Politics as government
Abstract
When, in the conclusion to his Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Michel Foucault tells us that political rationality “has grown and imposed itself all throughout the history of Western societies,” his use of the word political clearly invokes the classical understanding set out in, for example, A ristotle’s The Politics, where political means, quite simply, pertain ing to the governm ent of the statethat is, of the polis. Aristotle tells us that “the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the p art” and that it is “a body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life.” Politics, the governm ent of the state, seeks to prom ote the common interest, and political science, Foucault’s political reason, considers how that end m ight best be pursued. In his writings on governm ent, Foucault norm ally uses the term political in precisely this sense-that is, to refer to aspects of the government of a state. Thus far, it might seem, there is nothing particularly unusual, or even interesting, here: politics, political, and related terms are frequently used to refer to the work of governing the population and territory of a state, and Foucault’s usage appears to be in line with this conventional practice.