In this day and age, people are obsessed with their own

brand of freedom. People obsessed with making a name for

themselves, or becoming a celebrity. Children are brought up to
strive and become rock stars or star athletes or Hollywood stars.
People, in their search for purpose, are focused on
distinguishing themselves IN the society, rather than
distinguishing themselves FOR the society. People think that by
doing so, they are fulfilling what their soul wants, and that
they are truly making a difference in society by doing so. This
is because society, and the authoritative figures that control
it, are proliferating this notion of liberation. In this age of
unlimited access to information in a matter of seconds, the media
force feeds us this false sense of freedom. We take for granted
the freedom afforded for us by technology and the rise of the
industries. This is why Hannah Arendt said that our society no
longer values speech; because we have become accustomed to
unlimited access to information that we no longer find the need
for intellectual discourse. Liberation, in this day and age, is
used as a tool to abuse human sexuality. Liberation, freedom, in
this day and age, is used as an excuse to remain ignorant. This
is why most of us fail to develop good hearts, despite being
educated. We think too highly of ourselves, even though we have
yet to contribute anything to society. As products of an
insulated life, we become self-entitled, self-absorbed.
Ironically, despite the advancements of technology, we live in an
age of proliferative ignorance, where we are encouraged on a
regular basis to live in a world of fiction. We are so enthralled
with the life we want to live that we become oblivious to what
is happening around us. We become dreamers, chasing useless
dreams, letting our own passions control us. We become so
obsessed with freedom that we end up not caring for society. We
1

arent grounded enough, hence, we fall prey to the fear mongering

and propaganda of the media; hence, we fall prey to our unchecked
passions.1 This is why wars happen; we abuse our freedom too much
that we become anarchists, driven by our unchecked passions. We
exercise our freedom without reflection. This type of liberation,
as in our practice of freedom, is what Foucault considers as
toxic. In The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of
Freedom, Foucault discusses such an abuse of liberation. He
discusses the need for a structure, such that the practice of
freedom may not only benefit the self, but also society as a
whole. This is where we see a convergence between Foucaults
works and Platos. There are many parallelisms found in
Foucaults work and Platos narrative, The Republic. This begs
the question, what exactly is the Foucaultian Project? Both of
these philosophers focus mainly on the concept of an ideal
society; both philosophers critique the flaws within their
versions of a society; for Foucault, the disciplinary society
that we live in today, and for Plato, the polis. In the early
part of the semester, we discussed disciplinarity and the
disciplinarity society2, Foucaults main focus in Discipline and
Punish. In this essay, Foucault discusses the flaws of the
disciplinary society, the same way Plato discusses the flaws in
the early Greek society within the polis.3 A pervading element in
Foucaults critique on the disciplinary system is the idea that
representation can achieve more than reality; the notion that in
1 Allan Bloom, trans., The Republic (Basic Books, 1991) Book

VIII.
2 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House,

1979).
3 Allan Bloom, trans., The Republic (Basic Books, 1991).
2

our disciplinary society, we are more concerned with the

meaning/s we ascribe to something than the real thing.
Representation creates that labels systematically blind us from
reality. Labels create partitions (and vice versa) that permeate
our modern society, our disciplinary society that is commandeered
by drunken sailors who control (or are driven by) the media,
which provides avenues for these labels to proliferate. Plato
also stresses this flaw in the polis, manifested by people who
live in a world of fiction, people who do not have any concrete
role in the city. Furthermore, Foucault also suggests that
instead of escaping our passions, we have to face them; while
Socrates, in Platos The Republic, mentions the four types of
dysfunctional men, driven by their unchecked desires and
appetites. As a result of their excessive abuse of their
passions, they end up abusing others. In Book VII of Platos The
Republic, Socrates presents the allegory of the cave: which
illustrates the effects of education on the human soul. In Book
VIII of The Republic, Socrates describes the four types of unjust
men: the timocratic man, the democratic man, the oligarchic man,
and the tyrant. Any aberration in the education of a person would
result to any of the four. However, the oligarchic man, the
tyrant, and the democrat are given more emphasis in our lecture.
The oligarchic man is very good at contractual relations, as the
oligarch is trustworthy. The oligarch, however, tends to suppress
his demons, his unchecked desires, as he becomes obsessed with
work. This is not uncommon in our society. In attempting to
suppress and escape our passions we get so caught up in the blur
of our everyday lives that we fail to recognize what is outside
our partitions. We get easily fooled by the promise of easy
money. For instance, the latest trend of networking; people buy
into this trend in the hopes of creating the future that they
want to have easily, instead of working hard for it. People turn
3

