Abstract
A sceptical essentialist ethic of self-interpretation, founded on an obligation to avoid the mendacity involved in inducing deficient self-conceptions in others, looks to have significant normative force. But how might it apply outside of the personal relationships investigated by Sartre, in a broader social context, in which self-conscious sadism (and masochism) seems to be uncommon? This chapter addresses this question with reference to the work of Michel Foucault. Although Foucault rejected key elements of phenomenology, his account of the power effects of disciplinary technologies has clear parallels with Sartre’s account of sadism in concrete relations with others. At the same time, he emphasises that disciplinary power does not require an agent, and may be diffused throughout social institutions. Foucault did not regard himself as an ethicist, in any conventional sense; but in highlighting the price we pay for scientific self-knowledge, his findings have clear implications for those whose professional roles involve the acquisition and deployment of such knowledge.
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Notes
- 1.
See de Beauvoir 1952.
- 2.
Ibid., Introduction and passim.
- 3.
Ibid., pp. 650–1, and passim.
- 4.
See Foucault 1988a.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 21.
- 6.
- 7.
Foucault 1980a, pp. 78–9.
- 8.
Foucault 1988a, p. 30.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
See Foucault 1977b.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 142.
- 12.
Ibid., pp. 144–7.
- 13.
Sartre 1989, p. 251.
- 14.
For this view of honesty, and the associated notion of a good intellectual conscience, see Nietzsche 1974, sections 110, 114, 319.
- 15.
Ibid., section 110.
- 16.
Nietzsche 1966, section 227.
- 17.
For example, with his notion of bad faith.
- 18.
See Foucault 1977b.
- 19.
See Heidegger 1962, p. 167.
- 20.
Foucault 1977b, p. 154.
- 21.
Foucault 1989a, p. 207. Note that Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ method, as set out in this work, is not identical to his later ‘genealogical’ method, referred to earlier. While the emphasis on historical origins remains a constant, the genealogical method shifts the explicit focus from the historical formation of rules, to concrete historical struggles. This requires, as Foucault expresses it in ‘Truth and Power’ (Foucault 1980b, p. 114), a shift from analyses couched in terms of language and signs to analyses couched in terms of force, power and tactics.
- 22.
Foucault 1989b, p. 119.
- 23.
And lest it be thought that one of them is ‘objective’ and the other merely ‘instrumental’ it should be borne in mind that it may be the builder who needs to call in the mycologist for an expert opinion.
- 24.
Foucault 1989b, p. 191.
- 25.
Ibid., pp. 196–8.
- 26.
Foucault 1981, p. 64.
- 27.
Ibid., part 3.
- 28.
See Foucault 1989b, pp. 197–9.
- 29.
Foucault 1981, p. 63.
- 30.
Ibid., p. 62.
- 31.
Ibid., pp. 58–63.
- 32.
The Foucauldian episteme is thus analogous to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm. Note though that whereas the Kuhnian paradigm aims to capture what distinguishes the sciences of a given period from each other, the Foucauldian episteme aims to capture what unites them, and at the same time distinguishes them from those of other periods. The Order of Things (Foucault 1970) is his most systematic attempt to investigate this.
- 33.
Foucault 1977a, part 1.
- 34.
Ibid., pp. 57–69.
- 35.
Ibid., part 2, section 1.
- 36.
Ibid., pp. 110–13.
- 37.
Ibid., pp. 120–31.
- 38.
Ibid., pp. 200–4.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 201.
- 40.
Ibid., pp. 201–3. See also Foucault 1981, p. 60.
- 41.
For further discussion of this point see Lucas 2002.
- 42.
Foucault 1977a, pp. 187–94.
- 43.
Ibid., p. 128.
- 44.
Ibid., pp. 170–7.
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Lucas, P. (2011). Foucault and Subjection. In: Ethics and Self-Knowledge. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1560-8_10
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