Irrera Article

Philosophy and Social Criticism
36(9) 995–1017
Pleasure and ª The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/0191453710379026
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self: Notes on ‘a dialogue
too soon interrupted’
between Michel Foucault
and Pierre Hadot
Orazio Irrera
Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, Italy
Abstract
The fact that the notion of ‘practice’ has achieved an ever-increasing relevance in the most various
fields of knowledge must not overshadow that it can be interpreted in so many different ways as to
orient fairly different historiographical paradigms and philosophical conceptions. Starting with the
two main issues of Hadot’s criticism of Foucault (the lack of a distinction between joy and pleasure
and the fact that his account does not underscore that the individual Self is ultimately transcended
by universal Reason), I have tried to show how the two scholars’ philosophical and historiographi-
cal approaches entail a different notion of ‘practice’. According to Hadot, the performativity of a
practice (or spiritual exercise) is intimately tied to a universal which transcends the individual self,
whereas Foucault maintains that it does not require the appeal to any universal, being exclusively
grounded on the modes of exertion of the practices which constitute the individual Self. According
to this address, pleasure is a fundamental notion in order to historicize the different ways in which
the ethical subject structures itself.
Keywords
ethical subject, Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot, pleasure, practice, transcendence of the self
1 Hadot’s criticism of Foucault

At the international conference on Foucault that took place in Paris in January 1988,
Pierre Hadot criticized Michel Foucault for having described the ethics of the Graeco-
Corresponding author:
Orazio Irrera, Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, Italy.
Email: o.irrera@fls.unipi.it
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996 Philosophy and Social Criticism 36(9)
Roman world as ‘an ethics of the pleasure one takes in oneself’.1 Hadot maintained that
Foucault’s view placed the self at the center of a series of spiritual exercises that should
instead be read foregrounding a more objective dimension. From here, Hadot develops
two interconnected lines of argument in order to reject the Foucaultian perspective on the
Graeco-Roman ethics. The first develops from the notion of ‘pleasure’ (plaisir) and the
second centers on the relationship between the individual self and the transcendent level
of universal Reason. Taking the cue from a passage in the second chapter of La souci de
soi entitled ‘The Culture of the Self’, Hadot notes that Foucault classifies the subjective
experience of joy (gaudium) for the Stoics as ‘another form of pleasure’. He objects that
the Stoics use the term gaudium precisely because ‘they refuse to introduce the principle
of pleasure into moral life. For them, happiness does not consist in pleasure but in virtue
itself, which is its own reward’ (RCS, 207).2 A contrast is outlined between joie and plai-
sir, gaudium (or laetitia) and voluptas, terms that, Hadot insists, the Stoics considered
mutually incompatible.
The second objection follows closely the first, and is again about the subjective expe-
rience of joy. To illustrate this experience, Foucault, in the same passage,3 refers to Sene-
ca’s letter to Lucilius, no. XXIII, the theme of which is the joy that one finds in oneself,
or more precisely ‘in the best portion of the self’. This, according to Hadot, opens the
subjective experience of joy to a transcendent level, to which the conscience turns when
it aims at the good, when its intentions have as objects virtue and right actions; this level
consists of ‘perfect reason’, of ‘universal reason’, ‘within all human beings, . . . and
within the cosmos itself’ (RCS). To act according to universal Reason means to over-
come the individual self and ascend to the cosmic and rational perspective that is com-
mon to all men; a reason, therefore, that is unique and is ‘man’s true self’ (ibid.), a
transcendent level that is reached after some physical and mental exercise, that discloses
to the individual self a perspective of participation to the cosmic Reason, a level to which
one is elevated by moving beyond one’s individuality (PhMV, 216). It is only this cosmic
perspective that ‘radically transforms the feeling one has of oneself’ (RCS, 208).
Neglecting this process through which one becomes aware of belonging to a whole, Fou-
cault misses the ‘psychic content’ of the exercises that he discusses, while fixating on
offering the ‘contemporary mankind a model of life, which Foucault calls ‘‘an aesthetics
of existence’’’ (ibid.), a model that ultimately Hadot sees as ‘a new form of Dandyism’
(ibid., 211).4 The accusation of dandyism appears also in ‘Le sage et le monde’, another
chapter of Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique.5 This time, however, it seems that
the criticism of Foucault is moved not only on account of a ‘historical inaccuracy’, but
also because his philosophical and ethical model of existence appears to be ‘too narrow
and insufficient’ (SM, 345); in this section, behind Hadot the historian of philosophy
there appears Hadot the philosopher, who sees to the task of ‘showing what are the set-
ting, the situation, the psychological process thanks to which ancient and modern expe-
rience can meet’ (SM, 346). The stake of the criticism of Foucault becomes double;
against the attempt to respond in individualistic key to the crisis of modernity, Hadot
tries to suggest an exercise of wisdom, always fragile and always renewed, capable
‘of realizing the integration of the ‘‘I’’ in the world and in the universal’ (SM, 346).
It is now clear how Hadot considered important the universalistic and cosmic dimen-
sion, on which he alleged Foucault did not insist sufficiently. Most of his criticism of the
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Foucaultian conception of the ethics of antiquity develops from this perspective (along
with the afore-mentioned question of the difference between joie and plaisirs).
2 Joy related to the doctrine of eupátheia

