phi454 term paper

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Jonathan Langseth

Foucault and Habermas on Power

1 Questions concerning the nature of power have been wide and varied. In the

introduction to the anthology, Power , Steven Lukes says that answering the question of

what exactly power is “turns out to be far from simple” (Lukes 1). Definitions of power

offered by the contributors to this anthology range from ‘the production of intended

effects’ (Russell), to ‘a generalized facility or resource in society’ (Parsons). The debate

centered on Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas is largely focused upon the question

of the nature of power. More specifically, we should say it is a question of power

relations, of the cause and location of domination and subjugation, and the question of

justification. This immediately brings into question the nature of freedom, agency, and

autonomy. Both authors have expressed as the normative task of their studies this very

question of autonomy. Habermas, following the work of early critical theorists from

Marx to Adorno, asks what forms of control over nature, society, or the individual, result

in either emancipation or domination. Domination, says Habermas, “can only be altered

by a change in the state of consciousness itself, by the practical effect of a theory which

does not improve the manipulation of things and of reifications, but which instead

advances the interest of reason in human adulthood, in the autonomy of action and

liberation from dogmatism. This it achieves by means of the penetrating idea of a

persistent critique.”1 Foucault has expressed his intention as consisting in exposing to the

individual the false bondages of universalized knowledge: “My role…is to show people

1 Jurgen Habermas Theory and practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 256

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that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some

themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-

called evidence can be criticized and destroyed. To change something in the minds of

people – that’s the role of an intellectual.”2

2 The comparison of Foucault and Habermas’ approaches to an analysis of power is

of importance today for a number of reasons. First, this debate has its origin in the

writings of the two authors themselves, and persists to the present day. Second, this

debate, while revolving around questions of power and freedom, also brings into question

the role of reason, critique, truth, and the relation between the individual and society in

modernity. Third, this debate raises the question of legitimacy in social hierarchy. And

lastly, at the level of methodology, this comparison asks what is the most viable approach

to investigating the relational balance or imbalance between the individuals that compose

society. In this essay I will argue that although there are nontrivial discrepancies between

the work of Foucault and Habermas, there are also important similarities, and further, that

at least in one important respect, their approaches to the question of power are

complementary.

3 Instead of directly attempting to answer what power is, Foucault is interested in

the how of power, and approaches this question from two points of reference: “On the

one hand, to the rules of right that provide a formal delimitation of power; on the other, to

the effects of truth that this power produces and transmits, and which in their turn

reproduce this power. Hence we have a triangle: power, right, truth.”3 From these two

2 Martin, L.H. et al, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with MichelFoucault (London: Tavistock, 1988), 93 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980),93

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points of reference Foucault reformulates the traditional question of political philosophy

concerning how discourses of truth can fix limits on the rights of power, into the question

of “what rules of right are implemented by the relations of power in the production of

discourses of truth?”4 In effect Foucault inverts the relation between power and truth

from that of truth’s limiting effect on power to power’s production of truth, as Habermas

notes in his analysis/critique of Foucault in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity:

“Foucault abruptly reverses power’s truth-dependency into the power-dependency of

truth.”5 Yet Foucault goes on to say, “…We cannot exercise power except through the

production of truth.”6

So the inversion is in actuality a kind of reciprocity: Power

produces the discourse of truth as a necessary means of its own articulation and right.

These articulations, in so far as they are truths, determine the way in which the

individuals of particular societies conduct their lives, and, in so far as they are rules of

right, are used as justification of social action. Power is dependent upon its surfacing in

terms of truth (as knowledge) and right (as justification).

4 Habermas argues that if Foucault is correct, if power is the underlying force that

produces discourse, truth, and right, then his analysis ultimately self-destructs, for

Foucault’s own discourse would also be an articulation of power, lacking legitimacy like

all other discourses. However, Foucault recognizes this fact and wants to move away

from any talk of legitimacy, including the legitimacy of his own work. Rather he sees his

own discourse as, what he calls, an ‘antiscience’ or ‘countermodernity.’ I believe this

4 Ibid5 Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 2746 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980),93

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terminology can be interpreted in two complementary ways: as a means of exposing the

historical contingencies that have produced certain conceptions of universal truth and/or

as a contribution towards creating a counterbalance to the dominant forms of discursive,

objectified power. Yet to the extent that Foucault implicitly posits value claims in the

rhetoric of his work, he is in fact already speaking in terms of legitimacy. Concerning

truth, Foucault wants to say that there is not one universal, objective truth, but rather a

multiplicity of truths, and he views universalized truths in terms of dominating power

relations. We will have to ask what implications such a belief has for Foucault’s overall

project.

