FOUCAULT AND THE QUESTION ON FREEDOM

Introduction

One of Michel Foucault’s greatest contributions is the unlocking of how modern society operates and how this operation affects the human person as a subject and/or as an object. I believe that the richness of Foucault’s philosophy lies on the relation of modern institutions and the subject, which is centered on how the subject is disciplined, molded, transformed and produced by modern disciplinary institutions.

In order to embrace this richness of Foucault’s philosophy, some of his key ideas must be taken into consideration at hand such as the Modern Society, Power and the Subject.

The first part of this paper is intended to give an overview of some of Foucault’s ideas on Power and the Subject which revolve around the spaces of the Modern Society or what Foucault refers to as the “Disciplinary Society.” Discussions of these topics are mainly based on his ideas published in his two monumental books, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality Volume I where the former is given much emphasis.

After exposing some of his key ideas on the first part of this paper, the second part will tackle another Foucault’s idea which I believe is consequent to the first part: The Question on Freedom. This part is the main focus of this paper though the first part is very crucial in understanding freedom in Foucault’s thinking as we shall see later on.

Concentrating on the problem of freedom, the second part will try to answer these questions: Is there a possibility to be free in a disciplinary society? What is freedom in Foucault’s philosophy? How do we achieve this freedom? Discussion on Foucault’s concept of freedom will mainly come from his book, History of Sexuality Volume II entitled The Use of Pleasure, where he brought out the notion of the care of the self adopting from the ancient Greeks and Romans which he thinks helpful in paving the way for the subject to practice freedom.

The paper will end with a brief conclusion regarding some of my understandings of Foucault’s concept of freedom.

I

In his book Discipline and Punish, Foucault presented his theories about the modern society as disciplinary society.

The subtitle of the book, Birth of the Prison, explicitly expresses the main object of his study in this book: the prison. The prison is central because it is in this institution that discipline is highly visible. However, his discussion is not restricted on the four walls of the prison; it is explicitly and/or implicitly extended to other institutions such as the school, monastery, military camps, factories and hospitals where operations in relation to disciplinary mechanisms resemble that of the prison. As Foucault asks, “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barrack, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”(DP, 228)

Foucault showed via genealogical approach how punishment as a violent and spectacular event that celebrated the infliction of pain into the body disappeared, became hidden and concealed paved the way for the emergence of the surveillance of the soul. The disappearance of public execution gave birth to a new and more efficient economy and technology of punishment which allowed a discreet but calculable exercise of power over the soul. Thus, the famous dictum: “The soul becomes the prison of the body.” (DP, 29-30)[1]

Foucault believes that this new technology of social control is disciplinary. Such form of discipline permeates almost all the elements of life in the modern society. Central to the works of Foucault is the concept of power. Power, for Foucault, is not a static or fixed quantity of physical force rather an ever flowing energy that operates in almost all aspects of the society. This power harnesses itself in regulating individual’s behavior, the system of knowledge, societal institutions, and people’s relationship with one another (A more comprehensive discussion about power will be discussed in the next section of this part). With this idea, Foucault described the modern society as disciplinary society.

To elucidate this disciplinary society described by Foucault, let us probe more on what Foucault means by discipline.

“Discipline, as Foucault uses the term, is more specific that simply the control of the behavior of others. It can refer as the project for the body’s optimization, for turning the body into a well regulated machine by means of breaking down its movements into their smallest elements and then building them back into a maximally efficient”(May, 73). Thus, discipline produces what Foucault calls the “docile body.” Foucault explains:

The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A ‘political anatomy’, which was also a ‘mechanics of power’, was being born; it defined how many have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies. Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an ‘aptitude’, a ‘capacity’, which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into relation of strict subjection.(DP, 138)

Though it seems that discipline is solely concern in producing docile bodies, it does not mean that it concerns only individuals. It also concerns about the relation of individuals to each others. In order to ensure the success of production of docile bodies, disciplinary institutions make use of some techniques. A space that is properly partitioned is ensured for the individuals to efficiently relate to one another. It must also ensure proper time coordination among activities as well as within them. This process is applied both to bodies and to the interaction among them. In order to accomplish this, an enclosed area is required in which the movements of individuals and the partitioned space of their relations can be monitored and intervened upon (DP, 141-169). Foucault summarizes: “Discipline is a political anatomy of details” (DP, 139).

