Governmentality and subjectivity: practices of self as arts of selfgovernment1
Mark Olssen
University of Surrey
Although the self is constituted by practices, it is always possible to make something out of what it has been
made into, once it learns how to pull the strings. This is the basis of ethical work. Ethical work, says Foucault, is
the work one performs in the attempt to transform oneself into an ethical subject of one's own behaviour, the
means by which we change ourselves in order to become ethical subjects. Such a history of ethics is a history of
ascetics. In his interview `On the Genealogy of Ethics' Foucault says that there is "another side to these moral
prescriptions which most of the time is not isolated as such but is, I think, very important: the kind of
relationship you ought to have with yourself, rapport à soi, which I call ethics, and which determines how the
individual is supposed to constitute himself as a moral subject of his own actions" (1997a: 263). The question
of how to conceptualise ethics and how to write its history lead Foucault to a study of ancient cultures in the
tradition of historians of ancient thought such as Paul Veyne, Georges Dumézil, Pierre Hadot, and Jean-Pierre
Vernant (Davidson, 1994: 64). His concern with ethics is the last two volumes of The History of Sexuality,
constituted a reconceptualisation and reorientation of his original project on sex in The History of Sexuality,
Volume 1 (Davidson, 1994: 64). Now, sex would be conceptualised in relation to ethics, and ethics was to
become, in his latter works, specifically the framework for interpreting Greek and Roman problematisations of
sex. Ethics, as such, was a part of morality, but, rather than focus exclusively on codes of moral behaviour, it
focussed on the self's relationship to the self, for the way we relate to ourselves contributes to the way that we
construct ourselves and form our identities as well as the ways we lead our lives and govern our conduct.
Such a project, says Foucault (1997b) lies “at the intersection of two themes…a history of subjectivity and an
analysis of forms of governmentality” (p. 88):
The history of subjectivity was begun by studying the social divisions brought about in the name of
madness, illness and delinquency, along with their effects on the constitution of a rational and normal
subject. It was begun by attempting to identify the modes of objectification of the subject in
knowledge disciplines…such as those dealing with language, labor and life. As for the study of
“governmentality,” it answered a dual purpose: doing the necessary critique of common conceptions of
“power”…; [and] analyse it rather as a domain of strategic relations focussing on the behaviour of the
other or others, and employing various techniques according to the case, the institutional frameworks,
social groups, and historical periods in which they develop (1997b: 88).
In this newfound concern with ethical action, there is on the surface a shift in relation to Foucault's interest away
from knowledge as a coercive practice of subjection, to being a practice of the self-formation of the subject as
an art of self-government. Hence, in his later works, Foucault applies the notion of governmentality as a set of
strategic practices defining the relations of self to self, and of self to others. This links the “the question of
politics and the question of ethics [to]…the analysis of governmentality - that is to say, of power as a set of
reversible relationships – [which] must refer to an ethics of the subject defined by the relationship of self to self”
(2005: 252). Yet this positing of a more active political, or “strategic” subject does not involve a radical break
with his earlier work, nor is it inconsistent with it, says Foucault (1991a: 11; 1989b: 296). In Madness and
Civilization, Foucault states that it was a matter of knowing how one "governed" “the mad” (1989b: 296); in his
last two works, it is a matter of how one "governs" oneself. In addition, as he says:
if now I am interested . . . in the way in which the subject constitutes himself in an active fashion, by the
practices of the self, these practices are nevertheless not something that the individual invents by himself.
They are patterns that he finds in his culture and which are proposed, suggested and imposed on him by
his culture, his society and his social group (1991a: 11).
My aim in this chapter is to demonstrate how the self utilises strategies of governmentality in relation both to
self and others in order to demonstrate its agency in its effort to endeavour to effect change.
1
1
What we can learn from the ancient Greeks
In both of the later volumes of The History of Sexuality, and in his writings on ethics in general, Foucault was
inspired by the work of Pierre Hadot (1987, 1992, 1995, 1997). As Davidson puts it, "in order fully to
understand Foucault's motivations and his object of study one must take into account the way in which Hadot's
work on ancient spiritual exercises helped to form the entire project. . . . If, as is now widely recognised, the
work of Georges Canguilhem is indispensable to understanding the early Foucault, the work of Pierre Hadot is
crucial to understanding his last writings" (Davidson, 1997: 200, 201).
What Hadot did was to open up dimensions of ancient philosophy typically overlooked and forgotten. Foucault,
being a keen reader of Hadot's work, sought to reinstate philosophy as "a mode of life, as an act of living, as a
way of being" (Davidson, 1997: 195) by seeking to isolate philosophical and spiritual exercises that lead to the
philosophical way of life. Hadot had argued that such exercises became eclipsed by the reduction of philosophy
from a way of life to an abstract theoretical activity locked within a discipline. Similarly, Foucault argues, that
"codes of behaviour became emphasised at the expense of forms of subjectivation" (p. 201). In both The Use of
Pleasure and The Care of the Self, Foucault borrows Hadot's notion of “spiritual exercises” directing his
attention to the history of ethics as a history of askēsis or practices of self, focussing attention on classical
Greece as well as Hellenistic and Roman philosophy as places where these elements of askēsis were most
emphasised, strongest, and most dynamic (p. 201).
Hadot acknowledges in turn a debt to Pierre Courcelle's work on Hellenistic literature 2 which explored themes
such as "self knowledge”, historically following them "across the years . . . as they evolved in the western
tradition" (Hadot, 1997: 206). An important concept was that of philosophia which as a form of life required
spiritual exercises aimed at realising a transformation of one's vision of the world. Such exercises involved
learning how to live the philosophical life (Hadot, 1997: 196). The lesson of ancient philosophy, Hadot says,
consisted in "an invitation for a man to transform himself. Philosophy is conversion, transformation of the way
of being and the way of living, the quest for wisdom" (Hadot, 1987: 227). Starting with Ancient Greece and
traversing the Greco-Roman cultures, Hadot considers the philosophical orientations of the different schools-the Platonists, the Aristoteleans, the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Academicians --and notes how each school has
its fundamental approach to life and regimen of exercises.
