Foucault on Leadership

The Leader as Subject

Nathan Harter

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780815381877
• eBook ISBN: 9781317241911
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

Michel Foucault, one of the most cited scholars in the social sciences, devoted his last three lectures to a study of leader development. Going back to pagan sources, Foucault found a persistent theme in Hellenistic antiquity that, in order to qualify for leadership, a person must undergo processes of subjectivation, which is simply the way that a person becomes a Subject. From this perspective, an aspiring leader first becomes a Subject who happens to lead. These processes depend on a condition of parresia, which is truth-telling at great risk that is for the edification of the other person. A leader requires a mentor and advisors in order to lead successfully, while also developing the capacity in one's own mind to heed the truth. In other words, a leader must learn how to guide oneself.

A valuable contribution to the field of leadership studies, this book summarizes these last lectures as they pertain to the study and practice of leadership, emphasizing the role of ethics and truth-telling as a check on power. It then presents several other contexts where these same lessons can be seen in practice, including in the life of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose career as a writer epitomized speaking truth to power, and somewhat surprisingly in the United States military, in response to its twenty-first century mission of counterinsurgency.

1
1981–82

A. Introduction

Michel Foucault had just returned to the lecture hall in January 1982, stating his theme from the lectern. “In what historical form do the relations between the ‘subject’ and ‘truth’… take shape in the West?” (2¹) Weeks later, he will sharpen this theme to read as follows: “How is the relationship between truth-telling (veridiction) and the practice of the subject established, fixed, and defined? Or, more generally, how are truth-telling and governing (governing oneself and others) linked and connected to each other?” (229)

The English word “subject” is ambiguous. On the one hand, we say of someone that he is a “subject” of the king or “subjected” to someone’s power, as in being subordinated. On the other hand, we use the term to refer to the person doing the acting, as the “subject” of the sentence. A subject in this sense is an active social agent, one who determines how to respond to the world. The subject in this second sense is relatively autonomous, the author of his or her own behavior and, in fact, the opposite of the one being subordinated. As one commentator put it, “[T]he subject is no longer constituted from the social sphere—he is no longer a ‘passive product’ ….” (Horujy, 2010/2015, p. 11) Foucault intended the second meaning here.

You will notice that Foucault limited his researches to the West. More on this theme of educating subjects could be said about other cultures, no doubt, but they were not the object of his inquiry. As we will see later, the West did gradually incorporate elements from other cultures, most pertinently from Judaism by way of Christianity; but here in these lectures, Foucault chose to restrict our attention to ancient Greece and Rome. For convenience, he announced that one could divide this period into three parts:

• Socrates/Plato;
• first- and second-century Greece and Rome (which he came to refer to as the “Hellenistic” portion of his research); and
• early Christian asceticism (which he had already begun researching separately).

This is not to suggest that what he was trying to do was write that history himself. It often sounds as though Foucault was attempting to construct some grand narrative, moving in a linear fashion from point A (Socrates) to point B (Christianity). He was not. (462) He explained that his purpose was to examine what he called “landmarks along the way.” (66) The path is hardly linear. Elements from one portion do survive into the next; others do not. For any one portion, we will find disagreements, divergences, such that the trajectory becomes split and confused. What was implicit in one era becomes explicit in another. Back of all that, Foucault will insinuate that something of value from the Hellenistic period has disappeared altogether—or changed so completely as to be unrecognizable in the present.

Frédéric Gros describes Foucault’s method in this fashion: “starting from a notion…, locating key texts, describing the strategies of usage, plotting lines of evolution or rupture.” (2008, p. 385) Gros then admits that throughout this period, the overall structure of his thinking would shift in response to the evidence. An outline he gave in one lecture might suddenly disappear, to be replaced by a completely different one later. He says this gives to these lectures a sense of their being more of a living laboratory than a finished text. (2001, p. 518) With this word of caution in mind, let us begin.

B. Socrates/Plato

Foucault began by presenting a broad injunction that pre-dated Socrates. Socrates even invokes it three times in his own criminal defense. (5) It was widely accepted in Athenian culture that one must “care for the self.” (8, 491) What did that mean? It was expected that adults assume responsibility for themselves and no longer require tutelage beyond a certain age. Part of what it had meant to emerge from the liminality of rites of passage was to begin caring for one’s self.

Foucault noticed that COS was a principle that extended for a thousand years, a general cultural phenomenon that included an attitude toward the world and an array of certain practices as a way of being in the world. (10f) Then strangely it practically disappears and seems no longer important in the West. (12) If anything takes its place, it is the narrower injunction found at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” (3, 491) Somehow, the venerable principle of COS becomes marginalized by something related but slightly different, which in turn leads to specific developments many centuries later, including the rise of modernity. (14) So the transition in its meaning long ago was not trivial to our understanding of ourselves today. Can we go back to find out what had happened?

