Kierkegaard and Foucault on “the subject”
Takaya SUTO
I. Introduction
Kierkegaard's saying of“truth is subjectivity”(9,157), which had a large effect on the existentialism of the likes of Sartre and Marcel, is a phrase all too well known. As can be detected in this saying, it can be said that it is a well known fact that in the history of modern thoughts, that Kierkegaard's thought, formed in the first half of the19th century through his confrontation with Hegel's thought, especially as philosophy of religion or philosophy of society, makes the subject under such concepts as “inwardness,”“individuality”and“faith” a place to exercise thoughts. In contrast to this, Foucault, who constructed his thought in the current of structuralism in the 1960s, criticized existentialism and phenomenology for placing a priori on the subject in the premise of its theory, and from the dimension of the conditions that determine arguments he again questioned himself,“how has the subject been made as the possible object of our recognition?”(4,213), and set the historical constitution of the subject as an object of his study. While one advocates the theory of human being based on Christian faith prior to structuralism, the other advocates the de-metaphysicized historical ontology after structuralism. Therefore, this may seem like an argument rather beside the point or a little forcible to compare these two thinkers who share neither the way nor the domain of thought. Such a difference between the two will become clearer, when we take a closer look at Foucault's understanding of the subject. He no longer thinks of the subject as a substance, but rather realizes it as being constructed in the process of subjectivization. As long as it is nothing but “a possibility of the organization of self-consciousness”, it never“becomes identified to itself”(4,706). It is easy to understand why Foucault's concept of the subject, which is free from identity, and that of Kierkegaard who criticizes the aesthetic human being for lacking “continuity” (1,295) form a striking contrast.
In this way we must, without any reservations, admit that this gap between these two thoughts spanning over one century is too far to bridge. But the fact that there exists a difference between the two does not mean at all that they are irrelevant to each other. On the contrary, the difference sharply felt between both often shows that there is a close and tense relation between them――like the relationship between Kierkegaard and Hegel. In relation to Foucault's interest toward Kierkegaard, as Frédéric Gros, the editor of the lecture of the late part of Foucault's life Hermeneutics of The Subject, points out,“Foucault read Kierkegaard very often. He actually never once mentioned about Kierkegaard, but Kierkegaard was for him of a secret and decisive importance”(S,25), and so exists a direct reading experience. Therefore, even if the conclusion of Kierkegaard's thought and that of Foucault's thought constructed after Kierkegaard do not correspond to each other, at least as far as their paying attention to the same theme is concerned, it is still possible to trace Kierkegaard's thought in Foucault, and to research how positive and negative evaluations were formed. Furthermore, after Kierkegaard and Foucault, we cannot help make the moving thoughts between them develop. On the problem of the subject where these two thoughts seem to rupture completely, the aim of this presentation is to show there is a place where they come to contact in a twisted way, that is, containing both continuity and discontinuity.
