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…