MF 02: the three moments

Faust: there are cannot be knowledge without a profound modification in the subject's being.
The opposition in modern philosophy started from theological thought and the requirement of spirituality.

The relations of the subject to truth cannot be posed in terms of knowledge.

The three moments in history on care of the self:
1. the Socratic-Platonic moment, the appearance of the epimeleia heautou in philosophical reflection;
2. the period of the golden age of the culture of the self, which can be placed in the first two centuries.
3. the transition from pagan philosophical ascesis to Christian asceticism in the 4th and 5th centuries.

"One ought to take care of oneself" was an old maxim of Greek culture, not specifically or necessarily a philosopher's work. From Plutarch, a Spartan was asked one day: You Spartans really are a bit strange. You have a lot of land and your territory is huge. Why don't you cultivate it yourselves? The Spartan says: we have to take care of ourselves and so we do not have to cultivate our lands. Taking care of themselves was the affirmation of a form of existence linked to a privilege: If we have helots, if we do not cultivate our lands ourselves, if we delegate all these material cares to others, it is so that we can take care of ourselves. We have to look after ourselves, and to be able to do that we have entrusted our work to others.

Socrates takes up the epimeleia heautou question based on a tradition.

Alcibiades

One cannot govern others well, one cannot transform one's privileges into political action on others, into rational action, if one is not concerned about oneself. 

Spartan education: an education that ensures firmness, greatness of soul, courage, endurance, the taste for victory and honor, etc.

A Spartan prince has four teachers: a teacher of wisdom, another justice, another temperance, and fourth a master of courage.

Wisdom - sophia
Justice - dikaiosune
Temperance - sophrosune
Courage - andreia

Socrates to Alcibiades of why he needs to take care himself: 1. the self linked to the exercise of power; 2. it is linked to Alcibiades's lack of proper education; 3. he has to take care of himself at the critical age, otherwise it would be too late to rectify matters if Alcibiades were fifty.

In Apology, the epimeleia heautou appears as a general function of the whole life, whereas in the Alcibiades it appears as a necessary moment of the young man's training. In this Socratic-Platonic form, the care of the self is an activity, a necessity for young people, within a relationship of them to their master or lover. A major debate and a turning point in the care of the self arises when the care of the self in Epicurean and Stoic philosophy becomes a permanent obligation for every individual throughout his life.