Security, Territory, Population Lectures at the Collège de France 1977--1978

Forward: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana

Introduction: Arnold I. Davidson

One: 11 January 1978
General perspective of the lectures: the study of bio-power. — Five proposals on the analysis of mechanisms of power. — Legal system, disciplinary mechanisms, and security apparatuses ( dipositifs ). Two examples: ( a ) the punishment of theft; ( b ) the treatment of leprosy, plague, and smallpox. — General features of security apparatuses ( 1 ): the spaces of security. — The example of the town. — Three examples of planning urban space in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: ( a ) Alexandre Le Maître’s La Métrpolitée ( 1682 ): ( b ) Richelieu; ( c ) Nantes.

Two: 18 January 1978
General features of apparatuses of security ( II ): relationship to the event: the art of governing and treatment of the uncertain ( l’aléatoire ). — The problem of scarcity ( la disette ) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. — From the mercantilists to the physiocrats. — Differences between apparatuses of security and disciplinary mechanisms in ways of dealing with the event. — The new governmental rationality and the emergence of “population.” — Conclusion on liberalism: liberty as ideology and technique of government.

Three: 25 January 1978
General features of apparatuses of security ( III ). — Normation ( normation ) and normalization. — The example of the epidemic ( smallpox ) and inoculation campaigns in the eighteenth century. — The emergence of new notions: case, risk, danger, and crisis. — The forms of normalization in discipline and in mechanisms of security. — Deployment of a new political technology: the government of populations. — The problem of population in the mercantilists and the physiocrats. — The population as operator ( operateur ) of transformations in domains of knowledge: from the analysis of wealth to political economy, from natural history to biology, from general grammar to historical philology.

Four: 1 February 1978
The problem of “government in the sixteenth century. — Multiplicity of practices of government ( government of self, government of souls, government of children, etcetera ). — The specific problem of the government of the state. — The point of repulsion of the literature on government: Machiavelli’s The Prince. — Brief history of the reception of The Prince until the nineteenth century. — The art of government distinct from the Prince’s simple artfulness. — Example of this new art of government: Guillaume de la Perrière Le Miroir politique ( 1555 ). — A government that finds its end in the “things” to be directed. — Decline of law to the advantage of a variety of tactics. — The historical and institutional obstacles to the implementation of this art of government until the eighteenth century. — The problem of population an essential factor in unblocking the art of government. — The triangle formed by government, population, and political economy. — Questions of method: the project of a history of “governmentality.” Overvaluation of the problem of the state.

Five: 8 February 1978
Why study governmentality? — The problem of the state and population. — Reminder of the general project: triple displacement of the analysis in relation to ( a ) the institution, ( b ) the function, and ( c ) the object. — The stake of this year’s lectures. — Elements for a history of “government.” Its semantic field from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. — The idea of the government of men. Its sources : ( A ) The organization of a pastoral power in the pre-Christian and Christian East. ( B ) Spiritual direction ( direction de conscience ). — First outline of the pastorate. Its specific features: ( a ) it is exercised over a multiplicity on the move; ( b ) it is a fundamentally beneficent power  with salvation of the flocks as its objective; ( c ) it is a power which individualizes. Omnes et singulatim. The paradox of the shepherd ( berger ). —The institutionalization of the pastorate by the Christian Church.

Six: 15 February 1978
Analysis of the pastorate ( continuation ). — The problem of the shepherd-flock relationship in Greek literature and thought: Homer, the Pythagorean tradition. Rareness of the shepherd metaphor in classical political literature ( Isocrates, Demosthenes ). — A major exception: Plato’s The Statesman. The use of the metaphor in other Plato texts ( Critias, Laws, The Republic ). The critique of the idea of a magistrate-shepherd in The Statesman. The pastoral metaphor applied to the doctor, farmer, gymnast, and teacher. — The history of the pastorate in the West, as a model of the government of men, in inseparable from Christianity. Its transformations and crises up to the eighteenth century. Need for a history of the pastorate. — Characteristics of the “government of souls”: encompassing power coextensive with the organization of the Church and distinct from political power. — The problem of the relationships between political power and pastoral power in the West. Comparison with the Russian tradition.

Seven: 22 February 1978
Analysis of the pastorate ( end ). — Specificity of the Christian pastorate in comparison with Eastern and Hebraic traditions. — An art of governing men. Its role in the history of governmentality. — Main features of the Christian pastorate from the third to the sixth century ( Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Cassian, Saint Benedict ): ( 1 ) the relationship to salvation. An economy of merits and faults: ( a ) the principle of analytical responsibility; ( b ) the principle of exhaustive and instantaneous transfer; ( c ) the principle of sacrificial reversal; ( d ) the principle of alternate correspondence. ( 2 ) The relationship to the law: institution of a relationship of complete subordination of the sheep to the person who directs them. An individual and non-finalized relationship. Difference between Greek and Christian apatheia. ( 3 ) The relationship to the truth; the production of hidden truths. Pastoral teaching and spiritual direction. — Conclusion: an absolutely new form of power that marks the appearance of specific modes of individualization. Its decisive importance for the history of the subject.

