Toolbox
No. 15 (2023): Foucault y la Roma clásica
Time for Foucault? Reflections on the Roman Self from Seneca to Augustine
University of California, Berkeley
Abstract
The essay approaches the idea of the self as this was most often formulated in antiquity from Heraclitus to Augustine—not as the object of self-fashioning and self-care, but as an irresolvable problem that was a productive if disconcerting source of inquiry. The self is less cultivated than it is “unbounded,” less wedded to regimes of truth and discovery than it is exposed, precariously, to crises of identity and coherence in the face of a constantly changing and unfathomable world. The self on this view of it does not conform to the accounts that are given by Foucault, Hadot, or Gill. Readings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Augustine are used to support this first attempt at an alternative picture of the self in antiquity.
References
ARENDT, Hannah. Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.
ARENDT, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism, New ed. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
BALIBAR, Étienne. Spinoza and Politics. Trad. Peter Snowdon. London, Verso, 1998.
BUTLER, Judith. «The Desire to Live: Spinoza’s Ethics under Pressure». En Politics and the Passions, 1500-1850. Victoria Kahn, Neil Saccamano, and Daniela Coli (Eds.). Princeton, NJ., Princeton University Press, 2009.
BUTLER, Judith. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2015.
BUTLER, Judith. Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. New York, Columbia University Press, 2012.
BUTLER, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London, Verso, 2004.
CARY, Phillip. Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
FOUCAULT, Michel. «About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth». En Political Theory 21, no. 2 (1993) https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591793021002004
FOUCAULT, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984. Volume I. Paul Rabinow (Ed.). New York, New Press, 1997.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. Lawrence D. Kritzman (Ed.). New York and London, Routledge, 1988.
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality. Trad, Robert Hurley. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986.
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II): Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-1984 François Ewald, et al. (Eds.). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK., Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982-1983. François Ewald, et al. (Eds.). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274730
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-82. Frédéric Gros (Ed.). New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09483-4
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of The History of Sexuality. Trad. Robert Hurley. New York, Vintage Books, 1985.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice. Fabienne Brion and Bernard E. Harcourt (Eds.). Chicago, London, University of Chicago Press; Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2014.
GILL, Christopher. The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.
HADOT, Pierre. «Reflections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self’». En HADOT, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Arnold I. Davidson (Ed.). Malden, MA, Blackwell, 1995.
HOLMES, Brooke. The Tissue of the World: Sympathy and the Nature of Nature in Greco-Roman Antiquity (forthcoming)
HUSSEY, Edward. «Heraclitus». En The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. A. A. Long (Ed.). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
KAHN, Charles H. «Discovering the Will: From Aristotle to Augustine». En The Question of «Eclecticism»: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, John M. Dillon and A. A. Long (Eds.). Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988.
KAHN, Charles H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
KIRK, G. S., RAVEN J. E. and SCHOFIELD, M. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, 2nd ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
LONG, A. A. «Finding Oneself in Greek Philosophy». En Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 54, no. 2 (1992).
LONG, A. A. From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279128.001.0001
LONG, A. A. Greek Models of Mind and Self. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674735910
MARCUS AURELIUS. Meditations, with Selected Correspondence. Trad. Robin Hard. With an introduction and notes by Christopher Gill. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2011.
MARION, Jean-Luc. In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine. Trad. Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2012.
MILLER, Jacques-Alain. «Extimité ». Prose Studies 11, no. 3 (1988) https://doi.org/10.1080/01440358808586354
NAGEL, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986.
NIGHTINGALE, Andrea. «The ‘I’ and ‘Not I’ in Augustine’s Confessions». En Arion 23, no. 1 (2015).
PORTER, James I. «Foucault’s Ascetic Ancients». Phoenix 59, no. 2 (Special issue: «Interrogating Theory—Critiquing Practice: The Subject of Interpretation». W. Batstone (Ed.). (2005).
PORTER. James I. «Jacob Bernays and the Catharsis of Modernity». En Tragedy and Modernity. Joshua Billings and Miriam Leonard (Eds.). Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015.
REMES, Pauliina. «Inwardness and Infinity of Selfhood: From Plotinus to Augustine». En Ancient Philosophy of the Self. Pauliina Remes and Juha Sihvola (Eds.). Dordrecht and London, Springer, 2008.
ROSENMEYER, Thomas G. Senecan Drama and Stoic Cosmology. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989.
RUTHERFORD, R. B. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989.
SEDLEY, David. «Marcus Aurelius on Physics». En A Companion to Marcus Aurelius. Marcel van Ackeren (Ed.). Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
SÉNECA. Dialogues and Essays. Trad. John Davie. With an introduction and notes by Tobias Reinhardt. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
SIMONDON, Gilbert. L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information. Grenoble, Millon, 2005.
WILLIAMS, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993.
