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Review

The Christian Roots of Critique: How Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh Sheds New Calorie-free on the Concept of Freedom and the Genealogy of the Modern Critical Attitude

Author: Karsten Schubert (Academy of Freiburg)

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  Review

  The Christian Roots of Critique: How Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh Sheds New Light on the Concept of Freedom and the Genealogy of the Modern Critical Attitude

  Author: Karsten Schubert (University of Freiburg)

Abstract

Finally published 34 years after his expiry, Foucault's book Confessions of the Flesh sheds new calorie-free on the debate about freedom and ability that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this contend argue that Foucault'southward theory of ability did not allow for freedom in the 'genealogical phase,' but that he corrected himself and presented a solution to the problem of freedom in his subsequently works, especially through his reflection on aboriginal ideals and technologies of the self in volumes two and three of History of Sexuality, likewise equally the concept of parrhesia. In contrast to this view, I argue that Confessions of the Flesh shows that a concept of freedom equally self-critical hermeneutics that aims at identifying a strange ability within the subject area was but developed in Foucault'south analysis of Christian practices of penance and confession. This interpretation of Confessions of the Flesh opens a new field of enquiry into the genealogy of critique and both the repressive and emancipative effects of truth-telling and juridification.

Keywords: freedom, critique, church fathers, sexuality, power, genealogy of critique, christianity

How to Cite: Schubert, Karsten. "The Christian Roots of Critique: How Foucault'due south Confessions of the Flesh Sheds New Low-cal on the Concept of Liberty and the Genealogy of the Mod Critical Mental attitude." Le foucaldien 7, no. ane (2021): 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/x.16995/lefou.98 [Note: In 2022, Le foucaldien relaunched equally Genealogy+Critique.]

1. Introduction

The English translation of Foucault's 4th volume of the History of Sexuality, Confessions of the Mankind (hereafter: Confessions), was long and eagerly awaited by the international Foucault customs and the interested public.¹ Until the recent publication of the French original in 2018, the volume was kept under wraps due to Foucault'southward ban on posthumous publications. All the more than reason for the readership to hope that the unveiled surreptitious would provide new insights not just into the subject field of the book—the reflections of the Church Fathers upward to Augustine on sexuality and subjectivity—but also on Foucault's work in general and its last decade in particular. Afterward Philipp Sarasin analyzed, in Le foucaldien in 2018, how Confessions helps empathise Foucault'south critique of the occidental bailiwick every bit subjected through police, I volition accost a very specific aspect of these expected revelations: the themes of power and liberty, which take shaped the reception of Foucault'due south works similar no other. Hence the question I am trying to answer is the post-obit: Does the book provide new insights into the problem of power and liberty?

To answer this question, I first describe the book and its translations in full general terms, situate it within Foucault's oeuvre, and summarize its central themes and theses. Then I reconstruct the discussions nigh power and freedom in Foucault'southward work, or more precisely, the view that Foucault'south work on aboriginal ideals, technologies of the cocky, and parrhesia can exist interpreted as a contribution to a normative concept of liberty, which is widespread today.² Sarasin, too, puts forward an interpretation of the aboriginal technologies of the self as Foucault's "contrepoint" against (Christian) law.³ In the third section, I analyze and criticize this view with regard to Confessions of the Mankind. I argue that the specific course of freedom Foucauldian thinking centers on—the capacity for a reflexive critique of the self and of subjectivizing powers—has its origins in the subjectivations of early Christianity rather than in antiquity. Hither, for the first time, subjectivity was constituted through a disquisitional reflection on power. This insight, which Foucault does not codify explicitly merely can be reconstructed from his analyses, is the decisive and surprising contribution of reading Confessions of the Flesh from the perspective of a theory of power and a genealogy of critique.

2. Volume and Oeuvre

Confessions of the Flesh is an extensive work on the early Church Fathers and their problematizations of lifestyle and sexuality. Foucault covers the period from the second century to the offset of the fifth century, beginning with a detailed analysis of the texts of Clement of Alexandria (ca. Advert 150—215) and concluding with an extensive report of the piece of work of Augustine (Advertisement 354—430). In doing and so, he traces the complex conflicts apropos baptism, penance, confession, virginity and abstinence, marriage, and sexual practice. The mankind is a specific concept of early Christianity, with which sexuality is problematized in relation to the other themes. Foucault delves securely into the material, aiming to make the premises and problems of the Church building Fathers intelligible for his contemporary readers. Due to the distance betwixt the Church building Fathers' thinking and our own, the book makes for an extremely laborious reading for the modern-solar day reader, although Foucault does an excellent job every bit translator and analyst of the discourses, presenting their rationalities intelligibly. Foucault is rather reserved in his own comments, interpretations, and theorizations. Particularly the themes of power and liberty are hardly always explicitly mentioned. In relatively few of the 400 pages, he explains his own thesis: in the early Christian discussions of sexuality, a new feel of subjectivity emerges, to which veridiction (speaking truth nearly oneself, 111) and jurisdiction (the juridification of thought and behavior, 222) are central (286, 300).

