Nietzsche and Foucault

both(prenominal) Nietzsche and Foucault clear similar beliefs almost the family tree of penalisation. On the one hand, Nietzsche argued that the initial earth displays of penalty arose out of our basic primitive instincts to see the wrongdoer punished in a in the populace eye(predicate) manner so everyone who precious to see their suffering (and fit to Nietzsche this mob was composed of anyone who didnt repress their instincts and urges) could do so. Foucault, on the other hand, presents his account as a genealogy.His genealogy gives us an account of the breach from the old method of crowned head strength towards the groundbreaking method of corrective antecedent. In the older placement of penalty, the role to execute and punish was held absolutely by the s everyplaceeign, and all public displays of punishment were displays of the monarch andterflys military unit everywhere their subjects.In the advanced(a) schema, this position relation between th e state and the several(prenominal) quiet down exists, just is done so in a much to a greater extent(prenominal) private bearing. Punishment straightway topics dwelling house behind closed doors, giving devise to the birth of prisons and correctional facilities, exhibiting a to a greater extent disciplinary power. In other words, the dodging of punishment sackinged from public displays of the sovereigns power over their subjects to private rehabilitative processes meant to change the brutal back to normal standards of family.In this canvas I exit explain each(prenominal) of the philosophers ideas about the happy chance in the method and purpose of punishment, and I impart seek how Nietzsches genealogy of morals could further account for this shift. Foucaults investigation into punishment and the origin of punishment begins with his exploration into why people in society con prepargon to standardized norms and how plastered institutions correct peoples deviance aw ay from those norms finished and done exercising their power.He explains that this corrections have been historically carried out in the form of two variant types of power sovereign power and disciplinary power. In crack and Punish, Foucault invokes that sovereign power is held by the attr operateion or ruler of the land and the subjects, historically residing in the form of a fairy or other monarch, and the subjects of such a sovereign are made to condense by their laws and regulations.When a subject breaks a law, their punishment is characterized by extreme force and made to be very public (DP, 7). The deed or punishment itself is roughly often carried out by a state-appointed executioner, working as a locate representative of the sovereigns power in enjoin unitedly to further dissuade the public witnessing the execution of committing other crimes (DP, 9).Around a blow years later, there was a shift away from these public displays of power and fierceness to a more corrective and rehabilitating process. Foucault defines disciplinary power as the power to collapse a wrongdoer to the normative standards of society (DP, 179). As the years go on, power is taken away from a aboriginal body and is exhibited through institutions such as schools, prisons, and hospitals where power and knowledge is maintained through the sciences (e.g. psychology, sociology, and psychiatry) rather than laws.This reinvigoratedfound form of power is exercised over the individuals soul rather by disciplining their body (DP, 30). In other words, these newborn houses of power prefer a correctional approach in order to restore the wrongdoer and cut down on the amount of individuals not adhering to the norms of society (DP, 19).By doing this, disciplinary power and punishment is exercised over subjects through hierarchical observation, correcting individuals based sullen of an accepted norm (DP, 171, 183), and examination, which is characterized by the confluence of observation and normalizing in order to more fully understand the actions and sight-process of the individual, thereby gaining more power over them (191).Foucault further argues that this shift from sovereign to disciplinary power was instantiated by evolution of power the state held (or wanted to implement) over its subjects. The new Enlightenment system of punishment that emerged in the early nineteenth century, although on its face seems to be a reaction against the old system of linking together punishment with violence and spectacle is in point just a new system of power for the state and a new way of exercising control over its subjects.This new system is alleged(a) to be a more tendere way of dealing with offenders it is meant to be seen as a cure in fact however, the opponent is true no longer is it think to punish the individual, rather it is set up to supervise and observe the individual. This system of disciplinary power is no longer anguish the body, rather it i s characterized by the deprivation of some(a) bod of rights and liberties, most often by housing them in some build of correctional institution.However, for Foucault, this does not remove the vituperate and injury of corporal punishment for to discase an individual their rights and freedoms is to inflict a different form of pain. With this current form of punishment, the area has shifted its power into the shadows so to speak.It has distanced itself from grand, gruesome public displays of its power to a more nuanced and clandestine system of private punishment that no longer sates the bloodlust of the crowds that used to watch the executions (because as we will see with Nietzsche, people began to mortify their natural instincts around the time of the slave-morality revolt) but rather focuses its energy on the adulteration of the offenders soul.In his Geneology of Morals, Nietzsche presents his view of how morality (and through that, punishment) has developed over the course of history. Retributivists assert that the essential essence of punishment is contained in the fair and equit qualified deserts it presents the wicked offenders with.To this, Nietzsche claims that this punishment did not come from the thought that the crimes of the guilty must be punishedin fact, he claims that this judgement is a rather late form of human observation and condemnation. Punishment, in Nietzsches mind, came about as the will of the master over the slaves, to modify them to experience and revel in the relish of condemning someone and macrocosm commensurate to abuse someone beneath them.In other words, punishing a wrongdoer was a right of the masters to soak up in severeness, something that was viewed as a haughty trait. However, these values changed after the emergence of Christian ressentiment which flipped the furiousty exhibited by the masters onward from something good to something evil this taught man to be ashamed and to abjure his primal instincts (th ose of the masters) which told him that roughness and abuse was essential to a smart life.Before this reversal, humans celebrated our cruel instincts Without cruelty there is no feast thus the longest and most superannuated part of human history teachesand in punishment there is so much that is festival( Nietzsche, Genealogy , es introduce 2, contribution 6). Nietzsche believed that punishment as it was supposed to be in effect(p) in the days of the masters is no longer how it is actually practiced in modern society.This is because if punishment still represented the sovereign power (as Foucault would put it) of those who punished, we would no longer punish. Originally, punishment came about as the direct expression of the will of the hefty (what Foucault called the sovereign). However, in our modern society, a change has taken places and the roles in punishment have been reversed.Being ruling in ancient times was likened to universe cruel and happy being powerful nowadays is the ability to suppress those instincts, to reject cruelty and through that, punishment. Being able to punish is no longer an act of power over those beneath you those who now punish are too tenuous to be able not to punish.This Christian ideal of ressentiment irrevocably changed who punished and what punishment actually is. Those who are now the punishers take punishment as not being the imposition of their will over those weaker than them but rather as the defending of their idea of justice by retributive means, by curing the sick, or by preventing further breaches of this justice. Nietzsche asserts that our understanding of punishment in modern times is a contradiction of its beginnings.He believes that the implementation of punishmentthe remains of the will to powernow prefers the morality of the weak, and tells them of the enormousness of getting retribution for the crimes committed, or the grandness of doing only that which has utility. Therefore the weak arent creating a new institution of punishment, rather they are transforming the old version under their new masters, into something that directly goes against what punishment was initially supposed to mean.Taking this idea into the perspective of Foucault, Nietzsche would say that the change in the meaning of punishment from that which gloried in public displays of violence to a penitentiary system which targeted the rehabilitation of the captive or to gain some sort of retribution for the criminals offence has less to do with the punished and more to do with the punishers.To Nietzsche, this shift is in accordance with a rejection and downsizing of basic human instincts, where the reveling and celebration of cruelty has been transformed into the idea of retribution or justice.