INTRODUCTION
Western thought has been predominantly occupied with ontological dualism, which exclusively conceives the distinction between subjects and objects as separated and independent elements. This ontological dualism sometimes became a reason for legitimizing an exclusion of otherness, and even an extermination of others. Thus, this dualistic onto-epistemology “undermines the definition of the human condition in terms of ethics and therewith the fundamental ethical quality of social interaction.”1 If the problem of human agency is seen from an essentialist’s standpoint, the question itself already orients the search towards the separation between self and others, real and ideal, individuals and social environment. This dualistic attitude leads human beings to misconstrue their place in society, and become absorbed into materialism, that is, to search for the satisfaction of their own greed. Therefore, ontological dualism must be challenged by an antidote that should purportedly enhance non-dualistic and self-reflexive conception of human subjectivity.In light of this concern, in this thesis I will focus on two thinkers: the French postmodern thinker Michel Foucault and the American philosopher John Dewey as representatives who provide an antidote to the emergence of ontological dualism and the deprivation of human agency. I will argue that Foucault’s conception of self-empowerment can be seen in the intersubjective constitution of selfhood in his later work on “technologies of the self,” and, that Dewey’s answer to this problem of self empowerment has to do with the recovery of individuality by nurturing “intelligence” in relation to the matrix of the natural environment and all social discourses, which promotes democratic participation for citizens, gives people meaning in life, and simultaneously avoids social anomie—a feeling of dislocation and aimlessness.2 In so doing, they offer a framework for thinking through longstanding moral and
In Foucault’s Technologies of the Self and
Dewey’s Creative Intelligence
Kyohei Mikawa
1 Evans, T. M. S. Anthropology as Ethics: Nondualism and the Conduct of Sacrifice. 2008. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. 9.
political questions regarding tensions between human persons and social structures. Therefore, throughout this thesis, I will explain both thinkers’ non-dualistic approaches to intersubjective self-governing systems in greater detail: technologies of the self (Foucault) and creative intelligence (Dewey).
CHAPTER 1:
MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE DEFENSE OF HUMAN AGENCY
In this chapter, I will show that one of Foucault’s later works depends upon the practical application of resistance to power. However, before a consideration of the reversal of power, an analysis of power needs to be examined. These power dynamics cannot easily be seen without a careful examination of power dynamics between structures and individuals, due to the nature of capitalistic discourse. This idea of power, what Foucault calls “bio-power,” began permeating Western civilization in the nineteenth century. In unveiling the power structure, I will present Foucault’s answer to the resistance to bio-power focusing on one of the self-governing techniques: “parrhesia” or truth-telling.Docile Bodies Manipulated by Bio-Power
One of Foucault’s masterpieces, The History of Sexuality vol.1, elaborates what Foucault calls “bio-power” since its appearance in the seventeenth century, when it became the driving force sustaining the social-body of the state as an organic living creature. According to Foucault bio-power is constituted as a polarity. It comprises the disciplines of the body on one side, and the regulation of the population on the other. Foucault states:
...the first to be formed … centered on the body as a machine: its docility, its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls, all this was ensured by the procedures of power that characterized the disciplines; an anatomo-politics of the human body. The second ... focused on the species body... Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: a bio-politics of the population.3
The ancient symbolic power of a sovereign individual is replaced by the state’s carefully conducted management of social life. One of the consequences of this power is that the power began penetrating social life in schools, hospitals, prisons and other institutions. This bio-power was a prerequisite for the elaboration of capitalism, for economic regulation is not
possible without the operation of bio-power which controls bodies and puts them into the circular systems of machinery production. Bio-power has manipulated citizens by fostering a false consciousness since the seventeenth century, in the name of the survival of the state itself. Hence, Foucault problematizes bio-power. Here the question is: how can docile bodies become aware of this power and resist it? In order to respond to this inquiry, Foucault provides an analysis of bio-power in relation to truth, power, and ‘sex.’
