Ethics as a Process
Foucault’s elaboration of an ethics of care of the self was intended as an alternative to modern moral systems. Of course, care of the self as Foucault focused on it was almost entirely an ancient ethical practice caught up in the cultural atmosphere of late Greek and early Roman antiquity. As such, it is clear that this ethics cannot be easily imported into the modern context to which Foucault was addressing himself. The ethics of the care of the self will require significant revision if it is to be meaningful and viable in contemporary contexts. That said, there are certain elements of an ethics of care of the self which are already immediately relevant to contemporary ethical contexts, and these elements can be used to assist in a rethinking of our contemporary ethical practices. These elements, I think it was Foucault’s point, do not require significant revision in order to be deployed with effectiveness in contemporary settings. Is the idea of 'ethics as a process' one of these central ideas which Foucault finds relevant for modern moral philosophy?
The crux of modern ethical practice, as Foucault described it in such works as Discipline and Punish and The Will to Know, was an attempt to divide power from freedom. We might say, then, that modern ethics is problematized around the oppositional relation between power and freedom. This oppositional relation constitutes the core problem for modern moral systems. Almost every modern moral system is an attempt to show how we can effectively disentangle power and freedom in such a way that conceptualizes their relation as oppositional.
Foucault elaborated the ancient ethical tradition of care of the self as an alternative to the modern approach insofar as care of the self is described by him as specifically emphasizing the way in which power and freedom are intensely and inevitably interleaved with one another. This turn to ancient ethical practice in terms of the interlocking relation between power and freedom can be conveniently reformulated in the terminology employed in his work on power: “Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are ‘free’.” The ethics of self-care specifically focuses on this intrinsic interrelation between power and knowledge and as such offers an alternative to the modern moral systems of the fascist and the freespirit. What was this alternative? How did it work? What did it look like? Obviously these question leave a great deal open.
One of the most interesting features of care of the self is the way in which Foucault tends to describe it as a 'spiritual' practice or process in contrast to a 'philosophical' theory or knowledge. The idea for him is that care of the self comes into being by being practiced. It is not a morality that already exists which we can come to know. What is at stake in this contrast between a dynamic ethics of process and a static ethics of knowledge? Does it presuppose a valid and accurate portrait of modern moral philosophy? And is Foucault's alternative itself viable?
8 comments:
"The idea for him is that care of the self comes into being by being practiced."
What I find interesting about this phrase is that there is also an emphasis in Confucian thought on knowledge acquired through practice (rather than practice occurring after one acquires and applies knowledge). I just read a book called Awakening China (Fitzgerald) in which the author discusses how this was precisely the problem in implementing modern discourses in Chinese nationalist (specifically statist) thought: how could Confucian thought (action producing knowledge) be combined with the Hegelian dialectic (knowledge producing action)? The author seems to be arguing that this is the issue which Mao tried to deal with in On Practice--Mao believed that intellectuals needed to basically practice what they preached. One could not understand the plight of a peasant if one had never worked or lived like one.
Yes it is unfortunate that Foucault did not look more to Eastern practices. I think there is fertile ground here to be explored. In 'Herm of the Subject' Foucault dismisses contemporary attempts (in the 1980s) to care for the self as having an “absence of meaning and thought”. Furthermore he identifies contemporary efforts to constitute an ethic of the self as “more or less blocked and ossified” and lacking content (251). However I think that many eastern practices are close to the type of Hellenistic practices that Foucault examines in Herm of the Subject. In particular many of these practices are about developing greater awareness of ones place within the world through practical mental and physical exercises and constituting the self (as opposed to finding ones true self). It is these elements of the Hellenistic practice of the care of the self that Foucault emphasized.
Do Eastern systems of ethics, then, help us to explicate what exactly might be meant by saying that ethics is practical? If ethics is practical, what is it not? Theoretical? And what does it mean for it to be practical? For Foucault, at least, there seems to be a sense of an opposition to the idea that morality is a purely epistemic or cognitive pursuit. But if ethics reaches beyond the cognitive, where does it reach out to? To the body? To emotions? Do Eastern moral systems, e.g. Confucianism, offer any guidance on these questions concerning the type of moral substance that might be activated in practicing a morality that is not purely cognitive?
Yes I think Eastern practices illustrate what may be meant by saying that ethics involves practice. I think that to ask where ethics reaches to is to ask the wrong question. To look specifically at Foucault’s work on care of the self. Foucault says that ethics for the Greeks/Romans around the period 2nd Century BC was concerned with the relationship one had with oneself. To be ethical was to have a certain relationship to the self, and this relationship was produced through caring for the self. As Foucault explains in Herm of the Subject caring for the self involved both askesis and mathēsis. Mathēsis involves theoretical knowledge of the world (natural and social) while askēsis is the regular calculated procedures that allows true discourses to be matrixes of rational behaviour. Eastern practices involve true discourses as well as regulated practices that enable the individual to produce themselves as an ethical subject. If we think of Taoism, for example, there is a whole body of theoretical knowledge together with a whole series of practices (mediation, and practices for training the body) through which one becomes an ethical subject. For example a person who learns a martial art does so firstly on the basis of theoretical knowledge but through practicing this art one gains a deeper understanding of the principles that one heard. The principle that when one is ‘going up’ one is ‘going down’ may not make much sense to a beginner but through practice an individual gains knowledge about this principle. Eastern practices illustrate how ethics may involve producing oneself as opposed to the Christian renunciation of self, or the more contemporary ‘finding oneself’, and how this ethics may involve both practical and theoretical knowledge working together.
I am particularly interested in exploring ways in which Foucault was trying to understand 'care of the self' as a practice of freedom, which for him would have been an alternative to certain modern conceptions of freedom (e.g., freedom as 'liberation') in which he was rather disappointed. Do Eastern practices of Taoism or Confucianism suggest any ways into approaching Foucault in these terms?
As for the theory-practice connection, I agree that this is one point of contact between Foucault and some of the Eastern practices you describe. But I'm not at all sure that this is extremely significant, since a number of non-Kantian and non-Utilitarian conceptions of ethics evince a similar conception of the reciprocity of theory (mathesis) and practice (askesis). What exactly about the Taoist or Confucian conception of the theory and practice relation is illuminating for Foucault?
Yes I think Eastern practices are illustrative of a practice of freedom that is not just concerned with liberation. What about the description of Taoism sounds to you like a concern with freedom as liberation?
Remember that I said above it is a pity that Foucault did not look more to Eastern practices so I’m not saying Taoist concepts were illuminating for Foucault. Rather what I have been saying is that I think that the features of the Hellenistic care of the self that Foucault identifies can also be identified within certain eastern practices. I am interested in contemporary practices of the self and in particular contemporary practices that may involve alternatives to currently dominant models. Some points of connections between the Hellenistic practice and Eastern practices are the relationship between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Another two points of contact are the idea of constituting the self rather than finding the self, and of preparing the self for dangers it may encounter in the external world. In your original post you said that you feel that an ethics of care of the self was intended as an alternative to modern moral systems. However I did not get a clear picture of exactly what you see this ethics as involving. What is your interpretation of what was involved in an ethics of a care of the self?
Where do you see a similar relationship between theoretical knowledge (mathesis) and practical knowledge (askesis) in, on the one hand, non-Kantian and non-Utilitarian conceptions of ethics and, on the other hand, the practice of caring for the self?
Clearly, many thanks for the information.
What necessary words... super, magnificent idea
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