The conditions of the essay:
In this essay I explore the geographical journey of condition of the concept of Innocence. Making the essay into a journey itself, I navigate around the subjectivism of the concept I explore, to make sense of its full operational picture. The intentional purposes of this essay were to find out about the existence of the concept of Innocence, though because of the very conceptualization of the term, the purposes posed at the beginning turned out to be a conditions for the very concept I wanted to explore, thus making the whole piece of writing into the practice of one’s freedom projected in and by anxiety to make use of this very writing in the condition of the self-incurred limits and that of 8000 words constraint.
I would like to open up this essay quoting an extract of the conversation with my good friend, who has visited the series of author academic talks on “Innocence” organized by the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent. The little passage of our conversation has settled in me, and rented 4 months in my solar plexus. This was a drive to write this essay.
“So, I went on this brilliant talk on “Innocence”, it was such an interesting experience, but then it was the time for feedback. When other people started to ask their questions the “Innocence” has gone. The innocent space was left, filled with trenchant sneer. It was unbelievable!”- Then her mentor asked her about how she found a talk. She said she exclaimed dazedly, with no hesitation- “Where has the innocence gone?”. The mentor then said- “Everyone was trying to prove their knowledge”.
The question is indeed, where has the “Innocence” gone to (if we ever had it in the first place), and if so, where to, and how to get it back (if there is a necessity for it)? The concept of “Innocence” turned out to be a much more complex body of qualities, characteristics, insecurities and their overlapping relationships.
My entry to the “Innocence” body of relationships starts with the terms etymological betrayal of its own generalized etymological meaning. It is necessary to refer to it in order to bring to light constructional insecurities the term of “Innocence” has, as well as how these factors influence terms operation.
Most of the etymology dictionaries give a very short, too generalized picture of words that suppose to “uncode” the essence of “Innocence”, but fail to do so, as do not offer any typological discourse. It is intriguingly to follow the historical, developmental change in the formation of the term, especially the shift from mid 14 to mid 15 centuries. During mid. 14 century “Innocence” operated around the words such as “purity”, “chastity”, “blamelessness”, “uprightness”, “integrity”, which had more alienated, idealistic, subject-orientated character with no exit for its own practical operation. Then in the mid. 15 century “Innocence” etymology has shifted towards more object-orientated, less Idealist understanding which involved more possibilities for the operational conceptual use. Despite the apparent benefits for such an inclusion “Innocence”, which was then read as “freedom from legal wrong”, was prone to incur a problem of its conceptual dualism, the problem of subject/object characteristics of itself. The problematic opens itself up with the emergence of the toxic words which simultaneously corrode “Innocence” dogmatic moods and create an exit for its conceptual liberation- negative dialectics. One of such dogma-dangerous words is “Naivete”. It is often, mistakenly, put closely to “Innocence”, thus vaccinating its construction with etymologies of “unborn”, “unspoiled”, “artless”, “lacking experience”, “unworked” and even “foolish”.
The corrosion of the dogmatic relationship happens when the subjective, alienated definitions such as “lacking experience” meet its operational, still alienated counterpart such as “freedom from legal wrong”. Following this idealist logic, the question now is whether the “freedom from legal wrong” means “lacking experience” or one is condition for the other? Or, put it another way, how do I become free from legally wrong if I lack experience? Bearing in mind the senselessness of deduction logic we can easily seize it down to the following- can I be free with no experience? If one is to carry on the following process of working with a thought, one will soon realize the twaddle of in dogmatics, which hurries to annul its “immediate” and not further defined. This power withdraws the concept of “Innocence”, as well as its potentiality in the reality of its own functional reality (which is “instant” historical presupposition). What we, in fact, dealing with is not the withdrawal of the logical conception of “Innocence”, but the fact of the limits in its conceptualization.
I would like to introduce Soren Kierkegaard now. He has indubitably mentioned that the thought alone does not possess reality. He emphasized the importance of Kant in this investigation. Putting on doubt the assumption of the Ancient and Middle ages philosophy, Kant allowed us to enter the field of “negative logic” (according to Kierkegaard) or “negative dialectics” (according to Theodor Adorno). Hence, I would like to examine the concept of “Innocence” through the lens of Kierkegaardian “Hereditary sin” in his work “The Concept of Anxiety”. According to the negative logic of Soren Kierkegaard the “Innocence” is only possible if it is given up by sin. The move of the “immediate” (logic) in “Innocence” has destructive character, for it moves towards the withdrawal, annulation of its ethical conception. Though, it is unethical for Kierkegaard to withdraw it, as according to negative logic of ethical, the limits of its logic can not be annulated by its own immediate logic. The question then is what is it that can withdraw the ethics within the excess of “Innocence” logical parameters?
Kierkegaard begins to scrutinize Adams first sin here in order to understand how “the ethical” in “Innocence” moves. But before getting into his observation, let me picture the scene where the story is set.
