Frieder Vogelmann

In this paper we pose the question what constitutes the originality of governmentality as a state analytical framework by confronting it with alternative contemporary approaches in state theory, suggesting that the latter may already contain many of the insights Foucaultians sometimes tend to ascribe to the governmentality perspective exclusively and thus run the risk of reinventing the state theoretical wheel. Still, we argue that there is something unique to the governmentality perspective, namely a particular kind of unwieldy knowledge about the state it aims to produce. Generating such knowledge would no longer be state theory but rather state philosophy in a specifically Foucaultian sense.

Most conceptual analyses of responsibility fail to sufficiently account for the historicity of the concept – both within philosophical reflections and within non-philosophical practices. Three frequently encountered problems are: First, “responsibility” is often read retrospectively in texts where the concept is not present; second, the necessary and sufficient conditions that account for responsibility’s meaning are often derived from contemporary usage alone; and third, the non-philosophical usage of “responsibility” is often dismissed as “defective” too quickly. To avoid all three problems, I argue for a Foucauldian analysis of practices in which “responsibility” is used.

Does truth have a history? Whereas Bernard William denies it and only allows a history of truthfulness, I defend the possibility of a critical history or genealogy of truth. Because a trifling relativistic historicization of truth leads to a paradoxically a-historic and pacifistic conception of truth, one must first establish the methodological concepts with which a genealogy of truth can avoid both problems. Three first steps towards such concepts can be found in some of Michel Foucault’s lectures, which lead the genealogy of truth to focus on the origins of truth’s force.