Let us begin with the question of the relationship between joie and plaisir, and let us
inquire why for Foucault the former is ‘another form’ of the latter. For Hadot, as we saw,
edone´ or
this is an inexact way of describing joy, simply because the Stoics use the term h
voluptas to indicate something different from eupátheia and gaudium. Nonetheless, in
the pages quoted by Hadot, those from the chapter ‘The Culture of Self’ in La souci
de soi, Foucault seems to operate exactly this distinction, when he says:
The individual who has finally succeeded in gaining access to himself is, for himself, an
object of pleasure. Not only is one satisfied with what one is and accepting of one’s limits,
but one ‘pleases oneself’. This pleasure, for which Seneca usually employs the word gau-
dium or laetitia, is a state that is neither accompanied nor followed by any form of distur-
bance in the body or the mind. It is defined by the fact of not being caused by anything that is
independent of ourselves and therefore escapes our control. It arises out of ourselves and
within ourselves. It is characterized as well by the fact that it knows neither degree nor
change, but is given as a ‘woven fabric’, and once given no external event can rend it. This
sort of pleasure can thus be contrasted point by point with what is meant by the term volup-
tas. The latter denotes a pleasure whose origin is to be placed outside us and in objects
whose presence we cannot be sure of: a pleasure, therefore, which is precarious in itself,
undermined by the fear of loss, and to which we are drawn by the force of a desire that may
or may not find satisfaction. In place of this kind of violent, uncertain, and conditional plea-
sure, access to self is capable of providing a form of pleasure that comes, in serenity and
without fail, of the experience of oneself. (CS, 66)
If Foucault is well aware of the difference between gaudium and voluptas, why does he
persist in translating the first term as ‘another form’ of the second, excluding or scaling
down the term joy and enlarging so much the semantic reach of the notion of pleasure?
As can be noticed from several lectures of the course taught at the Collège de France in
1981–2 – which treated the Stoics as well as the Epicureans – joy, pleasure and voluptas
are used as equivalent expressions, both in a positive and in a negative sense. What
polarizes these affective states in a constant way is the reference to the stability–instabil-
ity axis. All the pleasures that are not elusive, that tend to lend stability and balance, and
to cement the relationship of mastery and self-sufficiency of the self with itself, are pos-
itive. Those whose presence does not depend on us, and that turn out to be ephemeral,
transitory and elusive, and thus cause fear of privation and disturb the balance of the self,
are negative pleasures.6 But what is at stake in the distinction of these notions? From
which perspective are they so different? Can there be a perspective capable of explaining
the Foucaultian indifference to the use of these terms? Let us go back to Pierre Hadot in
order to try to verify of what the difference between joie and plaisirs might consist. On
the basis of the contribution to the 1988 Paris conference, this can be read as the differ-
ence that separates eupátheia and h edone´.
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Eupátheia is a doctrine that arches back to the ancient Stoa. As Pierre Grimal
explained, since the four fundamental passions were regarded by the Stoics as illnesses
of the soul, and since on the other hand affective motions are natural and necessary to
inner life, it is indispensable to replace the ‘vicious’ passions with affections amenable
to the control of reason, and this transformation is a operation that only the wise man will
be able to perform. In this transitio toward the ‘constant affections’, to desire (cupido)
there will correspond stable will, to fear (metus) ‘precaution’, to pleasure (laetitia) ser-
ene joy (gaudium, chará ); the fourth passion, sadness (aegritudo, lup e) cannot be tran-
formed, it is against reason and leads to the destruction of being. The Stoics distinguish
in this way some ‘positive’ passions, which reason can transform into moving elements
of inner life, and the negative passion, only one, namely sadness, which depends on not-
being. All the passions derive from a natural cause, the spontaneous emotionality of the
soul, which moves the impetus, the essential element of the animus of animalia. The
nature of the emotion stirred depends on the opinion that accompanies this impulse. The
opinion of a present good takes the form of a pleasure (voluptas), that of a future good the
form of a desire (cupido), that of a future evil the form of fear (metus), that of a present
evil the form of sorrow (aegritudo). If reason, summoned to criticize conscience’s spon-
taneous attitude, expresses the judgment that these opinions can be rationally justified,
the first three passions become eupátheiai (or constantiae).
Nevertheless, reason could never regard as a real evil emotion in the face of a real
incommodum, for there is no other evil than the moral one. The three constantiae always
have as their object the Good, present or future, whether one wants to achieve it or avoid
its opposite. Clearly, the possibility of this transition is reserved to the sage. As Seneca
says in letter CXVI to Lucilius, the same modes of inner experience that are applied to a
sage should not be applied to one who is not a sage yet. The doctrine of constantiae is
therefore reserved to the ideal figure of the sage, while in real life one tries to avoid the
pitfalls of passions.7 The eupátheia thus presupposes an elaboration by reason, which has
to operate on representations disturbed by the affections that render consciousness incon-
stant. Gaudium, joie, is then a passion purified by work of the self on the self, not the fruit
of the spontaneous emotiveness of soul that alters judgment (thus giving in to voluptas).
Yet, from what we have seen in Foucault’s excerpt from La souci de soi, this differ-
ence is conceptually present. If we do not want to reduce Hadot’s objection to a mere
lexical question, we should ask why the assimilation of joy to a different form of pleasure
could not be satisfactory (a pleasure, it is understood, with all the characteristics of sta-
bility, and that results from an exercise of the self on the self). It is, thus, a matter of
understanding why something that appears with the same characteristics can be called
in two different ways. Hadot makes a historical-doctrinal consideration when he states
that, as we have seen, the Stoics
. . . refuse to introduce the principle of pleasure into moral life. For them, happiness does
not consist in pleasure but in virtue itself, which is its own reward. (RCS, 207; emphasis
added)
We face the problem of a principle of the philosophical form of life that is also the
ultimate goal and happiness of the same [form of life]. The foundation of a mode of
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moral conduct is also the highest value to which the practice of life based on it must lead.
In this sense, one cannot talk of overriding pursuit of pleasure (or even joy) in the case of
the Stoics, because their ultimate goal is the achievement of virtue, or the compliance of
one’s actions with an absolute moral Good (for our purposes, there is no need to describe
what this Good consists of, how one can know it, and how one can submit to it). Pleasure
would be, rather, the Epicureans’ ultimate value. Foucault, however, does not start from
historical-doctrinal considerations. This means, more specifically, that he has no interest
in what has priority or what is to be maximized by a subjectivity. From this point of view,
referring to one school rather than another may be indicative but not essential. What
interests Foucault is the experience that the self has of itself and on itself, no matter what
it might want to become, or whether it complies to this or that code of behavior, based on
a certain value rather than another.
3 Joy related to the notion of happiness

We shall therefore try to interrogate Hadot’s texts to examine how joy and pleasure are
described. In order to do this, we will use the notion of happiness, which represents from
the subjective point of view the accomplishment of an ideal of life that can be realized,
and the resulting satisfaction always on the same level – the life of the conscience – even
if this is not in itself the highest value. It is interesting to analyse how these two ‘differ-
ent’ states (joy and pleasure) are characterized in an article by Hadot published in 1992,
which is aptly entitled ‘Modèles de bonheur’.8 Joy and pleasure are placed within the
theories of the gods in the different schools. This offers a model of divine beatitude that
becomes the model of happiness for men, again irrespectively, for the time being, of
whether this happiness is to be sought in itself or whether it is the result of some kind
of achievement of perfection. Hadot writes about religious celebrations as ‘a communion
in gods’ joy . . . in these moments of collective joy, men feel intensely the god’s pres-
ence’ (MdB, 329). Hence, at a pre-philosophical stage, joy is a state that characterizes the
gods in the first instance, and then men, when they are able to arrive, in ways to be spec-
ified, at the presence of god. As philosophy develops, however, the conception of this
participation in divine beatitude comes to be defined more precisely. Hadot distinguishes
two main tendencies:
On the one hand, the Socratic tradition, for which the participation in divine happiness is
founded in God’s presence in human soul and is ultimately realized in the love of the Good;
on the other hand, the Epicurean attitude, very complex, which we will have to define
further. (MdB, 330)
The first tendency implies a moral life marked by the presence of an ‘inner god’, who
inspires ‘not only a virtuous life, but also a path of contemplation’; we thus found our-
selves exposed to the ‘paradox that what is most essential in man transcends man’ (ibid.).
Furthermore, in referring to Aristotle, it is noted that
. . . man’s highest happiness is thus a divine beatitude that we can reach only exceptionally:
‘This state of joy that we do not possess but in rare moments, God possesses it always’
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(Metaphysics, 1072.b.28). Let us add that Aristotle, always the realist, knows well that this
happiness can only be reached by a man provided with a healthy body and enjoying a min-
imum of goods necessary for nourishment and care. (MdB, 331)
This implies that in order to achieve what we have earlier called joy, we have to face
three problems: first, the paradoxical transcendence that we have to operate inside our-
selves; second, the relationship that the transcending consciousness has to have with the
body; and, finally, the duration of the joy that is achieved in this way (in this case, one
can talk about instability). A fourth problem is added when Hadot’s reconstruction
pauses to consider Plotinus, in whose theory
. . . man’s happiness is founded on the presence of the divine in the soul and in the impulse,
in the love, of the soul for the Good. . . . This divine presence was therefore a call to the love
of the Good, that is, to the conversion of the whole being toward the divine Spirit . . . ‘He is
always present, but we are only present to him when we have rejected what keeps us far
from him’ (Enn..IV.9.8.33). . . . It is the unconscious presence of the divine in us that leads
us to love and seek him. (MdB, 331)
The relationship with the divine is thus characterized as love, whereas the discussion
was about joy, which, in reference to God and his beatitude, seemed to indicate a disem-
bodied, spiritual state, which love, understood as eros, somehow contradicts. The term
joy, however, does not disappear but reappears shortly later to designate this kind of mys-
tical experience precisely along with eros:
. . . in even more rare and exceptional moments [than those in which it is united with the
Spirit], it [the soul] will feel the presence of the Good, in a ‘loving exhilaration’, as Plotinus
says (VI.7.35.24). The soul’s highest happiness is therefore an experience that can be qual-
ified as mystical, and that is characterized, among other things, by an immense joy. It is suf-
ficient that the soul be with Him, ‘so great is the joy that it reached’. (VI.7.34.38) (MdB,
332)
Moving now to Hadot’s essay on Plotinus, right where the passage above is exten-
sively analysed, we read that ‘In mystical union, the soul experiences a feeling of cer-
tainty, well-being, pleasure (volupte´)’ (PSV, 59).9 There follows the passage in
question, which explains that when the soul recognizes God, it can say, ‘It’s him!’ only
in a second moment, since in the instant of ecstasy ‘she says it in silence. She is filled with
joy (joie); and she is not mistaken, just because she is filled with joy (joie); she does not
speak in this way because her body is tickled with pleasure (plaisir), but because she has
become once again what she was before, when she was happy’ (ibid.). In the 4th revised
and enlarged edition of Plotin ou la simplicite´ du regard, Hadot concludes, ‘If the soul
feels joy and pleasure [ joie et volupte´], it is then because it ‘‘has become . . . ’’’ (PSR,
95; emphasis added). Again, he quotes Plotinus VI.7.35.24, ‘The Spirit full of love,
senseless, because it is inebriated with nectar, spreading out in joy [jouissance], for the
state of intoxication in which it is’, and finds in this a reference to Plato’s Symposium.
Finally, he writes again about the ‘rising Spirit, inebriated by love and joy [jouissance]
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Irrera 1001
because it is in touch with the Good’ (PSR, 96). Since one cannot talk about the Good in
actual terms, that is, in the very instant in which the unio mystica occurs, for then the soul is
dispossessed of its discoursive faculties, it is possible to do so only in a second moment,
recalling imperfectly, for not even the memory escapes the collapse of descriptive powers.
Hence, Hadot writes:
. . . we could go on and sense that joy and voluptas give us knowledge of some element of
the essence of the Good. In fact, if the presence of the Good elicits this kind of joy, will it not
be because the Good itself is an unspeakable joy ...? (PSR, 98; emphasis added)
Note that joy, love, pleasure and voluptas are placed in the same dimension, the dimen-
sion of the level-jumping of the self that transcends itself to the point of losing self-
consciousness. Nonetheless, there remains an unspecified difference between joy and
pleasure. It is curious that, still examining the article ‘Modèles de bonheur’, we encoun-
ter the statement, ‘in a sense, a certain hedonism can be unearthed in Plotinus, Aristotle,
and Plato. The life of the Spirit and the love of the Good are accompanied by an enjoy-
ment [jouissance] and a spiritual joy’ (MdB, 332; emphasis added). A fourth level of
problems springs from these conditions, namely, how the relationship with the level
of transcendence is characterized. There are, in fact, different ways to understand this
‘jump’, the lived relationship with the transcendent – or, maybe it is better to say, the
‘field of transcendence’.
Let us summarize these levels of problems. The first concerns the ways in which con-
sciousness is able to raise beyond itself while remaining within itself; the second, the
relationship that one has to have with the body in order to transcend the individual self;
the third, the stability or permanence of the experience that we made of the transcendent;
the fourth, the question of what is involved in this relationship between the transcending
consciousness and the level of transcendence, which we called, for this reason, the field
of transcendence. For the purpose of describing joy, these levels of problems transform
into the following questions. What do we have to do in order to transcend ourselves and
achieve joy? What relationship do we have to have with the body and with pleasure?
How long does joy last? Of what does joy consist, what kind of experience is it, what
does it involve and what does it leave out? As we saw above, Hadot himself was not able
to move beyond joy understood as pleasure-spiritual enjoyment, and did not explain
what this rather oxymoronic expression means. It can be noticed that the Stoics were the
only ones who, within the Socratic tradition, endeavored to
. . . purify to the highest degree the moral intention from any motivation external to the love
of the Good, from any hedonism, even if spiritual. Doubtlessly the Stoics base even man’s
happiness on the love of the Good. (MdB, 332; emphasis added)
Nevertheless, to what kind of subjective experience does this model of happiness – the
one in which we are most interested, since Hadot’s criticism of Foucault concerns mainly
a mistaken interpretation of Stoic philosophy – refer? How does joy behave relatively to
the grid of problems that we derived from our previous accounts of Hadot’s argument?
The paper on ‘Modèles de bonheur’ does not deal with joy any longer, and mentions
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pleasure as something that is indifferent to the Stoic’s rightful intention to follow always
and only the Good (MdB, 333). This is, however, a coarse pleasure, not elaborated, not
refined, and which cannot be compared to the pleasure that we have seen to be co-
extensive with joy, or at least not sufficiently distinct from the latter. Furthermore, the
excerpt above deals with the ‘love’ of the Good. But how is this concept to be understood
if the Stoics got rid of the hedonistic aspects that other doctrines reserved to the relation-
ship with the transcendent?
4 The relationship between joy and pleasure in the Stoic

