The Use of Pleasure - Michele Foucault
Book Notes
C2 - Forms of Problematization
Chapter begins with challenging false binaries about how Christianity and Greek and Roman times thought about sex, monogamy, same-sex relations. "But this picture is not accurate..." MF provides four examples that show continuity between the ages. Then immediately, he says "it would be a mistake to infer that the sexual morality of Christianity and that of paganism forma a continuity" (which he follows with a few specific examples of how Socrates and Aristophanes are different in attitude toward sex than middle age church figures). Then he expands on the differences.
(21) In classical thought, on the other hand, the deamnds of austerity were not organized into a unified, coherent, authoritarian moral system that was imposed on everyone in the same manner; they were more in the nature of a supplement, a "luxury" in relation to the commonly accepted morality..... They proposed -- more than they imposed -- different styles of moderation or strictness, each having its specific characre or "shape." Pythagorean austerity was not the same as that of the Stoics, which was very different in turn from that recommend by Epicurus.
He names the "a thematic complex - a "quadri-thematics" of sexual austerity - formed around and apropos of the life of the body, in institution of marriage, relations between men, and the existence of wisdom" which will define the structure of the book.
He says that slaves and women had almost no power or rights... so this moral thinking was only for men "It was an ethics for men: an ethics thought, written, and taught by men and addressed to men -- to free men, obviously. A male ethics, conseqently, in which women figured only as objects or, at most, as partners that one had best train, educate, and atch over when one had them under one's power, but stay away from when they were under the power of someone else (father, husband, tutor). This is doubtless one of the most remarkable aspecdts of that moral reflection: it did not try to define a field of conduct and domain of valid rules -- subject to the necessary modulations -- for the two sexes in common; it was an elaboration of masculine conduct carreid out from the viewpoint of men in order to give form to their behavior." (22)
Getting close to the theme of the book: "Better still: it did not speak to men concerning behaviors presumably owing to a few interdictions that were universally recognized and solemnly recalled in codes, customs, and religious prescriptions. It spoke to them concerning precisely those conducts in which theywere called up on to exercise their rights, their power, their authority, and their liberty: in the practice of pleasures that were not frowned upon, in a marital life where no rule or custom prevented the huband from having extramarital sexual relationh, in relationships with boys, which - at least within certain limit - were accepted, commonly maintained, and even prized." (23)
Another clarification: (23) Which does not mean that this thematics of sexual austerity : represents nothing more than an inconsequential refinement and a speculation unconnected with any specific concern. On the contrary, it is easy to see that each of these great figures of sexual austerity is tied to an axis of experience and to a cluster of concrete relationships: relations to the body, with the question of health, and behind it the whole game of life and death; the relation to the other sex, with the question of the spouse as privileged partner, in the game of the family institution and the ties it creates; the relation to one's own sex, with the question of partners that one can choose within it, and the problem of the adjustment between social roles and sexual roles; and finally, the relation to truth, where the question is raised of the spiritual conditions that enable one to gain access to wisdom.
His project: "Instead of looking for basic interdictions that were hidden or manifested in the demands of sexual austerity, it was necessary to loacte the area of experience and the forms in which sexual behavior was problematized, becoming an object of concern, an element for reflection, and a material for stylization." (24)
He ends this important chapter with a series of questions, including "How did sexual behavior, insofar as it implied these different types of relations, come to be conceived as a domain of moral experience?"
Part 1 - the moral problematazation of pleasure
Preliminary to studying the four types of stylization of sexual conduct that were developed in a dietetics concerned with the body, an economics concerned with marriage, an erotics concerned with the subject of boys, and a philosophy concerned with truth, I intend simply to bring out a few general traits that served as a framework for them, seeing that these traits were common to the different reflections on the aphrodisia. One can grant the familiar proposition that the Greeks of that epoch accepted certain sexual behaviors much more readily than the Christians of the Middle Ages or the Europeans of the modern period; one can also grant that laxity and misconduct in this regard provoked less scandal back then and made one liable to less recrimination, especially as there was no institution— whether pastoral or medical-that claimed the right to determine what was permitted or forbidden, normal or abnormal, in this area; one can also grant that the Greeks attributed much less importance to all these questions than we do. But once all that is granted or assumed, one point still remains irreducible: they nonetheless concerned themselves with such matters, and there were Greek thinkers, moralists, philoso-phers, and doctors who believed that what the laws of the city prescribed or prohibited, what the general customs tolerated or rejected, could not suffice to regulate properly the sexual conduct of a man who cared about himself. The manner in which this kind of pleasure was enjoyed was considered by them to be an ethical problem.
What I would like to define in the next few pages are just those general aspects which their preoccupation with these questions shared; that is, the general form of the moral inquiry that they pursued concerning the aphrodisia. And for this we will need to consult texts that are radically different from one another-essentially those of Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle. 36
I will attempt to restore, not the "doctrinal contex!" that might give each one its peculiar meaning and its differential value, but rather the "field of problematization" that they had in common and that made each of them possible. The object, therefore, will be to elicit, in its general features, the constitution of the aphrodisia as a domain of moral concern. I will consider four notions that are often encountered in the reflection on sexual ethics: the notion of aphrodisia, through which one can grasp what was recognized as the "ethical substance" in sexual behavior; the notion of "use," of chresis, which allows one to perceive the type of subjection that the practice of pleasures had to undergo in order to be morally valorized; the notion of enkrateia, of mastery, that defines the attitude that was required with respect to oneself in order to make oneself into an ethical subject; and lastly, the notion of "mod-eration," of sophrosyne, that characterized the ethical subject in his fulfillment. It should thus be possible to determine what structured the moral experience of sexual pleasures—its on-tology, its deontology, its ascetics, its teleology. 37
C1 Aphrodisia
In the reflection of the Greeks in the classical period, it does seem that the moral problematization of food, drink, and sexual activity was carried out in a rather similar manner. Foods, wines, and relations with women and boys constitued analogous ethical materail; they brought foces into play that were natural, but that always tended to be excessive; and they all raised the same question: how could one, how must "make use" (chresthai) of this dynamics of pleasures, desires, and acts? A question of right use. As Aristotle expresses it, "all men enjoy in some way or another both savoury foods and wines and sexual intercourse, but not all men do so as they ought." 51/52
C2 Chresis
How does a man enjoy his pleasure "as one ought"? To what principles does he refer in order to moderate, limit, regulate that activity? What sort of validity might these principles have that would enable a man to justify his having to obey them? Or, in other words, what is the mode of subjection that is implied in this moral problematization of sexual conduct?
