Dear Stuart,
What you say regarding Foucault's strategies with respect to his reading of
Bentham is no doubt correct, but if we were to assume that Bentham's work
produced this or that effect within, for example, early nineteenth century
Britain (not to mention France, which is a whole other terrain of possible
effects) we would have to go beyond Foucault's impressionistic account.
Many of Bentham's later works (i.e., those written when he was involved in
the Philosophic Radical movement with Mill, Grote et al) were not published
in his lifetime (i.e, before 1832), and outside of that circle were known
only through their effects within the writings of that circle (for example,
the draft _Constitutional Code_ is referred to in Book VI of Mill's _History
of British India_). It would seem indeed that some of Bentham's early ideas
on 'fictions' for example - which did inform his work on penal reform - were
suppressed in favour of Mill's ideas on the association of ideas, which
derived from the works of Hartley, Hume, and Condillac. Mill's position was
unambiguously opposed to that of Coleridge, for example. Interestingly,
Coleridge's literary career in many ways mirrored that of Bentham, in
composing large, unwieldy, and unfinished manuscripts considered 'brilliant'
by his acolytes but producing effects in his lifetime largely through the
writings of the latter (for example, George IV's poet laureate Robert
Southey). If we were to seek an explanation of why John Stuart Mill's
distinctive contribution (as opposed to his early work, which was largely
derivative of that of his father on the one hand and Edward Gibbon
Wakefield - especially on the issue of population/contraception - on the
other) begins with his famous conciliatory essay on 'Bentham and Coleridge'
(which appalled his fellow Philosophic Radicals) we would perhaps look at
how the political stakes of philosophical discourse - including, crucially,
on the character of the human mind - altered after the reforms of the 1830s.
J.S. Mill was also involved in the production of a heavily annotated edition
of his father's _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_ at around the
same time as the writing of his _System of Logic_, and it's possible that
what Foucault refers to in the latter work might also be reflected in J.S.
Mill's footnotes to the former.
There was considerable opposition in Britain from both the Whigs and Tories
to utilitarian ideas - including the Panopticon - until the transformation
in Whiggism that follows the emergence of socialism (e.g., that of Hodgskin)
in the UK in the 1820s, and it seems that the Whigs - notably Macaulay -
began appropriating and domesticating certain utilitarian ideas in the late
1820s, with socialism to the left and Whiggism to the right occupying the
ground that the Philosophic Radicals had occupied in 1815-1825. Certainly
Foucault's use of Bentham has its merits in delineating a new structure of
thinking that can be seen in later works, institutions, and practices - and
I think it is one of the merits of Deleuze's review of D&P to draw attention
to Foucault's 'cartographic' mode in this exercise - but to understand the
historical effects of Bentham's work in any given conjuncture we would have
to consider the material existence of Bentham's concepts. Foucault suggests
that there is a disjunction between the anticipated and actual effects of
Bentham's legal philosophy but that only draws our attention to the problem,
it does not provide an account of why or how that space opened up, nor does
he give a good account of the political, philosophical, or practical
problems that led to Bentham's intervention.
That said I look forward to reading all of the courses as they appear. My
point was not to fault Foucault for not looking into the context of
Bentham's reception in Britain but simply to ask if there was something he
says in this course that would challenge my present views of his level of
interest in the topic. I don't think we need to look to Foucault for an
analysis of this or that thinker. There are plenty of methods and concepts
in Foucault's work that we can apply to writings and problems that Foucault
never considered. So far I have found his work very useful in analysing all
kinds of works that Foucault probably never read and possibly would not have
considered important.
The stuff by Semple and Ball sounds interesting. I have read Terence Ball's
work on James Mill (he edited a Cambridge collection of Mill's _Political
Writings_ - mainly consisting of encyclopaedia articles, and by no means
comprehensive even then, and also wrote a paper on what he considers the
Platonist influences on Mill's penology by comparison with the Epicurean
influences on Bentham) and Marx but I have not read the work of Semple, and
certainly I have not read the writings of either on Foucault. I will
certainly look these up.
