Foreword: François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana
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Introduction: Arnold I. Davidson
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Translator's Note
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One: 6 January 1982: First Hour
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Reminder of the general problematic: subjectivity and truth. — New theoretical point of departure: the care of the self. — Interpretations of the Delphic precept "know yourself." — Socrates as man of care of the self: analysis of three extracts from The Apology. — Care of the self as precept of ancient philosophical and moral life. — Care of the self in the first Christian texts. — Care of the self as general standpoint, relationship to the self and set practices. — Reasons for the modern elimination of care of the self in favor of self-knowledge: modern morality; the Cartesian moment. — The Gnostic exception. — Philosophy and spirituality.
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Two: 6 January 1982: Second Hour
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Presence of conflicting requirements of spirituality: science and theology before Descartes; classical and modern philosophy; Marxism and psychoanalysis. — Analysis of a Lacedaemonian maxim: the care of the self as statutory privilege. — First analysis of Plato's Alcibiades. — Alcibiades’ political expectations and Socrates' intervention. — The education of Alcibiades compared with that of young Spartans and Persian Princes. — Contextualization of the first appearance of the requirement of care of the self in Alcibiades: political expectation and pedagogical deficiency; critical age; absence of political knowledge (savior). — The indeterminate nature of the self and its political implications.
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Three: 13 January 1982: First Hour
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Contexts of appearance of the Socratic requirement of care of the self: the political ability of young men from good families; the (academic and erotic) limits of Athenian pedagogy; the ignorance of which one is unaware. — Practices of transformation of the self in archaic Greece. — Preparation for dreaming and testing techniques in Pythagoreanism. — Techniques of the self in Plato's Phaedo. — Their importance in Hellenistic philosophy. — The question of the being of the self one must take care of in the Abcibiades. — Definition of the self as soul. — Definition of the soul as subject of action. — The care of the self in relation to dietetics, economics, and erotics. — The need for a master of the care.
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Four: 13 January 1982: Second Hour
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Determination of care of the self as self-knowledge in the Alcibiades: conflict between the two requirements in Plato's work. — The metaphor of the eye: source of vision and divine element. — End of the dialogue: the concern for justice. — Problems of the dialogue's authenticity and its general relation to Platonism. — Care of the self in the Alcibiades in its relation to political action, pedagogy, and the erotics of boys. — Anticipation in the Alcibiades of the fate of care of the self in Platonism. — Neo-Platonist descendants of Alcibiades. — The paradox of Platonism.
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Five: 20 January 1982: First Hour
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The care of the self from Alcibiades to the first two centuries A.D.: general evolution. — Lexical study around the epimeleia. — A constellation of expressions. — Generalizations of the care of the self: that it is coextensive with the whole of life. — Reading of texts: Epicurus, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, Philo of Alexandria, Lucian. — Ethical consequences of this generalization: care of self as axis of training and correction; convergence of medical and philosophical activity (common concepts and therapeutic objective).
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Six: 20 January 1982: Second Hour
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The privileged status of old age (positive goal and ideal point of existence). — Generalization of the principle of care of the self (with universal vocation) and connection with sectarian phenomena. — Social spectrum involved: from the popular religious milieu to Roman aristocratic networks of friendship. — Two other examples: Epicurean circles and the Therapeutae group. — Rejection of the paradigm of the law. — Structural principle of double articulation: universality of appeal and rarity of election. — The form of salvation.
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Seven: 27 January 1982: First Hour
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Reminder of the general characteristics of practices of the self in the first and second centuries. — The question of the Other: three types of mastership in Plato's dialogues. — Hellenistic and Roman period: the mastership of subjectivation. — Analysis of stultitia in Seneca. — The figure of the philosopher as master of subjectivation. — The Hellenic institutional form: the Epicurean school and the Stoic meeting. — The Roman institutional form: the private counselor of life.
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Eight: 27 January 1982: Second Hour
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The professional philosopher of the first and second centuries and his political choices. — Euphrates in Pliny's Letters: an anti-Cynic. — Philosophy as social practice outside the school: the example of Seneca. — The correspondence between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius: systematization of dietetics, economics, and erotics in the guidance of existence. — Examination of conscience.
