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When the individual isfundamentally affected by thepower of the StatePaul VeyneVersion of record first published: 16 Aug 2006.

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When the individual isfundamentally affected bythe power of the State

Paul Veyne

For Michel Foucault, in memory of ourTuesday evening conversations in whichwe had so much fun.

By ‘‘individual’’ we will understand here a subject, a being attached to his own

identity through self-consciousness or self-knowledge. Let us suppose that this

subject, in this philosophical sense of the word, is also a subject in the political

sense of the same word; let us suppose that he is the ‘‘subject’’ of a king. In this

case he will not obey unconsciously, as animals probably do: he will think about

his obedience and his master, and also about himself as the docile or rebellious

subject of his king.

In the sense agreed here, then, an individual is not an animal in a herd; he is,

rather, someone who attaches a price to the image he has of himself. Concern

for this image may push him to disobey, to rebel, but it may also, and even

more frequently, push him to be even more obedient. Thus understood, the

notion of the individual is in no way opposed to the notions of society or the

State. We can say then that this individual is fundamentally affected by the

power of the State when his self-image, the relationship he has with himself

when he obeys the State or society, is affected. We would like to distinguish

this effect on the individual’s self-image, which has always been one of the

major stakes in historical conflicts, from other no less important stakes, such as

economic stakes or those of the distribution of power. When an individual’s

own idea of himself is thus affected, we can say that his relationship with the

Copyright # 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd

ISSN 0308-5147 print/1469-5766 online

DOI: 10.1080/03085140500054701

Economy and Society Volume 34 Number 2 May 2005: 346�/355

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State is the same as the relationship he would have with another individual

who has humiliated him or, alternatively, reinforced him in his pride.

As an example of this historically important stake of self-image or

subjectivity, the sixteenth century Wars of Religion, and all the anticlerical

struggles up to 1905, the revolts against the pastoral authority of the Catholic

Church, caused more blood to flow and aroused more passions than the

worker’s movement of the nineteenth century. As Lucien Febvre wrote: ‘‘if

there was one thing that Martin Luther’s contemporaries resisted with all their

might, it was the argument from authority’’; ‘‘all mediation or intercession

irritated them.’’

What we would like to try to say here is that this stake of subjectivity is just

as important in the specifically political domain. We will take an example from

Roman history, that of Nero. It will mean investigating why the Romans, or

certain Roman circles, overthrew Nero, even though Nero’s private life, which

was their main grievance, had no effect on how things were going, on

economic, social or international interests, which remained unchanged and

were in a rather better state than at other times.

Or, to put it differently, this account arises from astonishment at hearing

someone say to me: ‘‘I vote for de Gaulle because of the dignity of his private

life.’’ We can sense it; the self-image of the sovereign’s subjects is probably the

key to what we call the sovereign’s public image, charisma, showbiz politics,

father figure, ideology or legitimation. In my village, where at the beginning of

the twentieth century political awareness developed through struggle against

what was felt to be clerical authority, votes for the socialists are due less to the

content of socialist policies than to hostility towards the Gaullist style of

authority. In a society like that of the Roman Empire, the conflicts which create

the framework of political history are rarely about the distribution of power,

and even more rarely do they concern economic relations; what was at stake

was whether the emperor would be ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad’’; if he handled the

susceptibilities of the senatorial caste tactfully, susceptibilities as Platonic and

hollow as those of the Duc de Saint-Simon, then he was good. Subjectivity is

quite simply what a fashionable, but quite apt, expression calls ‘‘self-identity.’’

There is obviously a difference in kind between a revolt arising from poverty

and hunger and one due to pride and arrogance. However, man being an

individual, more than one economic revolt has also had an aspect of

subjectivation. We are familiar with the idea of the ‘‘dignity of labour’’ in

the nineteenth century workers’ movement; we know that this hunger for

dignity also included the worker’s duty to improve himself in education and

morality. On this subject, let us add that concern with aestheticisation of the

self, the famous ‘‘distinction,’’ is certainly often a class instrument, a social

barrier. But it is not originally or always this; it becomes so, but arises first of

all from that particular form of the relationship of oneself to oneself that we

call aestheticisation. There is also working class elegance.

