Three unexpected partners: Zoe, Bios, and the Homo Sacer

What makes a beauty of Giorgio Agamben’s depiction of the homo sacer (in English, sacred man) is the fact that even if the said individual is condemned by the state to death, wherein anyone can kill him, he is at the same time forbidden to be sacrificed. The beauty of this, in contrast to Michel Foucault’s biopolitics, is that Agamben goes back to the classical Greek politics of Aristotle, wherein life is distinctively different into two terms, which is the zoe and the bios.
The zoe is referred to life in general, as life is an essential part of man, that man should know how to manage and live his life. On the other hand, the bios, as Aristotle said in his book Nicomachean Ethics, is the life that is desired in a city, which is the good life. The good life, hence, is the kind of life the city wants to share with the individuals who are a part of that state. Agamben’s separation of life into the traditional way, as opposed to Foucault’s biopolitics where the very essence of life is the source of political power, and hence invested with politics, is very clear to the people that there is a distinction of life, which was pointed out by Aristotle but Foucualt has neglected.
Going back to the distinction of the zoe and the bios, such distinction is made that in the bios, a series of exclusions in the polis is involved, giving the zoe no involvement in politics. But although the zoe is excluded in the political sphere, which is here represented by the bios, it has been explicitly mentioned that the zoe is still, in one way or another, included within the bios. Although the bios is a privileged space that the zoe cannot be part of, it can still be seen that the inclusiveness of the zoe is still evident by the fact that a particular aspect of life is still respected in the polis. Even if the zoe, which can be likened to the aliens and outcasts of the polis, is excluded in being involved together with the bios, which is likened to the intellectual elites, middle class, and businessmen of that state, the inclusion of the zoe would still manifest to life in general as a basic structure to politics, similar to that of Foucault’s biopolitics.
But however, it must be clear that Agamben is pointing out the involvement of life with politics as different to that of Foucault’s biopolitics: Foucault makes no distinction of life in his definition of biopolitics while Agamben makes that distinction in his work on the homo sacer.
In contemporary times, the homo sacer can be likened to threats that are imposed to structures on a daily basis. As these threats, like the homo sacer, which cannot be sacrificed but can be destroyed, these threats are addressed by the sovereign through making ways or means in order to destroy that threat and at the same time maintaining the overall integrity of the state. In such manner, the use of power here is not for legitimization purposes but for emergency and critical situations, which is similar in matter in the formation of martial law in the Philippine constitution, wherein the threat becomes to strong for the traditional sovereign to handle, causing the government to make more use of the power it has to address that threat. In addition, the homo sacer cannot be likened to the bare life, the life where only the basic necessities that man needs for survival, as bare life does not have the sacredness the homo sacer has. Because of the sacredness of the homo sacer, of which bare life does not have, democracy is possible such that the homo sacer can be killed by anyone but at the same time contradicts it because of the fact that is sacred.
To understand the homo sacer much better, Agamben points out that he is not contradicting what is Foucault pointing out with regards to biopolitics; instead, what Agamben wants us to do is not to resist biopolitical power but to rethink the ethics behind it.
By rethinking the ethics means understanding the human body, specifically ourselves, as a limiting figure in terms of power. For me, such makes sense as the human body itself has its own unique limits. The human body is no invulnerable figure like that of a God; it is because of our limits that we can only do so much, and hence, the presence of the specialty system that Plato has pointed out in The Republic, as individuals have specialized jobs in order to benefit society the most. By understanding ourselves as limiting figures, we are able then to set the limits in society as well, creating what is to be called an ideal type of democracy: a type of political system that gives freedom to its people and at the same time sets just limits to maintain the integrity and equality of society.
Hence, the homo sacer, being a paradoxical figure of the state, is essentially a powerful figure, possibly more powerful than those individuals who make the most of being part of the bios. What makes the homo sacer powerful, despite its paradoxical function in the sovereign, is that it is a determining figure in the state, as despite its condemnation by the state and its mere exclusion to the bios, the homo sacer is still forbidden to be sacrificed by the state, as the state that desires for the bios has still respect for the zoe as well.

