“Spiritual Gymnastics”: Reflections on Michel Foucault’s On the Government of the Living 1980 Collège de France lectures

Abstract

This review locates the 1980 lectures within the context of the wider discussions of Foucault and religion; highlighting the influence of George Dumézil on the comparative and structural analysis. Assessing the problem of the historical accuracy of Christian history in Foucault’s work and the nature of the archaeological approach, the review explores what would be fair to ask of Foucault’s 1980 lectures on Christianity. The review focuses on the internal consistency, selections and theoretical tensions. While acknowledging that Foucault picks up the important shift towards external ritual performance of early Christian life, the review questions Foucault’s lack of appreciation of the notion of “sacramentum,” which informs the central interpretative framework of “truth acts.” The review suggests that Foucault’s thinking is shaped by an “expressionist theology” and operates on a false binary distinction between faith and practice. It shows the problematic reading of Tertullian and the indivisibility between acts and faith in his work and reveals the counter-conduct and freedom practices in Tertullian’s later Montanist commitment—which rejected church authority for inner commitment to God—and also suggests a gendered dimension to expressionist acts. The review reveals Foucault’s own inability to split the faith-practice dichotomy—on which his expressionistic argument depends—and highlights the tensions that persist in maintaining a “truth-act” model from early Christian life. It concludes by suggesting that the philosophy-theology relation in Foucault opens more questions than it resolves.