Utilitarian Biopolitics

Bentham, Foucault and Modern Power

Anne Brunon-Ernst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317322566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

The works of Foucault and Bentham have been regularly examined in isolation, yet rarely has the relationship between them been discussed. This study traces the full breadth of that relationship within the fields of sexuality, criminology, ethics, economics and governance.

Part I
Biopolitics of Interests

Introduction: From Interest to Norms

Bentham is widely acclaimed as the proponent of the principle of utility. Focusing on the biopolitics of interests, Part I suggests a study of pleasures and pains in Bentham and Foucault from the perspective of Bentham’s theorization of the principle of utility. The relevance of such a perspective will appear increasingly justified as the chapters unfold, culminating in the final chapters on the relationship between economics in a liberal state and interests.

The principle of utility, as based on the concept of interests, is not without its contradictions. The aim of this introduction is to highlight these contradictions in order to circumscribe the framework of the debate on pleasures and pains in the following two chapters.

When Foucault refers to the principle of utility,¹ he does have Bentham in mind, but not solely. Indeed, Bentham did not invent the principle of utility.² Moreover, in Bentham’s theory itself there are different expressions of the greatest happiness principle.³ At the end of his life, Bentham realized that the previous wording implied a disregard for the welfare of a community⁴ and so, in 1827, he changed the phrase ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ into ‘the greatest happiness principle’.⁵

The principle of utility first appeared in Bentham’s Fragment on Government and was later systematically exposed in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Utility is both a psychological and an ethical concept. The injunction to an ought is derived from the is: that is, all men should conform to the principle of utility because they do so in fact.⁶ Of course, deriving an ought from an is is not without a certain number of difficulties, as explained in Chapter 5.⁷ Bentham’s psychology rests on the observation of human nature, rather than assumed a priori.⁸ He borrowed his psychology from David Hartley, and never showed how it could be supported by observational science.⁹ However, in practice , Bentham’s ethical hedonism can be pursued without any commitment to his psychological hedonism.¹⁰

For the purpose of Part I, the most pressing question is: how the principle of utility is applied in practice? Only what Bentham calls the ‘felicific calculus’ can determine that an act is conformable to the principle of utility. One cannot add apples and pears. In order to add two items, they must be commensurate. Thus, to add different types of sensations in different individuals, at different times, Bentham identifies common values shared by all pleasures and pains: intensity, duration, certainty, uncertainty, propinquity and remoteness, fecundity and purity. The main issue of the utilitarian calculus is: can happiness, that is the superiority of pleasurable over painful sensations, be measurable? Can it be assessed in financial terms?¹¹ There are also problems of measuring the different kinds of pleasures¹² and different intensity of pleasures among individuals.¹³ Moreover there is the diminishing marginal utility of money, which Bentham considers, but which varies from one individual to another.¹⁴ In the end, neither value nor happiness can be calculated.¹⁵

If commentators from all ages have criticized Bentham for basing his ethics on hedonistic principles, the only moral good being pleasure, C.-F. Bahmueller rightly reminds the reader that Bentham’s pleasure might not be our pleasure, at least not for all categories of people:

so far from wallowing in ‘pleasure’ in the ordinary sense, life for the poor under the regime advocated by this philosopher of the pleasure principle was positively ascetic. The poor would be remade as models of the secularized Protestantism of the work ethic.¹⁶

Moreover it is important to keep in mind that interests are not pleasures and pains per se, and accounting for interests in terms of pleasures and pains also raises a certain number of problems.¹⁷ Pleasure and pain are feelings. The varying intensity of those feelings will prompt individuals to act one way or another to increase their pleasure and diminish their pain. This intent is called interest.¹⁸ As with pleasures and pains, Bentham does not define interest, as he thinks it is self-evident.¹⁹

Bentham does not wish to add pleasures and pains simply for their own sake, but because this sum will enable him to use utility as the foundation of a legal system and of an ethics. The principle of utility can explain how law is possible by explaining how punishments operate.

The following two chapters do not tackle the ingrained problems raised above related to Bentham’s use of pleasures, pains and the utility calculus but their focus on the fecundity of the comparison of pleasures and pains in Bentham and Foucault. However, the shortcomings of utility as a principle have to be borne in mind throughout the following discussion.

In Chapter 1, the operation of pleasure in Bentham and Foucault is examined, and is followed by an exploration of the flaws within their arguments. Foucault, in his theorization of ‘bodies and pleasures’, refuses to set a framework for the operations of that specific type of pleasure and in doing so, undermines the validity of the concept. The only way to rescue his ideological crusade for ‘resistance’ is to use a minimal form of utilitarian calculus of interest to make his concept of ‘pleasures’ workable in a biopolitical environment. The combination of Foucault’s ‘pleasures’ and Bentham’s calculus is called ‘biopolitical pleasure’.

Chapter 2 separates the study of pains from pleasures in an artificial way, as both are sensorial reactions to external stimuli, and as both are set on a continuum from the most intense form of pleasure to the most unbearable form of pain. Nonetheless, the division is guided by argumentative necessity. The relationship between Bentham and Foucault is inverted in the chapter: Bentham is no longer the one who lends his conceptual tools to make a Foucaultian concept workable. The chapter highlights the practical shortcomings in Bentham’s pain. The force of Foucault’s thought lies in balancing interest with instinct to account for unspeakable criminal acts. Instinct, a notion foreign to Bentham’s time, helps to flesh out a concept of ‘biopolitical pain’. Pleasures and pains are poised between ought and is statements, an imbalance which puts them on a scale from greater to lesser conformity to utility.