doctrine
In an article entitled ‘La figure du sage’, Hadot first reviews the relationship that the
Epicurean sage has with the gods, then describes the relationship that the Stoic sage
entertains with them. Both these figures, being paradigmatic, limit-figures, tend to
be equal to their gods, with the difference that for the Stoics ‘it is not an equality in plea-
sure but in virtue . . . that is, in the perfection of reason’,10 and the latter, as is known, is
‘an organizing force immanent in the world, that produces with order all the cosmic
events’. Immediately after this, Hadot sketches the way in which the relationship
between human and universal reason is configured:
Human reason is an emanation, a part of this universal Reason, but it can get obscured,
deformed in passing through bodily life or because of the attraction of pleasure. . . . But the
attraction of pleasure, the force of passions, cause in men a corruption, an almost general
deviation of reason. (FdS, 242–3)
Therefore, he identifies a field of intervention, a platform for ascesis, which begins to

specify what is to be done in order to transcend the self especially in relation to the body
and its passions. Still, this is insufficient. We shall then try to analyse the section which
Hadot devotes to joie in his study on Marcus Aurelius. Concerning the Stoics, so far we
alluded to the fact that ‘motive and end of moral action’ was to act according to virtue,
which was determined by the contemplation of the Good, the only absolute value. To
succeed in that, it was necessary to acquire the moral virtues that enable reaching the
Good by means of a series of practices and exercises and some self-discipline. To these
virtues, which are justice, truth and temperance, there correspond three disciplinary
areas, three sectors of life that are amenable to the discipline of the self by the self:
. . . that of action, which ordains that people should help one another; that of assent, which
consists in distinguishing the true from the false; and that of the desire, which consists in
accepting the lot which universal Nature has reserved for us.11
It is in the latter that we have to train ourselves not to desire pleasures and not to
escape pains, thereby accepting the Nature’s will. These three disciplines (and the whole
set of related exercises, which, however, we shall not discuss) and the three correspond-
ing virtues
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Irrera 1003
. . . bring to the soul the only true joy which exists in the world, since they place the soul in
the possession of all that is necessary: the one absolute value. Living beings experience joy
when they fulfill the function for which they are made, and act in accordance with their
nature. (IC, 238–9)12
Practising these three disciplines one attains joy. The field of desire, of bodily pas-
sions, is disciplined starting from the concept of reasonable nature, of universal Nature.
Reading further, we get more important information, which differentiates this model of
joy from what we could see so far. In this sense, the question of the duration of joy is
relevant; Hadot, in fact, adducing even Seneca as a witness, says:
For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in conformity with
his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the
words of Seneca: ‘The effect of wisdom is a continuous joy . . . and only the strong, the
just, and the temperate can possess this joy.’ (IC, 239)
Later on, Hadot refers to other sections by Marcus Aurelius, which describe joy not as
an internal subjective state, but as if joy, as we already said, consisted of the exercise of
the three virtues and in the modes of disciplining connected to them:
For man, joy consists in doing what is proper to man. What is proper to man is benevolence
toward other human beings, who are his relatives; disdain for movements based on sense-
perception; criticism of deceptive representations; and the contemplation of universal
Nature, and of that which happens in conformity with its will. (Meditations, VIII.26) (IC,
240; emphasis added)
It seems, therefore, that the state of joy is connected at least with the awareness of
acting according to virtue. That is to say, if I act according to the Good, then I will feel
joy as a state that accompanies the awareness of having acted rightly. In fact, Hadot com-
ments that ‘joy, then, is the sign of an action’s perfection’. It is for this reason that
Unlike Epicurean pleasure, Stoic joy is not the motive and end of moral action: rather, virtue
is its own rewards. Virtue seeks nothing above and beyond itself; instead, for the Stoics, joy
like Aristotelian pleasure, comes along as an extra surplus in addition to action in confor-
mity with nature. (ibid.)13
Nevertheless, when Hadot has to try to describe of what this joyous awareness con-
sists, he still needs to resort to pleasure:
It is only when we love human beings from the bottom of our hearts, and not merely out of
duty, that we feel pleasure in benefiting them (Meditations, VII.13.3), just because we then
have the feeling of belonging to the same living organism, and of being the limbs of the body
of rational beings. (ibid.; emphasis added)14
The pleasure described here refers, among other things, to the feeling of belonging to
the same body, a living organism. Even though the moral intention can be conceived of
1003

