The obligation to truth and the care of the self:Michel Foucault on scientific discipline and on philosophy as spiritual self-practice

ABSTRACT

It has often been argued that Foucault’s turn to antique and early Christian care of the self, spiritual self-.practices and truth-telling (parrhesia) results from inquiries into the confession practices and pastoral power structures in the context of a genealogy of the desiring subject. This line of reasoning is in itself not incorrect, but – this article claims – needs to be complemented with an account of Foucault’s philosophical quest for freedom and for conditions, possibilities and modes of thinking and acting differently vis-à-vis the normalizing regimes of power in science and, hence, in philosophy as an academic discipline. In this context a first turn to antique philosophy seen as a ‘way of life’ constructed through ascetic practices can be detected already writings from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although indeed the project of the history of sexuality moved in a direction than Foucault had foreseen in the first volume published in 1976, earlier reflections on the need for free and critical philosophical thought relative to scientific ‘disciplines’ already prelude the later inquiries into care of the self, self-practices and parrhesia as productive for a critical philosophical attitude.

KEYWORDS:

• Foucault
• care of the self
• truth
• spirituality
• discipline
• critique

Introduction

In the introduction to The Use of Pleasure from 1984 Foucault writes that ‘this series of studies is being published later than I had anticipated, and in a form that is altogether different’ than he had planned in the mid-1970s when he published the first volume of The History of Sexuality, The Will to Knowledge. The original intention of the project of the history of sexuality was ‘to dwell on that quite recent and banal notion of “sexuality”’. As a concept ‘sexuality’ first emerged from biology in the eighteenth century – more specific, from Linnaeus’ sexual classification system of organic life. Notably in the nineteenth century the notion of sexuality was further established in connection with the development of ‘diverse fields of knowledge’ in corresponding sciences supported by juridical, pedagogical and medical institutions. These new organizations of knowledge and power affected the forms within which ‘individuals are able, are obliged, to recognize themselves as subjects of this sexuality’. It is through the formation of sciences of sexuality and the systems of power that mediate the knowledge and regulate the practices of sexuality that the ‘historically singular experience’ of sexuality is constituted.¹ In his 1976 The Will to Knowledge the domain and period of the history of sexuality was thus clearly defined and the whole project remained in line with the previous studies on the emergence of a discourse on sexuality in the modern medical, psychiatric, and juridical sciences and institutions.²

Why and how then does the study of the history of sexuality move in a direction Foucault had apparently not anticipated? One – and maybe even ‘the’ – crucial factor appears to be his recognition of the importance of Christianity. In The Will to Knowledge this comes to the fore in the hypothesis that the modern scientia sexualis as organized around the production of ‘true discourses’ of sexuality ‘kept in its nucleus the singular ritual of obligatory and exhaustive confession, which in the Christian West was the first technique for producing the truth of sex’.³ In short, the inquiries into the emergence of a modern ‘true’ discourse and experience of sexuality as the ‘truth of the subject’ evoke a further analysis of the Christian practices of the confession of one’s desires.

From these inquiries Foucault not only discovers a continuity between the Christian confession of the movements of the flesh and the production of discourses on sexuality. Foucault realizes that although the experiences of the flesh and of sexuality and the related forms of subjectivity are quite distinct, both experiences are ‘dominated by the principle of “desiring man”’.⁴ The study of the history of sexuality takes a decisive turn here, namely towards the analysis of the hermeneutical practices through which individuals were led to focus attention on their inner desires and to decipher and acknowledge themselves as desiring subjects. The history of sexuality becomes a genealogy of the desiring subject. It is this turn that propels the project back in time towards the analysis of the emergence of the desiring subject in early Christianity and of the question of continuity and discontinuity within antique philosophical practices and thought. The Greek and Roman ars erotica, merely mentioned in The Will to Knowledge as a counterpoint for modern scientia sexualis,⁵ will now become a field of further analyses.