The question is significant, for as Foucault explained, COS served the purposes of spirituality, but not of philosophy (as we understand the term today) and here’s why. Under spirituality, the raw individual as an adolescent is incapable of accessing the truth. Society assumed that children were unable to grasp or understand certain important things. They had to undergo processes of maturation or education or training of some sort to earn that access. Foucault mentioned exercises, rituals, practices, and disciplines. (15) In other words, young adults had to transform themselves first. Then, once they had gained access to the truth, it would fulfill them deeply. It brought their lives into focus and offered them some kind of meaning. (16; see 180–185) Modern philosophy, which relies more on the injunction to “know thyself,” has tended to regard truth as mere knowledge, a knowledge that cannot fulfill or save. (17) Knowledge is increasingly seen as data, factoids of the sort that one could gather, assemble, and consult, as though written in a handbook or an online encyclopedia. What Foucault was attempting to contrast here were two mindsets:

1. in antiquity, the child is initially incapable of accessing the truth without transforming himself first; although once he is transformed, the truth he discovers will save;
2. in modernity, the child would be thought capable of accessing the truth without some mysterious transformation; although once accessed, the truth would not “save” anything or anyone. (19)

Foucault conceded that rudiments of spirituality survive in the modern day. He found it, for example, in psychoanalysis and in the works of such writers as Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. But the professional philosophers of the twentieth century by and large displayed a “profound hostility” to this surviving version of COS. (28) COS was being marginalized after centuries of importance to Western culture.

Before moving ahead with the content of Foucault’s lectures, I should point out that this distinction between spirituality and philosophy will actually become relevant to leadership, inasmuch as programs in leader development sometimes adopt the COS. Prospective leaders are expected to undergo processes to prepare them to lead. Leadership is not always taught as book learning or an intellectual enterprise. Often young leaders are shepherded through experiences intended to transform them first, to enable them to overcome their natural immaturity. In a sense, then, these programs in leader development are a throwback to antiquity. And the surrounding language suggests that if the leader develops properly, this transformation has the potential to save society. Leadership is thought to be what we need. One might say that these leadership programs hearken back to an earlier time. Students (and teachers) who believe that studying leadership is exclusively about reading and memorizing abstract concepts miss the point.

Even though Socrates is usually associated with the injunction to “know thyself,” he accepted the COS as a broader injunction. Foucault then specified six practices or activities known to early Greek culture and of course to Socrates, calling them “technologies of the self”² (TOS). These technologies included the following:

• purification or washing,
• exercises in holding oneself still, body and mind,
• withdrawal from society,
• ordeals of endurance,
• examining one’s conscience, and
• temptations or tests, to judge one’s progress. (47f)

Foucault referred to these as “shamanistic” technologies. (418) Even though Socrates accepted and practiced them in his own life—as, for example, walking around without shoes, wearing flimsy clothing in all kinds of weather, enduring hardships (418)—he introduces two new questions, two complications. In a manner of speaking, he introduces questions that will subsequently lead to a split in Western thinking. He wants to know what is meant by the “self” and what is meant by “care” for this self. These are not unreasonable questions, of course, yet they open up a diversity of answers.

The first text Foucault introduced from the podium was Plato’s short dialogue known today as Alcibiades I. (494)³ Like mentors since time immemorial, Socrates approaches a young Alcibiades who had reached that threshold age when he could no longer rely on his youthful good looks to obtain power. Alcibiades admits to a much older Socrates that he wants to become a leader. He’s even chomping at the bit, eager to get his career underway. After all, he possesses the requisite fame and wealth and unsurpassed social connections. (33–34) Socrates wants to help the young man who is not as ready to lead as he thinks he is.

During their conversation, Socrates gets Alcibiades to acknowledge that he wouldn’t exercise leadership in a vacuum. Internal to Athens, Alcibiades will encounter rivals for power. And beyond its borders, enemies will resist him. Socrates convinces the young man that these other leaders will have been better prepared for their leadership than he at such a young age. Of what use then are fame and wealth and social connections if you don’t know what you are doing? (34–36) Leadership is in part a craft, a technē, which Alcibiades is the right age to begin learning. A prospective leader cannot convert privilege into leadership without such preparation; that is the lesson. (36)

Socrates tries to get Alcibiades to ask himself this basic question: “What is this self I must take care of in order to be able to take care of the others I must govern properly?” (39)

This “self” is both the subject and object of care, a both/and called psyche. (53) It is that which possesses and uses the body and language and property, and it occupies a transcending position or mode within the mind. (56ff) Socrates will indicate that to help a prospective leader adopt this mode and put it to best use, he would require a mentor or “spiritual director,” i.e. somebody to enter into a relationship with him for his edification. (58)⁴ Socrates insists this relationship is not erotic, in the modern sense, inasmuch as eros is selfish and tries to possess or exploit. Instead, the mentor Alcibiades needs will care about the subject’s COS. It is a selfless desire.

