Power
and Its Uses in the Modern Age
Power
is a symbolization for self-cultivation of the individual, however, its use has
changed in the modern era leading to power being harder to achieve for the
individual. Power here is fairly vague but its explanation and exploration will
serve as the rich and fulfilling answer to such a rigorous concept. The
exploration of power will inevitably lead to it’s dynamic within the individual
and its role in self-cultivation. An attempt will be made to back up these
claims from various resources, such as Plato to give a contextual setting to
our problem while other writers such as Foucault and Nietzsche will be used
interchangeably to explicitly show the change in power from antiquity to modern
times.
First,
it might help to explore power through its definition and Plato as our source
and guide for this definition. Power, to Plato, is conceptualized and formatted
differently in comparison to Socrates. For Socrates, the concept of power can
only be known through serious questioning of the concept. “What is power?” is
something Socrates would ask to those thinking they understand it while Plato’s
approach would define the question with “How is power?”. The conceptual
analysis used is a dialectical approach to format power into the governmental
system in which people live. Plato does this for a variety of reasons, mostly
to juxtapose the dialectic of power in a political system and power that an
individual has, however, that idea will be explored later.
So,
Plato and his definition and conceptualization of power can be found within various
dialogues. For starters, The Alcibiades will serve as the dialogue that
will give the conceptualization immediate utility. The usefulness of The
Alcibiades lies within the dialectic of its two center actors, Socrates,
and Alcibiades. The greatest insight to this dialectic is located toward the
end of the dialogue, the very end. Socrates tells Alcibiades after the latter
expresses that he will cultivate justice within himself “I should like to
believe that you will persevere, but I’m afraid-not because I distrust your
nature, but because I know how powerful the city is, I’m afraid it might get
the better of both me and you.” (Plato, 207). Here, is the first insight into the
power that is gained. What Plato means by this line in particular that the will
of the state is far stronger and in tandem more dominant than the will of the
individual. For, Socrates he is an individual that chooses to live outside the
city, an isolated individual who views the power of the state from and outside
perspective. It is easy to understand Socrates’ worries for himself as his
words foreshadow his impending demise at the hands of the state itself.
But
for Alcibiades, who is someone that is the complete opposite of Socrates in
almost every regard, “the powerful city” getting the best of him exposes Plato’s
ideas on power and how they’re used with rule of law. Working backward, Socrates
tells Alcibiades that individuals, as well as the state, are dangerous if left
to their own devices, at liberty to do anything they want. If a sick person is
free to do as he wishes with no medical insight, then the body will suffer as a
result. The same goes for the state, if a ruler, administrator or city itself
is lacking in control, or virtue then the city suffers. Here, the platonic form
of power is revealed, and its definition exists as effort exhibited over the
self or within the city. This concept is echoed first in The Alcibiades,
then Symposium, and The Republic. First,
with The Alcibiades, Plato argues that first power is gained in the self
when an individual puts in the effort to control and ascertain justice for
himself.
A
good example is when Socrates asks Alcibiades to clearly explain how he learned
justice. Alcibiades claims that he learned it from the various teachers and
also from self-teaching, however, Socrates prods Alcibiades enough to get him
to admit that he knows nothing of justice or in-justice and that the supposed
teachers that Alcibiades claims he initially learned it from are flawed in their
expressions of justice. Here, Plato shows that power and effort are not
something gained or learned through experience, only something gained through
the soul and its efforts. Like many dialogues before, Plato would argue that
power and effort are bound up together along with knowledge. Therefore, it
would not be illogical to assert that power is begetting on the soul. Just how
Plato argues that beauty is an essential axiom in the world of forms (Plato, 67),
as is power.
In
a philosophically consistent move, Plato then uses the world of forms to argue
that “Man is one of three things, the body, the soul, or the two of them
together, the whole thing” (Plato, 197). Plato uses this statement to format
man as one of complex actions and movements. As Plato moves along, he will
continuously argue that man is not ruled by his body neither does he rule his
body. As Plato highlights once again towards the end of The Alcibiades “I
think, is either that he’s nothing, or else if he is something, he’s nothing
other than his soul” (Plato, 198). Furthermore, Plato sees the issue and rigor
of claiming such an argument like this, stating that man is such a complex
animal. Further dialogues such as The Republic will echo these axioms such as when
Plato goes onto list the souls of the various classes within the good and just
city. These souls, Plato would argue make up the body of the state and thus
must be regulated to express the state's will.