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
Before God informed Adam about his potential choices, he had no experience of seeing and knowing his choices. He was “naive” (no experience). Once he became experienced in seeing the options, the “naivete” has gone. By being aware of the “paradoxically forced” choice to choose, Adam has no other way than to experience “the evil”, since the distinction between “good” and “evil” is existential and is not available for consideration until one experience it through the “enjoyment of the fruit”- hence falling guilty. Kierkegaard says: “A choice is finite, concrete decision to act upon preference for a known end. Adam and Eve’s fall cannot have been a choice in this sense, any more than it could have simply enacted lustful desire”.1
Sinfulness and guilt are transcendentally presupposed the very moment Adam is informed of choices. The “ethical” in “Innocence” therefore is annulated by the transcendental presupposition of the sinfulness and guilt, the impossibility of not falling, the impossibility of not trying “the evil”. To decipher it further, one can only get “Innocence” when one loses it, which marks the “limit of logic” and makes “Innocence” sufficient unto itself. Interestingly in this respect is that Adam loses “Naivete” as a consequence of the logical “immediate”, the fate of developmental process which is sufficient unto its very immediacy. But does it mean Adam loses “Innocence”?
“Therefore, one never really has any control over losing it (Innocence), except in the only way in which it is ever always already lost- that is by guilt. It is sufficient to remember that innocence itself never precedes its loss; it only exists as lost. The collective guilt on which the human community is rooted in and by is precisely this choice of sin over innocence. And, as we know from the preceding narrative, this choice has to be assumed as freely chosen.” (The Ethical Paradox in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety; Ed Cameron) 2
So, to desire to get “Innocence” back can be read only as to desire to possess its condition (something that one has already lost). But how can one desire the condition of something one has no idea about? Something, which exists only as condition or something which, Kierkegaard wittingly, calls “nothing”? What does this whole impulse produce?
Kierkegaard looks at this impulse of “desiring nothing” as the consequence of prohibition, being a condition for “falling guilty”, which has regarded itself as a condition for “desiring nothing”. The effect of losing the choice to choose over “Innocence”s loss produces anxiety, which itself is a result of “nothing” which we give up in falling into the sin. In his analysis of given “anxiety” Kierkegaard observes its conceptual effects in children behavior. By arguing that “anxiety” belongs to the child, he also claims it is “preserved at the cultural level” 3. He then introduces the concept of “freedom” in “anxiety” which by passing through the imperfect forms of its own history, taking its profoundest routes to finally come to itself actualizes in the “anxiety”. “Freedom” as a possibility of possibility actualizes in and by anxiety. In this sense, anxiety acts as the only possible way to constantly get back to the impossibility to choose over ones fall, as it is the only possible gate to sustain ones possibility for freedom.
“In the end, Kierkegaard’s paradox is that guilt both brings about a loss of innocence and furnishes the only possible access to innocence.” (Ed Cameron “The Ethical Paradox in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety” pg.7-8)
The very fact that in this “anxiety” we are able to see a “possibility of being able” is thus a higher form of anxiety as well as “ignorance”. Kierkegaard uses “ignorance” here as to mark the limit of knowledge, the condition of the impossible- where no knowledge of “good” and “evil” is possible thus projecting its own actuality in and by anxiety. This condition of pre-symbolic, pre-subjective character becomes a transcendental gift, which signifies Adam and Eve’s belonging to the “God’s infinite mastery”. The gift sufficient unto itself. The gift that can only be realized after falling, which is unavoidable. Kierkegaard calls this continuous movement a synthesis, which relationship is a relationship itself. It is being derived and relates itself to itself, which is a possibility for freedom. He defines this synthesis as a “spiritual self” which is itself a “spirit”- sufficient unto itself.
Considered to be one of the first existential philosophers of his time, his works like “The concept of Anxiety” and “Sickness unto death” have undoubtedly helped to allocate “Innocence” into the realm of “Spirit”. “Innocence”, being a complex condition, a constant necessity for a drive of “spiritual self” is always engaged in the power-relations of socio-ethical order. To lose the necessity for a drive thus means to fail spiritually and eliminate one’s possibility for freedom.
