Technologiesoftheselfseminarwithfoucault

technologies of the self

Plato's Alcibiades in which you find the first elaboration of the notion of epimeleia heautou, 'care of oneself

the role of reading and writing in constituting the self

public lecture to the university community on "The Political Technology of Individuals."

FROM insanity, deviancy, criminality, and sexuality TO technologies of power and domination THROUGH what he termed "dividing practices" (Madness and Civilization, 1961, trans. 1965; The Birth of the Clinic, 1963, trans. 1973; and Discipline and Punish, 1975, trans. 1977).2 =>>how a human being turns him- or herself into a subject

Vermont seminar, he began an investigation of those practices whereby individuals, by their own means or with the help of others, acted on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being in order to transform themselves and attain a certain state of perfection or happiness, or to become a sage or immortal, and so on (p.information practises here?)

final lecture to the University of Vermont community, Foucault summarized his concern with the self as an alternative to the traditional philosophical questions: What is the world? What is man? What is truth?

end of the eighteenth century with Kant: "What are we in our actuality?" "What are we today?"-that is, "the field of the historical reflection on ourselves."

Foucault located the roots of the modern concept of the self in first- and second-century Grcco­ Roman philosophy and in fourth- and fifth-century Christianspirituality, two different contexts that he understood to be in historical continuity.

techniques of self-formation from· the early Greeks to the Christian age

history of the present

My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being What I am afraid of about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think that there arc more secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of the political rainbow

Unlike other interdictions, sexual interdictions are constantly connected with the obligation to tell the truth about onesel.confession, sexuality is related in a strange and complex way both to verbal prohibition and to the obligation to tell the truth, of hiding what one does.

How had the subject been compelled to decipher himself in regard to what was forbidden -question of the relation between asceticism and truth.

How have certain kinds of interdictions required the price of certain kinds of knowledge about oneself? \Vhat must one know about oneself in order to be willing to renounce anything? (****)

Christianity has always been more interested in the history of its beliefs than in the history of real practices

As a context, we must understand that there arc four major types of these "technologies," each a matrix of practical reason: (1) technologies of production, which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification; (3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject; (4) technologies of the self, which 1 permit individuals to effect by their own means or with .the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and semis, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. These four types of technologies hardly ever function separately, although each one of them is associated with a certain type of domination. Each implies certain modes of training and modification of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes

hermeneutics of the self in two different contexts which arc historically contiguous: ( 1) Greco-Roman philosophy in the first two centuries A.D. of the early Roman Empire and (2) Christian spirituality and the monastic principles

set of practices "to take care of yourself," "the concern with self," "to be concerned, to take care of yourself." The precept "to be concerned with oneself" was, for the Greeks, one of the main principles of cities, one of the main rules fo1· social and personal conduct and for the art of life. For us now this notion is rather obscure and faded. \Vhcn one is asked "\Vhar '.s the 1�ost important moral principle in ancient philosophy?" the •n:m�d1ate answer is not "Take care of oneself" but the Delphic pnnc1plc, gnotbi sauton ("Know yourself") Perhaps our philosophical tradition has overemphasized the latter

In Greek and Roman texts, the injunction of having to know yourself was always associated with the other principle of having to take care of yourself, + Πλατωνας, Αλκιβιαδης

Eight centuries later, one finds the same notion and the same phrase in Gregory of Nyssa's treatise, On Virginity, but with an entirely different meaning. meant the movement by which one rcnounct..'S the world and marriage anddetaches oneself from the flesh and, with virginity of heart and body

Between these two extremes-Socrates and Gregory of Nyssa-taking care of oneself constituted not only a principle hut also a constant practice.

Epicurus writes that it is never too early, never too late, to occupy oneself with one's soul

Hellenistic Alexandria, practises, , enigmatic group on the periphery of Hellenistic and Hebraic culture called the Thcrapeutae, marked by its religiosity. It was an austere community, devoted to reading, to healing meditation, to individual and collective prayer, and to meeting for a spiritual banquet (agape, "feast"). These practices stemmed from the principal task, concern for oneself

relation between care and self-knowledge

First, there has been a profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society. We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give ourselves more care than anything else in the world.We also inherit a secular tradition which respects external law as the basis for morality. How then can respect for the self be the basis for morality?

"Know thyself" has obscured "Take care of yourself" because our morality, a morality of asceticism, insists that the self is that which one can reject.

The second reason is that, in theoretical philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, knowledge of the self (the thinking subject) takes on an ever-increasing importance as the first step in the theory of knowledge.