A final word of introduction. The susceptibility of subjects to the modality

of command explains another curious fact: the disproportion between the

Paul Veyne: When the individual is fundamentally affected by the power of the State 347

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violence of emotional reactions to the sovereign and the often quite limited

extent of his power. Beyond the city gates, the power of a French king

floundered in impotence; and it affected social and political interests much less

than did families, the nobility, confraternities, etc. This does not stop the

king’s image strongly affecting subjectivities, and much more so than does the

image of a president of one of our republics, who is, however, much more

powerful.

Let us return first of all to the phrase: ‘‘I vote for de Gaulle because of the

dignity of his private life.’’ When I heard this phrase it seemed to me to be

stupid: was not de Gaulle’s political choices or abilities the only issue at stake?

I was mistaken: the phrase was not stupid, but naıve and grand like antiquity.

Let us suppose, with the author of this phrase, that politics does not

constitute a specific domain of problems to be dealt with, reforms to be

undertaken, etc. Let us suppose rather that politics is no more than having to

be good fathers, good husbands, and disciplined citizens. In other words, let us

suppose that politics is reduced to civic morality; in short, that ‘‘political

activism’’ may not be necessary. In this case, only a man who is virtuous

himself will deserve to be our leader. We who are, and whose only politics is to

be, respectable people, would feel tarnished to have a man leading the country

whose private life set tongues wagging. For we put our point of honour in our

irreproachable morality. Now morality is, in essence, universal: no one has the

right to exempt themselves from its obligations. This universality, which is our

point of honour, would suffer the worst breach if we gave the place of honour

to a man of easy virtue.

It goes without saying that, in practice, this ethical conception of politics

ends up in conservatism, for virtuous apoliticism excludes any idea of reform,

militancy, etc. But let’s not confuse this level of conservative politics with the

level of a subjectivity that does not want to be besmirched. For the two levels

may be separate in reality. Let us suppose, in fact, that we are dealing with an

arrant but cynical conservative like Vilfredo Pareto; he would look down

his nose at the General’s private life: he would have voted for de Gaulle

because de Gaulle knew how to bring the communists to heel. He expected a

politician to be nothing more than a good technician. Greco-Roman antiquity

also lived through a good half millennium with a civic morality that was not at

all cynical but quite the reverse. This morality is summed up in a sentence: one

can be governed honourably only by a man who can govern his own passions.

And for a very good reason: when one obeys a leader who is the master of

himself, one does not really obey this leader �/ one obeys the morality that the

leader is the first to obey; the moral good is the common master of the king

and his subjects; heteronomy is in reality autonomy. The result is that being

master of oneself, said Philostratus, consists in being obedient, rather than

rebellious, quick-tempered, and undisciplined. In short, the relationship that

the ethical subject has with himself is in this case identical to the relationship

the political subject has with the emperor. Civic pride is intact: self-discipline

rules.

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We hasten to say that what I have just summarised was the morality of

nobles, of notables, or, as one liked to say, of educated people. From this

particular case it would be wrong to draw the mistaken conclusion that

subjectivation, or this relationship of oneself to oneself, is essentially a question

of autonomy, of symmetrical relations. It is nothing of the kind: each social

class makes its own subjectivation, as it can, on the basis of its own

possibilities; pride remains the privilege of classes that can allow themselves

to be proud. But there is always subjectivation, even in plebeians. There was a

plebeian conception of authority, which was roughly the opposite of that of the

notables.

