The Government of Self and Others

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The Government of Self and Others Also in this series: SOCIETY MUSTT BE DEFENDED (North America & Canada) ABNORMAL (North America & Canada) HERMENEUTICS OFTHE SUBJECT (North America & Canada) PSYCHIATRIC POWER SECURITY, TERRITORY, POPULATION THE BIRTH OF BIOPOLITICS

Forthcoming in this series: THE WILL TO KNOW PENAL THEORIES AND INSTITUTIONS THE PUNITIVE SOCIETY ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THE LIVING SUBJECTIVITY AND TRUTH THE COURAGE OF TRUTH M ICHEL FOUCAULT

The Government of Self and Others

L ECTURES AT THE COLLÈGE DE FR ANCE 1982–1983

Edited by Frédéric Gros General Editors: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana

English Series Editor: Arnold I. Davidson

TRANSLATED BY GRAHAM BURCHELL

This book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London. (www.frenchbooknews.com) THE GOVERNMENT OF SELF AND OTHERS © Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard 2008, Edition established under the direction of François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana, by Frédéric Gros. Translation © Graham Burchell 2010. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC 1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in France by Éditions de Seuil/Gallimard under the title Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres: Cours au Collège de France, 1982–1983. English translation published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-4039-8667-2 ISBN 978-0-230-27473-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230274730 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 CONTENTS

Foreword: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana xi

Translator’s Note xvii one 5 January 1983: First Hour 1 Remarks on method. Study of Kant’s text: What is Enlightenment?? Conditions of publication: journals. The encounter between Christian Aufklärung and Jewish Haskala: freedom of conscience. Philosophy and present reality. The question of the Revolution. Two critical filiations. two 5 January 1983: Second Hour 25 The idea of tutelage (minorité): neither natural powerlessness nor authoritarian deprivation of rights. Way out from the condition of tutelage and critical activity. The shadow of the three Critiques. The difficulty of emancipation: laziness and cowardice; the predicted failure of liberators. Motivations of the condition of tutelage: superimposition of obedience and absence of reasoning; confusion between the private and public use of reason. The problematic turn at the end of Kant’s text. three 12 January 1983: First Hour 41 Reminders of method. Definition of the subject to be studied this year. Parresia and culture of self. Galen’s On the Passions and Errors of the Soul. Parresia: difficulty in defining the notion; bibliographical reference points. An enduring, plural, and ambiguous notion. Plato faced with the tyrant of Syracuse: an exemplary scene of parre–sia. The echo vi contents

of Oedipus. Parresia versus demonstration, teaching, and discussion. The element of risk. fourr 12 January 1983: Second Hour 61 Irreducibility of the parrhesiastic to the performative utterance: opening up of an unspecified risk/public expression of a personal conviction/bringing a free courage into play. Pragmatics and dramatics of discourse. Classical use of the notion of parre–sia: democracy (Polybius) and citizenship (Euripides). five 19 January 1983: First Hour 75 Ion in the mythology and history of Athens. Political context of Euripides’ tragedy: the Nicias peace. History of Ion’s birth. Alethurgic schema of the tragedy. The implication of the three truth-tellings: oracle, confession (l’aveu), and political discourse. Structural comparison of Ion and Oedipus the King. The adventures of truth-telling in Ion: the double half-lie. six 19 January 1983: Second Hour 97 Ion: A nobody, son of nobody. Three categories of citizen. Consequences of political intrusion by Ion: private hatreds and public tyranny. In search of a mother. Parresia irreducible to the actual exercise of power and to the citizen’s status. The agonistic game of truth-telling: free and risky. Historical context: the Cleon/ Nicias debate. Creusa’s anger. seven 26 January 1983: First Hour 113 Continuation and end of the comparison between Ion and Oedipus: the truth does not arise from an investigation but from the clash of passions. The rule of illusions and passions. The cry of confession and accusation. G. Dumézil’s analyses of Apollo. Dumézil’s categories applied to Ion. Tragic modulation of the theme of the voice. Tragic modulation of the theme of gold. eight 26 January 1983: Second Hour 131 Tragic modulation of the theme of fertility. Parresiaa as imprecation: public denunciation by the weak of the injustice of the Contents vii