The preface by Frédéric Gros and Stuart Elden's review from 2018 provide solid groundwork data on the status of the text, translated by Robert Hurley, as a not-authorized manuscript, on its relations to other texts, and on the history of its origin.⁴ Therefore, I limit myself to what is necessary here. After Foucault had published the first volume of History of Sexuality, he deviated from the original plan for its continuation, every bit his research took him to reading the Church Fathers as early as 1977.^five He so wrote the manuscript of Confessions until about 1981/82, before writing volumes two and three of History of Sexuality, on pagan and Hellenistic ethics and sexuality. Confessions was held back from publication considering Foucault realized that he had to outset the History of Sexuality earlier, which is why his path led into antiquity. There is no introduction and no affiliate on methods, and the text starts rather abruptly, considering volumes two, three, and four course a larger project, which expanded and was divided amongst the volumes in the grade of the piece of work. Volume 3 has no introduction either; instead, the introduction to volume 2 may utilise to all three volumes. The way of the fourth volume corresponds to that of volumes 2 and 3: sober, unagitated, and detailed, Foucault analyzes the material, which consists of the Church building Fathers' theological texts alone, and does not include other material, such as texts on institutional procedures.

Foucault writes as an historian of philosophy, less as a genealogist of power. Anyone who expects a similar reading experience to that of Discipline and Punish (1977) will be disappointed. The text is not hyperbolic, information technology does not exaggerate, nor suggest or frighten. Similar to The Gild of Things (1970), the main piece of work of the early archaeological phase, Foucault barely addresses material and institutional aspects. Combining the discursive with the question of ability and subjectivation in institutions is the innovation that characterizes the transition to the 'genealogical phase' and the 'analysis of power.'⁶ That Foucault neglects or forgets the question of ability in his 'upstanding plough' was an early suspicion voiced with regard to volumes two and 3 of the History of Sexuality.⁷ Irrespectively of the conclusion one reaches regarding this question, Confessions can be clearly assigned to the late, upstanding phase because of its style and method—which are interrelated—although it was written before the other two volumes. Viewed every bit an independent text, Confessions does not consist of a contribution to a genealogical critique of power, of which, according to Martin Saar, a specifically hyperbolic style that exposes power is characteristic.⁸ However, in the context of Foucault'due south oeuvre and the debates about freedom and power, Confessions appears equally office of Foucault'southward genealogical project and offers new insights into a Foucauldian conception of liberty.⁹

The book is divided into three parts. Some of the titles were given by the editors and not past Foucault—I will neglect these and other editorial details in the post-obit, considering apart from a sure general circumspection in dealing with the text, nil further tin can be deduced from them. There are no notes commenting on the translation. The English translation (2021) is defective some separators of passages (lines or asterisks, for example on 157 and 167) and some headlines of subdivision that are nowadays in the French original (2018) and the High german translation (2019) and that help structure the text. There is also at least one omission of text in the English language translation (see beneath). The inconsistent translation of the French "la pénitence" (German "dice Buße"), that is mostly rendered as "penance", nonetheless at times as "penitence" and "repentance" (French "le repentir", German "die Reue"), without any explanation for these decisions past the translator, may pb to confusion.^ten

The first role, "The Formation of a New Experience" (approx. 110 pages), deals with Christian penitential practice and examination of censor. It begins with a chapter on Clement of Alexandria, whose rules for moderating sexuality are, co-ordinate to Foucault, continuous with those of the pagan philosophers. At the finish of this section, Foucault explains the thesis of the book: sexual morality changes from pagan moderation in Cloudless to strict purity and full renunciation in Augustin, who perceives mankind and its sexuality negatively, based on the Fall of Man (34–7). This transformation is not, however, primarily ane of the codex, that is, of the areas of regulation and their strictness, as is often claimed, but "it'southward a different type of experience that is being formed little by picayune" (35). The practices of penance, monastic asceticism, and confession lead to new forms of technologies of the self, to a new form of subjectivity characterized past the fight against evil and telling the truth about oneself. This is already the definition of the flesh that gives the title: "a mode of experience," that is, "a mode of noesis and transformation of oneself by oneself" (36) that is based on fighting evil within oneself through self-exam, penance, and confession. Thus, Christianity entails a wholly new type of subjectivity that is constituted through the relation of "wrong-doing" and "truth-telling" (36) in the "manifestation of truth" (37) nigh oneself. The concept of mankind forms part of Foucault's overarching thesis on the history of sexuality: the area of feel and the trouble that we call 'sexuality' today only emerged in the course of the 18th century; its predecessors were beginning the ancient aphrodisia and then the Christian mankind.