The best picture of this kind of discipline could be found in the prison. As mentioned above, prison resembles schools, factories, hospitals, military camps, businesses, and, perhaps, the way we live our lives. It only shows that this kind of technique seem to cover the entire social body. The proposed uniformity of these diverse institutions is based on the principle that internal disciplines are founded upon similar techniques briefly enumerated above. This idea serves as central to Foucault’s opus. His understanding of the modern society as disciplinary society which pervades almost all aspects of people’s lives is mainly based on the similarities of these different disciplinary institutions. However, it is wrong to equate these institutions to discipline itself. Discipline is not “the” institutions per se; rather, it is a mode, a power, a technology that is taken upon by these institutions which is essential in the production of a particular end: in the case of disciplinary institution, the docile body.

On Chapter 5 of DP entitled “The means of correct training”, Foucault elucidated the main function of disciplinary power as “training”.

The chief function of the disciplinary power is to ‘train, rather than to select and to levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them. Instead of bending them all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point necessary and sufficient single units (DP, 170).

Foucault enumerated three central aspects of disciplinary training: (1) hierarchical observation, (2) normalizing judgment and (3) examination. For Foucault, the success of disciplinary power is derived from these simple instruments.

Hierarchal observation entails a certain ‘economy of gaze’. It consists of the observer and the observed. From a hierarchical distance, the observer must keep an eye on the observed. However, the observer is not seen by the observed, while the observed is seen but does not see (or at least does not see the observer). On one hand, the observer can see what the observed is doing or not doing and how well or how poor they are doing it. On the other hand, the observed becomes the subject to the gaze of the observer for they (observed) become conscious that they are perpetually observed. Given this situation, the observed must always be efficient as possible (May, 74).

“Normalizing judgment is a binary operation that works by means of both conformity and individuality” (ibid.). Disciplinary society sets some standards that each individual must strive to meet. One of the functions of the disciplinary society is to correct the deviant behavior. The use of punishment is meant to “reduce the gap” or to be corrective. In other words, punishments are used to reform a certain individual through a set of interventions for him or her to live by the society’s standard or norm. The former refers to conformity and the latter refers to individuality.

Normalizing judgment in the modern disciplinary society, Foucault describes, is opposed to earlier approaches to punishment. Earlier approaches to punishment operate by “not hierarchizing, but simple by bringing into play the binary opposition of the permitted and the forbidden; not by homogenizing, but by operating the division, acquired once and for all, of condemnation” (DP, 183). Furthermore, there is no norm in the earlier approach of punishment. Hence, one does not worry where he or she stands with regards to the norm or the “normal.” Acts are only forbidden or allowed by the law but they are not judged as being normal or abnormal.

Finally, examination is the combination of the techniques of an observing hierarchy and normalizing judgment. “It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them (DP, 184)”. Through examination, one can determine whether an individual conforms to the standard or not. Examination also shows the efficiency of a certain individual which is very essential for the economy of gaze.

Foucault finds his model of a disciplinary society in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. What is a Panopticon? How does Panopticon work? An architectural description helps us to understand what a Panapticon is:

At the periphery of the Panopticon, a circular structure; at the center, a tower with wide windows that opens onto the inner side ring. The structure on the periphery is divided into cells, each with two windows, one facing the windows of the tower, the other facing the outside, allowing an effect of backlighting to make any figure visible within the cell. ‘All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy.’ Each inmate is alone, shut off from effective communication with his fellows, but constantly visible from the tower (Bartky, 63).

Another description might be helpful:

Essentially the Panopticon is constructed like a ring around a central core. The ring holds the prisoners, the central core the guards. The prison is constructed so that the guards can look out and see inside all the prison cells. The prisoners, however, cannot see into the central one. Therefore, although one cannot watch all the prisoners at once, no prisoner can see who is being observed and who is not. One must act as though one is always being observed, since at any particular moment one might be.

But there is more. In the Panopticon, since one cannot see the guards, and since one must assume that one is being watched all the time, there do not actually have to be any guards in the central core. The prisoners, in essence, guard themselves. They act as though they are under surveillance even if there is nobody there to observe them (May, 76-11).

Foucault asserts that this is how current modern society operates. This is our own human condition as situated in a disciplinary society. With the all pervasive presence of discipline, we are in the condition of what Foucault calls “panopticism”. We become the “jailer of our own selves.” This effect of the panopticon resonates throughout the society not just in the four walls of the prison. Foucault asserts,

The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements. . . .(DP, 304)

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In the preceding section, I have given an overview of why Foucault describes the modern society as disciplinary society. We have answered in a way these questions: What is a modern society as a disciplinary society? How does disciplinary society operate? However, there seems to be still lacking in our picture of the disciplinary society. Therefore, some relevant questions are still to be asked in order for us to have a deeper understanding of Foucault’s conception of disciplinary society: What makes the disciplinary society operate in such a way as it does? or What mainly animates the disciplinary society to be such?

