Ordonez, Matthew David D.

Philo 104 Section Y Group Number 1 October 13, 2012 The Self that Thinks and Cares The philosophical act is entitled to explore what might be changed in its own thought through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it. Michel Foucault Through a portal in to thinking, about what we are doing provided by our own tree planting activity, practices of the care of the self suggest themselves that involve developing an understanding and ethics of mastery over the self that blossom out into the political agency in relation to which Foucault and Arendt invite their readership to gradually and with increasing resoluteness, play out in their lives and communities.

Philosophy has traditionally been defined as the love of knowledge, of the beautiful, and eventually became synonymous with the preoccupation with the abstract and the meta-physical. For a time, the Philosophical project became about separating ideas from the world, seeing truth as an abstract idea. Their focus was to escape the Cave of the platonic myth and stay in the realm of the sun. Thus deep reflective thought became reserved for the aged, the devout, the elite and the ivorytower intellectuals. From there, notions of human nature, general will, and ideology have erupted, dominating the classical philosophical discourse. Such thoughts were so detached from the social world that they reify the image of the Rodins thinker, passive, solitary, and silent in an eternal struggle within himself. Even Arendt recognizes that traditional Philosophy, at least from Plato to Hegel, was not of this world so much so that Marx and his fellow modern thinkers inverted Platonism to give action and violence primacy as the midwife of history(). This was a reaction to philosophy being unable to answer the concrete perplexities and problems of their historical circumstances. Shortly preceding the late-modern philosophers was the period of Romanticism which was preoccupied with idealism, absolutes, and utopian architecture, all centered on the spontaneity and the beauty of human emotion. Rousseau, the periods chief proponent, propagated a thought that discarded historical facts to justify romantic conjectures focusing on a so-called humanity. This sanitation of philosophical thought may be the effect of the progression of society as social hierarchies of laborers and the elite are maintained as well as their corresponding assigned activities. Thinking and politics, since the Greeks , were reserved for

citizens who were characterized by having leisure while laborers, who today are economically and socially marginalized, are anchored to the pre-political realm(). This stigmatized elitism of traditional philosophy as a high and noble activity would simultaneously repulse the masses, those not born for the act, and those who are born for the act from the mundane and profane those who are not. As Freud put it, beauty, cleanliness, and order, are the marks of civilization. Those who are civilized are thus fixated on these marks even if ignores conditions of stained yokes of labor and suffering. This paper would discuss two Philosophers that deviate from both the traditional and modern philosophy, albeit not completely but a nuanced synthesis of Platonic thought and action oriented modernism. In an attempt to relive and relearn Greek philosophy, they advocate a shift from Philosophy not as an elite activity done at leisure, postulating about transcendence but to a standard if not universal activity integrated into every aspect of human lives, whether it be of economics, politics, friendships, sexuality, etc. Rather than focusing on the beauty, sublimity and romance of humanity, they delved deep into the most repulsive aspects of human history such as the holocaust and the prison system. This paper seeks to reposition philosophy from the love of knowledge, or love of the beautiful, to the precisely the investigation of the excrement of human history whether societal or personal. Through Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, we may learn practices and manifestations of freedom in a so-called, latecapitalist, neoliberal world. From the former, we may learn how the individual can nurture and articulate itself as he takes prescriptions from Greek cultural guidelines on sexuality such as dietetics, erotics, and economics. From the latter, we move from the private and pre-political to activities among fellow

citizens in the public sphere divided into Labor, Work and Action. This paper would also serve as a processing piece on the tree planting activity. Foucault Like many activities involving struggling against the soil, the earth, the act of tree-planting was tedious as it involved unfamiliar motions and extraordinary amount of effort for college students more disciplined to read than to labor. As arbitrary as we felt it was, it was inevitable that we asked certain questions about ourselves. For instance, traditionally, the male group members would have been an asset in this primarily physical task yet bodily strength was not enough as the ground hardly yielded to our blows in making a place for our seedling. Was our weakness merely within our bodies, because we were not disciplined enough to train ourselves? Have we indulged to much in leisure? Did the problem lie in something other than from ourselves? Did we simply lack the tools and the technique? Was it because we were unfamiliar with the ground we battled with? In short, these circumstances, the task was entirely new to us and it demonstrated how little we know ourselves. Admittance of ignorance is the first step into Philosophical thought which was first demonstrated by Socrates to the Delphic oracle by saying I know that I know nothing to which the oracle replied by proclaiming him to be the wisest man in Greece(). The first thing to understand, to know is thyself
( )

