Pastoral state and men's political government

Abstract

Using the Foucaultian framework, we examine here the basic assumption of the modern and contemporary political order, namely the decisive conception that men are governable. In the genealogical path opened by Michel Foucault we examined the political reworking of what was originally the Judeo-Christian spiritual power of governing souls. For Foucault, the modern political government of men is situated at the intersection of two sets of powers foreshadowed in early Christianity: a) the pastoral art of conducting conduct displaced from the eschatological destination of souls to the calculated management of (biopolitical) biological life and b) the dual production of the knowledge necessary for good governance; the utilitarian production of the truth that serves the pastoral art of government itself and the pure or aleturgical manifestation of the truth with regard to the governable.