Philosophy as a way of life

1 24 Ibid, 5, 1 .

7

Reflections on the Idea of the

"Cultivation of the Self"

In his preface to The Use of Pleasure, as well as in a chapter of The Care of the Self,1 Michel Foucault made mention of.my article 'Exercices spiritucls', the first version of which dates back to 1976.2 Foucault seems to have been particularly interested by the following points, which I developed in this article: the description of ancient philosophy as an art, style, or way of life; the attempt I made to explain how modern philosophy had forgotten this tradition, and had become an almost entirely theoretical discourse; and the idea I sketched out in the article, and have developed more fully above, that Christianity had taken over as its own certain techniques of spiritual exercises, as they had already been practiced in antiquity.

Here, I should like to offer a few remarks with a view to delineating the differences of interpretation, and in the last analysis of philosophical choice, which separate us, above and beyond our points of agreement. These differences could have provided the substance for a dialogue between us, which, unfortunately, was interrupted all too soon by Foucault's premature death.

In The Care of the Self, Foucault meticulously describes what he terms the

" practices of the self" (pratiques de soi), recommended in antiquity by Stoic philosophers. These include the care of one's self, which can only be carried out under the direction of a spiritual guide; the attention paid to the body and the soul which the "care of the self" implies; exercises of abstinence; examination of the conscience; the filtering of representations; and, finally, the conversion toward and possession of the self. M. Foucault conceives of these practices as "arts of existence" and "techniques of the self. "

I t i s quite true that, i n this connection, the ancients d i d speak o f a n "art of living. " It seems to me, however, that the description M . Foucault !(ives of what I h11d termed "spirit ual exercises," anti which he prcfc1·11 111 cilll

Reflections on the Idea of the "Cultivation of the Self"

207

"techniques of the self," is precisely focused far too much on the "self," or at least on a specific conception of the self.

In particular, Foucault presents Greco-Roman ethics as an ethics of the pleasure one takes in oneself: "Access to the self is liable to replace this kind of violent, uncertain, and temporary pleasures with a form of pleasure one takes in oneself, serenely and forever." 3 To illustrate his point, Foucault cites Seneca's twenty-third Letter, where he speaks of the joy one can find within oneself, and specifically within the best portion of oneself. In fact, however, I must say that there is a great deal of inexactitude in this way of presenting the matter. In Letter 23, Seneca explicitly opposes voluptas and gaudium - pleasure and joy - and one cannot, therefore, speak of

"another form of pleasure," as does Foucault (Care of the Self, p. 83) when talking about joy. This is not just a quibble over words, although the Stoics did attach a great deal of importance to words, and carefully distinguished between hedone - "pleasure" - and eupatheia "joy".4 No,

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this is no mere question of vocabulary. If the Stoics insist on the word gaudimn/"joy," it is precisely because they refuse to introduce the principle of pleasure into moral life. For them, happiness does not consist in pleasure, but in virtue itself, which is its own reward. Long before Kant, the Stoics strove jealously to preserve the purity of intention of the moral consciousness.

Secondly and most importantly, it is not the case that the Stoic finds his joy in his "self;" rather, as Seneca says, he finds it "in the best portion of the self," in "the true good." 5 Joy is to be found "in the conscience turned towards the good; in intentions which have no other object than virtue; in just actions." 6 Joy can be found in what Seneca calls "perfect reason" 7 (that is to say, in divine reason)8 since for him, human reason is nothing other than reason capable of being made perfect. The "best portion of oneself," then, is, in the last analysis, a transcendent self. Seneca does not find his joy in

"Seneca," but by transcending "Seneca"; by discovering that there is within him - within all human beings, that is, and within the cosmos itself - a reason which is a part of universal reason.