Foucault And Ethical Universality.pdf

Inquiry , 47, 580–596

Foucault and Ethical Universality

Christopher Cordner

University of Melbourne

Foucault’s resistance to a universalist ethics, especially in his later writings, is well-

known. Foucault thinks that ethical universalism presupposes a shared human essence,

and that this presupposition makes it a straitjacket, an attempt to force people to

conform to an externally imposed ‘pattern’. Foucault’s hostility may be warranted for

one – perhaps the usual – conception of ethical universality. But there are other

conceptions of ethical universality that are not vulnerable to Foucault’s criticism, and

that are ethically and culturally important. I set out one such conception, and show

why it matters. Paul Patton has argued that Foucault is best read as grounding his

analyses of power in a ‘conception of human being’ traceable to Nietzsche. I explain

why this does not amount to the ethical universalism that I sketch below.

Foucault was hostile to the idea of a universal ethics. He recognized that a

commitment to ‘universality’ is one possible ethical orientation among

others, and that it has at times been an inﬂuential orientation. 1 But he clearly

resisted any suggestion that ethics is inherently universal, and equally clearly

wanted no truck with such a commitment himself. He thought this

commitment was, and still is, tyrannical and crippling. As he put it in a

late interview: ‘The search for a form of morality acceptable to everybody in

the sense that everyone should submit to it strikes me as catastrophic’. 2 In

Foucault’s view the conviction of universalism generate the will to impose

uniformity on all.

At the cultural level, Foucault thinks this pairing of attitudes ﬁnds

expression in the normalizing operation of disciplinary power. Conceptions

of normality and sanity, for example, operate to exclude difference, and even

co-opt people into denying their own difference. They straitjacket people, but

they do so in part by suborning people into straitjacketing themselves. As

Barry Allen puts it:

The point of discipline is not to force people to do what you want, but to make them

into the kind of people you want; not to make people do what you want them to do, but

to make them want to do it, and to do it as you want them to, with the desired tools,

efﬁciency and order. 3

The normalizing forces of disciplinary power shape the conviction that there

is a shared human essence, and then operate to conﬁne people in accordance

with it. But there is no such essence. The search for a universal ethic is

‘catastrophic’ just because it seeks to impose an illusory sameness on the

DOI 10.1080/00201740410004313

2004 Taylor & Francis

Foucault and Ethical Universality 581

important reality of human difference. Foucault thinks that universal ethics is

always predicated on an already-given conception of the range of human

capacities, so that its application excludes all sorts of humanly important

possibilities, including many that have yet to appear. As Paul Patton puts it:

‘(Foucault) argues that when philosophers invoke ‘man’ as the basis for their

moral and political judgments, they invoke no more than their own or others’

concepts of human nature, which are themselves the products of particular,

historically constituted regimes of truth.’ 4 This, very brieﬂy, I take to be the

background of Foucault’s resistance to ethical universality.

Some of Foucault’s hostility to ethical universalism is warranted, but in my

view not all of it. In this paper I want to sort out what is warranted from what

is not. More speciﬁcally, I want to clarify what kind or form of ethical

universality, if any, it might still be important to recognize. I shall argue that

there is an important form of ethical universality, different from the

conception Foucault opposes, that any decent ethics must acknowledge. To

say that this conception of ethical universality is different from the conception

Foucault opposes leaves open whether the conception is compatible with

Foucault’s outlook – and beyond that, whether it might even be retrieved from

his thought. I shall return to these questions at the end.

Foucault assumes that ethical universality involves commitment to

universal norms of behaviour. I share much of his opposition to ethical

universalism so conceived, but there is a distinction within the domain of

behavioural-norm universalism that Foucault seems to overlook. Arguably,

a less objectionable form even of this kind of universalism can be spelled

out once this distinction is recognized. We can get at the distinction via

Foucault’s discussion of a shift in Stoic thinking from ‘an idea of aesthetics of

existence’ to a ‘universalist’ orientation. Foucault illustrates the former

orientation in the following way:

