Know Thyself: A Reflection

Ai Weiwei: Know Thyself (2022) 

Lego bricks 192.5 x 192.5 cm [a]

 

 

I. 

 

Whenever I come across the ancient Greek injunction know thyself [b], I immediately think of Nietzsche's preface to the Genealogy in which he mocks the very possibility of this, even for those who pride themselves on being men of knowledge: We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers ... [c]

 

But I also think of Foucault's text entitled Technologies of the Self ...

 

 

II.     

 

Based on a lecture given at the University of Vermont in October 1982, this text is hugely interesting for its insistence that care of the self - conceived as an ethico-aesthetic project of stylisation - is at least as important as knowing the self (understood in relation to a moral conception of Truth).

 

In the modern era, care of the self was almost entirely decoupled from the more imperative-sounding command to know the self. And that is unfortunate to say the least, because care of the self crucially entailed the forming of external relations with others, whilst knowing the self is a much more internalised and solitary pursuit (like masturbation).

 

For Foucault, "the equation of philosophical askesis with renunciation of feeling, solidarity, and care for one's self and for others - as the price of knowledge - was one of the biggest wrong turnings" [d] in Western history. 

 

But rather than simply regret this, or naively call for an impossible (and undesirable) return to an ancient way of life [e], Foucault began to think things through in his own inimitable manner (more as a hermeneutics of the self than an epistemological exercise) ... 

 

 

III.

 

Gnōthi seauton is one thing; epimeleisthai sautou is another. Without doubt, says Foucault, we moderns have overemphasised the former and largely forgotten the latter. 

 

In the Graeco-Roman world, however, "the injunction of having to know oneself was always associated with the other principle of the care of the self, and it was that need to care for oneself that brought the Delphic maxim into operation" [f]. It was, in other words, one of the key principles (and practices) governing "social and personal conduct" [226].

 

For Foucault, this "profound transformation in the moral principles of Western society" [228] has occurred for two main reasons: 

 

"We find it difficult to base rigorous morality and austere principles on the precept that we should give more care to ourselves than to anything else in the world. We are more inclined to see taking care of ourselves as an immorality [...] We inherit the tradition of Christian morality which makes self-renunciation the condition for salvation. To know oneself was paradoxically the way to self-renunciation." [228] [g]

 

The second reason - just as crucial - is that in modern philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, "knowledge of the self (the thinking subject) takes on an ever-increasing importance as the first step in the theory of knowledge" [228].

 

 

IV.

Does any of this really matter today?

 

To many people, perhaps not: but to me, as a philosopher who, like Foucault - and, indeed, like Socrates - cares about the question of care, it matters a great deal. 

 

For I would love to see a greater concern with ethos as the Greeks understood this term; i.e. a way of being and of behaviour, of stylising the self (in relation to others) that was evident in every aspect of the person (their appearance, dress, manner, etc.). 

 

The immanent utopia realised now/here in the bonds between people that D. H. Lawrence terms a democracy of touch will be a society founded upon such an ethos; one in which everybody takes proper care of him or herself whilst also properly conducting themselves "in relation to others and for others" [h]. 

 

Ultimately, let me add in closing - once more in agreement with Foucault - the relationship between philosophy, politics, ethics, and art is permanent and fundamental. And that's why one can't simply visit an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, for example, and simply come away speaking about aesthetics or his method of working [i].  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] This Lego mosaic by Ai Weiwei, based on a first-century Roman work depicting a skeleton and the Greek phrase ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ, is presently on display at the Lisson Gallery (London). It previously featured as part of Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition Know Thyself, at Galerie neugerriemschneider, in Berlin (September 14, 2023 - March 30, 2024). 

      Why the artist chose to reverse the image and write the Greek maxim as if viewed in a mirror, I don't know; perhaps it is meant to indicate the fact that he is reflecting on the complex relationship between past and present (I very much doubt, from what I know of him, that he is advocating a reversal of moral wisdom).  