But Foucault’s inquiries into Christianity do not only produce insight into the desiring man, the hermeneutics of one’s inner life, and the verbalization of desire in the confession practices to which individuals are subjected by regimes of pastoral power. In the courses from 1977–1978 (Security, Territory, Population) and 1979–1980 (On the Government of the Living) Foucault elaborates on possibilities of resistance towards disciplining regimes of power and knowledge, focusing attention on what he calls ‘counter-conducts’. The Christian pastoral power is essentially a ‘power of care’ of the other, i.e., of epimeleia tòn allòn,⁶ of leading individuals towards salvation through the teaching of ‘the truth’ and the subsequent necessary submission to the ‘law’, i.e. the will of God.⁷ Yet, the implementation of pastoral power and the ‘compulsory extraction of truth’ will result in resistance effects; these ‘revolts of conduct’ do not take place outside the regimes of power but are rather situated within this realm as ‘tactical’ maneuvers searching for ways to conduct oneself and to explore and make use of the possibilities to establish another personal relation to the truth.

According to Foucault, the most prominent form of such tactics is ascesis as ‘an exercise of self on self’ in which the presence of a pastoral authority or spiritual guide is ‘if not impossible, at least unnecessary’.⁸ Foucault argues that, given the fact that pastoral power is at the heart of the Christian institutions, ‘Christianity is fundamentally anti-ascetic’.⁹ This conclusion, however, is nuanced in following writings and courses: Christianity is not only anti-ascetic since it cannot be reduced to the institutionalized pastoral power regimes. This becomes clear when Foucault shows that in Christianity confession has two meanings that are both ‘truth acts’. The first is the confession (aveu) established through the exercise of power and the obligation to be obedient as well as to decipher and verbalize one’s sinful desire. The second truth act is the one in which the individual has the obligation to profess his/her faith (confession).¹⁰ This confession as ‘act of faith’ is, historically seen, older than the submission to the confession (aveu) of the flesh. This act of confession is what Foucault will later relate to the ‘parrhesiastic pole’ of Christianity, the pole of an immediate relation with the truth, of confidence in God and of testimony of personal faith.¹¹ In short, through the analyses of Christian confession practices, Foucault discovers that in Christianity antique ascetic practices, notably also the parrhèsia, are continued. And it is to the study of the antique practices of parrhèsia that Foucault will devote his last courses at the Collège de France.

From this sketch one might want conclude that Foucault’s turn to Greek and Roman thought and practices as related to the use of pleasure (ars erotica), the care of the self (epimeleia heautou), self-practices of self-mastery (askèsis) and the courage of speaking freely and frankly (parrhèsia) appears as a result of the more in-depth analyses of the historical origins of the scientia sexualis, the Christian pastoral power and the related problematics of the ‘desiring man’.

This would not be a wrong conclusion.¹² However, it would also need to be complemented with an aspect that is easily overlooked and that in fact at the heart of Foucault’s philosophy: the philosophical quest for freedom and for conditions, possibilities and modes of thinking and acting differently vis-à-vis the normalizing regimes of power in science and, hence, in philosophy as an academic discipline.

In this paper, I would like to explore this aspect of Foucault’s interest in antique ascetic practices and care of the self. I will argue that Foucault’s turn to antique philosophy seen as a ‘way of life’ constructed through ascetic practices can be understood from intuitions that are already articulated in the late 1960s: 1) the modern scientific disciplines result from rationalization processes and an obsession with the notion of truth rooted in antique philosophy; 2) ascetic self-practices are the key to find ways of ‘thinking differently’ or freely, that is to say, not merely transgressive in relation to a restrictive law,¹³ or reactive in relation to power regimes. The project of the history of sexuality did move in a different direction than originally planned but the turn to askesis in the course of this project was itself not ‘unexpected’ when we take into account Foucault’s earlier reflections on philosophy and philosophizing.

Science as obligation to think in common with others

In Foucault’s writings the analysis of the ways in which the modern sciences – including philosophy – emerged and were organized in ‘discourses’ and ‘disciplines’ plays a central role. His explorations of the actual emerging new scientific disciplines such as the scientia sexualis and discourses such as those on sexuality in the modern era are part of more fundamental inquiries into epistemic shifts and organizations of knowledge and power. Notably in his 1966 The Order of Things Foucault elaborates on the thesis that there are historical ruptures, sudden shifts in the organization of sciences due to fundamental changes in the (a-priori) conditions of knowledge. According to Foucault, a most important epistemic shift appears in the early seventeenth century, in the era of Descartes. Until that period knowledge was based on comparison and the recognition of resemblances and analogies in the reality that was still regarded to be God’s creation. Things have their place and meaning within a divine order and purpose. Descartes’ thought marks the moment in which this model loses its plausibility and a new model, based on the ‘Archimedean point’ of the convergence of the subject’s thought and certainty of knowing, comes to the fore.¹⁴ From this point onwards mathematics as the science of series and calculable order, and taxonomy as the science of the description of differences through the identification of stable properties (for example, of organisms) will deliver the paradigms for the organization of knowledge.¹⁵ A second epistemic shift appears in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries when the notion of stable series and classifications is replaced by the idea of development and evolution, i.e. the historicity of things (such as religions, cultures, languages, production processes). In the course of this the human sciences will emerge as sciences of the study of the human being in its collective and individual development.

