Michel Foucault's attitude toward the Ancient Greek
- Antiquity and Attitude of Modernity
"I don't talk about the societies which have no geography and no calendar."
- 'Entretien avec Michel Foucault'
I. Questions Raised
The main interest of Michel Foucault(1926-1984) concerning the period rests apparently on the Modern age. It isn't until his last books, The use of pleasure and The care of the self, that he finally takes the ancient Greek world seriously. These are the volume II and III of The history of sexuality and were released simultaneously in 1984, the year of his death. The history of sexuality: An introduction, the first volume released in 1976, treats uniquely the Modern European societies. The history of sexuality, originally planned to be a six-volume work, was suddenly interrupted by his unexpected death in 1984. At the moment of his death, he was working on The confession of flesh, the fourth volume of the series, which treated the Latin period and was never released in full, 'The battle for chastity', in Dits et écrits.
Before these last days of his life, Foucault talked about, mainly and almost exclusively, the Modern age, the period after "the threshold of a modernity that we have not yet left behind." In fact, for Foucault, the Modern age is, contrary to our first impressions, the period whose temporal limits are precisely defined by Foucault himself. In Europe, the threshold of 'ours', that is European, modernity was definitely established between 1775-1825. And basically, even until now, we are always under this dynasty called 'Modern'. And that's why Foucault concentrates on this period all through his life to better understand our present societies in the western hemisphere. The threshold of Modern age, from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, is the period in which 'our' modernity has been essentially and definitely set up.
More precisely, 1984, the year of publication of The use of pleasure and The care of the self, is not the first time that Foucault dealt with a 'non-modern' period in European societies. In his lectures in Collège de France between 1979-1980, he already examines the "Occidental Christian culture" and "the philosophical schools in the Antiquity" under the title of "On the government of the living". "The birth of biopolitics", the lectures of the previous year 1978-1979 treats mainly the turning period to the nineteenth century, the Modern age. And the lectures followed during 1980-1981, 1981-1982, 1982-1983 and 1983-1984, are titled respectively as "Subjectivity and truth", "The hermeneutics of the subject", "The government of the self and the others" and "The courage of truth". They all treat without exception the ancient Greek and Roman world. Why this change in terms of period has occurred? And what are the meanings of this 'brutal' change in Foucaldian thoughts?
II. Periods or the épistémès - the Modern
Starting from The order of things in 1966, Foucault keeps the main subject of his study the Modern age. According to the book, the European culture has only two main ruptures from the Renaissance period till today. The Renaissance ends in the middle of the seventeenth century, and from that moment on comes the Classical age. The Classical age is followed by the Modern age which begins in the last years of the eighteenth century. 'We' now today are always under this regime called 'modern'. So there are the Renaissance, the Classical age, and the Modern age. And each period has its unique, the one and only, épistémè - the resemblance for the Renaissance, the representation for the Classical age and the history or the Man, the empirical-transcendental doublet for the Modern age.
So what happens in this period of turning from the Classical age to the Modern age? Of course, there is an epistemic change from the representation to the history or the Man. This change into Modern age is total and all through the fields like the life, the language, and the labor. But it is shown drastically in Kantian philosophy which leaps definitely the threshold of 'our' modernity by being able to think finally the finitude through the analytics of the finitude. I. Kant(1724-1804) settles our modernity by settling man's conditions on his finitude, that is to say, by transforming the negative limits into the positive conditions. Then come all the positive and positivist sciences on Man: the human sciences. And the human sciences constitute themselves with 'ourselves' today and construct the conditions of our knowledge on 'ourselves', and vise versa. The Modern age is the period in which the conditions of ourselves are constructed. In other words, the Modern age is the time that we should examine if we wish to understand why and how we have become what and who we are today. Kant is the very philosopher who established 'our' modernity. Kant is the modern philosopher, the Auflkärer. In this sense, we are all "neo-Kantians."
III. Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger - the ancient Greek
It is well known that Foucault is profoundly an anti-Hegelian thinker. Foucault was always consciously against the dialectical thinking of G.W.F. Hegel(1770-1831) at least since his departure from the French Communist Party in the early 1950's. Foucault even says that the modern philosophy since one hundred and fifty years is the one trying to answer the question : "how to be no more a Hegelian?"
