Michel Foucault and the question of “What is Enlightenment?”

1. Michel Foucault and the question of “What is Enlightenment?” “The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be considered an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them” Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” 50

2. Foucault and Kant: Part I • Foucault interprets Kant as suggesting that the process of enlightenment—the move from self-imposed tutelage of immaturity—as a “way out” (34). • A ‘way out’ from what, however? • For Foucault, the call to make use of one’s own reason—Sapere Aude—is to subject the present to critique, a possible ‘way out’ of the present.

3. Foucault and ‘modernity’ • What is ‘modernity’? • For Foucault, modernity is neither a period nor an achieved state. • Here think about the process of enlightenment, can it be accomplished once and for all? • For Foucault, ‘modernity’ consists in an attitude marked by Kant’s critical attitude of using one’s own reason (38).

4. Foucault and ‘modernity’ • “The attitude of modernity does not treat the passing moment as sacred in order to maintain or perpetuate it. … For the attitude of modernity, the high value of the present is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it … otherwise than it is, and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is” (40-41).

5. Foucault and ‘modernity’ • Individuals adopt a certain relation to the present: We see ourselves as both belonging to the present as well as the possibility of departing from it. • The relation that one adopts to the present the pays attention to the present but also confronts it with a practice which “simultaneously respects … and violates” the present (41). • This practice is an expression of our autonomy.

6. Foucault and ‘modernity’ • For Foucault, the critical attitude commits us to critically engage history. • Our relation to history, to social reality, is always one of “complex difficult elaboration” (41). • Social reality for us is not established once-and-for-all; the present—who we are, what we are—is always in flux. • We are constantly working on social reality, possibly making it anew, including ourselves.

7. Implications of the attitude to modernity • A possible objection to Foucault: since you are criticizing modernity, aren’t you committed to rejecting all that is modernity? Either one is for modernity or one is against it, according to this objection. • Foucault calls this objection the Blackmail of Enlightenment • He rejects the dichotomy of either you are for or against modernity because it is a false dichotomy. Why?

8. Foucault & the ‘blackmail of enlightenment’ • Foucault diagnoses the motivation behind the blackmail of enlightenment is the false identification of enlightenment with an endorsement of ‘humanism’ • ‘Humanism’ is a vague term, trying to capture many themes under one description. • For Foucault, these themes should be separated to yield different varieties of humanisms (44).

9. Foucault & the ‘blackmail of enlightenment’ • Not all of the varieties of humanisms are worthy of endorsement, e.g. Nazism billed itself as a humanism. • For Foucault, we should engage the different humanist themes critically, to oppose them “by the principle of a critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy” (44). • Foucault calls the exercise of “a permanent creation of ourselves in our autonomy” a project of critical ontology

10. Foucault and Kant: Part II • Unlike Kant’s goal for critique, the task of critical ontology does not aim at a philosophical system. • The task for critical ontology “is not that of making a metaphysics possible. … [It] will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action. … [It] will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are, do or think” (46).

11. Critical Ontology • Foucault’s project is not theoretical, but practical. • It is directed to potentially problematic areas of what we do and think, in general who we are. • We need to honour the present yet at the same time seek out where change is both possible and desirable and to determine the form of this possible change • The changes are experimental. Why ‘experimental’?

12. Critical Ontology • We are not all-knowing; we aren’t omniscient. • We can’t assume a position which can grasp the problematic areas all at once and offer solutions to them for all eternity (47). • Changes have to be provisional and targeted at specific issues. • However, local and provisional do not mean that we do not pay attention to possible complications from wider concerns.

13. Critical Ontology • Indeed, Foucault invites us to reflect on the dangers with those proposals who have claimed to offer a solution to all our ills (46). • Foucault favours the concrete results achieved by, for example, women’s and gay liberation. • These examples are ongoing processes for there is still much to be done.

14. Critical Ontology • Objection: “If we limit ourselves to this type of always partial and local … test, do we not turn the task of letting ourselves be determined by more general structures of which we may well not be conscious, and over which we may have no control” (47). • Response: this objection is based on the claim that we have assess to knowledge of such general structures; it is based on us being all-knowing

15. Critical Ontology • For Foucault, the fact that we are not omniscient does not mean that change is impossible. • For him, one of the more pressing areas for change is the effects of modern power relations. • Recall modern power in contrast to sovereign power is not top-down but is deeply connected to knowledge of ourselves at a variety of levels, as individuals and as a population

16. Critical Ontology • For Foucault, such knowledge increase our capacities to make achievements but it comes with constraints of being more and more directed by power relations • Examples • The aim is to disentangle the growth of capabilities from the intensification of power relations (47).

17. Critical Ontology • These investigations and tests are not assumed to be for all times. Hence, “the critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be considered an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them” (50).

18. Foucault and critical theory • How is critical ontology different from the emancipatory projects of Marcuse or Habermas?