 

[b] Know thyself was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. It has been quoted and interpreted by countless thinkers, scholars and authors ever since. It is usually written in Greek as Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton).

 

[c] The original German reads: Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst ... See Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887), p. iii. 

[d] Paul Rabinow, introduction to the Essential Works of Foucault 1: Ethics, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (Penguin Books, 2000), p. xxv.

 

[e] In answer to the question whether he sees the ancient Greeks as offering an attractive and plausible alternative, Foucault says: "No! [...] you can't find  the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people." Further, Greek ethics "were linked to a purely virile society" founded upon slavery and he doesn't much like that idea. 

      See 'On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 256. 

 

[f] Michel Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self', in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 226. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text. 

      A slightly different version of this text appeared in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49 and this can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[g] It's important to note that Foucault sees many continuities between pagan and Christian culture and does not see a clean break as many modern Christians and neo-pagans like to imagine. Christianity - a religion of confession and salvation - is, as Nietzsche once said, in many respects a form of Platonism for the people (see his preface to Beyond Good and Evil, 1886) and the Christian tradition is not uniquely to blame for the moral world we now inhabit. 

      See the interview with Foucault from January 1984, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', which can be found in an amended translation with footnotes in the Essential Works 1: Ethics ... pp. 281-301, where he stresses this point.  

 

[h] Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', Essential Works 1: Ethics ... p. 287. 

[i] In a recent post published on Torpedo the Ark, I discussed how Ai Weiwei's transformation of a well-known canvas by Van Gogh enables the viewer to reflect upon contemporary social, cultural, and political concerns. Those interested in reading the post, can click here. 

 

Philosophical Reflections on Self-Partnering

Emma Watson
Photo: Action Press / Rex / Shutterstock

As members of the Hollywood set are amongst the most self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and self-indulgent individuals in the world, it came as no surprise to hear Emma Watson speak in an interview with Vogue about self-partnering [click here to read online].

Of course, such a single-positive proposition is really nothing very new: we could trace out a long and fascinating history of self-partnering from Narcissus to Jerry Seinfeld; "Now I know what I've been looking for all these years - myself. I've been waiting for me to come along. And now I've swept myself off my feet!"*

And although some people seem to react with hostility to the idea, there's really nothing to get angry or judgemental about. In fact, I would encourage people to be happy for Ms Watson - particularly as she seems to be so content with the arrangement.

Ultimately, self-partnering is better than sitting around moping like Bridget Jones, or complaining about not having met your soulmate - that special someone who will complete you as a human being (as if Aristophanes's amorous fantasy was anything other than that).**

I also agree with Foucault that care for others shouldn't be put before the care of oneself; that the latter is ethically prior due to the fact that the relationship with oneself is ontologically prior. ***    

The only problem comes when you grow tired of the arrangement and seek a conscious uncoupling; i.e., a releasing of oneself from oneself  - 'cos breaking up is hard to do (comma, comma, down dooby doo down down).  

Notes

*Dialogue from Seinfeld, 'The Invitations', (S7/E22, 1999), written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, episode dir. Andy Ackerman. Click here to watch a clip on YouTube.

** Plato, The Symposium, ed. M. C. Howatson and Frisbee C. C. Sheffield, trans. M. C. Howatson, (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

*** Michel Foucault, 'The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom', in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley and Others, (The New Press, 1997).

Readers who enjoyed this post will probably find an earlier one on sologamy also of interest: click here.

Peter Sloterdijk and the Question of Anthropotechnics

Polity Press (2013)

Anthropotechnics is a term widely used today across numerous fields of study and with many different meanings. For some, it simply concerns the close interaction of man and machine. For others, however, with more of a background in Nietzschean philosophy, it refers to the manner in which bios (i.e. the raw material of the flesh) is given shape by a combination of culture and cruelty, or what Peter Sloterdijk likes to think of as existential acrobatics.