Sex was never boring

Among the several theories that may seem easy but is complicated to understand is on the whole notion of sexuality and the politics of gender as for many years, there have been debates on the domination of the female gender or the male gender in various fields. Such was formed out of the female’s desire to gain equal treatment as compared to the male gender; hence the birth of Feminism.
However, the whole notion of Feminism is widely debated, with different beliefs and notion of what is the source of the problem that the phallic remains superior. Feminism is divided into four groups, that is liberal feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminism, and postmodern feminism. All four have clear points, but however, all four of them have loopholes, thus, making their beliefs problematic.
First, let us discuss liberal feminism. In this type of feminism, the main objective it wants is for women to be given rights and ultimately, to work like men. It is good in the sense that it addresses the problem of the legal system being too much in favor of men, but it is still considered to be problematic in the sense that it does not totally address the equality issue properly as their argument would end up with women being identified as men and not as women, which was addressed with the postmodern feminism.
As for socialist feminism, the problem with the economy is addressed through the payment of the wife, who would stay at home to take care of the child, for her duties in forming and rearing the child so that it grows up to be of good use in society. The problem here is that there is no basis on how the wife should be paid, and that it makes love and commitment a commodity, of which cannot happen. In the end, what social feminists are doing to women is that women are treated as a “necessity” for men and society, hence further stripping women of their rights, which liberal feminists were able to address.
Radical feminism takes steps a bit “beyond borders” as it sources the problem at the physical characteristics of the woman. As a resolution, radical feminism aims to create a woman dominating structure through going beyond the body of the woman and creating a reversion of the roles of the male and the female, which is problematic because first it creates a overly dominating woman sphere, and second, their beliefs are just as problematic as that of liberal feminism as the reversal of identity is the same as distorting the identity of the woman into that of a man, which for me is the primary reason why radical feminism is the most problematic of the four types of feminism discussed.
As for postmodern feminism, in my opinion this has to be the least problematic and easiest to understand form of feminism as it properly addresses the identity of women properly through the reformation of women’s way of writing as stories with broken narratives and illogical sequences rather than writing in a phallocentric manner like how men would write, having stories following a single climactic scene. It is similar with radical feminism but it addresses the identity of women in a more rational way.
In light of the issue of sexuality, Michel Foucault, in his book The History of Sexuality, further goes in depth about sexuality, giving the notion of understanding sex as the master explainer behind everything. In his book, he made a clear, elaborated point that even if the Victorian era made an emphasis that sex was considered a taboo and must not be talked about in public, while at the same time people are the more tempted to talk about sex in private, a result of the repressive hypothesis, Foucualt said that sex was never repressed in the first place. The repression issue was just an illusion for people to comply.
In addition, Foucault wants us to understand that such is being done in order to make sex of something useful and productive in society, just in the same light of the birth of the prison as a form of punishment in his other book, Discipline and Punish. Through the use of power, the state has found a way in making the use of sex as “productive” through various sources of power such as the Christian pastoral, the field of medicine, and the like. For the former, as pastors act as shepherds, their role is to be a consultant to the confessor at the confession box, resulting with the confession box as a box wherein the individual asks help in order to improve his/ her sex life, thus giving the pastor the power to “discipline” the sexual desires of the individual.
The rationale behind the “trimming” of sexual practices is in order for the state to first manage the population well and second, in order to prevent individuals from the state to practice unorthodox sex, such as necrophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, and the like. Hence, the objective of repressing sex is to trim the extreme aspects of sex, as there is a multiple center of production, of which Foucualt points out as the general problem of Feminism, as feminism tends to concentrate on one aspect wherein the role of gender involves multiple sources, hence the role and power of gender involving pluralistic sources of power.

Love and Politics: A harmonious relationship?