Eight: 1 March 1978
The notion of “conduct.” — The crisis of the pastorate. — Revolts of conduct in the field of the pastorate. — The shift of forms of resistance to the borders of political institutions in the modern age: examples of the army, secret societies, and medicine. — Problem of vocabulary: “Revolts of conduct,” “insubordination” ( insoumission ),” “dissidence,” and “counter-conduct.” Pastoral counter-conducts. Historical reminder: ( a ) asceticism; ( b ) communities; ( c ) mysticism; ( d ) Scripture; ( e ) eschatological beliefs. — Conclusion: what is at stake in the reference to the notion of “pastoral power” for an analysis of the modes of exercise of power in general.

Nine: 8 March 1978
From the pastoral of souls to the political government of men. — General context of this transformation: the crisis of the pastorate and the insurrections of conduct in the sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformation and the Counter Reformation. Other factors. — Two notable phenomena; the intensification of the religious pastorate and the increasing question of conduct, on both private and public levels. — Governmental reason specific to the exercise of sovereignty. — Comparison with Saint Thomas. — Break-up of the cosmological-theological continuum. — The question of the art of governing. — Comment on the problem of intelligibility in history. — Raison d’État ( 1 ): newness and object of scandal. — Three focal points of the polemical debate around raison d’État: Machiavelli, “politics” ( la “politique” ), and the “state.”

Ten: 15 March 1978
Raison d’État ( II ): its definition and principal characteristics in the seventeenth century. — The new model of historical temporality entailed by raison d’État. — Specific features of  raison d’État with regard to pastoral government: ( 1 ) The problem of salvation: the theory of coup d’État ( Naudé ). Necessity, violence, theatricality. — ( 2 ) The problem of obedience. Bacon: the question of sedition. Differences between Bacon and Machiavelli. — ( 3 ) The problem of truth: from the wisdom of the prince to knowledge of the state. Birth of statistics. The problem of the secret. — The reflexive prism in which the problem of the state appeared. — Presence-absence of “population” in this new problematic.

Eleven: 22 March 1978
Raison d’État ( III ). — The state as principle of intelligibility and as objective. — The functioning of this governmental reason: ( A ) In theoretical texts. The theory of the preservation of the state. ( B ) In political practice. Competition between states. — The Treaty of Westphalia and the end of the Roman Empire. — Force, a new element of political reason. — Politics and the dynamic of forces. — The first technological ensemble typical of this new art of government: the diplomatic-military system. — Its objective: the search for a European balance. What is Europe? The idea of “balance.” — Its instruments: ( 1 ) war; ( 2 ) diplomacy; ( 3 ) the installation of a permanent military apparatus ( dispositif ).

Twelve: 29 March 1978
The second technological assemblage characteristic of the new art of government according to raison d’État: police. Traditional meanings of the word up to the sixteenth century. Its new sense in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: calculation and technique making possible the good sue of the state’s forces. — The triple relationship between the system of European balance and police. — Diversity of Italian, German, and French situations. — Turquet de Mayerne, La Monarchie aristodémocratique. — The control of human activity as constitutive element of the force of the state. — Objects of police: ( 1 ) the number of citizens; ( 2 ) the necessities of life; ( 3 ) health; ( 4 ) occupations; ( 5 ) the coexistence and circulation of men. — Police as the art of managing life and the well-being of populations.

Thirteen: 5 April 1978
Police ( continuation ). — Delamare. — The town as site for the development of police. Police and urban regulation. Urbanization of the territory. Relationship between police and the mercantilist problematic. — Emergence of the market town. — Methods of police. Difference between police and justice. An essentially regulatory type of power. Regulation and discipline. — Return to the problem of grain. — Criticism of the police state on the basis of the problem of scarcity. — The theses of the économistes. — The transformations of raison d’État: ( 1 ) the naturalness of society; ( 2 ) new relationships between power and knowledge; ( 3 ) taking charge of the population ( public hygiene, demography, etc. ); ( 4 ) new forms of state intervention; ( 5 ) the status of liberty. — Elements of the new art of government: economic practice, management of the population, law and respect for liberties, police with a repressive function. — Different forms of counter-conduct relative to this governmentality. — General conclusion.

Course Summary

Course Context

Index of Names

Subject Index

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