Thinking Ethics with Foucault in 2020
In the early 1980s, the French philosopher Michel Foucault gave an interview where he outlined his most recent project on ethics (Foucault & Rabinow, 1994). During the discussion, Foucault explains the difference between ethics and morality. He describes ethical behavior as how we relate to the morals of our time. His ideas about ethics take on new importance in our current situation of social and economic upheaval.
Many of our beliefs about safety, financial security, and even social progress have been thrown into doubt by a devastating global pandemic, conflict-ridden leadership, and sharp economic decline. With so much at stake, we must carefully consider how best to respond ethically, in the right way, to these unprecedented challenges. Foucault’s discussion of ethics guides how we might navigate the instability and uncertainty of our times with compassion and accountability.
Ethics, the principles and actions that direct our behavior, differ in important ways from morals. While morals are the rules we are given to follow by our society, religion, government, and so on, ethics describe our relationship to these morals. For Foucault, morals take the same form (social rules) and only change in content. For example, early Christian morals strictly regulated sexuality to preserve purity while Ancient Greek morals regulated sexuality to preserve masculinity, which was defined in large part by self-control. The morals of early Christianity and Ancient Greece differ, but they remain the same in that they are laws about what we “should do”.
While rules and social norms always exist, the important thing that changes, Foucault explains, is how we relate to these rules, that is: ethics. Foucault compares early Christian ethics to Ancient Greek ethics. For the former, ethics was centered on following morals as closely as possible, on attempting to live perfectly following biblical law.
In contrast, ethics for the Greeks consisted of knowing religious and social conventions, but not always following them. Ethics for the Greeks was a practice of reflecting on one’s relationship to rules and laws — questioning the origin of these directives, their relevance and correctness, and deciding how to follow or not follow these regulations. This latter relationship to morality holds promise for a time in which strict adherence to established laws and codes of conduct has not always resulted in humane institutional and social behavior.
While we cannot return to the ways of ancient times, we can and should consider a different way of relating to ourselves and our society. What if we started looking to our intuition as a source of ethical guidance in addition to our institutions and social norms? We need not wholly reject our traditions and religious beliefs. To do so would be impractical and impossible. Our beliefs about what is good and right (our morals) have been built up through our lives; however, the ways in which we relate to our beliefs and our ethics are not set in stone.
We should consider the humanitarian benefits of developing an ethical relationship with ourselves and our world — one that consists of checking in with the beliefs we have developed and internalized over time and reflecting on their virtue for our current situation. In a good world, ethical people follow their values but are not opposed to altering or shifting these values when given compelling reasons. Perhaps we are not so far off from the promise of a more ethical world. In the United States, we’ve recently seen a record number of white people join protests against anti-black racism.
This is encouraging, but symbolic support is not the same as active support. A real ethics of reflection and action would mean learning about injustice and changing the rules of the institutions and social conventions that oppress and exclude large swaths of humanity.
Foucault, M. (1994). Michel Foucault: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (P. Rabinow, Ed.). New York, NY: The New Press.