According to Arnold Davidson, "the idea of philosophy as a way of life . . . is one of the most forceful and
provocative directions of Foucault's later thought" (1994: 70 – 1). To emphasise philosophy as a “way of life”
must be seen as distinct from everyday life, for, as Hadot has written with respect to the ancients, the idea of a
way of life "implies a rupture with what the skeptics called bios, that is daily life" (cited in Davidson,1994: 70).
"It was this experience of philosophy as a way of life, and not simply as a theoretical doctrine, that brought
Socrates into deadly conflict with the authorities" (p. 71). For Foucault, "philosophy was a spiritual exercise, an
exercise of oneself in which one submitted to modifications and tests, underwent changes, in order to learn to
think differently" (p. 71).
By ethics, Foucault refers not to morality in the narrow sense of the term, but rather customs and practices-what Kant meant by Sitten (Hacking, 1986: 239). Hence, ethics is not intended in the Kantian sense, as
pertaining to something "utterly internal, the private duty of reason" (Hacking, 239) but more in the sense of
Ancient Greece where ethics was concerned with the good life:
The Greeks . . . considered this freedom as a problem and the freedom of the individual as an
ethical problem. But ethical in the sense that Greeks could understand. Ethos was the
deportment and the way to behave. It was the subject's mode of being and a certain manner of
acting visible to others. One's ethos was seen by his dress, by his bearing, by his gait, by the
poise with which he reacts to events, etc. For them that is the complete expression of liberty.
(Foucault, 1991a: 6)
In this regard, Hacking says that Foucault reverses Kant. Kant had held that we construct our ethical position by
recourse to reason. As Hacking (1986: 239.) observes, "but the innovation is not reason but construction" (1986:
239). In other words, Kant taught us that we make the moral law, and that is what makes us moral. Foucault
incorporates this constructionist dimension into his historicism, meaning that "morality leads away from the
letter of the law of Kant, but curiously preserves Kant's spirit" (1986: 239). As Hacking concludes, "those who
criticise Foucault for not giving us a place to stand might start their critique with Kant" (1986: 239).
Closely related to the Greek view of ethics, for Foucault, ethical action demands stylization which is an
aesthetics of existence. In this sense, ethical self-creation of one's life as a work of art extends Nietzsche's
conception that life has value as an aesthetic achievement and that one must give style to one's life by
2
2
integrating the diffuse nature of oneself into a coherent whole. The question of style was crucial in ancient
experience: there is the stylization of one's relationship to oneself, the style of conduct, and the stylization of
one's relationship to others. In the Greco-Roman empire of the second and third centuries, style became thought
of as a moral code (Foucault, 1989c: 319). According to Davidson this theme of aesthetics as involving a style of
existence is another of Foucault's central ideas in his later writings 3. (1994: 70-71). Styles of existence refers to
how one lives a life philosophically. The problem of ethics is in choosing a style of life. As Paul Veyne notes,
"style does not mean distinction here; the word is to be taken in the sense of the Greeks, for whom artist was
first of all an artisan and a work of art was first of all a work"(cited in Davidson, 1994: 67). One of Foucault's
concerns was in the style of life of the homosexual community by which he sought to "advance . . . a
homosexual askesis that would make us work on ourselves and invent, I do not say discover, a manner of being
that is still improbable" (Foucault, 1989a: 206, cited in Davidson, 1994: 72). Hence, as Davidson points out, the
homosexual style of life involves new forms of friendship and yields "a culture and an ethics aimed at the
creation of a homo-sexual mode of life" (1994: 72).
The History of Sexuality Volumes 2 and 3: Explaining ethics
In The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self Foucault became concerned with the practices of the self that
were very important in classical and late antiquity. These practices of the self were those practices “by which
individuals were led to focus their attention on themselves, to decipher, recognise and acknowledge themselves
as subjects of desire” (1985: 4). As such, it was part of his concern with the constitution of the subject: “the
forms and modalities of the relation to self by which the individual constitutes and recognizes himself qua
subject” (p. 6). Such a concern was an attempt to explain the historicity of ethical systems as the outcome of
material forces across successive periods of history, focussing on Greek and Greco-Roman culture. The Use of
Pleasure is concerned with the manner in which sexual activity was problematized by philosophers and doctors
in classical Greek culture of the fourth century B.C. The Care of the Self deals with the same problematizations
in the Greco-Roman cultures of the first two centuries of our era (the period known as the High Empire).