Toward the Resistance Against Bio-Power
Foucault’s argument goes deeper into the analysis of allocation of “sex” in relation to ‘sexuality’ and power. Foucault sets up an inquiry by stating:
After all, is the power that is exercised through sexuality not directed specifically at that element of reality which is ‘sex’, sex in general? That sexuality is not, in relation to power, an exterior domain to which power applied, that on the contrary it is a result and an instrument of power’s designs, is all very well. But as for sex, is it not the ‘other’ with respect to power, while being the center around which sexuality distributes its effects?4 In his analysis, sexuality is considered not as that which exists exterior to power or that on which power is applied from outside, but that through which power exercises itself. Thus, sexuality is an instrument of power.”5 Sex is defined, not as that which is the “other” in relation to power, but that which is allocated somewhere in the domain of sexuality as a driving force, to whatever degree it is real or not. Hence, the formula is: bio-power functions through an instrumentalization of sexuality, whose function is induced by effects of sex. Thus, the presupposed formula is: if sex is annihilated, the effects of sex are annihilated; if the effects of sex are annihilated, the instrumentality of sexuality is annihilated; if the instrumentality of sexuality is annihilated, bio-power ceases to be at work; if bio-power ceases its operation, then docile bodies are liberated from the manipulative power over life. Foucault states, “Now, it is precisely this idea of sex in itself that we cannot accept without examination. Is ‘sex’ really the anchorage point that supports the manifestations of sexuality, or is it not rather a complex idea that was formed inside the deployment of sexuality?6” For Foucault, “sex” is an imaginary creation, a social and biological construct appearing in 4 Ibid. 152. 5 Ibid. 152. 6 Ibid. 152.
the nineteenth century; therefore, “sex” must not be misunderstood as an actual target or objection of resistance. At least, however, humans must be aware of “sex” in this particular sense. In concluding his arguments, Foucault asserts that we must not make the mistake of thinking that sex is an autonomous agency which secondarily produces manifold effects of sexuality over the entire length of its surface of contact with power. On the contrary, sex is the most speculative, most ideal, and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations, and pleasures.7 Sex must be construed as something conditional, without an agency in its essence. However, according to Foucault, this imaginary entity called “sex” is powerful enough to leave consequences and functions to create norms or people’s communal identity. Therefore, bio-power, which is exercised through sexuality, needs to be halted in its powerful operation by active constitution of human subjects through “technologies of the self.”
CHAPTER 2:
TOWARD THE ORIGIN OF “BIO-POWER” AND TECHNOLOGIES
OF THE SELF
Practicing Parrhesia, Defending Autonomy, Enhancing Intersubjectivity
In ancient Greece, “care of the self” (Souci De Soi in French) was a pervasive self-governing exercise among people. As Foucault conceives it, it is an “art of existence,” which intensifies one’s subjectivity, and proactively constitutes oneself by forcing one to be consistent in telling what one thinks and acting on what one tells. This art of living aligned with “technologies of the self” practiced among Epicureans before the Christian era shows a concrete example of epimemeia heauton (care of the self). Let us look at a specific practice, one of the Greek self-governing techniques: ‘parrhesia.’
Foucault gave a series of six lectures under the course title Truth and Discourse at The University of Berkeley in California in 1983. The main focus throughout the course was parrhesia or frank speech. Foucault’s lecture from 1981 focused on this particular Greek concept, which can be translated in English as free speech (franc-parler). Foucault states: Parrhesia is opening the heart, the need for the two partners to conceal nothing of what
they think from each other and to speak to each other frankly. Once again, this notion needs to be elaborated, but it is certain that, along with friendship, it was one of the conditions, one of the fundamental ethical principles of guidance for the Epicureans.8 Parrhesia is not an intellectual exercise, but rather a philosophical activity which has both individual and social dimensions. This Greek philosophical ethics can be viewed both negatively and positively. Negatively, parrhesia needs to be understood through what is opposed to it, namely, flattery and rhetoric. A positive account of parrhesia is explicitly presented in Seneca’s Pari parrhesia.
