39
regulatory norms. Foucault identified the first and second centuries as the height of true
cultivation of self.
This was an ideal time, according to Foucault, when one could use reason to assess what
was good and bad for oneself. Foucault explained how Epictetus' Discourses reveal the
importance of self in these times.
Man must attend to himself...because the god {Zeus} deemed it right that he be
able to make free use of himself; and it was for this purpose that he endowed him
with reason.... In fact, it is this absolutely singular faculty that is capable of
making use of itself, for it is capable of 'contemplating both itself and everything
else.'
80
Unlike in modern times, reason could lead to a knowledge of how to live appropriately for the
individual.
But Foucault discussed this care of self in the present tense, as if he were encouraging
these practices today. "It is important to understand that this application to oneself does not
require simply a general attitude, an unfocused attention." "It takes time. And it is one of the big
problems of this cultivation of the self to determine the portion of one's day or one's life that
should be devoted to it."
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He also suggested that retreats from ordinary life
enable one to commune with oneself, to recollect one's bygone days, to place the
whole of one's past life before ones' eyes, to get to know oneself, through
reading,...by contemplating a life reduced to its essentials, to rediscover the basic
principles of a rational conduct.
82
The difference in one's ability to know the essentials of one's life is vastly different between the
ancient world and modernity. And Foucault's recommendation of the inward turn to self as a
80
Foucault, The Care of the Self, trans. Robert Hurley, Vintage Books, New York. 1986, 47. quoting Epictetus,
Discourses, French ed. and trans. J. Souilhe. I,1,4.
81
Foucault, The Care of the Self , 50.
82
Foucault, The Care o f the Self , 50-51.
Convention