I believe that the answer is POWER. The concept of power is central to Foucault’s philosophy that is why I deem to give an emphasis on this topic. As Foucault asks, “When I think back now, I ask myself what else it was that I was talking about in Madness and Civilization or the Birth of the Clinic, but power?” (Rabinow, 57) Power is so interconnected with Foucault’s other concepts such as discipline, truth, knowledge, self and freedom --- I believe that without the concept of power, these concepts are almost impossible to grasp. Thus, this section will focus on some considerations regarding Foucault’s concept of power.

The traditional view of power that pervades almost all political thought, particularly in liberal tradition of political philosophy, is that “power works in order to stop certain things from happening”. Two central themes can be deduced from this concept of power: (1) the centrality of the state as possessing power and (2) the negative view of power as repressive. To connect the two, we can say that power is what the state has that can interfere in the ability of individuals to carry out their lives.

Foucault looks at power in a different manner. He moved away from the state and turned into a closer look to the ground at individual’s daily and common practices. What interested him is not who holds the power but how and where a particular power arises. We can say that Foucault’s conception of power is very distant from the traditional/liberal conception of power. First, for Foucault, more effective form of power comes from below rather from above; it comes from individual’s practices, rather from the state. Second, more effective power operates by creating objects rather than by repressing them. However, it is a wrong interpretation of Foucault’s work to say that he denies the existence of such thing as repressive power that the state possesses. It is for the reason that he cannot find any good grounds to totally turn our gaze on them for they are not as effective as the power that comes from below, and the power that creates/produces especially in the context of a disciplinary society. There is an important note about this new conception of power: an emphasis should be given that the rise of this new economy of power is a historical matter. “It relies on more advanced technologies of communication, more dominant population centres such as cities, the rise of medical and related health sciences, and greater economic integration.”(May, 82)[2] Therefore, the rise of power can also be considered as historically contingent.

Let us try to dig deeper on Foucault’s ideas on how power operates.[3]

Power comes from below. In this sense, power is not a possession of the state.[4] “It lies in the dispersion of everyday practices that are ether of our lives… It is not power that one possesses over another (there may be that to but that is not what Foucault is getting at); rather, it is a power that lies in the practices itself…” (May, 84)[5] However, it is incorrect to generalize that all of our everyday practices are practices of power. Power is everywhere, as Foucault says, but it is essential to note that he did not equate that power means everything. There is more to life or in our everyday practices other than the exercise of power.

In connection, power is not centralized. It works in what Foucault calls “power relations.” There is no Power, but only powers that intersect with one another in a particular historical (time-space) context. What exists is an infinitely complex network of “micro-powers”, of power relations that permeate every aspect of social life.

Power is creative rather than repressive. Foucault writes: “We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of object and rituals of truth.” (DP, 194) However, this is not to deny that there is no such power as being repressive. In this sense, I contend that what Foucault means is that it is more effective to see power as productive rather than repressive. In an interview, further says,

If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us a force that says no, but that it traverses and produce things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression (TP, 61).

We can deduce some interpretations about this. We can say that power can be repressive or productive, or we can also say that power is both repressive and at the same time productive. Putting it on a question, Is power indifferent that can have the mode of being, in one way, repressive or, in the other way, productive? or Is power both repressive and productive? I believe it is the latter that gives a closer interpretation of what Foucault means that power must be seen as productive rather than repressive. In analogy, power can be likened to a coin that has two faces, however only one of its faces can be seen and the other remain hidden to the naked eye – hidden though existent. I think this is what Foucault means when he said that we must see power as more productive rather than repressive. It is helpful therefore to differentiate the one from the other. We shall term them negative power and positive power.[6]

On one hand, negative power represses. It says no. It carries the force of prohibition. Its effect is identified as repression.

On the other hand, positive power enables. Because it enables, it carries the force of producing a myriad of things that we consider valuable and good as what is mentioned in the preceding part of an interview with Foucault.

One dimension of positive power is its capacity to generate knowledge. Power and knowledge have a very close relationship in Foucauldian philosophy in the sense that discourses about different areas and/or subjects are made possible in the relations of power.

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In the preceding sections, I have presented the disciplinary society and the concept of power. Consequently, I believe that we have acquired an incomplete though sufficient understanding of their connection to each other as this paper necessitates. In this last section of the first part of this paper, I intend to focus our attention on the problematization of the “individual”, the “self” or the “subject”. However, to understand the subject requires the understanding of power and its significance in the social structures of a disciplinary society. Thus, the first two sections were first presented.