as pure, not determined by anything but itself, the subjective state of someone who is
thereby content of himself appears not to be describable in a disembodied, spiritual
sense; in short, one cannot do without sensibility. In the section devoted to joy, Hadot
continues the discussion of the purity of intention of the soul, which has to consider vir-
tue without any external conditioning. In explaining the derivation of the subjective state
that accompanies the awareness of having acted rightly, Hadot talks indifferently about
pleasure, rather than only about joy, and quotes from Seneca’s De vita beata again:
In the words of Seneca: ‘Pleasure is not a reward for virtue, nor its cause, but is something
added on to it. Virtue is not chosen because it causes pleasure; but if it is chosen, it does
cause pleasure.’ (ibid.)
The next sentence is still about joy: ‘The joy which arises from virtue . . . ’ Hadot closes
the sentence with a qualification that, however, he cannot fulfill: ‘Such joy is not, more-
over, an irrational passion, because it is in conformity with reason. According to the
Stoics, it is rather a ‘‘good emotion’’ or a ‘‘good affection’’ (eupatheia).’ From this pic-
ture there emerges that joy is rather a distillate, the result of a transitio, of an elaboration
operated by the self on the self, but in the light of universal Reason, the criterion that
rules specifically the disciplining of both soul and body.
Within the ‘intelligibility grid’ outlined above, one can see that the Stoic’s joy pre-
supposes a mode of self-transcendence that does not lead to the loss of one’s own state
of consciousness. There is not a sort of mystical leap as in Plotinus, even though there is a
full range of spiritual exercises, or techniques of the self that prepare and ultimately
enable the ‘toti se inserens mundo’. Second, the body must be prepared, disciplined. The
spontaneous impulses of the animal part must not be heeded without submitting the
representations produced by these impulses to the test of judgment. Moreover, unlike the
conceptions described above, joy is achieved permanently, and, although it is reserved to
the sage, who remains a limit-figure, surely this sentiment is not felt in the point-like way
that we saw earlier. Fourth, it is the theory of eupatheia that enables the transitio from
the negative to the positive passions. This is, however, only possible from the judgment
expressing conformity with universal Reason, which ultimately, as is known, is
expressed in distinguishing what depends on us from what does not depend on us, toward
which we must remain indifferent.
But some qualification on the first point is still necessary. First of all, transcending
oneself implies the application of physics as a spiritual exercise that makes one able
to recognize oneself as belonging to the cosmic Whole. This implies that self-
transcendence is specified as a set of meditation techniques enabling this elevation,
which changes the perspective on the world. From this vantage point, reached by virtue
of a view from above, one adopts an outlook that, when turned on the totality of things as
well as on the now narrow horizon of the affairs of daily life, tends to identify – it is,
however, not clear how and how much – with the cosmic-universal perspective, the per-
spective of Reason. Even the famous praemeditatio malorum is included in this context
as a preparatory exercise that, elaborating through judgment the depressive kernel of
emotion connected to the representation of evil, prepares the very transcending, that is
to say, the change of perspective, the enlarging of the horizon.15 Thus, the exercises that
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stimulate and operate discoursively on the imaginative and emotional fabric appear as
the glue capable of unifying the conception of the four aspects that can describe a single
subjective phenomenon, the affection of joy.
5 The relationship between joy and pleasure in the Epicurean

doctrine
Hence, the results of our analyses led us so far to a conclusion, and to an experiment con-
sequent from this conclusion. The conclusion is that of a theoretical insufficiency in the
specification of a difference between joy and pleasure. The experiment that derives from
this assessment attempts to create a grid of intelligibility to verify how joy as an affective
state can be understood from Hadot’s historical-doctrinarian arguments. Now we shall
try to continue the experiment verifying, also through the above-mentioned grid of intel-
ligibility, how the relationship between joy and pleasure is configured in Hadot’s
description of Epicureanism.
Let us begin with pointing out that pleasure is for the Epicureans the supreme value,
which must be pursued above all. This said, we must specify this pleasure. It consists of
the elimination of pain from our bodies. It is characterized as stable and is, on the other
hand, the result of a specific ascesis. This pleasure is reason and purpose of the Epicurean
choice of life. In addition, Hadot reminds us that the Epicureans’ model of happiness is
‘pure pleasure of existing’, and its model is the pleasure felt by the gods. Referring to the
theory of the gods according to which they, not being involved in human affairs, cannot
inflict any fear on humans, Hadot, always in the ‘Modèles de bonheur’ essay, depicts the
Epicurean sage – paradigmatic figure like the Stoics’, but not less important for this –
and the contemplation exercises through which he reaches the stable pleasure of existing.
About the contemplation of the gods in particular, he states:
Especially if the gods are not involved in human affairs, the sage will not invoke them to
obtain a benefit whatsoever, but will find his happiness in the contemplation of their seren-
ity, in the association with their joy. The love of the gods is, for Epicurus, the love of their
beauty and their perfection. . . . Epicureans’ happiness is, perhaps, like the gods’, the pure
pleasure of existing. (MdB, 333–4; emphasis added)16
This semantic overlap of pleasure of existing and contemplative joy, which in this
excerpt concerns indistinctly the sage and the gods, recurs in the historical-
doctrinarian reconstruction of the ‘paradigmatic’ description of the gods’ life in the Epi-
curean school that Hadot makes in What is Ancient Philosophy?:
Epicurus’ gods are the projection and the incarnation of the Epicurean ideal of life. The
Gods spend their lives enjoying their own perfection and the pure pleasure of existing, with
no needs and no worries, in the most pleasant company. . . . With this representation of the
gods – as deities who embody the Epicurean way of life – physics becomes an exhortation to
practice concretely the initial option of which it was the expression. It thus leads to peace of
mind and to the joy of participating in the life of contemplation which the gods themselves
lead. (WAPh, 121–2; emphasis added.)17
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As it appears, even for the Epicureans no distinction appears to specify the difference
between joy and pleasure, understood as inner states, as subjective experience. Their
defining characteristic is elsewhere, namely in the fact that pleasure and only pleasure
is the value to be sought in the highest degree. Moreover, what characterizes stable plea-
sure for the Epicureans, as opposed to other schools, is the reference to the ‘experience of
the flesh’, to use Hadot’s words, that is ‘the subject of pain and pleasure’, which further
alludes to a different, complex and very interesting, relationship between soul and body.
A question arises at this point: since joy and pleasure seem to overlap, how far is it pos-
sible to sight this overlap? We have created above an intelligibility grid to describe the
inner state of the ethical subject, who was supremely content of himself for having
reached the axiological apex of his life choice. Hence, cannot we verify how the Epicur-
ean stable pleasure of existing behaves relatively to the intelligibility grid of joy, espe-
cially in reference to the Stoics, given the specific criticisms leveled at Foucault?
The first vector appears unusable because the problem of making consciousness trans-
cend itself through the participation of a part of it in universal Reason does not seem to
arise for the Epicureans. We note, however, in Hadot’s presentation of their philosophy,
some tendency to put this philosophy almost at the same level as the Socratic tradition.18
Let us quote an extensive excerpt from What is Ancient Philosophy?, which is significant
in this regard. After distinguishing the stable pleasure of existing from the ‘changing
pleasures’, Hadot clarifies:
Such stable pleasure is different in nature from mobile pleasures. It is opposed to them as
being is to becoming; as the determinate is to the indeterminate and the infinite; as rest is to
movement; and as the supratemporal is to what is temporal. It is perhaps surprising to see
such transcendence attributed to the simple suppression of hunger and thirst, and the satis-
faction of vital needs. Yet this suppression of the body’s suffering – the state of equilibrium
– makes the individual conscious of a global, coenesthetic feeling of his own existence. It is
as though, by suppressing the state of dissatisfaction which had absorbed him in the search
for a particular object, he was finally free to become aware of something extraordinary,
already present in him unconsciously: the pleasure of his own existence. (WAPh, 116;
emphasis added)
Relatively to our grid, we note that Hadot refers not only to a transcendent level, but
also to a level that, once reached, produces a change of perspective, a global enlarging of
the sense of existence, in a way that to us seems to allude to the same procedure that
occurs in the manifestation of joy in Stoic philosophy. As in that philosophy, the leap
of the self is not marked by the loss of consciousness. Both forms of life presuppose
returning to daily life after the contact with transcendence, everyday public life for the
Stoics and communal life for the Epicureans. Another unexpected resemblance is that the
contact with the transcendent is in any case effected inside oneself toward ‘something
that was already unconsciously present in oneself’. This is perhaps the point of greatest
resemblance to that ‘Socratic tendency’ from which Epicureanism was taxonomically
distinct. It is as if even the Epicurean were dealing with the same ‘ve´ritable moi’ with
which the Stoics were dealing. This theoretical element is of fundamental importance
to account for the self-transcendence, which for the Stoics turns out to be constituted
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by a universalistic and global structure, and by the presence of a part of it in the

