Hi,
I'm working from the assumption that there is a connection between the 'care
of the self' and Foucault's interpretation of Kant's "What is
Enlightenment?". This is a continuation of a question that I posed
earlier. I am connecting "What is Enlightenment?" with the Pythagorean
tradition as Foucault partly outlines it in "The Hermeneutics of the
Subject"; "Pythagoreans divided human life into four periods of twenty
years: in the Pythagorean tradition, you are a child for the first twenty
years, an adolescent from twenty to forty, young from forty to sixty, and an
old man after sixty". Is Foucault demonstrating that the 'maturity' that
Kant uses to characterize the Enlightenment is the 'young' stage of the
'care of the self'? How do the dual aspects, being individual and
collective, appear at the moment that these shifts occur? I'm mainly
concerned with the collective. If the Enlightenment (as it relates to
thought) is the 'young' stage of the 'first awakening', what happens when
old age has passed in the 'care of the self'? Why does Foucault use
'awakening'? After a period of wakefulness is a period of sleep. In terms
of the collective, is Foucault tracing shifts were the 'wakeful; state is
ruled by the collected activity...movement...institution based social and
political consequences of the masses (I would normally phrase this as the
mass organism)? ; and in periods of 'sleep' the collective is ruled by the
unaware state, the collective unconscious? Therefore thought is approached
differently during these periods of wakefulness and sleep.
Thanks,
Teresa
I'm working from the assumption that there is a connection between the 'care
of the self' and Foucault's interpretation of Kant's "What is
Enlightenment?". This is a continuation of a question that I posed
earlier. I am connecting "What is Enlightenment?" with the Pythagorean
tradition as Foucault partly outlines it in "The Hermeneutics of the
Subject"; "Pythagoreans divided human life into four periods of twenty
years: in the Pythagorean tradition, you are a child for the first twenty
years, an adolescent from twenty to forty, young from forty to sixty, and an
old man after sixty". Is Foucault demonstrating that the 'maturity' that
Kant uses to characterize the Enlightenment is the 'young' stage of the
'care of the self'? How do the dual aspects, being individual and
collective, appear at the moment that these shifts occur? I'm mainly
concerned with the collective. If the Enlightenment (as it relates to
thought) is the 'young' stage of the 'first awakening', what happens when
old age has passed in the 'care of the self'? Why does Foucault use
'awakening'? After a period of wakefulness is a period of sleep. In terms
of the collective, is Foucault tracing shifts were the 'wakeful; state is
ruled by the collected activity...movement...institution based social and
political consequences of the masses (I would normally phrase this as the
mass organism)? ; and in periods of 'sleep' the collective is ruled by the
unaware state, the collective unconscious? Therefore thought is approached
differently during these periods of wakefulness and sleep.
Thanks,
Teresa