Michel Foucault as "Thin" Communitarian: Difference, Community, Democracy

Abstract

Rather than advocating a variant of ethical dandyism revolving around individualistic withdrawal and the aesthetic intensification of sexual pleasures, this article argues that Foucault's ethical and political ouvre can best be represented as a form of nonmonistic communitariamsm termed "thin" communitarianism. In this model, difference and unity are paired or balanced. Although difference is given greater scope than in traditional enlightenment philosophical theorizing, the author argues that it must be nevertheless contextualized in relation to a model of community if it is to be coherent. Extending the argument further, he argues that a form of democratic associationism better fits the type of political community he intends. In this sense, Foucault is best represented as a "thin" communitarian, not in the sense of Rawls, Habermas, or the premodern notion of a community as having a substantive common goal or unified bond (communio), but rather as a interactive multiplicity (commercium) not ruled by any organizing or binding law or principle, and as a structure of tacit agreements, understandings, and rules that represent the basis of political reason as a pragmatic code for problem solving rather than a set of universal epistemological principles based on truth.