The goal of moral reflection on the aphrodisia was much less to establish a systematic code that would determine the canonical form of sexual acts, trace out the boundary of the prohibitions, and assign practices to one side or the other of a dividing line, than to work out the conditions and modalities of a "use"; that is, to define a style for what the Greeks called chresis aphrodision, the use of pleasures. The common expression chresis aphrodision related, in a general way, to sexual activity (for example, people would speak of times of the year or the age in one's life when it was good to chresthai aphrodisi-ois).' But the term also referred to the manner in which an individual managed his sexual activity, his way of conducting himself in such matters, the regimen he allowed himself or imposed on himself, the conditions in which he accomplished sexual acts, the share he allotted them in his life.* It was not (54)add quote
Three fold strategy
1. The strategy of need
F introduces Diogenes, masturbating in public. He says "if breakfast be not absurd, neither is it absurd to breakfast in the market-place." (also: "he likewise found in masturbation the most direct means of appeasing his sexual appetite. He even regretted that it was not possible to satisfy hunger and thirst in so simple a manner: "Would to heaven that it were enough to rub one's stomach in order to allay one's hunger." (55)
He introduces Socrates' lesson that peopel should 'limit themselves to such indulgence as the soul would reject unless the need of the body were pressing, and such as would do no harm when the need was there."
He clarifies; But in this need-regulated use of the aphrodisia, the objective was not to reduce pleasure to nothing; on the contrary, what was wanted was to maintain it and to do so through the need that awakened desire." people should "wait until they crave them". "And in a discussion with Euthydemus, Socrates remarks that "hunger or thirst or desire or leack of sleep are the sole causes of pleasure in eating and drinking and sexual indulgence, an in resting or sleeping, after a time of waiting and resistance until the oment comes whne these will give the greatest possible satisfaction"
Understood in this way, moderation could not ake the form of an obedience to a system of laws or a codification of behaviors nor could it serve as a principle for nullify-ing pleasures; it was an art, a practice of pleasures that was capable of self-limitation through the "use" of those pleasures that were based on need: "Self-control alone, " says Socrates, "causes them to endure the sufferings 1 have named, and therefore she alone causes them to experience any pleasure worth mentioning in such enjoyments.. And this is how Socrates himself experienced them in everyday life, according to Xenophon: "He ate just sufficient food to make eating a pleasure, and he was so ready for his food that he found appetite the best sauce; and any kind of drink he found pleas-ant, because he drank only when he was thirsty.
2. The strategy of timeliness
Another strategy consisted in determining the opportune time, the kairos. This was one of the most important objectives, and one of the most delicate, in the art of making use of the pleasurses... Plato emphasized fornate was the one... who knew what needed to be done in this sphere "at the right time and in the right amount"
... it was one of the essential asects of the virtue of prudence that made one capable of practicing the "politics of timeliness" in the different domains -- whether this involed the city or th eindividual, the body or the soul -- where it was imporant to seize the kairos. In the use of pleasures, morality was also an art of the "right time."
3. Strategy of status
60. The same Demosthenes of the Erotic Essay addresses Epicrates in order to "counsel him on the means of rendering his life still more worthy of es-teem"; he does not want to see the young man make decisions that are not based on "the right advice on the conduct of life"; and this good advice is not given in order to review the general principles of behavior, but to point up the legitimate difference that exists among moral criteria: "we do not reproach men of humble and insignificant natural gifts even when they commit a dishonorable act"; on the other hand, if they are someone like Epicrates himself, who has attained distinction, even a bit of negligence in some matter of high honor brings dis-grace." It was a generally accepted principle of government that the more one was in the public eye, the more authority one had or wanted to have over others, and the more one sought to make one's life into a brilliant work whose reputation would spread far and last long-the more necessary it was to adopt and maintain, freely and deliberately, rigorous standards of sexual conduct. Such was the counsel given by Simonides to Hiero concerning meat and drink and sleep and love": these were pleasures that all creatures alike seemed to enjoy, whereas the love of honor and praise was peculiar to humans, and it was that love which enabled one to endure dangers and privations."
61. Moderation was quite regularly represented among the qualities that belonged—or at least should belong—not just to anyone but particularly to those who had rank, status, and responsibility in the city. When the Socrates of the Memorabilia describes for Critobulus the gentleman whose friendship is worth seeking, he places moderation on the list of qualities that characterize a man worthy of social esteem - a list that includes being ready to render a service to a friend, being disposed to return kindnesses received, and being accommodating in business matters." In order to show the advantages of moderation to his disciple Aristippus, who was rather intemperate in such matters," Socrates, still according to Xenophon, asks the question: if he had to educate two youths, one of whom would go on to lead an ordinary life and the other would be destined to command, which of the two would he teach to "control his passions" so that they would not hinder him from doing what he would have to do?" Elsewhere in the Memorabilia, Socrates submits that since people prefer to have slaves who are not intemperate, all the more when it comes to choosing a leader, "should we choose one whom we know to be the slave of the belly, or of wine, or lust, or sleep?
62. We are a long way from a form of austerity that would tend to govern all individuals in the same way, from the proudest to the most humble, under a universal law whose application alone would be subject to modulation by means of casuistry.
On the contrary, here everything was a matter of adjustment, circumstance, and personal position. The few great common laws-of the city, religion, nature- remained present, but it was as if they traced a very wide circle in the distance, inside of which practical thought had to define what could rightfully be done. And for this there was no need of anything resembling a text that would have the force of law, but rather, of a techne or "practice," a savoir-faire that by taking general principles into account would guide action in its time, according to its context, and in view of its ends. Therefore, in this form of morality, the individual did not make himself into an ethical subject by universalizing the principles that informed his action; on the contrary, he did so by means of an attitude and a quest that individualized his action, modulated it, and perhaps even gave him a special brilliance by virtue of the rational and deliberate structure his action manifested.