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Nine: 3 February 1982: First Hour
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Neo-Platonist commentaries on the Alcibiades: Proclus and Olympiodorus. — The Neo-Platonist separation of the political and the cathartic. — Study of the link between care of the self and care for others in Plato: purpose, reciprocity, and essential implication. — Situation in the first and second centuries: self finalization of the self. — Consequences: a philosophical art of living according to the principle of conversion; the development of a culture of the self. — Religious meaning of the idea of salvation. — Meanings of soteria and of salus.
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Ten: 3 February 1982: Second Hour
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Questions from the public concerning subjectivity and truth. — Care of the self and care of others: a reversal of relationships. — The Epicurean conception of friendship. — The Stoic conception of man as a communal being. — The false exception of the Prince.
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Eleven: 10 February 1982: First Hour
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Reminder of the double opening up of care of the self with regard to pedagogy and political activity. — The metaphors of the self-finalization of the self. — The invention of a practical schema: conversion to the self. — Platonic epistrophe and its relation to conversion to the self. — Christian metanoia and its relation to conversion to the self. — The classical Greek meaning of metanoia. — Defense of a third way, between Platonic epistrophe curiosity. — Athletic concentration.
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Twelve: 10 February 1982: Second Hour
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General theoretical framework: veridiction and subjectivation. — Knowledge (savoir) of the world and practice of the self in the Cynics: the example of Demetrius. — Description of useful knowledge (connaissances) in Demetrius. — Ethopoetic knowledge (savoir). — Physiological knowledge (connaissance) in Epicurus. — The parrhesia of Epicurean physiologists.
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Thirteen 17 February 1982: First Hour
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Conversion to self as successfully accomplished form of care of the self. — The metaphor of navigation. — The pilot's technique as paradigm of governmentality. — The idea of an ethic of return to the self: Christian refusal and abortive attempts of the modem epoch. — Conversion to self without the principle of a knowledge of the self. — Two eclipsing models: Platonic recollection and Christian exegesis. — The hidden model: Hellenistic conversion to self. — Knowledge of the world and self-knowledge in Stoic thought. — The example of Seneca: criticism of culture in Seneca's Letters to Lucilius; the movement of the gaze in Natural Questions.
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Fourteen: 17 February 1982: Second Hour
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End of the analysis of the preface to the third part of Natural Questions. — Study of the preface to the first part. — The movement of the knowing soul in Seneca: description; general characteristic; after-effect. — Conclusions: essential implication of knowledge of the self and knowledge (connaissance) of the world; liberating effect of knowledge (savoir) of the world; irreducibility to the Platonic model. — The view from above.
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Fifteen 24 February 1982: First Hour
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The spiritual of knowledge (savoir) in Marcus Aurelius: the work of analyzing representations; defining and describing; seeing and naming; evaluating and testing; gaining access to the grandeur of the soul. — Examples of spiritual exercises in Epictetus. — Christian exegesis and Stoic analysis of representations. — Return to Marcus Aurelius: exercises of the decomposition of the object in time; exercises of the analysis of the object into its material components; exercises of the reductive description of the object. — Conceptual structure of spiritual knowledge (savior). — Faust.
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Sixteen: 24 February 1982: Second Hour
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Virtue and its relation to askesis. — The absence of reference to objective knowledge of the subject in mathesis. — The absence of reference to law in askesis. — Objective and means of askesis. — Characterization of the paraskeue: discourse-action. — Mode of being of these discourses: the prokheiron. — Askesis as practice of the incorporation of truth-telling in the subject.
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Seventeen: 3 march 1982: First Hour
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Conceptual separation of Christian from philosophical ascesis. — Practices of subjectivation: the importance of listening exercises. — The ambiguous nature of listening, between passivity and activity: Plutarch's Peri tou akouein; Seneca's letter CVIII; Epictetus’ discourse II.23. — Listening in the absence of tekhne. — The ascetic rules of listening: silence; precise non-verbal communication, and general demeanor of the good listener; attention (attachment to the referent of the discourse and subjectivation of the discourse through immediate memorization).