powerful. Creusa’s second confession (aveu): the voice of confession (confession). Final episodes: from murder plan to Athena’s appearance. nine 2 February 1983: First Hour 149 Reminder of the Polybius text. Return to Ion: divine and human veridictions. The three forms of parre–sia: statutory- political; judicial; moral. Political parre–sia: its connection with democracy; its basis in an agonistic structure. Return to the Polybius text: the ise-goria/parresiaa relationship. Politeia and dunasteia: thinking of politics as experience. Parresia in Euripides: The Phoenician Women; Hippolytus; The Bacchae; Orestes. The Trial of Orestes. ten 2 February 1983: Second Hour 173 The rectangle of parre–sia: formal condition, de facto condition, truth condition, and moral condition. Example of the correct functioning of democratic parre–siaa in Thucydides: three discourses of Pericles. Bad parre–siaa in Isocrates. eleven 9 February 1983: First Hour 187 Parresia: everyday usage; political usage. Reminder of three exemplary scenes: Thucydides; Isocrates; Plutarch. Lines of evolution of parre–sia. The four great problems of ancient political philosophy: the ideal city; the respective merits of democracy and autocracy; addressing the Prince’s soul; the philosophy/ rhetoric relationship. Study of three texts by Plato. twelve 9 February 1983: Second Hour 209 Plato’s Letters: the context. Study of Letter V: the phone– of constitutions; reasons for non-involvement. Study of Letter VII. Dion’s history. Plato’s political autobiography. The journey to Sicily. Why Plato accepts: kairos; philia; ergon. thirteen 16 February 1983: First Hour 223 Philosophical ergon. Comparison with the Alcibiades. The reality of philosophy: the courageous address to power. First viii contents

condition of reality: listening, the first circle. The philosophical oeuvre: a choice; a way; an application. The reality of philosophy as work of self on self (second circle). fourteen 16 February 1983: Second Hour 245 The failure of Dionysius. The Platonic rejection of writing. Mathemata versus sunousia. Philosophy as practice of the soul. The philosophical digression of Letter VII: the five elements of knowledge. The third circle: the circle of knowledge. The philosopher and the legislator. Final remarks on contemporary interpretations of Plato. fifteen 23 February 1983: First Hour 259 The enigmatic blandness of Plato’s political advice. The advice to Dionysius. The diagnosis, practice of persuasion, proposal of a regime. Advice to Dion’s friends. Study of Letter VIII. Parresiaa underpins political advice. sixteen 23 February 1983: Second Hour 285 Philosophy and politics: necessary relationship but im possible coincidence. Cynical and Platonic game with regard to politics. The new historical conjuncture: thinking a new political unit beyond the city-state. From the public square to the Prince’s soul. The Platonic theme of the philosopher-king. seventeen 2 March 1983: First Hour 299 Reminders about political parre–sia. Points in the evolution of political parre–sia. The major questions of ancient philosophy. Study of a text by Lucian. Ontology of discourses of veridiction. Socratic speech in the Apology. The paradox of the political non-involvement of Socrates. eighteen 2 March 1983: Second Hour 325 End of study of Socrates’ Apology: parre–siaa/rhetoric opposition. Study of the Phaedrus: general plan of the dialogue. The conditions of good logos. Truth Contents ix

as permanent function of discourse. Dialectic and psychagogy. Philosophical parre–sia. nineteen 9 March 1983: First Hour 339 The historical turnaround of parre–sia: from the political game to the philosophical game. Philosophy as practice of parre–sia: the example of Aristippus. The philosophical life as manifestation of the truth. The permanent address to power. The interpellation of each. Portrait of the Cynic in Epictetus. Pericles and Socrates. Modern philosophy and courage of the truth. twenty 9 March 1983: Second Hour 357 Study of the Gorgias. The obligation of confession (aveu) in Plato: the context of liquidation of rhetoric. The three qualities of Callicles: episteme; parre–sia; eunoia. Agonistic game against egalitarian system. Socratic speech: basanos and homologia.