as Plato would argue throughout the writing of his

Socratic dialogues. Even in his seminal work, the Republic, he would define doing justice as minding your own business (433a-433b) over concrete societal and public obligations such aspaying ones debts as espoused by Cephalus, helping friends and harming enemies by Polemarchus, and getting the advantage over another

by Thracymachus( ). In other words, he means for people to work on where they are best suited. The question of determining what we are best-suited for isnt entirely clear. In Platos city, the guardians are chosen out of the noble lie regarding their birth, i.e. whether were born with a golden spoon in their mouth( ). Some Platonists would hold the separation of matters of the body and the soul as Plato states in Phaedo, the body is the main obstacle to wisdom(). The common, pessimistic interpretation of Socrates would hold Philosophy is Leave more false ideas behind than other people do and to come closer to the truth than the rest of the world:it is to allow ones life to be rules by the soul and so to be as far removed from ordinary life as possible() While pessimistic philosophers, including Nietzsche, believe that Socrates suffered life as a disease() and implicitly that Plato tried to distance himself from the realm of politics, Foucault tries to bring back philosophy back to life and into life. He even positions himself in a tradition that treats philosophy as an art of living(169). He believes that the subject can form themselves into ethical subjects through practices of freedom though ways of living even in seemingly restrictive norms, principles, rules of conducts and discursive positions(). In the classical Greek world, ones ethos can be seen the way one acts, and appears to society. The body can be ones canvas in expressing excellence and belongingness to society It can be said that Foucault is either a platonic reformist against the metaphysical Plato who distances himself from politics as he glorifies the soul or a genuine student who sees Plato as the original Father of the art of living. If is easy to see Plato as another Philosophical elitist by assigning the hunger of the producing, farming class as bronze,

the least of the metals in the Republic( ). This, by no means, implies the hungers of the body is to be forgotten but merely in submission to the higher classes namely the disciplined spiritedness of the auxiliaries and the wisdom of the guardians( ). It is only though spending time with the beast can knowledge developed into arts and then into wisdom(492a-494). It is safe to say that Foucault knew Plato understood that wisdom would start from a struggle with the selfs own appetites, desires, and idiosyncrasies. As much as Foucault advocates the public dimension of the care of the self, he admits the need for introspection in the pre-political space where. Thus it would be futile for philosophers to search of a a human nature since each a subject must be allowed to define its own practice of freedom rather than repetitively reaffirming and developed several bodies of knowledge in hopes of selfdiscovery which have resulted in the prescriptive texts that Foucault chronologically analyzes in his History of Sexuality: the Use of Pleasure. These arent dogmatic or monolithic truths but merely devices in approximating how one in Greek society can transform himself into an ethical subject. Being an ethical subject does not entail blind and loyal adherence to these rules for their sake but utilizing them in the practice of moderation and self-mastery(78-79). This is made clear as Foucault recognizes Christianity as a mode of subjection but a paradoxical one as it requires its faithful to renounce themselves rather than tackling it directly (285). What as unacceptable in Greek society was not their preference in one sex or the other, or the love if both but ones immoderate desiring and even passivity towards desire.(UP,85). As a product of almost conscious reflection and immersion, the greeks have developed ways on managing their particular sexuality or desire (283) The Greeks understood this

sexual pleasures as one ought. These arts of control have been classified as Dietetics, Economics and Erotics. Dietetics is about determining which practices were favorable and how to maintain rarefication from the pleasure(). This implicitly allows indulgence but within the limits and balance of the bodys health. While it did deal with the sexual act such as the frequency of expenditure of bodily fluids and responsibility of procreation, this area covered other practices of health such as exercise, consumption and bodily awareness i.e. the needs and capacity of each part. Foucault remarks that intimacy between a person and his body can never be replaced by a doctor-patient relationship (up,107). By extension, this grants the individual a regular ability of control and judgment on what is good and bad for his body( ). He is generally deemed as a capable ruler if he is able to rule himself first and foremost before he can rule any city(COS 89) With Economics, Foucault moves from the greek codes of individual practices of health to private relationships between spouses, particularly targeting male sexuality. Greek society concerned themselves with spouses since marriages did not only imply the union a man and a woman but their respective families, and fortunes( ) thus magnifying the impact of any disagreement the nobility(149). After which, each particularly between