One of the topics that intrigues me a lot in the field of politics is the possibility of love being in a harmonious relationship with the field of politics. In our discussion about spacing desire, we have talked about how our desire for someone special becomes a present feeling within the space in between you and that special someone. As discussed, it is through that space that allows the existence of desire, but this becomes a problem in contemporary political theory as it is through transcendence that space is abolished, and it should not be the case in terms of love?
Why space should not be abolished in love anyway? The reason is plainly simple: in true love, a couple shows sincere love for each other if they understand and stage their differences towards each other. Even if they may have conflicting personalities, the fact that they understand each other is a good way of defining how space is well-addressed with desire for the other.
But unlike love, contemporary politics destroys that space by making everyone conform to a certain standard, and this is well-evident with communism.
Although communism addresses equality with the state, communism abolishes, however, the space as it gives no room for addressing differences towards each other, meaning there is no understanding between the elite and the commoner and the middle man; it is just a single class all alone within the state. The problem becomes worse as discussed by Foucault, as through making power relations subjective we are changing our discourses for discipline. The more we change our discourses, the more difficult for us to propose a solid, reliable, and usable alternative to improve society.
Having said that, the downfall of contemporary political theory as compared to classical political theory is the fact that the differences between the classes of people within the state are eliminated such that the ultimate objective of contemporary political theory is creating a classless society, where everything is universal and uniform. Such thinking eliminates the hierarchy of the state, which plays an essential role as discussed in Plato’s The Republic, as people have their respective roles, and that they cannot be do-it-all people, one-man bands, or a Mr. Handyman.
In my personal opinion, love and politics can be related to each other in harmony if we talk about it in terms of classical political theory, where classes and hierarchies exists. In classical political theory, differences are well-addressed through the presence of political masks as Machiavelli discussed in The Prince, and the existence of a mysterious creature called the Leviathan in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. During these era of political theory, differences were addressed well in a hierarchal fashion, wherein the public sphere gains control of the law, as these classes conform to rules made by the public and the presence of an unknown entity that people fear the most, thus presenting stability in the state through these laws made by the public for the individual to follow. As the individuals have laws to follow, love can therefore be related to the classical form of politics as the differences between the various classes in the sate, from the elite all the way to the common masses, are addressed through the formation of laws for everyone to comply.
Now going to the modern context, of the likes of Marx and Foucault, the notion of love and politics being able to live together in harmony is destroyed as it treats the human soul as if it were just a part of a never-ending cycle of history that goes on and on. The progression seemed to be not as much as the progression seen through classical times. As evident with Foucault, the use of power relations as means of forming the individuals hence destroys the harmonious relationship of love and politics because instead of an understanding nature where people would be focus on addressing the differences between them, the situation being presented in the contemporary context shows an image of a person who is on top saying “follow my orders or I have you killed” kind of thinking. There leaves no room for any form of change or proposed alternative in improving society. In addition, it has to come always from the laws made from the private sphere and not from the public sphere, as represented through classical political theorists.
Hence, going back to the debate on whether love and politics can go together in a harmonious relationship or not, I believe the answer is a big no given the context of contemporary political theory as it destroys the most important part of desire, which is the space within that desire. Without space, there is no room for change nor room for correction. Through eliminating change we are left with creating various discourses without proposing a concrete alternative to change society. Imposing classless societies and the panopticon as a basis for discipline shows to us our refusal to address our differences towards each other and hence, becoming selfish, which is never the point of true love.