A curious phrase in Aristotle says roughly this: tyrants flaunt their

immorality, easy life, loves and binges. Aristotle spoke truthfully: for half a

millennium, from Anthony, Cleopatra’s lover, to the ‘‘bad’’ Roman emperors,

including Nero, we follow this politics of monarchs who made a show of their

wealth and of their superiority to common morality; and for this the plebs only

loved them more. We can see why: it is a notable’s point of honour only to obey

his own kind. On the other hand, a plebeian, who would be outraged to see one

of his equals in poverty claiming to give him orders, will whole-heartedly

accept obedience to a master whose superiority is strikingly demonstrated by

external signs. In his humility, a plebeian does not universalise his values; his

only resort is to require obedience to a master whose values prove to be

superior to those available to the pleb; it is not humiliating to submit to a man

who is not one of the herd. The plebeian’s humble pride requires inequality,

dissymmetry.

We have noted in passing the theme of conspicuous consumption, which is

usually explained by imagination: when the king drinks, it is said, the people

imagine themselves drinking. Is this really the case? I am thinking of an

interesting page by Victor-Louis Tapie in his book on baroque art and the

civilisation of sumptuous baroque churches: the poor, writes Tapie, ‘‘were

accustomed to living poorly on familiar terms with churches or palaces that

flaunted gold and marble, and the wealth of which, far from offending them,

seemed almost to belong to them.’’ However, to be offended by the wealth of

other people it is necessary to universalise the notion of man on the basis of

oneself; now the poor thought that the Church or the nobility had a superior

essence, as their wealth itself demonstrated. We are not jealous of the

splendour of a king any more than we fall in love with the queen. The problem

was not being jealous of the gold and marble of palaces and churches, or of

possessing them in imagination, but of having the satisfaction, in one’s heart of

hearts, of only bowing before a self-evident authority. We do not share in its

splendour in imagination, like at a pornographic film. Similarly, the festive life

led by Anthony and Cleopatra or Nero could offend only the aristocracy, and

only because these feasts were flaunted publicly; it was contrary to aristocratic

equality for Nero to set up his feasts on a public stage that rose high above the

nobility and limited the claim of the nobles to establish the reign of their values

everywhere. Similarly, Emile Zola will make a scandal of the immorality of the

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second Empire, which involved scarcely a few hundred people; but this

imperial feast had a public splendour that shocked the republican universalism

of virtue. Only the feast, which is Dionysian, has splendour; virtue does not

possess it.

We can see that what is at stake behind all this is not economic inequality

any more than it is class relations; both the former and the latter are enormous

stakes, but they are not in play here. To take another example, it is said that the

ancient Roman baths, with their gold and marble, were the cathedrals of

Antiquity. When a man of the people went to them he found two satisfactions:

his enjoyment of the sumptuous surroundings was quite real, in the same way

that our enjoyment of the TGV, which does not belong to us however, is not

imaginary; and he said to himself that the emperor who built this sumptuous

building loved the plebs and was so great that one could obey him without

shame.

We come now to the Nero affair, in order to relate what this emperor really

wanted to do and why he was overthrown. We will see that Nero wanted to

impose on his subjects a new image of himself and of themselves, that is to say

of their relation to him.

Everyone knows Nero’s glorious feat, setting out for Greece in order to have

his artistic genius recognised in the games or competitions. His reign until

then, both in internal and external politics, had been remarkable; so the reason

for his final fall does not lie there. No more is it found in his crimes of the

inner circle, or in his showing off in Greece, for it was not the showing off one

thinks it was. When Nero paraded himself as a musician or charioteer,

he did not abuse his omnipotence to get the prize awarded to his talents as a

private man: he gave free rein to a specifically political utopia, that of a

sovereign who is authorised to rule by the fascination and charm of his

personal genius. It is because of this utopia that Nero was overthrown by the

senatorial order.

We will stop seeing Nero as a rather exceptional psychological case, and we

will see the political nature of his project, if we consider the case of Prince

Sihanouk. Prince Sihanouk, not exactly an innocent, founded an annual film

festival at Phnom Pen at which he received the gold medal every year; and

every Cambodian newspaper also proclaimed him the foremost journalist of his

realm. It was legitimate for such a highly endowed man to be the leader of

Cambodia. We recall that Stalin too was the foremost theoretician and even the

best linguist of his time.