That is to say, learning how best not only to live, but to achieve a level of physical and mental agility via extensive training techniques that enable one to perform extraordinary feats as a human being (to dance, to tumble, and to walk on tiptoe). 

If this poetics of being can be furthered via a little genetic tinkering here and there or some form of selective breeding, then Sloterdijk seems fairly relaxed about this. In Rules for the Human Zoo, for example, he suggests that in a transhuman era in which traditional methods of enhancing the self - such as reading the right books - are losing their power, then biomedical engineering might be embraced as an exciting new opportunity: Vorsprung durch Technik ...

Unfortunately, Sloterdijk's eugenic speculation was regarded by some - including the grand old man of German critical theory Jürgen Habermas - as politically and philosophically pernicious and Sloterdijk was accused of wilful provocation and crypto-fascism (the fact that the above text was written in response to Heidegger didn't help matters).

To his credit, however, Sloterdijk stuck to his anthropotechnical guns and a decade later published a book translated into English as You Must Change Your Life - a work in which he again takes up the idea of human being not as something one is born, or as a fixed essence, but as something one becomes; an ever-changing work-in-progress subject to individual and collective techniques of transformation.    

Ultimately, says Sloterdijk, human beings are self-creating, self-disciplining animals and the history of human evolution is a vertical history of anthropotechnics. Again, it's impossible not to hear echoes of Nietzsche and those who have written in his shadow, such as Michel Foucault, in all of this; indeed, one might ask why read Sloterdijk when one can read Nietzsche and Foucault, both of whom write more beautifully in my view. 

Perhaps Keith Ansell-Pearson provides an answer to this in the effusive opening paragraph of his review of Sloterdijk's work:

"Peter Sloterdijk must be the most erudite man currently dwelling on the planet. He has fresh and novel insights into whatever he’s discussing at any particular moment. His recently translated book You Must Change Your Life is a tour de force that engages the history of philosophy, religion, and thought, both Western and Eastern, in ways that make you think deeply about the evolution of the human being these past few thousand years. As if this weren’t already enough, Sloterdijk is also concerned with the future, and on a planetary scale. [...] Sloterdijk thinks there is a new global ecological and economic imperative facing us today, and to this we need to respond with a new sublime."

And so, if you want an ambitious, complex, rather sprawling but at times amusing 21st-century spin on the care of the self in terms of aesthetics, asceticism and athleticism, inspired by Nietzsche, but which also takes in the work of Rilke, Kafka, Wittgenstein, and L. Ron Hubbard along the way, then this may very well be the book for you.    

Personally, however, I continue to have reservations; not least with the text's grandness of narrative and Sloterdijk's authorial grandiosity. For me, a little modesty would have been nice - and, for the record, I really don't like to see the word mußt in a book title (even if it is a borrowing from a poet).   

See:

Peter Sloterdijk, 'Rules for the Human Zoo: a response to the Letter on Humanism', trans. Mary Varney Rorty, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 27 (2009), pp. 12-28. Click here to read as a pdf online.

Peter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics, trans. Wieland Hoban (Polity Press, 2013).

Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Philosophy of the Acrobat: On Peter Sloterdijk', Los Angeles Review of Books, (July 8, 2013): click here to read the online version from which I quote. 

On the Metaphysics of the Soul Contra the Aesthetics of Existence

In the end, as a philosopher, one has a choice to make: to concern oneself either with inner being, or outer beauty; the metaphysics of the soul, or the aesthetics of existence. 

Of course, it may be that these questions are constantly linked. But there is no necessary relationship; rather, it's contingent and variable. Thus, push comes to shove, one is obliged to think the care of self primarily as a question of ontology, or as a question of style; two very different projects, even if they have a common starting point and common goal (what is known as the good life). 