The panopticon and Orientalism: the bridge

One of the very noticeable things that have been observed for the past decades is the constant discrimination of the west to eastern culture, or to make things simple, to a culture of Orientalism. Because of this certain form of discrimination, what is happening to the East culture now is that they have this tendency to be over-influenced by the Western culture, and this is very evident in our own country.
In the Philippines alone, it is evident of how we are overly influenced over the American culture: the preference for McDonalds over Jolibee, Starbucks over Figaro, Levi’s over Bench, and many more countless examples. Also, this mentality that we have possessed affects us Filipinos such that we think very low on ourselves and on our abilities to make world-class products. Our basis of having world-class products are based on how the Americans do it.
This is how capitalism makes the world go round; like the panopticon that Michel Foucault has discussed in his book Discipline and Punish, the panopticon monitors every prisoner it has within the complex such that each prisoner is very conscious of his actions. Going back to the panopticon, the structure of it is circular, with the watchtower located at the center of the circle and the prisoners’ cells are arranged in a way that the watchtower and the person inside the watchtower can see everyone inside the structure, evaluating their every move inside their cells.
The same applies to the Orientalism that Edward Said has presented to us. In his discussion on Orientalism, Said points out that because of the domination of the Western culture over the Eastern culture, a bias was developed that the works from the Western culture are deemed to be superior over the works of the Eastern culture; hence, causing the Eastern culture to conform to the standards of the Western culture to maintain a status of superiority.
Due to the non-recognition of the Eastern works of the Western culture, the competition of the best work, in the literary, movie, scientific, medical, and in other various fields has become always towards to the western culture, of which would not be the case all the time since there are Eastern works that are proven to be greater than those of the Western works, but are, unfortunately, not recognized.
The panopticon, therefore can be applied in a larger, more global scale with the discussion of Said on Orientalism. From our previous discussion of the panopticon, we have said that it is applicable in the Philippine setting as we are given the norms of what it means to be “in” at the fashion scene, and on what it means to be ideally beautiful through the constant persuasion of the capitalists to the masses by telling them to buy their products so that they can be accepted into the societal norm.
Being able to maximize the effect while minimizing the costs, the panopticon concept makes the most of what is expected from the prisoners, which is to make the prisoners docile enough so that he can be productive and of use to what society needs from him. As the prisoner becomes conscious of his acts, he is then trained and exercised to become beneficial and hence, become a norm of society.
As for Orientalism, the application of the panopticon concept is very applicable such that it promotes monopoly on a global basis through removing the competition between the West and the East, making the East docile enough to adapt to Western culture and beliefs, and thus the Western people make the Eastern people docile enough so that they can be of greater use for the West, and hence, creating monopoly on a global scale.
Yet, although the panopticon concept can be well integrated into Said’s Orientalism, there still remain one distinct difference: the panopticon makes the prisoners docile enough for the benefit and for the good os the society, while Orientalism on the other hand makes the Eastern culture docile enough for the benefit of the Western culture, which then arise to racial discrimination.
This, therefore, is the problem of Orientalism that Edward Said wants to point out.
In his work, he emphasized that what is needed to be corrected is that that Western culture should understand that the Eastern culture is not to be considered an inferior culture as both cultures have their unique traits. For Said, it does not mean that what the Eastern culture believes is different from that of the Western culture does not necessitate that the Eastern culture is inferior to that of the Western culture. After all, the Western culture has its good and bad sides.
With this in mind, I believe that although the panopticon is a very useful concept for reforming convicts and prisoners to make them useful to society, the application of the panopticon has its limits, as it is evident with the rise of Orientalism and the West’s discrimination over the East.

Someone is watching over your whole self

As Michel Foucault discusses on the panopticon, one would try to imagine that the panopticon, as Jeremy Bentham conceptualize in 1785, as a place that is best equated to the modern prison. Examples of this would be that of the Muntinlupa prison here in the Philippines.
And yet, one fails to see that the concept of the panopticon can be seen beyond the image of the prison. In fact, there are a lot of good examples of panopticon-structured places, like malls, hospitals, and even your typical school.
The idea of the panopticon was to ensure that the inmates who are within the system will assume that they are always being watched by the watchguards, even if there are times that there are no watchguards actually guarding the panoptic structure.
Because the panopticon is structured such that it sees everyone, this then gives a double edged sword for both the watch guard and the inmate. It benefits the watchguard such that he has a view of practically everyone within the structure, making his guarding duties much easier. On the other hand, this pressures the inmate as he / she cannot determine if he is being watched by the watchguard of his / her acts, making him unable to do whatever act he / she would desire to do.
In the modern context, the panopticon gives an internalization of the gaze by us being succumbed through all of the advertising materials made by the capitalist society. This internalization of the gaze can be seen in quite a number of examples, of which some of them are actually common to the everyday, normal, typical person.
The first case to be discussed is on clothing. Basically, the essence of clothing is to protect our bodies from the harsh particles, from the bad weather, from germs, and the like, which would mean that as for basic clothing all we need is just something to cover our bodies. But in a capitalist perspective, the big companies actually dictate to the human what is in for a particular season in the field of fashion, what is out, what is hot, what is not, what is cool, what is the fad. Because of the existence of “fashion watchdogs”, the typical everyday consumer is then pressured to conform to these standards as he / she perpetually assumes that someone is looking at his / her choice of clothing. Because of this constant watching over him / her, the person would try to avoid such criticism by choosing the good clothes.
An analogy to this is that for example in buying a pair of pants, since the consumer would like to be in and fashionable with his / her friends, that person would have a tendency to buy a pair of pants from Zara or Levi’s, of which costs around three thousand pesos, rather than buying pants from Jag or Bench, in which their pants would not even reach the one thousand mark. The point here is that since the person is being conscious of the kind of clothes he / she would buy, that person would buy a branded one that is suppose to be “more fashionable” than other brands; hence, this creates the continual flow of capitalism in our country. Even if the pants of Bench is similar in terms of function as compared to the pair of Levi’s, the consumer would spend two thousand pesos more for the sake of trying to be “in”, and to prevent any criticism from his / her peers.
The second case would be in terms of beauty. With the advent of beauty critics, people tend to strive for the ideal beauty: white skin, thin and lean structure, straight hair, white and straight teeth, perfect nose, perfect butt, perfect bosom (for the girls) and the like. As a result, the capitalist community respond to the needs of the masses for the ideal beauty through the advent of whitening creams, metathione pills, diet pills, and forms of cosmetic surgery like breast and butt augmentation, face lift, liposuction and many more. As the people, the masses., become more conscious of their overall appearance as they are being “watched” by watchguards, thus pressuring the masses to have a take on these beauty services in order for them to be accepted in society and in order for them to avoid further criticism. For example, if a person knows that he / she’s fat, that person will avail of liposuction services in order to be accepted into society and not be discriminated by their peers as well. If their peers would criticize them for having dark skin, the consumer will find his / her way on how to have a fairer skin, regardless of the cost of having the skin whitened or the cost of taking metathione pills.
If you would come to think of it, the whole panopticon idea of having these watchdogs monitoring inmates and inmates being paranoid that they are being watched is best exemplified with the big brother principle first evident with the advent of Totalitarianism, wherein the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” entails to the people fearing big brother, and thus being more careful of their acts.

