Nevertheless, according to the first theorists of population in the eighteenth century, there is at least one invariant that means that the population taken as a whole has one and only one mainspring of action. This is desire. Desire is an old notion that first appeared and was employed in spiritual direction (to which, possibly, we may be able to return), and it makes its second appearance within techniques of power and government. Every individual acts out of desire. One can do nothing against desire. As Quesnay says: You cannot stop people from living where they think they will profit most and where they desire to live, because they desire that profit. Do not try to change them; things will not change. However—and it is here that this naturalness of desire thus marks the population and becomes accessible to governmental technique— for reasons to which we will have to come back and which are one of the important theoretical elements of the whole system, this desire is such that, if one gives it free play, and on condition that it is given free play, all things considered, within a certain limit and thanks to a number of relationships and connections, it will produce the general interest of the population. Desire is the pursuit of the individual’s interest. In his desire the individual may well be deceived regarding his personal interest, but there is something that does not deceive, which is that the spontaneous, or at any rate both spontaneous and regulated play of desire will in fact allow the production of an interest, of something favorable for the population. The production of the collective interest through the play of desire is what distinguishes both the naturalness of population and the possible artificiality of the means one adopts to manage it.
This is important because you can see that with this idea of a management of populations on the basis of the naturalness of their desire, and of the spontaneous production of the collective interest by desire, we have something that is completely the opposite of the old ethical juridical conception of government and the exercise of sovereignty. For what was the sovereign for the jurists, for medieval jurists but also for the theorists of natural law, for Hobbes as well as for Rousseau? The sovereign is the person who can say no to any individual’s desire, the problem being how to legitimize this “no” opposed to individuals’ desire and found it on the will of these same individuals. Now through the economic-political thought of the physiocrats we see a completely different idea taking shape, which is that the problem of those who govern must absolutely not be how they can say no, up to what point they can say no, and with what legitimacy they can say no. The problem is how they can say yes; it is how to say yes to this desire. The problem is not therefore the limit of concupiscence or the limit of self-esteem in the sense of love of oneself, but concerns rather everything that stimulates and encourages this self-esteem, this desire, so that it can produce its necessary beneficial effects. We have here therefore the matrix of an entire, let’s say, utilitarian philosophy.25 And just as I think that Condillac’s Ideology,26 or, in short, what has been called sensualism, was the theoretical instrument by which the practice of discipline could be underpinned, I would say that utilitarian philosophy was the theoretical instrument that underpinned the government of populations, which was something new at this time.*
The population is not, then, a collection of juridical subjects in an individual or collective relationship with a sovereign will. It is a set of elements in which we can note constants and regularities even in accidents, in which we can identify the universal of desire regularly producing the benefit of all, and with regard to which we can identify a number of modifiable variables on which it depends. Taking the effects specific to population into consideration, making them pertinent if you like, is, I think, a very important phenomenon: the entry of a “nature”§ into the field of techniques of power, of a nature that is not something on which, above which, or against which the sovereign must impose just laws. There is not nature and then, above nature and against it, the sovereign and the relationship of obedience that is owed to him. We have a population whose nature is such that the sovereign must deploy reflected procedures of government within this nature, with the help of it, and with regard to it. In other words, with the population we have something completely different from a collection of subjects of right differentiated by their status, localization, goods, responsibilities, and offices: [We have]** a set of elements that, on one side, are immersed within the general regime of living beings and that, on another side, offer a surface on which authoritarian, but reflected and calculated transformations can get a hold.
The dimension in which the population is immersed amongst the other living beings appears and is sanctioned when, for the first time, men are no longer called “mankind (le genre humaine)” and begin to be called “the human species (l’espèce humaine).”* With the emergence of mankind as a species, within a field of the definition of all living species, we can say that man appears in the first form of his integration within biology. From one direction, then, population is the human species, and from another it is what will be called the public. Here again, the word is not new, but its usage is.† The public, which is a crucial notion in the eighteenth century, is the population seen under the aspect of its opinions, ways of doing things, forms of behavior, customs, fears, prejudices, and requirements; it is what one gets a hold on through education, campaigns, and convictions. The population is therefore everything that extends from biological rootedness through the species up to the surface that gives one a hold provided by the public. From the species to the public; we have here a whole field of new realities in the sense that they are the pertinent elements for mechanisms of power, the pertinent space within which and regarding which one must act.
- Michele Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977-78
This is important because you can see that with this idea of a management of populations on the basis of the naturalness of their desire, and of the spontaneous production of the collective interest by desire, we have something that is completely the opposite of the old ethical juridical conception of government and the exercise of sovereignty. For what was the sovereign for the jurists, for medieval jurists but also for the theorists of natural law, for Hobbes as well as for Rousseau? The sovereign is the person who can say no to any individual’s desire, the problem being how to legitimize this “no” opposed to individuals’ desire and found it on the will of these same individuals. Now through the economic-political thought of the physiocrats we see a completely different idea taking shape, which is that the problem of those who govern must absolutely not be how they can say no, up to what point they can say no, and with what legitimacy they can say no. The problem is how they can say yes; it is how to say yes to this desire. The problem is not therefore the limit of concupiscence or the limit of self-esteem in the sense of love of oneself, but concerns rather everything that stimulates and encourages this self-esteem, this desire, so that it can produce its necessary beneficial effects. We have here therefore the matrix of an entire, let’s say, utilitarian philosophy.25 And just as I think that Condillac’s Ideology,26 or, in short, what has been called sensualism, was the theoretical instrument by which the practice of discipline could be underpinned, I would say that utilitarian philosophy was the theoretical instrument that underpinned the government of populations, which was something new at this time.*
The population is not, then, a collection of juridical subjects in an individual or collective relationship with a sovereign will. It is a set of elements in which we can note constants and regularities even in accidents, in which we can identify the universal of desire regularly producing the benefit of all, and with regard to which we can identify a number of modifiable variables on which it depends. Taking the effects specific to population into consideration, making them pertinent if you like, is, I think, a very important phenomenon: the entry of a “nature”§ into the field of techniques of power, of a nature that is not something on which, above which, or against which the sovereign must impose just laws. There is not nature and then, above nature and against it, the sovereign and the relationship of obedience that is owed to him. We have a population whose nature is such that the sovereign must deploy reflected procedures of government within this nature, with the help of it, and with regard to it. In other words, with the population we have something completely different from a collection of subjects of right differentiated by their status, localization, goods, responsibilities, and offices: [We have]** a set of elements that, on one side, are immersed within the general regime of living beings and that, on another side, offer a surface on which authoritarian, but reflected and calculated transformations can get a hold.
The dimension in which the population is immersed amongst the other living beings appears and is sanctioned when, for the first time, men are no longer called “mankind (le genre humaine)” and begin to be called “the human species (l’espèce humaine).”* With the emergence of mankind as a species, within a field of the definition of all living species, we can say that man appears in the first form of his integration within biology. From one direction, then, population is the human species, and from another it is what will be called the public. Here again, the word is not new, but its usage is.† The public, which is a crucial notion in the eighteenth century, is the population seen under the aspect of its opinions, ways of doing things, forms of behavior, customs, fears, prejudices, and requirements; it is what one gets a hold on through education, campaigns, and convictions. The population is therefore everything that extends from biological rootedness through the species up to the surface that gives one a hold provided by the public. From the species to the public; we have here a whole field of new realities in the sense that they are the pertinent elements for mechanisms of power, the pertinent space within which and regarding which one must act.
- Michele Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977-78