In the mid-1950's and 1960's, Foucault seeks the possibilities of the non-dialectical or the problematic thinking in the philosophies of F. Nietzsche(1844-1900) and M. Heidegger(1889-1976). Foucault mentions frequently these two philosophers as his main philosophical references with a great importance. In an interview in 1984, Foucault explains his intellectual parcours :
"For me Heidegger has always been the essential philosopher. I began by reading Hegel, then Marx, and I set out to read Heidegger in 1951 or 1952; then in 1952 or 1953 - I don't remember any more - I read Nietzsche. I still have here the notes that I took when I was reading Heidegger. I've got tons of them! And they are much more important than the ones I took on Hegel or Marx. My entire philosophical development was determined by my reading of Heidegger. I nevertheless recognize that Nietzsche outweighed him. I do not know Heidegger well enough: I hardly know Being and Time nor what has been published recently. My knowledge of Nietzsche certainly is better than my knowledge of Heidegger. Nevertheless, these are the two fundamental experiences I have had. It is possible that if I had not read Heidegger, I would not have read Nietzsche in the fifties but Nietzsche alone did not appeal to me - whereas Nietzsche and Heidegger: that was a philosophical shock! But I have never written anything on Heidegger, and I wrote only a very small article on Nietzsche; these are nevertheless the two authors I have read the most."
These words reveal two things concerning this article's subject. Firstly, Foucault's reading on Heidegger and Nietzsche had replaced his main philosophical interests in Hegel (or Marx) in the early fifties. Secondly, Foucault's reading on Nietzsche was - if not totally dominated - considerably influenced by that of Heidegger. And there is another point that can draw some lights on this article's subject: whether it is Hegel, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, they are all 'Grecian' philosophers. Each of them has a thorough knowledge of the Greek language, literature and philosophy. Not only they all use their perfect knowledge on the Greek culture as instruments for their philosophical analyses and arguments, but also, and more importantly, their usages of the Greek in themselves constitute the essence of their own philosophies. Their usages and their philosophies are tied in an inseparable manner.
IV. 'A la Heidegger' - Philosophy as a Greek word
For instance, for Heidegger, philosophy is φιλοσοφία, a compound of φίλος(friend or lover) and σοφία(wisdom), the love of the Wisdom or the Truth. So the philosophy is Greek by definition and there can't be no philosophy other than that of the Greek. In this sense, the sentence 'the philosophy is Greek' is a tautology in that, in fact, this can mean only 'the Greek philosophy is Greek.' If one should be faithful to this logic, as is Heidegger himself in 'Was ist das - die Philosophie?' in 1956, one can understand without problem that, for example, the expression 'the korean philosophy' isn't correct simply because it is a contraditio in adjecto as 'Greek Korean philosophy.' Heidegger says in this article:
"The often heard expression "Western-European philosophy" is, in truth, a tautology. Why? Because philosophy is Greek in it's nature; Greek, in this instance, means that in origin the nature of philosophy is of such a kind that it first appropriated the Greek world, and only it, in order to unfold."
Now one may see that, in Heideggerean way of thinking, there is some specific process that we could call the process of identifying between etymology and the Being, the process of identifying the meaning or essence of something to the word's etymological roots. An etymological analysis of the Greek word φιλοσοφία can - and only it can - bring the light on the philosophy itself, with definition and by definition, that is to say definitely. Therefore the entire philosophy or philosophical analysis of Heidegger can be considered as a (cultural) game of definitions in and with philosophy in that we call the ensemble of these definitions in a given society or world 'culture' in its large sense. In this meaning, the entire philosophy is a culturally determined definition game. And, basically, this can also be true for Hegel and Nietzsche despite their minor differences in that, for them, there can be no philosophy other than that of the Greek. There is no philosophy outside the linguistically and culturally Greek-rooted world in that philosophy is a kind of cultural - but at the same time 'universal' - game(jeu): "The statement that philosophy is in its nature Greek says nothing more than that the West and Europe, and only these, are, in the innermost course of their history, originally "philosophical.""