their passions into an obsession for money. Such is the nature of

oligarchs. The oligarch turns greedily towards money-making as he
escapes his desires and replaces them with the insatiable greed
for money. He becomes a slave to his own greed by refusing to
confront his passions. The oligarch is supposed to be a kind
person, but he tends to suppress his desires, and he has no plans
of facing them; thus, he is reduced to an accident waiting to
happen. The democratic man is a hypocrite of sorts. He is a lover
of speeches, and he is obsessed with freedom, yet he has no
intention to have a deep understanding of things. He loves to go
out of his way to show people whos boss, but he becomes tame in
the presence of superiors. The mark of democracy is stubbornness
bigheadedness. Thus, the democratic man is a stubborn man who
follows only himself and thinks of only himself, without any
regard for others. The democratic man then, can be compared to
the 2nd group of people in the allegory of the cave, they worship
the shadows on the wall. The democratic man is a man of fiction,
a man that is always high up in the air, refusing to stay
grounded, thus, he has no real understanding of the world. He is
stuck in his own world. In a way, most Ateneans can be compared
to the democrat. Most Ateneans are stuck up in their own world,
and look down upon those who they think are not in the same
league with them. Ateneans love rubbing elbows with the elite,
and yet they grimace at the sight of the marginalized. Take, for
example, the immersion required for all Ateneans. Almost all
seniors talk about how life-changing their immersion experiences
were, yet after they graduate, they usually move on to work in
corporations that exploit the same people they met in their
immersion. In fact, even before they graduate, the immersion
experience becomes more and more irrelevant as they return to the
safety and comfort of their homes and again face the requirements
that the university imposes on them. The immersion then becomes
4

just a part of their resumes. In a way, our obsession with

freedom ironically enslaves us. We become slaves of the system
without even realizing it. We automatically buy into the concept
of what is perceived to be living the life. Most of us would
rather be comfortable machines than true human beings. Most of us
would rather conform to the system in place than challenge it.
Here we see Foucaults notion of the Faustian pact that we are
makingwe trade our souls for the illusion of comfort, safety,
and whatever we consider as genuine happiness. We need to
liberate ourselves from the Faustian pact; we need to be aware of
it. We need to be aware that we live in a society that takes into
account pseudoscientific sciences that continually lead us to
believing that prejudices based solely on conjecture are actual
facts. Platos critique on democracy is insightful and thoughtprovoking. His description of democracys single-minded pursuit
of freedom at the expense of other goods, and of the sort of men
who tend to gain power in such a system, is reminiscent of
Foucaults critique on the disciplinary system and the residual
sovereign power that rules it.4 Democracy, as Plato describes it,
leads men to believe that they can abuse their freedom, that they
can do whatever they want to do without reflection or proper
understanding of the consequences of their actions. There is
absolutely no order or necessity in the democratic mans life.
Thus, he regards anarchy as freedom. This is the kind of thinking
that would lead to the decline of the democratic man into
something worse. This kind of thinking opens the door to an even
greater abuse of passions, which leads us to the fourth type of
dysfunctional man, the tyrant. The tyrant, the worst of the
three, is a slave to his passions. He lets his emotions run amok,
4 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House,