The various scientific branches in their claims of knowledge of the truth about reality (at least in part) will establish themselves as ‘disciplines’ producing their own methods, rules, instruments, and et cetera. In The Discourse on Language from 1971 Foucault writes:

(…) disciplines are defined by groups of objects, methods, their corpus of propositions considered to be true, the interplay of rules and definitions, of techniques and tools: all these constitute a sort of anonymous system, freely available to whoever wishes, or whoever is able to make use of them, without there being any question of their meaning or their validity being derived from whoever happened to invent them.¹⁶

Scientific knowledge is always disciplined knowledge. The ‘system’ does not demand from its subjects a specific mode of being, way of living, or form of self-government. To the contrary, while being freely available it merely demands adherence to ‘truths’ (propositions, methods, rules, definitions) of the system. What does this imply? It implies that the subject freely submits to the already established organization of knowledge and power in discursive practices and hence also to ‘a system of prohibitions and values’ producing exclusions and limitations, resistance effects, and transgressions. It is precisely in view of this ethical dimension of the scientific discourses in their quest for true knowledge that the question must be raised of whether the subject involved in these ‘ways of speaking’ – the scholars, philosophers, and others – might be able to find ways to think and speak differently.¹⁷ For any subject that submits itself to such disciplined system pays homage to an order of knowledge and power in which there is little or no room for critical thought. For this reason, Foucault opposes the idea of a fixed position within a discipline and argues for freedom of movement within discourses thus enabling one to question its formation and limitations.¹⁸

Think and speak differently in relation to what exactly? In a text from 1970 in which he reviews Deleuze’s critique of Platonism in his 1969 Logique du sens, it becomes clear that the reflection on the possibilities for critical philosophical thought cannot be limited to the domain of the modern scientific disciplines. Foucault argues in this text that the scientific ‘discipline’ and its organization around ‘truths’ that one should adhere to is rooted in a Western tradition founded in Platonic thought. The ‘Platonic’ tradition is one of rationalization relative to the notion of the universal truth and the ‘obligation to think “in common” with others’, that is, with other ‘knowing subjects’.¹⁹ Yet, it is within Platonic thought and the various other antique schools that other ways thinking are also explored. Foucault writes that ‘to pervert Plato is to side with the Sophists’ spitefulness, the unmannerly gestures of the Cynics, the arguments of the Stoics, and the fluttering chimeras of Epicurus’.²⁰ These antique movements and schools show that it is possible to ‘decenter oneself with regards to Platonism’ and to ‘give rise to the play of surfaces at its borders’. One should take seriously the Epicurean emphasis on taking pleasure in perceptions and phantasmas as well as the Stoic concern with the self-mastery of their passions. In addition, often neglected details and gestures in Plato’s work point towards a compassion for real life in this world. And it is exactly in these aspects of antique thought that a singular ‘modality of the subject’ appears and free and critical ‘thought itself is formed’.

This essay shows that Foucault already in the late 1960s and early 1970s relates his critical analyses of modern scientific disciplines and its normative organizations of knowledge to a Platonic tradition of objectifying and disciplining rational thought relative to knowledge of the universal truth. At this point one can hear the echo of Nietzsche’s view of science as ascetic practice. After all, it was Nietzsche who had argued that modern science with its slave-moral imperative of emotional detachment, ‘disinterest’, objectiveness and neutrality could be understood as a late manifestation of the obsession in the Western philosophical and religious tradition with the ‘divine’ truth. Knowledge of the truth apparently presumes the submission to the obligation to think and do science in the way that is common and shared by all who are willing to confess their ‘metaphysical faith’ in the truth. And in doing so, they continue an ‘ascetic’ tradition in which the ‘will to power’ takes the form of a wish to deny this will in this life while orienting oneself towards ‘another world’, thus turning this life in this world into a meaningless life.²¹