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Eighteen: 3 March 1982: Second Hour
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The practical rules of correct listening and its assigned end: mediation. — The ancient meaning of melete / meditation as exercise performed by thought on the subject. — Writing as physical exercise of the incorporation of discourse. — Correspondence as circle of subjectivation / veridiction. — The art of speaking in Christian spirituality: the forms of the spiritual director's true discourse; the confession (l'aveu) of the person being directed; telling the truth about oneself as condition of salvation. — The Greco-Roman practice of guidance: constitution of a subject of truth through the attentive silence of the person being guided; the obligation of parrhesia in the master’s discourse.
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Nineteen: 10 March 1982: First Hour
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Parrhesia as ethical attitude and technical procedure in the master's discourse. — The adversaries of parrhesia: flattery and rhetoric. — The importance of the themes of flattery and anger in the new system of power. — An example: the preface to the fourth book of Seneca's Natural Questions (exercise of power, relationship to oneself, dangers of flattery). — The Prince's fragile wisdom. — The points of opposition between parrhesia and rhetoric: the division between truth and lie; the status of technique; the effects of subjectivation. — Positive conceptualization of parrhesia: the Peri parrhesias of Philodemus.
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Twenty: 10 March 1982: Second Hour
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Continuation of the analysis of parrhesia: Galen's On the Passions and Errors of the Soul. — Characteristics of libertas according to Seneca: refusal of popular and bombastic eloquence; transparency and rigor; incorporation of useful discourses; an art of conjecture. — Structure of libertas: perfect transmission of thought and the subject's commitment in his discourse. — Pedagogy and psychagogy: relationship and evolution in Greco-Roman philosophy and in Christianity.
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Twenty-one: 17 March 1982: First Hour
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Supplementary remarks on the meaning of the Pythagorean rules of silence. — Defintion of "ascetics." —Appraisal of the historical ethnology of Greek ascetics. — Reminder of the Alcibiades: withdrawal of ascetics into self-knowledge as mirror of the divine. — Ascetics of the first and second centuries: a double decoupling (with regard to the principle of self-knowledge and with regard to the principle of recognition in the divine). — Explanation of the Christian fate of Hellenistic and Roman ascetics: rejection of the gnosis. — Life's work. — Techniques of existence, exposition of two levels: mental exercise; training in real life. — Exercises of abstinence: the athletic body in Plato and the hardy body in Musonius Rufus. — The practice of tests and its characteristics.
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Twenty-two: 17 March 1982: Second Hour
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Life itself as a test. — Seneca's De Providentia: the test of existing and its discriminating function. — Epictetus and the philosophy-scout. — The transfiguration of evils: from old Stoicism to Epictetus. — The test in Greek tragedy. — Comments on the indifference of the Hellenistic preparation of existence to Christian dogmas on immortality and salvation. — The art of living and care of the self: a reversal of relationship. — Sign of this reversal: the theme of virginity in the Greek novel.
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Twenty-three: 24 March 1982: First Hour
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Reminder of results of previous lecture. — The grasp of self by the self in Plato's Alcibiades and in the philosophical texts of the first and second centuries A.D.: comparative study. — The three major forms of Western reflexivity: recollection, mediation, and method. — The illusion of contemporary Western philosophical historiography. — The two meditative series: the test of the content of truth and the test of the subject of truth. — The Greek disqualification of projection into the future: the primacy of memory; the ontological-ethical void of the future. — The Stoic exercise of presuming of evils: the possible, the certain, and the imminent. — Presumption of evils as sealing off the future and reduction of reality.
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Twenty-four: 24 March 1982: Second Hour
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The meditation on death: a sagittal and retrospective gaze. — Examination of conscience in Seneca and Epictetus. — Philosophical ascesis. — Bio-technique, test of the self, objectification of the world: the challenges of Western philosophy.
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Course Summary
Course Context: Frédéric Gros
Index of Names
Index of Notions and Concepts
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