What must Alcibiades then do about the need for a mentor? Socrates offers himself as a mentor. What does he require of Alcibiades? Alcibiades must come to know his “self.” (67) He must locate or identify this transcending position or mode within himself, the “subject” within the psyche. As Foucault interprets it, one finds this subject by thinking about thinking, reflecting on one’s participation in knowledge, and understanding. (70) We might call it the divine spark. So, in order to prepare yourself to lead, you must care for your self, which depends on knowing your self, which in turn means the divine that is within you, the noetic feature. (71) Thus, as we saw regarding spirituality earlier, Plato (who is the author of this dialogue) believed that initially you are incapable of accessing the truth on your own, so you must undergo a process and transform yourself, with the aid of a mentor, to find the divine within. (77) On such a foundation, one can build an identity.

This inward turn, which Foucault would place under a heading known as meditation, means that the student must direct his attention or gaze on something internal and examine it with a kind of critical detachment. Plato would call it the divine within your own soul. Epictetus would put it differently: the student is to “observe, check, judge, and evaluate what is taking place in the flow of representations and the flow of passions.” (457, 495, 503) Rather than simply recognizing the divine within, you are to notice how like the divine you are because you are capable of becoming a subject. You can converse with and govern yourself—just like Zeus!⁵

Foucault recognized three elements in the Socratic teaching on leader development. First, only certain persons were positioned to undertake this process. It was a privilege of the elite precisely because they were the ones in a position to lead the polis. Alcibiades was especially rich, famous, and ambitious, a prominent heir and citizen. Second, these youngsters undertake the process in order to lead the polis. That is its purpose. The process is a preparation for entering into an active political career. COS is (for Socrates) literally preliminary: that is, before the threshold of leadership. Third, the process entails knowing one’s self. (82)

C. Socrates’s Successors

Subsequent writers from the Hellenistic period will extend this teaching along two dimensions. First, many who follow Socrates will claim that the process is not to be restricted to early adulthood, such as a rite of passage, but instead should be lifelong, a way of life, and not just preliminary to adult life. Second, many will claim that not just a privileged elite, such as Alcibiades, but in fact everyone would be advised to undergo this process as a part of growing mature. COS is not just for eager young scions of the rich and famous. (86)

Later, as the Socratic teaching became extended to a lifetime practice, i.e. a way of being generally, there was a greater emphasis on routinely monitoring and correcting oneself, as we shall see further. We might say that what for Socrates was something of a rite of passage and part of one’s liminal transition into adulthood becomes more of a recurring ritual. The problem will no longer be regarded as youthful ignorance, as it had been for Alcibiades, but rather occasional lapses and one’s failings of character. (93) This gradual transition toward making COS a way of life had at least three consequences. (107–110) First, it requires a consistent posture of self-criticism, detecting and disavowing aspects of oneself. Foucault will see a link between this trend in Hellenistic philosophy and the practice of confession in the early Christian church (93). Later, in modernity, people will be expected to police themselves, surveilling their private thoughts and attitudes and presumably making the appropriate corrections on their own. Second, the transition toward making COS a way of life suggests that the pinnacle or destination for the process is old age, when one is freed from ambition and the responsibility to lead. For some successors of Socrates, COS will become entirely detached from the idea of leadership. Third, COS increasingly resembles the practice of medicine; just as one needs to mind his bodily health, so also he must mind his spiritual health.

Foucault said a few additional words about this third consequence. Just as with medicine, there is a five-level structure to COS that resembles medicine. (97f) First, there is in each person the proclivity to some disease, such as asthma. Second, there is some perturbation or stimulus activating that proclivity, such as smog. Third, if left untreated, the condition becomes a chronic illness—not just a spell or bout of illness. Fourth, beyond a certain point, the chronic illness becomes a permanent condition, just as some patients simply have to live as an asthmatic. Fifth, the condition becomes so entrenched, so deeply etched, that it shapes your identity or character and becomes a part of who you are. COS was to be promoted as a method for recognizing and responding to these proclivities before your life (and leadership) deteriorates. This response reflected the three-part meaning of the word “therapy”: it meant medical action for bo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 1981–82
• 2 1982–83
• 3 1983–84
• 4 Parresia in the Twentieth Century: Solzhenitsyn
• 5 Subjectivation in the Twenty-First Century: The U.S. Military
• 6 Closing the Distance
• Index