The balance of the chapter explains through the reconstruction of Tertullian and Cyprian how penance—first in preparation for baptism, then increasingly independently from information technology—becomes a more and more than complex technique of self-examination and reflection aimed at fighting the inner evil. Here Foucault states for the offset fourth dimension the central theme of the previous chapter, the "juridical avowal" (68, French: "l'aveu juridique"), but only in the French and German language versions—in the English language translation this sentence is omitted. Regarding Cassian, Foucault shows that the leadership practices and techniques of the examination of conscience (the French "l'examen de conscience" is weirdly translated every bit "soul-searching" (eighty), or "spiritual examination" (81)) in Christian monasteries (87–eight) originate in infidel philosophy. Christian practices of management—in contrast to aboriginal ones—aim at the renunciation of ane'due south own will and not at the sovereign exercise of the will (96–7), and are performed through unconditional submission and obedience (92–5). A hermeneutics of suspicion is formed, with which the Christian subject constantly examines itself for foreign, diabolical elements of evil within itself. In this style, a new kind of subjectivity develops in relation to truth.

The 2nd office, "Beingness Virgin" (approx. eighty pages), traces the development of virginity in the third and fourth centuries to a form of life that goes far across pure forbearance and strict regulation of sexual practice. Here, too, Foucault emphasizes that one does not fully grasp this development if one simply notes the increasing strictness of the codex. Rather, the Church fathers translate private sexuality in light of the history the Fall of Man and salvation. Therefore, the life course of virginity becomes a crucial business (145–54), which explains the Christian 'upvaluation' of sexuality, through which the latter attained a significance never seen earlier (155–7). A complex applied science of the cocky is evolving, in which the inner knowledge of the self and the struggle against the mankind (the foreign, evil element inside the cocky) are integrated in complex relationships with others to whose power and management 1 must submit in order to survive in this struggle (167–91).

In the third part, "Being Married" (approx. ninety pages), Foucault turns his attention to marriage and analyzes, based on Augustine'south writings, how it was subjected to more complex regulations in the fourth century. Co-ordinate to Foucault, in Augustine'southward reflections on marriage, a process of juridification begins that characterizes Christianity up to the 20th century (279) and that Foucault wanted to analyze in the planned fifth volume of History of Sexuality. In contrast to virginity, divineness, and penance, which are based on veridiction, that is, speaking the truth about oneself, in married life spouses are conceptualized every bit legal subjects with common obligations and debts (214–22). Foucault traces the complex theological considerations that led to the creation of the legal field of study: free will, a will that is contained of God, arises with the Fall of Human being and is henceforth internally divided, because libido and desire now grade role of it (270–8). That following 1's desire is an act of free will is the foundation of the juridical principle of guilt and of the juridification of marriage (280–6). The autonomy of the will constitutes the legal subject field.

The primary text is followed by four appendices, which could not exist integrated into the main text, yet enrich the material. The second appendix is relevant from the perspective of power analysis. Here, Foucault discusses the development of Christian pastoral power from the 7th century onwards. In this text, the connections to already published ideas, which accordingly have already influenced Foucault'southward reception, become clearer than elsewhere in the book. Pastoral power is the specific grade of power and government that is spread by monastic life, that became primal to the history of the Occident and is still constructive in today'southward governmentality (296–9). The modifications of the exercise of ability that Foucault analyses in Confessions are crystalized in pastoral power, which is why the book is and so of import for united states today. These developments entail governing and monitoring people "through the manifestation of their individual truth" (313), and judging them as office of circuitous groups. In this second appendix, therefore, Foucault discusses more than clearly than in the main text how Christian confessional practices fit into the history of Western mechanisms of regime and repression, which can be traced upwards to contemporary biopolitics.

iii. Power and Liberty

What can nosotros learn from Confessions of the Flesh regarding the problem of power and freedom? How does the book chronicle to the debates about how Foucault adult his thinking on these issues in volumes two and iii?^eleven The trouble of freedom consists in a social-theoretical description of subjectivity in which subjectivity is determined past power, which is why there can be no liberty and no resistance. While Foucault never took this position explicitly, and, in reaction to such reception fifty-fifty emphasized that he conceptualizes power and liberty every bit equiprimordial,¹² social philosophical readers interpreted his works every bit leading to this problem. This, as I debate elsewhere,¹³ is neither Foucault'south nor his readers' 'error', but rather due to the fundamental difference betwixt the systematic methods of these social philosophers and Foucault's genealogy as critique; furthermore, information technology is a sign of the enormous productivity of Foucault'southward work that was able to provoke rich research on the concepts of ability and freedom, which goes beyond Foucault and is an important contribution to social philosophy in its own right.