For example, you ﬁnd in Isocrates a very interesting discourse, which is supposed to

be held with Nicocles, who was the ruler of Cyprus. There he explains why he has

always been faithful to his wife: ‘Because I am the king, and because as somebody

who commands others, who rules others, I have to be able to show that I am able to

rule myself.’ And you can see that this rule of faithfulness has nothing to do with the

universal and Stoic formulation: ‘I have to be faithful to my wife because I am a

human and rational being’. In the former case it is because I am the king! 5

It is true that Nicocles (as described by Foucault) thinks that something

speciﬁc about his situation imposes the requirement of faithfulness on him

and not everyone. But it does not follow that there is no universality, still less

that Nicocles is giving expression to an ‘aesthetics of existence’. Note the

words Foucault gives to Nicocles: ‘Because I am the king, and because as

somebody [my italics] who commands others … I have to show that I am able

to rule myself’. Nicocles’ conception of himself as ‘somebody’ who

commands others is what provides his rationale for faithfulness. But that is

582 Christopher Cordner

clearly a description that others could, and in fact do, satisfy. The reason on

which he acts he thus recognizes as applicable to any ‘somebody who

commands others’. That is to say, the reason is universal in form. Nicocles

acts on it because he recognizes that this universal reason applies to him as

‘somebody who commands others’. 6

Nicocles’ ethical orientation is clearly not shaped by a conception of

himself as ‘just anybody’. But it need not therefore be a matter of merely

‘personal’ or ‘aesthetic’ choice, without implications for anyone else. Those

are not the only possibilities. What is salient to Nicocles is that he is ‘a king’. 7

His thought seems to be that any king would be obligated as he is; and that is

a ‘universal’ thought, with clear implications for others – any others who are

kings. The universalism thus expressed is not predicated on what Bernauer

and Mahon call a ‘least [i.e., lowest] common denominator’ of human

dispositions, capacities and situations. 8 They use that phrase to describe the

behavioural-norm universalism Foucault rejects. But behavioural-norm

universalism can recognize that various differences in individual capacity

and situation make a difference to behavioural requirements (the ‘rules’ a

person considers binding). Such a situation-sensitive and capacity-sensitive

universalism does not impose a straitjacket on human beings regardless of

their differences of situation and capacity, since it can specify at least some

ethical requirements in terms of how one stands with respect to these

‘variables’. It is ‘a person of such and such a kind, in such and such a

situation’ – for example, as one who is a king – that such ethical requirements

bind. Ethical requirements can in fact be made ever more speciﬁc and

situation-sensitive, while remaining in this sense universal. What this shows

is that the generality (or otherwise) of ethical requirements is not the same as

their universality (or otherwise).

Does anybody really think that what is ethically required of us is always

independent of our speciﬁc circumstances and capacities? Foucault some-

times cites Kant as thinking this, but Kant does not hold that all the speciﬁc

ethical requirements are derivable from the ‘least common denominator’ of

capacities and situations. He distinguishes between perfect duties, which are

indeed like this, and imperfect duties, which are not. 9 Perfect duties include

prohibitions on murder and lying, for example, and on Kant’s view these

prohibitions are indeed required simply by the ‘least common denominator’

of our shared rational nature. In the case of our imperfect duties, by contrast –

for example, the duty to perfect one’s talents and the duty to help others

– Kant held that what one is to do in order to fulﬁl these duties varies

according to individual capacity, circumstances and preferences. In the

domain of imperfect duties, ‘universal norms of behaviour’ cannot be laid

down for all to follow.

Of course Kant’s ethics may still be too restrictive for Foucault. Foucault

might, for example, reject all universal norms of behaviour. But in any case,

Foucault and Ethical Universality 583

Foucault is less concerned with the claims of philosophers than with the

normalizing effects of disciplinary power. Here in practice is a domain of

‘universal norms of behaviour’ imposed on human beings in all sorts of social

and institutional contexts. ‘You may not do this or that because it is insane, or

abnormal or perverted or ….’. Disciplinary power in effect seeks to extend the

reach of ‘universal norms’ a very long way into our lives and activity. Even if

Kant formally speaking makes room for individual variation in ethical self-

realization, via the category of imperfect duty, that may still leave far too

much scope to the avaricious tentacles of disciplinary power. As Foucault

might perhaps have put it had he used Kant’s terms: ‘imperfect’ duty, by

means of which we give individual ethical shape to our being, covers a much

larger territory than Kant allowed.