As Foucault will make much more explicit in later texts, at the origin of the Western philosophical tradition and of modern science one finds indeed the ‘Platonic’ obsession with and primacy of the truth. In Plato we find the origins of the rationalization processes and the notion of objectifying knowledge as the sine qua non for access to the truth. According to Foucault, what is at stake here is ‘the question for the West’: the question of the status of the truth, more precise, the question why the concern for and obligation to truth overpowered the pluriformity of experimental practices, modifications of the subject and modes of thinking differently in such a way that the philosophical ethos could ‘only occur through the concern for truth’?²² It was in this Platonic ‘climate’ that the Western ‘rationality’ was developed, and that ‘a movement of knowledge developed, a movement of pure knowledge without any condition of spirituality’, or more precisely, without any condition of another kind of practice of ‘care of the self’ and mode of thinking than a pure and objectifying knowledge of oneself (gnothi seauton).²³ According to Foucault, here we find the origins of a principle from which eventually Descartes will give the official approval and the modern sciences will emerge.

In late essays and interviews from 1984 such as ‘What is Enlightenment?’ and ‘The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom’, we find Foucault expanding on these earlier intuitions. According to him, philosophy should resist ‘the blackmail’ of the modern scientific era that links the advancement in intellectuality and humanism to the emergence of various types of institutions and projects of rationalization, that is to say, to specific hierarchical organizations of power and knowledge. Instead philosophy should seek to develop a ‘limit-attitude’ in which it critically reflects on the contingency and normativity of the boundaries between systems of knowledge and what is excluded from them. Obviously such critique cannot produce new (‘better’) ‘formal structures with universal value’ that could replace outdated ones. Philosophy should not seek refuge in old or new ideologies. Rather, it should firstly problematize the kind of subjects produced by such ‘formal structures’, that is, the kind of scientifically disciplined subjects that do research, and think, talk and write ‘scientifically’ and ‘scholarly’. It is precisely such critical, experimental practice that makes it possible to do and think ‘differently’. According to Foucault, this implies practicing a ‘philosophical ethos’, meaning that one has to ‘carry work out by oneself upon oneself as free beings’.²⁴

To conclude, the analyses of the emergence of modern scientific disciplines as regimes of power and knowledge raise the question of the possibilities for thinking critically and ‘differently’. Since this problematic is rooted deeply in Western thought, related to the status of truth and knowledge in Plato, Foucault already in the late 1960s realizes that a critique of the Platonic tradition can take shape when exploring the ways in which in the antique philosophical schools subjects were modified and critical thought was formed. It is from this intuition that we can begin to understand the introduction of the notion of ascesis (askesis) and later also of ‘care of the self’ in his writings.

The Cartesian moment

Foucault’s first reference to the antique concept of ‘ascesis’ appears in a 1972 text on Descartes’ Meditations. In this text entitled ‘My Body, this Paper, this Fire’ Foucault engages with Derrida who had criticized his reading of Descartes in History of Madness. In the course of his reply to Derrida, Foucault writes that one should take the title ‘meditations’ seriously. In fact, the text requires a double reading, namely as

a set of propositions forming a system, which each reader must follow through if he wishes to feel their truth, and a set of modifications forming an exercise, which each reader must effect, by which each reader must be affected, if he in turn wants to be the subject enunciating the truth on his own behalf.²⁵

The Meditations can be read as an exercise through which the subject is modified. On the one hand, such modifications are part of a movement from ‘systems to askesis, from the proposition to the resolution’. By this Foucault means to say that one may want to interpret the ascetic exercise as an implementation of propositions, hence, as a personal adherence and submission to an already established truth expressed in the propositions. But the double reading of the Meditations also makes room for the opposite: it is the modification of the subject through which ‘the succession of propositions’ that together form the system are ordered and put into place. The meditations imply ‘a mobile subject’ that through a series of exercises and utterances is modified in such a way that the subject is liberated ‘from his convictions’ and freed ‘from his attachments or immediate certainties’.²⁶ This ‘liberation’ is then the precondition for the articulation of new propositions forming a new system. In short, it is through the exercises transforming the subject that a relation to the truth (of the new propositions) is first established, and that a critique of other organizations of knowledge becomes possible. The Meditations are thus an expression of freedom vis-à-vis existing regimes of truth.²⁷

According to Foucault, Descartes’ Meditations is an ‘exercise’ and a ‘practice’. As such these meditations can be described as being ‘ascetic’. The meditations are ascetic exercises that ‘bring the subject in a certain situation’ in which it can act upon itself in order to constitute itself – in this case as res cogitans. The meditations are thus an exercise in self-formation. And although Foucault doesn’t define the notion of askèsis in this text, it is clear that the few scattered remarks already prelude the later definitions and descriptions of ascesis in terms of its original antique connotations. The term askèsis describes ‘exercises’, ‘trainings’ or ‘practices’ aimed at self-(trans)formation.