individual. Surely for the Epicureans there is not a physics that might explain this rela-
tionship. If anything, physics has a completely different effect on the life of its followers.
What these two perspectives appear to have nevertheless in common is the ‘feeling’ that
the subject has for the subjective state in which he realizes his model of perfection.
We can find an analogy also with respect to the body. In both schools, in fact, the body
is prepared before the self-transcendence by an ascesis that does not mortify it, as it does
for the Neoplatonics. This is a body that, however educated, still remains the body of
someone who, as we already said, takes part in a communal life.19 Concerning the dura-
tion, both Stoic joy and Epicurean pleasure are marked by a stability that also becomes a
meter to measure one’s progress on the path to wisdom. The ‘field of transcendence’,
which can be legitimately mentioned also for the Epicureans, given Hadot’s passage
examined above, is defined in both schools by the relationship entertained by conscience
with the transcendent level. It is ultimately determined by the action of a judgment capa-
ble of changing de-stabilizing affections into stable affections, a judgment capable of
producing a transitio. In both schools we find an activity of discrimination. Also the Epi-
curean, in order to achieve the pleasure of existing, needs to distinguish between ‘desires
which are natural and necessary; desires which are natural and not necessary; and empty
desires, which are neither natural nor necessary’ (WAPh, 117). Relative to this field of
transcendence, Hadot’s position is determined by a distinction that for him is fundamen-
tal, between the action of a judgment that derives from knowledge of Nature and of the
cosmic Whole, and that of a judgment tied to the need to eliminate the suffering of the
‘flesh’.
Moreover, behind the manifestation of joy in the Stoics and behind that of pleasure in
the Epicureans, there seems to be also the difference between a state that springs from the
acceptance of a necessary order and another state that acknowledges a miraculous con-
tingency. In this case, the reach of principles as different as ‘universal Reason’ and the
‘flesh’ does not seem to be merely historical-doctrinal, but it also seems to affect the
modes of manifestation of two different inner states. Nevertheless, the relevance
acquired in this way by the doctrinal dimension of physics, especially in the case of the
Stoics, is still undeniable. The difference between the two inner states of joy and plea-
sure, indeed, turns out not to arise per se (that is, qua inner state) but starting from a doc-
trinal level.
If there existed no universal Nature, the field of transcendence could not be specified in
such a way that the distinctive feeling, which we saw joy to be, manifested itself inside it.
Furthermore, the natural necessity through which the statute of joy is determined turns out
to be at the basis of the specific choice of life that is founded on the acceptance of this
necessity. This is a definite kind of acceptance, which shapes in a special way the kind
of judgment tied to the manifestation of joy. For the Epicurean, according to Hadot, this
transcendent level is constituted by a theory of the stable pleasure of existing that turns out
to be ever since a part of individual life. Always following Hadot, it appears that the Epi-
curean choice of life does not stem from a ‘practical’ need, so to speak, but rather from the
need to acknowledge a theory that reflects a conformity to a natural order, a universal
nature, even though this concerns the universality of pleasure. This appears contradictory
if we take into account other statements by Hadot that point to the opposite direction.20
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6 The paradigm of transcendence and normative exteriority in

Hadot
Let us summarize once again: following Hadot’s criticism of Foucault about an insuffi-
cient distinction between joy and pleasure, we demonstrated that, on a first level of ver-
ification, in Hadot’s texts the terms ‘pleasure’ and ‘joy’ are used interchangeably in the
reconstruction of historical-doctrinal contents of the various schools of antiquity. In the
second instance, we tried to assemble a grid of intelligibility to reveal the modes of man-
ifestation of joy relatively to several moments of philosophical discourse in antiquity.
The picture obtained in this way, always on the basis of Hadot’s strategies of reconstruc-
tion, was compared to the one that emerged about the state of pleasure in the Epicureans.
Although the majority of features proved to be common to both pictures, we identified
some differences that warranted a justified distinction between the above-mentioned
states of joy and pleasure.
Nonetheless, the possibility of drawing this distinction rested on the anchorage of the
spiritual exercises to a specific theoretical level. This is located on a transcendent, uni-
versal level, only relatively exterior with respect to the subject’s initial state, for the sub-
ject does somehow participate in it and has ever done so. It seems, therefore, that the
notion of ‘practices of the self’ or ‘spiritual exercises’ connected to the manifestation
of joy and pleasure in this way pays tribute to specific doctrinal and theoretical contents.
Hadot’s strained attempt to include the concept of transcendence in order to conceive
unitarily of performativity, of the therapeutic value of the entire philosophical discourse
of antiquity, introduces in reality a theory of universality as normative exteriority in
regard to consciousness. This hypostatization can get performatively into play only if
it becomes theory, doctrine, and determines in this way an overall attitude of the subject
(the choice of life), of which a particular and corresponding activity of judgment is part.
Ultimately, in order to make the distinction of joy and pleasure work, it is necessary to
anchor the notion of practice to theories that are prior and foundational to it.
Hence, what for Hadot distinguishes joy and pleasure is in the first place bound to the
fact that that joy and pleasure presuppose two different moral principles. Actually, in the
case of the Stoics, joy is simply the state that accompanies the conformity of their actions
to their principles. In this sense, we saw the importance of the theoretical frame, which
accompanies and determines a specific choice of life, in directing the discriminatory
faculty of judgment on the basis of physical theories, in such a way that even this choice
of life can produce values that give foundations to the rules of conduct. It is on the basis
of these two points that, despite the mentioned lexical overlaps, the distinction between
gaudium and ‘elaborated’ pleasure can work.
One more consideration must be added to our discussion. At this juncture it is clear
that the taxonomic activity of the historian of philosophy, however supported by hon-
est, meticulous and anyhow necessary philological work, can be performed only start-
ing from the choice of determined theoretical paradigms – in this case, a theory of
transcendence21 – a choice that sublimates into methodological praxis, and finally
hides behind the alleged neutrality and non-judgmental character of philological anal-
ysis, or behind the more or less objective exposition of undisputable historical-
doctrinal contents.
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7 Foucault’s genealogical method

The special Foucaultian method of inquiry does without just these issues, and distin-
guishes itself from Hadot’s, or any other historian of philosophy’s, intentions of
historical-doctrinal reconstruction. This much is very clear from the introduction to
L’usage des plaisirs, in which Michel Foucault characterizes the slant of his analysis,
differentiating it from other approaches:
Anyone who wishes to study the history of a ‘morality’ has to take into account the different
realities that are covered by the term. A history of ‘moral behaviors’ would study the extent
to which actions of certain individuals or groups are consistent with the rules and values that
are prescribed for them by various agencies. A history of ‘codes’ would analyze the differ-
ent systems of rules and values that are operative in a given society or group, the agencies or
mechanisms of constraint that enforce them, the forms they take in their multifariousness,
their divergences and their contradictions. And finally, a history of the way in which indi-
viduals are urged to constitute themselves as subjects of moral conduct would be concerned
with the models proposed for setting up and developing relationships with the self, for self-
reflection, self-knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self by oneself, for
the transformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object. This last is what
might be called a history of ‘ethics’ and ‘ascetics’, understood as a history of the forms
of moral subjectivation and of the practices of self that are meant to ensure it.22
Foucault’s attention is turned precisely onto forms of subjectivation, regardless of the

doctrinal framework in which determined practices of the self are located. Even the fact
of having called, coherently with the original project, his last books a History of Sexu-
ality, speaks volumes about the fact that his inquiry does not move from a historical
assessment of the texts that he examines, since, Foucault himself points out, ‘the term
‘‘sexuality’’ appeared rather late, at the beginning of the 19th century’. It is for this reason
that the quotes around this word have their significance (UP, 3). To highlight the distance
that Foucault perceived between his method and the historical-doctrinal approaches
(toward which he never assumes a critical position, but from which he does anyhow dif-
ferentiate himself), we need to keep in mind a note inserted in the chapter we are exam-
ining. It is also the same page in which he acknowledges his debt to historians and
historians of philosophy like Peter Brown, Pierre Hadot himself, and Paul Veyne:
I am neither a Hellenist nor a Latinist. But it seemed to me that if I gave enough care,
patience, modesty, and attention to the task, it would be possible to gain sufficient familiar-
ity with the ancient Greek and Roman texts; that is, a familiarity that would allow me – in
keeping with a practice that is doubtless fundamental to Western philosophy – to examine
both the difference that keeps us at a remove from a way of thinking in which we recognize
the origin of our own, and the proximity that remains in spite of that distance which we
never cease to explore. (UP, 7; note 1)
The significance of this observation is great because it opens the whole western phi-
losophy and the modes of discourse about it to the always ‘situated’ practice of self-
reflection. At bottom, the origins of our thought and the categories that we use to refer
1009