If we were to mention here one figure that played the most important part in offering the scene in which Kierkegaard and Foucault confront each other, it would have to be Kant. His epistemology was the first in the history of western thoughts to have cracked the metaphysical ontology based on the identity of the subject and the object. With regard to the relation between Kant and Kierkegaard, for example, as Ricour points out“the philosophical function of‘paradox’in Kierkegaard is closely parallel to that of‘limits’in Kant. One might even go so far as to say that Kierkegaard's fragmented dialectic resembles the Kantian dialectic, understood as a critique of illusion”(1), it seems then that Kantian epistemology prepared Kierkegaard to limit the system constructed by reason, and determine faith as a‘paradox’, and stress that the truth of Christianity is beyond human reason. Meanwhile Foucault also on occasions touches on Kant (4,679). While admitting the prominent originality in Kant's epistemology, Foucault criticizes his moral philosophy for not detaching itself from universality. But especially concerning the free subject which relates to itself as presented in his Critique of Practical Reason, Foucault does examine in detail and in his vision he makes much use of such subject that has its own freedom, as freedom is the most important element in his theory of the power (4,631). Foucault often rejected to be categorized as a structuralist, one reason being that, while admitting the determinative power of society to individuals, he was still searching for the ethical subject with free will that is not relatively reduced. Foucault's treatment of the historical ontology is different from that of Kant. However, Foucault also considers the condition of thinking, and has tried to secure the possibility of the free subject by making the condition of thinking clear. While Kierkegaard is a thinker who thought in a different way from Foucault, he also tried to secure the subject having free will by saying,“belief is not a knowledge but an act of freedom, an expression of will”(6,76). Therefore, we can say that these three thinkers take part in the work to construct the subject that has free will. Of course Kant cannot be the only thinker whom both Kierkegaard and Foucault paid attention to when they tried to construct the free subject. When we extract the two thinkers’ understanding of the subject, naturally we have to consider the entire history of western thoughts from the ancient times of Socrates to the Danish theology in 19th century. We will also have to go through further thoughts in order to measure the range of such understanding. But to achieve all these tasks here is impossible due to my limited knowledge at this stage on the matter and the short time allowed for this presentation. Therefore, I will treat this problem by limiting its scope, and will touch on only the different points and similar points between the two thinkers in respect to the subject that are directly clear (2).
II. The subject in Kierkegaard
Through Kierkegaard the subject and the subjectivity derived from it are used in an opposite relationship with the object and the objectivity, and they are some of the most important concepts that compose the core of his thought. He comments on the connection of Christianity as the truth with this subjectivity, “Christianity, therefore, protests against all objectivity; it wants the subject to be infinitely concerned with itself. What it asks for is subjectivity; the truth of Christianity, if it exists at all, is only in this subjectivity; within objectivity it does not exist at all”(9,108). This way to track down the truth in the opposite relationship of concepts is adopted not only in the “subjectivity/objectivity” pair but also in the pairs of “inwardness/externality” and “individuality/ universality”. The individuality and the universality are also presented in the relation where they completely refuse all mediation (6,168), and a strong opposition is also stressed for the inwardness and the exteriority. In this opposite relation Kierkegaard asserts, “this cannot be outwardly expressed, since it is indeed inwardness”(12,143), the Christian truth is determined as something that cannot be expressed by any exteriority because of its inwardness. Like these pairs of two opposite elements Kierkegaard “transforms everything into inwardness” (9,212). That is to say he stimulates his readers to direct their interest to one of the two opposite elements and not to pay attention to the other. One of the most radical features of Kierkegaard's thought lies in this way of discarding one side of a pair of opposite elements.
In this composition of his logic the objectivity is deprived of the truth, and the subject is to have relation to itself by parting with objectivity. Of course, even when granted that the truth is to be practiced by having relation to itself, according to Kierkegaard's understanding of the subject based on Christianity, “in relating oneself to its own self and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it” (15,74), God is seen as the being that gives foundation to the subject. Though the human subject does not give ground to God with his reason, the subject is thought to have a relation to itself correctly as long as it has a relation to God. However, we should not miss the fact that he stresses it is the subjectivity that supports religiosity. As he says,“religiousness lies in subjectivity, in inwardness, in being deeply moved, in being jolted, in the qualitative pressure on the spring of subjectivity”(Pap.VII-2B235,190), Kierkegaard did not grasp the subjectivity and the religiosity as being exclusive to each other, though later the phase of“subjectivity is untruth”(9,173) would emerge.