In his further analysis on maintenance of the self-spiritual existence, Kierkegaard’s identity, the “I” in the spiritual journey is often prosecuted in the possibility to have the “estranged solipsistic” character in “a chaotic sea of unmitigated possibility” 4. The “I” in his spiritual journey is alienated from the socio-political context, which withdraws the “I” from the realm of the objectification in “spirit”. Thus, taking into account qualities and characteristics of Kierkegaardian condition of “Innocence” and their circulation within “Spirit”, I would like to introduce Michel Foucault to this part of the essay, who characterizes spirituality as “intensity without spirit” 5. Foucault too makes the necessity for the maintaining “spiritual life” apparent as a means to access ones possibility for freedom. The very difference appears through the ways this necessity relates to the concept of “truth”. Soren Kierkegaard, in this regard, is a representative of the Western Modern Philosophy in which the access to spiritual being is only available through the concern for “truth”. Kierkegaard himself saw a truth as subjectivity, which required the individual who tries to understand the truth, to become subjective himself. This approach is opposite to one of Foucault, who defined spiritual practices as “not something invented by the individual himself. They are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society and his social group”. Rather than transforming ones inward way of thinking only (which according to Kierkgaard was the only way to approach spiritual self), Foucault focuses on “spiritual corporality”, the way of transforming one’s mode of being. The subject of “more outward”, “the self” that is not the deep self of disciplines, “the self” which in order to achieve spirituality concerns one’s position and behavior. As Foucault puts it “a more superficial self which strives for the ethical coherence of its acting”. To shift “spiritual” into the “bodily” realm in that way means to solve Kierkgaardian paradox of dualism in “spiritual”. As Kierkegaard himself objects:
“This is (spiritlessness) misfortune, that it has a relation to spirit, which proves no to be a relation. Spiritlessness may therefore posess the whole content of spirit- not as spirit, be it noted, but as jest, galimatias, phrase, etc. It may poses truth- not as truth,… but as old wives tales… In fact, spiritlessness can utter the same words the richest spirit has uttered, only it doesn’t utter them by the virtue of spirit. When a man is characterized as spiritless, he has become a talking machine, and there is nothing to prevent him from learning a philosophical rigmarole just as easily a confession of faith and a political recitative repeated by rote.” 6
The necessity for the drive (condition of Innocence) for the “spiritual being” should not be resurrected every time it meets its socio-ethical context as it exactly is “a mode of being for the subject, along with a certain way of acting, a way visible to others”. That is for Foucault a practices of “the care for the self”. Through the mode of self-formation, which is, to be tantamount, different to Kierkegaardian idea of “ spiritual self-isolation”, as it implies an ascetics performed through one’s whole way of life. The spiritual without a spirit, without “an incorporate supernatural being” or immortal soul.
I must, indeed, make a tantamount reiteration here, to seize the “immediacy” and make this spiritual exercise, spiritually louder.
The drive of and for spirit is spirituality. The drive of spirituality is spiritual being. Spiritual being is available through its practices. The practices of spiritual being are only available through one’s own autonomous dimension of life; they are not dictated by any moral codes other than that which are “practices of freedom”. Thus to fail in spirituality means a choice (which is of one’s own as from the preceding narrative) to refuse one’s potential for practices of freedom. By abandoning one’s potential to use “practices of freedom”, one enters the dimension of non-spirituality and lies in which he looses the drive for necessity to become freer and more spiritual, which means one closes the potentiality for knowing one’s true self. “The self” which abandons to realize itself is thus in the deep, deceitful illness. It is “The Sickness unto Death” as Soren Kierkegaard fairly calls it.
Despite of any level of spiritlessness there is always “spiritual practices” (practices of freedom) available which if started instantly allocate individual into the spiritual realm, thus into the realm of one’s own true consciousness.
What are then these “practices of freedom” which makes the entry to the true self available?
I want to escape etymological clutter when relating to the question of “freedom” and its historical use. What I could only emphasize is that the critics of the Modern Western Philosophy related “freedom” to the ethical space, so did Foucault. Rather than looking at the concept of freedom as an alienated, autonomously rational set of conditions, Foucault focuses on its historical circulation. “Freedom” turns out to be a condition of an ethical dimension which implied various possibilities in which we tried to allocate “I” as a “subject, an agent, and a free person” 7. As of preceding analysis it becomes clear that “freedom” for Foucault is a condition for maintaining spiritual being. Freedom (or “spiritual being”, “one’s drive for spirit”) was not given to us in the first place; it is not a priori, neither primordial. It is the way of being, which becomes an achievement, a practice that opens one’s real consciousness. The condition of freedom is never stable, not unitary nor ontologically. It is ipso facto relational and generative. In its relative-generative movement it forms itself as circulation that depends on its own infinite exhaustion. Bearing in mind “Freedom”s conditional quality, we can object that, as with our condition for Innocence, we can only create “Freedom”.
“We produce our Humanity by generating modalities of freedom, ways of relating to ourselves, to truth, and to our historical period, or present. If there is freedom, it is always creative freedom. ” 8
Once we decide to create our freedom, become consciously active in the resistant field of maintaining our spiritual being we face a set of subjugations born of the games of power. These sets are waiting to meet the mechanisms for their own resistance. These mechanisms for resisting various forms of subjugations, as well as the relationship between the two must be clearly outlined in this second part of the essay. As with the beginning of investigating the concept of “Innocence” I would like to land necessary resisting mechanisms first, in their clear (“unbind from negative logic”) logical nature. This will give an opportunity to be aware of their points of insecurity, which will mark the entrance to the “negative logic” and operational relationship within these mechanisms.
Agonistic mechanism of/for truth-telling.
In The History of Sexuality, Foucault examines Socrates way of life and his impossibility to “not to die” as a historical condition in support to Socrates idea of “the care of the self” through fearless truth-telling, which, according to Socrates is the art of living.
Socrates lived moral life. He exercised truth-telling as a practice which supports the higher purposes of the divine morality. His death was his own, conscious choice of his own philosophical calling, in order to not betray Athens and teaching he was living. He thought, he had no other choice than to die. He died for his convictions.
