Research Paper on:
Michel Foucault on Freedom

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these forces serves to permanently change the perspective of his readers, never allowing them again to simply take the institutions of their particular society for granted. This feature of Foucaults  philosophy and writing is particularly evident in regards to his model of freedom. Foucault shows that freedom and power relations are inextricably intertwined. As Foucault writes in "The subject  and power," power can be exercised only "over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free" (221). Similarly, Foucault argues that power exists only when it  is put into action (Subject and power 219). In other words, Foucault sees power relationships only when people have the freedom to act. Power, writes Foucault, is "not a renunciation  of freedom," but rather a "transference of rights, the power of each and all delegated to a few" (Subject and power 220). From this perspective slavery does not constitute a  "power relationship," bur rather constitutes a relationship of physical domination (Subject and power 221). Foucault, like other political philosophers before him, perceives government as a means for both  regulating human behavior and also for making civilization possible. In accomplishing these tasks, governments, the seats of power, balance between nature of freedom, on the one hand, and the desire  for social control and the exercise of power, on the other. All government, indeed, all institutions of society, exist along this continuum between anarchy and tyranny. It is through the  power relationships of society that people have the "freedom" to live relatively free from fear of social anarchy. However, in order to obtain that freedom, they transfer certain rights to  power institutions. When governments exceed their authority and limit freedom too severely, they are faced with the "recalcitrance of the will" of the people, as well as the "intransigence of