In The Use of Pleasure Foucault says, he is interested in “an analysis of the games of truth and error through
which being is historically constituted as experience, that is, as something that can and must be thought” (1985:
6 – 7). Experience is defined as “the correlation between field of knowledge, types of normativity, and forms of
subjectivity in a particular culture” (p. 4) Thus, Foucault asks “How and in what form was sexuality constituted
as a moral domain?” (p. 10). His aim was “to define the conditions in which human beings “problematize” what
they are, what they do, and the world in which they live” (p. 10). Not to study the codes, or ideologies, official
interdictions, or successive conceptions of desire, “but rather to analyze the practices by which individuals were
led to focus their attention of themselves, to decipher, recognize and acknowledge themselves as subjects of
desire...” (p. 5). In this context, Foucault recognizes “problematizations through which being offers itself to be”
(p. 11). Such problematizations were linked to a group of practices which were called “arts of existence” or
“techniques of the self” which included “those intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set
themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves into their singular
being and to make their life into an oeuvre” (p. 10). It would be, says Foucault:
a history of the way in which individuals are urged to constitute themselves as subjects of moral
conduct...concerned with the models proposed for setting up and developing relationships with the self,
for self-reflection, self-knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self by oneself, for the
transformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as an object. This...might be called a history of
"ethics" and "ascetics", understood as a history of the forms of moral subjectivization and of the practices
of self that are meant to ensure it. (1985: 29)
Such an aesthetics of existence comprising various arts of life was developed in relation to dietetics, marriage,
the management of the household, and erotics. It was around these and other practices that the Greeks
“developed arts of living, of conducting themsleves, and of ‘using pleasures’ according to austere and
demanding principles” (p. 249). This resulted in a series of flexible practices of self, aimed at self-mastery and
self- regulation based on exercises whose purpose was to exact moderation in relation to diverse objects in
diverse contexts. Such an account, says Foucault, would involve an “archaeology of problematizations” (p. 13),
and a “genealogy of the desiring man” (p. 12).
The theoretical purpose was to both describe and account for these practices of self as regards to the use of
pleasures. As Foucault explains:
[V]ery early in the moral thought of antiquity, a thematic complex – a “quadri-thematics”
3
3
of sexual austerity – formed around and apropos of the life of the body, the institution of
marriage, relations between men, and the existence of wisdom. (p. 21)
This thematics maintained a constancy “crossing through institutions, sets of percepts, extremely diverse
theoretical references, and in spite of many alterations” (p. 21). Foucault dismisses what he believes to be a
prevalent viewpoint with regard to the use of pleasures in Ancient societies. It is not true, he says (p. 14), that
“Christianity strictly excluded such relationships, while Greece exalted them and Rome accepted them". As he
puts it in the Conclusion to The Use of Pleasure:
[T}he principle of a rigorous and diligently practised sexual moderation [can be found] …as early as the
fourth century [where] one finds very clearly formulated the idea that sexual activity is sufficiently
hazradous and costly in itself, and sufficiently linked to the loss of vital substance, to require a
meticulous economy that would discourage un-necessary indulgence. One also finds the model of a
matrimonial relationship that would demand a similar abstention from all “extramarital” pleasure by
either spouse. Furthermore, one finds the theme of the man’s renunciation of all physical relations with a
boy. (1985: 249 - 250)
In The Care of the Self Foucault documents how the Socratic notion of “the care of the self” (epimeleia
heautou) concerned with setting one’s soul straight, as a preparation for political rule, in Plato’s Alcibiades,
became more widespread, encompassing all of life, in the imperial era. In was in these two centuries that
austerity themes were strengthened pre-dating Christian societies. While there were many continuities with the
Greeks of the fourth century B.C., Foucault makes the point that severe modifications were also perceptible,
which “prevent one from considering the moral philosophy of Musonius or that of Plutarch simply as the
accentuation of the lessons of Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates or Aristotle” (1986: 237). There was in short a growth
of an art of existence increasingly emphasizing the fragility of the individual in the face of the dangers of sexual
activity giving rise to new systems of knowledge and new dividing practices. In the Greco-Roman period, there
arose a mistrust of pleasures, a more intense valoraization of marriage and martial roles, and a dissaffection with
regard to the spiritual meanings imputed to the love of boys. There was “in a word…a more intense
problematization of the aphrodisia” (p. 39) around a stricter observance of monogamous fidelity, a suspicion
that sexual pleasure might be evil, a renewed ideal of chastity, and a general principle of moderation. In
addition, there was a greater preoccupation with self – a growing inwardness – whereby life was not led to the
same degree in public, accompanied by a more positive valuation of personal life and a greater intensification of
the values of private life. What essentially changed, says Foucault, was the arts pertaining to the “cultivation of
the self”, where relations to self were intensified and valorized, and the care of the self became a more general
art of existence (technē tou biou) constituting a regular work of continuous preparation. Hence, this principle
established its necessity in the Greco-Roman period very differently from the way that the principle functioned
in Greek culture. The emphasis of the Alcibiades is replaced. Instead of being concerned with a function of
perfecting oneself preparatory for one’s political career, it became a life-long orientation, aimed at old age,
involving the critical removal of habits. Instead of being based upon a pedagogical relationship between student
and master, it became more curative, therapeutic and medical, and supported by a more varied set of social
relations (educational organizations, private counsellors, family relations, relations of friendship). It referred to a
whole mode of living. The final goal of the care of the self was a form of spiritual “conversion to self (for
Epictetus, epistrophē eis heautou), involving a “return to the self”, in an attempt to gain mastery of oneself. It
was essentially this more general idea of the care of the self that came to characterize life in the Greco-Roman
societies during the Golden Age of the Empire over the first two centuries. Such a conception is evident in all
of the major writers of the period, including Seneca, Plutarch, Galen, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.
