II

    The first philosophical explication of the interest in caring for oneself is found in Plato's Alcibiades I. When the text was written is uncertain, and it is possibly one of the most spurious writings. I am not interested in dates, however; I would rather identify the specific features of concern for oneself, which is at the heart of the dialogue.

We know from the neoplatonists of the third and fourth centuries of our era what importance was attached to this dialogue and what weight it had in the ancient tradition: They wanted to organise Plato's dialogues as pedagogy and as encyclopaedic knowledge. They took Alcibiades as the first Platonic dialogue, the first one to be read and studied. It was archē. In the second century Albinus said that every talented young man who wanted to stay away from politics and praxis virtue should study Alcibiades. It contains a programme for the whole of Plato's philosophy. The care for oneself is his highest principle. I would like to analyse the care for oneself in Alcibiades under three aspects:

1) How is the question introduced into the dialogue? Why do Socrates and Alcibiades arrive at the concept of concern for oneself? Alcibiades is about to enter public and political life. He wants to speak in front of the people and rise to unrestricted power in the city. He is not satisfied with his inherited status, with the privileges that come with birth and class. He wants to gain personal power over all others, inside and outside the city. At this crossroads, Socrates appears and makes a declaration of love to Alcibiades. Now Alcibiades can no longer be the beloved; he must become a lover himself. He must become active in the love play as in the political game. So a dialectic between the political and the erotic discourse is created. Alcibiades undergoes a change in both politics and love, in a very specific way.

In the political and erotic vocabulary of Alcibiades a certain ambivalence is expressed. In his youth he was desirable and had many admirers, but now, as his beard begins to sprout, they vanish. In former times he had rejected them all in the awareness of his beauty, because he wants to rule and not be ruled, now he wants to rule himself. This is the moment when Socrates intervenes and he succeeds where others failed. He manages to make Alcibiades submit. The two make an agreement: Alcibiades submits to his lover Socrates, but not physically, but intellectually. The intersection point where political ambition and philosophical love cross each other is the care for oneself.

2) Why should Alcibiades take care of himself in this respect, and why is Socrates interested in this interest of Alcibiades? Socrates asks Alcibiades about his abilities and the nature of his ambition. Does he know what the rule of law or justice or harmony means? Alcibiades knows nothing about that. Socrates asks him to compare his education with that of the Persian and Spartan kings who are his rivals. Spartan and Persian princes have teachers of wisdom, justice, temperance and courage. Having been so, the education of the Alcibiades resembles that of an old ignorant slave. How is he supposed to strive for knowledge? But, Socrates says, it is still too late. In order to gain the upper hand — to attain technē — Alcibiades must take care of himself. But Alcibiades does not know what he should strive for. What kind of knowledge is it that he seeks? He is perplexed and confused. Socrates calls on him to take courage.

In Alcibiades I, 127d, appears for the first time the expression epimelēsthai sautou. Concern for oneself refers to an active political and erotic status. epimelēsthai means something more serious than mere attention. It contains several moments: taking the utmost care over one's talents and health. It is real action and not just a habitus. It is compared to the work of a farmer who is concerned about his fields, his cattle and his farm, or to the task of a king who takes care of his city and its citizens, or to the worship of the ancestors of the gods, and in the medical sense it refers to the activity of caring. It is enlightening that in Alcibiades I the care for oneself is directly related to poor education, when a political decision and a life choice have to be made.

3) The rest of the text is devoted to the study of the term epimelēsthai, Care that one takes on oneself. It deals with two questions: What is this self on which one takes care? And: What is this care?

First, what is the self (129d)? Self is a reflexive pronoun, and it has two meanings. auto meaning the same, but it also refers to the concept of identity. In this later meaning, the question shifts from what is the self to what is the scope in which I will find my identity?

Alcibiades tries to find the Self in a dialectical movement. If you care about your body, it's not care for yourself. The Self is not clothing, tools, or possessions. It is found in the principle which uses the tools, a principle of the soul and not of the body. You have to take care of your soul — that is the central activity of taking care for oneself. Care for the self is care for the soul as substance.

The second question is: How should we care for this principle of activity, which is the soul? What is this care for? We need to know what the soul consists of. The soul is only able to recognise itself when it looks at itself in a similar element, a mirror. So it must look at the divine. In contemplating the gods, the soul discovers rules that can form the basis for justice and political action. The effort of the soul to recognise itself is the principle on which just political action can be based, and Alcibiades will be a good politician if he regards his soul in the divine element.

Often the discussion revolves around the Delphic maxim Know thyself, both in content and in expression. Caring for oneself means knowing oneself. Consciousness becomes the object of striving for care for oneself. Dealing with oneself and political action are intertwined. The dialogue ends at the moment Alcibiades realises that he has to take care for himself by examining his soul.

This early text illuminates the historical background of the commandment to take care for oneself and formulates four main problems that run through the whole of antiquity, although the solutions offered often differ from those formulated in Plato's Alcibiades.

First, there is the problem of the relation between dealing with oneself and political action. In the later Hellenistic and imperial periods, the question is presented in an alternative way: When is it better to turn away from political activity to concern oneself with its self?

Secondly, the connection issues between concerning for oneself and pedagogy. For Socrates, self-inquiry is a young man's task, but in later Hellenistic times it was considered a lifelong endeavour.

Thirdly, there is the problem of the relationship between care for oneself and consciousness. Plato gave priority to the Delphic maxim Know thyself. The privileged position of the maxim is a characteristic feature of all platonists. In the later Hellenistic and the Greco-Roman period the principle was reversed. Now the emphasis was no longer on consciousness, but on care for oneself — this gained legitimacy and even priority as a philosophical issue.