to what originates it are actually always afflicted by the difference, by the tension that the
present continuously deepens and modulates according to multiple instances. The origin
is originated, and what originates the origin is a present that ever and forever differs. As
it is known, Foucault designated this method of inquiry as ‘genealogy’. In one of his last
interviews, the French thinker was asked why he chose as object of his analyses ‘epochs
that many would say are too far from us’. Foucault answered:
I always start from a problem that arises presently, and then attempt to draw the genealogy.
Genealogy means to develop the analysis starting from a problem that arises in the present.23
On the other hand, in the very introduction to L’usage des plaisirs he defines as ‘gen-
ealogical’ his own programmatic level:
. . . to analyze the practices by which individuals were led to focus their attention on them-
selves, to decipher, recognize, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire, bringing
into play between themselves and themselves a certain relationship that allows them to dis-
cover, in desire, the truth of their being, be it natural or fallen. In short, with this genealogy
the idea was to investigate how individuals were led to practice, on themselves and on oth-
ers, a hermeneutics of desire, a hermeneutics of which their sexual behavior was doubtless
the occasion, but certainly not the exclusive domain. (UP, 5)
The genealogical field is, in this case, that of the analysis of practices that individuals
exercise by themselves on themselves. Is this the starting point that directs Foucault’s
analysis?
8 The function of pleasure in Foucault’s genealogy

There is, however, another reason why the concept of pleasure is thought of in so unitary
a way that it renders the Stoics’ gaudium but another form of it. Pleasure is, in fact, one of
the three vectors from which Foucault investigates the constitution of the subject of
desire, the latter being a privileged element of analysis to identify how the relationship
between subjectivity and truth is historically structured. Foucault aims at writing ‘the
history of the relationship that thinking entertains with truth; the history of thinking, pre-
cisely because it is thinking about truth’ (SdV, 669). From these premises, Foucault notes
that desire has be the object of a ‘mise en discourse’ that posited it, according to diverse
historical modalities, as a field of inquiry in which the truth about the subject ultimately
proves to be lodged. It should, rather, be framed as an effect of the devices of power, the
roots of which dig into the techniques of confession. ‘Sexuality’ is the name of this
device (dispositif), and the individual turns out to be the result of this process of indivi-
dualization. Psychoanalysis also is part of this device. It is for this reason that Foucault
refuses to grant the ‘sexual impulse’ a trans-historical statute. Sexuality is the product of
historical forms that shape, elaborate and repress it.24
In the last phase of his research, Foucault tried to set up models, thresholds that
constituted a resistance to this device. It is in this context that the concept of pleasure
as art of living, as aesthetic of the existence, takes shape. The starting point of Foucault’s
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inquiry is placed in the present precisely because it collects the demand of ‘de-sexualiz-
ing’ pleasure and to subtract it from the grip of the truth-telling about oneself. Pleasure is
thus conceived as what at once diversifies, multiplies, intensifies and maximizes the rela-
tionship of the self with the self. Pleasure becomes the pivot that enables a redirection of
all the discourses on the body and on the soul within a unified practical dimension.
In the next-to-last lecture of his last course at the Collège de France in 1984, Foucault
significantly states, about the ‘sovereign life’ of the cynic:
. . . the sovereign life in ancient philosophy is a life that tends to the establishment of a rela-
tionship with the self of the order of enjoyment [jouissance] in both senses of the term
enjoyment [jouissance] that is, as possession [possession] and as pleasure [plaisir] at the
same time. The sovereign life is life that is in control of itself, a life in which no fragment,
no element escapes the exercise of its power and of its sovereignty on itself. To be sovereign
is first of all to be self-possessed, to belong to oneself. Furthermore, this enjoyment-
possession relationship is also an enjoyment-pleasure relationship. One likes oneself [on
se plait à soi-meˆme] in the sovereign life. One finds in oneself all the principles of true
voluptas [volupte´], not the bodily one that depends on external things, but the one that
we can possess indefinitely without ever being deprived of it. Hence, in this general formu-
lation, the sovereign life is a life of enjoyment, enjoyment-possession and enjoyment-
pleasure.25
Furthermore, it is because one looks for new ways of achieving pleasure that new
forms of life can take shape.26 It is pleasure that drives an indefatigable becoming of the
self that continuously escapes the truths crystallizing around it to block and ‘govern’ it.
Amid desire and pleasure there unfolds a series of acts, of conducts that realize pleasure
in different ways. They are set in a certain frame, which is that of desire. This digression
allows us two considerations concerning the comparison of Foucault’s and Hadot’s the-
oretical and methodological positions. The first is that pleasure is conceived in a way that
is so changing, so little depending on a specific doctrinal picture, that it can be thought of
as determined by historical forms, or even as ‘de-sexualized’. This notion can thus inau-
gurate a new regime in the relationship with and in the ‘embodied subject’, in which tra-
ditional discourses about the body and the soul are welded together.27 Starting from this
paradigm, which is theoretical and methodological at the same time, it is easy to under-
stand why from the point of view of genealogy the difference between joy and pleasure
cannot be that relevant. Foucault is interested in describing the set of practices of the self
regardless of the historical-doctrinal articulations, even though these are still important
to him. As Frédéric Gros noted:
Concerning stoicism, there is no historico-doctrinal presentation of the three periods of the

school of the Porch; nothing on the system of logic, physics and ethics; almost nothing on
the problem of duties, preferable things, and indifferent things, nor even on the paradoxes of
the sage; concerning Epicureanism, Foucault speaks neither of pleasure nor the physics of
atoms. ... Explaining in detail the structures of subjectivation (the medical tenor of the care
given to the self, the examination of conscience, the appropriation of discourses, the speech
1011

of the guide, retirement, etcetera), Foucault carries out transversal sections in these philo-
sophies, finding historical realization of these structures in the different schools.28
The second consideration is that pleasure is furthermore one of the vectors that,
together with desire and acts (that is, the practices of the self that realize it29), constitute
the grid of intelligibility for the different structures of subjectivation that historically
took place within this level. The notion of pleasure has therefore a privileged place and
function in the economy of Foucaultian discourse. This can be seen clearly in the struc-
ture of the ‘ethical substance’ that constitutes the set of acts related to pleasure and
desire, which, relatively to the Graeco-Roman period, Foucault calls aphrodisia. Inquir-
ing about these acts of pleasure, Foucault explains:
. . . what was at issue was not the form they assumed, it was the activity they manifested.
Their dynamics was much more important than their morphology. This dynamics was
defined by the movement that linked the aphrodisia to the pleasure that was associated with
them and to the desire to which they gave rise. The attraction exerted by pleasure and the
force of the desire that was directed toward it constituted, together with the action of the
aphrodisia itself, a solid unity. . . . In the experience of the aphrodisia on the other hand,
act, desire, and pleasure formed an ensemble whose elements were distinguishable cer-
tainly, but closely bound to one another. It was precisely their close linkage that constituted
one of the essential characteristics of that form of activity. (UP, 42–3)
The quotation is useful to focus on the role of the concept of pleasure in directing Fou-
cault’s investigation on the hermeneutics of desire in antiquity. This whole grid, in which
pleasure is located, is not only an instrument of intelligibility of the aphrodisia, under-
stood as a specific isolated phenomenon, but also the instrument to historicize, to operate
a periodization of desire understood as a theme of ethical reflection. In the interview, ‘On
the Genealogy of Ethics’, Foucault insists on the importance of the acts that, although
conceived as unified with pleasure and desire, remain in antiquity the privileged objects
of ethical problematizing. Most important, however, is that the scheme acts-pleasure-
desire is identified as a paradigm that holds together the various forms historically
assumed by desire:
If, by sexual behaviour, we understand the three poles – acts, pleasure, and desire – we have
the Greek ‘formula’, which is the same at the first and at the second stage. In this
Greek formula what is underscored is ‘acts’, with pleasure and desire as subsidiary:
acte-plaisir-[de´sir]. I have put desire in brackets because I think that in the Stoic ethics you
start a kind of elision of desire; desire begins to be condemned. The Chinese ‘formula’
would be plaisir-de´sir-[acte]. Acts are put aside because you have to restrain acts in order
to get the maximum duration and intensity of pleasure. The Christian ‘formula’ puts an
accent on desire and tries to eradicate it. Acts have to become something neutral; you have
to act only to produce children or to fulfill your conjugal duty. And pleasure is both practi-
cally and theoretically excluded: [de´sir]-acte-[plaisir]. Desire is practically – you have to
eradicate your desire – but theoretically very important. And I could say the modern ‘for-
mula’ is desire, which is theoretically underlined and practically accepted, since you have to
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liberate your own desire. Acts are not very important, and pleasure – nobody knows what it
is!30
9 For a critique of universal and transcendence

