Religion and the Sciences of the Soul: The Contributions of Nikolas Rose
Kevin McCabe, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Seton Hall University
The later work of Michel Foucault brought renewed attention to “the soul” as an object of critical concern. Far from abandoning the soul as a relic of the Christian past, Foucault identified the soul as the locus through which modern medical authorities and disciplinary practices seek to form, govern, and control persons today.
Perhaps no other scholar has done more to take up Foucault’s challenge to think about the place of the soul in modern medicine than British sociologist Nikolas Rose. Beginning with Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (1989), Rose has been concerned with exploring how a range of modern techniques and practices—especially the psychological sciences—work together to form the sorts of persons that inhabit liberal modernity. It will be the aim of this paper to argue for and elaborate the significance of Rose’s thought for the study of medicine and religion today. Throughout his long and prolific career, Rose has developed and extended the insights of Foucault beyond what Foucault himself was able to accomplish in his life, and yet Rose has received little attention from theologians and scholars in religious studies who are concerned with thinking about the sorts of persons formed and produced through modern medical practices. His work helps de-familiarize many of the concepts and values taken to be immutable features of the modern self, such as individuality, autonomy, and personal fulfillment. He sheds light on how the psychological sciences—what he terms the “‘psy’ disciplines” have contributed to forming the particular kind of personal interiority that was once considered to be the exclusive domain of religion, the soul. And yet he casts critical light on contemporary values such as freedom and choice without rejecting them altogether or resorting to a reactionary alternative, as is too often the temptation with theological engagements with modernity. Rose challenges us to think about new ways of being, relating, and thinking about ourselves that do not make recourse to the private interiority, the “soul” of modern persons.
After addressing what religious scholars might learn from the provocation of Rose’s work, my paper will close with some preliminary suggestions about how they might respond to the challenge he poses. Following the work of theologians such as Kathryn Tanner who are invested in thinking about the human person beyond the bounds of the modern subject, I will suggest what a renewed understanding of Christian interiority might look like in the face of Rose’s analysis of the multiple experts, practices, and therapies that all stake a claim to the soul today.
The later work of Michel Foucault brought renewed attention to “the soul” as an object of critical concern. Far from abandoning the soul as a relic of the Christian past, Foucault identified the soul as the locus through which modern medical authorities and disciplinary practices seek to form, govern, and control persons today.
Perhaps no other scholar has done more to take up Foucault’s challenge to think about the place of the soul in modern medicine than British sociologist Nikolas Rose. Beginning with Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (1989), Rose has been concerned with exploring how a range of modern techniques and practices—especially the psychological sciences—work together to form the sorts of persons that inhabit liberal modernity. It will be the aim of this paper to argue for and elaborate the significance of Rose’s thought for the study of medicine and religion today. Throughout his long and prolific career, Rose has developed and extended the insights of Foucault beyond what Foucault himself was able to accomplish in his life, and yet Rose has received little attention from theologians and scholars in religious studies who are concerned with thinking about the sorts of persons formed and produced through modern medical practices. His work helps de-familiarize many of the concepts and values taken to be immutable features of the modern self, such as individuality, autonomy, and personal fulfillment. He sheds light on how the psychological sciences—what he terms the “‘psy’ disciplines” have contributed to forming the particular kind of personal interiority that was once considered to be the exclusive domain of religion, the soul. And yet he casts critical light on contemporary values such as freedom and choice without rejecting them altogether or resorting to a reactionary alternative, as is too often the temptation with theological engagements with modernity. Rose challenges us to think about new ways of being, relating, and thinking about ourselves that do not make recourse to the private interiority, the “soul” of modern persons.
After addressing what religious scholars might learn from the provocation of Rose’s work, my paper will close with some preliminary suggestions about how they might respond to the challenge he poses. Following the work of theologians such as Kathryn Tanner who are invested in thinking about the human person beyond the bounds of the modern subject, I will suggest what a renewed understanding of Christian interiority might look like in the face of Rose’s analysis of the multiple experts, practices, and therapies that all stake a claim to the soul today.