The concept “practices of the self” (practiques de soi) by which an individual constitutes him/herself as an
ethical subject is central to all of Foucault’s writings on ethics. By practices, Foucault refers to forms of action
and behaviour that are socially and normatively governed, and which derive from the general rules and values in
the culture. Practices of the self refers to “a set of practices by which one can acquire, assimilate, and transform
truths into a permanent principle of action” (1997a: 239). When taken together they are essential to establishing
an “aesthetics of existence”. Such practices, as utilized by the Stoics, and other schools of Ancient philosophy,
included a range of techniques and exercises, often carried out under a teacher, including a wide variety of
actions such as studying, truth-relling (parrhésia) un-learning bad habits, adhering to principles, as well as
activities such as listening, writing, self-reflection, memorising, as well as practical tests and activities such as
abstinence, fasting, exercises of self-examination, keeping notebooks (the hupomnēmata) confession, meditation
and prayer. Rather than being seen in Weber’s sense, as “abnegation”, they constitute ascetical practices
involving “the exercise of self on self by which one tries to work out, to transform oneself and to attain, a certain
mode of being” (1991a: 2). Although, as practices of the self, they comprised techniques of self-formation, they
4
4
are not represented individualistically as forms of subjective volition, but rather they aim to integrate and
manage the relationship between the individual and the societal rules and practices of a period. As such,
Foucault sees such a study as important to both the history of subjectivity as well as the study of
governmentality, and its various forms and techniques. Such practices and techniques, he tells us, constitute an
“art of self-government” (1997b: 88). It is a form of analysis where "power relations, governmentality, the
government of the self and of others, and the relationship of the self to self constitute a chain" (2005: 252). The
ability of individuals to learn the practices of the self which permit the navigation of the regulatory rules of a
society reflects Foucault’s view that “ethics can be a very strong structure of existence” holding a society
together “without any relation with the juridical per se, [to]an authoritarian system, [to] a disciplinary structure”
(1997a: 260).
The Confessions of the Flesh
Such practices of self can be found in all cultures in different forms, says Foucault (1997a: 277). Although
Foucault’s intended fourth volume of The History of Sexuality (Confession of the Flesh) was never published,
fragments of his thought and research presented in essays, seminar presentations and interviews indicate his
general line of thought4. One important theme that Foucault emphasizes is the continuities between Greek,
Greco-Roman and Christian ethics. In the conclusion of The Use of Pleasure, for instance, he seeks to link
Greek and Christian ethics noting that the philosophical, moral, and medical thought that formed in the classical
Greek and Greco-Roman eras “formulated some of the basic principles of later ethics – and particularly those
found in Christian societies”, and which the Christian societies “seem to have only had to revive” (1985: 250).
Yet in that there were continuities around austerity and moderation, there were also differences. Just as GrecoRoman society differed from Athenian society in certain respects, so there were changes in the emergence of
Christian experience. In Christian culture, strict obligations of truth, dogma and canon imposed a set of rules of
behaviour for a certain transformation of the self. In that Christianity was an ethical system based more on a
code, “subjectivation occurs in basically a quasi-juridical form, where the ethical subject refers his conduct to a
law, or set of laws, to which he must submit at the risk of committing offenses that may make him liable to
punishment” (1985: 29 – 30). Christian experience implied an obligation to obey rules as the basis of ethical
practice, embodied in such practices as the acknowledgement of faults, and the recognition of temptations.
There was also an obligation to disclose the self as made obvious through the development of different forms of
discovering and deciphering the truth about themselves. These included practices such as exomologesis which
constituted an obligation of recognising oneself as a sinner and penitent through self-renunciation and
expressing the truth about oneself (1997d: 244); exagoreusis, a form of permanent verbalization and confession
involving "self-examination . . . reminiscent of the verbalizing exercises in relation to the teacher-master of the
pagan philosophical schools" (245) and incorporating the Christian spiritual principles of obedience and
spirituality; and practices that emerged later in the monastic communities such as the sacrament of penance and
the confession of sins (243). Monastic life constituted a different technology of the self, based upon obedience
and the contemplation of God, more concerned with “thought in itself” that is, with the “nature, quality and
substance of his thoughts” (1997f: 218), related to "inner impurity" than with action, or self-mastery, or
passions, or attitudes, and which represented a renunciation of self and a surrender of autonomy. The emergence
of these technologies, says Foucault, was “the first time in history that thoughts are considered as possible
objects for an analysis” (1997f: 220).
Foucault’s 1980 course “On the Government of the Living” (Foucault, 1997e), as well as his 1981-82 lecture
course (Foucault, 2005), also devoted attention to Christian practices of self, and witnessed a shift in ethics as a
process of subjectivation, dictated by a subject’s choice of existence, in classical or late Antiquity, to ethics as
subjection to a higher power or truth, expressed in terms of a code, with Christianity. Foucault’s interest in
studying Christian techniques was related to his view that the modern hermeneutics of the self is rooted more in
Christian techniques than Greek or Greco-Roman ones (1997f: 201; 2005: chps. 13-23).
Foucault’s historical materialism
For Foucault (1991b: 90), the idea of the art of government is also concerned with the issue of security, of
stabilising the fragile link between ruler and ruled, of rendering it legitimate, “to identify dangers… to develop
the art of manipulating relations of force that will allow the Prince to ensure the protection of his principality”.
The concept of security is, along with governmentality, a central concept for Foucault, and is concerned with the
issue of how the state deals with unpredictable events, how it evaluates and calculates the costs and
consequences, and how it manages populations within constraint, rather than through the imposition of rule.
Indeed, “one need[s] to analyze the series: security, population, government” (1991b: 87) as part of a combined
approach, he tells us. While sovereignty is concerned with the problem of rule through the imposition of law,
security is concerned with the management of populations. The intersection of security and government occurs
5
5
with the concern for the regulation of populations” and the search for “mechanisms capable of ensuring its
regulation” (1997g: 67). While the issue of security is relevant in all periods of history, it became of increased
concern in the 18th century, and affected the form and practice of government.