To speak more in detail about the subjectivity and the objectivity in Kierkegaard, the subject is to secure the truth of the object, when he pursues the truth standing on objectivity. Contrary to this, when he pursues the truth standing on subjectivity, he no longer pays attention to the truth of the object, but endeavours to make the way he relates himself to the truth true. In comparing“what”and“how,”Kierkegaard states,“objectively the emphasis is on what is said; subjectively the emphasis is on how it is said”(9,169). In this way Kierkegaard demands the subjectivity be held by leaving the objectivity, but this composition of logic abandoning one of the two elements in an opposite relation has the following phase. That is, the phase where the element abandoned before returns. Kierkegaard states about the final phase where the objectivity abandoned before comes back again in inwardness,“the remarkable thing is that there is a How with the characteristic that when the How is scrupulously rendered the What is also given, that this is the How of ‘faith.’ Here, at its extremity, inwardness is shown to be objectivity. And this, then, is a turning of the subjectivity-principle”(Pap. X-2A299). Though it is true that Kierkegaard's thought has the radical feature where he concentrates in the subjectivity by abandoning one of two opposite elements, the subject is the subject that has relation to oneself in the relation to the God that is beyond his reason, there is the logic that the element abandoned comes back again in the way unknown to the subject.
In this respect, in Kierkegaard the subject devotes itself to self-relation, but in demanding self-relation he aims to reform the subject himself. He thinks that each subject owes“the task of its own development”(Pap.VIII-2B81,149). What he intends here is to criticize the situation where only the object is recognised, and the reform of the subject is forgotten. The nature of the truth recognition involves“appropriation, inwardness, and subjectivity”(9,160), and it is important not only to recognise the object but also to make the subject that practices the truth. In his later years, Foucault tried to construct the ethical subject not standing on universality, and pursued “aesthetics of existence”, the possibility of the subject formed by the subject itself. At the same time Kierkegaard also states that“in Greece a thinker was not a stunted existing person who produced works of art, he himself was an existing work of art”(10,11), by following the example of the ancient, he aims to reform the subject through the subject itself. Of course Kierkegaard's subject is different from Foucault's aesthetic-ethical subject that is engaged in the historical recognition and relates to itself by abandoning the universality, it is the ethical-religious subject that has relation to God by relating to itself as formulated “the human self is such a derived, established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another”(15,73). The final form of the subject that Kierkegaard considers as the outcome of the Christian form of self-reform is the subject that imitates Christ. This imitation is not one of metaphor nature, but is intended to indicate, “that your life has as much similarity to his as is possible for human life to have” (16,107). The subject in Kierkegaard, by examining the possibility of self-love in the inwardness of itself, gradually transforms into the subject that practices Christian love of one’s neighbour. Kierkegaard's severe self examination and advancement up to high ideality leads to strained and conflicting relation with the rest of the world, as he says, ”you must die from your selfishness, or from the world, because it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you; if you die from your selfishness, you also die from the world” (17,115). According to Kierkegaard's understanding that positions the individuality and the universality or the subjectivity and the objectivity oppositely, the truth of Christianity is transcendent and never coincides with the immanent truth of this world. Therefore, those who imitate Christ are then to train themselves under the same poverty as Christ in our society.
III. The subject in Foucault
The fact that Foucault ceased to consider the subject as substance and with his own method adopted “genealogy” that analyses how the subject has been constituted in history has already been stated above. In this section we shall examine the content of Foucault’s genealogy more closely. Before we begin, we have to realize that Foucault provides his genealogy with three spheres (4,618). The first one is “the historical ontology of ourselves in our relation to the truth”. Here, the relation between the subject and the truth act as the thematic subject. That is to say, how we have constituted ourselves as the subject of knowledge in history is analysed. The second one is “the historical ontology of ourselves in our relation to the power scene,” and the thematic subject here is the relation between the subject and power. This signifies how we have constituted ourselves in history as the subject that approaches other people. And the third one is “the historical ontology of our relation to the moral”. The thematic subject given here is the relation of the subject to its own self that takes on the former two parts (4,718). It means how in history we have constituted ourselves. Following this organization of genealogy by Foucault, I will give an outline of how he developed his thought on the subject.
