The Concept of Problematization

Foucault often described his late work in the history of ethics in terms of the concept of ‘problematization’. But Foucault seemed to use ‘problematization’ in at least two senses. What are the relations between these two senses of 'problematization'? Do they suggest a tension in Foucault's own approach or rather a delicate nuance which we must be careful to discern?

In one sense, he described it as the work which the historian does to direct the work of thought toward present practices which were once seen as stable but which the historian shows to be problematic in some crucial sense. For instance, Foucault once offered the “problematization of a present” as “the questioning by the philosopher of this present to which he belongs and in relation to which he has to situate himself” (“The Art of Telling the Truth” in Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture, p.88)

In a second sense, Foucault described his work as ‘the history of problematization’ such that his historical inquiries would aim less to problematize present practices and instead be focused on the way in which certain practices have been subjected to problematization in history. This is the way in which Foucault seemed to describe his work in the methodological “Introduction” to the second volume of The History of Sexuality. Foucault here describes himself as analyzing “the problematizations through which being offers itself to be, necessarily, thought—and the practices on the basis of which these problematizations are formed” (p.11). Foucault goes on to clarify that he is not so much problematizing concepts by writing their histories as he is writing the histories of there having been problematized: e.g., madness or crime as problematized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or sexuality as problematized in Stoicism and early Christianity.

This all provokes the question, for me, of whether or not these two senses of problematization are related to one another. Are they compatible? If they are compatible are they two aspects of the same process?

One possible answer would be that these two senses of problematization feed into one another. The historian of problematization provides practical exemplars from the way in which the problematizing critic of the present can direct our focus toward current practices. At the same time, since Foucault’s own domain of analysis for his history of problematization, sexual ethics, is so central to our own culture, it is difficult to believe that one could trace the way in which, and the reasons why, these ethics have varied through history without provoking in at least some sense the thought that at present our own sexual ethics needs to be more carefully considered. This, of course, seems plausible, but it also does not appear that Foucault spelled out this connection with sufficient detail. Is the history of problematizations the only way to problematize the present? Are there other routes to this? And must the history of problematizations provoke a critical attitude toward our present? Could it, instead, be used to justify present modes of practice? These are difficult questions which, I hope, a careful reading of The Hermeneutics of the Subject might help us resolve.