This reading of the problem of freedom was put forward in relation to Foucault'southward archaeological and genealogical works.¹⁴ In the archaeological phase, the problem is related to language and thought. Foucault argues that the possibilities of thinking are determined by a historical a priori, the so-called episteme, and thus likewise fundamentally limited. In the genealogical phase, Foucault expands his social theory and increasingly examines institutions, power technologies, practices, and bodies. Discipline and Punish (1977) is both a genealogy of the modern prison and a critique of modern capitalism, since co-ordinate to Foucault, modernistic capitalism is based on the aforementioned technologies of power that are developed in prison to field of study and oppress individuals. Due to his rejection of the methods of normative social philosophy, which would make information technology possible to differentiate between liberal and repressive aspects of modernity, and the lack of a concept of socialization that could explain how subjects develop their own capacity to act, Discipline and Punish was interpreted every bit amounting to an prototype of modernity as total oppression. That at that place is no outside of power and that power is productive and not just repressive are the central disquisitional and innovative ideas of Foucault's intervention against classical state centered and juridical theories of power and against liberal normative political theories. However, despite developing a concept of power as productive, he focused on the repressive sides of this productive ability. Therefore, many commentators saw no place in such a theory for liberty and the associated concepts of resistance and emancipation.¹⁵

1 claim that is widespread in secondary literature is that the solution to this problem is to be found in Foucault's late work, the and then-called 'upstanding stage,' peculiarly in volumes two and 3 of History of Sexuality. Here 1 finds terms that could provide hope for overcoming the one-sided focus on the repressive side of productive power: technologies of the self instead of technologies of domination, care for the self and aesthetics of existence instead of discipline and bio-ability, upstanding choice instead of moral regulation, and resistance confronting ability through parrhesia, speaking the truth with backbone. In particular, the distinction between a morality based on ethical relationships of the self with itself and a morality based on moral codes, which Foucault develops in the Introduction to the Utilize of Pleasure (Foucault 1990, 29–32), is understood equally the foundation of a normatively substantive concept of freedom that can serve as a basis for the critique of ability relations.¹⁶ Foucault argues that there are various dimensions of morality, especially the moral code and associated sanction-proven rules, besides as "the manner one ought to 'deport oneself'—that is, the mode in which i ought to form oneself as an ethical subject field acting in reference to the prescriptive elements that make up the lawmaking" (Foucault 1990, 26). Foucault very cautiously suggests that this second, "upstanding" dimension of subjectivation tended to be primal in aboriginal morality (Foucault 1990, 29), in which wealthy men freely adhered to the moral code and shaped their lives, described by Foucault as an "aesthetics of existence." Christian (sexual) morality was based more on strict adherence to the lawmaking and respective institutions. Despite Foucault's cautious and balanced description, the stardom was frequently understood to hateful that at that place can be, and has been, a freer ethic of self-exercise in antiquity, as opposed to Christian repressive morality. Confessions ultimately complicates this overly simplistic picture.

4. The Christian Roots of Critique

It is non surprising that a schematic reception of the difference between ancient, ethical, and free ideals on 1 hand, and modernistic, Christian, juridical, institutional-repressive morality on the other emerged earlier the publication of Confessions of the Flesh. The History of Sexuality was at the time incomplete,¹⁷ with but the finish and starting points available: the description of modern repression together with the relative freedom in artifact. With the now published link, Confessions of the Mankind, not only the greater historical continuity betwixt antique and Christian subjectivations becomes visible, but also the systematic complexity of the subjectivation processes that Foucault meant to capture with his analytical categories from the introduction to volume two. Furthermore, in Confessions of the Mankind—or more than precisely, in the confessional and penitential practices described therein—the origin of an alternative concept of freedom can exist institute, which, forth with the aboriginal concept of freedom, plays an important role in current debates on freedom along Foucauldian lines. The core of this concept of freedom is the critique of ability that works within subjectivity, which is why it is better suited to resolve the Foucauldian problem of liberty than aboriginal ideals. I will explain these 3 aspects in the post-obit.

Firstly, historical continuity. While the dual typologization of free ideals in contrast to repressive morality has shaped the reception of Foucault, the new volume shows one matter above all: historically, the two forms cannot be strictly separated. Rather, at that place is a continuity between Christian norms and subjectivations and ancient ideals. Foucault develops this thesis in the first chapter and frequently emphasizes this continuity within the irksome procedure of transformation. This gradual transmutation characterizes not only the continuity of the code, that is, of the areas of regulation, concerns, and prohibitions; Foucault repeatedly emphasizes in particular that the developments cannot be interpreted as "reinforcement of prohibitions" or "greater strictness in morals" (35). Furthermore, the transformation of the modes of subjectivation, whose gradual change Foucault traces, takes place through continuous evolution. The experience of aphrodisia slowly and seamlessly develops into the experience of the flesh.

