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February 25, 2007
In the beginning to Senecan Moods: Foucault and Nietzsche on the Art of the Self in Foucault Studies Michael Ure states that:
The sober, dispassionate style of Nietzsche’s middle works and Foucault’s late works signpost their return to the conception of the philosophical life and practice that dominated philosophy from Epicurus to Seneca, that is to say, to the idea of philosophy as a therapy of the soul. Both turned back to the Hellenistic therapies as the question of the self, or more specifically and pressingly, of their “ego ipsissimum,” took centre stage in their thinking. Nietzsche in his middle works and Foucault in his last, incomplete researches both draw on the Hellenistic and Stoic
traditions that analyse and treat the pathologies which threaten o arise from “setbacks” to our wishes, especially from that "most touchy point in the narcissistic system”: the mortality that shadows our lives and loves and which compels us to learn how to work on ourselves and mourn our losses
I agree with Ure when he says that the shift in Foucault’s philosophical orientation and style derives from tradition that can be better understood in therapeuic rather than aesthetic terms.
Foucault clouds the true nature and significance of the Hellenistic and Stoic care of the self insofar as he presents it as a purely aesthetic project akin to nineteenth‐century Dandyism. On the other hand, if we bracket Foucault’s comments glossing these practices as purely aesthetic, and examine instead his historical analyses of the care of the self we discover the clear outlines of Hellenistic philosophy and Stoicism as philosophic therapeia of the soul.
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