According to Socrates, knowledge, courage and justice are absolute virtues intervened. This makes us claiming that if one’s knowledge is courageous it must also be just, thus we should act courageously, according to our just knowledge. This absolute logic formula works up until its maximum logical border, which is one’s encounter with death. Socrates practiced dialogues, he has practiced “the absolute truth” right until his encounter with his own impossibility to possess his choice, control, over the “morals” he was praising. Being a living example of maintaining the concept “philosophy as a way of life”, Socrates living was promoting anti-narcissist way of life, when “truth-telling” was the way to govern him, as well as others. For him, it was impossible to not to truth-tell, as knowledge, courage and justice for him are virtues, which are put into logical absolute. Socrates believed in morality as a form of knowledge, which opens up a gate for spiritual relationship with political encounter, but at the same time, launches the same problem (as with Kierkegaard), when the excess of logical parameters represented by rationality confronts its encounter with the irrational, thus “immoral”, according to its own logical reality. He believed in “morality” excluding its “spiritual circulation”, calling it “the weakness of the will” (i.e. the problem of the drive), thus becoming the prisoner of his own moral convictions.
The choice to live “spiritual life” is inextricably bind within the socio-political context, which implies the relationship of power. Thus one of the mechanisms to practice one’s freedom means to verbally (by telling truth) resist the subjugations of socio-political orders- this is truth for both Socrates and Foucault. Though, Foucault chooses Socrates living to picture the call for coordination of the point where truth-telling located in the “freedom practice” realm produces agony, and its own impossibility to sustain happy, ethical, democratic way of being. This is to be examined further within the broader operative context.
Veridical Writing. Ethopoetical mechanism.
Michel Foucault has been focusing a lot on St. Augustine writings. Augustine was an early Christian philosopher and theologian who has developed a different reading of crucial standpoints in Christian philosophy. He has offered a new reading of “the original sin”, introduced a concept of Church, which is distinct from “Earthly city”, but is a spiritual city of God, as well as worked on the question of “Theodicy of God”. In the latter, he has developed an answer to the paradoxical question of “why there is evil in the world, even if God is both, almighty and all-beneficent”, which is of the big importance to Foucault. Interestingly to notice, that Augustine too, as well as Socrates, and Kierkegaard, underscores the importance of the will (the drive) turning away from the human, not because of the “divine evil”, which, for some mysterious reason, takes it away from him. Augustine, didn’t deny the existence of “evil”. On the contrary,
“Theodicy of God” or, in other words, God’s Justice, according to Augustine, is the very answer to the existence of evil. Being influenced by Manichaeism (teaching of the struggle of spiritual and the evil world of material darkness), he though denied “evil’s” materialization into a “separate substance, entity or being” 8. He objected, that this reading would contradict the very omnipotence of God, which would throw discredit on the Christian monotheistic doctrine. It is thus, not uncontrollable God’s or evil trial, it is a personal choice of evil- it is by and of our own hand in freedom we choose a “turning, a negation, a privation of some prior or primordial good” 9 – we deny our drive. According to Augustine, this happens not because our will is evil; it is rather because we let it being evil by following our instant, inordinate desire- libido. We are following our own concupiscence. Why would we allow that?
“In Augustine’s view, we bring evil into the world because we aspire to terrestrial or temporal things instead of aiming for that which is eternal and truly good. We bring evil into the world because we fail to be vigilant over our carnal desires and inclinations. We allow that which is superior and more perfect, our will and mind, to be subjugated to that which is inferior and finite: the flesh” (“The Practice of freedom” Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”).
The problem of the flesh is that it has its own will, which, again, is massively led by desire, which is, nowadays, controlled. Rather than promoting techniques of obtaining entrypoints for realization of one’s carnal desires, what is promoted today is “the ready-made desires” themselves. Thus, making the conditions for the access to real self almost impossible.
“Sex in erection is the image of man revolted against God. The arrogance of sex is the punishment and consequence of the arrogance of man” (“Augustine or ethopoetic freedom” Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”).
The problem of the relationship between “the will” and “the desire” requires constant hermeneutics of the self, if one is to maintain one’s spirituality.
One of the techniques Foucault focuses on, whilst analyzing Augustine’s Confessions is the use of writing exercises in order to take care of the self. In ancient Western traditions, the care of the self, was not only dietary, medical or philosophical issues, one had to write about oneself to know oneself. The subject had to exercise “permanent hermeneutics of the self” 10. The ancient practice of writing diary was a technology of the self, which allowed person to access the transformative knowledge, “the type of knowledge that is decisive and transformative of the self.” 11 Ancient Greeks called this type of knowledge ethopoetic. The knowledge, produced by the hermeneutics of the self, which, for Foucault, should lead “to the sacrifice of the self, so that a new self may be born” 12. A vigilant analysis this type of exercise produced was a practice of ethopoetic freedom. Different techniques of writing about oneself was a tool for one’s irreversible transformation towards one’s true spirit.
“We wrote, and continue to write, in order to become different, and by becoming different we practice a transformative freedom”. (“Augustine or ethopoetic freedom” Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”).
Critique as a meditation on possible transgression.
Two above-mentioned practices of freedom have left us with a problem of the will and its relation to desire. As of the preceding narrative, the immediate desire (the apparent call of the will of flesh) has to be read only within the deeper context of one’s call for the spiritual will. Moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant provided a rational-only look when analyzing “good will”. He claimed that morality is the limit of human’s rational being, and the only justification of this morality would be a rational determination of that very will. It is in the rational existence, he claims, human is free. It is when the will submits itself to the “rational adjudication”.