Just as security affects the governance of populations, so it relates to practices of the self, and influences the
kinds of governance techniques the self employs. Foucault’s treatment of ethics, like his analysis of modernity,
constitutes an attempt to understand the importance of ethics as an autonomous domain of governance. In doing
this, Foucault does not seek to relate such practices directly to modes of economic life, although he does
recognize “the economic level below which a man might not hope to support a wife and family” (1986: 84) and
other primary necessities of life as they influence the responses of individuals and communities to risks and
dangers, well-being and survival. The emphasis on risks, dangers, survival and the self as material factors
influencing the ethical and political structure of societies is a constant concern in these studies. The aphrodisia
thus was in all times in these periods a potential source of disease and societal instability. Although in Greek
times the sexual act had its normal and morbid forms, in Greco-Roman era, whilst still not an evil, it became “a
permanent focus of possible ills” (p. 142); liable to “great excesses” (p. 142); requiring “extreme vigilance”;
because more precariously lodged in a potentially unstable field of risks, dangers and disease. This provided a
continuity in the discourses of austerity, but itself became overlaid with more subtle, yet distinct differences in
form and practice, depending upon these specific factors as they developed under the Empire. While such
differences gave rise to different practices of self, the common concern of themes such as “self-mastery”, “self
control” and on “self-regulation” was also apparent:
The accent was placed on the relationship with the self that enabled a person to keep from being carried
away by the appetites and pleasures, to maintain a mastery and superiority over them… (1985: 31)
The common concerns with austerity and regulation centred around problematizations around dietetics, health
and disease, and a fear of sexual activity in relation to them. That this materialist tension constituted the central
thesis of his later studies is supported by his comment in Le Nouvel Observateur (1st June 1984), as reported by
Dosse (1997: 345) where he says that “[i]n The Use of Pleasure I tried to show that there was a growing tension
between pleasure and health”. Throughout these studies, Foucault utilises the concept of problematization to
suggest an issue that was of concern or was seen to constitute a problem in the particular community studied.
Thus, behaviour was problematized centering around “the way in which one managed one’s existence” which
“enabled a set of rules to be affixed to conduct” (1985: 101). In classical antiquity sexual activity and pleasure
were problematized through practices of the self. In addition, he says, in the Greco-Roman era there was a “deproblematization” around the erotic and philosophical investments imputed to the love of boys conjointly with
the instensification of investments around marriage, and a more intense problematization of the aphrodisia, its
specific purposes, limits and functions5.
Apart from the primary necessities of life in constituting a potential source of danger and instability, the core
material factors were the body, the self, and the relationship to the collectivity in terms of its capacity to sustain
the lives and existences of the citizenry, each in relation to the whole, and in relation to external and internal
threats. The body affected ethics as a “health practice” (hygieinē pragmateia) “which constituted the permanent
framework of everyday life” (1986: 101). There was in the Greco-Roman era a certain form of
“pathologization” around sex that arose (p. 101). It was a fragile and precarious activity, of “unknown
benificience”, it was linked to an “open field of dangers and diseases”, and could be “easily perturbed” (p. 101).
Practices of the self are thus a response to material conditions and defined the context in terms of which
practices of governmentality developed. What Foucault’s materialism emphasizes, that earlier deterministic
models had not, is the role of local and contingent factors, and the dynamic potentials of agency in interaction
with the material.
Foucault also identifies changes in the structure of marital relations, and changes in the political game as two
crucial material factors which accounted for changes in the practices of self in the Greco-Roman period. With
relation to marital role there was a change in institutional role, a change in the organisation of the conjugal
relationship and a change in value system. Foucault (1986: 73) describes a greater “publicizing” of marriage
under the Hellenistic authorities in what constituted a growing interest in control as regards marriage by the
authorities. There were a series of new legislative measures, of which the law de adultoriis was one
manifestation. The consequence was that the wife’s status gained compared with in the classical period in terms
of juridical independence from her father, and in the strengthening of her economic role within marriage.
Marriage became “more and more clearly a voluntary agreement entered into by the partners” (p. 75) This
constituted a “significant evolution for Hellenistic Egypt” says Foucault (p. 76). Increasingly marriage looked to
public authorities for its guarantees under the Empire. It became “more general as a practice, more public as an
institution, more private as a mode of existence, a stronger force for binding conjugal partners and hence a more
effective force for isolating the couple in a field of other social relations” (p. 77).
6
6
With regards to the political game there was a decline in city-states as autonomous entities; starting from the
third century B. C., this decline corresponded to a growing valuation on private life. The new rules of the
political game were ushered in because of the rise of a centralised imperialism under the Empire. One must
approach the issue of explaining the changes that occurred, says Foucault (p. 82), in terms of the "organisation
of a complex space": imperial society was “a space in which the centres of power were multiple”. It was “much
vaster”, "more flexible", "more differentiated", "less rigidly hierarchized" and “much less closed” than was the
case for small city-states, like Athens. As a consequence, Foucault suggests that the close community bonds of
ancient Greece constituted one form of support for the differences:
Broadly speaking, the ancient societies remained societies of promiscuity, where existence was
led in public. They were also societies in which everyone was situated within strong systems of
local relationships, family ties, economic dependencies, and relations of patronage and
friendship. (1986: 42)
As a consequence, changes in political and social life promoted a different model of the care of the self and a
different model of governmentality. There is a more intense valuation of marriage and private life in GrecoRoman society which is in part an alternative to the civic activity and political responsibilities of Athenian
society (p. 85). Marriage itself became characterised by greater equality and reciprocity between partners which
undermined to a certain degree the traditional relation of male superiority (pp. 94 – 95). In addition, the
importance of starting with the self as a basis for political rule was still emphasised, but in a different way.
Hence, Foucault cites Plutarch who stresses that before they can be involved in public life it is necessary that the
individual must "retreat within himself"; that before he can be involved in political rule he must "set his soul
straight", and "properly establish his own ēthos" (pp. 91-92). Thus, in the Hellenistic period and during the
Empire, the three types of authority - over self, household, and others - became modified, and a weaker public
authority structure compared to Athens saw an individualistic withdrawal into “private life”, and a greater
emphasis on personal conduct and family relations (p. 96).