1979).
5

and projects this onto the world as a blind need to control

others and satisfy his insatiable appetite. In the last stage of
degeneration, the most free city descends into tyranny, and it
then becomes the most enslaved city. The insatiable desire for
freedom causes the city to neglect the necessities of proper
ruling. Freedom, when exercised without proper reflection,
becomes a tool for the degradation of society. A good example of
this is a group of elementary students inside a classroom without
a teacher. The teacher is there to provide structure; obviously,
when the teachers not there, the children can do as they please,
which often leads to chaos inside the classroom. The society that
obsesses over freedom without reflection is a macrocosm of the
human being controlled by its passions. It is at this point where
we see that Foucault, despite criticizing disciplinarity, proves
that we cannot live without structure either. We need
disciplinarity. However, for disciplinarity to become a tool for
the good, we must always stay grounded, and give importance to
negotiation. It cannot be argued that we need a disciplinary
system to get organized, otherwise, everything will fall to
chaos; however, organization has a price: obedience and docility.
While to some extent there is logic behind this price of
organization, the prejudices introduced by pseudo-sciences are
reinforced and instilled within us that we come out of schooling
systems as close-minded robots, unable to do on-the-ground
negotiations. The novel Invisible Man was mentioned in one of our
lectures. There are many parallelisms found in the novel and our
society. In many ways, we have Invisible men and women in our
society. We are not at all a world of innovations. This is
because we fail and refuse to recognize the importance of
operating on the ground, of negotiating on the ground. Were all
sucked into the hole created by pseudo-sciences. We need to get
back on the ground, get back to reality. This is why Foucault
6

would like to bring back humanity into the technological world

that we have become. We need to stop being machines and operate
once more on the ground. The world is already full of people who
believe that they have all the answers to everything. Yes,
technology can be useful, but we have technological apparatuses
operated by people who do not have the thinking of scientists.
Scientists work on the ground. Scientists are people who
participate on the ground. We should remember to operate on the
ground and not run away to the world of the cogito. Only then can
we become a world of innovators, a world that doesnt rely on
pseudo-scientific facts but instead rely on discourse and
negotiation. We keep on bashing the Nazis for what they did, but
the Nazis were just like us. They did not think of themselves as
barbarians, rather, they thought they were enlightened keepers of
high science and morality. They truly thought of themselves as
the chosen ones, a superior race, and they were willing to kill
and die for this belief. I think this may also be applied,
especially in light of the recent crises in the Middle East, to
the Muslim youth abducted by extremist Islamic rebel groups who
are eventually trained to hate and hunt and kill non-Muslims. All
their lives, they are indoctrinated to treat non-believers like
animals. These twisted ideologies start wars, and this is why we
need to get back on the ground. For the ancient Greeks, one can
only be part of war if one is part of the Agora. The Agora was
everything to the Greeks. One can only participate in war if he
proves that he has a mind of his own. This is proven by going
through debates in the place of speech. In modern society, people
enlist in the army to be followers. This is where the problem
lies. Again, people get this docility early on in life, from
schools. People are trained to memorize and not think; obey and
not question. There is no place for thoughtfulness. This is the
big problem of Foucault. This is how and why people, most of
7

their lives, stay in their grid, their compartments. The

cornerstones of these compartments are the penitentiary
apparatuses. We demand from the penitentiary apparatus something
which should never be asked from people: suffering. This just
shows us how we are not so different from the Nazis and the
Islamic rebel groups of the world. In the words of Nathan the
prophet (in response to King Davids question), that man is
you. This is where ethics comes in; in our lectures, we
discussed that ethics is based on tantsa (estimates). This means
only one thing, ethics must be grounded on negotiation and the
emotions of the people involved in negotiation; and in
negotiation, we must always aim to be good.5 We can only aim to
be good when we are grounded and not living in a world of
fiction, letting our passions control us. However, it is also
detrimental to think that we can detach ourselves from our
passions, as we are, inevitably, our passions; which is why
Foucault had problems with Cartesianism of the disciplinary
system.6 Cartesianism was a term attributed to Rene DeCartes, who
said that we are merely cogitos, and that the senses are
practically useless. It is this type of arrogance that places us
in danger of being stuck in a world of fiction. It is this type
of hubris that makes us vulnerable to our passions, since it
means to suppress them, instead of facing them. Naturally,
confronting ones passions would lead to one leading a more just
life. In Platos The Republic, Socrates establishes three
arguments to demonstrate that a man who is just lives a happier
and better life than an unjust man. Socrates takes as his first
5 Terence Irwin, trans., Nichomachean Ethics (Hackett Publishing