Building
upon what was stated earlier, if the society in which people like Alcibiades can
live as free as possible and are allowed to ignorantly claim that they “know”
justice then the body is compromised or better, the soul is compromised. It can
be said then, that the symbol of self-cultivation and self-care begins with the
effort an individual puts in to extract the maximum value of the thing he puts
in. The value, however, is not self-interested but rather, virtuous, allowing
the maximum value to be extracted so that citizens within the city can live a
life that is in their best interest. This is essentially an extended
application of the Delphic maxim gnōthi seauton or “Know thyself.”
gnōthi
seauton has been introduced into the argument for Plato and it
is used as a juxtaposition of the self and the state. The state can easily
“know thyself” through its philosopher-king enacting the maxim onto the very
soul of the citizens within the just city. The soul for Plato then must be
moderated to control the complex outcomes of human action. Plato argues this
because he sees the immense power that the soul has and highlights this power
at the end of The Alcibiades.
The powerful city that might get the better of both Alcibiades and Socrates is
just Plato’s feeling towards the souls of free-spirited individuals. Their
souls threaten the very foundation of the polis. Plato
will use the opportunity in further dialogues to give methods to moderate the
free spirted and other threats to the form of the good.
It
is important to remember that power of the self in antiquity was a simple object
placed upon the form of man and the complex actions that he aims completely. The
movement of self-cultivation through power was then a much more stable concept.
We see this idea in motion through the ending of The Alcibiades with Alcibiades
choosing Socrates as his mentor to “cultivate” justice within himself. This is
Alcibiades’ effort, but it is also the effort of Socrates to further cultivate
himself, to sow the seeds of justice within the soul of Alcibiades so that he
may go and extract the value that the city is owed, to secure the best interest
for the citizens. But this is also a way for Plato to cultivate his reader's
minds, to expose them to various complex ideals through various dialogues so
that their souls may begin a stage of begetting with power.
The
platonic framework to power has been achieved, however, there must be an
extension to its framework. Also, an analytical approach to platonic
assumptions is required to prove that power and its use in the modern age are
fettered. For this, Foucault’s interpretation and further, the hermeneutic
approach will assist the argumentation. During antiquity, it is obvious that
power and its use were a finite resource akin to a commodity. It was exchanged,
sought after, supplied and demanded, etc. However, even though gaining power
was finite it was had far fewer restrictions to it. The reason for this
unregulated exchange is simple and a combination of a few things. First, the
institutions that existed in a society like ancient Athens were in an infantile
stage. They served their function as an arm of the state and were not like an inflated
apparatus. The insight into this again is located within The Alcibiades.
Within
the dialogue, Socrates questions Alcibiades in how he will offer good counsel to
Athens. Alcibiades admits in the beginning that he doesn’t know a lot about war
but his experiences as a commander during the Peloponnesian War would certainly
benefit the state. Alcibiades takes this approach as his thoughts on counsel,
justice, and power were all influenced by the dramatic ideas of those concepts that
were asserted through the works of Homer on The Iliad. For, Socrates and
for Plato, this is fallacious because both thinkers viewed the epic as far too
simplistic of a view on the use of power, and the metaphysics of war. Alcibiades,
in this instance, is just the simulacrum of Achilles. Alcibiades' ideas would
be the representation of the persuasive force of poetry but also the
representation of the youthful thoughts in Athens at the time.
Alcibiades fallacy ties back into the way power were
unregulated during antiquity through the notion of idealist structures that
were pillars in an ancient society. Alcibiades thought that by going through
the physical struggles of war would give him enough wisdom, virtue, and power
to give his city the counsel it needs. However, despite Plato having an issue with
this sentiment, it was precisely this sentiment that still existed within a
platonic theory of forms. For Plato, there was still a base to the notions of
justice, power, rule of law, etc. For the people in power in ancient society,
which were very low and came from privileged backgrounds their exchange of
power was mostly unfettered due to their inherited traits given to them by
their ancestry, as well as their society. An upper-class person like Alcibiades
or even Plato with aspirations of political power had the moral inheritance to
set them on the path to achieving mastery overpower. The schools in which
future political players attended were preliminary stages of their political
life. It was up to the actor, the student, and the individual to use the tools
given to them to seek truths about this world which would elevate them above
even their upper-class peers.
In short, the unfettered use of power in an ancient
society stems from the collective gift of moral judgments, societal ideals, and
even institutional frameworks that upper-class groups crystalized. However,
this isn’t a value judgment placed onto the society of the past, it is merely
an interpretation of the ideas, morals, and writings of the time. To say that
these frameworks were just an example of historical materialism would be naïve
and hollow. For example, in writing to his brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero describes
how his brother should go about winning elections and consul in Rome. This is
an example of a gift given between those who hold power to one another. Both of
the Cicero brothers, Marcus and Quintus were Roman statesmen and their base of
knowing the power was something merely given off to them by those before them. This
is how those wanting power or having power cultivated themselves. They used the
concepts given to them to put the effort into achieving gnōthi seauton.