In later texts this relation with Greek ascetic philosophy is made more explicit when Foucault writes that Descartes’ meditations are practices of the self and as such stand in the long tradition – dating back to Plato – that held ‘that a subject could not have access to the truth if he did not first operate upon himself a certain work that would make him susceptible to knowing the truth. (…). No access to the truth without ascesis’.²⁸

Foucault thinks of Descartes’ Meditations as standing in a long tradition of ascetic practices. But he will also argue that Descartes marks a break with this tradition and as such is a culmination point of the Platonic tradition in which the pursuit of knowledge and access to the truth is no longer conditioned by spiritual practices. In his 1982 course at the Collège de France on the hermeneutics of the self, he refers to what he calls ‘the Cartesian moment’.²⁹ This moment indicates the separation of philosophy and spirituality. What does Foucault mean by this? He starts this course with a careful analysis of the two central elements in Greek philosophy, namely the rule ‘know yourself’ (gnothi seauton) and the principle of ‘taking care of oneself’ (epimeleia heautou) or ‘be concerned about oneself’.³⁰ It was this latter principle that actually founded the necessity of the rule, and hence it was a fundamental principle in the various antique philosophical schools that developed practices and exercises through which a philosophical way of living and thinking was established. The care of the self designates several actions exercised by the self on the self. It involves a series of self-practices (askèsis) such as meditation techniques, examinations of conscience, and analyses of representations that appear in the mind.

According to Foucault, this principle of care of the self is at the heart of Greek, Hellenistic, Roman and early Christian philosophy and spirituality, and as such it is a central principle in the history of the formations of subjectivity. In fact, in this tradition philosophy and spirituality were not separated but still intertwined – a ‘perverse’ reading of Plato would reveal exactly this. The question that should be raised is then this: Why and how did Western thought and philosophy come to neglect the notion of care of the self? Why did the imperative ‘know yourself’ gain a privileged status in such a way that eventually this self-knowledge no longer necessarily involved spiritual (ascetic) exercises? According to Foucault, it was Plato who laid the foundations for ‘the constant climate in which a movement of knowledge (connaissance) developed, a movement of pure knowledge without any condition of spirituality’.³¹ Yet, it was Descartes who first drew the radical consequences when qualifying the ‘know yourself’ as the sole condition for having access to the truth. For although it were ascetic exercises (meditations) that lead to the knowledge of the self, the result of this, however, was the finding that the subject – every reasonable subject – is always already essentially a thinking being (res cogitans) capable or knowledge through reasoning in accordance with mere formal conditions, methods and rules, drawing the right conclusions from a set of formal propositions. These conditions however ‘do not concern the subject in his being’.³² That is to say, in order to have access to certain knowledge and truth the subject’s being is not put into question. The philosopher is no longer obliged to modify himself into a singular subject and to practice ways of thinking differently and freely in order to have access to the truth.

This idea of putting the subject into question was exactly what was expressed in the care of the self that Foucault now associates with the term ‘spirituality’ (spiritualité) – a Christian term that is here defined in a broader sense, including also ancient Greek and Roman practices of the self. He defines spirituality as

the set of researches, practices, and experiences, which may be purifications, ascetic exercises, renunciations, conversions of looking, modifications of existence, etc., which are, not for knowledge but for the subject, for the subject’s very being, the price to be paid for access to the truth.³³