It is strange that to my knowledge no one has understood that the famous

episode of Nero showing off as a charioteer and musician at Olympia is a

critical episode of political utopianism in the same way as the Paris Commune

of 1871 or the Anabaptist revolution in Munster in 1534. The reason for this

lack of comprehension is probably this: from the revolt of Munster to that of

Paris in May 1968, the revolutions that we call, goodness knows why, utopian,

have always been mass phenomena. This leads us to forget that in earlier times,

when the people were as humble as the soil, utopian upheavals were usually

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created by sovereigns themselves, such as the pharaoh Amenhotep IV,

Akhenaten or the caliph al-Hakim.

Nero’s was a utopia that wanted to put amorous fascination in power: the

relationship between the prince and his subjects would be identical to that of a

virtuoso to a public of music lovers. This idea was neither more nor less absurd

than that of putting imagination in power, or love according to Saint

Augustine, or a king’s paternal kindness, or the soviets, or the sovereign

people, or the devotion of a hereditary nobility. Nero’s invention is very

original since, in his epoch, the usual practice was for a tyrant to get himself

hailed as a living god. Nero never did that.

What is disconcerting for us in Nero’s case is a particularity that belongs

entirely to his epoch: in order to demonstrate his utopia, Nero took on the role

of wandering entertainer as his means of expression; how could a prize at the

Olympic competitions demonstrate an ability to govern an empire? Certainly,

but in this period, the victors of the competitions became figures as mythical as

Nobel Prize winners are for us today. We consider a Nobel Prize winner as a

higher example of humanity in general; should he be awarded the prize for

chemistry he will be asked for his views on politics or the rights of man. We are

more ready to accept the authority of a man of science or thought than we are

of a sportsman. But unlike us, the Romans did not contrast private leisure

activities, in which we would place the games, with a different, hard-working

and serious part of life.

Nero’s utopia tried to modify the reasons his subjects could have in their

heads for obeying him. For all that, this utopia was not an ideological cover

(Marxist version) or a mode of legitimation (Weberian version); it would be

translated into specific decisions and entail consequences that were only too

real. The principal decision was nothing less than that of liberating Greece

from Roman domination, of decolonising it: until Nero’s fall, Greece no longer

had a Roman governor and stopped paying taxes to Rome. This is

understandable: since the Greeks recognised the emperor’s genius at Olympia,

there was no longer any need for a governor to enforce obedience; they will

now obey Nero out of fascination for his genius.

As for the consequences of this utopia, they were the fall of Nero himself.

Naturally the Greeks loved their liberator and always retained a grateful

memory of him; the plebs in Rome still venerated his name at the time of the

Christian emperors, three centuries later; and, after his fall, ‘‘false Neros’’

appear who try to lead the crowds. If Nero fell, it was for a simple reason of

class subjectivation: the senators and municipal notables could not bear having

to obey a genius leader; in accordance with the epoch’s style of command, they

wanted to see themselves courteously persuaded, as equals, by the first

magistrate of the State.

The style of command was the only reason for Nero’s fall. By its nature, the

Neronian utopia hardly changed the relations of power: we know that the

senate was as powerless under the good emperors, who addressed it politely, as

it was under the bad. Nor did Nero affect class relations or the relations of

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production. While he was unfolding his utopia on the Greek stage, the Empire

continued to function and the administrative and fiscal machine followed its

usual humdrum routine. Nothing changed the routine, except one thing: the

enthusiasm of the plebs for a prince who did not treat them as eternal minors,

quite the opposite, since he set great store by the plebeians in his desire to

transform them into his admirers.