Secondly, the complexity of subjectivation. The continuity of the history of sexuality after antiquity makes information technology even clearer that Foucault's central critical method is to demonstrate the "relentlessness of historicity" through genealogical analysis.^xviii The great contrast in method, style, and theme between the first and 2d volumes of History of Sexuality could still tempt some readers to view Foucault'due south perception of antiquity as fundamentally different from that of the following periods in terms of ability and to translate the assay of aboriginal modes of subjectivation every bit contributing to the development of a systematic concept of liberty. But the tedious and stubborn continuity of Foucault'southward historical-philosophical analysis, which stylistically and methodically simply continues where volume iii left off, makes clear how strongly the supposedly free subjectivation of antiquity itself is spring to historically contingent forms. Subjects are bound past their respective historically valid forms of self-relation, fifty-fifty if these emphasize gratis ethics rather than adherence to moral codes, as stated for the instance of antiquity. In short, costless and upstanding subjectivation is likewise a matter of power, imposed from the outside, even though it demands care of the self and aesthetic choices. For this reason, a concept of liberty that would help to solve the problem of freedom cannot be found in a specific ethics of free option, but rather in questioning the historicity and subjection of ethics in its entirety, and in developing a disquisitional relationship to it. Such a concept of freedom as critique, in which freedom is understood as a practice of critique of ability and historical regimes of subjectivation through which subjects can reflect their 'inner unfreedom' and thereby potentially transform themselves, is plant in Foucault's tardily reflections on the concept of critique and his own method of genealogy as a historical critique of power and subjectivation.^xix

Thirdly, the Christian roots of the critique of subjectivation. Reflections on this concept of freedom as critique are non explicit in Confessions of the Flesh. Yet Foucault'due south analyses offer astonishing insights into the genealogy of this critical capacity, despite the fact that his objective is to show how nosotros are nevertheless bound today past technologies of power that originated in early on Christianity. Foucault's primal thesis is that Christianity constitutes the legal subject to whom autonomy and thus also responsibility for its desire is attributed. According to Foucault, the legal regulation and subjectivation, the juridical forms and their noesis/ability complexes, which are of enormous significance for the present day, have their origins in the problematizations of union and desire by the early Church Fathers, and in the Christian confessional and penitential rituals. Not only is the Christian pastoral power ane source of contemporary (neo-)liberal governmentality. By forcing the subject area into a coherent self-identity in order to hold it accountable and responsible, the confession is also an original scene of gimmicky "ethical violence", co-ordinate to Judith Butler.²⁰ The violence lies in binding the field of study to specific, historically contingent regimes of subjectification: "If they become naturalized, taken for granted […], if they become the terms by which we do and must live, then our very living depends upon a denial of their historicity […] In Foucault, it seems, at that place is a price for telling the truth almost oneself, precisely because what constitutes the truth will exist framed by norms and by specific modes of rationality that emerge historically."²¹

Information technology is this problem of unfreedom due to the subject's constitution within historically specific regimes of subjectification, its beingness formed by the social norms in place during the historical period to which it belongs, to which Foucault'south freedom equally critique and his method of genealogical critique reacts. And in addition to the genealogy of the Christian "ethical violence", Confessions besides entails a genealogy of such critical reflexivity as originating in the emerging Christian subjectivity. In the "telling-the-truth-about-oneself" (54) of the Christian penitential ritual, a practise of critical reflection on ability emerges for the first fourth dimension. The self is supposed to go on itself pure, and in club to do so it must constantly search for and critically examine strange, diabolical powers within itself. This practice of critical exam of internal heteronomy by external powers with the goal of autonomy and transformation bears pregnant systematic similarity with the critical practise of Foucault, the key difference being that it is not a historical-genealogical critique of power and subjectification, merely rather a theological-upstanding one. If the gimmicky legal subject area tin be traced back to the early on Church fathers, as Foucault claims, information technology is plausible that this also holds for the gimmicky form of critical subjectivity, which is constituted and transformed through reflexivity with regards to inner foreign power, the inner other:

What is at consequence, in fact, is the form of subjectivity: the exercise of oneself upon oneself, knowledge of oneself, the constitution of oneself as an object of investigation and discourse, the liberation or purification of oneself and conservancy by ways of operations that deport light to one'south innermost being, and drive ane's deepest secrets upwardly to the light of redemptive exposure. Information technology is a grade of feel—understood both as a mode of presence to oneself and a program for cocky- transformation—that was developed in that period. (36)

A further aspect of modern critiques of ability, which is already rooted in the Christian feel, is the realization that questioning the other's inwardly working power is necessarily an countless activity.