According to Foucault, parrhesia is both anti-flattery and anti-rhetorical. First, in discourse between two people, flattery is defined as “a way for the inferior to win over the greater power he comes up against in the superior, a way for him to gain the superior’s favors and benevolence.”9 In contrast, someone who speaks to the other in parrhesia tells pure truths without embellishment in a way the other is ensured an autonomous relationship to himself. Foucault states, “the truth ... seals, ensures, and guarantees the other’s autonomy ... of the person who received the speech.”10 Second, rhetoric is “an art of capable of lying”11 or as Aristotle explains, it is “the ability to find that which is capable of persuading.”12 Rhetorical speech involves an intention to have an influence on the other, to act the way the speaker wants the other to act. On the other hand, as Foucault explains, parrhesia also “involves acting on others, but not so much to order … them to do something or other” but rather “involves acting on them so that they come to build up a relationship of sovereign to themselves, with regard to themselves, … of the subject who has attained all the happiness it is possible to attain in this world.”13 Unlike flattery and rhetoric, parrhesia functions as an instrument to transmit pure truths to the other, to intensify one’s subjectivity, thus endowing the receiver with autonomous sovereignty over themselves. While changing others is regarded a primary objective in flattery and rhetoric, in parrhesia, paradosis (transition or transmission) of truths itself is an end in itself. This truth is not embellished due to its non-purpose activity, thus the heart of parrhesia is “[g]enerosity towards the other, ” and “must be dictated by generosity.”14 Since paradosis of
8 Foucault, Michel. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France, 1981-82. 2001. New York: Picador. 137.
9 Foucault. The Hermeneutics of the Subject. 375.
10 Ibid. 379. 11 Ibid. 382. 12 Ibid. 381. 13 Ibid. 385. 14 Ibid. 385.
truths in parrhesia is an end in itself, transformation of the other is a secondary effect, not as a primary objective as in rhetoric or flattery. Receivers of truths are to be transformed as a natural result of the truth transition, thus, parrhesia here functions as a way of intensification of the subjectivity of the other. Another way of positively describing parrhesia can be found in Seneca, who sees it as an indispensible consistency in someone who uses parrhesia in his thought, speech, and conduct, thus, an experience of thought. Foucault underscores a significant aspect of Seneca’s parrhesia, asserting that: in order to guarantee the parrhesia of the discourse delivered, the presence of the person speaking must be really perceptible in what he actually says. Or again: the parrhesia, the truth of what he says, must be sealed by the way he conducts himself and the way in which he actually lives. This is what Seneca says in the following phrase: “This is the essential point: let us say what we think and think what we say; let speech harmonize with conduct.15” For Seneca, as Foucault points out, what characterizes parrhesia is the perfect correspondence between the subject who enunciates and the conduct of the subject. This explains why the subject must be “perceptible in what he actually says,”16 because one cannot perform the speech-conduct match without comprehending one’s utterance. Through this correspondence, the subjects experience what they tell as truth, which is a paradoia of truth in reality. Once the subject finds a correspondence between what he says and his conduct, he constitutes himself with his own truth, because he experiences what he tells as truth. Moreover, even if telling the truth is an end in itself, it will nonetheless have certain consequences for the other. Hence, an exercise of parrhesia gains a right to a political participation and an enhancement of human autonomy. This individual exercise has a social dimension, too. Since the paradosis of truth occurs within the domain of the transmission of pure thought, which means it is no longer within the domain of bio-power but rather independent from it, parrhesia assures genuine human agency and guarantees the subject’s agency as an actor in the world, who creates reality with his political participation. In summary, Foucault states, parrhesia is free speech, released from the rules, freed from rhetorical procedures, in that it must, in one respect of course, adapt itself to the situation, to the occasion and to the 15 Ibid. 405-6. 16 Ibid. 405.
particularities of the auditor. ... it is speech that is equivalent to commitment, to a bond, and which establishes a certain pact between the subject of enunciation and the subject of conduct.17 Furthermore, what gives meaning to human conduct is the bio-power itself in a sense that the latter provides a social framework in which certain conduct is connected with value. Foucault refers to this inseparable nature of the relationship between human conduct and social structure as “truth-game.” Foucault states, “The care of the self is of course knowledge of self—that is the Socratic-Platonic aspect—but it is also the knowledge of a certain number of rules of conduct or of principles which are at the same time truths and regulations. To care for self is to fit one’s self out with these truths. That is where ethics is linked to the game of truth.”18 Care of the self—an intensification of subjectivity—cannot be independent from “truths and regulations” which in this context mean social discourses, values, and structures. If one’s behavior diverts the participation in the “game”—social framework, then any behaviors are meaningless because they have no access to having influence on truths and regulations. Care of the self must be conducted within a certain framework, thus resistance against bio-power becomes possible only within this framework, a “game” of truth.