Another reason as to why that power was unfettered in the
ancient sense was also due in part to the perspective of a regular citizen of a
city-state or grand empire. Their relationships were far more familial and duty-bound,
their opportunities to cultivate themselves were very little. The ideas they
inherited from their predecessors were one that enforces the virtues of family,
honor, and duty. The lower-middle-class society had different moral sentiments
to that of those who engage with powerful political institutions. It can be
argued that the foundations of the modern unfeasibility of power lie in the
struggles of changing moral dynamics. For example, with Plato, he wanted to
create an ideal society in which there were very few people living in this
society, the state-owned the children, people were moderated in their daily lives
to a degree but also the small class structures that were enforced. The elite
in Plato’s ideal state would never be questioned by other classes and vice
versa. Plato saw that increasing the utility of a powerful, unfettered state
would benefit everyone in the long run. For someone like Aristotle he saw that
those not in power were there for a reason, even saying that some are born
slaves as he writes in Politics “He who is by nature not his own but
another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man
who, being a human being is also a possession” (Aristotle 1132).
Here, we see the dynamics of an ancient civilization
begin to move towards a modern period, still very far off but the foundations
are set for future epochs to draw inheritance from. Although the life of a
citizen was not as important as those governing those lives and protecting
those lives. It was still up to those political institutions to cultivate
themselves so that the lives of citizens within the polis can live
“good” lives. This good life is something more enforced by Aristotle than
Plato, however, both are still relatively based in gnōthi seauton. For
ancient times gnōthi seauton was merely a tool used by the state. This
allowed the state to use its power in a manner that was free from internal
power struggles. It was not so much that the institutions that held power would
bounce the tool back and forth between upper-class families but so much that
the upper-class had its duty to legitimize the power of the state over its
citizens.
Finally, this is Plato and later Aristotle’s dialectic of
power juxtaposed onto the individual and the state. Which can be explored
through Plato’s The Republic and Aristotle’s Politics. The
individual is fractured for both writers, and in turn, so is the state and its
various functions. So, it is up to the individual to find himself and go
through the necessary steps to be just, or powerful. For Plato, this might be
recognizing yourself as a being who can attain virtue through practice but for
Aristotle, he writes “Every state is a community of some kind and every
community is stabled with a view to some good; for mankind always act to obtain
that which they think good.” (Aristotle 1127). This is, in essence, the
crystallization of all the moral sentiments of the time. States are just made
up of communities, these communities of individuals who want to achieve the
best good they can. For Aristotle, these are virtues of political forms,
actions, practices, habits, and also relations. Politics, and in turn power is about
relationships. Plato would also agree with Aristotle here, certain political
axioms are integral to the power structure and not just those with power but
also the state and its citizens have relational power in which they can achieve
political “goodness”.
This was the sum of the ancient period; the climax was
those philosopher's influences and moral ideas implemented into the minds of
their time. The importance of philosopher-kings was an idea that lasted beyond
just antiquity. However, a shift occurred within the substance of power. It
meant that the “goodness” or effort that individuals aimed for as well as
states were tough for not only individuals within various communities but also the
institutions that had power.
For starters, a particularly lucid insight comes from
Michel Foucault as he lectures about “care of the self” in the ancient period. The
change in how power is used stems from this concept, a concept that was heavily
drawn from by Plato, Socrates, and even Aristotle. Foucault believes that this
shift occurred sometime within the 18th-20th century, as
a myriad of philosophers would offer their ideas for the truths of this world
and reject the previous standard. It was different from past epochs as
mentioned before the ideas of moral justifications for power were passed from
previous generations to the next. Keeping the use of power as loose as possible
for those who had power in ancient times was a pillar. Philosophers of those
eras would extrapolate on previous philosophers thought, however in this new
age, the ideas of previous philosophers were rejected en masse in favor of a
different idea of power.
As Foucault discusses in his Hermeneutics of The
Subject “I The entire history of nineteenth-century philosophy can, I think,
be thought of as a kind of pressure to try to rethink the structures of spirituality
within a philosophy that, since Cartesianism, or at any rate since
seventeenth-century philosophy, tried to get free from these self-same
structures” (Foucault 28). Epimeleia heautou,
or
“care of the self” exists within the same framework as gnōthi seauton,
they interact with one another in a way like bodies of water meeting each
other, on the surface the two looks practically different from each other,
however, looking deeper the two are mixing but still completely separable. Regarding
Epimeleia heautou and its relation to Foucault’s quote, it can be shown
that within the framework 18th-20th-century philosophy
this shift occurred in a way that wanted to account more for Epimeleia
heautou than gnōthi seauton. Still,
there is a glaring issue that exists within this realization, why did
philosophers of this age focus on this concept while seemingly rejecting others
or concepts previously established.