One of the most important arguments Foucault presented on the relation between the subject and the truth is the comparison between “philosophy” and “spirituality”. Philosophy is defined by Foucault as “a form of thinking that pursues what makes the subject approach the truth” (S,16), and spirituality is on the other hand defined as “the research, practice and experience by which the subject gives itself the transformations necessary to access the truth” (S,16). These two methods adopt different stances on the relation between the subject and the truth. That is to say, spirituality thinks that the reform of the subject is needed at first to reach the truth, while philosophy does not agree with this. According to Foucault, in modern era following Descartes it became common thought that it is the truth that is recognized by the subject with a philosophical judging ability, and the spirituality that thinks about and carries out the necessary reform of the subject disappears. Regarding this change of relation between the subject and the truth Foucault states, “it is evident that the recognition of the Descartesian type cannot be defined as the access to the truth, rather, it is the recognition of a domain of objects. However, here, if you may, the notion of recognition of the object substitutes for the notion of access to the truth. I will try to locate here the big change which is very essential to understand what philosophy is, what the truth is and what the relation of the self to the truth is” (S,184). In Descartes a big shift occurred in the way the subject relates to the truth, which changed from the reform of the subject that reaches the truth to the recognition of the object by the subject with judging ability. Foucault says the truth recognized by philosophy in modern era does not give salvation to the subject (S,20). In opposition to this form taken by the subject in the modern era Foucault refers to the example of the stoics and presents “subjectivization of true discourses” (S,317). Foucault never, of course, denied the act of recognition as radically as Kierkegaard did, but we can see a similar interest both in Foucault and in Kierkegaard(3). Kierkegaard has questioned his deed since his youth, saying “that's what I lacked for leading a completely human life and not just a life of knowledge” (Pap.IA75,54-5), and from the standpoint of his characteristic Christian theory of forming the subject he criticises that the speculative philosophy only devotes itself to the recognition of the world by forgetting the forming of the subject. Furthermore, Foucault distinguished the recognition from the practice and analysed the historical change of the relation between the subject and the truth.
This relation with the truth is placed in the second sphere, that is, the power relation. According to Foucault, the power is no more a substance than the subject is. The power relations are not only fixed relations where one side continues to dominate the other, but are also to be looked upon as a “strategic game between the freedoms”. In other words, it is the “strategical games in which one tries to determine the conduct of the others and the others respond to this by trying not to make the opponent determine their conduct, or in reverse by tring to determine the opponent's conduct” (4,728). Such power relations can happen as long as the subject is free in relation to the others, thus power is instead one of the elements that compose the subject (4,785). With this understanding of the power Foucault discovers the Christian “pastoral power”(4,229) and the subject that is subjected to this power (4,223). Pastoral power first took the form as pastoral’s power over livestock practiced by the Hebrews, which was later on adopted by western culture in Christianity and further developed. Pastoral power is not a form of power simply imposing orders; rather, it works under the precondition that “individual attention is paid to each member of the herd” (4,139). By taking care of each member and promising each individual salvation in the next world it is viable to gain control of each individual from the inwardness. The subject accepts identity and conscience by subjecting itself in individuality. In this way Christianity imposes the “interpretation of self” (S,245) as a duty on the individuals, and demands the “renouncement of self”(S,241). Such understanding of Christianity by Foucault manifests the accordance with Kierkegaard's thought that stresses the individuality and renouncement of the self, even when the ways to approach the problem are different between them.
While we have seen the sphere of knowledge and the sphere of the power where the subject functions, it is the third sphere, namely the sphere of subjectivity, where the subject functioning in these two spheres relates to itself. Regarding Foucault’s thought, Deleuze states in his book that “Foucault's fundamental thought is the dimension of the subject that derives from power and knowledge, but does not depend on them”(4). But as correctly pointed out here, while the subject in Foucault is understood in the context of close and undivided relation with the knowledge and the power. But is thought to have independence that can not be reduced to the knowledge and the power by relating to itself. Meanwhile, the subject of self-relation connects itself to others in “governmentality”. Foucault says, “governmentality implies the relation of the self to itself. By this notion of governmentality I will show all the practices by which one can constitute, define and organise the strategies and make it instrumental. The individuals can have strategies toward other people in their freedom. It is the free individuals that try to control, determine and limit the freedom of the others. To do this they use several instruments to govern the others. Therefore, it depends on the relation of the self to itself and the relation to the others” (4,728). Indeed, there is a big difference between Foucault's theory of the subject that tries to positively govern the others and that of Kierkegaard, which on the contrary avoids the domination the others as much as possible. Foucault's ethical subject based on the knowledge and the power aims to open several possibilities of the practice of “regulation of desire” (S,405), and is different from the Christian model of Kierkegaard that aims to reform the subject towards one particular truth, such as the renouncing of desires and the power. Nevertheless, Foucault was pursuing new forms of the subject that relates itself to its own self, just the same as Kierkegaard. It is my finding that Foucault's theory that presents the subject relating to itself remaining in interrelation with others can reconstruct Kierkegaard's paradoxical subject that takes the form of Christian love of one’s neighbour, by showing how the subject functions in each particular society that has its own paradigm.