CHAPTER 3:
THE NON-DUALISTIC, ANTI-ESSENTIALIST, INSTRUMENTALIST
ACCOUNT OF DEWEYAN HUMAN AGENCY IN SOCIETAL
PROCESS OF GROWTH
Leaving Foucault, this chapter explores another perspective in the defense of human agency from a natural environmentalist standpoint. The American pragmatist John Dewey shares commonalities with Foucault’s non-dualistic, anti-essentialist, and intersubjective account of the instrumentality of human agency. I will argue that, similar to Foucault, Dewey’s conception of an autonomous individual can be seen as an instrumentality. Unlike Foucault, however, an end of morality for Dewey is the continuous growth of the society as an organism in which individuals and social structures are mutually constituted in the matrix of the natural environment. Humans are agents in the world insofar as they have the ability to make 17 Ibid. 406.18 Foucault, Michel. ‘The Ethic of Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom’ from Final Foucault. 1987.
contributions for the sustenance of this organic life-process in which freedom of individual is acknowledged. First, I will present a general overview of Dewey’s cultural concerns, which clearly stand against Western dualism and its philosophical reconstruction project. Second, I will push further and attempt to define the threshold from which the non-essentialist conception of an “essential human agency” can be integrated back into Dewey’s account of a life-process: the continual growth of an organism. And finally, I will argue how both his social concerns and anti-essentialist account of agency are to be reconciled by means of the Deweyan conception of intelligence which brings to the chaos an order within contingency and precariousness.
Reconstructing Philosophy: Deweyan Inquiry into Life as Anti-dualistic Instrumentalism
The distinguishing characteristic of Dewey’s philosophy is that, unlike British empiricism, it aims for the recovery of human experience, which has been submerged both by Humean naïve empiricism (“naïve” compared to Deweyan empiricism, which is to be explained later in the current section) and Cartesian rationalism. In Reconstruction in Philosophy, Dewey argues that rationalists’ employment of naïve-empiricism (or sensational-empiricism) degraded human experiences by seeing them as disturbing to scientific knowledge and the moral law.
Dewey’s deep-empiricism or what he calls empirical naturalism or naturalistic empiricism,19 unlike Humean naïve-empiricism, revalues human experiences and frees people from the obsessed modern philosophical ideal-real disputes. Dewey states that this locates the Kantian synthesis of these two in an “unnecessary” sphere, whose non-empirical method “fail[s] to note the empirical needs that generate their problems, and fail[s] to return the refined products back to the context of actual experience.”20 Essentially, it “cast[s] a cloud over the things of ordinary experience.”21 According to Dewey, experience means both crude subject-matters in the primary experience to be attained “as a result of a minimum of an incidental reflection,” and the secondary or refined objects of reflection which are to be experienced “in consequence of continued and regulated reflecting inquiry.”22 Since modern science and philosophy focused only on the objects of the refined experience, the axis between the primary experience and the secondary reflexive systematic inquiry has been lacking for centuries, leaving the subject matters having a mere “sense contact with” the refined objects, as seen in the case of Humean naïve-empiricism.
19 Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. 1958. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. ix. 20 Dewey. Experience and Nature. 33.
21 Ibid. 38. 22 Ibid. 4.
Without the connection between them, Dewey’s pragmatic thought, which attempts to cope with an environment in the continuous growth of an organism of society, cannot fully perform its role. In order to avoid leaving the primary experience as a mere sense-contact, the refined objects must return to the subject matter so that they can “explain the primary objects.”23 According to Dewey, the significance of this experimental axis is as following:
The history of the development of the physical sciences is the story of the enlarging possession by mankind of more efficacious instrumentalities for dealing with the conditions of life and action. But when one neglects the connection of these scientific objects with the affairs of primary experience, the result is a picture of a world of things indifferent to human interests because it is wholly apart from experience. It is more than merely isolated, for it is set in opposition. ... When objects are isolated from the experience through which they are reached and in which they function, experience itself becomes reduced to the mere process of experiencing and experiencing is therefore treated as if it were also complete in itself. We get the absurdity of an experiencing which experiences only itself, states and processes of consciousness, instead of the things of nature.24 This natural empiricist metaphysics reconciles the problem of the primary experience and secondary reflexive inquiry both being left as isolated objects, yet instead furnishes the initial experience with the reflexive inquiry so that “what is experienced gains an enriched and expanded force because of the path or method by which it was reached.”25 Since Deweyan empirical naturalism generates creative interactions between the primary and secondary experiences, it can avoid the chaos that occurs through the disfunctioning of a social life-process. Experience functions as an organizing factor, connecting the adaptive course of actions with objective principles, and therefore suffices as an indispensable element for all life with which the continuity of the life-process is sustained. What is at the heart of experiences is intelligence, which is to be explained next.