3 Enkrateia
64. When Xenophon speaks of moderation-which, together with piety, wisdom, courage, and justice, was among the five virtues he usually recognized he employs the words sophrosyne and enkrateia interchangeably. Plato refers to this proximity of the two words when Socrates, questioned by Callicles concerning what he meant by "ruling himself" (auton heauton archein), replies that it consists in "being temperate, master of himself [sa phrona onta kai enkrate auton heautou), ruling the pleasures and appetites within him [archein ton hedonon kai epithumi-ôn]." And when, in the Republic, he considers the four cardinal virtues in turn—wisdom, courage, justice, and moderation (sophrosyne) — he defines the latter by enkrateia: "Moderation [sophrosyne] is a certain orderliness and mastery [kosmos kai enkrateia] over certain pleasures and appetites." We may note, however, that while the meanings of these two words are very close, they stop short of being exact synonyms. Each refers to a somewhat different mode of relationship to self. The virtue of sophrosyne is described rather as a very general state that ensures that one will do "what is fitting as regards both gods and men'"-that is, one will be not only moderate but righteous and just, and courageous as well. In contrast, enkrateia is characterized more by an active form of self-mastery, which enables one to resist or struggle, and to achieve domination in the area of desires and pleasures. According to Helen North, more here! Type in.
65 The opposite of sophrosyne is the immoderation (akolasia) that is expressed by deliberately choosing bad principles, following them of one's own accord, surrendering even to the weakest desires, and taking pleasure in bad conduct: the immoderate individual is shameless and incorrigible. Enkrateia, with its opposite, akrasia, is located on the axis of struggle, resistance, and combat; it is self-control, tension, "continence"; enkrateia rules over pleasures and desires, but has to struggle to maintain control. Unlike the "moderate" man, the "continent" one experiences pleasures that are not in accord with reason, but he no longer allows himself to be carried away by them, and his merit will be greater in proportion as his desires are strong. As an opposite, akrasia is not, like immoderation, a deliberate choosing of bad principles; it invites comparison, rather, with those cities that have good laws but are incapable of enforcing them; the incontinent individual lets himself be overcome in spite of himself, and despite the reasonable principles he embraces, either because he does not have the strength to put them into practice or because he has not given them sufficient thought: this explains why the incontinent person can come to his senses and achieve self-mastery. Thus, enkrateia can be regarded as the prerequisite of sophrosyne, as the form of effort and control that the individual must apply to himself in order to become moderate - (sophrõn).
In any case, the term enkrateia in the classical vocabulary seems to refer in general to the dynamics of a domination of oneself by oneself and to the effort that this demands.
66. be able to become moderate (sophron) "if he has not fought triumphantly against the many pleasures and desires [pollais hedonais kai epithumiais diamemachemenos] using the help of speech, deed, and art [logos, ergon, techne] in games and in serious pursuits." These are almost the same words that Antiphon the Sophist employed on his own account: "He is not wise (sophron] who has not tried the ugly and the bad; for then there is nothing he has conquered [kratein] and nothing that would enable him to assert that he is virtuous [kosmios].
One could behave ethically only by adopting a combative attitude toward the pleasures. As we have seen, the aphrodisia were made not only possible but desirable by an interplay of forces whose origin and finality were natural, but whose potential, by the fact that they had their own energy, was for revolt and excess. These forces could not be used in the moderate way that was fitting unless one was capable of opposing, resisting, and subduing them. Of course, if it was necessary to confront them, this was because they were inferior appetites that humans happen to share-like hunger and thirst—with the animals; but this natural inferiority would not of itself be a reason for having to combat them, if there was not the danger that, winning out over all else, they would extend their rule over the whole individual, eventually reducing him to slavery. In other words, it was not their intrinsic nature, their disqualification on principle, that necessitated this "polemical" attitude toward oneself, but their possible ascendancy and dominion. Ethical conduct in matters of pleasure was contingent on a battle for power. This perception of the hedonai and epithumial as a formidable enemy force, and the correlative constitution of oneself as a vigilant adversary who confronts them, struggles against them, and tries to subdue them, is revealed in a whole series of expressions traditionally employed to characterize moderation and immoderation: setting oneself against the pleasures and desires, not giving in to them, resisting their assaults, or on the contrary, letting oneself be overcome by them," defeating them or being defeated by Them, being armed or equipped against them.
70. In the domain of pleasures, virtue was not conceived as a state of integrity, but as a relationship of domination, a relation of mastery. This is shown by the terms that are used whether in Plato, Xenophon, Diogenes, Antiphon, or Aristotle-to define moderation: "rule the desires and the pleasures," "exercise power over them," "govern them" (kratein, archein). There is an aphorism that captures this general conception of pleasure; interestingly, it is attributed to Aristippus, who had a rather different theory of pleasure from that of Socrates: "It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without ever being worsted" (to kratein kai mẽ hettasthai hedonon ariston, ou to mē chresthai). " In other words, to form oneself as a virtuous and moderate subject in the use he makes of pleasures, the individual has to construct a relationship with the self that is of the "domination-submission," "command-obedience," "mastery-docility" type (and not, as will be the case in Christian spirituality, a relationship of the "elucidation-renunciation," "decipherment-purification" type). This is what could be called the "heautocratic" structure of the subject in the ethical practice of the pleasures.
(72) 3. A struggle of this kind required training. The metaphor of the match, of athletic competition and battle, did not serve merely to designate the nature of the relationship one had with desires and pleasures, with their force that was always liable to turn seditious or rebellious; it also related to the preparation that enabled one to withstand such a confrontation. As Plato says, a man will not be able to oppose or defeat them if he is agymnasros " Exercise was no less indispensable in this order of things than in the case of other techniques one acquired: mathesis alone was not sufficient; it had to be backed up by a training, an askesis This was one of the great Socratic lessons; it did not contradict the principle that said one could not willfully do wrong, knowing that it was wrong; it gave this knowledge a form that was not reducible to the mere awareness of a principle. Speaking in reference to the accusations brought against Socrates, Xenophon takes care to distinguish his teaching from that of the philosophers-or "self-styled lovers of wisdom"-for whom once man has learned what it is to be just or moderate (sophron), he can become unjust or dissolute. Like Socrates, Xenophon objects to this theory: if one does not exercise one's body, one cannot sustain the functions of the body (ta tou somatos erga); similarly, if one does not exercise the soul, one cannot sustain the functions of the soul, so that one will not be able to "do what one ought to do nor avoid what one ought not to do." It is for this reason that Xenophon thinks that Socrates cannot be held accountable for Alcibiades' misbehavior: the latter was not a victim of the teaching he received, but rather, after all his successes with men, women, and a whole populace made him a champion, he acted like many athletes: once victory was won, he thought he could "neglect his training" (amelein tes askéseds).