So far I’ve been arguing that a capacity – and situation – modulated ethical

universalism perhaps need not fall to Foucault’s objections against

universalism. As a matter of fact, however, Foucault’s opposition to

universalist ethics extends even to modulated versions such as this one. He

seems to resist any suggestion that ethics is inherently universalist, even a

relatively concessive, situation-sensitive one. To put the point in terms of his

example of Nicocles: once being ‘ a king’ can make a difference to what is

ethically required, then so indeed can being ‘ this king’. The ethically relevant

speciﬁcity of one’s situation can reach all the way down to its uniqueness, and

then, it may seem, every vestige of rule-universality has disappeared.

I shall not dispute this claim here, since my interest is in whether, even if

we grant it, we have thereby forsworn all commitment to ethical universality.

Before pursuing that question, however, it is worth noting some thinkers from

a different philosophical background who broadly share Foucault’s views

about universal ethical ‘norms of behaviour’. Stuart Hampshire said that,

ethically speaking, no-one can avoid going ‘lop-sided to the grave’ – with

humanly rich ethical potentialities undeveloped. 10 He did not mean that this

showed a regrettable failure in each of us to develop all of our capacities as we

might have done if we had been less lazy or more imaginative, or perhaps

lucky enough to have been born into a richer or more tolerant culture. He

meant that there are indeﬁnitely many ways in which human beings can

develop, and can come to live rich, vital and ethically good lives, and that

each of these ways will, at many points, involve excluding possibilities that

could be realized in the living of a different rich, vital and good life. In

reﬂecting upon George Orwell’s essay about Gandhi, Peter Winch makes a

similar point. He contrasts one aspect of Gandhi’s ‘asceticism’ – his ‘turning

away from types of human relationship that involve emotional entanglement

with other individuals’ – with Orwell’s belief in the need to accept the

dangers of such entanglement. 11 The difference between Gandhi and Orwell

is not merely contingent – as if, given world enough and time, each might

well have added the other’s practices and outlooks to his own. Rather, as

584 Christopher Cordner

Winch puts it, ‘(t)he two moral conceptions are not merely different and

mutually exclusive, but … they are opposed to each other: the one involves a

rejection of the other.’ 12 But it does not follow from this that Gandhi and

Orwell must each think that everybody else ought to do and be like he does

and is. While each recognizes that his orientation excludes the other’s, that

does not require each to think of the other as ‘mistaken’ or ‘wrong’. Either of

them might think that, but Winch’s point is that this would be a further

thought, not something already contained as a matter of pure logic in his own

ethical orientation. Winch summarizes what he takes to be the lesson of his

example in these terms:

There is no reason to suppose that two such men would ever reach agreement on what

divides them, whatever arguments were adduced … But equally there is no reason to

think that failure to agree must be a sign of deﬁcient understanding or of bad faith in

either one of the disputants. 13

What is thus recognized by Hampshire and Winch I would not (nor would

they) describe in Foucault’s terms as ‘the search for styles of existence as

different from each other as possible’. That would make it sound too much a

matter of ‘mere’ choice – as if Gandhi, being the man he was, might instead

just as well have gone for what Orwell valued – and also too much as if the

motive is to be as different as one can from anyone else. Still, the basic

emphasis in Hampshire and Winch is similar to Foucault. 14

Does this emphasis negate all ethical universality? I do not believe so. A

certain conception of ethical universality is still available to us. 15 I want to

show what it involves – and beyond that, why it matters that we acknowledge

it. To show this we need to shift our attention a little. It is well-known that

for Foucault the domain of morals involves much more than whatever

‘code’ of proscriptions and requirements – norms of behaviour – a person

might adhere to at any cultural moment. It also involves the four aspects

of what Foucault called ‘ rapport ` soi ’, the ‘relation to oneself’ in one’s

refrainings and doings. 16 This adds to ‘what it is right to do’ a concern for

what Charles Taylor calls ‘what it is good to be’. 17 For Foucault ethics

involves ﬂexibility in how human beings relate to themselves in whatever

norms of behaviour they may acknowledge. (This is also the territory of

ascesis – the ‘work on oneself’ whose ethical importance Foucault

highlights.) Rapport ` soi is the complex of ways in which, through our

culturally situated freedom, norms of behaviour get woven into living a

distinctive ethical life.

This is an important enrichment of what belongs to ethics. But Foucault’s

resulting ‘picture’ of ethics still, I believe, misses something very important.

What that is can be described in different ways. One of them highlights the

ethical signiﬁcance of how one thinks of those others vis-`-vis those in whom

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