Deweyan Pragmatism and the Defense of Human Agency against the Loss of Individuality in a World of Chaos without Creative Intelligence
In Dewey’s rich empiricism, experience must be accompanied by intelligence at its core.
23 Ibid. 5. 24 Ibid. 11. 25 Ibid. 5.
“Intelligence” is “not something possessed once for all. It is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn, and courage in readjustment.”26 Intelligence is a key to connecting the primary experience with the reflexive inquiry, thus to bring order to the social organism. The nature of intelligence is described in Dewey’s own words as:
[w]hat is needed is to find the right course of action, the right good. Hence, inquiry is exacted: observation of the detailed makeup of the situation; analysis into its diverse factors; clarification of what is obscure; discounting the more insistent and vivid traits; tracing the consequences of the various modes of action that suggest themselves; regarding the decision reached as hypothetical and tentative until the anticipated or supposed consequences which led to its adoption have been squared with actual consequences. This inquiry is intelligence.27 Inquiry is an indispensable element for the continual growth of the social organism, which is itself an endless end-in-itself. Hence, the disposition of intelligence has an instrumentality which functions as a tool for maintaining the growing process of the social body. This intensifies the relationship between individuals and the natural environment, human desire and moral law, subjective experience and reflexive disclosure of nature. Deweyan pragmatism is, then, a non-dualistic instrumentalism that constitutes a cultural ethos in the mutual enhancement of subjects and an environment. As was discussed earlier, practical science in the subject matter of human experience and contemplative objective knowledge must be connected by a reflexive inquiry which carries refined objects back into primary experiences. This reconciliation may be made by an instrument of intelligence which composes an organized factor of the subject’s experience, and which constitutes the world organism by sustaining its ceaseless growing processes. Here, it might seem that intelligence works as an actor in the world which maintains the Deweyan moral end, the continuous growth of social life-processes. Does it mean that for Dewey it is intelligence that should be defended as a human agency against the loss of individuality? If so, in what sense can intelligence be seen as human agency? In order to consider these inquiries, let us take a look at the differences between his conception of individualism and individuality. For Dewey, intelligence is a way in which human beings constitute individuality in relation to 26 Ibid. 89-90.
the matrix of environment and individual relations. Unlike individualism, individuality “does not require isolation from community but rather emphasizes the unique perspectives and contributions that individual members can make when they are integrated into a community.”28 Thus, individuality is something to be “wrought out” in “a social and moral sense,”29 which becomes an “assumption of responsibility in choice of belief and conduct.”30 Human agency is assured by an active operation of individuality, which needs to be developed under social conditions which nurture it because it is not something naturally given. However, Dewey argues that an enhancement of individuality is obscured by individualism, which comes with the advent of capitalism. In his words, individualism “impel[s human beings] into a common mold to such an extent that individuality is suppressed,”31 which leaves humans as “the lost individuals.”32 The key to resisting this individualism is a cultivation of individuality, because it, unlike individualism, avoids allowing human beings to become isolated from communal life, and to be diverted from the constitution of the growing process of an organic social life. Through individuality, humans can make their own choices and act freely. Hence, it is individuality within the realm of the individual intelligence that ensures the agency of an actor in a society. However, the trick is that individuality should not be construed as a fixed kernel element of an individual in the sense that this is understood by essentialism. Dewey leads one to:
Consider the conception of the individual self. The individual school of England and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was empirical in intent. It based its individualism… upon the belief that individuals are alone real, that classes and organizations are secondary and derived. ... Let us perfect ourselves within, and in due season changes in society will come of themselves is the teaching. ... [W]hen self-hood is perceived to be an active process it is also seen that social modifications are the only means of the creation of changed personalities. Institutions are viewed in their educative effect:—with reference to the types of individuals they foster.33 An individual self is a process within a society, thus, the development of self-hood and social
28 Savage, Daniel M. John Dewey’s Liberalism: Individual, Community, and Self-development. 2002. Carbondale, Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. 62.