Broadly speaking, those who choose to be soulful naturally tend towards mysticism and notions of God and immortality. They often allow their asceticism to flourish negatively as a contempt for the body and things belonging to the material world and this is why they frequently end up badly dressed, marginalized from society and prone to violent fundamentalism. Like Jesus or Osama Bin Laden.    

Those who choose to be stylish, on the other hand, tend towards materialism and notions of artifice and superficiality; they have no time for thinking about the soul when there are flowers to look at, wardrobes to furnish, and bodies to penetrate. However, they often allow their cynicism and irony to make them apathetic, which is why they can end up looking good, but devoid of feeling or enthusiasm, and this can make them attracted to cruelty and perversion. Like Sade or Dorian Gray.

There are dangers, therefore, in either affirming the soul as an ontological reality distinct from physical existence, or affirming the latter - bios - as something to be shaped and disciplined according to a set of elaborate procedures. But each attempt to account for the self takes a certain courage; those who choose to live in desert caves are not to be sneered at, but nor are those who prefer to practice their philosophy either in the bedroom or on the catwalk.

Having said that, I obviously prefer the libertine or the dandy and their modality of truth-telling, to the prophet or holy fool who would sacrifice the entire world for the sake of saving his own precious soul.        

         

On the Three Ways to Care

Image from a KiddiKraft blog post dated 30 July 2014

http://kiddikraft.com/blog/5-ways-instill-compassion-children/

There are at least three important ways in which one might offer care to others: 

(i) with compassion -

(ii) with indifference -

(iii) with resentment -

To care with compassion, or with sympathy, is to actively share in the suffering of others whilst at the same time maintaining the integrity of one's own soul. It is not motivated by a will to merger and it is not merely a mechanical feeling of pity for those one deems deserving of such. Compassion is a noble virtue of the heart free from moral judgement. 

To care with indifference sounds, at first, somewhat paradoxical. But, for me, whilst indifference is certainly not a form compassion, it doesn't mean that one is completely uncaring. Rather, it means that one does so with an ironic perspective and a healthy degree of insouciance. Indifference is an instinctive reaction to the suffering which would otherwise overwhelm us and compel us to tears; a form of self-protection against the mortal danger of becoming over-concerned and eaten up with caring. Indifference is a noble quality of mind.

To care with resentment is to poison the very concept of care. It is a feeling against rather than with or even for others and it ultimately causes the person who experiences it to fall out of touch not only with those who have (rightly or wrongly) caused such bitterness, but with their own good nature; they become trapped inside a bubble of hostile emotion created by their own humiliated ego. When resentment is felt towards someone to whom one is closely related, such as a parent or child, then it is particularly intense and can lead to extraordinary acts of spite.

To conclude: take care - and be caring; for the former, as a practice of the self, depends on how we interact with others.  

Postcard from LA

Scientologists

Dreaming of L. Ron Hubbard

Sun their perfect tits 

As Foucault was at pains to point out, the Californian cult of the self that emerged in the 1960s combining an astonishing level of reactive narcissism with what can only be described as a form of zen fascism was - and remains - far removed from the Classical idea that one's principle duty is to care for the self via the disciplined application of aesthetic values to one's own life and existence.

Epimeleia heautou lies at the heart of Greco-Roman ethics and involves a multitude of complex techniques. But it doesn't mean simply being self-absorbed and self-attached and for Foucault our contemporary obsession with learning how to love our true selves or liberate our inner being from all that might otherwise prevent its unfolding via a combination of psychoanalysis, New Age religion, health foods, jogging, plastic surgery and lying by the pool, is diametrically opposed to what the Stoics might have had in mind for example.

The key difference is perhaps this: in antiquity, the self was an object to be fashioned or given style; in modern society it's a subjective identity to be discovered and in which we are imprisoned. Until we abandon the latter way of thinking based on the concept of soul-substance then we'll never really appreciate what it means to care for the self.   

 

Note: LA Haiku by Zena McKeown was sent on a postcard from Los Angeles dated 12 Aug 2013.