Spirituality denotes the idea that the truth is never given to the subject and never self-evident in the subject by right – the subject is never fully capable of attaining the truth – and for this very reason it must change and transform itself. No access to truth without spiritual transformation. According to Foucault, the Cartesian moment consists of discrediting this spiritual care of the self as an ascetic practice of self-formation. The Cartesian moment is the anti-ascetic and anti-spiritual moment of the separation of philosophy from spirituality, and hence, from a long tradition of care of the self-taking the form of transformative self-practices: ‘after Descartes, we have a non-ascetic subject of knowledge. This change makes possible the institutionalization of modern science’.³⁴ The main event in the era of Descartes is thus not the separation of philosophy and theology as two different scientific ‘disciplines’. Also, the Cartesian moment does not describe the foundation of modern ‘enlightened’ scientific rationality as opposed to preceding and contemporary forms of ‘irrationality’ (religious superstition, etc.). The Cartesian moment marks the separation of philosophy and spirituality. And this means, according to Foucault, that ‘we have unfortunately forgotten about the care of the self’ in philosophy and science.³⁵

It is from this that we can understand Foucault’s remarks in The Use of Pleasure (1984) and other late writings in which he reflects on intellectual curiosity as evoking ‘the care one takes of what exists and might exist’, on the ‘value of the passion for knowledge’ (acharnement du savoir – ‘relentlessness for knowing’), and – again – on the possibility of a philosophy in which ‘one can think differently as one thinks’. Here Foucault writes that philosophy should be ‘critical work that thought brings to bear upon itself’. Instead of being a ‘discourse’ in which knowledge is always already organized, and instead of being a scientific ‘discipline’ that strives ‘to legitimize what it already knows’, i.e., that knows and confirms what the truth is and where it is to be found, and that ‘dictates others’ to follow its procedures and methods, philosophy should instead ‘explore what might be changed’ including one’s own subject position. The substance of philosophy is, after all, its free critical thought, i.e. the practice of questioning ideological and dogmatic hegemonies of truth.

It is through the inquiries into the conditions of such critical thought that Foucault will become more and more interested in forms of ‘speaking the truth’ (confession, parrhèsia) that are not the effect of disciplining discourses, but in fact produced by a subject that is constituted through a caring relation with itself and a series of exercises performed on the self. Critical thought is possible through ‘an “ascesis”, askesis, an exercise of oneself’.³⁶ The importance of parrhèsia in this context was not only discovered through the Christian confession of faith. It was in fact already preluded in the 1972 text on Descartes’s Meditations when Foucault linked the ascetic practice of meditation to ‘the subject enunciating the truth on his own behalf’.

This turn to philosophy as parrhesiastic practice – and not as a deployment of rationality through pure knowledge – provides Foucault with the opportunity to give yet another reading of Descartes’ Meditations in line with the 1972 notion of the subject’s enunciation of the truth. It is Descartes who in founding a ‘scientific discourse in truth’ on an act of parrhèsia ‘in the sense that it is actually the philosopher as such who speaks in saying “I”’, is able to position himself freely ‘in relation to the structures of power of ecclesiastical, scientific, and political authority’ that had always been forcing scholars and philosophers to think ‘in common’ with all. Seen in this light, Descartes’ Meditations already point towards Kant’s view of Enlightenment as ‘putting one’s own reason to use without subjecting oneself to any authority’, and prelude the Kantian motto of Sapere aude (‘Have the courage to know’) as an affirmation of oneself as a subject of doing, thinking and saying things ‘differently’ than established regimes of power and knowledge demand.³⁷

The care of the self and the obligation to ‘think differently’

On the question (interview from 1984) whether the role of philosophy is to warn of the dangers of power, Foucault answers the following:

This has always been an important function of philosophy. In its critical aspect – and I mean critical in a broad sense – philosophy is that which calls into question domination at every level and in every form in which it exists, whether political, economic, sexual, institutional, or what have you. To a certain extent, this critical function of philosophy derives from the Socratic injunction ‘Take care of yourself’, in other words, ‘Make freedom your foundation, through the mastery of yourself’.³⁸

Several aspects of this quotation are worth considering when we try to map Foucault’s care of the self relative to the obligation to ‘think differently’. First, the antique epimeleia heautou, the care of the self, is explicitly associated with a form of freedom acquired through the mastery of oneself. This is in line with what Foucault writes elsewhere when elaborating the care of the self. Taking care of oneself is characterized by a free-willing concern with oneself, a finding pleasure in oneself, and a devotion to one’s self – not as an act of egoism, but in fact as a starting point for a care of others and the world. Even though the antique philosophers (Cynics, Epicureans, Stoics) saw the care of the self as a ‘duty’ and a fundamental obligation, it was first and foremost a duty and obligation in relation to oneself. The main antique duty or obligation in antique philosophical practice was to attain a form of self-mastery which, if negatively defined, could be described in terms of absence of any form of ‘enslavement’ to either inner uncontrolled instincts and passions or outside forces such as shared habits and customs. Care of the self as aimed at self-mastery can thus, positively defined, be seen as characterized by the free use of techniques and exercises (of thought and action) that constitute a person as a free subject. The fact that this self-mastery goes hand in hand with ascetic practices that demand forms of renunciation does not contradict the notion of freedom through self-mastery.³⁹