Thanks again for your response to my question. My only other question is:
is the 'critique of Althusser' you mention explicit, in the sense of an
extended engagement with positions attributed to Althusser? Or is it more
like the critique of Althusser that we can read in, for example, D&P, which
obviously engages with Althusser throughout but doesn't provide a discussion
of this or that formulation in Althusser's text?
best wishes
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Elden" <stuartelden@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 7:36 PM
Subject: RE: Le pouvoir psychiatrique
> Thanks David
>
> I think you might be disappointed as to Foucault's knowledge of
> utilitarianism as a movement. There is little more in this course than
> elsewhere on this point. In Foucault's work as a whole, there are
obviously
> several references to Bentham, but I can think of few if any to the Mills.
> Checking Dits et ecrits' index, the only reference to JS Mill is in "La
> psychologie de 1850 a 1950", a brief mention of JS Mill's Logic (DE I,
122).
>
> Janet Semple and Terence Ball have written about the relation of Foucault
to
> utilitarianism. There must be others as well - I read up on some of this
> literature during my PhD/writing the book on Heidegger and Foucault, but
> haven't looked at this for some time.
>
> Aside from the obvious interest in these issues, why should Foucault write
> about them? It seems to me that he is not that interested in
utilitarianism
> in itself, but more in a single idea, the Panopticon, and that only really
> because it was so widely referenced in literature on hospital design. The
> hospital/asylum architecture issue is where he came across it, it's where
> that is talked about in this course, and Foucault makes it clear that he
is
> not seeing it as a model for a prison, or at least not _only_ as that. He
> doesn't seem that interested in the other aspects of Bentham's proposed
> scheme, with the more obviously utilitarian models of private ownership
and
> payment relating to the number of expected deaths against the actual
deaths,
> etc. He doesn't make a lot of why the Panopticon was never built as
Bentham
> envisaged in England, and why it was only really the architectural issues
> that caught on elsewhere. Again, I used to be more familiar with these
> issues than I am now.
>
> I'm sure that you're right about the different perspectives within
Bentham's
> reception, and that if Foucault was trying to do something rigorous about
> utilitarianism then he was at fault in not addressing them. But I think
his
> aim is somewhat different.
>
> best
>
> Stuart
>
> ----
>
> Dear Stuart,
>
> with regard to the case study of George III that you mention with respect
to
> Foucault's course, I'm wondering if it reveals more background knowledge
on
> Foucault's part regarding the Utilitarians than _Discipline and Punish_
> seems to suggest. My own research as an intellectual historian working on
> the period of George III and the Regency of George IV I'm aware that (what
> we might now call) psychology (then discussed under the rubric of 'the
> philosophy of mind') and the literary, epistenological, political, and
> social significance of 'the imagination' were points of contention in this
> period, with the Romantics on one side and the Utilitarians on the other
(a
> divide that J.S. Mill later tried to overcome, after liberalism had been
> established in the 1830s). My impression of Foucault from texts such as
D&P
> is that his knowledge of the Utilitarians is restricted to Bentham, and
that
> he doesn't consider the processes of literary reproduction in which
> Bentham's work produced its immediate effects (here I am thinking of the
> works of James Mill, George Grote, and Charles Austin) or even how the
> Bentham of the Panopticon period was transformed into the Philosophic
> Radical of the Constitutional Code, but perhaps this lecture series might
> reveal more depth in Foucault's research in this area. For example, he
> doesn't discuss James Mill's essays (e.g., 'Education', 'Prisons and
> Prison-Discipline') or books (e.g., _The History of British India_, _An
> Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_), even though these were the
> main articulations of utilitarian thought in these areas during this
period
> and - especially the encyclopaedia articles mentioned and his work on
> India - were works that both different significantly from Bentham's own
> positions and framed the interpretation of Bentham's work in the period.
> In any case I'd like to hear more about it, as no doubt would many others.
