Epimeleia Heautou

From the Classical Self to the Modern Subject
(interview with Michel Foucault)

Q. What is the care of the self which you have decided to treat separately in Le Souci de soi?

M.F. What interests me in the Hellenistic culture, in the Greco-Roman culture, starting from about the third century B.C. and continuing until the second or third century after Christ, is a precept for which the Greeks had a specific word, epimeleia heautou, which means taking care of one’s self. It does not mean simply being interested in oneself, nor does it mean having a certain tendency to self-attachment or self-fascination. Epimeleia heautou is a very powerful word in Greek which means working on or being concerned with something. For example, Xenophon used the word epimeleia heautou to describe agricultural management. The responsibility of a monarch for his fellow citizens was also epimeleia heautou. That which a doctor does in the course of caring for a patient s epimeleia heautou. It is therefore a very powerful word; it describes a sort of work, an activity; it implies attention, knowledge technique.

Q. But isn’t the application of knowledge and technology to a the self a modern invention?

M.F. Knowledge played a different role in the classical care of the self. There are very interesting things to analyze about relations between scientific knowledge and the epimeleia heautou. The one who cared for himself had to choose among all the things that you can know through scientific knowledge only those kinds of things which were relatively important to him and important to life.

Q. So theoretical understanding, scientific understanding, was second to and guided by ethical and aesthetic concerns?

M.F. Their problem and their discussion concerned what limited sorts of knowledge where useful for epimeleia. For instance, for the Epicureans, the general knowledge of what is the world, of what is the necessity of the world, the relation between world, necessity and the gods—all that was very important for the care of the self. Because it was a matter first of mediation: if you were able exactly to understand the necessity of the world, then you could master passions in a much better way, and so on. So, for the Epicureans, there was a kind of adequation between all possible knowledge and the care of the self. For the Stoics, the true self is only by what I can be master of.

Q. So knowledge is subordinate to the practical end of mastery?

M.F. Epictetus is very clear on that. He gives as an exercise to walk every morning in the streets looking, watching. And if you meet a consular figure you say, “Is the consul something I can master?” No, so I have nothing to do. If I meet a beautiful girl or boy, is their beauty, their desirability, something which depends on me, and so on? For the Christians, things are quite different; for Christians, the possibility that Satan can get inside your soul and give you thoughts you cannot recognize as satanic, but that you might interpret as coming from God, leads to uncertainty about what is going on inside your soul. You are unable to know what the real root of your desire is, at least without hermeneutic work.