THE SHORTENED VERSION OF :

Foucault and Nietzsche on progress

Foucault and Nietzsche are the two thinkers who stand as marking figures in mapping the genealogies of unconventional phenomena, in an anti-Enlightenment vein, taking off the coat of Hegelian and Marxist thought, yet making use of historical facts to prove and to stress these important phenomena which affected the history and still continues to do so (the past exists in the present through its consequences). Both take pot shots at sacred cows, as for example Nietzsche in developing criticism on the genealogy of morals (criticizing religion, philosophers etc.), or Foucault in aiming at reason, confinement and punishment, madness or sexuality. The two are diagnosing the evolution of these phenomena and the way they have changed over time, criticizing in fact that which is called progress, in terms of power relations that affect society, seeing it as a source of regression rather than something constructive (which the word ''progress'' implies). But that is what they meet in with; in what the two differ though, and naturally so given the distance in time at which they lived and wrote their works, is that Foucault's discourse is more sociologically aimed at, whereas Nietzsche's stays in the realm of the abstract and philosophical ideas in expressing his views.

Progress, seen as a trap in which we ensnare ourselves is no strange idea for the two thinkers.

Firstly, Nietzsche shows how institutions were seen as a sign of progress in society  and how they inscribed themselves into the frame of creditor-debtor relation, using punishment as a way of keeping control, altering over time and leading to a destructiveresult which is nothing but progress; once a relation of power is established, he coins, the alteration of that relation comes with a loss of utility and the purpose for which that relation was established, fails in how it affects people: one greater power ruling over the rest doesn't equal progress (as history has shown us so many times, with deceptive results) – it leads to death/ destruction:

''(...) the “development” of a thing, a practice, or an organ has nothing to do with its progressus [progress] towards a single goal, even less is it the logical and shortest progressus reached with the least expenditure of power and resources(...) What I wanted to say is this: the partial loss of utility, decline, and degeneration, the loss of meaning, and purposiveness, in short, death, also belong to the conditions of a real progressus [progress], which always appears in the form of a will and a way to a greater power and always establishes itself at the expense of a huge number of smaller powers. The size of a “step forward” can even be estimated by a measure of everything that had to be sacrificed to it.'' (Nietzsche in the ''Second Essay: Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters'')

Secondly, Foucault bases his observations on cases throughout history, pointing out the manner in which the progress and its tools, i.e. institutions proved to play a marking role in the regression I mentioned before, although, the appeareance of these institutions was inevitable. Such is the case he discuses in ''The Great Confinement'', about the first mental institution in France (L'Hopital General), an institutional structure which reminds of Nietzsche's creditor-debtor relation and its inevitable, yet not progressive consequences :

"(...) the unemployed person was no longer driven away or punished; he was taken in charge, at the expense of the nation but at the cost of his individual liberty. Between him and society, an implicit system of obligation was established: he had the right to be fed, but he must accept the physical and moral constraint of confinement.''  p. 48

Foucault points out further these consequences and how their meaning in society, defining confinement in its full societal implication:

''(...)  confinement acquired another meaning. Its repressive function was combined with a new use. It was no longer merely a question of confining those out of work, but of giving work to those who had been confined and thus making them contribute to the prosperity of all. The alternation is clear: cheap manpower in the periods of full employment and high salaries; and in periods of unemployment, reabsorption of the idle and social protection against agitation and uprisings.'' (p. 51)

Just like Nietzsche he doesn't forget to point out how the church played its role in the Classical age as a tool of control, taking part alongside the hospital (mental asylums in effect, with more or less mentally ill people)  in the bourgeois ''machinery'' which sought to separate things for their own good and comfort, a city life machine in which the poor and the sick were no good (read ''useful''); institutionalising morality,exercising power through confinement with the intention of progressing the society came not without risks or repercusions which exist still. 

Works cited:

1. Foucault, M. - ''The Great Confinement'' , Madness and Civilisation, A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Vintage Books (a division of Random House, New York)

2. Nietzsche, F.  ''Second Essay: Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters'', On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemical Tract (  http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/genealogytofc.htm)