The Best Medicine

In the treatment and analyzing of the key works and philosophies of renowned modern thinkers Foucault and Appiah, it is necessary to distinguish their methods and key values that they both institute on each of their individual lines of criticism and argument, but still emphasize that they share the singular spirit of upholding and championing the individuality of a person as a key factor in the development of their best self, as well as constructing mankind’s most effective route to achieve a state of overall well-being. Foucalt and Appiah attempt to uncover and ponder the nature of development in order to maximize the quality of man’s attitude towards his own personhood and subsequently his own objectives in life, therein ultimately becoming lucid of his own societal place and potential. Appiah and Foucalt approach this task with differing methods, specifically in scholarly reference and critique, but when observed and analyzed closely it is clear that they argue to meet very similar quintessential ends. However, establishing a dichotomy between these two authors is essential to understand the full distinction of their individual ideologies, as both hold significant and signature merits to personal, social, and political philosophy. The values and ideas brought forth into their arguments also are often initially illustrated by the author’s affirmations or critiques on the argument of a peer, such as Mill, Kant, or other historical philosophers. Themes such as enlightenment, individuality, historical analysis, modernity, autonomy, and self-identification are all significant players in the construction of political theory for these two philosophers. In this paper, I will be illustrating and analyzing the distinctive arguments these authors make in their shared and distinctive ideologies regarding the well-being of mankind.

Beginning with Appiah, it is important to establish his core belief regarding liberty, as a launching point for the cultivation of individuality as an element of the social good. He asserts that liberty is essential to man’s well-being because it promotes man’s capacity for discovering the untampered truth, due to its ability to allow man to express himself freely while in a liberated state as well as the capacity for the man’s ideas to be tested in public debate (Appiah, 4). However, he says it is all part of the ends of pursuing individuality as a significant virtue in itself, which is maximized in conjunction with man’s autonomy and his ability to make his own decisions. This belief is reflected in Appiah’s reference to Mr. Stevens, a butler in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day in which Mr. Stevens is the caretaker of a master and spends his life in servitude to this man (Appiah, 9). However, where you would expect one to be rather dreary and weathered, Mr. Stevens is lively and full of enthusiasm for his work. He sees himself as key to the achievements and endeavors of his master and carries himself so as a result. He states that he concentrates on what is “within his realm” as this is what he individually holds the capacity to do, and further still is embellished in ambition to become even more capable in his chosen line of work(Appiah, 9). Stevens reflects Mill’s and Appiah’s belief that to choose one’s life path is to use all his core faculties as an autonomous being, and even goes so far as to claim that when one holds the power to choose one’s path in life, it becomes not merely an inherent quality of life simply because one would always make the best decisions, on the contrary he argues that one will often make bad decisions, but because these decisions are indisputably individual to that person, it will prove as conducive to the person’s overall well-being (Appiah, 8).

As we can see, Appiah reflects quite liberal views on the free-will of mankind, asserting that a state of well-being comes primarily from its ability to choose paths of life for oneself and conjure a set of goals that compound over one another until a full plan of life is set in place. While this is a noble ideology, it is not one without critique. Critics, such as J. L. Mackie argues that people do not make end-all-be-all decisions in life or all encompassing plans for oneself, especially regarding children or people underdeveloped faculties, as much as they would rather “choose to pursue various activities from time to time” reflecting a larger belief in the volatility of people’s impulse rather than a belief in their autonomous nature. (Appiah, 7) Critics of Appiah and Mill’s theory also assert that there are certain events in one’s life that one cannot simply plan for, including the creation of metaphysical relationships like that of love or friendship. Appiah however retorts that life plans are meant not to be fixed and unmoving but are subject to change, fluidity, and evolution. He explains that just because one speaks of his plan, this does not mean that it is not subject to reverse, recourse, or transformation as man may subject himself to “experiments in living” (Appiah, 9). To back these claims, he references the life of John Mill who undoubtedly had a clear and set plan for life, enveloped in education and self-development which admittedly, was made very important to him by his father. But when Mill eventually became estranged to virtually everyone that he interacted with in life, due to his “overdeveloped faculties of discrimination” he felt loneliness and decided to essentially deprogram his life and head in another direction (Appiah, 8). From there and in concurrence with one of the points of criticism, Mill found unforeseen love in Mrs. Harriet Hardy Taylor but still continued on his path as an academic, even writing his greatest work On Liberty after this meeting. This reflects man’s capacity to evolve within a particular life plan without ever necessarily having to diminish or scrap it.

Foucault on the other hand is somewhat indiscriminate in the claim that individuality is a defining merit of a well-fulfilled life, but when analyzing his work we can infer that this is, in a sense, the spirit behind the message wedged into his rather unique methods of approaching philosophy. In The Great Confinement the integrity of hospitals as genuine medical institutions has been, in Foucault's eyes, compromised by an administrative and oppressive bureaucracy headed by the national sovereignty (Foucault, 126). He outlines that the system that was once a respectable and virtuous staple of civilization, has now been effectively taken over by the royal power and seeks to imprison the sick, the poor, and the mad, all together into one quasi-authoritative institution that essentially holds little to no accountability to reason and justice (Foucault, 125). This new form of hospital essentially becomes the jailhouse for those who have not yet committed a crime, the only transgressions deemed to those who are imprisoned being “idleness” or a refusal to work for their wages. However this, to the view of the bourgeois as well as the state, is a crime worthy of disciplinary tactics. As this practice of imprisonment becomes more and more commonplace, the practice of soliciting cheap labor out of those imprisoned becomes normal as well, as hospital prisoners are forced to work and make only a fraction of their true labor value, while still being deliberated from their free will (Foucault, 132). This transforms the practice of confinement once again, however this one into a tactic of economics that lies behind the guise of morality. Foucault sees this as a strange and sinister phenomenon where moral obligation and civil law have effectively crossed paths and become the bringer of idealistic moral rectitude to enforce work as reparation to the crime of poverty. He recognizes that the bourgeois is entranced with this societal system as the city becomes a place of idealistic moral excellence, keeping the morally wretched locked behind the walls of the “noble” hospitals (Foucault, 138). Foucault ultimately contends through his criticism that the deliberation of the impoverished through confinement and forced labor, strips them of their autonomy and ability to practice free choice, condemning them to a life without ever a chance to develop any form of individuality. Furthermore, Foucault’s treatment of the asylum system under administrators such as Tuke and Pinel, furthers Foucault’s commitment to individuality as a virtue, criticizing the controlling and oppressive methods that were employed in order to cure the mad of its illness, effectively restricting and squeezing out any slivers of individuality that those imprisoned may have had to their character. Foucault describes the methods of asylum under Tuke as employing a method of conformity and an imposition of reason onto those that inherently stretch the boundaries of it, controlling and depressing the mind until it’s lost all sense of its past autonomy and individual worldview (Foucault, 163). Foucault sees this practice as inherently unethical and uninspired as he recognizes the changing nature of the doctor-patient relationship, understanding that the doctor now sees the patient as something less “miraculous” and more commonplace and subject to discrimination, belittlement, and cure instead of acceptance and curiosity.

Appiah and Foucault’s work maintains an element of optimism and liberalism in their theories of mankind’s prosperity but reach their conclusions in vastly different ways. One might even say that Appiah provides the assertion to the philosophical question and Foucault provides the evidence. Both are deeply concerned with the issue of man’s liberation into individuals and exercising of free thought and action. While they are not both clearly stated to have the same philosophies on the matter, they do reveal the same truths, that oppression and domination can restrict the spirit of an individual, controlling their well-being which, to Appiah and Foucault, is the same thing as stripping it away.