If in that location is a subjectification, information technology implies an indefinite objectification of oneself past oneself—indefinite in the sense that, never caused once and for all, it has no terminate in time; and in the sense that one must always push one's test of thoughts as far as possible, nonetheless tenuous and innocent they may appear. Further, this subjectification in the form of a quest for the truth about oneself is carried out through complex relations with others. And in several ways: because it'south a affair of ridding oneself of the power of the Other, of the Enemy that hides below the appearances of oneself. (191)

Christianity—and non ancient ideals or parrhesia ²²—practices subjectivity for the beginning time as critical cocky-reflection of foreign and inwardly acting power (evil) and continuous self-transformation (truth). This is where the bones elements of the mod hermeneutics of suspicion arise that critically examine the ain and seemingly free thinking with regard to heteronomy and repression. This hermeneutics cannot come up to a standstill because there is no free core of the subject at which criticism would come to an stop.²³ For subjectivity is only conceivable with and through others, that is, constituted through power; this remains the core of Foucault'south concept of subjectivation.

In What is Critique, Foucault argues that critique as a "critical attitude" or "the art of not being governed similar that"²⁴ developed in the 15th century as a counter-movement to the governmental intensification of Christian pastoral ability. He besides sees the origins of the disquisitional mental attitude in the questioning of the Christian doctrine and in the evolution of a newer, purer relationship to the Bible.²⁵ Confessions of the Flesh shows that the foundations of critique prevarication much earlier, namely in the Christian feel of the mankind and its connectedness betwixt subjectivity, truth, and critique. Because it was already constituted past critically examining the human relationship of truth and power, Christian subjectivity was able to turn the critique of ability against the Catholic Church building during the reformation.²⁶ This interpretation shows how Foucault'southward analysis of the critical hermeneutics of Christian subjectification in Confessions makes intelligible the connection betwixt Christianity and the will not to be governed that he describes in What is Critique. Of grade, this does non mean that the confession is an emancipatory practice in itself. Information technology is clashing and, particularly as role of conservative church politics, repressive; however, the Christian cocky-cogitating subjectivity also prefigures the critique of subjectivation that later becomes central to social and political critiques of the social norms of "ethical violence".²⁷

For the contemporary social-philosophical reflection on power and freedom, this means that not only the repressive power that normalizes and subjects us tin can be traced dorsum to antiquity. The origins of the emancipative and rebellious side of critique, also, reach far dorsum into the past. The current reception of Foucault'southward late works tends to locate freedom in artifact and detects the origin of critique in parrhesia, post-obit Foucault'south own genealogy of the modern disquisitional attitude. Confessions of the Flesh may assist to revise and complete this genealogy of critique, which contains a gap: The truth-telling through ancient parrhesia is grounded in the field of study's backbone and does not rely on a hermeneutics of self-reflective critique that is central for Foucault'southward liberty as critique. On the contrary, doubting and questioning if one's ain truth might be constituted through strange power seems to severely limit the confidence, delivery, and courage that define parrhesia. The question thus is how through the transformations of parrhesia from antiquity to modernity, the hermeneutics of suspicion became part of the modernistic critical attitude. Foucault's analysis of the Christian penitential practice suggest that they might be the missing link, as they bring about cocky-cogitating and self-critical subjectivity—a hypothesis that Foucault himself did non develop, possibly because of his premature expiry. One important consequence of such a revised genealogy of critique would be that reflexivity and being bound to truth-telling that became the dominant modes of subjectification through Christianity are not problematic in themselves. Rather, the trouble lies in the specific naturalist and ahistorical forms they tin can take as "ethical violence". As a critique of subjectification that tackles the historical contingent regimes of normalizing power to engage in emancipatory truth-telling about oneself, ongoing reflexivity is key for liberty and political emancipation.²⁸ Confessions of the Flesh thereby opens a new field of inquiry into the genealogy of critique and both the repressive and emancipative furnishings of truth-telling and juridification.