75. Similarly, Plato proposes subjecting young people to tests of courage that would expose them to simulated dangers; this would be a means of training and improving them, and a means of gauging their merit at the same time: just as one leads "colts into noise and tumult to see if they are fearful, so we must expose our young to fears and pleasures to test them, much more thoroughly than one tests gold in fire, and see whether a guardian is hard to bewitch and behaves well in all circumstances as a good guardian of himself and of the cultural education he has received." In the Laws, Plato goes so far as to imagine a drug that has not yet been invented: it would make everything look frightening to anyone who ingested it, and it could be used for trying one's courage: either in private "out of a sense of shame at being seen before he was in what he considered good condition," or in a group and even in public "in the company of many fellow drinkers," to show that one was able to overcome "the power of the necessary transformation effected by the drink."
2 In the same way, banquets could be planned and accepted as tests of self-control, so to speak, based on this artificial and ideal model. Aristotle expresses this circularity of ethical apprenticeship and learnable virtue in a simple phrase: "By abstaining from pleasures we become temperate and it is when we have become so that we are most able to abstain from them. "
76 Governing oneself, managing one's estate, and participating in the administration of the city were three practices of the same type. Xenophon's Oeconomicus shows the continuity and isomorphism between these three "arts," as well as the chronological sequence by which they were to be practiced in the life of an individual.
The young Critobulus declares that he is now capable of ruling himself, that he will no longer allow himself to be dominated by his desires and pleasures (Socrates reminds him that the latter are like servants who are best kept under supervision); therefore it is time for him to marry and with the help of his wife to administer his household; and, as Xenophon points out several times, this domestic government-understood as the management of a household and the cultivation of a domain, the maintenance or development of an estate constituted, when given the right amount of dedication, a remarkable physical and moral training for anyone who aimed to fulfill his civic obligations, establish his public authority, and assume leadership functions. Generally speaking, anything that would contribute to the political education of a man as a citizen would also contribute to his training in virtue; and conversely, the two endeavors went hand in hand. Moral askésis formed part of the paideia of the free man who had a role to play in the city and in dealings with others; it had no need of separate methods; gymnastics and endurance trials, music and the learning of vigorous and manly rhythms, practice in hunting and warfare, concern with one's demeanor in public, acquiring the gidos that would lead to self-respect through the respect one showed for others—all this was a means of educating the man who would be of service to his city, and it was also moral training for anyone who intended to master himself. Commenting on the tests of contrived fear that he recommends, Plato speaks of them as a means of identifying those boys who are most likely to be "the best men for themselves and for the city"; those will be the ones recruited to govern: "The one who is thus tested as a child, as a youth, and as an adult, and comes out of it untainted [akeratos] is to be made a ruler as well as a guardian." And in the Laws, when the Athenian wants to define what he means by paideia, he characterizes it as what trains "from childhood in virtue" and makes one "desire and love to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled with justice."
Chapter 4. Freedom and truth
78-Sophrosyne was a state that could be approached through
• the exercise of self-mastery and through restraint in the practice of pleasures; it was characterized as a freedom. If it was so important to govern desires and pleasures, if the use one made of them constituted such a crucial ethical problem, this was not because the Greeks hoped to preserve or regain an original innocence; nor was it in general—except of course in the Pythagorean tradition-because they wanted to maintain a purity;* it was because they wanted to be free and to be able to remain so.
79. This individual freedom should not, however, be under-. stood as the independence of a free will. Its polar opposite was not a natural determinism, nor was it the will of an all-power-ful agency: it was an enslavement-the enslavement of the self by oneself. To be free in relation to pleasures was to be free of their authority; it was not to be their slave.
Of the dangers carried by the aphrodisia, dishonor was not the most serious; the greatest danger was bondage to them.
Diogenes was in the habit of saying that servants were slaves of their masters, and that immoral people were slaves of their desires
80- But this freedom was more than a nonenslavement, more than an emancipation that would make the individual independent of any exterior or interior constraint; in its full, positive form, it was a power that one brought to bear on oneself in the power that one exercised over others. In fact, the person who, owing to his status, was under the authority of others was not expected to find the principle of his moderation within himself; it would be enough for him to obey the orders and instructions he was given. This is what Plato explains in re-I gard to the craftsman: what is degrading in his case is that the best part of the soul "is naturally weak and cannot rule the animals within but pampers them and can learn nothing but ways to flatter them"; now, what should be done so that this man might be governed by a reasonable principle, "similar to that which rules the best man"? The only solution is to place him under the authority of this superior man: "he must be enslaved to the best man, who has a divine ruler within him-self." On the other hand, the man who ought to lead others was one who had to be completely in command of himself: both because, given his position and the power he wielded, it would be easy for him to satisfy all his desires, and hence to give way to them, but also because disorderly behavior on his part would have its effects on everyone and in the collective life of the city. In order not to be excessive, not to do violence in order to avoid the trap of tyrannical authority (over others) coupled with a soul tyrannized by desires, the exercise of Political power required, as its own principle of internal regu-lation, power over oneself. Moderation, understood as an aspect of dominion over the self, was on an equal footing with justice, courage, or prudence; that is, it was a virtue that qualified a man to exercise his mastery over others. The most kingly man was king of himself (basilikos, basileun heautou). •
82. The day would come when the paradigm most often used for illustrating sexual virtue would be that of the woman, or girl, who defended herself from the assaults of a man who had every advantage over her; the safeguarding of purity and vir-ginity, and faithfulness to commitments and vows, were to constitute the standard test of virtue. This figure was not unknown in antiquity, certainly; but it does seem that, for Greek thought, a more representative model of the virtue of moderation, one more expressive of the latter's specific nature, was that of the man, the leader, the master who was capable of curbing his own appetite even when his power over others allowed him to indulge it as he pleased.
