File spoon-archives/foucault.archive/foucault_2002/foucault.0208, message 32


From: "Ali Rizvi" <ali_m_rizvi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Strategic Side of Foucault's thinking [2]
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 01:28:33 +0000



Thanks to Jesper, and Andrew and to all others for helpful comments.

I realised a while ago parallels in Veyne's comments with comments by 
another major contemporary influence on Foucalt. I mean Pierre Hadot. In the 
last of his writings Foucault investigates ancient texts, especially Greek 
and Roman texts. Foucault uses many new concepts derived from these 
traditions in subtle way to give new life and new vigour and new strategic 
depth to essentially modern and postmodern pursuits. One such concept is the 
concept of Philosophy as spiritual exercise, which he borrows from Pierre 
Hadot (Hadot 1987). Foucault explicates this in a famous passage from his 
The Use of Pleasure:

“. . . what is philosophy today-philosophical activity I mean-if it is not 
the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it 
consist, if not in the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be 
possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already 
known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when 
it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their 
truth is and how to find it, or when it works up a case against them in the 
language of naïve positivity. But it is entitled to explore what might be 
changed, in its own thought, through the practice of a knowledge that is 
foreign to it. The “essay”-which should be understood as the assay or test 
by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes, and not as the 
simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication-is the 
living substance of philosophy, at least if we assume that philosophy is 
still what it was in times past, i.e; an “ascesis’, askesis, an exercise of 
oneself in the activity of thought” (8-9)

Now on the face of it there is a very considerable difference between 
Foucault’s philosophy of difference and his notion of thought one the one 
hand and the notion of spiritual exercises or askesis on the other. In his 
later essay on Foucault, Hadot analyses some of the misinterpretations 
carried out by Foucault while attributing the idea of exercise of self in 
thought to ancients. Hadot specifically mentions the following misconstrual 
of Greek thought. Firstly Hadot questions Foucault’s attribution of the 
notion of the joy of “another pleasure” to Seneca or Stoics in general. The 
reason being the fact that “if the Stoics set store by the word gaudium, the 
word ‘joy’, this was precisely because they refused to introduce the 
principle of pleasure into moral life. For them happiness did not consist in 
pleasure but in virtue itself, which is seen as being its own reward” (Hadot 
1992 p. 226). Second reason Hadot gives for doubting Foucault’s 
interpretation is that according to Hadot, Foucault’s conception of self is 
quite different (and at loggerheads with) the Stoic conception of self. For 
“Stoics did not find joy in the ‘self’ but, as Seneca says, ‘in the best 
part of the self’” and ‘the ‘best part’ of the self is ultimately a 
transcendent self. Seneca does not find joy just in ‘Seneca’, but by 
transcending Seneca, by discovering that he has a reason in himself, a part 
of the universal Reason which is within all men and the cosmos itself” 
(ibid. translation amended). Now this conception of self, attributed to 
Seneca by Hadot would have been anathema to Foucault. However after 
mentioning these ‘misinterpretations’, Hadot makes the following comment, 
which sums up the issue very aptly:

“I understand Foucault’s motive in glossing over these aspects very well, 
though he was well aware of them. His description of practices of the self 
(like, moreover, my description of spiritual exercises) is not only a 
historical study; it was meant also to offer contemporary man a model of 
life (which Foucault calls the ‘aesthetic of existence’). Now, according to 
a very general tendency in modern thought-a tendency, which is perhaps 
rather more, instinctive then considered-the notions of ‘universal Reason’ 
and ‘universal Nature’ are no longer seen as having much meaning. It was 
therefore expedient to parenthesise them” (ibid. pp. 26-27,).

Hadot’s comment that it was ‘expedient to parenthesise them’ correspond to 
Veyne’s comments on about “strategic reasons (to avoid words which might 
shock . . .)” and his comments about ‘for reasons of hygiene’. Does this 
parallel cast any fresh light on Veyne's quotes?

Any other comments related to these issue are greatly appreciated.

best regards
ali

References:

Pierre Hadot (1987) Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: 
Études augustiniennes, second edition).

Pierre Hadot (1992) “Reflections on the notion of ‘the cultivation of the 
self’”, in Armstrong ed. (1992).Michel Foucault Philosopher trans. Timothy 
J. Armstrong (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf).

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