QuestionsAre humans good by nature?The modern individual is fabricated by discipline
Are humans good by nature?Neither good nor bad

The modern individual is fabricated by discipline

Docile bodies; the disciplinary society

Michel Foucault 1926 · 1984Philosopher and historian: knowledge and power produce each other, and every society has its regime of truth.
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What it claims

The modern human being is neither good nor bad by nature: he is shaped, body and 'soul', by society's disciplines.

Why

School, barracks, factory and prison train bodies by exercises and surveillance; the individual's 'soul' is the effect of this training.

In short

"The modern individual is fabricated by discipline" is an argument by Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish (1975), I, 1; III, 1 'Docile Bodies'; III, 3 'Panopticism') on the question "Are humans good by nature?" (answer: neither good nor bad). Its claim: The modern human being is neither good nor bad by nature: he is shaped, body and 'soul', by society's disciplines. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Discipline and Punish (1975), I, 1; III, 1 'Docile Bodies'; III, 3 'Panopticism'
Valid with an implicit premise

Are we good or bad by nature? Foucault shifts the question: what we call our nature, our soul, our personality, was produced. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, techniques of power (timetables, drills, examinations, surveillance) were used to train bodies in armies, schools, workshops, hospitals and prisons. The soldier, for example, is no longer someone recognised by natural vigour: he is manufactured from a shapeless dough. For Foucault, the modern individual, with his inner life, is itself an effect of this manufacture. One is born neither good nor bad: one is shaped.

P1In the classical age the body is discovered as object and target of power: a body that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved, that is, a 'docile' body.
P2These techniques (exercises, timetables, examination, surveillance) fabricate individuals; power does not only repress, it produces reality, domains of objects and rituals of truth.
P3The 'soul' that inhabits modern man and brings him to existence is itself a means by which power masters the body: 'the soul is the prison of the body'.
P4 · implicit premiseIf what we take to be our inner nature is an effect of these techniques, then it is neither good nor bad in itself: it is what the training made of it.
Therefore the modern human being is neither good nor bad by nature: he is shaped, body and 'soul', by society's disciplines.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Valid with P4. P1 to P3 describe the fabrication of the modern individual. P4, hidden, infers that there is no good or bad inner nature beneath this fabrication. Points of attack: P4 (that a disposition is shaped does not prove there is no natural base that resists or predisposes) and the scope of the argument, historical and limited to the modern era. Foucault does not say everything is training, but that what we call 'the individual' is. Note: this argument does not say people are bad; it refuses the question of their nature.
Analogy. A box shrub clipped into a ball in a garden. One thinks one sees a plant that is naturally round, but its shape comes from repeated pruning and from the place the gardener gave it.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Noam Chomsky 1971 · attacks premise 4

In their 1971 debate, Chomsky defends the existence of a human nature: an innate creativity, which explains for instance why a child produces sentences never heard before. For him it also grounds the idea of justice and rights. If this nature exists, training constrains it without creating it.

a defender replies
Michel Foucault defender of the argument · 1971
In the same debate Foucault answers that he distrusts 'human nature': the concept has played a varying role in the history of our knowledge, and the very idea of justice was invented and used in different societies as an instrument of power. He does not deny the capacities of language; he refuses to make them the foundation of a politics (summary, passage not quoted).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Chomsky: there is a creative human nature. Foucault: the concept is historical and political. Core disagreement: can an innate nature ground the critique of power?
N
Nancy Fraser 1981 · attacks the conclusion

Fraser argues that Foucault describes disciplinary power superbly but does not say why it should be resisted: to condemn it one would need norms (freedom, dignity, justice) that he refuses to invoke. If the individual is a fabrication, in whose name is the fabrication judged?

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Foucault in the texts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Fraser: without a norm, critique of power is impossible. Core disagreement: can power be described without being judged, or judged without a universal norm?
A
A common objection (readers of Discipline and Punish) 1975 · attacks premise 2

If disciplines wholly fabricated individuals, one could not understand where revolts and refusals come from. An individual entirely produced by power could not resist it.

a defender replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Michel Foucault defender of the argument · 1976
In The Will to Knowledge, Foucault specifies that where there is power there is resistance, and that points of resistance are present everywhere in the network of power. The shaping is therefore never total, even though resistance is not external to power.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Objection: if we are shaped, how do we resist? Foucault: resistance is part of power. Core disagreement: does resistance come from a free nature or from other forms of power?