Analysis Of Michel Foucault's and Immanuel Kant's Viewpoint of Enlightenment
The present essay has the objective of interpreting two differing positions on the Enlightenment: I will stride to find similarities and discrepancies between Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault, taking as key point their homonymous essays What is Enlightenment? To do so, I will point out the author’s main ideas in each of their texts; later on, I will quote discrepancies and similarities between both philosophers. Similarly, I will refer to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau because — as I will demonstrate during the development of this essay — his work on the matter sets arguments in a middle ground between the previously cited philosophers. Also, this essay will focus on the arguments of Kant and Foucault, and furthermore serve as a critique of the Enlightened epoch. My assertion is that during this age of understanding, rational methods of inequality were formed, and therefore created social struggles and inequalities that are still of philosophical relevance in the Contemporary period. Further support for this claim will come from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Michel Foucault.
Firstly, why this particular period of time? The Enlightenment represents a turning point in human history and thought, where a general optimism surrounded mankind’s potential achievements: «Progress is the triumph over superstition and over the church, over fanaticism and colonial exploitation, over slavery and [. . . ] over despotism». Generally speaking, it comprises the XVII and XVIII century of Western civilization, and characteristics of this period include the progression of mathematics and the organization of a scientific method, new political thought and the rise of a particular social class — the Bourgeoisie — that craved to break with the old, authoritarian monarchical regime. In doing so, almost all Enlightened thought had a «political interest that led the men of this same Enlightenment to advance the first modern theories of such influential political doctrines as government by law, the separation of powers, popular sovereignty, the “night-watchman” state, and “welfare state”». That is, a rational justification was created in order to counteract traditional, one- sided exercise of power that was lessening the Bourgeoisie’s political and economic aspirations. Considering the way the scientific method shaped Modern thinkers ideas, they saw fit to describe under these standards most of humanity’s civilizing processes. Within their descriptions, the starting point of human organization is based on progress, that is, subsequent transformations will define this notion as a primary rule of human development. Progress differentiates the Modern period from past epochs, which were not as developed (urbanized, industrialized and rational) as the Enlightened people. Philosophers like Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws), Marquis de Condorcet (Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Spirit), Hobbes (Leviathan; although from a previous age, it did not hinder its influence during Modern times), Voltaire (Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations), and of course Rousseau, illustrated the qualities of social organization, and therefore, of political structure. Within these organizations, they define habits, social structures, virtues, passions and customs that will take mankind to reach its height.
Furthermore, economic development and democracy (self-administration and self-government) were some of the fundamental elements Western countries such as the then newly-formed United States and France aspired to achieve. Democracy — as this era defined it — was «the sovereignty of the people and the destruction of an ancient regime [Absolutism] founded on inheritance, divine right and privilege». Given that this form of government would require a degree of participation, regulation and vigilance, the social contract gained importance as a social bond created by the bourgeois political order, primarily as a binding tool that would maintain its interests. Thus, during the Enlightenment concepts like democracy and freedom differed from what they mean during the Renaissance or the Classical period. Moreover, the concept of popular sovereignty is fundamental within an enlightened State, in which popular representation is chosen by suffrage. In addition, they advocated for freedom of association, freedom of speech and freedom to choose one’s labour.
Secondly, I consider the enlightened period to be one of cardinal significance for contemporary society. During this period, Man’s rationality should prevail over all other of his qualities. The appliance of reason in several aspects of human life could not be valid without generating a certain degree of inequality. As I will continue to explain, Michel Foucault tried to refute some of the main principles of the Enlightenment that Kant stands for, and in doing so he emphasizes the shortcomings that he was able to analyze with the benefit of hindsight. Without undermining other aspects of the Enlightenment, this essay will predominantly focus on political thought, canons and structures that this period produced. Similarly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote shortly before the success and mostly general acceptance of Moderns paradigms. Yet he maintains a vigilant and critical position of the changes around him, and the manner those changes are moulding Western civilization. Both Rousseau and Foucault constructed plausible claims about the Age of Enlightenment because they wrote about issues that were happening during their particular lifetimes. As such, the limitations and failures of the Modern project as the comments made on them are quite current because they continue to respond to socio-political realities of great inequality, vigilance, oppression and discrimination.