Fourthly, there was the problem of the relationship between care for oneself and philosophical issues of love or the relationship with a teacher. In Hellenism and in the imperial period, the Socratic concept of care for oneself became a widespread, universal philosophical topic. Epicurus and his followers accepted it, as did the Cynics and also Stoics like Seneca, Rufus and Galen. The Pythagoreans generally paid attention to the idea of an orderly life. Care for oneself was not an abstract piece of advice, but a manifold task, a network of commitments and duties towards one’s own soul.

In the succession of Epicurus, the Epicureans believed that it was never too late to deal with oneself. The Stoics said to take care for oneself: retire into the self and stay there. The term was parodied by Lucian. It was a widespread praxis, which resulted in a competition between the rhetoricians and those who were particularly attracted to the role of the teacher. Of course there were charlatans as well. But it was generally accepted that it was good to devote oneself to reflection, at least for a while. Pliny advises a friend to retreat for a few moments a day, or for several weeks or months a year — an active leisure time, during which one studied, read, or prepared for an emergency or death.

Writing was also important in a culture of care for oneself. One of the most important praxes of the care for oneself was to make notes about oneself to oneself, with the intention of reading them again later on: writing treatises and letters to friends to help them, and keeping a diary in order to reactivate for oneself the truths on needed. Seneca's letters are an example of this self-inquire. In traditional political life, spoken culture was largely predominant, therefore rhetoric was important. However, the development of administrative structures and bureaucracy during the imperial era expanded the praxis and role of writing in the political realm. In Plato's writings, dialogue was replaced by monologue.

In the Hellenistic, care for oneself was allied with constant writing. The self is something you write about, a subject or object of writing. This is by no means a modern issue that would have emerged in the Reformation or Romanticism; rather, it is one of the oldest traditions in the West, and it was already established and deeply rooted when Augustine began writing his Confessions. The new interest in the self was matched by a new consciousness. This is evident in the first and second centuries. An alliance was formed between writing and awareness. Attention was paid to nuances of everyday life, of mood, of reading; in the act of writing, consciousness gained in intensity and extension. A new field of perception opened up that had not been entered before. We can compare Cicero with the late Seneca or with Marcus Aurelius, both of whom showed a meticulous curiosity for all the details of daily life, for the movements of the mind and for the analysis of one's own self.

The whole imperial period is present in Marcus Aurelius' letter to Fronto from the year 144 or 145 of our era:

"Hail, my sweetest of masters. We are well.

    I slept somewhat late owing to my slight cold, which seems now to have subsided. So from five A.M. till 9, I spent the time partly reading some of Cato's Agriculture, partly in writing not quite such wretched stuff, by heavens, as yesterday. Then, after paying my respects to my father, I relieved my throat, I will not say by gargling — though the word gargarisso is, I believe, found in Novius and elsewhere — but by swallowing honey water as far as the gullet and ejecting it again. After easing my throat I went off to my father and attended him at a sacrifice. Then we went to luncheon. What do you think we ate?
A wee bit of bread, though I saw others devouring beans, onions, and herrings full of roe. We then worked hard at grape-gathering, and had a good sweat, and were merry and, as the poet says, 'Still left some clusters hanging high as gleanings of the vintage.'
After six-o'clock we came home.I did but little work and that to no purpose. Then I had a long chat with my little mother as she sat on the bed. My talk was this: 'What do you think my Fronto is now doing?'
Then she: 'And what do you think my Gratia is doing?' Then I: 'And what do you think our little sparrow, the wee Gratia, is doing?' Whilst we were chattering in this way and disputing which of us loved the one or other of you two the better, the gong sounded, an intimation that my father had gone to his bath. So we had supper after we had bathed in the oil-press room; I do not mean bathed in the oil-press room, but when we had bathed, had supper there, and we enjoyed hearing the yokels chaffing one another.
After coming back, before I turn over and snore, I get my task done and give my dearest of masters an account of the day's doings, and if I could miss him more, I would not grudge wasting away a little more. Farewell, my Fronto, wherever you are, most honey-sweet, my love, my delight. How is it between you and me? I love you and you are away."

This letter offers a description of everyday life. All the details of care for oneself are present. Cicero only communicates relevant things; in Aurelius' letter, however, the minor incidents are significant because they are what he is — what he thought and felt. The relationship between body and soul is also highly eloquent. For the Stoics the body was not important; but Marcus Aurelius speaks emphatically about his body, about his health, of what he ate, of his inflamed throat. This is characteristic of the ambiguity that reigns in the praxis of the Self. In Pliny and Seneca we find a shaken measure of hypochondria. They go to the fields in this letter therefore on the grounds that it allows contact with nature. And there is a love affair between Aurel and Fronto, between a twenty-four-year-old and a forty-year-old: Ars Erotica is the subject of discussion. At the end of the letter we find a reference to self-inquiry at the end of the day. Aurel goes to bed and looks in his notebook to see what he had wanted to do and what he actually did. The letter is the transcription of this self-inquiry. He emphasises what he did and not what he thought. This is the difference between the praxis during the Hellenistic period or in the imperial period and the monastic praxis. Also with Seneca, deeds, not thoughts, dominate. Nevertheless, Christian confession is here already established. This genre of letters testifies to something that lies beside the philosophy of the time. Self-inquiry begins with the writing of such letters. The writing of diaries follows later, it comes from the Christian era, the focus here is nevertheless on the idea of the struggle for the soul.

TECHNOLOGIES of the SELF
A Seminar with Michel Foucault