Notes

1. Cardinal arguments of this text appeared before in German, as Karsten Schubert, "Die christlichen Wurzeln der Kritik. Wie Foucaults Analysen der Kirchenväter neues Licht auf dice Debatte um Macht und Freiheit werfen: Rezension von Michel Foucault: Die Geständnisse des Fleisches. Sexualität und Wahrheit 4. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 2019," Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur 7, no. two (2019), https://doi.org/10.21827/zfphl.7.2.35687 and in a shortened version as "Die christlichen Wurzeln der Kritik. Lesenotiz zu Michel Foucaults 'Die Geständnisse des Fleisches. Sexualität und Wahrheit four,'" Theorieblog, https://www.theorieblog.de/index.php/2019/10/dice-christlichen-wurzeln-der-kritik-lesenotiz-zu-michel-foucaults-die-gestaendnisse-des-fleisches-sexualitaet-und-wahrheit-iv/. [ ^{^} ]
2. The estimation entails that Foucault corrects his theory of power and freedom in his later works; that it is widespread is shown by the fact that it is presented every bit the but interpretation in a handbook entry on Foucault, cf. Paul Patton, "Foucault, Michel (1926–1984)," in Encyclopedia of Political Theory, ed. Marking Bevir (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publ., 2010). Already the album Jeremy Moss, ed., The later Foucault: Politics and philosophy (London: SAGE Publ., 1998) asks how Foucault'due south belatedly piece of work answers the problems of the works of the 70s. Some of the many articles based on the correction thesis are Hans H. Kögler, "Fröhliche Subjektivität: Historische Ethik und dreifache Ontologie beim späten Foucault," in Erdmann; Forst; Honneth, Ethos der Moderne; Vikki Bell, "The hope of liberalism and the performance of freedom," in Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism, and rationalities of regime, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (London: Routledge, 1996); Mark Bevir, "Foucault and Critique: Deploying Agency confronting Autonomy," Political Theory 27, no. one (1999); David Webermann, "Are Liberty and Anti-Humanism Compatible? The Case of Foucault and Butler," Constellations 7, no. two (2000), https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.00185; Kristina Lepold, "Dice Bedingungen der Anerkennung," Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 62, no. two (2014), https://doi.org/10.1515/dzph-2014-0022, and, with a special focus on Foucault'southward analysis of parrhesia, Nancy Luxon, "Ideals and Subjectivity: Practices of Self-Governance in the Late Lectures of Michel Foucault," Political Theory 36, no. three (2008), https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591708315143. That this interpretation has lost nothing of its popularity is shown past the nearly contempo monograph based on it: Richard A. Lynch, Foucault'south disquisitional ethics, But ideas (New York, NY: Fordham Academy Press, 2016). [ ^{^} ]
3. Philipp Sarasin, "Adam und Eva: Michel Foucaults ominöser 'vierter Band' schließt endlich die Histoire de la sexualité ab," Le foucaldien 4, no. 1 (2018): viii, https://doi.org/10.16995/lefou.45. [ ^{^} ]
4. Stuart Elden, "Review: Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité 4: Les aveux de la chair," Theory, Culture & Society 35, vii–8 (2018), https://doi.org/x.1177/0263276418800206. [ ^{^} ]
5. Elden, "Review," 294. [ ^{^} ]
6. See for a critique of the dominant periodization in the secondary literature based on the new insights of Foucault's "Last Decade" Stuart Elden, Foucault's Last Decade (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 4. [ ^{^} ]
7. Hinrich Fink-Eitel, Foucault zur Einführung, tertiary ed. (Hamburg: Junius, 1997), 94–112; Axel Honneth, "Einleitung: Zur philosophisch-soziologischen Diskussion um Michel Foucault," in Erdmann; Forst; Honneth, Ethos der Moderne. [ ^{^} ]
8. Martin Saar, Genealogie als Kritik: Geschichte und Theorie des Subjekts nach Nietzsche und Foucault, Theorie und Gesellschaft 59 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007). [ ^{^} ]
9. This method of interpreting Foucault's subsequently works in light of social theoretical debates initiated past the earlier works is like to Saar'due south method, who argues that Foucault's late work provides the theory of power and liberty that fits genealogy as a critique, as it helps to depict subjects both as power-determined and free. He claims that but this later social theory can account for relatively complimentary subjects that tin can exist addressed by the genealogist. Cf. Saar, Genealogie, 249–75. In departure to Saar's account of the volumes i and 2 every bit a general theory of the possibility of freedom, I show that Confessions offers elements of a genealogy of the specific form of freedom as critique. [ ^{^} ]
10. These and other remarks on the translation are based on the proofs that I received by the publisher on twenty-10-19. Attaching a draft of this review, I inquired if this is the last version of the translation or if in that location are corrections expected. The publisher stated that this would be the final version. [ ^{^} ]
11. For a reconstruction of this social-philosophical debate nearly freedom in Foucault's works, see Karsten Schubert, Freiheit als Kritik: Sozialphilosophie nach Foucault (Bielefeld: transcript, 2018) and, with a detailed analysis of Foucault's The Subject and Power Karsten Schubert, "Liberty as critique: Foucault across anarchism," Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2020, https://doi.org/x.1177/0191453720917733. [ ^{^} ]