> best wishes
> David
>
What you say regarding Foucault's strategies with respect to his reading of
Bentham is no doubt correct, but if we were to assume that Bentham's work
produced this or that effect within, for example, early nineteenth century
Britain (not to mention France, which is a whole other terrain of possible
effects) we would have to go beyond Foucault's impressionistic account.
Many of Bentham's later works (i.e., those written when he was involved in
the Philosophic Radical movement with Mill, Grote et al) were not published
in his lifetime (i.e, before 1832), and outside of that circle were known
only through their effects within the writings of that circle (for example,
the draft _Constitutional Code_ is referred to in Book VI of Mill's _History
of British India_). It would seem indeed that some of Bentham's early ideas
on 'fictions' for example - which did inform his work on penal reform - were
suppressed in favour of Mill's ideas on the association of ideas, which
derived from the works of Hartley, Hume, and Condillac. Mill's position was
unambiguously opposed to that of Coleridge, for example. Interestingly,
Coleridge's literary career in many ways mirrored that of Bentham, in
composing large, unwieldy, and unfinished manuscripts considered 'brilliant'
by his acolytes but producing effects in his lifetime largely through the
writings of the latter (for example, George IV's poet laureate Robert
Southey). If we were to seek an explanation of why John Stuart Mill's
distinctive contribution (as opposed to his early work, which was largely
derivative of that of his father on the one hand and Edward Gibbon
Wakefield - especially on the issue of population/contraception - on the
other) begins with his famous conciliatory essay on 'Bentham and Coleridge'
(which appalled his fellow Philosophic Radicals) we would perhaps look at
how the political stakes of philosophical discourse - including, crucially,
on the character of the human mind - altered after the reforms of the 1830s.
J.S. Mill was also involved in the production of a heavily annotated edition
of his father's _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_ at around the
same time as the writing of his _System of Logic_, and it's possible that
what Foucault refers to in the latter work might also be reflected in J.S.
Mill's footnotes to the former.
There was considerable opposition in Britain from both the Whigs and Tories
to utilitarian ideas - including the Panopticon - until the transformation
in Whiggism that follows the emergence of socialism (e.g., that of Hodgskin)
in the UK in the 1820s, and it seems that the Whigs - notably Macaulay -
began appropriating and domesticating certain utilitarian ideas in the late
1820s, with socialism to the left and Whiggism to the right occupying the
ground that the Philosophic Radicals had occupied in 1815-1825. Certainly
Foucault's use of Bentham has its merits in delineating a new structure of
thinking that can be seen in later works, institutions, and practices - and
I think it is one of the merits of Deleuze's review of D&P to draw attention
to Foucault's 'cartographic' mode in this exercise - but to understand the
historical effects of Bentham's work in any given conjuncture we would have
to consider the material existence of Bentham's concepts. Foucault suggests
that there is a disjunction between the anticipated and actual effects of
Bentham's legal philosophy but that only draws our attention to the problem,
it does not provide an account of why or how that space opened up, nor does
he give a good account of the political, philosophical, or practical
problems that led to Bentham's intervention.
That said I look forward to reading all of the courses as they appear. My
point was not to fault Foucault for not looking into the context of
Bentham's reception in Britain but simply to ask if there was something he
says in this course that would challenge my present views of his level of
interest in the topic. I don't think we need to look to Foucault for an
analysis of this or that thinker. There are plenty of methods and concepts
in Foucault's work that we can apply to writings and problems that Foucault
never considered. So far I have found his work very useful in analysing all
kinds of works that Foucault probably never read and possibly would not have
considered important.
The stuff by Semple and Ball sounds interesting. I have read Terence Ball's
work on James Mill (he edited a Cambridge collection of Mill's _Political
Writings_ - mainly consisting of encyclopaedia articles, and by no means
comprehensive even then, and also wrote a paper on what he considers the
Platonist influences on Mill's penology by comparison with the Epicurean
influences on Bentham) and Marx but I have not read the work of Semple, and
certainly I have not read the writings of either on Foucault. I will
certainly look these up.