spouse would have their own division of responsibility, the husband will represent the household in the public space, the Agora, while the wife would handle the household or the private pre-political space. As partners, they are obligated by both culture and law to be mutually faithful to one another since any disruptions in the household may affect the husbands ability to participate in public affairs(165) Last main division of self-management is Erotics, Foucaults look into the Greeks regulatory practices on the

societal structure of bisexuality. It was accepted that sexual identities were not fixed and desire for both sexes would change over time. As opposed to dietetics and economics, erotics is more of a strategic game that was beyond the relations to the self but more on a mutual relationship between loved and lover.(203) Each role has a set of rules, codes and strategies for acceptable conduct in a game of pursuit where normally the boy is expected to respectfully refuse, or prolong the chase while the man had to pursue while preserving the boys honor and without too much aggression(224). It is in this realm, this performance of signs and codes, that Greeks seem to demonstrate or rehearse their self-mastery in the context of a loving relationship. Whereas a wife in economics is under the authority of the husband, albeit in negotiable conditions, boys were considered, future equals in society of their pursuers and thus complicated the dynamics of relationships. It involved processes of measuring the right circumstances, approaches and positions. The complex field of Erotics seems to be a metaphor or a rehearsal of thinking what we are doing and of applying the principles maintained and honed in Dietetics and to a lesser extent, economics. In a sense the relationship of men and boys would be a synecdoche, a sample of different relations of power and freedom. Power became more of a game of truth, not in an amusement sense but that it had rules of procedure and principles to lead to a particular result wherein certain means may be considered valid or invalid by established standards ( 297). These relations only remained to be games as long as there is reversibility, where advantage can change in the opposite sides of the game. Otherwise, irreversibility of truth, knowledge and identities that remain static and dogmatic, would mean that the relation would be a tyrannical state of

domination(285)where no freedom can thrive. Foucault concludes the Use of Pleasure with the following words: For the Greeks the reflection of sexual behavior was not a means of internalizing, justifying, or formalizing general interdictions imposed on everyone; rather it was a means of developing an aesthetics of existence, the purposeful art of freedom as a power game.(up,252-253) Thus power for it to be truly ethical, it must be founded on freedom and informed by reflection (284). Basically, Foucaults earlier historical project focused on modern institutions that do impose subjectivities on individuals, even to the point that discourses like the penal system and psychiatry are tools of power to create and control Foucault the finds in modern his subject(173 response to to the ) by this Greek isolating them from society where they can express and define themselves increasingly further. disciplinary society returning

practice of askesis or asceticism, the mastering of pleasure and oneself.(FS179 Returning that required to an the tree-planting activity, and only we were confronted with our own individual weaknesses and a new task immediate we were self-mastery to not improvement. confront our Although minimal, able

unfamiliarity with the filth of the earth and develop our own techniques with the tools that we were given. For instance, since the pickaxe we used was too old and fragile to break the soil apart, the other three members not wielding the pickaxe joined in using a swift downward motion and let gravity do the work and using quick downward strokes with the bamboo stakes (the same way one would mix the sahog and shaved ice in halohalo) to loosen the surrounding soil. To break the monotony of the task, sometimes songs and jokes were exchanged in spite of the difficulty and dirtiness of the task. We had our own expectations with one another based on each others gender and

personality. The females feminine attire and mannerisms would normally in our indicate own way We weakness coming never in physical our own labor while maleness and would imply knowhow with tools. However, each of us contributed from fit contexts, into any skills personality. ideally established

subjectivity or stereotype but worked at our own pace as opposed to mindless conformity and production. As we move from issues of self-mastery individual selfreflection, we move to a theorist more focused on loneliness in the midst of others and how this affects activity and relations in the public space, Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt After one