For Hadot, the possibility of a distinction between pleasure and joy depends, as we have
seen, on a reading strategy entirely anchored to the problem of the individual’s self-
transcendence toward a new relationship with exteriority, a relationship on the basis
of which one participates in a universalized and universalizing dimension. We have
already inquired whether this transcendence is to be understood as going beyond one’s
own consciousness, losing its boundaries through a motion of ‘simplification of the
view’, or whether it is to be understood as a long and hard ascesis toward a universal
perspective related to an exteriority that can be reached with a series of spiritual exer-
cises strongly conditioned by the knowledge of nature – indeed, we saw that for the
Stoics physics is practised right as a spiritual exercise.
Unhindered from demands of historical-doctrinal reconstruction, Foucault turns all
his attention to the forms of subjectivation produced by practices tout court. He rejects
fencing the practices within the narrow horizon of theory. A practice of the self is not free
from thought contents, this is clear; however, what interests Foucault is its performative
reach on the historical modalities through which a subjectivity constitutes its experience
of the self. From this point of view, we find then a sharp rejection both of the perspective
that makes the motion of transcendence absolute, and of the anchoring of practices to a
universalizing perspective.
Moreover, the act that elevates the individual to a perspective that is within him but at
the same time transcends him, so important for Hadot, remains for Foucault an act of
self-reflection. For him, one does not get out of the relationship that subjectivity has with
itself. Far from conceiving the latter as a form of solipsism, he projects the relationship
with exteriority as seen by Hadot – that is, as the participation to a universal order, which
is nature’s as much as reason’s – on a level absolutely immanent to the subjectivity itself.
In Foucault’s 1982 lectures on Seneca’s Questiones naturales, we see clearly how the
relationship with nature and the exercise of the view from above are regarded as very
relevant to understand the processes of subjectivation in question. Nevertheless, the dif-
ference from Hadot’s position is that, despite the contemplation of an order that appears
as universal to the Stoic’s eye, ultimately this relationship between a universal ‘that
appears’ and the individual who experiences it remains entirely within the subjectivity
and its self-reflexive and, above all, self-performative and ethical dynamics. In this
respect Foucault, in the seminar held in Berkeley in April 1983, answers a precise ques-
tion of his interlocutor’s concerning the importance of the ‘cosmos’ in ancient thought:
I believe that what is said about the relationship with the cosmos in the Stoicism and, in
general, in ancient philosophy, must be somewhat modulated. For it is a curiously recurring
theme, present in all ancient philosophy from Socrates to Epictetus, that there is no need to
know anything about those useless things concerning astronomy and non-medicinal plants
and what happens at the bottom of the sea . . . All of this is incessantly found, and it is
1013

certain that Plato and Aristotle are exceptions in this regard. They are not at all the most
typical representatives of ancient thought. They are monsters in respect to ancient thought,
in which one finds instead continuously this theme that one must occupy oneself (s’occuper)
[sic] only with what is directly useful to living. It is found in Socrates, in at least all the later
Stoicism, in Epictetus and in Epicurus. Therefore, this relationship with the cosmos, which
is indeed present, is anyhow a relationship well characterized by the importance of the rela-
tionship with oneself (rapport à soi). One has a relationship with the cosmos in so far as the
cosmos has a relationship with oneself.31
This first refusal to absolutize the universal in a physical sense is directly connected to
a second refusal, namely, that of the universal perspective that transcends the individual.
In fact, this universal, if posited paradoxically as both internal to the self and separated
from it, leads in any case to theorization (a sort of contemplative space that polarizes an
objectivizing tension, in the sense that what is separated from the self takes up a form
anyhow just because it is posited as separated). This theorization introduces, as we have
already mentioned, a normative exteriority that rests on what Derrida would call the
metaphysical thought of presence. The universal, not only as concrete universal, which
has, that is, its own theoretical characteristics and axiological implications, but the very
form of the universal is rejected by Foucault from his first work to the last thanks to the
genealogization of processes that lead to its own constitution, in other terms, the histor-
ical dynamics that make it appear as such.
In this way the historical-doctrinal relevance that Hadot attributes to the Stoics’
‘ve´ritable moi’ is played down by a genealogical approach that focuses on the constitu-
tion of the relationship of the self with the self through the ‘practices of the self’. Atten-
tion to the latter steers the genealogy toward new strategies of historical classification of
the processes that concern the constitution of the self. These classifications go beyond
the historical-philological considerations of single terms, which are no longer examined
exclusively in their original doctrinal dimension. A new history can therefore be
glimpsed behind these terms, since the sense settled under these notions is interrogated
with questions that are not driven by the need to clarify or expound a doctrinal content,
but by the attempt to display historically modes of ethical reflection, forms of subjecti-
vation that are connected to a moral dimension and refer to a series of techniques applied
by the self on the self in a performative sense.
Notes
1. P. Hadot, ‘Réflexions sur la notion de ‘‘culture de soi’’’, in Michel Foucault philosophe.
Rencontre internationale, Paris 9, 10, 11 janvier 1988 (Paris: Seuil, 1989), available in
P. Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002), English-
language edn ‘Reflections on the Idea of ‘‘Cultivation of the Self’’’, in Philosophy as a Way
of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. M. Chase (Oxford and New
York: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 206–13, in particular p. 207; hereafter cited as RCS.
2. See P. Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre. Entretiens avec Jeanne Carlier et
Arnold I. Davidson (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), p. 216; hereafter cited as PhMV; see also
P. Hadot, Qu’est ce que la philosophie antique? (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), English-language
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edn What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. M. Chase (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2002), p. 127; hereafter cited as WAPh.
3. M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualite´, vol. 3, Le souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), English-
language edn The History of Sexuality, vol. III, The Care of the Self (New York: Vintage
Books, 1986), p. 66; hereafter cited as CS.
4. See also PhMV, p. 217.
5. P. Hadot, ‘Le sage et le monde’, in Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, pp.
343–60 (my trans.); hereafter cited as SM. The part discussed here is not included in the Eng-
lish translation that I have used elsewhere (see note 1).
6. M. Foucault, L’Hermeńeutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France: 1981–1982 (Paris:
Gallimard-Le Seuil, 2001), English-language edn The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures
at the Collège de France, 1981–82, trans. G. Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005); hereafter cited as HS. See in particular the lectures of 20 January on ‘epimeleia heau-
toú’; of 10 February on Epicureans’ ‘physiologia’; of 17 February on the ‘Mastery of the Self’.
7. P. Grimal, Seńèque ou la conscience de l’Empire (Paris: Fayard, 1991[1978], pp. 331–3; see
also pp. 358–410.
8. P. Hadot, ‘Modèles de bonheur’, in La Vie spirituelle 72 (1992): 33–43, available in P. Hadot,
E´tudes de philosophie ancienne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998), pp. 327–40 ; hereafter cited
as MdB.
9. P. Hadot, Plotin ou la simplicite´ du regard, 4th edn, revised and enlarged (Paris: Gallimard,
1997[1963]); hereafter cited as PSR. The parts discussed here were not included in the 3rd
edn, on which the English translation Plotinus, or The Simplicity of Vision, trans. M. Chase
(Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1993) is based; hereafter cited as PSV.
10. P. Hadot, ‘La figure du sage’, first published in Les sagesses du monde (Paris: Éditions Uni-
versitaires, 1991), pp. 9–26, available in Hadot, E´tudes de philosophie ancienne, pp. 231–54,
esp. p. 242; hereafter cited as FdS (my translation).
11. P. Hadot, La citadelle inte´rieure (Paris: Fayard, 1992); English-language edn The Inner Cita-
del: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. M. Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1998), p. 235; hereafter cited as IC.
12. The text continues: ‘as we have seen, man fulfils his function qua man, and follows his nature
as well as universal Nature, when he consents to order: the order of the universe as fixed by
Destiny; the order of the City of the World and of human beings, based as it is upon the mutual
attraction of rational beings, and hence on the proper nature of mankind; and finally to order of
discourse, which reproduces the relation which Nature has established between substances and
attributes, and above all between events which necessarily follow upon one another’ (IC,
p. 239).
13. We have already glimpsed, in the case of the Aristotelian pleasure, how difficult the descrip-
tion of this kind of pleasure was, a pleasure bound to contemplation and to the relationship that
this state has with joy, which is a permanent characteristic of God’s act of self-contemplation.
From this point of view, the state experienced by man when practising contemplation is
sometimes described as accompanied by joy. Elsewhere it is instead described by Hadot as
accompanied by pleasure (WAPh, pp. 77–90). On the other hand, we noted above that Hadot,
in ‘Modèles de bonheur’, is ultimately forced to define paradoxically this kind of inner state as
‘a certain hedonism’. All of this is still more problematic if one considers that precisely the
Stoic model of happiness had been defined as different from Platonic, Aristotelic and Plotinian
1015