For a place to start, shifting the focus to the prevalent
19th-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. In his work Beyond
Good & Evil, Nietzsche tackles the hard subject of previous truths that
were once upheld in society and how they relate to the individual. For
Nietzsche, these issues were so costly on the human mind that the philosophers
who tackled them packaged their “fix” to these issues under the guide of
virtue, objectivity, and reason. However, as Nietzsche would claim, these are
just the prejudices of the philosophers of the time, each of them had moral
inclinations to these issues and sought that the best way to relieve their
psyche was the justify their proposed fixes under the guise of wisdom or
intelligence, but in turn, it was just those philosophers moralizing the
issues. “As soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always
creates the world in its image; it cannot do otherwise” (Nietzsche 16). Philosophy
has always believed in “itself” but the philosophy that does this more frequently
than others was the philosophy of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Their
philosophy was based in gnōthi seauton after all, to those philosophers,
their philosophy was the world or what Nietzsche would call, “First cause” or causa
prima.
In the instance of Nietzsche, we see the
goal for him the issue is that these philosophers take their philosophy and rearrange
the world according to their prejudices it or “tyrannize” it as Nietzsche would
say. It would seem then, for Nietzsche but also for the sake of explaining that
there was a shift of gnōthi seauton to epimeleia heautou that causa
prima is bound up in gnōthi seauton. The reason for this is because gnōthi
seauton is the first cause of the self, it is the effort one puts into itself
to beget knowledge, power, wisdom. Ancient philosophers used causa prima
and gnōthi seauton to reshape the world into something that begins with
the self and ends with the soul being cultivated, and in turn, the state being cultivated,
and power is achieved.
So, how is power formed today and what can be said about
it concerning some of the concepts already discussed earlier. To look for its
form Foucault gives an insight into within Discipline & Punish. Without
discussing the entire book, the highlights here are the shift away from public
executions as a way of showing the states might, towards the prison system as a
new legal, and moral way of handling those that have wronged the state. The
state executed wrongdoers so that it may reinforce its claims to power but also
keep consistent with gnōthi seauton. This
is the case because “knowing yourself” is a fundamental pillar to the polis
and assaulting the values of the polis means that gnōthi seauton is impossible,
so the state ordered that felons were made a spectacle so that it could retain
its unfettered power that was the tradition for so long.
But,
for the move towards the prison system where the goal was surveillance,
normalization, and examination there were many ways for the states to move
towards this and why it is a function of epimeleia heautou.
First,
using Nietzsche as our guide once again he writes on the free-spirited, those
who are different from the masses and how they use their spirit to manifest
power. Nietzsche would come to abhor a certain “free spirit” known as “levelers”
or richtmaschinen. These
levelers aimed to bring forth “modern ideas” of justice, power, and wisdom.
Only, these were the people that made it so the idea of the prison system model
was pushed through as it was seen as the “equality of rights” as Nietzsche
would put it or “sympathy for all that suffers” (Nietzsche 54). Foucault as
well would agree with Nietzsche “Today, we are rather inclined to ignore it;
perhaps, in its time, it gave rise to too much-inflated rhetoric; perhaps it
has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of
‘humanization’ “(Foucault 7).
So,
these “levelers” combined with the philosophers who began to reject the truths
of the world that were pillars to the philosophers in antiquity as well as the
state looking for better ways to keep its power set the foundation for power in
the modern times. This power in the modern age is fettered, it's fettered on
the state but also fettered on the individual to allow themselves to cultivate.
This goes back to the Platonic “Form of the Good”, it is impossible to know a
thing through experience, only through the soul. But in the modern age,
however, ideas of a spiritual realm holding the vast sums of all knowledge has
been rejected not only by the philosophers of the new age, and the levelers,
but also the masses, and the state as well. This leaves humanity alone and
isolated, only have to tackle subjects of the being of their knowledge which
Foucault argues is the crux of the modern idea “The subject only has to be what
he is for him to have access in knowledge” (Foucault 190).
So,
the power to cultivate, and the effort that power requires to exist are hard
for humanity to attain due to the modernization of our lives. We are
disorientated by the realization that the spiritual realm is nonexistent and that
the answers don’t exist in a practical sense. The idea of power is lost on us
in the waves of a new life. There are no stakes in the modern use of power, it
is merely a concept that entertains individuals for a while and then they move
onto something else. Power then in the modern sense, is not a long-term
endeavor, paradoxically we are held back by our revelation of the truth, and
the simplicities that accompany it. Power is still attainable for the individual,
but it is harder and more laborious than ever.
