Time for Foucault? Reflections on the Roman Self from Seneca to Augustine

Authors

  • James I. Porter University of California, Berkeley

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.5247

Keywords:

Self, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Heraclitus, Augustine, Cosmos, Stoicism

Abstract

The essay approaches the idea of the self as this was most often formulated in antiquity from Heraclitus to Augustine—not as the object of self-fashioning and self-care, but as an irresolvable problem that was a productive if disconcerting source of inquiry. The self is less cultivated than it is “unbounded,” less wedded to regimes of truth and discovery than it is exposed, precariously, to crises of identity and coherence in the face of a constantly changing and unfathomable world. The self on this view of it does not conform to the accounts that are given by Foucault, Hadot, or Gill. Readings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Augustine are used to support this first attempt at an alternative picture of the self in antiquity.

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Published

2017-01-06

How to Cite

Porter, J. I. (2017). Time for Foucault? Reflections on the Roman Self from Seneca to Augustine. Foucault Studies, (22), 113–133. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i0.5247

Issue

Number 22: January 2017: Foucault and Roman Antiquity: Foucault's Rome

Section

Special Issue on Foucault and Roman Antiquity: Foucault's Rome

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