The exercise of power also changed in the Greco-Roman period. It was relativized in two ways, says Foucault
(1986: 88). First, birth was less important as a denotation of status, and was not linked to status by right. Rather
politics became a vocation of free and deliberate choice, based on judgement and reason. Secondly, power
changed from being an imperium to a procuratio that is, from being a node, or centre, to being an intermediary,
or delegated function. Power operated in the Empire as a “transition point” within a “field of complex relations”
(p. 88). It was more defined as a “role”, than as a “supreme authority”. In Weber’s sense, it was more “rationallegal” (p. 88). In short, the field of power relations had become more extensive and complex, resulting in a
network of relations of greater equality and reciprocity.
Self, Others, Economy and Politics.
In endeavoring to account for the use of pleasures and the ethical structures of different societies as embodied in
practices of the self, Foucault makes it clear that practices of the self are linked to other institutions and groups:
to marriage, the household, politics and to others. The very requirement for practices of the self requiring
austerity, moderation and regulation or self-mastery reflect the vicissitudes of the self in relation to the tasks of
survival, and the dangers facing particular societies at different periods. As Foucault explains:
Self-mastery had an implied close connection between the superiority one exercised over oneself, the
authority one exercised in the context of the household, and the power one exercised in the field of an
agonistic society. It was the practice of superiority over oneself that guaranteed the moderate and
reasonable use that one could and ought to make of the two other superiorities. (1986: 94 – 95)
Practices of the self also implied a particular ethical and political vision, for it is not possible to develop rules for
living unless these make sense within a broader aesthetics of existence. To develop the ethical self as an
aesthetics of existence is to develop “the purposeful art of freedom perceived as a power game” (1985: 253). It
was problematized as centering on an axis of freedom, power and truth. In this sense, ethical practice was about
the formation of character which was essential to freedom. A moral askēsis requiring moderation and selfmastery (enkrateia); a method or mode of subjection (chrēsis) involving the application of a technē, or savoirfaire relating to need, urgency, timeliness, and skills of comportment. Such ethical practices relating to sexuality
bore a resemblence to a battle; the aphrodisia was made desirable and available in relation to an interplay of
forces, whose potential was for revolt and excess in relation to the dangers in the field of social relations. Ethical
relationships were in this sense agonistic, in that they involved struggle, suppression of appetites. The battle is
between oneself and oneself, but only because the self always stood in a relation to others.
7
7
The relation of self to others is a constant theme in Greek and Greco-Roman societies manifesting itself in
different ways in the different periods. “[I]t is not because it is care for others that it is ethical”, says Foucault
(1991a: 7). “Care for self is ethical in itself, but it implies complex relations with others, in the measure where
this ēthos of freedom is also a way of caring for others.” Thus, “the problem of relationships with others is
present all along in this development of care for self" (p. 7). Moreover, the principle of the care for self came to
operate as a general rule effecting how one conducted oneself, to an individual’s rights, entitlements and duties,
to the master of the household; to the ruler who looked after his subjects; as well as to a particular educational
ideal, or “soul service” (1986: 51 – 55). As he says: “educating oneself and caring for oneself are interconnected
activities” (p. 55).
In one of his interviews (1989b: 296), Foucault states his central interest in The Care of the Self as being "how
an experience is formed where the relationship to self and to others is linked". The care of the self, then, is
always at the same time concerned with care for others. Ethical practice in this sense is communal, for "ēthos
implies a relation with others to the extent that care for self renders one competent to occupy a place in the city,
in the community . . . whether it be to exercise a magistracy or to have friendly relationships" (Foucault, 1991a:
7). Foucault notes how this indeed was the ethical imperative of Socrates. As he says, in Greek society, "one
who cared for himself correctly found himself by that very fact, in a measure to behave correctly in relationship
to others and for others. A city in which everyone would be correctly concerned for self would be a city that
would be doing well, and it would find therein the ethical principle of its stability" (p. 7). There is a temporal
and logical order, however: "one must not have the care for others precede the care for self. The care for the self
takes moral precedence in the measure that the relationship to self takes ontological precedence" (p. 7).
Ethical action presupposes a certain political and social structure with respect to liberty. As Foucault puts it,
"liberty is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the deliberate form assumed by liberty" (1991a: 4).
For liberty or civic freedom to exist there must be a certain level of liberation conceived as the absence of
domination. In this, Foucault disputes the view "more or less derived from Hegel" in terms of which "the liberty
of the individual would have no importance when faced with the noble totality of the city" (p. 5). The concern
for liberty as expressed in ancient societies--in not being a slave for instance--was an absolutely fundamental
theme, a basic and constant issue during eight centuries of ancient culture. Such ethical practices of self on self
involve choices which are essentially moral choices, says Foucault (p. 5).
Just as ethical work presupposes liberty, it also is intrinsically political. As Foucault explains, "it is political in
the measure that non-slavery with respect to others is a condition: a slave has no ethics. Liberty is itself political.
And then it has a political model, in the measure where being free means not being a slave to one's self and to
one's appetites, which supposes that one establishes over one's self a certain relation of domination, of mastery,
which was called arche--power, authority" (1991a: 6).