2. What was affirmed through this conception of mastery as active freedom was the "virile" character of moderation.
Just as in the household it was the man who ruled, and in the city it was right that only men should exercise power, and not slaves, children, or women, so each man was supposed to make his manly qualities prevail within himself. Self-mastery was a way of being a man with respect to oneself; that is, a way of commanding what needed commanding, of coercing what was not capable of self-direction, of imposing principles of reason on what was wanting in reason; in short, it was a way of being active in relation to what was by nature passive and ought to remain so. In this ethics of men made for men, the development of the self as an ethical subject consisted in setting up a structure of virility that related oneself to oneself. It-was by being a man with respect to oneself that one would be able to control and master the manly activity that one directed toward others in sexual practice. What one must aim for in the agonistic contest with oneself and in the struggle to control the desires was the point where the relationship with oneself would become isomorphic with the relationship of domi-nation, hierarchy, and authority that one expected, as a man, a free man, to establish over his inferiors; and it was this prior condition of "ethical virility" that provided one with the right sense of proportion for the exercise of "sexual virility," according to a model of "social virility." In the use of male pleasures, one had to be virile with regard to oneself, just as one was masculine in one's social role. In the full meaning of the word, moderation was a man's virtue.
92. Hence the ethical subject was to be characterized not so much by the perfect rule of the self by the self in the exercise of a virile type of activity, as by self-renunciation and a purity whose model was to be sought in virginity. This being the case, one can understand the significance that was attached, in Christian morality, to two opposite yet complementary practices: a codification of sexual acts that would become more and more specific, and the development of a hermeneutics of desire together with procedures of self-decipherment.
Putting it schematically, we could say that classical antiquity's moral reflection concerning the pleasures was not directed toward a codification of acts, nor toward a hermeneutics of the subject, but toward a stylization of attitudes and an aesthetics of existence. A stylization, because the rarefaction of sexual activity presented itself as a sort of open-ended require-ment. The textual record is clear in this regard: neither the doctors who made recommendations about the regimen one should follow, nor the moralists who demanded that husbands respect their wives, nor those who gave advice concerning the right conduct to manifest in the love of boys, ever say exactly
what ought or ought not to be done in the way of sexual acts or practices. And it is very unlikely that this was owing to the authors' reticence or sense of shame; rather, it was because the problem was elsewhere: sexual moderation was an exercise of freedom that took form in self-mastery; and the latter was shown in the manner in which the subject behaved, in the self-restraint he displayed in his virile activity, in the way he related to himself in the relationship he had with others. It was this attitude—much more than the acts one committed or the desires one concealed—that made one liable to value judg-ments. A moral value that was also an aesthetic value and a truth value since it was by aiming at the satisfaction of real needs, by respecting the true hierarchy of the human being, and by never forgetting where one stood in regard to truth, that one would be able to give one's conduct the form that would assure one of a name meriting remembrance.
Now we will see how some of the great themes of sexual austerity—themes that would have a historical destiny extending well beyond Greek culture-were formed and elaborated in the thought of the fourth century. I will not start from the general theories of pleasure and virtue; rather, I will take as my source material the existing and recognized practices by
•
which men sought to shape their conduct: their dietary prac-tice, their practice of domestic government, their courtship practice as expressed in amorous behavior. I will try to show how these three practices were conceptualized in medicine or philosophy and how these reflections resulted in various recommendations, not for codifying sexual conduct in a precise way, but for "stylizing" it: stylizations within dietetics, understood as an art of the everyday relationship of the individual with his body; in economics as an art of a man's behavior as head of a family; and in erotics as an art of the reciprocal conduct of a man and a boy in a love relationship.*
Part Two: Dietetics
97 The moral reflection of the Greeks on sexual behavior did not seek to justify interdictions, but to stylize a freedom -- that freedom which the "free" man exercised in his activity....
The main objective of this reflection was to define the use of pleasures -- which conditions were favorable, which practice was recommended, which rarefaction was necessary -- in terms of a certain way of caring for one's body. The preoccupation was much more "dietetic" than "therapeutic": a matter of regimen aimed at regulating an activity that was recognized as being important for health. The medical problematization of sexual behavior was accomplished less out of a concern for eliminating pathological forms than out of a desire to integrate it as fully possible into the management of health and the life of the body.
101 ... it is clear that "diet" itself -- regimen -- was a fundamental category through which human behavior scould be conceptualized. It characterized the way in which one managed one's existence, and it enabled a set of rules to be affixed to conduct; it was a mode of problematization of behavior that was indexed to a nature which had to be preserved and to which it was right to conform Regimen was a whole art of living.
(the areas covered... exercises, foods, drinks, sleep, sexual relationsh" -- everything that needt to be "measured". Among the exercises, those that were natural (walking, strolling) were distinguished from those that were violent (foot races, wrestling); and it was determiend whih ones outght ot be practiced and with what intensity, depending on the time of day, the season of the year, the age of the subject, the food he had consumed. Exercises might be combined with baths -- hot or cold, and also depending on season, age, activities, and meals already eaten or to be prepared.
(this regimen follows a "freeman" like Diocles moment by moment through the day... waking, first exercises, ablutions and amssages of the body, twalks, private activities, gymnasium, lunch, napping, antoher round of walking and gymnasium activies.... "At all times, and encompassing all of a man's activities, regimen problematized the relation to the body and developed a way of living whose forms, options, and variables were determined by a concern with the body."
transition -- But th ebody was not the only thing in question... it's also how to do things "in the right measure" for "proper care of teh soul"
103. Even outside the strictly Pythagorean context, regimen was regularly defined with reference to these two associated dimensions of good health maintenance and proper care of the soul. This was because the one implied the other, but also because the resolve to follow a measured and reasonable regimen and the diligence one manifested in the actual task were themselves evidence of an indispensable moral fortitude.
