Virtue after Foucault: On refuge and integration in Western Europe
| Author | Muhammad Ali Nasir |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885120964794 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Virtue after Foucault: On
refuge and integration in
Western Europe
Muhammad Ali Nasir
Marmara University, Turkey
Abstract
I suggest that virtue ethics can learn from Foucault’s critical observations on biopolitics
and governmentality, which identify how a good cannot be disassociated from power
and freedom. I chart a way through which virtue ethics internalizes this critical point. I
argue that this helps address concerns that both virtue ethics and the critical scholar-
ship inspired by Foucault otherwise ignore. I apply virtue ethics to the contexts of
refugee arrival, asylum procedure, and immigrant integration in Western Europe; I then
see how Foucault’s critical thought provides a counterpoint to virtue ethics; I finally
analyze how incorporating that critique allows virtue ethics to make sense of both the
context and the stakes involved.
Keywords
Asylum, biopolitics, Foucault, integration, MacIntyre, refugee, virtue, virtue ethics
In Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) notes that
Foucault, as ‘Nietzsche’s intellectual heir’ (MacIntyre, 1990: 47), follows a ‘gene-
alogical’ method of moral inquiry. Genealogy aims to unmask a self’s ‘disguises,
concealments, and negotiations’ (MacIntyre, 1990: 54). Viewing Foucault’s gene-
alogical method as a ‘rejection of any table of virtues’ (MacIntyre, 1990: 209),
Corresponding author:
Muhammad Ali Nasir, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Marmara University,
Beykoz, Istanbul, Turkey.
Email: Muhammad.alinasir@hotmail.com
European Journal of Political Theory
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885120964794
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2023, Vol. 22(1) 96–116
MacIntyre considers Foucault a rival to the method of moral inquiry presupposed
by virtue ethics, which MacIntyre himself subscribes to. Unlike genealogical meth-
od’s sole focus on ‘unmasking’, MacIntyre argues that virtues provide us with
resources with which ‘to rationally justify ... types of judgment and activity’
(MacIntyre, 1990: 64). My aim is to challenge this assertion of rivalry. I suggest
that, despite an initial difference in perspectives, the lines pursued by both can
overlap. I do this by presenting an account that outlines such a compatibility.
Interestingly, Michel Foucault’s ethical observations pursue this line. In the
1983–1984 Coll
ege de France lecture course The Courage of the Truth, Foucault
sees how truth-telling (parrh
esia) is a virtue based on courage and conviction. The
truth-teller takes ‘some kind of risk [in speaking] this truth which he signs as his
opinion, his thought, his belief’ (Foucault, 2011: 11). Moreover, the truth-
teller anticipates ‘the interlocutor’s courage in agreeing to accept the
hurtful truth that he hears’ (Foucault, 2011: 13). Similarly, in The Care of the
Self, published in 1984, the year of his death, Foucault focuses on the 1st
and 2nd century moral philosophers to comment on ‘the ethical work of the self
on the self’ (Foucault, 1986: 91). Yet, the extent to which this line of inquiry
pursued by Foucault interacts with both virtue ethics and his earlier work
on biopower and governmentality remains underdeveloped. This has led some
commentators to differentiate early Foucault from later Foucault. They argue
that later Foucault ‘contradicts his ... theory of sexuality offered in The History
of Sexuality: Vol. I’, and charge that he later ‘romanticizes’ what he had earlier
critiqued (Butler, 2006: 127-128). My aim is to dispel this interpretation of
Foucault’s thought to see how his ethical explorations can be interpreted as a
continuation of his critical concerns.
I address both of the aforementioned points by providing a virtue ethics nar-
rative that internalizes Foucault’s critical observations about it. I find resources in
Foucault’s ethical explorations for such a reading. Such a narrative tells us that a
good cannot be disassociated from power and freedom. This sheds light on social
regulation from a virtue ethics position. That is, how standards of evaluation
governing what appears to the agent as morally salient are shaped through insti-
tutional knowledge and dynamics. This is a topic which virtue ethics otherwise
ignores. Such a narrative tells us how virtues relate to a community’s self-
understanding, as it regulates social affairs. This sheds light on institutional
design and rational evaluation, a topic which Foucault’s emphasis on self-
cultivation and ‘technologies of self’ otherwise leaves out. Thus, my account pro-
vides an institutional corrective to virtue ethics and lends rational coherence to the
ethical and social thought of Foucault. By implication, my interpretation shows
that the two lines of thought are neither rivals (against MacIntyre) nor incommen-
surable (against some of Foucault’s interpreters). The narrative that I offer makes
its point with an empirical focus on refugees and immigrants in Western Europe.
My argument proceeds in four steps. The first section lays out a virtue ethics
narrative of refuge and integration. I explain the importance of goods in contex-
tualizing social behavior, the role of practical wisdom in guiding the ethical
97Nasir
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