'Technologies of the Self' in the Facebook Age

For a few centuries in Classical Greece, Michel Foucault claimed, people were able to shape their lives according to the principles of beauty, and to “constitute” themselves instead of “discovering” themselves. They achieved this through specific practices conducted by the self on the self to attain a state of happiness, wisdom and moderation. The thinker largely ignores, however, the close relationship between this care of the self and the Athenian democratic mechanism, focusing instead only the process itself. He also argues that these practices were only confined to the future potential leaders of Athens and that they were in essence an aristocratic occupation. This paper aims to prove the opposite, that these “technologies of the self” were encouraged by speeches and several democratic developments in order to make them more accessible to the general population, and to highlight their organic connection with the Athenian democratic practices, which Foucault barely discusses.

Postmodern Openings, 2015

This study is considered as a proposal to identify some metaphysical support (non-empirical) of the self-care for a patient suffering from a chronic disease, as an extension of the bio-psycho-social paradigm. The methodology is dominated by a phenomenological perspective, supported by a hermeneutic conceptual analysis of the care of the self in Michel Foucault, focused on the Socratico-Platonic period and pervaded by the intention of having a translation and application to self-care. Foucault pleads for an aesthetics of the self, called subjectivity, in which the subject is selfconstituted through the so-called technologies of the self. The care of the self comes from the resignification of the philosophy as a way of life in which the subject is objectified. The translation and the applicability of the care of the self at the idea level to self-care are identified precisely in the acquisition of some important principles of the philosophy of care of the self from the Greek Antiquity: the role of awakener of consciousness of the one who is concerned about oneself as the first moment of the metaphor of awakening from the sleep, the ēthos as a way of being, a way of behaving and a life model. The pair self-knowledge-care of oneself justifies informing the former by the latter, in which being concerned about oneself means knowing oneself. Nevertheless, knowledge means care of the self where the self is synonymous with the soul and moreover, with the divine element in man.

Care of the self in early Greek philosophy, 2012

The ancient Greek notion of “care of the self” and the self-knowledge it presupposes is premised on the concept of introspection. Introspection obviously involves “consciousness”; more precisely, it implies a “conscious” notion of the “self.” Consciousness itself can be notorious difficult to define and explain. In this paper, I examine some of the historical precedents for “caring for the self” as we find them in Plato’s earlier dialogues, notably the Apology, and the kind of consciousness it presupposes. This was an invited paper for a panel on “Care of the self in early Greek philosophy” organized by Annie Larivée for the 80th Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New Brunswick, May 2011. I’ve added a few references to my more recent work on the topic.

Kneller Lecture, 2007

Dialogue and Universalism vol.27, no.3, 2017

ABSTRACT: The ethical constitution of the subject in Michel Foucault's work relies on the way truth is perceived, and on the way the knowledge of truth is produced. Foucault understands subjectivity as constituted socio-historically by means of particular techniques, which he refers to as " Technologies of the Self. " The main focus of this paper is to present the way in which two different kinds of approaching the truth, the modern scientific and the ancient Greek one, develop different kinds of technologies as ways of forming the subjectivity. It is maintained that the ancient technology of the care of the self can be especially meaningful in contemporary society from an ethical and political perspective.

This paper focuses on Foucaults Care of the Self in Philippine context.

Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2015

A generation ago, Foucault's untimely death meant that his final genealogical investigations were never transformed into published monographs. However, with the publication of his last 3 years of lectures at the College de France, new insights have been revealed about the self in Antiquity (and the present day). Specifically, this paper will argue that Foucault's final investigations reveal (i) a theorization of the Hellenistic self which "cares for itself" so as to gain "access to the truth" from within an existing "agonistic" field; (ii) an oppositional "standpoint" self which goes beyond those found in the phenomenological, anti-sociology tradition; and (iii) Foucault's apparent acknowledgement that he had tacitly "cared for himself".

Platonism: Ficino to Foucault, 2021

In the last years of his life Michel Foucault devoted himself to the study of classical antiquity, focusing on what he called the ‘technologies of the self’, i.e., a system of therapeutic and ethical practices that constructed the ancient subject within a horizon of freedom. The motivations that led Foucault to undertake this study are still an object of debate today. The present study endorses the approach of those authors (such as Arnold Davidson and Judith Revel) who identify a continuity in the development of Foucault’s oeuvre. In this respect, I share Davidson’s and Revel’s views and do not interpret Foucault’s return to antiquity as a moment of self-absorption, an abandonment of politics or a way out from the pessimism characterizing the previous period of his work, as pointed out by Alexander Nehamas. Arguably, by studying the ancients, Foucault intended to elaborate possibilities of action for the present, without however searching in the past for solutions to problems which characterised a different age. In other words, for Foucault the study of classical thought enables to historicise our point of view and to conceive the possibility of other forms of life. It does not seek a ready-made model requiring implementation, but entails a perspectival exercise which aims at engendering effective forms of resistance and production. The critical posture of the intellectual is thus conjugated with a practice of self-transformation which enables the wider context in which the subject acts/reacts to be changed. From this perspective, Foucault emphasises the relation between government of the self and government of others, historicising philosophy and demonstrating how it encompassed a knowledge which was indissolubly bound to praxis. Mario Vegetti has criticized Foucault for reducing antiquity to a pacified form of Platonism or Neoplatonism, incapable of capturing the conflict and political tensions of the period. The present analysis intends to demonstrate that this is not the case, and it highlights how much Foucault drew from the notion of ergon that he learned from a very Socratic Plato for developing an account of transformative philosophy as mode of life embedded in the power dynamics.