I'd like to call this kind of Heideggerian etymological argument the fallacy of appealing only to etymological roots or simply the Heideggerian etymological argument fallacy in that it identifies wrongly the meaning of a concept to its etymological roots. If one identifies a given philosophical concept to its Greco Latin etymological roots, and if one tries to find the soundness of an argument not to its correctness of its logic itself but to its word's etymological roots, then there can be no place left for the non Greek-rooted philosophical thoughts. Having said this, I'd like to make sure that I don't deny at all the precious value of this kind of - Heideggerian or not - etymological arguments in general, but what I want to say is the point that, if there exists only this kind of etymological work in an argument to elucidate a given concept, and if every other aspect in an argument is reduced in this kind of etymological one, then it would be problematic. It's just like a Chinese thinker declines totally all the non Chinese thoughts on the ground that he can not find the exact equivalent notion of Tao, which he considers an 'indispensable' notion for 'true', 'profound' thinking, in them. One can rightfully decline this kind of argument for being too cultural.
One can not and must not restrain philosophy in a certain linguistic or cultural form. Philosophy can not be reduced to a certain form of language or culture. Philosophy should be defined not by its contents but by its way of thinking, its logic. Simply because, as long as there is humanity, there'll be a philosophy, or rather philosophies, as a form of expressing their lives.
V. Heidegger and Foucault - the Being and Aufklärung
1) Against Heidegger - Hellenistic archaism
No one can tell today for sure if Michel Foucault was aware of this Heideggerian notion of philosophy as an etymological, linguistic and cultural game. But one can easily tell that he was aware of the fact that there is in Heidegger something like sort of a Greek archaism, an eulogy to the Greek. In an interview in 1974, Foucault said:
"Some years ago, there were some usual practice that I would call it 'à la Heidegger' [in a Heideggerian manner]: all the philosophy that made a history of thoughts or of a branch of the knowledge should begin at least from the ancient Greece and especially should never go beyond. Plato couldn't be nothing but a decadent from whom everything began to crystallize themselves. This type of history in the form of metaphysical crystallization, established once and for all by Plato himself, and, in France today, taken up again by Derrida, seems to me irritating. Irritating because after the [ancient] Greece there were so many interesting and amusing things that have passed. So one of my polemic objects is to be willing to enlighten a close archeology. At least for one or two centuries since, there has been a great deal of phenomenon which has bound our social structures, economy, way of thinking with an at least equally strong force similar to that had been produced in the first Greek cities. It's true that I avoid talking about the [ancient] Greece because I don't want to fall into the trap of hellenistic archaism in which the historians of thoughts have confined us for such a long time. We have a history, we have an ethnology, we have an archeology that we can practice to the present day."
Foucault doesn't accept so-called privilege of the ancient Greek. In the interview that shows his interests in this subject, he calls it "a sort of nostalgia":
"Christianity has long represented a certain form of philosophy. Then there were periodic efforts to rediscover in antiquity a form of thought not contaminated by Christianity. In this regularly repeated return to the Greeks there is certainly a sort of nostalgia, an attempt to retrieve an original form of thought and an effort to conceive the Greek world outside of Christian phenomena. In the sixteenth century it was a matter of rediscovering through Christianity a sort of Greco-Christian philosophy. Beginning with Hegel and Schelling, this took the form of an attempt to recover the philosophy of the Greeks while bypassing Christianity - here I'm speaking of the early Hegel - an attempt which one finds again in Nietzsche."
And this philosophical nostalgia on the Greek should be in turn lightened by his discussion on a "double nostalgia":
"that [nostalgia] of Greek age to which we ask for elucidating our relationship to the Being and that of the eighteenth century to which we ask for bringing the forms and the limits of our knowledge into question. Against the Hellenistic dynasty, from Hölderlin to Heidegger, there stands the dynasty of the modern Aufklärer that goes from Marx to Lévi-Strauss. The 'monstrosity' of Nietzsche can be the fact that he may belong to both. Being Greek or Aufklärer, on the side of the tragedy or of the Encyclopédie, on the side of the poetry or the well-made language, on the side of the morning of the Being or of the midi of the representation, it's the dilemma from which the modern thinking - that dominates us still, but that is already shaking underneath our feet - has never escaped."
Therefore Foucault's criticism on Heidegger should be understood in the light of his criticism on a double nostalgia of the European culture today: nostalgia of the Greek age and that of the eighteenth century. And Heidegger is just an emblematic figure of this Greek nostalgia.
