Antoon Braeckman

ABSTRACT One of the productive political-philosophical concepts Foucault developed is that of governmentality. According to Foucault, governmentality is in many respects the heir of pastoral power. However, Foucault has never conclusively demonstrated the genealogical link between pastoral power and governmentality. The hypothesis that I want to put forward is that the “missing link” in this genealogy should be situated in the governmental transformations that took place in the period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, more specifically in the period of the “confessionalization”. To substantiate this claim, I briefly discuss the ideal-typical relationship between pastoral power and governmentality while indicating how Foucault accounts for this relationship. I then criticise his account by showing that it fails to expose the genealogical link between pastoral power and governmentality. Finally, I show how, from a genealogical point of view, the confessionalization theory makes a convincing connection between the revival of pastoral power during the Reformation and the development of a “confessional governmentality” in which religious and secular authorities intersect.

According to Gauchet we are living in a `society of individuals'. But a central term is missing from that formula, and not by any accident, for contemporary society has lost it from view: the term of the political. In sum, thus reads Gauchet's diagnosis, society today is haunted by a kind of individualism out of which no society can be conceived, as it obfuscates its political dimension. The aim of this article is to elaborate this diagnosis, and more specifically the idea that there is no society, and therefore no individual either, without the political. In order to do so, I will explore the meaning of the formula `society of individuals'. Within the scope of this analysis, I shall primarily pay attention to the `primacy of the political' in Gauchet. To conclude, I will assess Gauchet's diagnosis, by fathoming in what sense contemporary individualism, besides being an `eclipse of the political', is also a threat to democracy

Resistance as ‘Counter-conduct’. On the Usefulness of Foucault’s concept of Contre-conduite This paper intends to clarify the peculiarity of counter-conduct as a form of resistance and to examine its usefulness in our neoliberal era. In view thereof, it takes off with a general discussion of Foucault’s views of the relationship between power and resistance. Then the focus shifts more specifically to governmentality and its predecessor, pastoral power, as the specific type of power against which counter-conduct as a form of resistance is directed. This investigation allows in the next step to fathom the uniqueness of counter-conduct as a peculiar form of resistance and to find out whether it is appropriate to resist neoliberal governmentality. The paper concludes by pointing out a major weakness of counter-conduct, viz. its unlikelihood to develop into forms of collective resistance.

The general claim advanced in this article is that Foucault’s genealogy of the modern state traces two ideal-typically different power arrangements at the origin of the modern state, roughly referred to as ‘sovereign power’ and ‘governmentality’. They are ideal-typically different in that they operate according to a different logic, including different ends, means and modi operandi. The more specific claim, then, is that due to this different logic, their ever changing interpenetration on the level of the state is imbalanced. In order for ‘governmentality’ to operate according to the law, it must be backed by the juridical frameworks provided by sovereign power, but then again these juridical frameworks prove inadequate and insufficient to curb ‘governmentality’s’ operational procedures as well as the modalities and intensities of its implementation. In other words, in his genealogy of the modern state, Foucault tracks down ‘governmentality’ as a distinctive form of power which, although intertwined with the state, cannot juridically be contained by the state. It cannot be appropriately restrained by its legal regulations and, as such, constitutes an excess vis-à-vis those regulations.

This essay sets up a dialogue between Lefort’s view on the relationship between the state and modern society and Foucault’s thesis of a governmental turn in the modern power regime, whereby the relations between state and society are thoroughly redrawn. What are the main results? 1) Whereas Lefort’s political ontology leaves room for divergent agencies from which the symbolic institution of the social may unfold, his preoccupation with democracy leans him to inseparably link the symbolic institution of modern society with the functioning of the modern state. 2) By contrast, Foucault’s history of governmentality documents a shift from the political and legal power regime to the biopolitical regime. This shift seems to be accompanied by a turn in the regime of the symbolic institution of modern society. Where that institution hitherto relied on the state, today, a symbiosis of state and neoliberal governmentality seems to be taking over. 3) This shift in power regimes brings along major problems. In political respect, it leads to a re-adjustment of the instituting representations of contemporary society, to a depoliticization of political and social relations, and to the erosion of democracy.

Weber’s concept of rationalization internally relies on an opposition that is borrowed from a religious semantics: the opposition between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Taking as point of departure the expression ‘the disenchantment of the world’ I argue that this expression, and the concept of rationalization, which is connected with it, have to be understood as elements of a categorical field of tension that is dominated precisely by the mentioned opposition. Referring to the sociology of religion, in which Weber for the first time developed and deployed this opposition as an analytical tool, it appears that 1) the concept of rationalization in Weber is multivocal; 2) that the extraordinary and the ordinary relate to one another as do charisma and institution; and finally 3) that the description of the western rationalization process in terms of ‘disenchantment of the world’ by no means signifies that modern society is no longer characterized by the relationship between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Weber, for that matter, indeed attaches great importance to the extraordinary as a factor of revolutionary change, both in modern history and in modern politics

In Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spätphilosophie Schellings, W. Schulz concludes that the project of German idealism reaches its fulfilment in Schelling's later philosophy, in such a way that the project itself is abandoned. Schulz defines it as an attempt to conceive pure subjectivity in terms of sheer self-mediation. This project, which Schelling consistently carries through, results in the insight that pure subjectivity (identified by Schulz with pure reason) is itself mediated. In this awareness pure subjectivity experiences its finitude. Against Schulz's position I want to posit that the project of German idealism and especially the project of Schelling's philosophy should preferably be defined as an attempt to understand reason as constituted by freedom. Precisely because Schulz does not systematically take into account this constitutive position of freedom, he misses some essential aspects in Schelling's thinking. Schelling indeed conceives of the primacy of freedom in two ways : it is both the theoretical ground and the practical aim of reason. This implies that reason is not only constituted by freedom, but that it is also directed towards its realization. Yet, although these dimensions of freedom are both constitutive of reason, they do not belong to it. This idea of freedom as both constitutive and external to pure reason, obviously leads to Schulz's thesis that a mere self-mediation of pure subjectivity is impossible. But whereas Schulz argues that Schelling does not reach such insight until his later philosophy, I would say that it was already present when Schelling acknowledged the formative position of freedom — an idea which he put forward at the very beginning of his philosophical evolution. By thus narrowing the problem of Schelling's philosophy, Schulz cannot possibly understand the specific role and meaning of the positive philosophy in Schelling's later thinking. For this role is completely based on the idea that philosophy is oriented towards the realization of an ethical praxis. In this article I try to show how Schelling understands this primacy of freedom : firstly, he conceives freedom as the ground of all reasoning via a transcendental reconstruction of the relationship between freedom and reason ; secondly, he legitimates the realization of freedom as the aim of all reasoning by postulating the final unity of reason and freedom as the ultimate goal of history. More specifically, I discuss how the distinction in Schelling's later thought between negative and positive philosophy clearly reflects this concept of philosophy

This article explores Schelling’s view concerning the eventual reconciliation of modern individuality and society. It is argued that in Schelling’s speculations on this subject, aesthetic models play a prominent role: on the level of society by expressing the need for a new mythology; on the level of the individual by formulating a normative ideal in which the individual is modelled after the work of artand its creator: the artistic genius. This normative view on modern individuality is quite ambivalent. It summons the individual to abandon its individuality and to have it determined by universality. But, since Schelling wants the individual to be a real individuality, his position comes down to the quest for an “individual universal.” Relying on a close-reading of Schelling’s System des transzendentalenIdealismus, the Philosophie der Kunst, and the Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen, the paradigm of this extraordinary position is shown to be the work of art.