Compare Nietzsche and Foucaults treatment of either: the subject , or discipline .

Discipline and Punish begins with an account of Robert Damiens... [who] rushed up to Louis XV with a knife and inflicted a light wound...he had only intended to frighten, not kill, the king. (Gutting, pg.79, 2005). Still, he was convicted of regicide and Foucault vividly describes the punishment, emphasising the way it is treated as a public spectacle. Foucault quotes from eye witness accounts (Gutting, pg.79, 2005) which not only accurately describes the punishment; but also how the punishment is perceived by spectators. Foucault contrasts this account with Lon Faucher s rules for the house of young prisoners (Discipline and Punish, pg.66, 1991). Although these punishments do not punish the same crimes or the same types of delinquent...they each define a certain penal system. Less than a century apart. (Discipline and Punish, pg.67, 1991). This distinction between punishment is one Nietzsche and Foucault share; as Nietzsche gives examples of our old penal code...stoning...breaking on the wheel...smeared with honey and abandoned to the flies under a burning sun (On the Genealogy of Morality, ii, 3, 1998). This essay will assess Foucault s and Nietzsche s explanation of how discipline has created a society that distinguishes a dichotomy of the doer as distinct from his deeds (May, pg.71, 2002). In other words, how has discipline created the subject? This essay will explain how the change in discipline was made possible before explaining how this new discipline creates the subject through punishing the doer and not the deeds. This essay will also assess whether it is Nietzsche or Foucault, who gives a better account of discipline and why this is. For Nietzsche, the explanation of how the subject became the effect of discipline is rooted deep in history; at the creation of Judeo-Christian ethics. An example to show the not only the moral, but also cultural difference is: Roman masters did indeed boast of raping their male and female slaves by way of punishment, or merely by way of asserting their authority (Goldhill, pg.33, 2004). There are two points of interest in this quote; they are i) there is a distinction between masters and slaves ii) punishment and asserting authority are indistinguishable for masters. The distinction between masters and slaves is one of the will to power. The will to power manifests itself in two ways; strong and weak will. A weak will manifests something of compulsion...oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings-the person betrays himself (Beyond good and Evil, 21, 1997). This means that

the master has a stronger will than the slave; for he does not oppress his feelings, he asserts his overpowering authority (will) by acting upon his desires. To understand how morality has changed throughout the ages, Nietzsche says the value of these values [i.e. Judeo-Christian ethics] must itself be called into question (On the Genealogy of Morality, preface, 6, 1998). Nietzsche attacks the English psychologists claim that these values came from an association of good with unegoistic traits and usefulness. Nietzsche argues that language itself is an expression of power on the part of those who rule... [they] take possession of it (On the Genealogy of Morality, I, 2, 1998). Nietzsche gives evidence for this as he shows that good has a link with nobility rather than usefulness (On the Genealogy of Morality, I, 5, 1998). The reason that values have changed is because of the slave revolt, this is where the slaves, lead by the priests made the miserable alone are the good; the poor, powerless (On the Genealogy of Morality, I, 7, 1998) with Jesus of Nazareth, as the embodied gospel of love (On the Genealogy of Morality, I, 8, 1998). Nietzsche shows that Christianity is not about love, but about hatred and ressentiment; it can be seen in the gruesome paradox of a God on the cross , that mystery of an inconceivable, final, extreme cruelty and self-crucifixion of God for the salvation of man (On the Genealogy of Morality, I, 8, 1998). Ressentiment always needs an opposite...its action is, from the ground up, reactive (On the Genealogy of Morality, I,10,1998). Noble morality is formed out of a yes-saying to oneself whereas ressentiment says no to the values of the nobles (On the Genealogy of Morality, I,10,1998). Slave morality (ressentiment) condemns all noble values and makes them bad ; and their opposites good . These bad traits are the life-affirming instincts of nobles, and they do not cease to exist because they are no longer acted upon. All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn themselves inwards-this is what I call the internalisation of man...Hostility, cruelty, pleasure in persecution, in assault, in change, in destruction-all of that turning itself against the possessor of such instincts: that is the origin of bad conscience (On the Genealogy of Morality, ii, 16, 1998). Bad conscience is the saying no one s own instincts, denying the will to power, and therefore denying life (nihilism). For Foucault discipline is exemplified through Bentham s Panopticon. The structure is a ringed structure with a centre tower, segmented cells with two windows allowing for inspection (Shapiro, pg.295, 2003). The purpose of this was, in short, it reverses the