Xenophon's Socrates calls attention to this correlation when he advises young people to exercise their bodies regularly by practicing gymnastics. He sees this as a means of ensuring that they will be able to defend themselves better in warfare, to avoid earning a coward's reputation as a soldier, to best serve their native land, and to obtain high rewards and hence to bequeath wealth and status to their descendants). He believes the practice will provide protection against illnesses and infirmities of the body; but he also points up the good effects of gymnastics that accrue, he says, where one would least expect to see them: in the mind, for an unhealthy body causes forget-fulness, loss of courage, bad temper, and madness, so that in the end the knowledge one has acquired may even be dislodged from the soul."°
106 (referring to a book call the Regimen in the Hippocratic collection)
The thing to note, however, is the concern it shows—one that was shared by ethics and medicine—with preparing the individual for a mul. titude of possible circumstances. One could not and one should not expect regimen to circum vent fate or to alter nature. What could be expected of it was that it would enable one to react, with some degree of readiness, to unforeseen events as they occurred. Dietetics was a strategic art in the sense that it ought to permit one to respond to circumstances in a reasonable, hence useful, manner.
In the vigilance it brought to bear on the body and its activities, dietetics necessitated two quite particular forms of attention on the part of the individual. It required what might be called a "serial" attention; that is, an attention to se-quences: activities were not simply good or bad in themselves; their value was determined in part by those that preceded them or those that followed, and the same thing a certain food, a type of exercise, a hot or cold bath) would be recommended or advised against according to whether one had engaged in or was about to engage in such or such other activity (the practices that followed one after the other ought to counterbalance one another in their effects, but the contrast between them must not be too extreme. The practice of regimen also implied a "circumstantial" vigilance, a sharply focused yet wide-ranging attention that must be directed toward the external world, its elements, its sensations: the climate of course, the seasons, the hours of the day, the degree of humidity and dryness, of heat or cold, the winds, the characteristic features of a region, the layout of a city. And the relatively detailed instructions that are giver. by the Hippo-cratic regimen were meant to help the individual who familiarized himself with them to modulate his way of living according to all these variables. Regimen should not be understood as a corpus of universal and uniform rules; it was more in the nature of a manual for reacting to situations in which to fit the circumstances. one might find oneself, a treatise
C2 - The Diet of Pleasures
two treatises of dietetics have come down to us... both belong to the Hippocratic collection...
111 the year is divided into four seasons... but these in turn are subdivided into shorter periods of a few weeks or even a few days... this is bcause the peculaiar characteristics of each season often develop in stages... and it is always risky to alter one's regimen abruptly.
(Spring begins with a period of thirty-two days, from the rising of Arcturus and the arrival of the swallows to the equinox; within this time span, the season should be divided into six periods of eight days...)
The author does not provide a complete regimen for these smal subdivisions. Rather, he defines, more or less in detail, an overall strategy that depnds on the qualities that are characteristic of each of these times of the year.... "in the period when plants prepare for their growth, humans should do likewise, preparing to develop their bodies; similarly, just as trees harden and brace themselves against the harsh days of winter, men should toughen themselves by not fleeing the cold but by exposing themselves to it "courageously" (112)
.. the quantity was note evaluated in the form of a precise numerical determination. One always remained within the compass of a general assessment: use pleasures "more amply" or in smaller amounts or as little as possible.... which did not mean that it was useless to concentrate one's attention on the problem, burt rather that it was not possible to determine in advance and for everyone...
parallel between this regimen and certain regulations in the Christianity ministry (115-116).... some of the criteria used for delimiting sexual activity are.
temporal in nature. But those criteria are not only more pre cise; they operate in a completely different way: they deter. mine times when sexual practice is permitted and other times when it is forbidden; and this strict partition is established in reference to different variables: the liturgical year, menstrual cycles, the period of pregnancy, or the time subsequent to childbirth.* In the ancient medical regimens, on the other hand, the variations were gradual; and instead of being orga nized according to the binary form of permitted and forbid. den, they suggest a constant oscillation between more and less.
The sexual act was not considered as a licit or an illicit practice according to the temporal boundaries within which it was inscribed: situated at the point of intersection between the individual and the world, temperament and climate, the qualities of the body and those of the seasons, it was viewed as an activity that could be more or less pernicious in its consequences and should therefore be subjected to a more or less restrictive economy. It was a practice that demanded reflec tion and prudence. So it was not a question of determining the
"working days" of sexual pleasures, uniformly and for every one, but of how best to calculate the opportune times and the appropriate frequencies.
C3 Risks and Dangers
author cites Pythagroas about the best time for making love: "When to want to lose what strength you have." :-)
120 Whearas women needed sexual relations so that the discharge necessary to their organism might occur in a regular manner, men could -- in certain cases at least -- retain all their seme; far from causing them harm, strict abstinence on their part would preserve their force in its entirety, accumulate it, concentrate it, and carry it finally to a higher level.
136 The sexual act did not occasion anxiety because it was associated with eveil but because it distrubed and threatened the individual's relationship with himself and his integrity as an ethical subject in the making; if it was not preoperly measured and distributed, it carried the threat of a breaking forth of involuntary forces, a lessening of energy, and death without honorable descendents.
138. Among the Greeks, these same anxiety themes (violence, expenditure, and death took shape within a reflection that did not aim at a codification of acts, nor at the creation of an erotic art; rather, its objective was to develop a technique of exis-tence. This technique did not require that the acts be divested of their primordial naturalness; nor did it attempt to augment their pleasurable effects; it sought to distribute them in the closest conformity with what nature demanded. The material it sought to elaborate was not, as in an erotic art, the unfolding of the act; nor was it the conditions of the act's institutional legitimation, as it would be in Christianity; it was much more the relationship between oneself and that activity "considered in the aggregate," the ability to control, limit, and apportion it in the right manner. This techne created the possibility of forming oneself as a subject in control of his conduct; that is, the possibility of making oneself like the doctor treating sickness, the pilot steering between the rocks, or the statesman governing the city* -- a skillful and prudent guide of himself, one wh had a sense of the right time and the right measure.
(*footnote: these 3 "arts of governing" were oftened likened to one another, as arts that demanded a knowledge and prudence attuned to circumstances; they were also comparable becasue they were knowledges that were associated with an ability to command. They were frequently referred to where it was a question of an indiviul's search for the principles or the authority that would help him to "conduct himself.")
Part 3- economics.
C1-the wisdom of marriage
151 This is why reflection on marriage and the good behavior of husbands was regularly combined with reflection concerning the oikos (house and household).