5 As a starting point of an analysis of power, Habermas locates what he takes to be

the three fundamental human interests: technical, practical, and emancipatory, with

corresponding medias and sciences respectively: work (empirical), communication

(historical-hermeneutic), and power (critical or self-reflective). Briefly, we have a

fundamental interest in what we produce, our relations with other people, and the degree

to which we are free to choose both what we do and how we relate to others. Habermas

sees the imbalance of power as directly related to the extent to which the production of

labor is privatized, communication is distorted, and critical self-reflection is absent within

society. In conjunction with his analysis of these imbalances, Habermas proposes a

means by which a democratic distribution of power relations can be achieved. Such a

means is inherently universalized.

6 At the outset it appears as though the debate between Foucault and Habermas is a

debate about whether there exists, as Habermas suggests, a single universalized criterion

of legitimacy that stands as a gauge of the degree of the balance or imbalance of power,

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or whether, as Foucault seems to suggest, any universalized normative claim regarding

the legitimacy of power is no more than power in the guise of a claim to sovereignty.

7 Foucault argues that there are two heterogeneous forms of power at work within

modern Western society; what he calls sovereign power and disciplinary power.

Sovereign power is based upon rules of right and legitimacy. According to Foucault,

analysis of this sole form of power, which at one time would have produced an accurate

expression of the state of affairs, is now one-sided. Instead, he sees a need to focus on the

ever increasing prevalence, since at least the beginnings of market economies, of

disciplinary power. Foucault finds the paradigm of disciplinary power in the architectural

conception of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon:

We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the

center, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring;

the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they

have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the

outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place asupervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a

worker, or a schoolboy.7

8 The Panopticon creates a situation in which the individuals in the outer, annular

building are seen without seeing, while those occupying the inner tower see without

being seen. This is a form of power based more on efficiency than force: “…it arranges

things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a

rigid, heavy constraint, to the functions it invests, but is so subtly present in them as to

increase their efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact.”8 The typical

resistance to forms of sovereign power is, in disciplinary power, incorporated into forms

of domination. The person who is seen without seeing falsely believes him or herself to

7 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books,1995), 2008 Ibid, 206

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see without being seen. Such a form of power relations produces a false sense of

individuality and autonomy. This conception of power is found manifest within multiple

facets of society in the form of reports, procedures, techniques, etc., geared at ordering

the bodies of individuals in the most economic mode of utility.

9 Disciplinary power differs from sovereign power in a number of ways. First, one

individual or class does not impose disciplinary power over others. In fact disciplinary

power incorporates those seemingly in control within its grasp. They are a function of the

process of efficiency just as much as those under surveillance. Similarly, disciplinary

power is not imposed upon society from without, but is infused within the very functions

of society itself. Further, because those under surveillance cannot see the gaze of those

watching them, the observed cannot know at any point whether or not they are being

watched (or controlled). The configuration of the Panopticon renders the actual exercise

of power by any individual or party unnecessary. The social structure analogous to the

architectural configuration of the Panopticon renders the exercise of power from a central

location unnecessary because its effective procedure is found in the individual’s knowing

or unknowing compliance.

10 The invisibility of disciplinary power is the result of its manifestation within the

functional processes of society; disciplinary power is found in localized discourses,

techniques, “effective instruments for the formation and accumulation of knowledge—

methods of observation, techniques of registration, procedures for investigation and

research, apparatuses of control.”9 Rather than turning his attention to how power is

justified or who holds power, Foucault looks at how power becomes evident in localized

9 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980),102

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techniques, norms, discourses, and exclusions.

