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Michel Foucault: The Care Of The Self

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1.1. Background and aims of the essay Michel Foucault spent much of the later part of his investigation on the idea of the 'The ethics of the care of the self. ' He expound such care as using one 's personal motives to discover who one is. Foucault takes on a different outlook on this subject, and investigates his focus on finding out who one is. "Q. First of all, I would like ask what is the focus of your current thinking on the hermeneutics of the subject? M.F. I have tried to find out how the human subject fits into certain games of truth, whether they were truth games that take the form of a science or refer to a scientific model, or truth games such as those one may encounter in institutions or practices of control."(Rabinow 1997:281) …show more content…

The art of living, according to Foucault in this perception means that one 's most important motive is to be like no one else. Foucault generated new feasibilities for life. Our objectives are affected by power relations in which we exist. Even though power comes through individuals we are not always in control. Power creates subjects. Foucault proclaims that we are products of the self. We are in relation to ourselves and we take action. Foucault was fascinated by what one or a group has to suppress and reject to form a positive conception of itself. He believed that our conception of ourselves as subjects depends on controlling or excluding whole classes of people who do not fit our enlightened category of "normal”. The same devices we use to understand and control these marginalised groups are also essential to understanding and controlling "normal” individuals. (Rabinow 1994: …show more content…

Many times I wonder about my after life. Reason being, I am religious. But thinking about my after life I have more freedom to dream and the self becomes real to me. There would be nothing influencing the self in heaven, maybe then I 'll be perfect. But what is perfect? What is the perfect self? In real life we are so limited to freely thinking, because we are trapped in a ferocious system with stringent rules. I imagine there to be more space to discovery the self and to reflect on the self in immortality. “You have to take care of yourself: it is you who takes care and then you take care of something which is the same things as yourself, as the subject who takes care.” ‘Care of the self’ is therefore to be understood in both possible senses, according to both the subjective and the objective genitive – the self is both that which does the caring and the object of that same care." (Rosenberg 2007:

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