“Discipline ‘makes’ individual; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instrument of its exercise.” (DP, 170)

One of Foucault’s greatest contributions is to give us an understanding of who we are now and who we might be.[7] (The former is the focus on this section and the latter will be tackled on the next part of this opus.) By unlocking how modern society operates through the techniques of discipline and power, Foucault also showed us our present human condition specifically as individuals created by significant social structures situated in our own historical context. Thus, we can see that it is not our human nature that Foucault is interested on but it is on our human condition as fashioned by the society where we inhabit in our daily lives that he focused his attention.

It is in his book Discipline and Punish that Foucault has explicitly shown how disciplinary mechanisms are employed on the subject in order to produce in him/her a particular end. He made use of the prison as his take-off point in examining the operation of power relations because it is in the prison where disciplinary techniques used in the exercise of power are very evident. However, these disciplinary techniques extend to a broader context that pervades in almost all aspects of the social body.

What does discipline mainly do? It shapes individuals through training. It employs different disciplinary techniques as an exercise of power in order to produce an individual who is enhanced in his aptitude while simultaneously being subjugated.

Being enhanced, the individual becomes a productive body through direct bodily training, for example, rote memorization in schools for students, precise movements for workers in a factory or endless drills for army men in the military. Through bodily trainings employed by disciplinary institutions, the individual is instilled with particular capacities and inclinations which increase its powers (thus increase their productivity). By productivity, we mean as the condition of being able to carry out and further the cause of the institution.

Being subjugated, an individual is conditioned to follow specific mode of behavior. The subject is persuaded to behave in a certain way without provoking it into thinking critically about what it is being asked to do. However, this subjugation is deemed to be necessary and beneficial for the subject in the long run: the subject as being productive. This means that subjugation of the subject is only a phase in the creation of a productive individual.

To explain it further, one feature of disciplinary power should be brought to light: that disciplinary power “normalizes”.

Normalization happens when a norm is set as a standard of some kind that multiplicity of individuals must be able to reach and maintain in order to perform specific tasks. It is through this process that a subject is objectified and subjected.

Being objectified, individuals are placed in some disciplinary mechanisms where it is most possible for them to be surveyed by the normalizing gaze. More detailed observations are employed on individuals’ gestures, attitudes, punctuality, and behavior, which serve as the main objects of normalizing judgments. Upon judging who conforms to the norm or not, individuals are further divided, organized and arranged into hierarchies to facilitate rigid inspection.

This normalizing gaze functions to create in the individuals certain attitudes, actions, and skills. The norm narrows the range of heterogeneity in a radical fashion in relation to the cause of the institution and at the same time it also helps to constitute differences among individuals. Foucault explains: “In a sense the power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to specialities and to render the differences useful by fitting them one to another” (DP, 184). In this way, exclusion becomes possible.

In a closer look, individuals become the objects of knowledge. Upon observation, institutions become capable of producing knowledge about the individuals. These truths are basically descriptive and scientific ones. However, these truths turn to be prescriptive when they are further used in order to classify individuals in the disciplinary process of normalization. It is in this sense that the individuals become not only the objects of discipline but also its vehicles.

We can see here the two modes of power (positive power and the negative power as elaborated above) at work in the disciplinary process of producing individuals. The effect of positive power is a productive individual while the effect of negative power is a subjugated individual. Though the main goal is to create a productive subject, the subjugated subject is necessary in the process of creating productive individual. This disciplinary process is what I call “empowerment through subjugation”. It just shows that power takes upon both positive and negative modes in terms of disciplinarity. Though the positive side is highlighted and the latter remained in the shadow (though existent).

In a deeper analysis, it seems that success is achieved by the production of individuals “who are economically apt while being politically docile.” However, there seems to be a lurking problem here: the subject is overridden by disciplinary institutions in making decisions about what is beneficial or not for it. Therefore, a question on freedom of the subject arises.

II

In the first part of this paper, we have seen somehow that Foucault seems to be detached in giving us a notion of our human nature; instead, he is interested in showing us how we are fabricated by certain forces that pervade our everyday practices in our own socio-historical context.

For Foucault, it is through the pervasiveness of powers and their relationship with one another that mainly constitute our human condition in our current modern disciplinary society. It is through the mechanisms of power that is ever-flowing in our society and human relationships that produce our individuality but at the same time objectify us as individuals by means of normalization, classification, exclusion, repression, and subjugation.

