In On the Government of the Living, Foucault seeks to analyze how a particular kind of subjectivity emerged during Christianity in Western societies — one that not only required subjects to obey, but to tell the truth of themselves. As Foucault puts it, he seeks to answer the question: “how is it that, in our type of society, power cannot be exercised without truth having to manifest itself, and manifest itself in the form of subjectivity, and without, on the other hand, an expectation of effects of this manifestation of the truth in the form of subjectivity that go beyond the realm of knowledge, effects that belong to the realm and deliverance of each and all?” (75).  

          Foucault begins his analysis with a discussion of Septimius Severus’ hall of justice. Above the court wherein Septimius Severus casted judgment, there was a mural of a star-studded sky. More specifically, what was painted was the exact star configuration that presided during Septimius Severus’ birth. The purpose of this was, for Foucault, threefold: first, it inscribed the judgments made in the court with the cosmic order of the world, thereby showing that those judgments were in harmony with the same order that organizes and governs the world. Second, to show the necessity of his reign — that his rule was no error, but rather dictated by the stars themselves. And, finally, to show that Septimius Severus’ reign was fated by the stars and thus could not be seized by conspirators.

Now, for Foucault, what is important here is the relationship between the exercise of power and the manifestation of truth, and more specifically of a truth that is not merely useful.  That is, the knowledge that is expressed by the star-studded mural is not meant to prove or demonstrate the legitimacy of Septimius Severus’ rule; rather, for Foucault, it was a ritual manifestation of the truth whose purpose was “of making truth itself appear against the background of the unknown, hidden, invisible, and unpredictable” (6). More specifically, Foucault is interested in analyzing the ‘alethurgy,’ or the set of verbal and non-verbal procedures by which the truth of what is true, hidden and unseen or forgotten is manifested. Again, while this knowledge offers no practical value, Foucault contends that this kind of knowledge is crucial to the exercise of power, and while it has undergone noticeable transformations, it is indispensable for the formation of Western subjectivity.    

          To further elaborate on this relationship between truth and subjectivity, beginning in the second lecture, Foucault turns to a discussion of Sophocles’ Oedipus. In doing so, Foucault seeks to establish three points: first, the necessity of the manifestation of truth to the exercise of power. While Oedipus may have preferred never to learn the truth of his birth, there could have been no peace in Thebes until the truth emerged. While unnecessary for justifying or legitimatizing his power, without this manifestation of this truth, Oedipus could not rule. Second, the manifestation of truth requires a subject that can say “I” — it requires a subject that was present, and can thereby offer a first-person account of what occurred. While Oedipus is initially told the truth by Apollo’s oracle (and was thus certified by the divine), it was only until the servants arrived and spoke the truth — the same truth as the oracle — that it was accepted. It was only until subjects whom could speak from the perspective of an “I” that the manifestation of the truth could occur. Finally, third, this manifestation of truth does more than merely reveal what was unknown. That is, at the start of the play, the oracle from Delphi demands that the one who caused the plague (i.e. the one who killed Laius) must either be exiled or put to death. And, yet, once it is revealed that Oedipus is the killer, the plague is lifted and order is restored: Oedipus remains in Thebes alive. As Foucault puts it, “It suffices that the truth be shown, that it be shown in its ritual, in its appropriate procedures, its regulated alethurgy, for the problem of punishment no longer to be posed and for Thebes to be liberated” (74).

          As with the example of Septimius Severius, Foucault wanted to highlight here the relationship between these manifestations of truth and the exercise of power; however, in discussing Oepdius, Foucault wanted additionally to highlight the role of subjectivity in these kinds of manifestations. Specifically, the role of the subject who is both subject to power and yet required for the truth to be manifested — the figure of the servant in the tale of Oedipus. As Foucault further explains, manifestations of truth require ‘truth acts’ by the part of a subject. These truth acts require a subject to be an operator that reveals truth; and to be a spectator — to have seen the truth and thus be able to speak with an “I.” If the truth act involves the truth of oneself, then it is a reflexive truth act and requires, in addition to these two roles, that the subject serve as an object in the ritual. For Foucault, the historically most important reflexive truth act is the practice of Christian confession. There, a subject must be an operator insofar as she must reveal what is hidden and unknown; because the subject was there, she is also a spectator to the truth; and, finally, the subject is an object in the ritual since it is a matter of her and of her truth.