IV. Conclusion
We have so far verified that both continuity and discontinuity coexist between these two thoughts in several topics on the subject. In approaching the religious problem especially of Christianity, there lies a difference, or a reverse relationship between Kierkegaard who thinks in the inwardness of the individual and Foucault who constantly thinks about it in a relationship with society and history, namely that they may share the same boundary within which they are situated but occupy different spaces in their relation to each other. But as soon as we shift our focus to the self-practice by the ethical subject that is determinative mutually with the former religious sphere, there we see in many ways the agreement between them. I will conclude this presentation with a brief discussion on how we can approach these two thoughts that simultaneously embrace both continuity and discontinuity.
As already mentioned, it was always the examination of the inwardness of the self by the subject in reference to the truth of Christianity that led Kierkegaard's thought. This certainly does not imply that Kierkegaard was blind to the problems of the other people, the society and history. Even if the imitation of Christ of poverty seems for “human criteria” (13,274) to be perverse, it was intended by Kierkegaard to realize the ethics of Christian love of one’s neighbour, and in addition to this he constructed his characteristic view of history by gathering materials of ancient philosophy, western thoughts in modern era and Christian theology. But when we compare this with Foucault's work of historical analysis, we realize that Kierkegaard did not continue to consider history and society expecting that he might get the materials that could help develop his thought of the subject, on the ground that his thought lacked the analysis to separately consider the historical conditions of some form of thought. As he states, “when the subject is done with this task, then the turn for world history to appear shall come”(9,147), Kierkegaard assigned more efforts to the subjective practice of the truth by way of accepting his partiality as his finiteness, rather than as an analysis of the history in which he himself existed. After Kant, during the first half of the 19th century, when it was already gradually becoming difficult for the human subject to give foundation to the Christian truth, Kierkegaard gave up giving basis to the faith, and tried to practice it as the transcendental truth that is demanded by the individual. Even considering that there had definitely been many twists and turns in the process of his thinking about the possibility to give basis, if we were to speak only about the ideal form of the subject, we can say that Kierkegaard did not have expectation to forms other than that of the imitation of Christ. When we think in this way, we may then consider Foucault as a thinker of the relativism that reduces the truth to society and history, and places it opposite Kierkegaard, but the relation between them does not only remain one of opposing nature. Without doubt, Foucault might find the lack of understanding about historical changeability in Kierkegaard's composition of the problem by using such terms as “transcendence” and “absoluteness.” However, it is also fact that, with the expectation that the ethical subject practices concretely beyond universality in relation to the others by relating to itself, Foucault read with great interest Kierkegaard's intense ethics of individuality that is contained in the imitation of Christ of poverty. Consequently, we should not regard Foucault as Kierkegaard's opponent, but as Kierkegaard's successor. Surely in a sense Foucault criticises Kierkegaard's subject that tries to secure its identity, but this criticism should be understood as the outcome from succeeding and reconstructing Kierkegaard's aim. The reception of and criticism on Kierkegaard's thought by Foucault make us confront the problem of the relation between eternity and temporality, and the relation between externality and internality of the truth. It is certain that Kierkegaard never isolated eternity and temporality, but as we can see in his theory of poverty, his understood them having an intense opposite relation, and stops short of contemplating in the way of connecting them paradoxically in this paradigm. On the other hand Foucault says, “political, ethical, social and philosophical problems that happen to us today do not try to liberate individuals from the nation and its institutions, but to liberate themselves from the nation and the type of individualization that adhere to it. We have to propel the new forms of the subjectivity by refusing this type of individuality that has been imposed on us for several centuries” (4,232). Where Kierkegaard found the problem of ethics impossible to solve and thus converted it to faith, Foucault showed his analysis of the condition that ethics can function in society and history. Through this work he prudently tried to realize the condition of possible concrete ethical deeds without rupturing the relation between the individual and the society or the truth and the reality. Foucault did not grasp the relation between two elements as being opposite nature, rather, he found a complicity relation between them, and without having relation to internality by risking every thing on externality, showed new possibilities in the historical present by firmly constituting the “problematization” (4,612) and “governmenmentality” concepts.