Such is, at all times, the importance of subjectivation as a stake. Today, in

the United States or France, we see the electorate’s requirement that

presidential candidates are not divorced. Facts of this kind elude the political

analysis of the left, which starts from class relations, and of the right, which

focuses on the so-called serious functions of the State. Then, failing to accept

subjectivation as an entirely separate stake, we perform the usual trick of

dualism, and we speak of ideology, symbol or public image. In both cases,

against all the evidence, we deny the specificity of this stake that we turn into

either the simple reflection of serious stakes or something trivial with which

the ‘‘real’’ political scientist is not to get involved, because it is nothing serious

but, at the most, a verbal concession to be made to the naive and rebellious

popular beast.

Having said that, the question is still not settled; there is unquestionably a

problem here and we will need to spend a bit of time on it. In other domains, the

demands of subjectivity can be as substantial and as bloody as those of poverty

or nationalism; but in the particular case of the sovereign, these demands may

remain largely verbal; almost everything happens in phrases or symbols: it will

suffice for subjects to have the satisfaction of learning that their king loves them

paternally, that their leader is a genius, or that the people are sovereign. It

matters little that the king’s kindness is not translated into anything, not even

less taxation: everyone feels vaguely that these phrases characterising the State

and the humble realities of the State belong to two different orders of things;

and besides, we do not expect marvels from the government.

It’s really like this: there are two very different sources of the subject’s

acquaintance with the State. One of these is the domain of communication, of

interlocution, and consequently it affects subjectivity. The idea of the State is

so vast and, even more, so abstract, that one can never experience it concretely

and as a whole; in practice, all that one experiences are taxes to be paid,

parking fines, plus a general feeling of social obligation, of duty, whose borders

with morality strictly speaking remain uncertain.

On one side, then, there are these always partial experiences of the State,

like the relationships subjects consequently maintain with the sovereign’s

agents or with ministers who distort his pure intentions. However, on another

side there is a very different experience in which the State now appears in its

entirety and appeals to us quite differently: this is when the Republic addresses

us or the king promulgates laws. Then, and only then, the State seems to

appear in person; but it can only do so by speaking. The State then ceases to be

a matter of practical experiences that are never totalised and becomes an entity

belonging to the network of communication. The State uses television for a

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dialogue with its subjects, a dialogue, moreover, whose prerogative is to be a

monologue.

The experience of the State in its dispersed effects is not at all transparent;

it would need an entire sociology to bring it to light. On the other hand, the

communication network is immediate by definition: within this network

everyone knows his interlocutor, or rather his interlocutor makes himself

known; at the same time everyone learns what right of speech, or keeping

quiet, he is granted. For communication is an empire of its own, with its

hierarchy of speakers, its unequal rights to speech, which certainly do not

exclude force relations, its privileges of being able to say one’s piece, of having

the last word, or of not having a word to say. When the prince enters into

communication with his subjects, by promulgating an edict for example, the

question is not who at bottom really governs and how this takes place: the only

question is who has the right to speak as sovereign, others having only the right

to listen.

We may see here, if we like, a personalisation of power, but on condition that

its terms are reversed: power does not merge with a man, rather a man lends

his voice to the speaking entity, which is already the sovereign; for a public

man is no longer an individual. When Nero performed on the stage at Olympia

playing the lyre, no one forgot that he was master of the world. Pragmatic

semiology is teaching us that, in communication, the thought each speaker

wants to express weighs less than the different roles of the speakers, which are

given in advance. The role of sovereign interlocutor, of prince, is one of these:

the individual, who plays the role of king or prince, is eclipsed by this role.

The State readily takes on personal features, therefore, be these the features

of a simple president of the 3rd Republic. This is not charisma or any other

father image: it answers to the simplest of necessities; the State can only appear

in its sovereign totality by entering into communication; in other words, there

will be a chief who will have the first or the last word. That’s it, a chief, which

is communicational; for the question of who really commands, and especially

of why everyone obeys, is a question that is situated elsewhere. So here you

have the State become speaking entity; a man must lend it his voice, for an

entity does not have one. Which is also translated thus: you need a chief.

