Utilitarian Biopolitics by Brunon-Ernst Anne

Author:Brunon-Ernst, Anne.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848931695
Publisher: National Book Network International

Conclusion

Bentham and Foucault share a common goal in their ethical writings: that of challenging established ethical standards in order to create an ethics based on the conduct of conducts.

The means they use to achieve their ends is nonetheless different. Bentham sets the foundations on strict utilitarian grounds, seeking to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, rejecting any ethics other than his own. Foucault criticizes the ethics of modern day society by studying classical morality, thereby highlighting the differences between the values at the time at which he was writing and that of classical Greece. Bentham and Foucault both seek to keep their distance from the morality of their contemporaries; as a consequence, the moralists they create share common traits. Nonetheless, because their starting point is different, the comparison between the two ethical figures of the deontologist and the parrhesiastes cannot be extended beyond a certain point and the concept of biopolitical ethics is not relevant here to understand the Bentham-Foucault relationship.

However, the strong link between Bentham’s and Foucault’s endeavours comes with the clinical techniques of self-examination, which are taught and enforced (through various technologies) in order that individuals might control themselves in a way which is consistent with what their environment requires from them, and so that individuals in the position of governors do not abuse their powers.

The most striking common ground remains that Bentham and Foucault very clearly cast themselves in the roles of the deontologist and the parrhesiastes, respectively. Indeed, Bentham wanted to be ‘despot of the moral world’, thanks to his ‘Deontology private or Morality made easy’.109 Both the deontologist and the parrhesiastes are philosophers who are there to teach us to transform ourselves.

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