Abstract
In this paper, I compare Hannah Arendt’s and Michel Foucault’s critiques of the specifically modern forms of domination. My paper consists of three parts.
In the first part, I outline the parallels between Arendt’s and Foucault’s understanding of the forms of domination characteristic of the modern society. I argue that in The Human Condition, Arendt examines the genesis and functioning of a specifically modern system of structural domination, which closely resembles Foucault’s notion of biopower.
In the second part of my paper, I examine some differences between Arendt’s and Foucault’s understanding of the modern system of domination, and, in particular, between the forms of resistance against this domination envisioned by the two authors. Arendt describes such resistance in terms of care for the public affairs and for the world, which takes the form of political action.
Foucault, on the other hand, describes it, at least in his late work, as care for the self, which takes the form of ethical practice aimed at artistic self-creation. The distinction between Arendt’s care for the world and Foucault’s care for the self seems to indicate deeper disagreements between the two authors on such matters as the nature of power and freedom, or the relationship between thought and action.
In the third and last part of the paper, I attempt to partially reconcile the differences between Arendt and Foucault that were outlined in the previous section. Drawing mostly from Foucault’s late text “What is Enlightenment?” as well as his 1984 lecture course on parrhesia, I argue that the distinction between Foucault’s care for the self and Arendt’s care for the world may be in fact far less radical than some other texts (for instance “On the Genealogy of Ethics”) suggest.