Immanuel Kant is one of they key figures of German Enlightenment and Western philosophy in general. Although his work is quite extensive and focused on other philosophical topics, his What is Enlightenment? deserves special attention because this essay is paramount for delimiting the ethos of this period, specifically when the author calls out “the impossibility [of individuals] to serve of their own intelligence without the guidance of another”. For Kant, this accentuates what humanity needs to accomplish to serve from its own reason and not be dependant of tutors that hold back their own development. On the other hand, his Idea of a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose acknowledges to a certain point Nature’s importance as a giver of reason to mankind, as well as modeller of human — rational after all — capacities to thrive in the world and search for his own wellbeing, particular characteristics that were also a focus of Rousseau’s writings. For Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment represents a liberating representation of what the individual can and is able to achieve.
Now, Michel Foucault's relevance is because in his interpretation, he identified that during the Classical period excluding discourses were formed, as well as dominant structures that remain until present day. If Kant described in his essay that the Enlightenment was an era in which prowess would lead to freedom and progress, how where those governing structures possible or justified? For Foucault, more than defined an era, What is The Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant served as basis to question this particular period, as well as the queries that it intended to resolve. For example, Michel Foucault claimed that this epoch «is defined by a modification of the pre-existing relation that ties will, authority and the use of reason. »6 That is, the individual that dares to do or think independently emerges as a turning point in the history of humanity. However, a certain immaturity must be overcome, which is «a state of our will that makes us accept someone else's will to guide us in areas in which the use of reason is mandatory».
Can this immaturity be overcome if during this period new forms of tutelage, surveillance and punishment appeared? In “The Great Confinement” of Madness and Civilization, Foucault argued that the Classical era conceived legal institutions that used to congregate the different (generally the displaced and mentally-ill); social norms that differentiated and set aside to establish «a world of neutral and uniform exclusion» that was operated by hospitals, asylums and prisons. Also, the role of hospital director not only had straightforward control on the lives of the detained, but his figure rose to a considerable level of omnipotence inside the institutions he governed9. Under these given circumstances, can an individual truly be free?
Returning to Immanuel Kant’s writings, it would be interesting to see what he would have to say of these new forms of tutelage; with attention on his assertion on liberty, it would be plausible to argue he would not have been in complete disagreement with these systems of exclusion, to a certain extent; for Kant the use of reason must be classified in a private and public use: «public use of their reason should be allowed to everyone and this is the only thing that can enlighten men; his private use should be often limited […] and by no means this should slow down the Enlightenment». Generally speaking, a person's role in society will define how much he or she can question: a government official should obey, whilst a schoolteacher might reason freely and exhort others to do so. In like manner, Kant is very conscientious in the manner in which both uses of reason should not interfere with or contradict the role a person plays. Secondly, Kant does not make a case for an absolute freedom or reasoning, although a necessary obedience is mandatory if it leads to a common good: «reason all you want and about what you want, but obey!» Similarly, the limits of reason must not promote a resistance of duty and, if possible, if an individual wishes to provoke change in some organisation he or she finds deficient, he or she must stay in said structure until the use of public reason has spread and made the defect well known. It is interesting to note that Kant does not challenge the creation of or obedience to institutions of his time, however he does bear an always-cautious manner of improvement.
While Kant does not defend an absolute freedom of reason, he does emphasize an individual regulation of freedom to reason, one where the individual decides which use of reason is more appropriate; a decision made by the individual itself and not biased by any external factors — like a mentor figure. Michel Foucault concurs with this argument, on the grounds that he quoted the Enlightenment as an attitude, as a «manner to relate with contemporary reality; a voluntary decision taken by a few people; in the end, a manner of feeling and thinking […]». The Enlightened attitude is defined by the determination taken based through reasoning. Kant stated: «because when Nature has managed to develop […] the inclination and task of Man's free thinking, the fact resonates gently in the rest of the community (who grows more and more capable of accomplishing freely)». In this sense, Foucault labelled device of obligation the dominant discourse that is exercised by individuals themselves: the dominant discourse permeates those under rule or regulation, and it is them whom make a particular ideology or system of beliefs their own. An example is Modern confinement institutions, that strayed from punishing wrongdoings to correct and form individual’s virtues and conducts and therefore created an effective form of social control: people regulated their own behaviour, once it was deemed unruly by the those new patterns of conduct, even if such conducts were completely acceptable under other past social paradigms.