Course Context 377

Index of Names 393

Index of Concepts and Notions 397 This page intentionally left blank FOREWORD

MICHEL FOUCAULT TAUGHT AT the Collège de France from January 1971 until his death in June 1984 (with the exception of 1977 when he took a sabbatical year). The title of his chair was “The History of Systems of Thought.” On the proposal of Jules Vuillemin, the chair was created on 30 November 1969 by the general assembly of the professors of the Collège de France and replaced that of “The History of Philosophical Thought” held by Jean Hyppolite until his death. The same assembly elected Michel Foucault to the new chair on 12 April 1970.1 He was 43 years old. Michel Foucault’s inaugural lecture was delivered on 2 December 1970.2 Teaching at the Collège de France is governed by particular rules. Professors must provide 26 hours of teaching a year (with the possibility of a maximum of half this total being given in the form of seminars3). Each year they must present their original research and this obliges them to change the content of their teaching for each course. Courses and seminars are completely open; no enrolment or qualifica- tion is required and the professors do not award any qualifications.4 In the terminology of the Collège de France, the professors do not have students but only auditors. Michel Foucault’s courses were held every Wednesday from January to March. The huge audience made up of students, teachers, researchers and the curious, including many who came from outside France, required two amphitheaters of the Collège de France. Foucault often complained about the distance between himself and his “public” and of how few exchanges the course made possible.5 He would have liked xii foreword a seminar in which real collective work could take place and made a number of attempts to bring this about. In the final years he devoted a long period to answering his auditors’ questions at the end of each course. This is how Gérard Petitjean, a journalist from Le Nouvel Observateurr, described the atmosphere at Foucault’s lectures in 1975:

When Foucault enters the amphitheater, brisk and dynamic like someone who plunges into the water, he steps over bodies to reach his chair, pushes away the cassette recorders so he can put down his papers, removes his jacket, lights a lamp and sets off at full speed. His voice is strong and effective, amplified by the loudspeakers that are the only concession to modernism in a hall that is barely lit by light spread from stucco bowls. The hall has three hundred places and there are five hundred people packed together, filling the smallest free space . . . There is no oratorical effect. It is clear and terribly effective. There is absolutely no concession to improvisation. Foucault has twelve hours each year to explain in a public course the direction taken by his research in the year just ended. So everything is concentrated and he fills the margins like correspondents who have too much to say for the space available to them. At 19.15 Foucault stops. The students rush towards his desk; not to speak to him, but to stop their cassette recorders. There are no questions. In the pushing and shov- ing Foucault is alone. Foucault remarks: “It should be possible to discuss what I have put forward. Sometimes, when it has not been a good lecture, it would need very little, just one question, to put everything straight. However, this question never comes. The group effect in France makes any genuine discussion impossible. And as there is no feedback, the course is theatrical- ized. My relationship with the people there is like that of an actor or an acrobat. And when I have finished speaking, a sensation of total solitude . . .”6

Foucault approached his teaching as a researcher: explorations for a future book as well as the opening up of fields of problematization were formulated as an invitation to possible future researchers. This Foreword xiii is why the courses at the Collège de France do not duplicate the published books. They are not sketches for the books even though both books and courses share certain themes. They have their own status. They arise from a specific discursive regime within the set of Foucault’s “philosophical activities.” In particular they set out the program for a genealogy of knowledge/power relations, which are the terms in which he thinks of his work from the beginning of the 1970s, as opposed to the program of an archeology of discursive formations that previously orientated his work.7 The course also performed a role in contemporary reality. Those who followed his courses were not only held in thrall by the narrative that unfolded week by week and seduced by the rigorous exposition, they also found a perspective on contemporary reality. Michel Foucault’s art consisted in using history to cut diagonally through contemporary reality. He could speak of Nietzsche or Aristotle, of expert psychiatric opinion or the Christian pastoral, but those who attended his lectures always took from what he said a perspective on the present and contemporary events. Foucault’s specific strength in his courses was the subtle interplay between learned erudition, personal commitment, and work on the event.

With their development and refinement in the 1970s, Foucault’s desk was quickly invaded by cassette recorders. The courses—and some seminars—have thus been preserved. This edition is based on the words delivered in public by Foucault. It gives a transcription of these words that is as literal as possible.8 We would have liked to present it as such. However, the transition from an oral to a written presentation calls for editorial intervention: at the very least it requires the introduction of punctuation and division into paragraphs. Our principle has been always to remain as close as possible to the course actually delivered. Summaries and repetitions have been removed whenever it seemed to be absolutely necessary. Interrupted sentences have been restored and faulty constructions corrected. Suspension points indicate that the recording is inaudible. When a sentence is obscure there is a xiv foreword conjectural integration or an addition between square brackets. An asterisk directing the reader to the bottom of the page indicates a significant divergence between the notes used by Foucault and the words actually uttered. Quotations have been checked and references to the texts used are indicated. The critical apparatus is limited to the elucidation of obscure points, the explanation of some allusions and the clarification of critical points. To make the lectures easier to read, each lecture is preceded by a brief summary that indicates its princi- pal articulations. The text of the course is followed by the summary published by the Annuaire du Collège de France. Foucault usually wrote these in June, some time after the end of the course. It was an opportunity for him to pick out retrospectively the intention and objectives of the course. It consti- tutes the best introduction to the course.* Each volume ends with a “context” for which the course editors are responsible. It seeks to provide the reader with elements of the biographical, ideological, and political context, situating the course within the published work and providing indications concerning its place within the corpus used in order to facilitate understanding and to avoid misinterpretations that might arise from a neglect of the cir- cumstances in which each course was developed and delivered. The Government of Self and Others, the course delivered in 1983, is edited by Frédéric Gros.

