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Thomas Flynn
Abstract Michel Foucault surveyed the history of Western philosophy in terms of the Delphic Know thyself and the Socratic care of the self. The former generates academic philosophy as we know it today whereas the latter conceives of philosophy as a way of life. At issue are competing notions of truth and the philosophical relevance of the discursive/nondiscursive domains. Comparing this account with a similar but distinct reading of the same Greek texts by Greco-Roman historian Pierre Hadot, I underscore the existentialist tenor of this distinction and assess the challenges and liabilities of pursuing philosophy as a way of life. Key words Alcibiades care of the self existentialism Foucault Hadot Hermneutique du sujet Know thyself philosophy as a way of life philosophys nature Plato Socrates spirituality
In his later lectures at the Collge de France, Michel Foucault surveyed the history of Western philosophy in terms of two rubrics, the Delphic Know thyself (gnothi seauton) and the Socratic care of the self (epimeleia heautou). Though his overview was more nuanced than this rather stark dichotomy suggests, one can summarize roughly his claim that the former hardens into the theoretical disciplines of academic philosophy as we nd them today: metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of mind, and the like, conveyed by a detached mode of reection and an antiseptic notion of truth that is emblemized in what Foucault calls the Cartesian moment in philosophical thought. The career of care of the self, on the other hand, moves through the Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics toward such non-academic domains of selfformation or spiritual exercise as catechesis, political training, and psychological counseling.
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On this account, it would seem that Socrates was admired more for his manner of living and dying, Foucault notes, than for his doctrine. This view can be gleaned from the sets of public lectures that Foucault delivered at the Collge de France in the years immediately preceding his untimely death in 1984. Foucaults colleague at the Collge de France, Greco-Roman intellectual historian and philologist Pierre Hadot, agrees in large part with this reading of Socrates and insists that almost without exception classical philosophy was primarily formative (protreptic) rather than informative in character, to use a contrast he borrows from classicist Victor Goldschmidt. On this reading, the wisdom which philosophy by denition seeks consists in a manner of existing, a way of life, more than a systematic discourse on the nature of man and/or the world. A brief review of the course offerings in Departments of Philosophy in the United States today would scarcely exhibit an explicit concern with wisdom in that Socratic sense. Rather, these academic programs appear to have inherited the Delphic legacy and the cognitivist understanding of truth to which they strenuously adhere. Nonetheless, recent revival of interest in Hellenistic ethics lends credibility to the attractiveness of the Socratic notion of philosophy as care of the self, if not to the validity of Foucaults original distinction and separation of it from the Delphic prescription. At issue is the relevance of the very differentiation between theoretical and practical philosophy as well as the corresponding conception of knowledge and truth claimed to be operative in each alternative. As long as the ideal of dispassionately objective knowledge and absolute truth in the natural and human sciences continues to hold sway, so too will the Delphic prescription as Foucault describes it. But as these ideals lose their luster, especially in the face of personal failure and social disaster,
While Foucault would not subscribe to Hadots transcendent universal reason, he could admit the normative force of Western ratio as he did in The Order of Things with the proviso that we acknowledged the dangers and minimized the harm that such Reason tends to bring in its wake.16 And he has repeatedly insisted that care of the self in its full exercise necessarily involves care of others. Finally, Foucault would add a further dimension to Hadots ideal of moving beyond oneself to include taking distance on oneself or thinking otherwise than before (se dprendre de soi-mme) which he considers the ethic of an intellectual in our day.17
The political commitments of both Sartre and Foucault seem incompatible with either aestheticism or, for that matter, the individualism with which their critics have tried to harness them.
Concluding reections
So the redirection of our attention to Hellenistic ethics and, more generally, to the concept of philosophy as care of the self that it presumes and fosters suggests that we review the cognate insights of existentialist thinkers in our own day. But before slipping into an easy accommodation with philosophers whom many have grown accustomed to dismiss as fuzzy or given to hyperbole and histrionics, let us test the ground by soberly considering some of the problems such a mixed marriage might engender. At least three such problems suggest themselves. (1) The role of reective critical and self-critical inquiry in such a quasi-existentialist conception of philosophy as care of the self seems to be seriously weakened if not relinquished entirely. Does the ancient counsel repeated from Plato onward to judge from the impersonal, universal perspective of Reason sufce to preserve this critical function? In other words, is the theoretical/practical distinction so widespread in
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Notes
1 Plato, Laches, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 165 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924), p. 39 (188 DE). 2 See Michel Foucault, Essential Works, ed. Paul Rabinow, 3 vols (New York: New Press, 1997), 1:281 and 3:253; hereafter cited as EW, plus volume and page numbers; as well as Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, Vol. 3 of his The History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 11. 3 Michel Foucault, Omnes et Singulatim: Toward a Critique of Political Reason, in EW, 3:323. 4 For a brief discussion of the Platonic authorship of this dialogue, see Michel Foucault, Hermneutique du sujet: Cours du Collge de France, 19811982 (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2001), p. 77, n. 12; hereafter cited as HS, plus page number. 5 Posterior Analytics 81b 5 (Book I, ch. 18). 6 See Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1975). Though this is a general thesis of the book, see especially p. 126ff. 7 See Sren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientic Postscript, trans. Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 189ff. Frdric Gros claims that Foucault was an avid reader of Kierkegaard (see HS 25 n. 46). 8 Though Foucault explicitly excluded from this reciprocity Aristotle, whom he characterizes as always the exception to generalizations in ancient philosophy, one cannot ignore the Stagirites account of the virtuous person becoming so by practicing the acts that dene the virtuous person. Of course, Aristotle will try to avoid circularity by appeal to the metaphysics of potency and act. But this may simply move the circularity back one step in the process. Here too one is dealing with the ancient paradox of becoming what you are. 9 For a thorough discussion of this topic see the following: Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette (London: Routledge, 1999); Jeremy R. Carrette, Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality (London: Routledge, 2000); and Michel Foucault and
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