Practices of the self are political also in that they constitute relations of power, they are ways of controlling and
limiting, and imply different models of governance to sustain them. As such they raise the problem of the abuse
of power, when one imposes on others "one's whims, one's appetites, one's desires":
There we see the image of the tyrant or simply of the powerful and wealthy man who takes
advantage of his power and his wealth to misuse others, to impose on them undue power. But
one sees--at least that is what the Greek philosophers say--that this man is in reality a slave to
his appetites. And the good ruler is precisely the one who exercises his power correctly, i.e.,
by exercising at the same time his power on himself. And it is the power over self which will
regulate the power over others . . . if you care for yourself correctly, i.e., if you know
ontologically what you are . . . then you cannot abuse your power over others. (Foucault,
1991a: 8)
The care of the self thus posits a politically active subject, involving practices of the self which include
governance, with all of the associated problems of practical politics. These in turn involve managerial
imperatives, at the level of the individual and of the state, including decision making, the interpretation and
application of rules, gambits, risks, knowing when to act and when to hold back, or being able if necessary to
attack or defend. These skills required autarkeia (self-sufficiency) which pertained in the ancient schools to a
form of internal freedom "located in the faculty of judgement, not in some psychologically thick form of
introspection" (Davidson, 1994: 76-77).
Hence the care of the self does not just refer to attention to oneself in the narrow sense; nor is it concerned
solely with the avoidance of mistakes and dangers; nor does it designate primarily an attitude toward one's self
or a form of awareness of self. It constitutes both a principle and a constant practice: “We may say that in all of
8
8
Ancient philosophy the care of the self was considered as both a duty and a technique, a basic obligation and a
set of carefully worked-out procedures” (Foucault, 1997c: 95).In this sense it designates a "regulated
occupation, a work with its methods and objectives" (p. 95). This work is by its very nature political, as it
contains integral to it notions concerning the management of self and others. This is evident, says Foucault, in
the meaning of the notion of epimeleia and its various uses. Xenophon employs the use of the concept to
designate the work of a master of the household who supervises its farming, and it is an idea also used to pay
ritual homage to the dead and to the gods. In addition, Dio of Prusa uses it to refer to the activity of the
sovereign who looks after his people and leads the city-state (p. 95).
While I have on this basis of the reciprocal tie between self and other utlilized insights from Foucault to support
my “thin communitarian” position (Olssen, 2002), one must be careful in attributing any conception of
community to Foucault. The notion of communio suggests the establishment of a unity, and is premised in its
traditional useage on the idea of a bounded and closed totality, which would be incompatible with Foucault’s
Nietzschean legacy. Having said this, the idea that people are socially constituted would seem to imply the
ontological status of the social as constituted of particular institutional and political structures in terms of which
both individual and group development takes place. Given this, how one is to conceptualise this space in which
social beings are constituted raises an important question? My own concept of the ‘thin community’ was
intended to capture this conception of an always open, unbounded social and institutional framework in which
individuals develop and interact. It was, to use William Corlett’s (1993) concept, a “community without unity”;
or in Michael Oakshott’s sense, it constituted a societas as opposed to a universitas6. For Oakeshott (1975: 203),
whereas a universitas pertains to a tightly knit community with a common purpose, societas is marked by the
fact that it does not presuppose a common or shared purpose. Rather than a common concern, what links them
together is a “practice of civility”, which Oakeshott calls respublica. It is a polity without a definite shape, or
fixed borders, or a definite identity, but is in continuous re-enactment, and ultimately has possible links to a
global polis.
Although the conception of a societas suggests a less Hegelian resonance than the traditional notion of
community, I am not intending to suggest Foucault would accept that term. But that some such context must be
presupposed would seem to be necessitated both (a) by the social character of selfhood, and (b) the institutional
and political context necessary for the practices of the self to be enacted. What Foucault clearly conveys is that
individuals create themselves in relation to social, political and regulatory structures of their environment, and
the processes of this creation, although patterned and regular within limits, varies in different historical contexts.
Ethical action and agency are regarded as political, and as forms of power, which is itself represented as a force
that circulates. In both his books and interviews Foucault presents a picture of individuals who are
interconnected and interdependent with each other and to the structures of social and institutional control; where
their ethical constitution is related to their participation in the world; where freedom, itself considered as
political, is conceived of as self-mastery and control within a set of societal constraints. While patterns of
withdrawal or commitment or involvement may vary between different societies, the ontolological status of the
self in the world is not represented individualistically, as in Liberalism, seeing the self as a ‘pre-social’ subject,
that invents itself from its own resources, but as a relation to an always open and ever changing complex social
whole, itself structured by relations of power, and necessitating techniques of governance.
Conclusion
As with all his studies, Foucault’s analysis in the latter volumes of The History of Sexuality reveals particular
dimensions concerning his method. While self-constitution involves on the one hand particular techniques and
practices of self, it is also evident that the process occurs in relation to particular social, institutional and
political contexts. While such practices involve technologies of governance, governance refers to both
“subjectivation” as well as to the social-institutional and political contexts (marriage, the household, the polis) in
which subjectivation takes place. What is essential to see is that techniques of the self take place through
strategies of governance just as the rule of populations takes place through strategies of governance. The
relevance of governmentality attests to the ontological significance of power in history as defining the context in
terms of which individuals and populations are shaped, and in terms of which human volition proceeds. It attests
to the historicity of governance arrangements at any particular time.
In relation to both ethics and politics, Foucault uses the term governmentality to supplement pastoral power and
biopower, in order to characterize this historicity. Governmentality has dual functions as individualizing and
totalizing, in shaping both individuals and populations, in order to understand the strategic exercise of power as
it is applied to situations. If ‘bio-power’ referred to disciplinary power introduced in the early modern period in
order to rationalize the problems afflicting populations, governmentality pertains to the specificity of power
relations with its concern to shape conduct as part of broader issue involving the political (i.e., volitional)
9
9
exercise of power. It includes “techniques and procedures for directing human behaviour” (1997e: 81). It
pertains, he says (1991b: 87-88) to “a concern with the art of government…of how to be ruled, how strictly, by
whom, to what end, by what methods, etc”. In addition, the concept can be applied to the family, religion, the
economy, as well as the state. In its most general sense it pertains to the “problematic of government in general”
(p. 88) and articulates “a kind of rationality” (p. 89). In this sense, at it most simple level, governmentality
expresses itself as an art, and also characterizes both practices of the self and forms of state reason (raisson
d’etat).