12. See Michel Foucault, "Afterword: The Subject and Power," in Dreyfus; Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ii. ed (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1983), 208–26. [ ^{^} ]
13. Encounter Schubert, Freiheit, 34–seven, 251–66. [ ^{^} ]
14. See Thomas Lemke, Foucault'southward analysis of modern governmentality: A critique of political reason (London, Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2019), 108–18 for a detailed assay of these problems, which are evoked past many commentators, for example Nancy Fraser, Unruly practices power, discourse, and gender in contemporary social theory (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Pr., 1989), 17–66; Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf Vorlesungen, stw 749 (Frankfurt a. K.: Suhrkamp, 1988); Axel Honneth, Kritik der Macht: Reflexionsstufen einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 738 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000); Charles Taylor, "Foucault on Freedom and Truth," Political Theory 12, no. 2 (1984), https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591784012002002 and Peter Dews, Logics of disintegration: Post-structuralist thought and the claims of critical theory (London: Verso, 1987), 155–70. [ ^{^} ]
15. Of course, these social-philosophical attempts to systematize a theory of power and freedom from Foucault'southward analysis and to debate its coherence were not only widespread, but also contested. Petra Gehring, "Foucault'sche Freiheitsszenen," in Parrhesia: Foucault und der Mut zur Wahrheit, ed. Petra Gehring and Andreas Gelhard (Zürich: diaphanes, 2012) and Johanna Oksala, Foucault on Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2005) for instance show that and how conceptions and scenes of freedom can be found throughout Foucault's oeuvre. [ ^{^} ]
16. The clearest interpretation of ancient ideals as a normative counter-concept to modernity is found in Wilhelm Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst: Die Frage nach dem Grund und die Neubegründung der Ethik bei Foucault (Frankfurt a. Grand.: Suhrkamp, 2000). But even authors who are justifiably cautious with such normative attributions find building blocks for a theory of liberty in the stardom between moral code and ethics and the field of study-theoretical description of self-relations, come across for example Lemke, Foucault, 265–83 or Saar, Genealogie, 251–75. [ ^{^} ]
17. Information technology is still incomplete today, as a first manuscript for a volume on the Children's Crusades is nonetheless in the Bibliothèque nationale and volition probably never exist published. [ ^{^} ]
18. Ulrich Brieler, Dice Unerbittlichkeit der Historizität: Foucault als Historiker, Beiträge zur Geschichtskultur Bd. fourteen (Köln: Böhlau, 1998). [ ^{^} ]
19. Michel Foucault, "What is Critique?," in The Politics of Truth (New York: Semiotext(east), 1997); Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?," in The Politics of Truth (New York: Semiotext(e), 1997). For a systematic conceptualization of Foucault'southward liberty as critique, see Schubert, Freiheit, 305–12; Schubert, "Freedom," ix–15. [ ^{^} ]
20. Judith Butler, Giving an account of oneself (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 2005), 42. [ ^{^} ]
21. Butler, Giving, 121. [ ^{^} ]
22. Reconstructions of Foucault's genealogy of his own enterprise of critique that he undertook in his last years, such as Andreas Folkers, "Daring the Truth: Foucault, Parrhesia and the Genealogy of Critique," Theory, Culture & Society 33, no. 1 (2015), https://doi.org/ten.1177/0263276414558885, should exist extended and corrected accordingly. Although Foucault begins the genealogy of critique with the ancient parrhesia, fearlessly speaking the truth to political regime, constituting truth through the courage and the cocky-transparency of the protesting subject field, this is precisely not the critical hermeneutics towards one'due south own subjectivity that is and so crucial to Foucault's concept of freedom of critique. Such reflexivity originates in the Christian confessional practices. [ ^{^} ]
23. Schubert, "Freedom," eleven. [ ^{^} ]
24. Foucault, "Critique" in The Politics of Truth, 45. [ ^{^} ]
25. Foucault, "Critique" in The Politics of Truth, 45. [ ^{^} ]
26. Run into for an assay of Foucault's interpretation of Christianity that stresses his affirmative stance towards the reformation as begin of the enlightenment Friedemann Voigt, "Genealogie der Lebensführung. Michel Foucaults Deutung des Christentums," Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte (Periodical for the History of Modern Theology) 14, no. ii (2007), https://doi.org/10.1515/ZNTH.2007.008. [ ^{^} ]
27. The ambivalence of the confession as both repressive and potentially emancipative is also subject of progressive theology, for case Gunda Werner, "Specifically Cosmic: At the Intersection of Power, Maleness, Holiness, and Sexualised Violence. A Theological and Historical Annotate on Power," Journal of the European Social club of Women in Theological Research 27 (2019), https://doi.org/10.2143/ESWTR.27.0.3286560. [ ^{^} ]
28. Guillaume Le Blanc, "Why Read Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh Today? (English version) – Critique 13/xiii," accessed October 28, 2020, http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/critique1313/guillaume-le-blanc-why-read-foucaults-confessions-of-the-flesh-today-english language-version/ makes this argument with regards to contemporary regimes of truth-telling about various sexual subjectivities in his comment on Confessions. [ ^{^} ]

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