Secondly, from the care of the self as a free practice of self-mastery philosophy derives its critical function. In The Use of Pleasure Foucault argues that according to the antique philosophers self-mastery coincides with the use of logos in the double meaning of that word: the use of reason and the engagement in speech and conversation.⁴⁰ The care of the self and the ascetic practices of self-mastery not only constitute an ethically modified subject (with certain virtues), but also constitute a philosophical subject capable of using reason, and engaging freely in speech and conversation. Informed by this use, relation and engagement are not based on the internalization of external rules and laws, the philosopher can take a critical stand towards the outside world (society, politics).

Thirdly, the critical function of philosophy ‘to a certain extent’ derives from the antique philosophical tradition of spiritual self-practices. To a certain extent indeed, because we have already seen that since Plato there was also a tendency to think of procedures for knowledge of the truth ‘without any condition of spirituality’, hence, without forms of care of the self that would put the subject in a position from which it could criticize the dominance of knowledge (connaissance). But there is more. The critical function of philosophy not only derives from the antique philosophical schools, but also from Christianity in so far as it was able to continue the ideal of care of the self, modes of self-mastery and oppose the pastoral power regimes – concretely in forms of asceticism and mysticism. From Descartes onwards, this ‘parrhesiastic’ tradition was continued in Enlightenment philosophy, in the ‘constitution of the self as an autonomous subject’ culminating in Kant’s Sapere aude expressing ‘a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era’.⁴¹ Contemporary philosophical critique thus combines the reflexive ethos of the Enlightenment with the notion of epimeleia heautou and the Greek and Christian spirituality of self-modification through ascetic practices.⁴² The critical function of philosophy thus not only draws upon the antique tradition of care of the self, but in fact on a longer tradition of self-constitutions of the subject in the West. Foucault’s remark in The Use of Pleasure that to take seriously the possibility of ‘thinking differently’ in philosophy today implies taking seriously the living substance of philosophical activity that consist of exercises ‘of oneself in the activity of thought’ (askèsis).⁴³ This should therefore preferably not be read as a call for a return to Greek philosophy as an alternative for modern philosophy, but much more as a reminder of the substance of philosophical thought from Socrates to Kant (and further): the ascetic tradition of self-mastery, autonomy and parrhèsia.

A final note

When reading Foucault’s views of Christianity one might at first sight be tempted to review Christianity in terms of it standing in opposition to a philosophical tradition of critical thought. Passing from Antiquity to Christianity is then the same as passing from a personal philosophical ethos to the obligation of obedience to a system of rules from which Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche liberated themselves, thus creating space again for modes of thinking and living freely and differently. But such reading is at odds with Foucault’s intuitions of the Platonic tradition as the one from which the obedience to systems of knowledge, and eventually scientific ‘disciplines’, emerges. It is also at odds with Foucault’s views regarding the ascetic and parrhesiastic aspects of Christianity that throughout the centuries challenged institutionalized doctrine and authority. The association of Greek askesis with the very Christian concept of spiritualité is telling in this respect. It suggests that the possibilities for philosophical critical thought and human freedom are not only to be found in Greek ascetic practices or modern enlightened thought, but also in Christian spiritual practices such as meditations, spiritual exercises, training of the will and conscience, confessions and acts of authentic faith, vocations and commitments, and et cetera.⁴⁴ Of course, in Foucault’s writings one finds a philosophical critique of the Christian pastoral power that ties into a body of modern critique of religion from Voltaire to Nietzsche. However, Foucault’s writings also create space for the contrary: a spiritual critique of philosophy as an academic discipline with blind faith in 1) rationality and pure knowledge, 2) the self-evident validity of certain methods and procedures, and 3) the truth of certain propositions and definitions. Such possible spiritual critique results from a philosophy willing to engage in a genealogy of itself, i.e., a critical inquiry into its emergence as a scientific discipline from a background of which religious thought and practices – from Paul via Augustine to Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and beyond – are a substantial part. In other words, Foucault provides the outlines for a ‘spiritual philosophy’ or ‘philosophical spirituality’ that moves beyond the traditional divide between philosophy and theology, as well as beyond the discourse of secularization and the decline of religious beliefs and institutions in Western modernity. Instead, by focusing on the issue of the care of the self and the variety of ascetic self-practices the main question is not how in contemporary societies people should liberate oneself from the obligation to be obedient to systems of rules (including religious systems), but rather where do we find the kind of spiritual practices and experiences through which subjects can modify themselves into agents of critical thought and action.