There is a possibility that Kierkegaard's thought and Foucault's thought might come into contact on the subject from what we have looked at so far. However, there are still loose ends regarding detailed consideration of the possibility and there also remain many points to be further scrutinised. For the conclusion, to show prospects on this matter, we can say that the discontinuity between these two thoughts is not a problem waiting to be solved by some particular rationality, but that it may be the clues shown to us to understand the conditions that determine our thinking in the present. While reading between Kierkegaard and Foucault, we encounter the aporia in the intertwined relation where continuity and discontinuity coexist. This is the aporia that the subject in the 21st century will inevitably have to face. It is not necessary, however, that this aporia would function negatively when we construct relationship with other people. This is because that on the one hand the aporia prevents the subject from meeting in identity for certain, but at the same time it makes it possible for the subject to relate itself to the others with freedom. It is my opinion that if we make our way deep into the aporia between these two thinkers, we can then see the aporia between them and us, and by doing so, the possible forms of the subject in the 21st century may be illuminated and become more visible. In this respect, it is therefore my aim to further deepen my understanding of these two.
Notes
Quotations from works of Kierkegaard and Foucault in this paper are shown by volume number, abbreviation and page number.
Søren KIERKEGAARD
volume number: Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, udg. af A B Drachmann, the J L Heiberg og H O. Lange, (København and Gyldendal, 1964).
Pap: Søren Kierkegaards Papier, udg. af P. A Heiberg, the V. Kuhr og E Torsting, 2. udg. ved Niels Thulstrup, (København and Gyldendal, 1968 - 78).
Michel FOUCAULT
volume number: Dits et écrits, 1954-1988, édition établie sous la direction de Daniel Defert et François Ewald ; avec la collaboration de Jacques Lagrange, (Paris, Gallimard, 1994).
S: L'herméneutique du sujet : cours au Collège de France (1981-1982) , édition établie sous la direction de François Ewald et Alessandro Fontana, par Frédéric Gros, (Paris, Gallimard, 2001).
(1) Paul Ricoeur,“Philosophy after Kierkegaard”, in: Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. by Jonathan Ree and Jane Chamberlain, (Oxford, Blackwell, 1998), p.16.
(2) For example, about this Flynn states,“In fact, Kierkegaard's‘subjectivity’like his‘truth’is moral rather than metaphysical and, to that extent, resembles Foucault's concepts”(Thomas Flynn,“Foucault as Parrhesiast: His Last Course at the Collège de France”, in: The Final Foucault, ed. by James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988), p.118). His study shows the possibility to compare Kierkegaard and Foucault in arguments out of metaphysics, and has been a useful source in my research.
(3) Kierkegaard states about self relation,“The ethical individual knows himself, but this knowing is not simply contemplation, for then the individual comes to be defined according to his necessity. It is a collecting of oneself, which itself is an action, and this is why I have with aforethought used the expression‘to choose oneself’instead of‘to know oneself’”(3,239). It is not that of recognition, but that of practice.
(4) Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, (Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1986), p.108-9.
Éditions de Minuit, 1986), p.108-9.