Co., 1985).
6 Michel Foucalt, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House,

1979).
8

example the tyrant. It might appear to an immature thinker, or a

child, that the tyrant, exercising despotism as he does, is
surely a happy man; after all, it is plain that the tyrant can
live surrounded by pomp and ceremony and all that wealth can buy.
All of his subjects he may treat as objects; he can kill any
citizen of his state at whim. But we must remember that the
tyrant himself is just as much a slave to his own mad master, his
lust, as his subjects are enslaved to his tyranny. The best parts
of the tyrant's soul are governed, tyrannically, by the worst
part of his soul, and he can never escape the dark prison of his
days. The tyrant, who is never in control of himself, is
miserable.
In contrast to the tyrant, the just man is free; he is
enslaved to nothing, for nothing in his desires or emotions can
captivate him; since his whole life is governed by his reason, he
lives a self-controlled life, happy in his knowledge and happy
that he knows it.
In initiating his second argument, Socrates repeats his
argument that the soul is divided into three parts: reason, the
spirited part, and desire. So we must remember that there exist
three basic types of men: the man of reason who seeks knowledge;
the "spirited" man who seeks honor and success; and the man of
desire who seeks gain (wealth) and satisfaction. Remember that
the man of reason possesses knowledge of the Forms, hence,
Justice. Thus it is that the first man is the just man; the
second, the timocratic man; and the third is a sort of mixture of
the oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical man. If we were to ask
each of these men if he thought himself to be the happiest of the
three, each would probably answer yes. It is entirely possible
that each man may have experienced happiness, but only the man of
9

reason could have experienced the happiness of knowledge because

he alone of the three possesses it, besides possessing the
happiness of the other two men. Thus it is that the man of
justice is correct in his judging himself to be the happiest. And
it is self-evident that the man of reason is best fitted to
judge, since he alone of the three knows Justice.
Socrates' third argument proves out by his making a distinction
between pure (positive) pleasure and illusory pleasure (a kind of
pleasure which is reliant upon an antecedent "pain"). Such an
illusory pleasure might be that of eating (because we are
hungry), or drinking, or, one assumes, any sort of sensual
pleasure. But pure pleasure, such as the study of knowledge, is
reflective of the pleasures of the soul independent of the body,
such as aesthetic pleasures or contemplation of the Forms. And we
must remember that the illusory pleasures are merely images;
knowledge and its study are real. Thus it is that the just man,
secure in his knowledge, is the happiest of men.
At this point in the dialogue, Socrates summarizes his
argument for the just man, and he answers the other participants
in the debate who had argued that the unjust man would lead the
best life so long as he could keep his reputation intact, thus
fooling his fellow-citizens.
Now we may behold the unjust man, who has ruined his own
life by denying his reason and feeding to surfeit his bestial
appetites. Nothing can ever profit him for the evils he has
visited upon himself, as well as upon others. A man must learn to
govern himself through his exercise of reason, lest he live a
life of misery. And if he cannot be guided by his own reason, he
should, like the craftsmen in the Ideal State, learn to be guided
by the intelligence and reason of others the philosopher10

rulers, who will grant him justice and provide for him a happy
and fruitful existence.7 Here we see the synthesis of both
Foucault and Platos works.
The Foucaultian Project therefore, is a mission, a call, to
continually seek out justice. The Foucaultian Project calls us to
continually seek out justice in a world of injustice. It calls us
to stay grounded, and base every decision we make in our lives
from negotiation and deep reflection. It calls us to proceed with
thought, and expose the ills of society. It calls us to exercise
freedom conscientiously, and not without thought. If we can try
and follow this model, then we have a chance at being truly men
and women for others.

7 Allan Bloom, trans., The Republic (Basic Books, 1991) Book IX.
11