Notes
1
This chapter draws significantly on Chapter 9 of my book Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, Paradigm Publishers, Boulder,
Colorado, 2006.
2
Les Lettres Creques en Occident de Macrobe a Cassiodore.
3
Foucault acknowledges a debt in his use of style to Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Boston, Harvard University Press, 1978).
See Foucault (1989s: 320).
4
According to Davidson (1986: 230) Foucault originally announced that his History of Sexuality would be a six-volume study
concentrating “on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and including volumes on children and perverts”. Davidson (1994) further notes
that five forthcoming volumes were listed on the back cover of The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. Foucault’s interests changed after
Volume 1, however, and he became interested more specifically in Ancient Greek, Greco-Roman and Christian ethics. Macey (1993: 446)
notes that the intended fourth volume - Confessions of the Flesh - although started, will probably not ever be published.
In an interview conducted in 1981 by André Berten in Belgium (“What Our Present Is”), Foucault simply defined this method as the
“history of problems”, or as “the genealogy of problems…why a problem, and why such a kind of problem, why a certain way of
problematising appears at a given point of time” (see Foucault, 1997f: 165, 239).
5
6
Oakeshott is using these terms which were used in the Middle Ages to describe two modes of human association.
References:
Corlett, W. (1993) Community Without Unity: A politics of Derridean extravagence.
Durhamm, NC.:Duke University Press.
Davidson, A. (1994) Ethics as ascetics: Foucault, the history of ethics, and ancient thought. In
J. Goldstein (Ed.), Foucault and the Writing of History (pp. 63 – 80). Cambridge, MA.:
Blackwell.
Davidson, A. (1997). Foucault and His Interlocutors. Chicago & London: University of
Chicago Press.
Dosse, F. (1997) History of Structuralism Volume 2: The Sign Sets,1967 - present. Trans.
Deborah Glassman, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. (1985). The Use of Pleasure: History of Sexuality, Vol. 2 (trans. R. Hurley).
New York: Pantheon.
10
10
Foucault, M. (1986). The Care of the Self: History of Sexuality Vol. 3 (trans. R. Hurley). New
York: Pantheon.
Foucault, M. (1989a). Friendship as a way of life (trans. J. Johnston). In S. Lotringer (Ed.),
Foucault Live. New York: Semiotext(e).
Foucault, M. (1989b). The concern for truth. In S. Lotringer (Ed.), Foucault Live: Interviews,
1966-84 (pp. 293-308). New York: Semiotex(e).
Foucault, M. (1989c). The return to morality. In S. Lotringer (Ed.), Foucault Live: Interviews,
1966-84 (pp. 317-332). New York: Semiotex(e).
Foucault, M. (1991a). The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom: an interview
(trans. J.D. Gauthier). In J. Bernauer & D. Rasmussen, The Final Foucault. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press.
Foucault, M. (1991b) ‘Governmentality’, in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller
(eds.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, pp. 87-104.
Foucault, M. (1997a). On the genealogy of ethics: an overview of work in progress. In M.
Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R.
Hurley) (pp. 253-280). Allen Lane: The Penguin Press.
Foucault, M. (1997b). Subjectivity and truth. In M. Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth:
The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley) (pp. 87-94). Allen Lane: The
Penguin Press.
Foucault, M. (1997c). The hermeneutic of the subject. In M. Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity
and Truth: The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley) (pp. 95-108). Allen Lane:
The Penguin Press.
Foucault, M. (1997d). Technologies of the self. In M. Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and
Truth: The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley) (pp. 223-251). Allen Lane:
The Penguin Press.
Foucault, M. (1997e). On the government of the living. In M. Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity
and Truth: The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley) (pp. 81-86). Allen Lane:
The Penguin Press.
Foucault, M. (1997f) The Politics of Truth. (ed.) Sylvère Lotringer and Lysa Hochroth, New
York: Semiotext(e).
Foucault, M. (1997g) ‘Security, Territory, Population’, in P. Rabinow (ed.) Michel Foucault:
Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, pp. 67-71.
Foucault, M. (2005) The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1981 – 1982, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, English series ed., Arnold Davidson.
11
11
New York: Picador.
Hacking, I. (1986). Self improvement. In D. Couzens Hoy (Ed.), Foucault: A Critical Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Hadot, P. (1987). Exercices Spirituels et Philosophie Antique (2nd ed.). Paris: Etudes
Augustiniennes.
Hadot, P. (1992). Reflections on the notion of `the culturation of the self'. In T. Armstrong
(Ed.), Michel Foucault: Philosopher (pp. 225-232). New York/London:
Harvester/Wheatsheaf.
Hadot, P. (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life. Edited with Introduction, Arnold I Davidson,
Trans. Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Hadot, P. (1997). Forms of life and forms of discourse in ancient philosophy (trans. A. I.
Davidson & P. Wissing). In A.I. Davidson (Ed.), Foucault and his Interlocutors (pp. 203224). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Oakshott, M. (1975) On Human Conduct. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Olssen, M. (2002) Michel Foucault as Thin Communitarian: Difference, Community,
Democracy, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, 2 (4) : 483-513.
Olssen, M (2006) Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education. Boulder: Paradigm
Publishers.
Rabinow, P. (1997). Introduction: The history of systems of thought. In M. Foucault, Ethics,
Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works (Ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley) (pp. XIXLII). Allen Lane: The Penguin Press.
Rorty, R. (1991). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self: the making of modern identity. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Veyne, P. (1997) The Final Foucault and His Ethics. In Arnold Davidson (ed.) Foucault and
His Interlocutors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 225 - 233.
12
12