Michel Foucault’s philosophical conception
For this work we choose the French author Michel Foucault. We consider that he has a particular vision of philosophy that we will try to capture here. This philosopher, professor, historian of ideas and psychologist, who taught countless courses on the history of thought systems in the Collège of France for almost 14 years until his death in 1984. Known mainly as structuralist, he moves away from that approach and even rejects the post -structuralist and postmodern labels attributed by other contemporary thinkers. Once it separates from that line of research, it begins to develop its own that will have three great moments: the archaeological, which passes between 1960 and 1969, where the subject is the object of study; the genealogical that covers the seventies and the center is defined by devices and power; And finally the ethical, from the eighties, focused on practices and self-care, being even due to his early death.
The French philosopher has a huge debt to Friedrich Nietzsche, who turned out to be the philosophical guide in the early studdles and even influenced the method he would adopt for several years: the genealogical. It is also important to highlight that in the last period of his life Foucault will develop his philosophical mink through ethics and self-care, clearly influenced by ancient thinkers, including Socrates and Marco Aurelio.
First of all, we must bear in mind that Foucaultian theory develops its ideas through a universe of concepts that are extremely linked to each other and reiterate throughout their entire work. For this reason we consider it necessary to clarify some fundamental concepts of the author .
First, we will start from the concept of power since it occupies a place of privilege within the French philosopher theory. It is here that we find a completely different conception from that of his time, since Foucault does not take this concept as something that is located at the top of the social pyramid forming the superstructure, exercising power vertically. Here power is omnipresent and is found in each relationship of the social body, from which it is established between the government and its inhabitants to marriage or sexual relationship, demonstrating that this is not only the property of the State and the most powerful groups, It is also exercised in groups and organizations, family ties and intimate ties, where it is often more difficult to identify.
Power is found in man himself, it is not something external that oppresses or enslaves, and is not necessarily seen as something intrinsically good or bad. Power is not possessed, but is exercised and is in that exercise that is transformed. Foucault postula. Ultimately, the need to "normalize" the members of the social body. In the truth and legal forms the author raises the following: “Social practices can engender domains of knowing that they not only make new objects, concepts and techniques appear, but also to be born totally new forms of subjects and subjects of knowledge" .
The concept of speech is intimately related to that of power and knowing. The author establishes a precise space of discursive production within the framework of the speech itself. Speeches are the emergency places for concepts and statements, endowed with materiality and possibility of permanent transformation. Then, speeches are a consequence of certain conditions of possibility, understanding in this way that they depend on certain social practices. We could say that each era "produces", in some way, all discourse (including philosophical discourse), everything that can be said or not, establishing systems of ideas where it is delimited what deserves to be known and what can be thought and What not.
For Foucault the body as a concept, it is the one that officiates of text so that social reality is written in it. In this way, social relations are trained in terms of historical construction would be consecrated in this way. This is how it is stated:
The human body is, as we know, a production force, but the body does not exist as is a biological article or as a material. The human body exists in and through a political system. Political power provides some space to the individual: a space to behave, where to adopt a particular position, sit in a certain way or work continuously .
The discipline is also very important in Foucaultian theory, especially in his work to monitor and punish, where the author analyzes it through the confinement institutions, more specifically the prison (remember that for Foucault the school, the factory and the institutions state are also places of confinement). Therefore, in these institutions we seek to develop bodies, minds and highly disciplined subjectivities, in order to generate high levels of productivity, concentration and acceptance of the regulations and methodical thinking required by Western societies, both in their capitalist and socialist versions. In this way the subject itself is transformed into a disciplined and disciplinary body of others, where all that "deviant" of the norm must be eradicated from the system, thus generating the "normalizing action".
Finally, we have the concept of Panoptic. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in the 18. In this way there was the possibility of permanently monitoring, which would develop self-control and discipline in presidiaries. Foucault takes up that concept and uses it to think about the surveillance devices present in all types of institutions, where through it the subjects become “docile bodies”, susceptible to control over itself and on others.
Once these concepts are defined that are rooted with each other, we can enter their relationships and the importance they have to understand that philosophy for the author is effectively. Foucault focuses on the analysis of the ways in which the subject is trapped by the control and dependence of the other, as constituted and crossed by certain and certain forms of power and knowledge. It is no longer a subject-object of knowledge of a certain object of discourse, but a subject that emerges from the framework of discursive and non-discursive practices (a microphysics) created, authorized and inflicted in the body of the subject itself:
The conditions for an object of discourse to arise, the historical conditions so that something can be said of him ‘, and so that several people can say different things, the conditions to enroll in a kinship domain with other objects , so that you can establish with them relationships of similarity, neighborhood, estrangement, difference, transformation, these conditions, as seen, are numerous and of importance. Which means that you cannot speak at any time of anything.