A new aspect of Michel Foucault’s “œuvre” is published with this e dition of the Collège de France courses. Strictly speaking it is not a matter of unpublished work, since this edition reproduces words uttered publicly by Foucault, excluding the often highly developed written material he used to support his lectures. Daniel Defert possesses Michel Foucault’s notes and he is to be warmly thanked for allowing the editors to consult them.

* [There are, however, no summaries for the lectures given in 1983 and 1984; G.B.] Foreword xv

This edition of the Collège de France courses was authorized by Michel Foucault’s heirs who wanted to be able to satisfy the strong demand for their publication, in France as elsewhere, and to do this under indisputably responsible conditions. The editors have tried to be equal to the degree of confidence placed in them.

FRANÇOIS EWALD AND ALESSANDRO FONTANA xvi foreword

1. Michel Foucault concluded a short document drawn up in support of his candidacy with these words: “We should undertake the history of systems of thought.” “Titres et travaux,” in Dits et Écrits, 1954–1988, four volumes, eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald (Paris: Gallimard, 1994) vol. 1, p. 846; English translation by Robert Hurley, “Candidacy Presentation: Collège de France” in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997) p. 9. 2. It was published by Gallimard in May 1971 with the title L’Ordre du discours, Paris, 1971. English translation by Rupert Swyer, “The Order of Discourse,” appendix to M. Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972). 3. This was Foucault’s practice until the start of the 1980s. 4. Within the framework of the Collège de France. 5. In 1976, in the vain hope of reducing the size of the audience, Michel Foucault changed the time of his course from 17.45 to 9.00. See the beginning of the first lecture (7 January 1976) of “Il faut défendre la société.” Cours au Collège de France, 1976 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 1997); English translation by David Macey, “Society Must be Defended.” Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 (New York: Picador, 2003). 6. Gérard Petitjean, “Les Grands Prêtres de l’université française,” Le Nouvel Observateurr, 7 April 1975. 7. See especially, “Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire,” in Dits et Écrits, vol. 2, p. 137; English translation by Donald F. Brouchard and Sherry Simon, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. James Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998) pp. 369–392. 8. We have made use of the recordings made by Gilbert Burlet and Jacques Lagrange in particular. These are deposited in the Collège de France and the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine. Translator’s Note

FOLLOWING THE APPROACH ADOPTED in translating Foucault’s 1982 lectures, The Hermeneutics of the Subjectt, I have again tried in this volume to stay as close as possible to what Foucault actually says in his lectures, translating Foucault’s own translations or the French translations he uses when quoting Greek and Latin authors, rather than relying on existing English translations. However, where possible I have provided an existing English translation of these quotations and references to English translations of the texts in the endnotes. In the first lecture of 12 January (p. 43), and again in the first lecture of 9 February (pp. 187–188), Foucault draws attention to the variety of meanings of the Greek notion of parre-sia, and to its usual translation in French as “franc-parler, liberté de parole, etc.” Throughout the lectures Foucault leaves the term in Greek, but sometimes he glosses it as a dire- vrai (truth-telling), or franchise (frankness, straightforwardness), or, more frequently, especially in the first half of the lectures, franc-parler (expressing oneself freely, without reserve, constraint or inhibition). The French term franc-parler is often given in English as “outspoken- ness,” “forthrightness,” or “speaking one’s mind,” but, in an attempt to capture slightly better something of both the French translation and the original Greek notion, I have chosen to translate it with the less common “free-spokenness,” which is the term given by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary for parre-sia in the entry for “parrhesia.”