“A good will can not be bad, because it is a will determined in accordance with universality. A good will, therefore, is not determined by anything external to it, whether it be obedience to God, deference to tradition, or submission to our desires or inclinations.” (“Kant, or critique as freedom”, Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
Kant sees the choice for a good will, or rather say, the drive that forces us to act in accordance with the universal law of morality as a part of doctrine of virtue. Instead of analyzing this doctrine, Foucault focuses on Kant’s philosophy of history.
He chooses to grasp and analyze the moment when one changes relationship to the reason used before, as something which follows our existential experience all the time, and is indeed our condition. For Kant, it was the condition of Enlightenment we all live in, though not living this condition. This ongoing condition in which humanity is involved circulates around the past that is fulfilling itself, and future that is expected to be unleashed. Though, what Foucault notices whilst analyzing historical moves in Kant’s philosophy is despite Kantian subordination to rationality in his moral philosophy, Kant, though, does not strive to allocate this condition neither in realm of the divine nor in realm of the logic of a rational plan of history.
“Kant defines Aufklarung in an almost negative way, as an Ausgang, an “exit”, a “way out” In his other texts on history, Kant occasionally raises questions of origins and defines the internal teleology of a historical process. In the text on Aufklarung, he deals with the question of contemporary reality alone. He is not seeking to understand the present on the basis of a totality or of a future achievement. He is looking for a difference. What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?” (“Kant, or critique as freedom”, Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
Not trying to “label” the unknown, Kant was working with the limits of epistemology, formulating radical character of the present “with respect to the task that it presents to us as contemporaries”. Rather than identifying “Enlightenment” Foucault offers to turn it into the critique, which would make the “negative” bit of not being able to live the “Enlightenment” into the condition of the “Enlightenment” we all live in. It is our epistemological condition of not knowing how to differentiate what is new with respect to what has come before. We saw that condition with Kierkegaard, earlier on in the conceptualization of “Innocence”, when he marked the limit of knowledge with the term “ignorance”, which produces anxiety. With Kierkegaard, the “negative”, impossibility to live “Enlightenment” does not exist, as he reads it not as the answer, but the condition we live in. The awareness of the epistemological limit in Kierkagaard is the gift, sufficient unto itself. Spiritual gift- the sign of belonging to the God’s mastery in the condition of God’s negation. It is with our own hand in freedom we challenge our self-incurred conditions of subjugations.
“We are exiting, departing, abandoning a self-imposed tutelage, to use the other word used to translate Unmundigkeit (immaturity), by means of the critical use of reason, by daring to criticize, to know.” (“Kant, or critique as freedom”, Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
Critique, is a critical use of reason without tutelage, guidance, submission or derogation guided by one’s spiritual drive only. Critique is indispensable part of Enlightenment, as it is the only way to find out about whether the use of reason is legitimate or not. “Critique guides reason leading it to Enlightenment”.
For Foucault, limits of knowledge should always be transformed into the positive, practical realm. Rather than criticizing demarcation of limits as in Kant and making it thus practically inapproachable as well as destroying its operative, transgressive qualities Foucault proposes to use critique (taking into account its necessary epistemological limitations) in a meditative future-orientated practice which always allows a possibility for transgression. To put in other words, in order to educe critique, which would be valuable and significant for all humanity, we should not be misled by searching for invariant and transcendental philosophical structures to give us answers on what has led humanity to the today’s way of living. By asking transcendentally “who we are now, in this very moment?” we should not immerse ourselves into the bare realm of philosophical constructions, rather we should take them into account of historical ontology, where history explains the political, social, etc., frameworks of our own construction, so we could enter the field of entrypoints which constitutes the emergence of “we”.
“Because we have become, we can also become different” 12-it is our own choice.
Historical investigation into Kant left us with the problem of philosophical ethos and insecurity to sketch the right lines of the time we live in. It is thus, according to Foucault, we should be using history as a tool to create an adequate picture of what we are now, in relation to our future transgression, not our past, historical development. History of the past should be used not to teach our present, which in this very moment becomes our future, but to help us to realize why we are, the way we are right now, in this very moment- this is the new philosophical ethos, that goes beyond Kantian negative part of Enlightenment, thus making it operative right now.
“We may meet Kant’s call to dare to use our reason, to live in an age if not enlightened at least of enlightenment, by working on our limits, those limits distinctly drawn out by a critical ontology. It is this critical labour of transgressing our historical contingency that gives form to “our impatience for liberty”.” (“Kant, or critique as freedom”, Eduardo Mendieta; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
Our freedom here is practiced through engaging in a transgressive, future-orientated critique of our time, by ontological criticism of the “historical shape our world has taken”. Our freedom is still practiced with the use of reason, but engaged in the critical awareness of our history to unmake its “solidity and putative inevitability”.