Thus, it becomes clear that the principle that obligated a man to have no partner outside the couple he formed was different in nature from that which tied a woman to an analogous obligation. In the case of the woman, it was insofar as she was under the authority of her husband that this obligation was imposed on her. In the man's case, it was because he exercised authority and because he was expected to exhibit self-mastery in the use of this authority, that he needed to limit his sexual options. For the wife, having sexual relations only with her husband was a consequence of the fact that she was under his control. For the husband, having sexual relations only with his wife was the most elegant way of exercising his control. This was not nearly so much the prefiguration of a symmetry that was to appear in the subsequent ethics, as it was the stylization of an actual dissymmetry. The restriction, which was analogous in what it allowed or forbade the two spouses, did not cover the same manner of "conducting one-self."
C2 isomachus’ household
153 All these personal and civic advantages of the landowner's life center on what is given to be the principal merit of the
"economic" art: it teaches the practice of commanding and is indissociable from the latter. To manage the oikos is to com-mand, and being in charge of the household is not different from the power that is to be exercised in the city. Socrates says to Nicomachides in the Memorabilia: "Don't look down on businessmen. For the management of private concerns differs only in point of number from that of public affairs. In other respects they are much alike... those who take charge of public affairs employ just the same men when they attend to their own; and those who understand how to employ them are successful directors of public and private concerns."* The dialogue on "economics" is structured as a grand analysis of the art of commanding. The beginning of the text evokes Cyrus • the Younger, who personally supervised the cultivation of his land, worked in his garden as a daily practice, and who had in this way acquired so much skill at leading men that when he was obliged to go to war, none of his soldiers ever deserted his army; rather than abandon him, they preferred to die fighting near his corpse.' In symmetrical fashion, the end of the text evokes the replica of that model ruler, such as one might find personified in those "great-minded" leaders whose armies always followed them without faltering, or in the estate master whose kingly ways sufficed to stir the workers to greater efforts as soon as they saw him, without his having to lose his temper, threaten, or punish. The domestic art was of the same nature as the political art or the military art, at least insofar as all three involved ruling others.*
158 (two forms of activity, two forms of organizing time that of the man… of the man), production, the rhythm of the seasons, waiting for the harvest, respecting and foreseeing the opportune time; on the other side (that of the woman), preservation and ex-penditure, ordering and distributing what is needed, orderly storage above all: Ischomachus dwells at length on all the advice he remembers giving his wife on how to store things in the space of the house so that she might find what she has put away, thus making her home a place of order and memory.
163
In this text devoted to the "masculine" art of governing a household—wife, servants, estate—there is no allusion to the sexual faithfulness of the wife or to the fact that her husband should be her only sexual partner: this is taken for granted as a necessary principle. As for the self-restrained attitude of the husband, it is never defined as the monopoly over all his sexual activity which he would concede to his wife. What is at stake in this reflective practice of marital life, what appears as essential to the orderliness of the household, to the peace that must reign within it, and to the woman's expectations, is that she be able, as the lawful wife, to keep the preeminent place that marriage has assigned to her: not to see another woman given preference over her, not to suffer a loss of status and dignity, not to be replaced at her husband's side by another-this was what mattered to her above all else. For the threat to marriage did not come from the pleasure which the husband happened to enjoy here or there, but from the rivalries that might form between the wife and the other women over one's position in the household and over the order of precedence to be ob served. The "faithful" husband (pistos) was not the one who linked the state of marriage to the renunciation of all sexual Pleasure enjoyed with someone else; it was the husband who steadfastly maintained the privilege s to which the wife was entitled by marriage.
Three policies of moderation
184. Moderation was not a matter shared between them and requiring concern on the part of the one for the other. In this we are far from the Christian teaching where each spouse would have to ensure the other's chas-tity, being careful not to cause him or her to commit the sin of the flesh-either through indecent entreaties or through harsh refusals. For the Greek moralists of the classical epoch, moderation was prescribed to both partners in matrimony; but it depended on two distinct modes of relation to self, corresponding to the two individuals. The wife's virtue constituted the correlative and the proof of a submissive behavior; the man's austerity was part of an ethics of self-delimiting domination.
Part 4- erotics
188. Were the Greeks bisexual, then? Yes, if we mean by this that a Greek could, simultaneously or in turn, be enamored of a boy or a girl; that a married man could have paidika; that il was common for a male to change to a preference for women after "boy-loving" inclinations in his youth. But if we wish to turn our attention to the way in which they conceived of this dual practice, we need to take note of the fact that they did not recognize two kinds of "desire," two different or comper. ing "drives," each claiming a share of men's hearts or appe-tites. We can talk about their "bisexuality," thinking of the free choice they allowed themselves between the two sexes, but for them this option was not referred to a dual, ambivalent, and "bisexual" structure of desire. To their way of thinking, what made it possible to desire a man or a woman was simply the appetite that nature had implanted in man's heart for
"beautiful human beings, whatever their sex might be’
192. To put things in a very schematie way, we tend nowing to think that practices aimed at pleasure, when they are ou ried out between two partners of the same sex, are governed by a desire whose structure is particular; but we agree if we are "tolerant" that this is not a reason to refer them to a moral standard, to say nothing of a legislation, different from the one that is shared by all. We focus our questioning on the singularity of a desire that is not directed toward the other we; and at the same time, we affirm that this type of relation should not be assigned a lesser value, nor given a special status. Now, it seems that the Greeks thought very differently about these things: they believed that the same desire attached to anything that was desirable-boy or girl-subject to the condition that the appetite was nobler that inclined toward what was more beautiful and more honorable; but they also thought that this desire called for a particular mode of behav. ior when it made a place for itself in a relationship between two male individuals. The Greeks could not imagine that a man might need a different nature-an "other" nature-in order to love a man; but they were inclined to think that the pleasures one enjoyed in such a relationship ought to be given an ethical form different from the one that was required when it came to loving a woman. In this sort of relation, the pleasures did not reveal an alien nature in the person who experienced them; but their use demanded a special stylistics
196 . "Courtship" practices had formed around them. Doubtless these practices did not have the complexity found in other arts of loving such as those that would be developed in the Middle Ages. But by the same token, they were something quite different from the formalities that one observed in order to qualify for the hand of a young lady. They defined a whole set of conventional and appropriate behaviors, making this relation a culturally and morally overloaded domain. These practices— the reality of which has been amply documented by K. J.