The Evolution of Punishment

When the word punishment comes into mind, I think of such a word as a tern that refers to the repression of certain privileges due to an unacceptable behavior. Punishment, in my own understanding, has been an important element towards reforming the person from his or her unacceptable behavior in society through the forms of repressed freedom, penalties, fines, and the like. But that was not the same form of punishment Michel Foucault has talked about in his book, “Discipline and Punish”, towards the first few pages.
Through reading the first few pages of Discipline and Punish, one can perfectly visualize the ancient way of punishment, and that is through a means of public humiliation and brutal, merciless, and slow death of the convicted. The description of such a spectacle during the medieval times may be very disturbing and bloody for the modern man like me, but such spectacle was for me the perfect execution of absolute and infinite power of the prince, the kings, and various leaders. This execution of power was able to present to its people the sense of discipline in the eyes of a prince. This imagery of the overwhelming power of the prince (or any leader during the medieval age perhaps) was the primitive form of punishment that has existed.
Imagine: breaking bones, burning hot pincers, beheadings, horse pulling, limb separations, burning bodies - these very graphic images were not of horror for the people back then, but more of a spectacle. It is like they do not care for the body of the convicted. It is like they do not fear God. It is like the princes are the God themselves. And yet this grand execution of power just showed how fragile it is at the same time; these grand representation of power can go down to the ditch. An example? When people would find out that their prince is useless. The overwhelming power of the Prince in this case can be destroyed or overcome by the people, leading to a great downfall to the prince.
And after decades of years, the definition of punishment has drastically transformed from a brutal, spectacular, majestic scene into a humane, static, and reformist scene.
Through the introduction of the prison, the brutal killings were stopped. The majestic power is gone. The people no longer see a fantastic spectacle of a ruthless death. Instead, we are now faced with the reformation of the human convict through going through a daily routine as he is deprived of his freedom, a cause for his unacceptable and immoral behavior in society. To make things simple, punishment in the modern sense has become a light of hope for the convict instead of a fatal nightmare, as represented with the spectacular death of Damiens the regicide in 1757. Eighty years after his spectacular death, the way convicts were punished became a time-table based way of punishment, where the officials reform the convicts instead of killing them publicly.
Sure the way convicts were punished became somewhat very bland and static, but I believe such change occurred for a reason. One main reason is that power is not absolutely strong and overwhelming at all. Through the existence of a time-table based schema for a prisoner’s daily life, the power of officials are re-channeled such that these officials realize after eighty years since Damiens’ death that these prisoners can actually do something less inhumane; simply speaking, I guess that the officials have a more merciful heart and soul as compared to before, that is why they had a one-hundred-eighty degree change on how they would punish the convicts.
Another plausible reason for this is that the rationale behind a time-based schema as a means of punishment is the fact that the objective of punishment was changed by itself: instead of eliminating the convicts and keep the state pure of immoral individuals, they instead insisted on correcting these individuals, which for me is the more appropriate part. Instead of killing them brutally, they are corrected through enclosing them in a protected area, where they have a daily set of activities, from waking up, eating lunch, attending class, praying, to even leisure time. Such time-based principle has helped the convict to reform himself and save himself from humiliation for his inappropriate acts at the same time.
As a result of this, reforming the convicts would mean for the leader better productivity of the state; through reforming them, they go back to society after serving a number of years in the prison, being able to be of help in the constant progression of the state and society.
This long duration of labor being implemented at the prison becomes like a purgatory for the convicts; they stay in this enclosed, heavily guarded area, they follow a certain schedule and a particular set of activities, and become reformed through education, interaction, and the like, coming down to a point wherein once they go out of the prison, they are a totally different person: a person who is no longer a convict but can serve society.

