The Hermeneutics of the Subject (1981–1982)

• In Event: Michel Foucault’s Lectures at the College de France: Implications for Research in Education

Abstract

Objectives
The Hermeneutics of the Subject was a set of 24 one hour lectures that Michel Foucault (2005) delivered at the College de France during the 1981-82 academic year. Under the general problematic of ‘subjectivity and truth’ Foucault pursued the theme of ‘care of the self’ beginning with the Delphic precept ‘know thyself’ and tracing classical sources in the ancient Greek and Christian traditions involving the development of spiritual knowledge, leading to philosophical ascesis, bio-technique, test of the self, objectification of the world as the challenges of Western philosophy. The objective of this paper is to summarize and contextualize this set of lectures and discuss the relevance and importance of the lectures for education, broadly defined.

Perspective
I will develop a reading of Foucault on The Hermeneutics of the Subject by close study and analysis of the text, and by reference to an examination of the secondary literature first by the editors of the volume Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana, Arnold I Davidson (English Series Editor) and Frederic Gros who provides a course context, as well as the English language commentaries.

Methods and Data Sources
The main method adopted will be a mix of traditional philosophical and textual analysis by reference to first sources in English translation by Graham Burcell. My interpretation will develop a reading largely sympathetic to Davidson’s account of Foucault’s project as developing “a conception of the history of ethics as a history of forms of moral subjectivation and of those practices of the self intended to support and ensure the constitution of oneself as a moral subject” (p. xi). Foucault’s interpretation of Hellenistic, Roman and Christian thought on the history of practices of subjectification has immediate application to education and to the way in which the centrality of the construction of moral subjects has been critical to the development of the philosophy of Western education with strong implication for the question of our modern mode, and especially liberal and neoliberal modes, of being subjects. The paper will analyze Foucault’s question "In what historical form do the relations between the 'subject' and 'truth’, elements that do not usually fall within the historian's practice or analysis, take shape in the West?" to interpret the strong resonances for the theory and practice of education.

Conclusions and Significance
The paper will contribute to an understanding of the way in which Foucault established an approach to the history of thought (and in this case, educational thought) that focuses on subjectivity and truth, and how ‘the care for oneself’ became a general cultural phenomenon developed through forms of self reflexivity involving memory, meditation and method as the basis of a set of spiritual exercises performed on the self. In this way Foucault investigates what he calls the ‘historical ontology of ourselves’ as subjects of truth and knowledge. He provides an approach now well developed in educational studies that investigates and answers these questions in relation to educational practices (eg., Besley & Peters, 2007).

Author

• Michael A. Peters, The University of Waikato