Foucault will propose that knowledge and power do not run through separate paths, but are feedback, support and sustain each. As a result of this intimate and close relationship, the discourse, piece and fundamental mechanism within the strategic game in which power is involved with knowledge and thanks to which it works. The author says about it:
It must be admitted that power and knowledge are directly involved in each other; that there is no power relationship without a correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, or knowing that it does not suppose and at the same time constitute power relations. It is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that would produce a knowledge, useful or reluctant to power, but that power-to-know, the processes and struggles that pass it and that constitute it, are those that determine the forms, as well as the Possible knowledge domains.
Within the author’s theory it is undeniable that knowledge (or knowledge) and power are intimately related and need each other. With this vision of genealogy, Foucault emphasizes the discourse of each knowledge, including the philosophical. This has a will to domination, it is not an abstract eduad, it is sought by its use, it is powerful and unstable. Hence the author one to knowledge with power, since the will of truth is a version disguised as the will to power . Then the power is and lies in social relations, although individuals exercise power as a form of domination and coercion, it is also involved in the production and use and management of knowledge, knowledge and speeches. The changes and negotiations of power create the spaces where speeches may appear, therefore, all knowledge and theory is contingent. Consequently, the delimitation between truth and falsehood within these knowledge is also .
Foucault raises a criticism of the notion of absolute truth. Some authors have pointed out that he raises a relativism of truth and morals, or even an absence of them. In this line appears the linguist Noam Chomsky, where in the famous debate of 1971 with the French author, he suggests these issues. We understand Chomsky’s point of view, which states that, by doubting a concept of universal and absolute truth, we would also be doubting the concept of morality. However, we do not believe that Foucault raises exactly that. The theorist discusses the relativity that can have the truth, in that it is true of a certain reality, which is accepted while satisfying the requirements of power and the speeches of the society in which they are immersed. This does not mean that it eradicates truth or morality, simply deconstructs reality in order to investigate whether or not the truth is a discourse and a certain type of knowledge that develops within a society linked to power and discourse allowed for her. But at no time he denies the truth, on the contrary, he tries to seek it in his writings through the analysis of power, knowledge and speeches that integrate knowledge.
In this discussion he raises on "the real" and "the true", the center of his philosophy and what he understands as such. Many times he has asked him how he has changed his opinion or an opinion throughout his writings, even reviewing his own theory and criticizing himself. This responds to the fact that there are many moments when it becomes necessary and essential to think differently to continue thinking, it is essential, since a philosopher spends his life studying, looking at reality, investigating, and needs that new thought to continue creating. In short, philosophy is what helps that eternal questioning, does not keep the first answers about reality or truth, but continues to investigate: that is the function of philosopher and philosophy.
So is Foucault philosophy a lifestyle? Somehow we could say yes. Knowledge and cooking help and stimulate the practice of freedom closely related to the postulate of philosophy as a way of life. Here we see the influences of the Greek and Roman thinkers, where the care of itself occupied a fundamental place and philosophy was the right way to carry it out: remember the "Know yourself" Socratic, that philosophical lifestyle where knowledge and knowing ignorant was the beginning to achieve good, truth and virtue. Foucault takes up this idea by showing how philosophy can be the way for an ethic of care and others, understanding that during modernity there is a change with respect to ancient assumptions:
For Foucault Cartesianism is responsible for confusing concern with spirituality as a search for truth, a truth that moves away from the concern of itself. In this sense, "the subject is really capable, but that truth is not able to save it". Historically, although Socrates links the care of himself with his restlessness, the modern philosophical tradition separates them. Thus, he knows yourself is not a concern as a question about being, but becomes modernity into a concern for knowledge, in which the being from doing is separated. In the Middle Ages with the foundation of universities, philosophy transforms into the appropriation of content and moves away from that ancient perception as a way of life.
Foucault’s criticism of Cartesianism shows us how French, in the final period of his life and reviewing all his theory (exercise and examining his conscience), he concludes that, to lead an ethical life And free, it is necessary to follow the path of philosophy. Already in the last year of him he conducts an interview on January 20, 1984 entitled the ethics of self-care as the practice of freedom in which he maintains:
The care of itself has been, in the Greco-Roman world, the way in which individual freedom-or civic freedom, to some extent-has reflected as ethics. If you consider a whole series of texts that range from the first Platonic dialogues to the great texts of late stoicism -epictet, Marco Aurelio … -will see that this issue of self-care has truly crossed all moral reflection.
Foucault recovers a meaning that is strongly connected to freedom and critical reflection on how to treat ourselves not as what we are, but as what we want to be. In this way his work approached his ideal of life: becoming what he really is, to be able to say what is really thought, elaborate a speech that responds to the truth and not to the power and concept of knowing of a certain era. He himself questions how he can do it, and he proposes to do philosophy from practice, from life itself, since for the author the theory without practice makes no sense, since the speeches can change with societies, just like knowledge and the different knowledge. The author himself was able to put aside the fears and uncertainties of him and dared to demonstrate, he began to import not only who speaks or that, but how that experience is lived, how he is doing.
From here his philosophy became. This opened a door, or a window, to ethics and care and knowledge of itself and others and that way of proceeding from the perspective of itself to recover the present as philosophical occurrence: as a philosophical doing consisted of it that makes us present and we present ourselves in him.
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