"What is philosophy today- philosophical activity, I mean- if it is not the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? It is entitled to explore what might be changed, in its own thought. To learn to what extent the effort to think one's own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently."- Michel Foucault
We are the by-products of traditional truth that holds our neck. Any attempt to break out of such traditionally held truth would incite an antagonistic position in the society, thus reprimanded by an authority. Foucault does not rebuke tradition nor would he like to have a complete displacement of modernism by postmodernism. But rather the advocacy and creation of different modes of thinking in such a way that human beings are made subjects.
This is an essay, which attempts to present the central thesis and productive ideas of Foucault concerning the Care for the Self. Foucault is creating a new ethos of providing a fundamental structuralism for the formulation of individual conduct and norms. A new ethical paradigm, which focuses on the inner life of the human person. But, it is not a reduction to the life of antiquity rather it re-captures the mode of its living.
Apparently, in the end, upon careful and sensitive response to the self, there is this implicit calling to care for the other as well. Since, to care for ones self is not merely an individual endeavor, but also a social practice.
Life is an art. It has an aesthetic and ethical dimension and character. It is an art because it is a way or manner of living in a specific context. The meaningfulness of a man's existence and the fruitfulness of his realism are dependent on how he actuates his possibilities as a human being. Of course, all of us, I suppose, have an ideal conception of the self.
But, to do this, we need to develop and cultivate the self, not in a rigorous way of disciplining oneself but in a caring and loving encounter of the self to the self amidst pluralities and diversions to the self. In earlier times, this was a matter of self-mastery. But over the course of history, it became more a matter of learning to shape one's own inner character.
An added flavor to savor the taste of one's existence is the valuation of pluralism of self-cultivation. Foucault's understanding on the self has a firm foundation on caring and seeking pleasures towards one's self. His critique on tradition is radically deconstructive and constructive as well. On one hand, he deconstructs the monolithic mode of living held by the traditionalists. On the other hand, he re-constructs the valuation of the self by re-evaluating and re-appropriating the basic concern of man to himself. That is, situating himself to the multifacetedness of reality, and his thinking towards himself.
Foucault was influenced enormously by Nietzsche. He construed that life must be affirmed amidst pain and suffering, and transcend such experience to the realm of the sublime. If and only if, man cultivates himself. Primarily to his reason. Thus, what most philosophers like Nietzsche and Foucault, construe in their philosophies is simply to live a reasonable life. Foucault like Nietzsche, is tempered with an optimistic outlook on reality. If the latter is a Nihilist, Foucault is a skeptical thinker who aims toward a permanent state of critique.
As the old Chinese adage would say, "the longest journey is the journey from within." Foucault is interested in journeying the inner sanctum of man's soul. :)
PS: This essay is a product of reading the third volume of The History of Sexuality, The Care of the Self.
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