17 january 1979
pp. 27-50
in: Michel Senellart, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana (eds), The birth of biopolitics, Berlin, Springer, 2008Abstract
I WOULD LIKE TO refine a little the theses or hypotheses that I put forward last week with regard to what I think is a new art of government that began to be formulated, reflected upon, and outlined around the middle of the eighteenth century. I think an essential characteristic of this new art of government is the organization of numerous and complex internal mechanisms whose function—and this is what distinguishes them from raison d'Etat—is not so much to ensure the growth of the state's forces, wealth, and strength, to ensure its unlimited growth, as to limit the exercise of government power internally.