies, and
then, to get rid of the sacrifice which is linked to those technologies”
[Howison].
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