An herculean principle of being

The rise of modern political thinking is not entirely political in the first place but more of a social thinking. The involvement of the social and the political has to be the biggest flaw modern political theory has made. Instead of creating a progression with the thoughts and theories of the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes and other classical political theorists, modern political theory, as Hannah Arendt said, became the downfall of the political.
How has modernism devolved the human race in terms of political thinking? First is the individualistic tendencies of the human, through the reversal of roles between the public and the private. As we all know, in the classical political thought, the public is governed by law, while the private remains to be free. In the reversal of the public and the private, as evident with modern political thought, the public now becomes a free space for reasoning while the private is now governed by law, and thus promoting self-legitimization in modern political thought.
In fact, in Michel Foucault’s “What is Enlightenment?”, he conforms to the fact that the idea behind enlightenment was never meant to be evolutionary. Instead, Foucault stated that what Kant was proposing with the enlightenment was simply a mere illusion to the human soul, since human being the ultimate arbiter of knowledge can never be placed into context, no matter what manipulation you can make to present the enlightenment as a means of a humanistic and political evolution.
The evidence to such principle? Classical political theory. In St. Augustine’s “City of God,” we have been said and emphasized that man by nature can never be perfect unless he is God. I would use this text in emphasizing the fact that by all means, you can never ever place man as the ultimate person, the perfect being, the creator of perfect laws, and the perfect follower of these crafted laws. That is why social classes exist in the human society, in the “city of humans”!!!
By saying that man is an ultimate arbiter of knowledge, then it is as if you are saying that all of us have the same characteristics, the same abilities, the same knowledge, and the same social classes, which realistically and historically speaking was never the case. Because man is a historical being as Foucualt said , we are formed and we develop through the course of history, and hence, we are crafted by our being overtime, as we gain additional knowledge through innovations and inventions. Through what the Enlightenment is saying, we are all final and can never step up. This has to be one of the major flaws of the Enlightenment, equating society with the political.
Although I am not entirely saying that the Enlightenment has totally wrecked out the evolution of being --- in fact, I am in favor of Kant’s proposal of having the courage to use your own reason ---but for me the Enlightenment has not been crafted very well to fit in the political. The association of the social, as Arendt said, has degraded the being of the human.
In addition to devolution of the being, Foucault also states the fact that with the proposal of the Enlightenment, the “courage of reasoning out on your own” in the public should be placed in a proper context such that there is a boundary on “daring to reason on your own” in the public. In this aspect, Kant conforms to Foucault’s proposition as he states that this “dare to reason” has a limit, as evident in the context of Frederick. Although it may be of something positive to reason out publicly and become quiet in the private, the limit on reasoning out freely in the public can be explained as the sake of preventing any abuse of freedom of reason in the public. Hence, Foucault would explain the courage to reason as a risky move as the Enlightenment challenges in fact the sovereign, the ordered power relations of the state.
The rationale behind this is the distinct difference of living out freedom and having absolute freedom, as discussed by Karl Marx in the Jewish question. Living out freedom means that you are not being repressed by the absolute sovereign of your concerns regarding the stability of the state. Absolute freedom, on the other hand, entails to having no sovereign preventing the public mass on exercising their freedom, whether it is necessary or not. The former is preferred than the latter as it promotes further stability to the state and that the former is what the Enlightenment is pointing out as an emphasis: having the freedom to reason on your own understanding for the good of the state through a better craft of the laws. Foucalt agrees to this as there is a need for critiquing since we are historical beings, and hence, we try to make things better through time. The latter is considered to be dangerous as having no control on the freedom of the being can lead to unnecessary exercise of freedom “based on one’s own understanding”, causing chaos into the state, which for Marx has been the flaw of the Jews as they desire for not having a state at all.