Foucault always tries to make it clear that he doesn't agree with this kind of nostalgia for the past, and for the Greek at all for that matter. As Deleuze says in his Foucault, "what the Greeks did was not a miracle. Heidegger has a Renan side to him, with his idea of the Greek light or miracle. In Foucault's opinion the Greeks did a lot less, or a lot more, depending on your choice," Foucault doesn't share this Heideggerian 'eulogy' to the Greek with him. Here are two of his comments on the Greek:
"[The Greek] ethics is essentially masculine"
"The Greek ethics of pleasure is linked to a virile society, to dissymmetry, exclusion of the other, an obsession with penetration, and a kind of threat of being dispossessed of your own energy, and so on. All that is quite disgusting!"
And in his very last interview in 1984, Foucault answers to the questions concerning the Greeks:
"Q: The Greeks - did you find them admirable?
Foucault: No.
Q: Neither exemplary nor admirable?
Foucault: No.
Q: What did you think of them?
Foucault: Not very much. [...] All of antiquity seems to me to have been a "profound error." [Laughter]"
In other words, Foucault's investigation on the Greek morality in the early 1980's isn't at all a 'return' to neither the morality nor to the Greek. It is a part of his research for the conditions of the occidental world today in that the Greeks have been one of the major influences for the occidentals.
This attitude of using the thoughts or thinkers might be called the "user attitude." Foucault says in one of his articles in 1975: "I use the people I like. The only remark of gratitude that we can witness to a thought like that of Nietzsche, it is, precisely, to use it, to deform it, to make it gnash, cry. Therefore, the commentators say whether or not faithful, it has no interest."
2) With Heidegger - Deep Concern for the Present
From the very beginning of his philosophical career, Foucault always wanted to make it clear that he tries to use the philosophers rather than to read, study or even worship. Heidegger and the Greeks are in no way make the exceptions. Essentially, Foucault's way of 'using' Heidegger consists in his transformation of the Heideggerian question of the Sein into that of Aufklärung as a principle of deep concern for the present, the actuality. When, in a conference in 1978, Foucault answered to the question of Henri Gouhier concerning the movement of returning to socratism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he tried to interpret Heideggerian analysis of the ancient Greek philosophers with the notions of the Being by his own notion of a deep concern for the present, diagnostics of the present:
"That's in fact the real problem. Here again, if I try to answer rapidly to this difficult question, it seems to me that in the depth when we interrogate Socrates like this, or even - I dare barely to say this - I ask myself if Heidegger's interrogation of the pre-Socratics doesn't ....... no, not at all, it has nothing to do with anachronism that will transfer the eighteenth century to the fifth century [B.C.], ... But this question of Aufklärung, that I find nonetheless fundamental for the occidental philosophy at least since Kant, I ask myself if it's not with this question that we [can] sweep away in a way all the possible histories and to the radical origins of the philosophy. In such way the Trial of Socrates, I believe, we can interrogate it validly, without any anachronism, but from a problem that is and has been in all cases perceived by Kant as being a problem of Aufklärung."
Foucault explains later in this interview that the Aufklärung is related essentially to what Kant calls actuality:
"Kant feels perfectly related to this actuality that he calls the Aufklärung and that he tries to define. [...] [Kant's] relationship to the Aufklärung was the question of everybody's in his time. What are we talking about? What is this movement that preceded us a little, to which we belong still and which is called the Aufklärung? The best proof is the fact that it was the newspaper that has published the articles of Mendelssohn, Kant ....... That was the question of actuality. A little bit like us, we ask ourselves the question: what is the crisis of our actual values?"
Now it can be said that Foucault's main concern over the Aufklärung lies in fact that he interprets its essence as interest in the present, the actuality.
VI. Kant's 'Was ist Aufklärung?' - Attitude of Modernity
According to Foucault, this interest was presented for the first time - at least in the history of occidental philosophy - in Kant's small article 'Was ist Aufklärung?'(1784). Exactly two hundred years later, Foucault wrote an article with the same title in French, 'Qu'est-ce que les Lumières?'(1984), an hommage to Kant. In this article, Foucault discusses and analyzes Kant's spirit of the Aufklärung as a deep concern for the present and the actuality, the principle of modernity. Foucault explains what the Kant's revolution of actuality is:
"It is a reflection by Kant on the contemporary status of his own enterprise. No doubt, it is not the first time that a philosopher has given his reasons for undertaking his work at a particular moment. But its seems to me that it is the first time that a philosopher has connected in this way, closely and from the inside, the significance of his work with respect to knowledge [connaissance], a reflection on history and a particular analysis of the specific moment at which he is writing and because of which he is writing. It is in the reflection on "today" as difference in history and as motive for a particular philosophical task that the novelty of this text appears to me to lie."
