Foucault on Plato's STATESMAN
Rummaging for information on Foucault (connected to the idea of the state as a form of technology, something that Foucauldians are associated with) I came accross a lecture by Foucault - Omnes et Singulatim (1979) - where he discusses Plato's STATESMAN.
His reading and use of the dialogue are pretty interesting. He clearly sees that the idea of the statesman as the "shepherd of man" is rejected by the Stranger - though also partially incorporated in the idea of the statesman as a kind of weaver. According to him, however, the specific difference between the shepherd and the statesman is that the former cares for human beings one by one - each individual person - whereas the latter is only concerned with the city as a whole. This seems to me not quite right: the shepherd is explicitly said to care for human beings as a herd, i.e., in groups (261d-e), but the ultimate point Foucault is making is similar to one I would actually make, namely, that the shepherd's knowledge gathers all the knowledge of the care of human beings into one person, whereas the statesman's knowledge does not. The shepherd thus cares for every aspect of the human person, while the statesman does not.
Foucault uses this argument to make a distinction between the "pastoral" and the "political" forms of power (the distinction is also grounded historically in other uses of the shepherd metaphor, but Foucault spends comparatively more time on Plato). The pastoral form of power is individualising - its oriented to the whole individual; the political is oriented to the unity of a community. He then traces the development of "pastoral" forms of power through Christianity all the way to the modern era. Interestingly, however, his argument is that the modern state represents a kind of convergence of these two modalities of power - the pastoral and the political. Though I take it that this distorts a bit the meaning of the Platonic claim that statesmanship cannot be a kind of shepherding - it does seem to suggest something important about the modern state and its reach into the whole lives of individuals - through the incorporation of the various forms of human knowledge into the state, perhaps. I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps if I read more Foucault. I don't suppose there are a lot of readers of Foucault in this group?
His reading and use of the dialogue are pretty interesting. He clearly sees that the idea of the statesman as the "shepherd of man" is rejected by the Stranger - though also partially incorporated in the idea of the statesman as a kind of weaver. According to him, however, the specific difference between the shepherd and the statesman is that the former cares for human beings one by one - each individual person - whereas the latter is only concerned with the city as a whole. This seems to me not quite right: the shepherd is explicitly said to care for human beings as a herd, i.e., in groups (261d-e), but the ultimate point Foucault is making is similar to one I would actually make, namely, that the shepherd's knowledge gathers all the knowledge of the care of human beings into one person, whereas the statesman's knowledge does not. The shepherd thus cares for every aspect of the human person, while the statesman does not.
Foucault uses this argument to make a distinction between the "pastoral" and the "political" forms of power (the distinction is also grounded historically in other uses of the shepherd metaphor, but Foucault spends comparatively more time on Plato). The pastoral form of power is individualising - its oriented to the whole individual; the political is oriented to the unity of a community. He then traces the development of "pastoral" forms of power through Christianity all the way to the modern era. Interestingly, however, his argument is that the modern state represents a kind of convergence of these two modalities of power - the pastoral and the political. Though I take it that this distorts a bit the meaning of the Platonic claim that statesmanship cannot be a kind of shepherding - it does seem to suggest something important about the modern state and its reach into the whole lives of individuals - through the incorporation of the various forms of human knowledge into the state, perhaps. I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps if I read more Foucault. I don't suppose there are a lot of readers of Foucault in this group?
posted by Xavier Marquez @ 7:47 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
foucault is always saying something very important to us. if he speaks about plato it´s obvious he wants to say something about our situation too. highly interesting always...
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