For the remainder of the lectures, Foucault seeks to trace the development of this relationship between truth and subjectivity, not from the perspective of ideology, but of regimes of truth. By regime of truth, Foucault refers to those practices and procedures that define what constitutes a truth act, what form they can take, and the condition under which individuals may tell the truth of themselves. Regimes of truth, then, constrain individuals to manifest their truth in particular ways. Of particular interest for Foucault in these lectures are the practices of baptism, penance and spiritual direction. Again, the concern is to expose how a certain kind of subjectivity emerged that forces subjects to not only obey, but to tell the truth of themselves. While the act of confession may seem the most visible practice of truth telling, Foucault contends that it is only the end result of an entire process by which Christianity obligated subjects to manifest their own truth.

          To begin, Foucault’s discussion of baptism revolves predominately around texts by first-century preacher John the Baptist and the second-century Christian scholar Tertullian. In analyzing these texts, Foucault notes a significant shift in the conception of repentance from those of earlier writers. Specifically, whereas earlier texts such as the Didache or Justin’s First Apology understood baptism as involving a unitary process wherein in turning towards the truth (of Christianity) the soul discovers its own truth, Foucault sees a split that ruptures the movement towards truth in baptism into two steps. The first step involved a reconceptualization of baptism as a test wherein one must learn the truth prior to baptism, and by virtue of which the soul becomes enlightened during the act of baptism; and, then, a second step after baptism wherein the soul discovers the truth of itself. This decoupling between the soul’s acquisition of the truth from the eventual manifestation of the truth after baptism is significant for Foucault as its marks, on his reading, the dissociation between faith (‘believing the dogma’) and confession (‘saying what one is’).

          This separation, which is not totalizing (faith and confession are still importantly interconnected), prompts a reorganization of the place of memory in Christianity. As Foucault explains, “On the one hand, memory becomes therefore a matter of institutionalized traditionality, and, at the same time, the truth, discovery of the truth of the soul by itself, becomes the object of a number of processes, procedures and techniques, which are also institutionalized, by which the soul is required to say, show, and manifest what is it a every moment of its move towards the truth and salvation” (145). As a result of this, truth itself is reorganized: on the one hand, there is truth as dogma, and on the other the truth manifested by the soul’s obligation to “‘tell me who you are'” (146).  

          Now, while baptism concerned how the soul would discover its own truth, the practice of penance was concerned with the subject, who after having discovered its own truth during baptism, relapsed into sin. As Foucault notes, unlike baptism, this procedure does not guarantee the sinner forgiveness by God, only the possibility. Moreover, it is distinct from baptism in two important respects: first, there is a stage prior to penance wherein the subject must seek permission by manifesting his truth and revealing that he has sinned. Second, and this is the more significant difference, the act of penance requires a public manifestation of the self, of one’s recognition that one was a sinner and now repents.

          In these two practices, then, Foucault sees two distinct kinds of procedures: one that entails a detailed verbalization of one’s sins, and a second that involves self-discovery and exploration. What is important for Foucault is the eventual coupling of these two processes late in Christianity. It is this coupling that marks the beginning of the development of the subjectivity of Western man. Now, to be clear, while these two processes are present in baptism and penance, it is not until Christian direction that the two are ultimately coupled. As Foucault explains, “It seems to me that the reason for this is that in baptism and in penance and forgiveness it is not a question of grasping the subject as he is, deep down, in his identity and continuity, but rather of making the manifestation of the truth a sort of de-identification of the subject, since it involves turning someone who was a sinner into someone who is no longer a sinner” (226).  

Thus, in baptism and penance, the subject does not manifest the truth of herself, but rather each constitutes a break within the subject along the axis of the sin. In contrast, with Christian direction, Foucault sees the establishment of a particular relationship of obedience to another to tell the truth of oneself in the form of a confession. Importantly, the goal here is not to tell the truth as a means of preparing the subject for some process that will eliminate his sin. The act of manifesting the truth to another is the entire procedure. The function of direction is not to retroactively evaluate past actions and determine whether they were sinful or not. Rather, the function is to “grasp thoughts at the very moment of their appearance and then trying, as quickly as possible, immediately, to separate those that one must be able to accept into one’s consciousness and those that must be rejected, expelled from one’s consciousness” (301). What is at stake here, then, is not the manifestation of the truth of the idea, but rather the truth of the subject who has the idea.

          Overall, On the Government of the Living is an important text for understanding how Foucault understands the relationship between truth and the development of Western subjectivity. Moreover, insofar as Foucault describes his project here as marking a transition in his work from the theme of ‘power-knowledge’ to ‘government by the truth,’ it constitutes an important work for understanding the evolution of Foucault’s thought and methodology. While Foucault’s project is limited here to the emergence of the subjectivity of Western man, he does remark that the practice of truth telling inherent in Christian direction is still present in contemporary practices, including medical practices.  As such, these lectures may be of interest of those working with Foucault’s account of the medical sciences.

© 2016 Jordan Liz

Jordan Liz is a graduate student in Philosophy at the University of Memphis.