From what has been explained, the normative nature of the principle of utility is self-evident. It cannot be demonstrated and serves as a measuring rod for any personal and collective action, for any legal, moral or economic act. The utility principle is thus normative:

the normative statement or principle – usually known as the principle of utility – can be summarized … as the principle that every action should be judged right or wrong according to how far it tends to promote or damage the happiness of the community, or the happiness of those people whom the action affects.²⁰

The normativity of utility is oft en stated by commentators.²¹ Indeed, in the opening statement of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, the ought is read as normative.²² However, the full implications of considering utility as a norm are not mapped. Through the investigation and comparison of the operations of pleasures and pains in Bentham and Foucault Part I will pave the way to tackling the issue of normativity in Part II.

1
Biopolitical Pleasure

[A] warning which, for the sake of the reader as well as for the sake of the writer, it is absolutely necessary to give is – that, unless the regard for human happiness has such an influence over his mind as, in pursuit of that object, to enable and force it to endure from beginning to end the extremity of disgust – disgust in its most repulsive form – he would do well to close the book at this very place, and not suffer his eyes to behold another syllable.¹

Introduction

‘Biopolitical pleasure’ is the phrase used in this chapter to describe how pleasure operates in the biopolitical era. The phrase can be understood to mean either the way biopolitical mechanisms control sexual behaviour, or the strategies of resistance developed by individuals and groups to counter attempts to manage their bodies. Foucault explores both meanings in his writings on sexuality. He first deconstructs the way bodies, through discourse and dispositif,² are modelled to maximize productive aims in a biopolitical era. He then explores how individuals could fight back against biopolitical assaults by reclaiming their bodies through unmapped pleasures. Bentham’s writings prefigure Foucaultian descriptions of and resistance to discourses on sex. By deconstructing legal discourses on sexual offences, he shows how pleasure should circulate in a State based on the rules of utility. I will argue that Foucault’s ‘pleasures’, understood as resistance, are akin to Bentham’s utilitarian sex.³

The issue of pleasures as a technique of resistance appears late in Foucault’s works. It is first explored in The History of Sexuality:

It is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim – through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality – to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures and knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibilities of resistance. The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.⁴

Foucault purposely gives a sketchy meaning to his concept of ‘bodies and pleasures’, which is no more defined than in the above excerpt. In fact, he refuses to define it, because doing so would limit and curtail the creativity of those wishing to explore new ways of producing pleasure and relationships with their bodies. He writes: ‘the idea of a programme is dangerous. As soon as a programme is presented, it becomes a law, and there’s a prohibition against inventing.’⁵ However, and on account of his silence, the concept lacks weight and cannot be used as a wedge to drive into the grip of power.

Among many others, Nancy Fraser, points to this shortcoming when she writes:

What, then, might body-language, better than the vocabulary of humanism, permit us to say or to do about such things? Here is where my capacity to imagine a plausible Foucaultian response runs out. I can form a non concrete picture of what resistance to the deployment of sexuality in the regime of bio-power in the name of the body and its pleasure would be like. Or to the extent that I can, it is one which, by the most ironic coincidences, resembles the hedonistic utilitarianism of the very architect of panopticism himself, Jeremy Bentham.⁶

Nancy Fraser associates the reversal of any form of disciplining and sexualizing of our bodies with Bentham’s Panopticon. This ‘panoptic’ pleasure as resistance is to be found in sado-masochist practices. To a certain extent, this is a distortion of Nancy Fraser’s statement. When she wrote her essay, Bentham’s manuscripts on sex had not yet been published, so she could not envisage Bentham’s contribution to the reflection on a resistance to sex beyond the Panopticon as an instance of sado-masochist pleasure. It is key to my present argument that she points to Bentham in order to understand Foucault’s ‘pleasures’. When the biopolitical body is associated with the Panopticon, the association is rarely flattering. However, Bentham’s other writings on sex now throw a different light on what we could call biopolitical pleasure, which goes beyond the sado-masochist nature of a panoptic pleasure.

Generally speaking, pleasure is the cornerstone of Bentham’s hedonistic utilitarianism – individual and collective actions must measure up to this universal standard. As Bentham clearly phrases it:

It may be asked indeed, if pleasure is not a good, what is life good for, and what is the purpose of preserving it? But the most obvious and immediate consequences of a proposition may become invisible when a screen has been set before by the prejudices of false philosophy or the terrors of a false religion.⁷

Bentham’s utilitarianism can be used to give meaning to concepts Foucault only sketched out. Bentham’s thought allows one to connect the dots within Foucault’s impressionistic concept. The resulting product will not be a deeper understanding of a concept of pleasures, which Foucault refused to define, but will give meaning to Foucault’s pleasures within a biopolitical environment. Biopolitical pleasure is a new concept created from the meeting of two great minds sharing a common stand on pleasure, and which could eventually become a political tool in today’s world, one that would give a voice to Foucault’s inarticulate cry for ‘bodies and pleasures’.

In order to achieve this aim, this chapter will explore Foucault’s and Bentham’s works on sexuality. To what extent can Bentham contribute towards a definition of Foucault’s concept of sexuality? How can Bentham help us to understand the concept of ‘bodies and pleasures’? The answers to these questions are not self-evident. Indeed Foucault never read Bentham’s writings on sex. Though Foucault did read Bentham’s Panopticon writings⁸ and was familiar...