As from the preceding narratives Foucault mentions three techniques which open up a gate to the spiritual, real self- the self, which permanently exercises freedom. He emphasizes the importance of the modes of veriditction in the production of truth, power-relations and subject-making, or how one makes oneself into the subject. In this framework of practicing freedom/ spiritual being person always circulates within a “triple theoretical displacement” of the relativity of knowledge and its veriditicion, the power relations in governmentality and its condition of possible domination, and one’s condition of practices of the self. It is by maintaining this condition of triple theoretical displacement one can analyze the relationships within truth, power and subject without seizing them one to another.
Spiritual freedom is possible only through its condition of running within the triple theoretical displacement, it is then, when spirituality becomes operative. Freedom which passes through the constellations of veridiction, governmentality and techniques of the self changes. It becomes refracted and this is its unavoidable change as in our physical body which gets older. Freedom as well as our spiritual drive, being originally creative and free only exists “after falling”, after its inevitable operational use. It is never a priori, nor it is transcendental because of its own inevitability for its operation. Freedom is never stable, and is achieved only when practiced with realization that it is never to be achieved in its constant, ideal glory. Freedom’s condition is always relational, discursive, intransigent, recalcitrant- sufficient unto itself though to be “preserved and wrested from the games of power in which it always circulates like blood in a living organism” 13. Primordially free freedom, in its inescapable relation to the games of truth (veriditcion) becomes ethopoetic, in its relation to governmentality becomes transgressive and in its relation to the practices of the self becomes agonistic.
Informed about the mechanisms of practicing one’s spiritual being I want to dedicate the last section of this essay to acknowledge the means for the urgency of their use by locating the “need for the spirit”/ the drive/ the call to practice one’s freedom into the realm of subjectivity of truth, power and practices of the self. What are the conditions for us to practice our own freedom?
‘We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’- USA Declaration of Independence.
Not trying to be tantamount I want to, once again, mention that the self-evidence of the above mentioned truths is not at all self-evident, for in order to make use of these truths, one has to know oneself first. The question of one’s understanding of who one really is was a battlefield for Western traditional philosophy which tried to make sense of our existence in the world. From the above mentioned narrative, self-sufficient condition for ones spirituality is the answer. The need to know, the passion to answer the questions of our existence is what makes us different from cauliflower, which as Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “never has to confront the problem of what it means to be a cauliflower; it never has to make a choice about how it will live its life; it will never be challenged about his choice”. Humanity though faces a different task, to wonder at one’s point of existence, finding it useless by the means of reason, though still existing by the unspoken desire to live and know oneself. Unavoidably facing the task to be oneself, one asks the question of what it is that constitutes the one, who asks this very question. The answer to this is subjectivity and one’s spirit (one’s existential, self-sufficient necessity for maintaining one’s freedom). In this case, as of the preceding narrative on the self-sufficiency of spirit one, which is subjectivity doesn’t exist without the other, which is spirit. The next question then is what constitutes our subjectivity and is there an equal relationship between the two? Our subjectivity then is something that we make of ourselves when we do devote ourselves to maintain our spirit. Or, put it another way, we need to carefully examine what the quest to be true to oneself entails? When we say “be yourself”, “express your self”, what really happens is that we form a relationship of the self to itself.
“… when I express myself, I am both the self who is doing the expressing and the self who is being expressed. ” 13
In order to break this self-sufficient, yet not operative cycle one is constantly engaged in the exercises of “outwards character” for it is impossible for the subjectivity to exist on its own. I must always relate myself to something in order to form myself as a subject. It is in the activity of seeking and finding and then relating myself to that of what I have found. It is then formulates me as a subject and influences on my further seeking-finding-relating activity. In Edward McGushin reading of “Foucault’s theory and practice of subjectivity” he says “it is the activity of seeking and discovering that makes or constitutes the self as both an active seeker and sought after object”. The self, in this sense is not some sort of metaphysical being (though metaphysically connected to the God’s mastery by the means of existence of its spirit and authentic desire to express it),it is not self-standing substance “that exists within us whether we look for it or not”, but it is this very exercise of seeking-finding-relating activity which forms into the thinking, acting creatures. In this sense the importance lies in what we find out there, which, it should also be noted, also forms of subjectivities. What are then the subjectivities, relative activities/experiences available? And what is most important, do they not dominate over our necessity for spiritual circulation?
Foucault offers a historical analysis of subjections formed in the Western civilization since the time of the ancient Greek philosophy. He looks at the formation of subjectivity through the lens of their government of the produced disciplinary subjectivities.
The child is born, in his uncontrollable desire to know and recognize himself with the world, he is faced with a various possibilities which he relates himself to. His spirit though is prevalent, as his subjective experiences are in this sense “naive”. As he is growing up, he acquires skills, knowledge, etc.- he builds various systems of his “common sense”, ways to manage his feelings by the means of rational reasoning etc.. He also develops critical skills to navigate around the systems he has built and choose “better for him”, more suitable reality. In this inextricable journey of acquiring one’s skills we should primordially be pursuing one’s authentic call for happy living. Though we forget, that all the means for it are buried under the systems we have built, and what meant to teach us “good” have taught us something else as well and we find ourselves with a lack of belief in what surrounds us, or what we are. It all projects in and by anxiety of our primordial call for spirit.