Dover™-defined the mutual behavior and the respective strategies that both partners should observe in order to give their relations a "beautiful" form; that is, one that was aesthetically and morally valuable. They determined the role of the erastes and that of the eromenos. The first was in a position of initiative—he was the suitor—and this gave him rights and obligations; he was expected to show his ardor, and to restrain it; he had gifts to make, services to render; he had functions to exercise with regard to the eromenos; and all this entitled him to expect a just reward. The other partner, the one who was loved and courted, had to be careful not to yield too easily; he also had to keep from accepting too many tokens of love, and from granting his favors heedlessly and out of self-interest, without testing the worth of his partner; he must also show gratitude for what the lover had done for him. Now, this courtship practice alone shows very well that the sexual relation between man and boy did not "go without saying": it had to be accompanied by conventions, rules of conduct, ways of going about it, by a whole game of delays and obstacles designed to put off the moment of closure, and to integrate it into a series of subsidiary activities and relations. In other words, while this type of relation was fully accepted, it was not a matter of "indifference." One would be missing the essential thing if one regarded all these precautions that were taken and the interest that was shown merely as the proof that this love was freely engaged in; it would be to ignore the distinction that was made between this sexual behavior and all the others whose recommended modalities were of little concern. All these preoccupations make it clear that pleasure relations between men and adolescent boys already constituted a delicate factor in society, an area so sensitive that one could not fail to be concerned about the conduct of the participants on both sides.
202. This was because, in the case of two spouses, marital status, management of the oikos, and maintenance of the lineage could create standards of be-havior, define the rules of that behavior, and determine the forms of the requisite moderation. But in the case of a man or boy who were in a position of reciprocal independence and between whom there was no institutional constraint, but rather an open game (with preferences, choices, freedom of movement, uncertain outcome), the principle of regulation of behaviors was to be sought in the relation itself, in the nature of the attraction that drew them toward one another, and in the mutual attachment that connected them. Hence the prob-lematization would be carried out in the form of a reflection on the relation itself: an inquiry that was both theoretical about love and prescriptive about the way one lived.
207 What exactly was being tested? And with respect to ~ what type of behavior was Epicrates supposed to draw the line between that which was honorable and that which was dis-graceful? The test pertained to the familiar points of Greek education: the demeanor of the body (carefully avoid rha-thymia, the sluggishness which was always a defamatory sign); one's gaze (in which aids, dignity, could be read), one's way of talking (don't take the easy option of silence, but be able to mix serious talk with casual talk); and the quality of one's acquaintances.
208 Now, as for knowing precisely how the distribution of honor is to be carried out in the love relation, one must admit that the text is extremely elliptical. While it does offer specifics regarding what Epicrates should do or has done in order to exercise his body and develop his courage, or to acquire the philosophical knowledge that he will need, nothing is said concerning what is acceptable or objectionable in physical relations. One thing is clear: not everything should be refused (the young man "grants his favors"), but not everything should be consented to: "No one finds himself disappointed of favors from you which it is just and fair to ask, but no one is permitted even to hope for such liberties as lead to shame. So great is the latitude your discreetness permits to those who have the best intentions; so great is the discouragement it presents to those who would fling off restraint."' The modera-totthe sophroryne—that is one of the major qualities re quired of boys clearly implies a discrimination in physical contacts. But it is not possible to infer from this text the acts and gesture that honor would compel one to refuse It should be noted that in the Phaedrus the lack of precision is almost a great, even though the theme is developed more fully.
Throughout the first two speeches on the advisability of yielding to a lover or a nonlover, and in the great fable of the soul as a team with its restive steed and its obedient steed, Plato's text shows that the question of what constitutes "honorable" practice is crucial: and yet the acts are never designated except by expressions like "to gratify" or "to grant one's favors" (charizesthai), "to do the thing" (diaprattesthai), "to derive the greatest possible pleasure from the beloved," "to obtain what one wants" (pleithesthai), "to enjoy" (apolauesthai), A reticence inherent in this type of discourse? Without doubt, the Greeks would have found it improper that someone would call by name, in a set speech, things that were only vaguely alluded to even in polemics and law court addresses. One imagines, too, that it was hardly necessary to insist on distinctions that were common knowledge: everyone must have known what it was honorable or shameful for a boy to consent to. But we may also recall an observation that was made in our - discussion of dietetics and economics, where it became apparent that moral reflection was less concerned with specifying the codes to be respected and the list of acts that were permitted and prohibited than it was concerned with characterizing the type of attitude, of relationship with oneself that was required.
C3 the object of pleasure
245. This This philosophical reflection concerning boys suggests a historical paradox. To this male love, and more precisely to this love of young boys and adolescents—a love that was later to be so severely condemned for such a long time—-the Greeks granted a legitimacy, which we are fond of seeing as proof of the freedom they granted themselves in this domain. And yet it was in connection with this love, much more than with health (which also preoccupied them) and much more than with women and marriage (the orderliness of which they nevertheless sought to maintain), that they spoke of the need to practice the strictest austerities. To be sure, except in a few instances, they did not condemn it or prohibit it. And yet it is in the reflection on love of boys that one sees the principle of "indefinite abstention" formulated; the ideal of a renuncia-tion, which Socrates exemplifies by his faultless resistance of temptation; and the theme that this renunciation has a high spiritual value by itself. In a way that may be surprising at first, one sees the formation, in Greek culture and in connec tion with the love of boys, of some of the major elements of a sexual ethics that will renounce that love by appealing to the above principle: the requirement of a symmetry and reciprocity in the love relationship; the necessity of a long and arduous struggle with oneself; the gradual purification of a love that is addressed only to being per se, in its truth; and man's inquiry into himself as a subject of desire.
One would be missing the crucial point if one imagined that the love of boys gave rise to its own interdiction, or that an ambiguity peculiar to philosophy accepted its reality only by _ demanding its supercession. One should keep in mind that this
"asceticism" was not a means of disqualifying the love of boys; on the contrary, it was a means of stylizing it and hence, by - giving it shape and form, of valorizing it.
