Very interesting. The noble lie part is quite telling about Kant’s discussion of friendship in The Docrtine of Virtue (Metaphysics of Morals). He suggested a distance that didn’t understand until now.
A social group itself is a condition very different than the perfect man in accordance to the law. I wonder if Kant would explain these shared exceptions as a side effect of the multiple and empirical. You are bringing up very compelling points.
An interesting side effect is that a people is bound by its immorality not its morality, which defeats some traditional notions.
“The noble lie part is quite telling about Kant’s discussion of friendship in The Docrtine of Virtue (Metaphysics of Morals).”
I am not familiar with the Doctrine of Virture and the place the noble lie has within it. What does Kant say about this, if you can summarize it easily?
“An interesting side effect is that a people is bound by its immorality not its morality, which defeats some traditional notions.”
If this concept of the morality of immorality if followed through, the complexity of taking a moral position against societal values is increased. Not only must one’s moral stance be taken into consideration, but also the mode by which you express it, and the consequence one wishes to achieve. This is a something that traditional oppositional thinking seems to miss. One is that by setting oneself up as an opposition you often perpetuate the thing you are opposing by creating a defining antithesis. But more subtly, if you try to appropriate the values of an ideology and literalize them subversively, you always risk being subsumed by the thing you are opposing and being used by the results. Look at the interesting way that ghetto gansta rap through its mode, embodies the ambitious dreams of white capitalism (Timberland, Louis Vuitton,), but in its stance powerfully appropriates the very term of denigration turning it into a term of power (nigga), but then in consequence is incorporated (literally) by the very white social machine it is thought to fight against, transforming it but not perhaps with any direction or control. The moral complexity of this is profuse. By opposing you set up the circumstance which allows the justification of further assented transgression, confirming the identity of those you oppose. By subverting you risk becoming subsumed by the hegemony. The only moral course of pure opposition seems is non-participation, Gandhi-like. Only then do you suspend the actual circulation of the law, however briefly, calling its foundations into question.
Kant demands that friendship maintains a certain distance, where the personal lives of each of the friends is kept distant. The noble lie is something Kant would never allow his virtuous moral subject, but a distance between the two people might help guard against the need for a noble lie.
This is also how power works in our time. Power used to operate repressively, this is called monarchal power (by Foucault). New forms of power do not repressive, they produce effects from the subject. Gangsta rap is bad but selling excessive amount of records tends to be good. This effect is produced by consumer appetite for the bling, bitches and machismo aspects of gangsta rap. The public as a whole does not have the patience for more militant or even progress forms of hip-hop.
“Power used to operate repressively, this is called monarchal power (by Foucault). New forms of power do not repressive, they produce effects from the subject.”
I suspect that even repressive power operated by producing effects from the subject. I am reading a very interesting Foucautian analysis of the Cathar Inquisition (14th cent) which argues that it is the production of the discourse of the confessing subject that lay at the heart of this “repressive” enterprise. In my view this has always been the case.
Dunamis
p.s. as that you like Marx, you might really like Zizek since he is a dialectical materialist
Yes, but an intersting shift happens around the 16th century. You should check out the essay “Govermentality.”
Shoot, I thought for sure I would find it online but I couldn’t.
The confessional form is very important for Foucault. It is a technique of self that has its origins in the delphic “know your self” but is later developed to a greater extent in the stoic, gnostics and especially chrisitan traditions. The inquisition is the use of the technology of confession in the juridicial, which became quite important in the begining of “Discipline and Punish.” What is really interesting is the dispersal of disciplinary power. The technology of confession is examined in History of Sexuality, but is a a theme of Foucault’s that really fascinates me.
Well, if you ever have the desire to read it, Inquisition and Power by John H. Arnold is an extremely close Foucaultian reading of the Inquisition documents from that time. It is dryly written, but it is compelling to see testimony examined as if with a very light scalpel, lifting the subtlest layer from subtlest layer. I always have like Foucault for the almost absurdly plain truth of his innovative arguments.
I agree completely. I’m reading Technologies of Self right now and you can tell a HUGE difference between Foucault and people doing a Foucauldian reading of things.
I might be interested in reading that sometime but right now I’m focused in on what freedom means for Foucault (specifically, how does it differ from Kantian freedom).
I am curious how he connects the technology of the self to the Delphic “Know thy Self”. It has been my contention that this is one of most misunderstood phrases in the history of philosophy. It is not a call to subjectivity, or even introspective study, but rather more an formulaic interogrative and a call to “know thy place” in relation to the God. I am following Plutarch’s interpretation of it, and as Plutarch was a priest at the oracle itself, he should know.
“The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he enters, with his “Know Thyself”, which is at least as good as “Hail”. We answer the God back with “EI” (Thou Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of Being… The opposite principle which we find in the universe, whatever its origin, is that which binds beings together and prevails over the corporeal weakness tending to destruction. To my thinking the word “EI” is confronted with this false view, and testifies to the God that Thou Art, meaning that no shift or change has place in him, but that such things belong to some other God, or rather to some Spirit set over Nature in its perishing and becoming, whether to effect either process or to undergo it.”
First of all, to “know thy self” constitutes the beginning of self-examination and its relation to how we constitute ourselfs as a subject.
Here is a passage from Technologies of self:
The shift in the first few centuries was from the pairing of “take care of yourself” and “know thy self” to kowing oneself.
To know oneself becomes an ascetic ideal:
This shift is also noted in the change from “Use of Pleasure” in Greek morality (as moderation or sophrosyne) to purity. “Knowing oneself” became an exercise in interpreting oneself, trying to find hidden concupiscience and cleansing oneself of all that is not in accordance with the Law (or god). This is why I’m studying the Kantian notion of freedom. Kant’s purity is one that is attached to reason rather than obedience to god. (Of course reason is really the decipherment of god’s laws). Kant’s freedom is a freedom to obey and we can understand that by examing the rigourous activities of the Kantian moral subject’s reason.
Here is another interesting passage:
This passage shows how a concern for self is done through morality, the subject is constituted by its relation to the law. The rejection of self is one thing that Nietzsche critiqued with great effort. I think it is a theme that Foucault consistently focuses on.
Here is the summary (I’m including this just in case I made little sense)
The knowledge of selves (or in Discipline and Punish “the knowable man”) constitutes the set of savoirs that relate to the subjectification of human beings. Psychiatry, criminology, sociology, and other knowledges of human beings proliferated after the 16th century.
hmmm… I don’t know if I’m versed enough to understand your question. The role of God in History of Sexuality volume II seems to be a certain relation that reveals the self. Knowing thyself in relation to god is a theme that is addressed but it seems more relevant to a transition to obedience for Focuault. I’m only on page 49 of History of Sexuality Volume III, I’ll let you know if I read anymore.
I’d suggest that you pick it up, it discusses Plutrach many times.
I like the complexity of his reading, and it seems that his original understanding is close to what I imagine. I wish I had time to pick up this book as it has long been on my list, but the number of things I have to read is really starting to pile up. Thanks for taking the time to quote extensively from the source though. That is much appreciated.
I’ll let you know if it actually happens. It’s been on my list for about 15 years really. And right now texts are pointing in a different direction. You know how that is, you follow a lineage of thinking, moving to related authors that reflect upon each other. Foucault is just another branch of the tree and would have fit better in when I was studying Lacan, Nietzsche, the Frankfurt school and Zizek I think. But you never know when reading takes you back to where you have already been.