For Foucault the disciplinary, governmental organizations we go through (nurseries, schools, hospitals, work, courts, shops etc.) are indeed the means for acquiring knowledge, but at the same time are the means for the specific controlled adaptation of our individualities. The power in this sense is not exercised by “prohibition”, it is exercised through a total control, which doesn’t even allow “the spirit” to comprehend its own authentic existence. Rather the power produces its own “alienated” version of spirit and its possible ways for development. In the continuous condition of necessity for spiritual being what we face today is not a domain moving in the direction of acquiring possibilities for one’s spiritual realization. It is a vector moving backwards. The power of senseless ready-made meanings waiting to slap its bearer with its own existential withdrawal. As if God has never prohibited Adam&Eve from eating from the tree of knowledge. As if Adam and Eve have never discovered their Innocent anxiety of the God’s gift which allows us to choose. Though the choice is still there, is still available. But we burry it even deeper, and deeper away from us, trying to justify it with our historical past, which grasped our throat and ruthlessly strangles us in our own senseless choice to die.
“These industries, authorities, experts and institutions guide me by pushing me to discover, maximize and express myself: “the chief function of disciplinary power is to train… Discipline makes individual. All these authorities train me, to be me.” (“Disciplinary subjectivities” Edward McGushin; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
The power, thus produces specific kind of truth, which indeed does not repress or oppress. These disciplines makes one productive, help one with one’s needs by promoting scientific innovations, which again, help one in one’s disciplinary needs. I go to the doctors and get treated like patient and customer. I go to the school and learn the knowledge from authority. What is the problem? This seemingly unavoidable systems, designed to help us, are indeed our fate. They construct us, they shape us, they do so with everyone and it is for our best. It all helps us, and what is the point to resist this help if this austerity mechanism working so well? But it is exactly within the domination of mechanisms which shape us; our natural call to start looking for one’s true self appears. It is projected by mass hatred, fear and the totality of one’s whimpering anxiety one is constantly relocating within the previous two domains. These disciplines designed to take care of ourselves and show us our natural potentiality of acquiring our true selves in fact make us suffer from the very skills we acquire from them. The more ready-made truths and understandings we learn the louder our call of anxiety is. The truth nurseries, schools, social organizations, churches, media, courts, market etc. produce is austerity- the ready-made product which is ourselves and our judgments of and for the world. The truth is, that we unconsciously choose austerity as authenticity because the truth that has made us into the subjects was ready-made for us. Thus our immediate desires and aspirations will never get us to authentic, happy living, for we always stir away from our primordial call of spirit projected in anxiety by subjectively wanting to “fix it”, as if something is wrong with us. We are not taking care of ourselves in the authentic, spiritual sense- instead, we subjugate ourselves even more, believing, that disciplinary subjectivities raised in our souls will solve this problem. Even when we become lucky to realize the existence of our spirit (that is because of the imperfection of the very ideality disciplinary subjectivity seemingly proves to possess), we try to relate it within the already-known system which has us forced, by its own imperfection, to discover it. Thus we, as humanity, find ourselves in the permanent condition of removing the layers of subjectivities we have acquired by inescapable meetings of disciplinary character, where disciplinary organizations should help us to acquire knowledge for our spiritual, ethical being, providing humanity the means for the spiritual exit- “natural wondering”, not the austerity and limit of our experience. The condition of accessing truth nowadays is again through cleansing one’s layers of subjectivation by means of practicing critique in relation to oneself and outer world. It is in the ways of constant checking whether one, expressing oneself, is being governed or not. It is to realize one’s subjugated form of veridiction and resisting to it. Through the constant exercise of resistance, unpeeling layers of subjectivism one finds his spirit in need to be maintained. Through the conditions of produced truths, in need for critique; total power in need for liberty; the self in need to be found.
According to Foucault, subjectivity is not a stable state humanity occupies, it is activity in a context of constraint humanity performs. The condition everyone is in is subjugation of one’s authentic being, where the drive/ the spirit/ to practice one’s freedom is in need to be excavated through the layers of agonizing technologies of the self, to practice one’s true self.
“We therefore find ourselves confronted with the task of figuring out when and how we are enabled, and when and how we are constrained, of determining ways in which existing practices have the potential loosen constraints and thus resist normalization, and of employing those practices not only for that purpose, but also in order to develop new and different practices- new and different practices of relating to ourselves and others. We need, in other words, to be able to reflect critically on the very processes of becoming a subject”. (“Practices of the self” ”Diana Taylor; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
We need to take care of ourselves and engage in the critically reflective activities through the practices of freedom- critique. Though, there is often a feeling of sacrificing something of yours, which makes the journey to ones self more agonizing.
The very understanding of one’s subjugated nature provides us with opportunity to realize that the “refill of our ball pen” can be changed, and it is our own right to choose what refill we want in it. So is with the conscious choice of truth one wants to live in accord with. One can put the new refill in only by sacrificing the old one. Though, if with the pen refill it is indeed the matter of one-go movement, it becomes different with the actual core, truth replacing when producing one’s own subjectivity. It is, again, in the process of permanent self-abnegation and old-refill sacrifice, when the new authentic subjectivity is achieved. In this case it becomes a sacrifice to the authority one consciously chooses, because the authority is one’s call for spirit. Yet, we have to remember that this sacrifice has nothing to do with a corruption of subject’s independency or autonomy, rather it is coercive measure to stop the destructive and harmful character of the relation of the self, to itself. It be means of critique there is a way to negotiate “modern relations of power that loosen the interconnection between truth and power that characterizes modern power relations and, hence, opens up possibilities for being constituted and constituting ourselves as subjects in ways that do not simply reproduce an abnegating self-relation”.