While it is true that during Modernity ideals and systems of thought that intended to be universal (freedom, reason, progress, autonomy, knowledge, democracy and human rights, to quote a few) flourishes, Immanuel Kant wrote his arguments from the period itself where these ideas were blooming. It is important to realize that Rousseau had a sense of prudence in manifesting the shortcomings of progress and other Modern ideals. His arguments, notwithstanding, were important enough to even influence Kant’s own work: Kant «declared that behind the rigorous logic of his philosophical Critiques, behind his demonstration of a necessary order in nature and an imperative law in morality, lay the simple lesson taught him by Rousseau — how to use thought for the purpose of “establishing the rights of humanity”». That is, even during the effervescence of Modern thought, there were a few intellectuals that managed to identify some negative outcomes, that were able to see trough the bright lights of reason and its impairments on mankind. Kant managed to mediate Rousseau’s more radical ideas into his own perception of the Enlightenment.
In corresponding Enlightened fashion, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Basis on Inequality Among Men, emphasized the importance of humanity's state of nature, and how Mankind is still quite dependant on it for survival. Following Kant's argument, we could infer that progress is deciphered as a subduing of Nature while it represents a benefit for the individual or society. However, Rousseau does not defend progress, he challenges it: his Discourse is about «indicating in the progress of things the moment in which, succeeding the right of violence, Nature is subdued by Law». Apparently Man left behind forms of natural organization and yielded to rational organization; thus, he deviated from a natural and equal life. What would Rousseau think about Modern institutions of confinement, considering they gravitate around economic inequities: houses of correction for vagabonds and the poor. For Rousseau, Modern paradigms represented an intermission in human history that could be used to analyze its own faults.
In the quoted Discourse, Rousseau depicts two kinds of men: a natural one and the other a civilized man. After a thorough description, the author defines that the main difference between the two is the state of nature one lives in, while the other belongs to a civil society. It is possible to conclude that progress is only feasible in a civil organization, and for this reason certain unnatural inequities started to develop. Regarding natural men, inequity is differentiated by Rousseau as natural or physical, and encircles health, age, bodily strength and the ability to adapt and live in native settings. Although this may be true, inequity in civilized men is present in the relation they have with each other and with the society they live in; that is, in social groups, level of wealth, creative or productive capacities differentiates them. On the other hand, Rousseau «did not regard natural impulses, passions, or self-interest as evil in themselves, but they did consider these drives denatured and demoralizing when they were divorced from reason and hence from the balance of nature». Civilized man has also to bear moral impositions and regulations, such as monogamy, situation that according to the Swiss philosopher it is not an issue in a natural organization. Another key difference between them is that the natural man tends to be healthy and peaceful, only resulting to violence in self-defence; civilized man tends to be more sickly and quarrelsome.
Also, he argued that civil society was created based on private property; in other words, private property and therefore the society that grew out of it are unnatural because they germinated out of greed, which is not found is Man's state of nature. As private property is based on greed, urbanized man will be prone to war and other means necessary to defend and increase his possessions. To put it differently, Foucault could concur with Rousseau in regarding progress as a deviation of more natural or equal relations between mankind, especially after Enlightened thought. In like manner, those institutions were an «instance of order, of monarchical and bourgeois order that was organized in France in this period».
To summarize, the observations made on the authors that write from and about the Enlightenment show some discrepancies, but it is possible to identify a common thread between them. Furthermore, for Kant, progress is just a natural state that will present itself in Enlightened individuals and societies; to be able to reach it, individuals must dare to act and make use of their reason, as long as it keeps within the margins of obedience and social parameters. To emphasize, Michel Foucault identifies that the practices of public and private reason are limited by society itself, and even more, he emphasized the birth of reclusive institutions under arbitrary (like poverty and mental illness), punitive and exclusionary parameters determined by the bourgeoisie and other social conventionalisms. Thus, these guidelines are justified with progress, a concept that he does not consider an inspiring idea of change or comparison, just a fact that coerces individual liberty.
I find that the following considerations provide a convincing argument for my initial observation that during the Age of Enlightenment created concepts that once applied to Modern societies, they reflect somewhat negative characteristics, especially if we consider them as rational justifications for inequality. While it is true that inequality has existed throughout the history of mankind, and even Rousseau acknowledges natural differences between men and women, economic limitations, the creation of new values and virtues based on consumption and vanity, the exploitation of the poor by the financially powerful still lacerate a great percentage of world population. To conclude this very brief examination on what the Enlightenment is, I consider appropriate to end in an optimistic note on what this process meant and continues to signify: «Thus Enlightenment must be considered both as a process in which men participate collectively and as an act of courage to be accomplished personally». If not by questioning, as Foucault himself did, what we do and think, along with the structure that has created and maintained this situations, true solutions to those urgent problems may not appear.
Resources
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