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Notes on contributors

Herman Westerink

Herman Westerink is associate professor for philosophy of religion and intercultural philosophy, senior researcher at the Titus Brandsma Institute at the Radboud University Nijmegen, and extraordinary professor for psychoanalysis, spirituality and mysticism at the KU Leuven. He has written and published many books and articles, most recently notably on Foucault’s History of Sexuality (De lichamen en hun lusten, 2019), modern spirituality (Religious Experience, Secular Reason and Politics around 1900, special issue in Journal RaT with H. Schelkshorn, 2019) and psychoanalysis (Sexuality as Pleasure? Reading the Different Editions of Freud’s ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’, with Ph. Van Haute, 2020 forthcoming).

Notes

1. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 3–4.

2. The recently published courses on sexuality Foucault taught in 1964 and 1969 give evidence of this. Foucault, La sexualité.

3. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 68.

4. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 5.

5. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 57.

6. Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” 278.

7. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 127, 166 ff.

8. Ibid., 205. The other major form of such tactics of counter-conduct is mysticism.

9. Ibid., 207.

10. Foucault, On the Government of the Living, chapter 4.

11. Foucault, The Courage of Truth, 337.

12. Compare f.e. Eribon, Michel Foucault, chapter 22; and Oksala, Foucault on Freedom, chapter 7.

13. Foucault, “A Preface to transgression”. In this article from 1963 Foucault thematizes the possibility of resistance and freedom in terms of transgression (or subversion/perversion) of the (juridical-oedipal) law. However, from the moment Foucault starts to critically reflect on the ‘universal’ status of the law and desire in contemporary ethnology (Lévi-Strauss) and psychoanalysis (Lacan) in The Will to Knowledge and later writings (notably also in Les aveux de la chair, volume 4 of The History of Sexuality), the idea that freedom might be defined in terms of the ‘possibility of transgression’ becomes highly problematic, since such transgression always presupposes some affirmation of the law. Foucault’s late inquiries into the possibility of freedom of thought and action are therefore no longer based on the paradigm of transgression. (Contrary to Lamb, “Freedom, the Self, and Ethical Practice according to Michel Foucault.”)

14. Foucault, The Order of Things, 58–64.

15. Ibid., 79–84.

16. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language, 222.

17. Ibid., 192 ff.

18. Ibid., 16–7. Compare also, Certeau, Heterologies, chapter 14.

19. Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum,” 353, 355–6.

20. Ibid., 346.

21. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, third essay (notably §23–24); and Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 373. On the issue of ascesis and science in Nietzsche see, Owen, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, chapter 7; and Janaway, Beyond Selflessness, chapter 13.

22. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 295.

23. Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 77–8.

24. Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?,” 312–6.

25. Foucault, “My Body, this Paper, this Fire,” 406.

26. Ibid., p. 406. See also, McGushin, Foucault’s Askesis, 175–94; and Horujy, Practices of the Self and Spiritual Practices, 72–6.

27. McGushin, Foucault’s Askesis, 180.

28. Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” 278–9.

29. Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, 14.

30. Ibid., 1–10.

31. Ibid., 77.

32. Ibid., 18.

33. Ibid., 15.

34. Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” 279.

35. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 294.

36. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 8–9; and Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher,” 325.

37. Foucault, The Government of Self and Others, 349–350, 388. Compare Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” 308, 315.

38. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 300–1.

39. Compare notably Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, chapter 1, passim. Also, Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 72–93.

40. Ibid., 85 ff.

41. Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” 312.

42. See also, Han-Pile, “Foucault, Normativity and Critique as a Practice of the Self,” 99.

43. Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, 9.

44. See also, White, “Foucault on the Care of the Self as an Ethical Project and a Spiritual Goal.”