Let us now return to subjectivation. Subjects know the State, the sovereign,

therefore, in two forms: they obey a thousand little dispersed obligations and

they know the chief ’s voice that brooks no reply. In their eyes the chief

assumes a gigantic and as it were anthropomorphic stature: the subjects

imagine that the prince is as powerful as how he speaks to them. What their

subjectivity expects from this powerful speaker will obviously be words,

symbolic gestures. Meanwhile, the tax collector continues to demand heavy

taxes. But this does not contradict the king’s fine words. A very general

experience demonstrates, in fact, that we do not feel the contradiction that may

exist between two ideas when these ideas each come from two different

domains of reality and thus affect different parts of our personality: the

existence of the tax-man is one thing, loving the king is another; similarly,

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money interests are one thing, the requirement that one be able to respect

oneself when one obeys is another. This subjective requirement is as specific as

other requirements, which, when you think about it, are no less strange, like

patriotism for example.

The result of subjectivation is that the relation of the citizen to the State is

not, and is never a relationship of pure oppression, since subjects react to this

oppression: within the area granted them by the public authorities, they come

to a personal arrangement with their own self; if this arrangement is bad,

maybe they will revolt, even without social motives. The State is not, or not

only, an enterprise that performs necessary functions; citizens also demand

from it things with which shareholders of a company, who only pursue their

material interest, are not concerned.

The problem of subjectivation is not philosophical; it is historical in the

same way as social or political history; even better, it is exclusively historical,

since the philosophers’ subject varies historically. There is a problem of the

subject because, in politics, we are active at the very moment we obey. Active,

therefore subject: to obey is to do oneself what others tell you to do; these

others are not a tyrant’s satellites who take your arms and legs in order to put

them in the appropriate position; however, you would not have made these

movements if you had not received the order to do so. We call power that

which conducts conduct. On what grounds do I do what someone gets me to

do? Maybe historians have something to say about this.

Finally, to really see the extent to which all this is neither ideology nor

masquerade, we wonder what would have happened if Nero had not been

overthrown and if his utopia had triumphed. Five things would have

happened, on which we will end.

1. Rome, the imperial capital, would have also been made into the world

capital of the games, above Olympia; which is what in fact it will become in

the 3rd century. It would have happened a century and a half earlier.

2. The senate, that academy and conservatoire of the nobility, would have been

suppressed or would have lost its importance, which it will lose in the

fourth century. A sultanic regime, with chamberlains or viziers, would have

been established at Rome.

3. There would have been decolonisation of the provinces and generalisation

of the system of self-government that governed Italy. More provincial

governors; in cases of disorder, the central government would have sent in

the army. Provincial taxes, which marked the subjection of the provinces,

would have been replaced by the indirect taxes that were paid by Italian

towns; fiscally, this would have amounted to roughly the same.

4. The targets of Roman imperialism would no longer have been the

traditional ones of Mesopotamia and Arabia and would have become the

sources of the Nile and the lower Volga plain, for which Nero prepared

expeditions. Actually, Nero was romantically obsessed with these bottle-

necks through which the Empire seemed to touch the infinite. No doubt

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traditionalists would have reproached him for these distant objectives, just

as Jules Ferry will be reproached for dreaming of conquering Indochina

rather than the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine. Instead of Roman provinces

of Mesopotamia and Arabia, there would have been provinces of Ethiopia

and Transcaucasia. Nero was only one thousand kilometres from

Stalingrad.

5. Finally, there would have been routinisation of charisma. Nero’s successor

had little chance of having the same artistic talent as him. Then, Nero’s

competition at Olympia would have been transformed into a symbolic

ceremony of enthronement in which each new emperor would have been

paraded on a chariot, holding a musical instrument. This would be one

imperial ritual more.

Translated by Graham Burchell .

‘‘L’individu atteint au cœur par la puissance publique’’ appeared in Paul Veyne

and others, Sur l’individu , contributions to Le Colloque de Royaumont,

October 1985 (Paris: Du Seuil, 1987).

Paul Veyne: When the individual is fundamentally affected by the power of the State 355

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