The existence of ethics, morality and values has long been a basis of contest among philosophical thinkers. On one pole stands the deterministic teleology of Aristotle, which distinguishes the good from the evil and the just from the unjust. On the other pole resides the de-centrism of Foucault, which denies a universal code of ethics or values altogether. The latter also denies a unifying human essence by a similar argument and has become prey to a host of contradictions. This essay will discuss the philosophy of Michael Foucault in relation to contrasting philosophies and expose the inconsistencies in his descriptions of human essence and values.
Foucault fundamentally denies the existence of a universal code of ethics or morality. His ideas are, in part, an adaptation of genealogy, the study of origins. Foucault argues that values do not have any origins and so cannot be predetermined universally by a metaphysical being. Rather, he proposes that values are the by-products of a non-progressive historical process. Values, he argues, do not evolve or progress over time; they are simply structures of knowledge established by power and violence at a time in history. Hence, the history of values is merely the history of dominance and power struggles between the ruling forces of a given time. Furthermore, the human has no power to create or direct the course of these values; the human is simply subjected to this history of violence and exclusion without choice. The human lacks both the creative ability and the freedom to create history or to shape values; rather, history creates and controls the human.
Foucault stands in stark contrast to Karl Marx, who states: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated.”1 Marx argues that humans are both the products of and creators of history. History shapes humans, but cannot consume us, for we in turn create and control history.
Foucault denies any human power to shape history, which in turn supports a non-active and quiet life. If action is maneuvered for change, the results of action are nullified if change is impossible. This, again, is strongly contested by Hanna Arendt and her notion of viva activa (the active life). For Arendt, it is action that creates history. Humans can condition and are conditioned by history.
Foucault extends this denial of universal values and the freedom to change these values to the denial of human essence. As values represent the structures of knowledge taken over by a ruling class at a given time, so does human essence represent the idea of humanity taken over at a given time. Human essence, argues Foucault, is a consequence of power struggles across history; it is neither universal nor determinate, it is simply a concept of humanity prevalent at a time. Foucault, however, does not scorn this. He asserts that establishing human essence would be oppressive, for it would deny difference among humans.
These views, especially the fear of indifference, present a myriad of contradictions.
Consider the critique asserted by Jeff Noonan: “If human beings are not essentially self-determining but are always functions of forces external to them, then there is no conceptual ground for the distinction between an oppressed and a free state. To be oppressed is to be made into something you are not by forces that you do not recognize to be legitimate.”2 Noonan enforces that if humans are bereft of an essence or a shared identity, then there is no notion of dehumanization. Hence, there can be no notion of oppression, which is the deprivation of human qualities. This contradicts Foucault's claim that a human essence, or a shared identity between humans, is oppressive.
Similarly, there can be no realization of oppression without a realization of values, for it is the values ascribed to freedom that bring forth the consciousness of oppression. If there is no notion of freedom, on what basis can one argue that he or she is oppressed? Foucault states that: “…there cannot be relations of power unless the subjects are free. If one or the other were completely at the disposition of the other and became his thing, an object on which he exercised an unlimited violence, there would be no relations of power. In order for there to be relations of power, there must be on both sides a certain form of liberty.”3 This is an obvious contradiction to his previous position that humans hold no freedom for establishing their meaning nor changing history. Here, he admits that humans must have liberty in order to participate in a relation of power. He describes the human as not only capable of modifying these relations of power, but being self-determining in essence; he describes the human as a subject. Earlier, Foucault described this subjectivity, or shared human identity, as oppressive. In this recent statement, however, he describes this same subjectivity as the tool to understand power and furthermore to supersede oppression.
Noonan describes this contradiction further: “This is a general problem that affects the postmodern attempt to think oppression and resistance to it without grounding this thinking in a concept of human self-determination. On the whole, the various sites of oppression generate a critique of that oppression that activates concepts such as self-determination, human rights, and equality and that have employed violent means to acquire them.”4 Certainly, if human essence is non-existent, as is freedom and control over one's environment and circumstances, then the human has no ability to make decisions, and hence no sense of individuality. The concept of oppression is interwoven with the concepts of freedom and self-determination, for oppression batters freedom and human rights. Without an understanding of what makes one human, oppression is meaningless.
Foucault believes freedom and human autonomy are a myth, which necessitates that oppression is unavoidable. Yet, he misses that freedom itself is a value established by the ruling class of a historical period. Throughout history, freedom has predominantly been defined by the white, European male. Hence, freedom cannot be presupposed as a universal quality that humans lack; the definition of freedom is itself a value imposed by power and dominance by the rulers of a time. Again, Foucault is seized in the clutches of his own web.
In conclusion, Michel Foucault's views have been the agent of both controversy and influence, as exemplified by the support from the postmodern movement and the critique from Jeff Noonan. Foucault's denial in values and human essence ultimately contradicts his purpose of superseding oppression, for there is no oppression without an understanding of what makes one human and what dehumanizes us. At the same time, his ideas have inspired a following of postmodern thought and political system that continues to be a subject of interest in modern philosophy.