In addition, it is also through this pervasiveness of power that Foucault becomes suspicious of the recovery of the original state of natural freedom. However, Foucault does not deny the possibility of resistance or opposition in a society where “power is everywhere.” Foucault asserts categorically that, indeed, resistance is possible: “there is necessarily the possibility of resistance, for if there were no possibility of resistance, of violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies that reverse the situation, there would be no relations of power” (CSPF). How can resistance be possible in a society where power is everywhere? How possible is freedom in society where individuals are subjugated by power mechanisms? If freedom is really possible, what does Foucault mean by freedom? How do we achieve freedom?

Finding sufficient answers to these questions is, therefore, the aim of the following discussions.

“Where there is power, there is resistance.” This is one definite statement that Foucault writes in order to assert the possibility of resistance in a society where power relations are prevalent. May (85) gives us two possible interpretations about this statement. First, that power requires resistance. In other words, there can be no power without resistance. Second, that power does not imply resistance but comes coupled with it. In other words, it is not that power relations cannot exist without resistance but that there is always the possibility of resistance when there is power relation. The former is a very strong claim while the latter is a weaker thesis. I argue that the weaker thesis is a more comfortable and defensible claim. I believe that resistance is not a pre-requisite of power relation but an indissoluble possible partner of any power relation. “Resistance for Foucault then is not a substance that is anterior to power, neither is it merely the inverse of power. Rather, resistance is coextensive and contemporary with power; otherwise it would not be able to situate and distribute itself strategically.” (Mendoza, 3, my own emphasis)

What is resistance? In a disciplinary society, we can understand resistance as the capacity to practice freedom. Consequently, freedom is the condition that is constituted by our capacity to resist. However, resistance cannot be understood as only “to oppose”, “to go against” or “to inverse power”. It is much more than that. Rather, it is the capacity to create a particular lifestyle other than what is instilled by the disciplinary society in the individuals. But, this cannot be done outside power relations because in a society of conformity where power comes from everywhere. It, therefore, depends on one’s ability to change the hold of power as not to be repressed by the relations of power to live a specific way of life. In this sense, we can safely say that freedom is not a state of being but a practice. Foucault travels back to Greece to show us a model of how people practice freedom that he suggests: the care of the self. (This concept of the care of the self will be discussed more extensively in the succeeding part of this opus).

In his earlier works (especially in Discipline and Punish and History of Sexuality Vol. I), Foucault emphasizes the application of the different technologies of domination through the subjugation of what he calls the docile body in the clasp of disciplinary power and the process by which subjectivities are produced by ways of objectification, classification and normalization. However, in his latter writings, there has been a shift from his thoughts. His emphasis turns into the self as self-constituting as ethical subject through what he calls the technologies of the self. This paves way to a new notion of power which not based mainly on repression or domination but a power that gives the capacity for the subject to become self-determining in creating its self, thus, capable of resisting the domination of the modern society. In the words of May, the earlier works focus on how we have come to be who we are through our contingent history and the latter works focus on the possibility of who we might be. (May,) Though there seems to be a sudden shift as often criticized in Foucauldian philosophy, this shift is not really a total abandonment of the Foucauldian earlier thinking rather this earlier thinking serves as a background so to advance in his later thinking specifically regarding the formation of subjectivity.

For a better understanding, a differentiation of these two technologies would be helpful. Technologies of power “determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject” (TS, 18). Technologies of the self are the various “operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being’ that people make either by themselves or with the help of others in order to transform themselves to reach a ‘state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality’” (ibid.).

It is in an interview during that 1984 entitled “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom” that Foucault clarifies the shift of his thinking about the relations of the subject and truth. In his earlier thinking, he conceived the “problem of the relation between the subject and games of truth in terms either of coercive practices---such as those of psychiatry and the prison system---or of theoretical or scientific games---such as the analysis of wealth, of language, and of living beings”. (CSPF, 282) In his later works, these games of truth involve coercive practice, but a practice of self-formation of the subject or what he calls an “ascetic practice.” Ascetic in this sense means “an exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, and to attain a mode of being” (ibid.).

