Foucault’s Care of the Self and the Cultivation of Pleasure
Is there a version of the individual that can serve as the grounds for a more collectivist US-American culture? We turn to Foucault for direction.
Byung-Chul Han draws upon the earlier work of Michel Foucault where he discusses the internalization of power, but doesn’t do much with Foucault’s later work on the care of the self and the cultivation of pleasure. In the work of this period, namely "The Use of Pleasure" and "The Care of the Self," Foucault explores how ancient Greeks and Romans, particularly within Hellenistic philosophies such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Cynicism, practiced "care of the self", a concept that involved rigorous self-examination and the cultivation of virtues through daily exercises and ethical reflection. He argued that these practices were not merely about self-improvement but were deeply intertwined with the pursuit of a good life and personal freedom.
In this work, there are elements that suggest a form of collectivism, though not in the traditional political sense. His exploration of ancient Greek and Roman practices reveals that these practices were often social and communal activities. For instance, the cultivation of the self in Hellenistic philosophies involved not just individual self-care but also participation in collective exercises, discussions, and mentorships within philosophical schools and communities.
These practices emphasized mutual support and the sharing of ethical techniques among members of these communities. The collective aspect of self-care was integral to achieving personal transformation and ethical development, underscoring a communal dimension in the cultivation of pleasure and ethical self-formation.
Also in this period, Foucault gives an interview to a French magazine that is published under the name “On Friendship,” where he argues that the gay liberation movement is a threat to the status quo precisely because of the new forms of kinship and the cultivation of pleasure as a communal project. In the interview, he points to the history of intimate female friendship as a model, although the feminist scholarship on these intimate friendships details how it ends up buttressing heteronormative patriarchal social norms… but all of this points us in an interesting direction.
We will need each other to survive the coming challenges, this much is becoming crystal clear. But we need each other, even those others who oppose us politically and in other ways, because we need others in order to be able to know our own damn selves. The cultivation of the self runs in tandem with the cultivation of community, and the sharing of pleasure rituals (not necessarily in a crass sense), is what will sustain our ability to help each other and organize our lives in better ways. We get at this not through discipline, sacrifice, or obligation, but through the capacity for pleasure that underlies these modalities of being one’s self with others. I mean the pleasure of sharing your favorite book with others who might also read it and discuss it with you and others; the pleasure of making art just because and sharing it with no expectation; gardening and sharing what you grow with a gardening community. Being one's self with others while building upon shared desires, this is how we learn to care for ourselves and others.
We must take a breath, and even though we are living through a time of terrible crisis, feel our feet on the ground and find what gives us pleasure, then find a way to share that with others. Know that every social media platform, capitalist venture, and techno-brohood is against you doing this. Much like controlling a dog’s nose controls also their bodies (because they lead with their sense of smell), controlling our human desires is how we are put into control by powers that wish to harness our human essence and energies. Take back your desires and they have no lever. Take back our desires, it’s how you can know anything that is real. Don’t expect it to be easy to center the cultivation of the capacity for pleasure, but do it anyway.
I love this. We so often underestimate goodness and joy - that which is pleasurable. Yet that is how we are wired.