Michel Foucault - The Culture of the Self, First Lecture, Part 1 of Part 2 of 7 (start from 5 min in) (10.35)

Michel Foucault - The Culture of the Self, First Lecture, Part 7 of 7 5min

Link to: the devil operation The Devil OperationThe Devil Operation (Boyd, 2010) A Boy, A Wall and A Donkey by Hany Abu-Assad 4min

Source for the following slides: mons.uri.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Ffilename%3D0%26article%3D1241%26context%3Dsrhonorsprog%26type%3D additional&ei=haKBUOXSJuiy0AHwoYGQAg&usg=AFQjCNFAYpHv-L3yCrT9imuijamrcWfdpQ

Care of the Self “We are standing at the edge of an abyss that had long been invisible: the being of language only appears for itself with the disappearance of the subject.”

POWER SUBJECTIVITY TRUTH

“In the Platonic current of thought…the problem for the subject or the individual soul is to turn its gaze upon itself, to recognize itself in what it is and, recognizing itself in what it is, to recall the truths that issue from it and that it has been able to contemplate”

Why Care of the Self? “In the abuse of power, one exceeds the legitimate exercise of one’s power and imposes one’s fantasies, appetites and desires on others…But one can see…that such a man is the slave of his appetites. And the good ruler is precisely the one who exercises his power as it ought to be exercised, that is, simultaneously exercising his power over himself”

POLITICS OF SELF ETHOS ASKESIS

How Do We Care for the Self? “Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.” Ontological: the nature of being, existence, or reality

ASKESIS – the exercises one practices that aid in the cultivation of an ethical self, particularly (but not limited to) acts of self-deprivation and introspection DT5.techniquesParrhesia.en.html

What is Critique? “But above all, one sees that the focus of critique is essentially the cluster of relations that bind the one to the other, or the one to the two others, power, truth and the subject. And if governmentalization is really this movement concerned with subjugating individuals in the very reality of a social practice by mechanisms of power that appeal to a truth, I will say that critique is the movement through which the subject gives itself the right to question truth concerning its power effects and to question power about its discourses of truth. Critique will be the art of voluntary inservitude, of reflective indocility.” Alter Self  Alter Power  Examine Truth

What is Enlightenment? “The critical ontology of ourselves must be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it must be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits imposed upon us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.”

“In the Apology, one sees Socrates presenting himself to his judges as the teacher of self-concern. He is the man who accosts passersby and says to them:” “You concern yourself with your wealth, your reputation, and with honors, but you don’t worry about your virtue and your soul.”

References: Foucault, Michel. “The Thought of the Outside” The Essential Foucault. New York: The New Press, Foucault, Michel. “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: The New Press, Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of Self” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: The New Press, Foucault, Michel. “What Is Critique?” The Essential Foucault. New York: The New Press, Foucault, Michel. “What is Enlightenment?” Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: The New Press, Foucault, Michel. “Hermeneutic of the Subject” The Essential Foucault. New York: The New Press,