Thanks again for your response to my question. My only other question is:
is the 'critique of Althusser' you mention explicit, in the sense of an
extended engagement with positions attributed to Althusser? Or is it more
like the critique of Althusser that we can read in, for example, D&P, which
obviously engages with Althusser throughout but doesn't provide a discussion
of this or that formulation in Althusser's text?
best wishes
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Elden" <stuartelden@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 7:36 PM
Subject: RE: Le pouvoir psychiatrique
> Thanks David
>
> I think you might be disappointed as to Foucault's knowledge of
> utilitarianism as a movement. There is little more in this course than
> elsewhere on this point. In Foucault's work as a whole, there are
obviously
> several references to Bentham, but I can think of few if any to the Mills.
> Checking Dits et ecrits' index, the only reference to JS Mill is in "La
> psychologie de 1850 a 1950", a brief mention of JS Mill's Logic (DE I,
122).
>
> Janet Semple and Terence Ball have written about the relation of Foucault
to
> utilitarianism. There must be others as well - I read up on some of this
> literature during my PhD/writing the book on Heidegger and Foucault, but
> haven't looked at this for some time.
>
> Aside from the obvious interest in these issues, why should Foucault write
> about them? It seems to me that he is not that interested in
utilitarianism
> in itself, but more in a single idea, the Panopticon, and that only really
> because it was so widely referenced in literature on hospital design. The
> hospital/asylum architecture issue is where he came across it, it's where
> that is talked about in this course, and Foucault makes it clear that he
is
> not seeing it as a model for a prison, or at least not _only_ as that. He
> doesn't seem that interested in the other aspects of Bentham's proposed
> scheme, with the more obviously utilitarian models of private ownership
and
> payment relating to the number of expected deaths against the actual
deaths,
> etc. He doesn't make a lot of why the Panopticon was never built as
Bentham
> envisaged in England, and why it was only really the architectural issues
> that caught on elsewhere. Again, I used to be more familiar with these
> issues than I am now.
>
> I'm sure that you're right about the different perspectives within
Bentham's
> reception, and that if Foucault was trying to do something rigorous about
> utilitarianism then he was at fault in not addressing them. But I think
his
> aim is somewhat different.
>
> best
>
> Stuart
>
> ----
>
> Dear Stuart,
>
> with regard to the case study of George III that you mention with respect
to
> Foucault's course, I'm wondering if it reveals more background knowledge
on
> Foucault's part regarding the Utilitarians than _Discipline and Punish_
> seems to suggest. My own research as an intellectual historian working on
> the period of George III and the Regency of George IV I'm aware that (what
> we might now call) psychology (then discussed under the rubric of 'the
> philosophy of mind') and the literary, epistenological, political, and
> social significance of 'the imagination' were points of contention in this
> period, with the Romantics on one side and the Utilitarians on the other
(a
> divide that J.S. Mill later tried to overcome, after liberalism had been
> established in the 1830s). My impression of Foucault from texts such as
D&P
> is that his knowledge of the Utilitarians is restricted to Bentham, and
that
> he doesn't consider the processes of literary reproduction in which
> Bentham's work produced its immediate effects (here I am thinking of the
> works of James Mill, George Grote, and Charles Austin) or even how the
> Bentham of the Panopticon period was transformed into the Philosophic
> Radical of the Constitutional Code, but perhaps this lecture series might
> reveal more depth in Foucault's research in this area. For example, he
> doesn't discuss James Mill's essays (e.g., 'Education', 'Prisons and
> Prison-Discipline') or books (e.g., _The History of British India_, _An
> Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_), even though these were the
> main articulations of utilitarian thought in these areas during this
period
> and - especially the encyclopaedia articles mentioned and his work on
> India - were works that both different significantly from Bentham's own
> positions and framed the interpretation of Bentham's work in the period.
> In any case I'd like to hear more about it, as no doubt would many others.
> best wishes
> David
>