Following his thoughts on this interview, this work of the self on the self should not be understood in terms of liberation in the left-wing traditional sense but as practices of freedom. By traditional view of liberation, we mean that there exists a human nature that has been concealed, alienated of imprisoned by the mechanisms of repression. All we need to do is to liberate the self from bondage of repressive mechanisms and man will be reconciled with himself again and have a positive relation to himself. On the opposite view, Foucault denies the existence of this original human nature upon emancipation. For him, this recovery of the original self is not possible anymore because there is only “becoming”. The only possibility is the conscious creation of a certain identity through constant self-formation. (CSPF: See Ransom, 22-23) Although he did not deny the existence of such practice of liberation, this is not sufficient to be called practices of freedom that is necessary to define an “admissible and acceptable form of existence or political society.” With this regards, liberation and freedom is therefore is not interchangeable in Foucault’s terms. He emphasized freedom over liberation, suggesting that the former is broader in context than the latter. However, he does not reject the idea that in order to exercise the practices of freedom, some degree of liberation is absolutely needed, although this is only the beginning. We become really free if we learn how to use or utilize power to forge a free subjectivity rather than being trapped again to a new snare of power relationship. “Liberation paves way for new power relationship [than can lead to another form of repression], which must be controlled by practices of freedom” (CSPF, 284). This gives us a clearer understanding of freedom as a practice rather than a state of being.
In the second Volume of the History of Sexuality entitled The Uses of Pleasure, Foucault gives us a new way of understanding ethics. What is unique about Foucault’s approach to ethics is his distinction between morality and ethics. According to him, morality consists of three aspects: (1) moral codes, (2) the actual behavior of those who are subject to this code, and (3) the way individuals conduct themselves as moral subjects of the code. It is in the relation of the third aspect that Foucault uses the term “ethics.” It is not the rules, principles or precepts that constitute ethics; rather, it is the field of our self-constitution as subjects or what he terms as “subjectivation.” (UP, 33, 37: See O’Leary, Foucault and the Art of Ethics, 11). Along with this line of thinking, Foucault isolates four elements which form the framework of ethics or moral practices: (1) the ethical substance, (2) mode of subjection, (3) ethical work and (4) the telos.

Foucault defines the ethical substance as “this part of himself as the prime material if his moral conduct.” (UP, 26). The mode of subjection is “the way in which the individual establishes his relation to the rule and recognizes himself as obliged to put it in practice.” (UP, 27) The ethical work is the work “that one performs on oneself, not only in order to bring one’s conduct into compliance with a given rule, but to attempt to transform oneself into the ethical subject of one’s behavior” (ibid.). Lastly, telos is “the goal towards which the instances of conduct that establish or express certain relations to a particular ethical substance are directed” (May, 109). O’Leary (13) presented four questions that frame the task of ethics: What part of myself should I address? Why should I engage in such work? What tools are available to me? What kind of person do I want to be, or what kind of life do I want to lead? The answer to each question corresponds to each element respectively.

Foucault contends that ethics is an aesthetic practice or a style of life. Therefore, freedom is very essential for the practice of ethics for ethics is conscious practices of free individuals. The word conscious is very crucial here because a person must have the knowledge that he is practicing ethics other than practicing ethics without knowing that he is practicing it. “Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection” (CSPF, 284). In order to elucidate his notion of freedom, Foucault gives us the practice of the “care of the self” as his model, adopting it from the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is in the practice of self-care that he deems to show how people practice freedom deliberately.

Now, let us turn our gaze briefly on the care of the self as practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans which is mainly elaborated in Foucault’s The Use of Pleasure.

The second volume of the History of Sexuality entitled The Use of Pleasure is centered on the ethical problematization of sex of the ancients Greeks. However, discussions are not solely on sex alone rather sex is seen as connected to different types of activities that have something to do in a larger field of pleasure. In Foucault’s words, of aphrodisia. Aphrodisia has something to do with pleasure associated with certain activities such as sex, food, wine, and relations with boys. What is common among these activities is that they involve intense pleasure that has the tendency to be excessive. Excessive indulgence is problematized because it can upset the natural order of living (May, 110). The question on how one is to approach aphrodisia becomes an important problem for them.

For the Greeks, it is not renunciation as Christian thought would recommend, but the proper relation to pleasures serves as the key answer to this quandary. “It is knowing how and when to indulge” (ibid.). With this regards, Foucault enumerates three elements in the know-how of one’s proper relation to aphrodisiac pleasures: (1) need, (2) timeliness and (3) status. There’s nothing shameful to engage in sex as long as it is not excessive. Engagement in sexual relations must be guided properly by moderation. One must refrain if it is not urgent. There is also a right and wrong time to engage activities that produce aphrodisia: proper times of days, months and years. Lastly, status of those who indulge is an important. Specifically in men’s relation with boys, the class status of the partner, the positions taken during the sexual activity is taken into consideration to determine proper levels and balance. (UP,; May 110-11)