11 Foucault calls his approach to exposing disciplinary forms of power a dual

process of archeology and, following Nietzsche, genealogy. Archeology is a method of

analyzing “instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many

historical events.”10 Foucault conducts an investigation of local discurvities and an

ascending analysis of power relations as opposed to a global, all-encompassing analysis

because localities are where power is implemented, where it becomes evident and

manifest. Genealogy “claims attention of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate

knowledge against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchize,

and order them in the name of some true science.”11 In Habermas’ words, “Whereas the

archeology of knowledge reconstructs the stratum of rules constitutive of discourse,

genealogy strives to explain the discontinuous succession of the sign-systems that coerce

people into the semantic framework of a determinate interpretation of the world.”12

12 In short, Foucault wants to reverse the traditional mode of analysis centered on

the theory of right and re-center it on an “analytics” of power. He argues that theories of

right are designed to fix legitimacy of power, and this legitimacy is designed to eliminate

the consciousness of domination and its consequences. Legitimacy takes the form of law,

while disciplinary power produces normalization. This normalization is the result of a

panoptical means of control, a means of control that is not imposed from without as law,

but rather is infused unknowingly from within and is found in the very discourse of 10 Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Critique and Power, ed.Michael Kelly (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 4611 Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Critique and Power , ed. MichaelKelly (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995) 22

12 Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 255

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everyday, social existence.

13 Like Foucault, Habermas conceives of power as manifest in discourse. Their

projects are similar at least in that they both analyze imbalances of power relations within

society and try to suggest a way towards the freedom of consciousness from falsely

objectified belief. In contrast with Foucault, Habermas argues for the need to analyze

power relations in terms of legitimacy. Habermas says, “Legitimate power arises only

among those who form common convictions in unconstrained communications.”13

Illegitimate power arises out of systematically distorted communication. So, an analysis

of power in terms of legitimation must look both at distortions of and constraints on

communication, and at what ideal situations, even if unattainable, would enable

undistorted communications. This approach relocates legitimacy from that of the

sovereign, religious or metaphysical to that of the discursive, argumentative, rational

forms of validation.

14 Habermas avoids Foucault’s criticism that viewing power in terms of legitimacy

veils modes of domination by placing the communication and discourse that operate

modes of domination at the very heart of the question of legitimacy. Fix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

15 Both Foucault and Habermas recognize the undemocratic distribution of power,

and locate power in its discursive articulation and the resulting actions such articulations

produce, yet Foucault wants to expose the historical conditions responsible for local

instantiations of power while Habermas wants to provide a non-transcendental/non-

metaphysical ideal by which to determine legitimacy of power in terms of the degree in

which communication, which leads to action (and techniques, norms, etc.), is constrained

13 Jurgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power,” in Power , ed. Steven Lukes (New York: New York UniversityPress, 1986), 85

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or distorted. This ideal, which Habermas calls an ideal speech situation, is an

intersubjectivistic interpretation of Kant’s categorical imperative: discourse

principle (D), according to which only those norms can claim validity that could

meet with the agreement of all those concerned in their capacity as participants in

a practical discourse. From the outset Habermas concedes that this ideal is unable

to be achieved, but asserts its necessity based upon the recognition of fundamental

human interests

and from a transcendental-pragmatic justification which proves that such an ideal

is anticipated in every act of communication.14

16 In his essay, “The Critique of Impure Reason,” Thomas McCarthy enumerates

what he sees as the differences between Foucault and the Frankfurt school, including

Habermas, as follows:

1) Foucault “attacks rationalism at its very roots,” while “critical social

theorists…understand critique rather in the sense of a determinate negation that aims at a

more adequate conception of reason.”2) Foucault rejects humanism, while critical social theorists attempt to reconstruct

the basic humanist notions of subjectivity and autonomy

3) Foucault rejects transcendental and universal truth claims, while critical socialtheorists attempt to relocate such truth claims in intersubjectivity.

4) Critical social theorists use agent’s conscious views as a starting point for their

critiques, while Foucault (prior to volumes 2 and 3 of The History of Sexuality)“displaces the participant’s perspective with an externalist perspective in which the

validity claims of participants are not engaged but bracketed.”

5) Foucault sees the human sciences at large as promoting domination, while theFrankfurt school identifies only particular aspects of the human sciences as such.