models because it constituted the most extreme attempt to purify oneself just of any hedonism
(MdB, p. 332).
14. We leave aside the question of how to understand the concept of love that prompted Hadot to
use, as we have seen, the notion of hedonism.
15. All these points, very relevant to Stoic philosophy, and fundamental for both Hadot and Fou-
cault, cannot be dealt with here. See WAPh, pp. 126–39, in particular pp. 135 ff.; P. Hadot,
‘Marcus Aurelius’, in Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, pp. 179–205; and IC, pp. 85–6,
142–3. For the premeditatio malorum, IC, pp. 168–72. For ‘The View from Above’ and the
importance that the knowledge of nature has in Stoic philosophy, see ‘The View from Above’,
in Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, pp. 238–50; and (for Hadot’s claim that Foucault does
not talk about it sufficiently or does not reserve for it the proper importance), Foucault, HS,
namely the lecture of 17 February 1982 (hours I and II), in which passages from Seneca’s
Questiones naturales are examined. But relatively to what discussed above, the fundamental
parts are those on the essential co-implication of self-knowledge and knowledge of the world,
on the liberating effect of the knowledge of the latter and, of course, on ‘The View from
Above’.
16. Here, it does not even appear presumable that the sage feels joy and pleasure when he arrives
at the contemplation of the god, and only then, since the state of divine beatitude is defined as
pleasure. Hence, it is not the extreme degree of a spiritual exercise aiming at a transcendent
level that, once attained, distils pleasure into joy.
17. See also WAPh, p. 125: ‘[living] in profound gratitude toward nature and life, which con-
stantly offer us pleasure and joy – if only we know how to find’; and again, ‘in this way the
divine power does not lie in creative power but in the way of being: peace, pleasure, joy’ (FdS,
p. 240; emphasis added). Soon thereafter we find an analogous overlap: ‘For them [the sages],
the gods are models of serenity, peace, simple joy. They are friends, equals, who are invited to
celebrate in joy in occasion of religious festivities and who, in turn, invite the sages to partic-
ipate in their life of beatitude. . . . On the other hand, this presupposes [sc.: the ascesis of
desires], even though the Epicureans do not say so explicitly, that one is capable of enjoying
all that is produced [fait] by the pleasure of divine existence, that is, the pleasure of the con-
sciousness of existing’ (FdS, p. 241; emphasis added).
18. Let us recall that this subdivision was effected in ‘Modèles de bonheur’, in relation to the way
in which men can participate in divine beatitude.
19. For the Epicurean ascesis of desires see WAPh, pp. 117, 122–4.
20. We refer to the description of physics and canonics as theories ‘functional’ to a specific choice
of life; a choice not directed by a prior theoretical conception but by a practical demand deriv-
ing from the experience of the flesh: ‘Above all, we must not imagine Epicurean physics as a
scientific theory, intended to reply a objective, disinterested questions. The ancient knew that
the Epicureans were hostile to the idea of a science studied for its own sake. Indeed, philoso-
phical theory is here merely the expression and consequence of the original choice of life, and
a means of obtaining peace of mind and pure pleasure’ (WAPh, p. 118).
21. We believe that in this case the normative notion of transcendence is to be understood not as
something that transcends the subject’s abilities of knowledge and judgement, but, as Hadot
himself suggests when he specifies his criticism to Foucault’s approach, as ‘another kind of
exteriorization, another relationship with ‘‘the exterior’’’, which opens up a new perspective,
the access to a further spiritual level (RCS, p. 211). As for the importance of this notion in the
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thought of the ‘philosopher’ Hadot it is sufficient; as an example, see SM, or the last part of
What is Ancient Philosophy?, under the heading ‘Questions and Perspectives’.
22. M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualite´, vol. 2, L’usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1984),
English-language edn The History of Sexuality, vol. II, The Use of Pleasure (New York : Vin-
tage Books, 1985), p. 29 ; hereafter cited as UP.
23. M. Foucault, ‘La souci de la vérité’, in Dits et Ećrits, vol. IV (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), p. 674
(my trans.), hereafter cited as DE and SdV respectively.
24. M. Foucault, La volonte´ de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), English-language edn The History
of Sexuality, vol. I, The Will of Knowledge (New York: Vintage Books, 1998[1978]).
25. M. Foucault, Le courage de la ve´rite´. Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres, vol. II, Cours au
Collège de France. 1983–1984 (Paris: Gallimard, 2009), pp. 248–9 (my trans.).
26. M. Foucault, ‘Michel Foucault, an Interview: Sex, Power and Politics of Identity’, in DE, vol.
IV, pp. 735–46, English-language edn ‘Sex, Power and Politics of Identity’, in Essential
Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. I, Ethics. Subjectivity and Truth ed. P. Rabinow and
N. Rose (New York: New Press, 2003), pp. 163–74; hereafter cited as EST.
27. It is for this reason that Foucault always pays much attention to the relationship between med-
icine and philosophy. On the notion of experience, Foucault specifies, ‘experience is under-
stood as the correlation between fields of knowledge, types of normativity, and forms of
subjectivity in a particular culture’ (UP, p. 4). The relationship between experience and pro-
cesses of subjectivation is very tight: ‘It is experience that is the rationalization of a process
itself provisional, which results in a subject, or better, in several subjects. I would call subjec-
tivation the process through which the constitution of a subject is obtained; more precisely, of
a subjectivity that, as is evident, is only one of the possibilities of organizing a consciousness
of self’; from ‘Le retour de la morale’, in DE, vol. IV, p. 706 (my trans.).
28. F. Gros, ‘Course Context’, in HS, pp. 520–1; emphasis added.
29. This is to be understood in the sense that in these acts, in these practices, the attention to the
mastered, elaborated use of pleasures might well refer to an aspect of the care of the self.
30. M. Foucault, ‘À propos de la généalogie de l’éthique’, in DE, vol. IV, English-language edn
‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: an Overview of Work in Progress’, in EST, pp. 268–9.
31. M. Foucault, ‘À propos de Nietzsche, Habermas, Arendt, McPhearson’ (Berkeley, April
1983); partially published as Politics and Ethics: An Interview, in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Fou-
cault Reader (Harmondsworth, Mx: Penguin, 1984), pp. 373–80, partially unpublished and
taken from the collection Archives de l’IMEC, D250(8) (my trans.).
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1 Hadot’s criticism of Foucault

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2 Joy related to the doctrine of eupátheia

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3 Joy related to the notion of happiness

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4 The relationship between joy and pleasure in the Stoic

Therefore, he identifies a field of intervention, a platform for ascesis, which begins to

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5 The relationship between joy and pleasure in the Epicurean

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by a universalistic and global structure, and by the presence of a part of it in the

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6 The paradigm of transcendence and normative exteriority in

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7 Foucault’s genealogical method

Foucault’s attention is turned precisely onto forms of subjectivation, regardless of the

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8 The function of pleasure in Foucault’s genealogy

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Concerning stoicism, there is no historico-doctrinal presentation of the three periods of the

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9 For a critique of universal and transcendence

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