29 Dewey. Reconstruction in Philosophy. 152.
30 Ibid. 153.
31 Dewey, John. Individualism: Old and New. 1999. New York: Prometheus Books. 26.
32 Ibid. 26.
environments mutually constitute one another. In other words, since individual-subject constitution is inseparable from the social organism, human agency for Dewey should not be perceived in an essentialist sense, but should be considered in terms of its instrumentality, which resolves the classic division between human subjectivity and institutions, and so can be thought of as intersubjective. In the growing life-processes of the mutual constitution of a social organism, active individual choices of human freedom are confirmed. The Deweyan intersubjective conception of agency can also be seen in the way he sees the workings of society and the interactions among its constitutive elements:
Society ... is many associations not a single organization. Society means association; coming together in joint intercourse and action for the better realization of any form of experience which is augmented and confirmed by being shared. Hence there are as many associations as there goods which are enhanced by being mutually communicated and participated in. … Society is the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common.34 When we talk about a human subject, we are inevitably talking about its relation to the matrix of organismic and environmental relations in the Deweyan sense. Individuals as a social organism are always contingent upon conditions of possibility that environments provide. For Dewey, the work of an autonomous self is seen in the continual growth of social life-processes which requires both individual participation and social environment for its sustenance.
CONCLUSION: CONSTRUCTIVE ARGUMENT BETWEEN
FOUCAULT AND DEWEY
A non-dualistic construal of the autonomous self for both Foucault and Dewey is seen in the relationality between many constitutive factors, from individual consciousness to a social organism by tracing its functioning instrumentality, rather than grasping agency as a substantial matter. In regard to the construal of a constitution of selfhood, it is inevitable to simultaneously consider it in relation to social discourse (Foucault), and natural environment (Dewey) due to the disposition of constituted selfhood and their mutual enhancement of intersubjectivity in its continual life-processes. Therefore, throughout this thesis, I attempted to avoid seeing human agency as something that dwells within an individual and as a sort of 34 Ibid. 160-1.
essence of the subject. Instead, I consistently put the focus upon the intersubjective processes through which subjects constitute themselves in relation to others and environment. This account of human agency stands in sharp contrast to essentialist accounts of agency, which lead to the perpetuation of a dualistic onto-epistemology. Both Foucault and Dewey provide this non-dualistic account of human agency in the subjects’ relations with others. Foucault’s work was not focused on an eradication of human subjectivity, but rather its intensification. A tool for articulating this is an intersubjective way of constituting the self, “technologies of the self,” thus parrhesia. For Foucault, the point of this constitution of the self is that the subjects’ truth can have meaning only through relations with social discourses which give the value to one’s own truth, which is a trick of “truth-game”—individuals and social structures are inseparable from the constitution of either. If a subject is completely an independent agent in the world, it cannot provide any influence because it cannot have any meaningful truth for society, thus subjects need a certain social framework and discourses. Participation in the game of truth is a necessary condition for an individual to perform its agency. How can the function of agency be seen? It can be observed at the site of reversal of power. As Foucault reminds us, where power is, there must be a chance of reversal in the relational dynamics between individuals, or subjects and institutions. Therefore, power relations always embrace contingency, meaning that they are always changing rather than fixed phenomena in relation with others, such as social discourses and systems. Even though individuals do not have clear essential identity for agency, an instrumentality (or function) of agency can be seen in terms of the possible reversal by the self-governing technique parrhesia of whatever framework of the continuously oscillating discursivity surrounds the subjects. Dewey is concerned that individualism will result in the loss of individuality, which means an eradication of the unique contribution of personal characteristics to the organic life-processes of the social body. An arrest of individuality leads to chaos. Then, intelligence as an instrument connects the subject with the objective knowledge and reflexive inquiry experienced in an individually unique way. Is intelligence itself a human agency