In critique, our aim is not to get outside the power, but rather navigate those relationships differently, in accord with our authentic, core- truth.
“It is an art of not being governed like that, by that, in the name of those principles, with such and such an objective in mind and by means of such procedures, not like that, not for that, not by them” (“Subjectivity and self-sacrifice” Diana Taylor; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”))
In governmentality subjugated individual moves within the reality of social practice which projected through power that adheres to its truth. In critique one has a right to question the effects of truth this kind of power produces. In governmentality, critique becomes an “art of navigating power relations”. As long as there is power-relations there will always be practices of resisting to that power. We can not escape power-relations, though we are able to create new modes of subjectivities which would resist this power by the means of critique, which retains critical to itself and therefore has a gate opened to its emancipatory potential.
To put critique (that, which counters self-sacrifice) into practice and make it work by allowing it to produce new authentic forms of self-constitution is first of all to settle with our relationships to ourselves. As Foucault puts it “thinking, speaking, and acting” in relation to “what exists, to what one knows, to what one does”14. Our attitude to ourselves and to society, to culture, etc. Critique allows us a way to relate to oneself and others according to the “new refill” one wants to subjugate to and its very condition of permanent subjugation in the condition of imposed “game of truths”. In this way we cultivate “insubordinate” character of one’s critique and one’s drive for the spirit, rather than that of self-sacrifice. In this way we cultivate our desire for “natural wondering” and refuse to the stable, immobile, untouchable, definite understanding of one’s freedom justified by the excess power of morality. It is through the refusal of “self-evident” facts (things proposed for the silent acceptance), curiosity to know and analyze “since we accomplish nothing without reflection and knowledge”14 and innovation in the sense of looking at seemingly known things and “seek out in our reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined”15– the natural wonder.
It is worth noting that in order to have an access to critique the self-sacrifice of the “old refill” is not central, for cultivation of refusal, curiosity and innovation can give us access to the true selves which is self-constitutive, ongoing and permanent in its self-sufficiency. It is thus not a liner development to a pre-established goal.
“The non-linear nature of critique as a mode of self-constitution is further supported by the practice of innovation: critique functions in such a way as to develop new, different and unexpected modes of thought and existence; it does not move toward a pre-determined, identifiable end.” (“Practices of the self” Diana Taylor; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts”)
The task is to refuse moving inwards (which is a manifestation of subjugated anxiety of fear or hatred) when asking about why one is feeling in certain way- rather than insist on moving outwards and ask, what it is about the world that made me feeling this way? The task is to include curiosity, refusal and innovation when engaging in the critique of what it is that constitutes the world around me without myself being subjugated to the domination of self-incurred power systems that always argue with my authentic drive. I should not allow doubting my own experiences and thus I should insist on excavating truths about myself, hence about the world around me. I should not make this task agonizing, (though it is agonizing in its core) for if I allow myself to be subjugated to the agony of the spiritual task, I will practice domination of power over my spirit. I should take care of myself and practice one’s freedom in accord with my own conditions of acquiring freedom.
References:
- John S. Tanner “Anxiety in Eden: A Kierkegaardian reading of paradise lost” pg. 68; 1992 Oxford University Press.
- Ed Cameron “The Ethical Paradox in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety” pg.6
- Ed Cameron “The Ethical Paradox in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety”; pg. 7 ph.4
- Jack Marsh “Hegel, Kierkegaard, and the Structure of a Spirit-full Self”
http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/marsh-self.shtml
- Karen Vintges “Freedom and spirituality” pg. 99; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts” edited by Diana Taylor; Published 2014 by Routledge
- Soren Kierkegaard “The concept of dread” https://archive.org/stream/TheConceptOfDread/TheConceptOfDread_djvu.txt
- Eduardo Mendieta “The Practice of freedom” pg.112-113; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts” edited by Diana Taylor; Published 2014 by Routledge
8/9/10/11/12 Eduardo Mendieta “The Practice of freedom” pg.112-124; Michel Foucault “Key Concepts” edited by Diana Taylor; Published 2014 by Routledge
13/14/15 Edward McGushin “Foucault’s theory and practice of subjectivity”; Cressida J.Heyes “Subjectivity and power”; Dianna Taylor “Practices of the self” in Michel Foucault “Key Concepts” edited by Diana Taylor; Published 2014 by Routledge
Other sources used:
- Patricia Huntington “Loneliness and innocence: A Kierkegaardian reflection on the paradox of self-realization”. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225614228_Loneliness_and_innocence_A_Kierkegaardian_reflection_on_the_paradox_of_self-realization
- Michel Foucault “The Subject and Power”
- Judith Butler “What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue” http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/butler/en
KatyaFJ 