In other words, the importance of Kant's article lies within its deep concern for today or actuality. Later in his article, Foucault gives a new meaning to the word modernity: contrary to the common usage of the word, Foucault tries to perceive it, not as an epoch, a period of history, but as an ēthos, an attitude toward the present, the actuality. In this sense, the modernity opposes itself not to the pre- or post-modernity, but to counter-modernity. Foucault characterizes this attitude of modernity as follows with C. Baudelaire(1821-1867)'s "The painter of modern life"(1859): i) The ironic heroization of the present. Modernity is often characterized in terms of consciousness of the discontinuity of time. Modernity is the attitude that makes it possible to grasp the "heroic" aspect of the present moment. it is the will to "heroize" the present. ii) Transfiguring play of freedom with reality. This heroization is ironic in that it aims at the transfiguration of this world as a difficult interplay between the truth of what is real and the exercise of freedom. For the attitude of modernity, the higher value of the present is inseperable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it, to imagine it otherwise than it is, and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is. Baudelairean modernity is an exercise in which extreme attention to what is real is confronted with the practice of a liberty that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it. iii) Ascetic elaboration of the self. However, modernity for Baudelaire is not simply a form of relationship to the present; it is also a mode of relationship that must be established with oneself. Modern man, for Baudelaire, is the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity does not "liberate man in his own being"; it compels him to face the task of producing himself.
As a whole, according to Foucault, Kant's deep concern for the present results in the construction of 'ourselves' today. It is one of the conditions of its formations. At the end of the article, Foucault tries to give a résumé of the meaning of attitude of modernity or the Aufklärung:
"it seems to me that a meaning can be attributed to that critical interrogation on the present and on ourselves which Kant formulated by reflecting on the Enlightenment. It seems to me that Kant's reflection is even a way of philosophizing which has not been without importance or effectiveness during the last two centuries. [...] I do not know whether it must be said today that the critical task still entails faith in Enlightenment; I continue to think that this task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty."
Therefore, when Foucault says "trying to rethink the Greeks today does not consist of setting off Greek morality as the domain of morality par excellence which one would need for self-reflection. The point is rather to see to it that European thinking can take up Greek thinking again as an experience which took place once and with regard to which one can be completely be free," he is in the total accordance with this attitude of modernity as a deep concern for the actuality, the present. Now one can tell that this attitude of modernity, the concern for the present, is actually the principle of philosophy, of philosophizing his own present, his own world.
VII. Aude saper - "Dare to think for yourself!"
If Foucault lived in the seventeenth century and could participate in the Quarrel of the Ancient and the Modern, it's obvious that he would take position on the Modern. We, the contemporaries, are not living in the Greek world and we can not return to the Greek world. Reading the Greeks today doesn't mean that they are the model, the universal example of humanity itself, but that they constitute simply one of the conditions of the occidental world and - now today - this occidentalized, 'universalized', 'modernized' and 'globalized' world.
For Foucault, reading the Greeks is simply an act of helping himself to be truthful to this attitude of modernity, a deep concern for the present. It is in a respect to this attitude or principle that Foucault tries to use the Greeks, the Aufklärung, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger to solve the problems of his own. And thus, just as his interests in the Greek morality are neither a 'return' to the Greeks nor to the morality, his interests in Kant's Aufklärung are neither a 'return' to Kant nor to the Aufklärung. It's not the Kantian Aufklärung or the modernity itself, but the attitude of modernity as a principle of philosophy that one should - if one should ever - 'return to'. Foucault just wanted to use the Greeks, Kant and the Aufklärung for the sake of this attitude of modernity.
Foucault wants not to 'return' to Socrates or what Socrates says, but to the attitude of Socrates and the way how Socrates talks, how Socrates philosophizes his present, his actuality and his 'modernity'. Foucault simply wants to be truthful to the principle of the Aufklärung, 'aude saper.' Now one may think with Foucault's attitude of modernity in mind:
"Dare to think for yourself, hic et nunc!"