We can see that moderation is very essential in one’s proper relation to aphrodisia. It is therefore necessary for a certain person to control his desires for pleasure. A person must become a “master of oneself.” Foucault contrasts the Christian practice against pleasure to that of the ancient Greeks. In Christianity, one masters these pleasures because they are to be renounced. Since the pleasures of aphrodisia are the pleasures of the body, they must be abandoned as much as possible for the reason that the body is seen as immersed in sin. On the other hand, ancient Greeks treat aphrodisiac pleasures as maybe dangerous but they are not a matter of sin. Renunciation of pleasures is not required for one to master oneself. The pleasures still remain but they are under the control of the one who is the subject of pleasure. Consequently, this form of self-mastery gives a subject a sort of freedom. However, this freedom is not a sort of freedom from deterministic forces or political oppression rather it is deep within--- a freedom of self’s relation to oneself. Foucault clarifies, “This individual freedom should not… be understood as the independence of a free will. Its polar opposite was not a natural determinism, now was it the will of an all-powerful agency; it was enslavement – the enslavement of oneself by oneself.” (UP, 79: See May, 111). We can again notice a freedom which is active rather than passive; a freedom which requires practice rather than being in a state of non-coercion.

In Foucault’s view, this is the approach of ancient Greeks to ethics. May (112) matches the four ethical elements cited by Foucault (as mentioned above) into the practices of the ancient Greeks with regards to proper relation to aphrodisia.

The ethical substance is aphrodisia. It is that part of the person that is the subject of ethical reflection and practice. The mode of subjection is the knowing-how associated with need, time and status. It forms what Foucault calls a type of savior-faire; instead of being a set of permissions and prohibitions, it forms a sense of how to navigate among dangerous but not necessary impure desires. The ethical work is the battle itself, the training and effort required to bring the promised pleasures of aphrodisiac under one’s control. The telos is freedom.

What interested Foucault in adopting the ancient Greek practice of the care of the self is the capacity of an individual to constitute oneself as an ethical subject. For Foucault, an individual must not be formed by any norms, or prescriptive morality but one must be able to become an artist of his/her own life. It is giving one’s existence a certain style rather than following a certain code that constitutes an individual as an ethical subject. Ethical practice then is basically about a matter of form giving to one’s life. In a nutshell, this is what Foucault refers as “the aesthetic of existence.” Foucault defines this as:

Those intentional and involuntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life in an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria (UP, 10-11)

O’Leary (13-4) gives two ways on how the “aesthetics” metaphor is used by Foucault. First, aesthetics suggests a form of relation of the self to self. This relation sees the self as “a task, as something which needs to be continuously worked on.” Its closest meaning to the ancient Greek term is techne. It is to understand aesthetics of the self as an ethics which demands a certain mode of behavior towards the self which is not different from that of an artist faced with is or her material. Second, aesthetics is used as referring to aestheticism (particularly it connotation in the nineteenth century move aestheticism). Foucault implies the centrality of the category of “beauty” in all the choices that affecting the way we live our lives. Although beauty seems to be the telos of Foucault’s suggested ethics, O’Leary argues that it is freedom rather than beauty, which I also agree with.

What is very salient regarding this ethics as an aesthetic of existence is that it suggests that an ethical subject is not constituted by normative moral codes but by constant practices of the self upon self. In other words, it is through some techniques upon the self that one creates a self for oneself. It is in these practices that individuals deliberately practice what Foucault calls FREEDOM.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have shown two different themes in the genealogical Foucauldian thinking. The first part of this paper gave an emphasis on elaborating the Foucauldian thought on how the subject is being constituted by disciplinary institutions through the mechanism of power relations. On the other hand, the second part gave an emphasis on how the subject is constituted by oneself. Though they seem to be two different themes, I argue that they are not completely separated from each other. I deem the former part to be very essential in understanding the latter part especially in tackling the question on freedom in Foucault's philosophy, which is the main focus of this paper.
The subject as produced through disciplinary mechanisms constitutes a sense of 'non-freedom' in a certain individual in the sense that disciplinary institutions override the choice of an individual about what is beneficial for himself/herself. On the contrary, the care of the self (as presented by Foucault adopting it from the ancient Greeks and Romans) constitutes freedom in the subject in the sense that an individual is the one who gives form to himself/herself, that is, the aesthetic of existence. Showing how the condition of non-freedom occurs in the former part gives a clearer understanding and appreciation of the how the condition of freedom becomes possible which is written in the latter part of this paper.
In the context of a disciplinary society, resistance constitutes freedom. As a result, freedom is a condition that is constituted by the ability to resist. In a society where power is everywhere, Foucault does not deny the possibility of resistance. Power is always coupled with resistance. Therefore, he did not shun away any form of human agency. He believes on the capacity of individual to constitute themselves as ethical subjects through the care of the self.
Freedom, as constitutive of resistance, must not be understood as merely going against dominating power relations. In addition, it is not merely being liberated from the grips of dominating power. Although liberation is necessary (as the first step) to practice freedom, it still requires particular practices that make up the life or existence that is free.
We can say therefore that freedom is active rather than passive; it is practical rather than merely theoretical. Freedom is not an ideal state of being that could renew our restricted human nature or a future goal that one day we will become totally emancipated from dominating powers; rather, freedom is a constant practice, a never ending striving that could only end, perhaps, when we die. Freedom is not simply saying "I am free." It is constituted by our active engagement in some practices that make us truly free. In my deepest analogy, the difference between liberation and freedom that Foucault is trying to convey can be likened to the difference of wedding and marriage. Typically, wedding is a one-day event that formally starts the relationship of a man and woman as husband and wife. However, it is not the wedding ceremony that makes them truly married husband and wife (though it is the official start); rather, it is in their constant practices (in my opinion, of showing their love to each other) in every moment of their lives that would determine their genuine relation to each other as truly married husband and wife. Wedding is just for a day, while marriage is forever. As love is not a noun but a verb, so is freedom.
In conclusion, freedom is not limited on those acts that are contrary to the given norms dictated by the disciplinary society or institutions. It is a capacity of an individual to create and pursue a particular lifestyle. Therefore, the practice of freedom lies on the practices of the self for it is such practices that we are given the capacity to create a particular lifestyle, and not the other.