6) Foucault does not see genealogy as “being in the service of reason, truth,freedom, and justice,” since, under his view, all is power, while the Frankfurt school

wishes to establish non-instrumental forms of reason that dissuade forms of domination.15

14 See “Discourse Ethics” in Jurgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness andCommunicative Action, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990)15 Thomas McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason,” in Critique and

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16 Of these six differences noted by McCarthy numbers 2 and 4 seem unproblematic

for the present discussion, while 6 seems questionable as far as Foucault’s intentions for

genealogy (see quote by Foucault in the introduction of this essay), while the

combination of 1, 3, and 5, if true, collectively expose what appears to be an

irreconcilable difference between Foucault and Habermas. Concerning point 5, Foucault

certainly expresses the role of the human sciences in the execution of disciplinary power,

yet if he in fact claims that all truths and rules of right are forms of power it seems that he

would be unable to locate which forms of power are domination and which not. And, in

effect, if this is true, if there is no way out of power relations and no way of

distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of power, then we must ask of Foucault

why he has given himself the intellectual task he has. If Foucault rejects all universal

truth claims then what about his own claims? This is similar to the response to the

relativist statement that ‘all claims are relative,’ in which one asks whether the claim that

‘all claims are relative’ is itself relative. It seems that not only is Foucault making a

universal claim in stating all truths and rules of right are forms of power, but also that

such a claim, as Habermas notes, self-destructs as with the relativist claim. Point 1 is also

problematic for Foucault, for in his analyses he uses at the very least the basic forms of

rationality that are inherent in the logical form of argumentation (such as modus ponens).

It appears that Foucault drove himself into a corner that he was unable to back out of. By

viewing universality as the form of power he wishes to attack, he is unable to put forth

his own account of a universal principle by which he or anyone else may conduct such an

attack or critique. How can one be critical without some standard by which to criticize?

Power , ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 248-9.

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Yet if he put forth such a universal principle or standard it would contradict his intention

of critiquing all universal truth claims.

17 Although these claims seem justified and would require an in depth apologetics

on the part of a Foucauldian, I think there is, independent of such an apology, a

salvageable component of Foucault’s thought that is compatible and complementary with

Habermas’ project. Of the three fundamental human interests put forth by Habermas,

Habermas claims that the first two, production and communication, are impossible to

obtain without the last, the critical interest. He sees the critical element of human interests

as a mode of self-reflection by which an individual or society is able to overcome

domination, and without which, both production and communication become forms of

domination.

18 Despite his apparent inability to reconcile his methodology with his intentions, in

the quest for means by which the emancipation of humanity from forms of domination

may be realized, Foucault’s contributions to social theory are not to be ignored. His

analyses of power pierce through the surface of the present in a way that enables the

individual to recognize certain artificialities universally and uncritically taken as fact.

The attentive reader of Foucault sees the world differently. This way of seeing…

Such recognition can aid in the implementation of critique as suggested by Habermas.

19 In his January 14th 1976 lecture Foucault said, “If one wants to look for a

nondisciplinary form of power, or rather, to struggle against disciplines and disciplinary

power, it is not towards the ancient right of sovereignty that one should turn, but towards

the possibility of a new form of right, one which must indeed be antidisciplinarian, but at

the same time liberated from the principle of sovereignty.”16 How Habermas

16 Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Critique and Power , ed. Michael Kelly

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reformulates the concept of critique can be seen at least as a step in such a possibility of a

new form of right. This form of critique is an intersubjective self-reflection to the degree

in which interactions, both communicatively and as regards production, are clearly

expressed.

20 Critique as a means of leveling power relations, thus giving individuals the ability

to produce the norms, institutions, and regulatory rules by which they conduct themselves

in social relations, requires, as Habermas notes, the recognition of distorted forms of

communication since power relations are articulated in discourse. Foucault’s genealogical

method exposes to the reader how certain forms of domination have come into existence

by their ability to increase efficiency and establish normativity. Although Foucault is not

explicit in delineating which forms of power are in fact forms of domination, if we

consider the empirical-historical conclusions of his texts in the framework of Habermas’

conception of the discourse principle, using the discourse principle together with a

rational criterion of distorted and non-distorted communication as a measure of the

justificatory validity of power, we find a useful contribution to the domain of discourse.

This contribution is the ability for Foucault’s texts to induce in the agent’s consciousness

the awareness of certain forms of domination hidden from view, to see the panoptical

structures that were disenabling individuals from seeing the nature of disciplinary power.

Such awareness can aid the premises of the argumentation that takes place in

communicative consensus.

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995) 45

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