that is an essential core of the subject? This contains a fuzzy boundary, but the answer would be no. Intelligence is not a given nature as an essence of the primary experience of individuals, but it is something to be developed under conditions in which interaction with society continuously occurs. Intelligence is a socially produced conception. How Dewey sees the moral end of a society as an organism provides another perspective to approach this difficult inquiry. He gives individual agency in a sense to actors in reality, who are mutually constituted by the interaction with a natural environment. A moral end for Dewey is the continual growth of a social organism by an endless investigation with a method of inquiry. Individuality is to be observed
in the sustaining of the growing process of a social organism as an instrument of the will of humans in the world. Both for Foucault and Dewey, instrumentalism—“truth-telling” (Foucault) and “intelligence” (Dewey) —becomes the tool for the intersubjective enhancement of reciprocal relations between individuals and the social body. They provide us rich ways to think through human agency as opposed to dualistic discourse within a certain framework. However, what is yet to be revealed is the question of whether or not the conception of human agency is real. If individuals and social environment mutually constitute one another in their reciprocal and continual influences, either of them must ground themselves in a certain truth (in this case, not an objective or subjective truth, but possibly something akin to “intersubjective” truth.) Otherwise, as pragmatists struggle with a correspondence theory of truth, a chain of social discourses will not cease its perpetuation, which is a pitfall of relativism. This question of the defense of human agency needs to be conducted from this perspective in the future.
REFERENCES
Cutrofello, Andrew. ‘Exomologesis and Aesthetic Reflection: Foucault’s Response to Habermas’ in Michel Foucault and Theology: The Politics of Religious Experience. 2004. Hampshire and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited and Ashgate Publishing Company.Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy. 1919. A Mentor Book: Published by The New American Library.
Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. 1958. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Dewey, John. Individualism: Old and New. 1999. New York: Prometheus Books.
Esposito, John L., Fasching Darrell J., Lewis, Todd. Religion and Globalization: World Religions In Historical Perspective. 2008. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford.
Evens, T. M. S. Anthropology As Ethics: Nondualism and the Conduct of Sacrifice. 2008. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Foucault, Michel. ‘Technologies of the Self’ from Technologies of the Self. 1988. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Foucault, Michel. ‘Truth, Power, Self: An Interview’ from Technologies of the Self. Foucault, Michel. ‘The Political Technology of Individuals’ from Technologies of the Self. Foucault, Michel. ‘The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom’ from the Final
Foucault, Michel. ‘On the Government of the Living’ from Religion and Culture. Berkeley lecture 1999. New York: Routledge. ‘Discourse and Truth Foucault, Michel. Hermeneutics of the Subject. 2004. New York: Picador.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction Volume 1. 1978. New York: Vintage Books A Division of Random House, Inc.
Gutting, Gary. The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. 1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haack, Susan. Pragmatism, Old and New: Selected Writings. 2006. New York: Prometheus Books.
Hogue, Michael S. From lecture notes, ‘Advanced Theology: Pragmatism.’ This session was conducted at Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago in fall of 2009.
Neville, Robert. C. On the Scope and Truth of Theology: Theology as Symbolic Engagement. 2006. New York, London: T & T Clark.
Pals, Daniel L.. ‘Society as Sacred: Emile Durkheim’ from Eight Theories of Religion. 2006. Oxford University Press, Inc: New York, Oxford.
Rainbow, Paul. ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ from Foucault: Ethics.
Rainbow, Paul. editor. ‘The Masked Philosopher.’ From Foucault: Ethics. 1994. New York: The New Press.
Savage. Daniel M. John Dewey’s Liberalism: Individual, Community, and Self-Development. 2002. Carbondale, Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Talisse, Robert B. Aikin, Scott F. Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed: Pragmatism. 2008. New York: Continuum.
Uozu, Ikuo. Puragumatizumu no shisou. [The Philosophy of Pragmatism]. 2006. Tokyo: Chikuma Publishing Co.
Welch, Sharon D. After Empire: The Art and Ethos of Enduring Peace. 2004. Fortless Press: Minneapolis.
West, Cornell. American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism. 1989. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
