January 20th, 1982 - Care, Life, and Old Age

Foucault begins the first hour of the lecture in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD with the prime of Stoicism up until just prior to the spread of Christianity. In this period of Roman Stoicism, including Aurelius, he emphasizes the importance of how a care for the self "...becomes co-extensive with life"(86), that philosophy is fundamentally, a constant attention to caring for the self (88), and, importantly, that the education of the young, is an education in the seriousness of "a proper care for the self"(90), so as to "become again what we never were"(95).

A question, of course, emerges: what does Foucault mean by "proper care"? It is worth noting, I think, that Foucault had long been interested in practices of philosophical self care, particularly monastic traditions. In early 1978 he travelled to Japan where, at the urging of Omori Sogen, a Zen master at the Seionji temple in Uenohara, Foucault lived as a monk for several days (Eribon, 1991, p. 310). There, as he noted later, he was less interested in a Buddhism as a religious (if it is that) ontology, than the practices, exercises and rules of Zen monastic care. He noted in an interview about the experience, that he was interested in "...life itself in a Zen temple, that is to say the practice of Zen, its exercises and its rules. For I believe that a totally different mentality to our own is formed through the practice and exercises of a Zen temple"(Foucault, "Michel Foucault and Zen," 1999, p. 110).

What is significant, perhaps, is his identification with the Stoic ethics as a rigorous exercise (what he called askesis) in co-extending self with life, and of a recognition within the broadly western ambit and tradition of a union between the experience of life, as the material of life, or what the Stoics called "nature", itself. The practices of self care are the means by which we become attuned to the dynamic un/enfolding of being-in-the-world. At bottom, a Buddhist practice speaks something to this responsibility, by which, in its rigorous attention to this ineffable Other of which we are also one (hence the emphasis in Foucault's lectures on the singularity of care), it is, as such, proper care, rather than simply spurious or aggrandizing (as in the case of Alcibiades). Foucault calls this former 'care of the soul' rather than the latter which is designated 'care of one's body' (96-7).

The soul then, it would seem, at least for the Stoics, and before the Christians got their trans-substantiative hands on it, that the concept of human matter and natural matter are one. Care for the self is care for the attunement of human experience with natural becoming. This is why, as Foucault emphasizes, if we are to govern justly. and thus well (according to the good, as Carlo reminded us), if we are to bring the city in alignment with the becoming of things in their natural dynamic, we must become familiar with the practices of attuning ourselves with, what the Stoics called, the "laws of nature", i.e. that of which we have been and must learn to become again. The Christian moment at the end of the 2nd century AD marked the beginning of the break from this singular recognition of matter. Recall that trans-substantiation is the Christian theological tenet that bread and wine become the matter of God in the celebration of the Eucharist, and ipso facto, that, because we are not matter in the mode of Jesus and thus God, we are ontologically distinct creatures, but ones who, through teaching (by priests, the church, etc), can come to know God, but not be the same stuff as God. (Incidentally, this is why Spinoza's monism and his Ethics was proscribed and placed on the Catholic Index.)

Foucault thus is tracing the emergence of a pre-transubstantiative ethics, and hinting at a means to conceptualize how one might return, but by becoming again what we never were (this is Nietzsche's eternal return par excellence) to an aesthetic ontology of careful attention.

His interest in monastic practice, particularly that of Buddhism, is helpful in perhaps seeing where he is going with his analyses.

Fascinating stuff.

But, it also can get away from him a little. Some caution might be needed, and I only draw attention, as I remarked during the discussion, to one small section of the second hour. In the second hour, he remarks on page 110, that "We should live to be old, for in old age we will find tranquility, shelter, and enjoyment of the self." I don't disagree with this sentiment, or the broad normative intent. Surely, yes, it is a laudable goal, and one that I would agree, should be striven towards. There is a long philosophical tradition of living to be old, whether in Aristotle, Confucius, Mencius, Pierre Hadot, or Simone de Beauvoir. But there is nothing necessary of old age that will be the case. Foucault forgets his own historical genealogy and method for a moment here. Simone de Beauvoir reminds us in her book Coming of Age that old age is our inescapable destiny (if we are lucky), but that its "lived meaning is specific to our historical, class and cultural situations" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/).

It feels somewhat apropos writing these comments about protecting the means to grow old in safety, tranquillity, and enjoyment when hundreds of thousands of people are, this very day, protesting the erosion of social security and pensions by our less than careful governors. (Indeed, I imagine David Cameron as a peculiarly gammon Alcibiades whom Socrates would chastise soundly; and, incidentally, refuse to bugger.) Nice sentiment, Foucault, but the safety and tranquility of old age as an ethical imperative, as de Beauvoir reminds, needs to be understood as and protected by the care of the polis, as much as the care of the self. Foucault might himself have been in a situation where the threat to the tranquillity of his old age safety was less pointed than it is for us today, and this less vexed or, indeed, privileged position might have led to his somewhat romantic generalization.

Anyway, for a reminder of Foucault's (and the Stoics) laudable maxim which must be protected, by careful selves qua the polis, whom better to remind the cost of not doing so than the inimitable John Prine.



Refs:
Foucault, 'Michel Foucault et le zen: un sejour dans un temple zen'. reprinted in Religion and Culture ed. Jeremy Carrette (Routledge, 1999).
D. Eribon, Michel Foucault. Trans. Betsy Wing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991.