1.

Neoliberalism and ethics In this paper I will examine the differences between the autonomous neoliberal subject, and Foucaults reflexive (ethical) subject constituted through the care of the self. The contrast between a (docile) subject constituted through disciplinary techniques, and the ethical self constituted through techniques of the self is quite clear. However, with the advent of neoliberalism, which precisely stresses the autonomy of its subjects (and even with the injunction to take care of itself), it becomes more difficult to distinguish the two. Based on a reading of Foucaults late work Fearless Speech I will argue that the difference lies in their specific relation to truth. While the neoliberal subject is caught in a neoliberal regime of truth, the ethical subject only comes into being by practicing techniques of the self that relate to a different truth: a particular truth constituted simultaneously white the constitution of the ethical self a truth that only exist the practices of the self.

2. Foucault and truth Foucaults states in Fearless Speech his aim in most of his works was to analyze the process of a certain problematization which means how and why certain things (behavior, phenomena, processes) became a problem (173). Fearless Speech itself is an analysis of the problematization of truth telling: who is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to power? (169). In this paper I will argue that fearless speech is Foucaults attempt to deal with our contemporary problematization of Truth. If the postmodern condition means a suspicion of any notion of a Universal Truth, truth telling becomes a problem: there is no (preexisting) universal Law or discourse with regard to which one can judge if someone tells the truth. This is similar to the problem of truth telling in Greek society at the end of the 5th century B.C. In Athenian democracy, Parrhesia (truth telling) becomes unlinked from a certain privileged status (the gods and the aristocracy), a status that before was a sign of parrhesia. How can one know whos speaks truth in a democracy? While isonomia (the equality of all citizens in front of the law) and isegoria (the legal right given to everyone to speak his own opinion), could be clearly defined in institutional terms, parrhesia itself could not. The problem for the Greeks was that the conditions or laws for truth telling could not be institutionalized. How is it possible to give legal form to someone who relates truth? There are formal laws of valid reasoning, but no social, political, or institutional laws determining who is able to speak the truth(72). However, the solution was not sought in the rejection of the possibility truth telling as such (as in the postmodern solution), but in the ethics of the care of oneself, an ethics that tries to find a techniques and practices with the aim to be able to relate to truth, to be able to tell the truth, and to be able distinguish between true and false speech (Foucault locates this moment as the origin of the critical attitude in the west). Ethics, the constitution of the self as a work of art, is driven by this

relation of the self to truth. Far from being a relativist, Foucault tries to rehabilitate a notion of truth as a force in ethics. In order to tell the truth in postmodernity, one cannot take recourse to a totalizing metanarrative (i.e. Marxism or religion). Rather, one has to carefully examine ones relation to truth (do I speak on behalf of my self-interest, someone elses, or do I tell the truth?), and through ethical practices, give place to truth as a force in ones actions. Consider this quote of Foucault, where he talks about Senecas care of the self: His pleasures are not the means of revealing what Christians later call concupiscensia (lust). For him, it is a question of his own state and of adding something to the knowledge of the moral precepts. This addition to what is already known is a force, the force which would be able to transform pure knowledge and simple consciousness in a real way of living . . . Seneca has to give a place to truth as a force.