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principle of the dungeon; or rather its three functions-to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide...Visibility is a trap (Discipline and Punish, pg.200, 1991). Nietzsche did not see how the organisation of space and visibility could create a depersonalised gaze which makes the subject regulate their actions (Shapiro, pg.299, 2003). Foucault has given an account of the ascetic ideal; in Nietzsche s words, Foucault has given a way to exploit the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self-discipline, self-supervision, self-overcoming (On the Genealogy of Morality, iii, 16, 1998). This is making people who lack ressentiment, create it though judging themselves from the position of the depersonalised gaze . The Panopticon is depersonalised gaze because it is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad (Discipline and Punish, pg.202, 1991) as the tower can only be looked out of, not into. The cells cannot look into one another, only at the Panopticon; their inhabitants are solitary actors of their own theatres...actors [who] ritually make themselves into objects of display (Shapiro, pg.297, 2003). The disciplinary regulation of the individual actions creates binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal)...[which creates] the existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising and correcting the abnormal (Discipline and Punish, pg.199, 1991). Foucault is Nietzschean, in the sense that his genealogies are diachronic accounts of (panoptic) power. The Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is a diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form (Discipline and Punish, pg.205, 1991). Foucault is a post-structuralist who is critically responding to structuralist theories such as Saussure s la langue which claims language is system of signs which are radically arbitrary, so that their significations are determined only by the historically constituted systems of conventions to which they belong (Holdcroft, pg.794, 2000). Foucault is giving an account for these systems of conventions using power in its ideal form . When Foucault writes: the symptoms that signify and the disease that is signified (The Birth of the Clinic, xxi, 1989), he is interested in the underlying power that has made the disease able to be signified as such; the truth of the disease. As Foucault says power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth (Discipline and Punish, pg.194, 1991). Therefore power and discipline should be seen as enabling as well as disabling features of society. Power is enabling because makes it possible for the formation and accumulation of new forms of Knowledge (Discipline and Punish, pg.224, 1991).
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Foucault contrasts how society excluded the leapers to old hospitals where they were left to die, with a plague-town where surveillance and order were introduced to combat the plague; not exclusion. As Foucault says, If it is true that leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion...then the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects (Discipline and Punish, pg.198, 1991). The reason disciplinary projects were introduced is because the plague is a more vivacious disease which would kill everyone unless it is contained. For the first time in history there was need for surveillance and order. To use Bentham s terms this is a move from direct to indirect legislation because instead of forbid[ding] them [i.e. the diseased] outright , disciplinary procedures provide the tools for the art of influencing and directing the inclinations (Ransom, pg.29, 1997). In the case of plague-town, fear made people

oblivious to what they were giving up through this indirect legislation. The discipline of plague-town laid down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his well being (Discipline and Punish, pg.197, 1991). Plague-town embodies the change in discipline that was happening everywhere. The Panopticon uses discipline to explain power in its ideal form, which means that could not exist in some places and not others. Discipline depends on there being a fixed conception of a population that reproduces itself in a certain way...together with a whole series of discourses concerning it, and then on the other hand and down below, the small bodies...individual bodies, the micro-bodies of discipline (Power/Knowledge, pg.124, 1980). Nothing can escape the grasps of power, much like Nietzsche s will to power ; but unlike Nietzsche s will to power , power cannot escape us. For Nietzsche will to power manifests itself in us but is not dependent upon us. For Foucault The fact that we are the vehicles of disciplinary power reveals...not the omnipotence of power buts its fragility (Ransom, pg.36, 1997). Nietzsche and Foucault both agree that discipline is no longer concerned with the deed; it is concerned with the doer. Discipline s objective is to normalise the subject through surveillance; for Nietzsche the effect of normalisation is the creation of bad conscience . The main feature of ressentiment is a discipline (saying no ) of one s instincts, this is what I call the internalisation of man: thus first grows in man that he later calls his soul . (On the Genealogy of Morality, ii, 16, 1998). Our soul is nothing more than discipline; the suffering of man from man, from himself (On the Genealogy of Morality, ii, 16, 1998).