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The following abbreviations are used for Michel Foucault’s works:

CSPF – The Ethics of Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom

DP – Discipline and Punish

HS – The History of Sexuality Volume I

TS – Technologies of the Self

TP – Truth and Power

UP – The Use of Pleasure

DE GUZMAN, FRANKLIN Q. 2009-78026 MA Philosophy 09165100839 frank_kleng@yahoo.com

Submitted by:

REFERENCES

Primary Sources

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan

Sheridan. New York: Random House, Inc., 1979.

_____. “Technologies of the Self.” Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with

Michel Foucault. Eds. Martin Luther H., et al. Amherst: The University

of Massachusetts Press, 1988.

_____. “The Ethics of Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom.”

_____. The History of Sexuality Volume I: Introduction. Trans. Robert

Huxley. New York: Random House, Inc., 1990.

_____. The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Huxley. New York: Random House,

Inc., 1990.

Secondary Sources

Bartky, Sandra Lee. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of

Patriarchal Power.” Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance.

Ed. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby. New York: Northeastern University

Press, 1988.

May, Todd. The Philosophy of Foucault. London: Acumen, 2006.

Mendoza, Perseville. “Foucault, Power and Seminary Formation”, MA Thesis,

First Semester 2001-2002, University of the Philippines – Diliman,

Philippines.

O’Leary, Timothy. Foucault: The Art of Ethics. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Rabinow, Paul, ed. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Ransom, John S. Foucault’ Discipline: The Politics of Subjectivity. London:

Duke University Press, 1997.

Sheridan, Alan. Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth. New York: Tavistock

Publication, 1980.

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[1] The soul is to be understood here not in the Christian sense of a soul born in sin and subject to punishment, but as the creation of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint (See, Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth by Alan Sheridan, Tavistock Publication, New York: 1980, 140).

[2] Foucault explains further: If it is true that the juridical system [the binary system of the permitted and the forbidden with its repressive view of power] was useful for representing, albeit in a nonexhaustive way, a power that was centered primarily around deduction [prelevement] and death, it is utterly incongruous with the new methods of power whose operation is not ensured by rights but by technique, not by law but by normalization, not by punishment but by control, methods that are employed on all levels and in forms that go beyond the state and its apparatus (HS, 89).

[3] It is very hard to give a definition of power in Foucault’s philosophy because this is not his interest. He is not interested in giving us a theory of power but he is more interested on how power operates (See May and Ransom).

[4] Foucault says, “Power is not something that is acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away” (HS, 94). In this sense, power is not a commodity that is possessed by someone; rather, it is exercised. To see power as a possession is to view power in the traditional liberal theory conception.

[5] For example, there is power in a father who gives advices to his son, in a teacher who asks a student to recite, in a police guard who watches his post, in a tourist who chooses a hotel to stay for a night.

[6] Negative Power and Positive Power are not two explicit kinds of power; rather, these are two modes of power that power can possibly take upon. These two terms were also used by Perseville Mendoza in his Unpublished MA Thesis entitled Foucault, Power and Seminary Formation (University of the Philippines – Diliman, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, First Semester 2001-2002, 2-4). I deem to adopt the use these terms because I believe that there are no better terms that can capture the image of power as Foucault pictures it.

[7] I borrowed these terms from Todd May who is very helpful in some of my understandings about Foucault’s Philosophy. He recognizes Foucault’s philosophy as giving as a picture of who we are now and who we might be.