To trace the philosophical history of the notion of emancipation, Diogo Sardinha relies on the commentary that Foucault gave to Kant’s text on the Enlightenment. From Baudelaire to Deleuze via Sartre and Bataille, the author explores the thought of emancipation in the modern era, and the lines of tension.
Emancipation from Kant to Deleuze presents itself as “ a history of emancipation over two hundred years as it can be reconstructed by philosophy » (p. 5). On the one hand, it is a story built on philosophical works, and on the other hand, of a story reflecting a certain way of understand philosophically emancipation. The story starts from the Kantian call to become major, and ends with Deleuze’s commitment to a become a minor ; paradox which provides the opportunity for properly philosophical reflection, mainly centered on the work of Foucault.
Baudelaire with Kant ?
In what appears to be the first moment of the work (chapters I to III), the author takes note of the strangeness of the consistent Foucauldian gesture, in his commentary on Kant’s text “ Answer to the question: What is the Enlightenment ? », to associate the dispassionate inventor of the categorical imperative and the author of Flowers of Evil ; the promoter of a humanity becoming adult and responsible for itself, and the incarnation of a dandyism that is both elitist and disillusioned. To better understand this gesture, he first suggests that this reading of Baudelaire is itself rooted in the previous debate between Sartre and Bataille.
Indeed, Sartre, in a manner basically quite consistent with Kant, condemned Baudelaire for not having known how to choose freedom and responsibility, locking himself in, out of despair, in a choice that is by definition impossible – and, frankly, childish – that of of “ Wrong “. Now every will tending spontaneously towards the good, this was in reality equivalent to denying one’s own will, and in doing so… to confirming the established order more solidly than ever (p. 24-25). For the author of Paths of freedom, Dandyism is therefore first and foremost a renunciation. Bataille, in reaction, praised the poet for having, through the very absurdity of this choice, highlighted the essential core of freedom, which is the capacity to take a stand for yourself, Was it to make a choice? impossible “. In this he confirmed Lacan’s analysis, which revealed the common ground on which Kant and Sade stood, according to him, the one who recognized the law in a positive way and the one who only established it to transgress it.
Foucault, for his part, first retains from Bataille the idea of the imprescriptible nature of choice as the essence of freedom ; However, all of his work, from the 1960s to the 1980s, demonstrates a progressive move away from the original admiration for transgression. Thus, joining Sartre without really recognizing him by finally bringing Baudelaire closer to Kant, he thus indicates to what extent the poet embodies, not so much the dark counterpoint of the Kantian project, but rather its positive continuator, in what he takes seriously, against all odds, the need for a choice of oneself by oneself. If this attitude cannot however be conceived in the phenomenological terms of authenticity, it is because it cannot be reduced to a truth of oneself but to a “ creative practice “.
However, emancipation thus understood can no longer constitute a collective or universal project, but the ethics of an avant-garde called, by this very fact, to the status of a numerical minority alongside a majority still not emancipated. This Baudelairian particularism then seems to collide head-on with Kantian universalism. However, faced with this difficulty, the Deleuzian path offers a radical alternative: the pure and simple reversal of the Kantian call into a become a minor.
Kant authorized himself to “ nature “, which frees humanity from its infantile dependencies, to invite the latter to take over by leaving “ of a state of guardianship for which (she) is (herself) responsible “. But this future naturally induced must precisely, for Deleuze, be distinguished from a become truly free. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze, underlines the author, seems rather reluctant towards the theme of transgression carried by Bataille (ch. II). Even more radical, for him emancipation is inseparable from a radical distrust of any form of position of a norm, even through the proud claim of a Refusal. Consequently, and even though for Foucault, madness remains a limiting category, left outside of philosophical discourse, Deleuze poses what the author calls “ the torture of the subject », or the figure of schizophrenia, at the foundation of any true thought of freedom (ch. III). It is therefore the figure of Artaud, neglected by Foucault, that he favors for his part, to the point of finally proposing on his example a philosophy which would be freed from the very category of judgement.