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Foucault agrees with this creation/construction of the soul as he says the soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body (Discipline and Punish, pg.30, 1991). As Deleuze says Nietzsche wished to remind consciousness of its need for modesty: its origins, nature and function are wholly reactive (pg.113, 2006). Foucault differs from Nietzsche because he keeps morality out of his genealogies; they show how power relationships have changed and formed new bodies of specialist knowledge and therefore new truths. Nietzsche s account has pre-grounded (pre-slave revolt) notion of good and bad; good and bad can only exist if there is a pre-grounded notion of truth. Nietzsche s truth is: all actions that satisfy our instincts are actions that affirm the will and life itself, all actions that violate our instincts are denying the will and nihilistic as they are denying life itself . These will-denying instincts exist because of the slave revolt and the sickness of ressentiment ; Nietzsche is not simply saying that ressentiment is a sickness, but rather that sickness as such is a form of ressentiment (Deleuze, pg.114, 2006). This shows Nietzsche not as a perspectivitist, proclaiming truth does not exist; Nietzsche s dogma makes value-laden account of good and bad. Evidence for this interpretation of Nietzsche comes from Nietzsche s theory of sovereign man. Sovereign man is created out of ressentiment and Judaeo-Christian ethics, as Nietzsche says the tree finally produces it s fruit...the sovereign individual...the human being with his own independent long will...who is permitted to promise...a true consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of the completion of man himself (On the Genealogy of Morality, ii, 2, 1998). His ancestors needed ressentiment in order for him to feel guilt; a second innocence [i.e. sovereign man] will not be free from any guilt-and, in particular, not from guilt arising from failure to respect self-legislated, life-enhancing standards (May, pg.75, 2002). Nietzsche sees discipline and the subject as necessary cogs in the journey towards sovereign man and the completion of mankind . Nietzsche diachronic genealogy is embedded with his dogmatic truths about an external, independent, will to power. It is Nietzsche s realist account of power as external and independent which create the dogmatic truths upon which his philosophy fails where Foucault seems to succeed. Foucault never refers to an end goal or completion of man like Nietzsche does. For Foucault Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation,
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distribution, circulation and operation of statements (Power/Knowledge, pg.133, 1980). Truth and power do not exist apart from the disciplinary procedures and subjects within them; it is A regime of truth (Power/Knowledge, pg.133, 1980). Nietzsche inherits the same criticism as Kant does on his account of space and time being synthetic apriori truths. Kant says that space and time must exist separately from experience because we could not experience space and time as such, and experience objects within space and time synchronically (Kant, A23/B38, 2007). Nietzsche doesn t explicitly say that the will to power is an external metaphysics; commentators such as Deleuze have attempted to make his implicit metaphysics, explicit (2006). The criticism against Kant embodies the difference between Nietzsche and Foucault when dealing with the notion of power, truth and discipline, and the subject. The criticism is: there is no contradiction in supposing that experience may be present one with that without which experience would not be possible (Gardner, pg.81, 1999). Against Kant this means that space and objects in space could co-exist and one does not have to precede the other, against Nietzsche this would mean that will to power and subjects of that will could co-exist; there is no reason for the will-to-power to precede the objects it manifests in. For Foucault the subject is the both the vehicle for and creation of power (Nietzsche s will to power), truth and discipline. Foucault is a perspectivist in the sense that he does not give a perspective; he maps the micro-bodies of discipline and shows the reciprocal connection between power, truth, discipline and the subject. It is because of this perspectivism that Foucault gives a more accurate account of discipline and its creation of the subject as it is not judged in terms of being good or bad . Reference list Deleuze. G (2006) Nietzsche and Philosophy: Continuum Foucault. M (1991) Discipline and Punish: Penguin Foucault. M (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Ed.Colin Gordon, trns. Colin Gordon et al.: New York: Pantheon Foucault. M (1989) The Birth of the Clinic: Routledge Gardner. S (1999) Routledge guidebook to Kant and Critique of Pure Reason: Routledge
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Goldhill. S (2005) Love, Sex & Tragedy: John Murray (Publishers) Gutting. G (2005) Foucault: A Very Short Introduction: Oxford University Press Holdcroft. D (2000) Saussure, De Ferdinand (1857-1913) in Concise Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Routledge Kant. I (2007) Crtique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith: Palgrave Macmillan Nietzsche. F (1997) Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future, trans. Zimmern. H: Dover Publications Neitzsche. F (1998) On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Clark. M & Swensen. A. J: Hackett publishing company, Inc. May. S (2002) Nietzsche s ethics and his war on morality: Oxford University Press Ransom. J. S (1997) Foucault s Discipline: The Politics of Subjectivity: Duke University Press Shapiro. G (2003) Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying: University of Chicago Press Bibliography Burnham. D (2007) Reading Nietzsche: An Analysis of Beyond Good and Evil: Acumen Publishing Limited Foucault. M (1989) Madness and Civilisation: Routledge Pearson. K. A (2009) A companion to Nietzsche: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.