Individual and community: freedom in modern times
But the main issue in this story seems to remain, for the author, of an ethical and political order. Indeed, by pushing the logic of minor becomings to its conclusion, Deleuze avoided the dilemma of the universal and the particular and gave himself the means to think, or at least to “ imagine “, a “ community of minor singularities » (p. 116). But the leave given to rational judgment seems to have an excessive price for Foucault, who would propose an intermediate solution between Kantian rationalism and the Deleuzian apology for psychosis.” We would thus be justified in reproaching the author for not recognizing more explicitly what this history of emancipation owes to a reflection on the text of Foucault, an author present from start to finish, in contrast in particular with Deleuze, no longer really discussed after the third chapter when it is presented as the end of the story in question. Such clarification would have avoided possible confusion with the project of an exhaustive history of emancipation (which is certainly not the author’s project), and would undoubtedly, more generally, have improved the readability of the work. . )). By maintaining for his part the impossibility of going mad, Foucault rather proposes, according to the author, to “ imitate madness » (p. 112) – a formula that is actually a little problematic, insofar as it still seems to presuppose a form of nostalgia in relation to a madness set up as a model of authentic life, and of which philosophical life can only be one pale copy.
The distinction (becoming mad or imitating madness) nevertheless remains operative to the extent that it allows Diogo Sardinha to illuminate the Foucauldian path to emancipation (chapters IV has VI). This first requires (ch. IV) to think of modernity, no longer as an era, but as a “ attitude », a truly ethical positioning “ transhistorical “, because it is likely to go beyond the limits of the XIXe century. Applying to Foucault, who is generally considered a radical relativist, the proposition is clear-cut to say the least and brings, quite fortunately it seems, an additional stone to the building of a conception of his thought attentive to his coherence (rather than claiming to see it as a philosophy of discontinuity), so as to restore its relative originality within the philosophical tradition, and to more rigorously evaluate its relevance, a position already defended in the previous work of the author. The attitude of the dandy thus reveals, according to him, a fundamental ethical attitude characterized by a “ emancipation by subjection to oneself » (p. 140), which leads to fully promoting the category of particularity against Kantian universality (p. 129ff.).
The explanation with Kant then continues in the form of a contestation of the anthropological project (already well underway since Words and things), to which Foucault proposes to substitute a “ historical ontology of ourselves » ; this, rather than telling us what we are or even giving us a direction (becoming “ major ), will reveal the contingency of what we are, and at the same time the possibility of becoming others (p. 157). This ontology is therefore enlightened by a discussion with Heidegger, whose intuition, developed in Being and time, of a Greek thought of technology not liberated and tyrannical, but on the contrary subject to “ self-care needs » (p. 165).
After these original clarifications, the author then returns strictly speaking to Foucauldian thought on emancipation by highlighting a certain number of fundamental points (chapter VI). First of all, emancipation must definitely be thought of under the general category of freedom, of which it is a form, rather than by means of the overly restrictive concept of resistance (yet a time valued by Foucault). The radical freedom of the human being would thus be the true condition of possibility of Foucault’s conception of power relations – which would in fact deeply connect Foucault, mutatis mutandis, to authors like Sartre and Kant. By contrast, the notion of resistance alone does not allow us to think about emancipation since it remains linked to power relations, which can be reversed but not resolved.
Then, the particularist positioning of the ethical attitude does not contradict a political thought of emancipation, but on the contrary is in solidarity with it, because the effort to govern others also requires an effort to govern oneself, opening up new possibilities. sort to a “ ourselves » — which is neither the universal essence of humanity, nor a collection of pure singularities — the possibility of being constituted. This solidarity nevertheless remains highly problematic, to the extent that the very success of the particularist ethics of the elite condemns it to being reversed into a universalist moral normativity, contrary to the initial attitude of its promoters: “ from the moment it becomes for everyone, ethics as attention to oneself can no longer play its role of resistance, and consequently is no longer a practice of freedom » (p. 184).
The author proposes to remove the difficulty by means of the idea, borrowed from Etienne Balibar, of a conception of subjectivity as be at the borders, in other words of a limit between the internal forces of the individual and the external forces of the collectivity – the author then authorizing himself, curiously, to reduce Foucauldian self-art to the Aristotelian virtue of the right measure, susceptible to help him situate himself in this balance of forces (p. 208-209). The proposition, very original, is all the more surprising since Aristotle is one of the major absentees from Foucault’s courses on ancient morality, after having been quite violently targeted in the first lessons of the 1971 course.
However, in conclusion, he finally seems to subscribe, despite their differences, to the idea of a compatibility of “ common dandyism » with the singularity of Deleuzian becoming-minor, in a “ strategic wisdom of game diversion » (p. 230) which is not based on any specific norm (whether it be the superiority of a caste or the essential dignity of humanity). It is then a function of character and “ the emergency » of the situation that it would ultimately be up to everyone to opt for one or the other of the paths retraced by the work. Which ultimately tends to confirm the idea that, despite its stated intentions, it is indeed within the Foucauldian framework alone – a framework certainly broadened and worked through a meticulous discussion and without particular complacency – that remain thoughts, and the history in question, and the philosophical positions that it intends to restore.