Care for the Self: Originary Ethics in Heidegger and Foucault

What interests me in the following remarks is an apparent parallel between Heidegger and Foucault concerning the question of ethics, the important differences between these two thinkers notwithstanding. Specifically, I have always been struck by the proximity of certain of Foucault's formulations in one of his last works, namely, the interview published under the title "The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom," and Heidegger's early thought from the period surrounding Being and Time. I suspect that this proximity, if indeed it proves to be more than a mere similarity of language, also extends to the period of Foucault's later work in general (roughly, from Discipline and Punish onward). The present forum offers me an opportunity to test what initially is merely a certain hypothesis.1 The title of Foucault's interview immediately suggests a common ground between these two thinkers: the theme of "care for the self," prominent in Foucault's last phase, at once recalls the central term by which, in Being and Time, Heidegger designates the being of Dasein, of the entity that each of us ourselves is in each case. And yet no sooner do we make this connection than we sense within us an immediate resistance. For where, in his early work, does Heidegger have anything to say about "the practice of freedom"? Further, is it not evident enough from Foucault's later studies that care for the self is to be taken as a very concrete practice? Is not his work on the last two volumes of the history of sexuality in effect an extensive study of various concrete, historically conditioned practices of such "care"? Whereas in Heidegger one would appear to find, as most commentators do, merely an ontological "theory" of selfhood or subjectivity that not only has nothing to say about concrete practice, but expressly distances itself from any ethics. Yet matters are far from being so simple. Not only should one stop to ask what kind of "ethics" is being resisted in Heidegger's analytic of Dasein as care, one should also pause to take the measure of the radicality of Foucault's conception of ethics in his later work, which is far from what modernity understands under that name. We need to address attentively, in other words, what is meant by "the subject" or "the self" in each of these two thinkers, and within the periods of their work being considered here. My purpose in the following remarks is not, of course, to argue that Foucault and Heidegger are saying "the same thing"-which would be absurd-but to try to show that their thinking shares a common issue, to which and from which each of them speak, and in terms of which they may be brought into dialogue. I hope here to prepare such a dialogue by considering first Heidegger, and then Foucault, with respect to the leading theme of "care for the self. " Heidegger For those who would remain content with opposing the "concreteness" of Foucault's problematic to the "ontological" or "theoretical" status of Heidegger's analytic, Foucault's interview itself presents a complication, for the distinction between the ontological and the ontic or concrete articulates the entire issue and central argument of the interview. A few examples: Liberty is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the deliberate form assumed by liberty. (712/4)2 One must not have the care for others precede the care for self. The care for self takes ethical precedence in the measure that the relationship to self takes ontological precedence. (715/7) If you care for yourself correctly, i.e., if you know ontologically what you are, if you also know of what you are capable. if you know, finally, that you should not fear death, well, then, you cannot abuse your power over others. (716/8) The care for self appears like a pedagogical, ethical, and also ontological condition for the constitution of a good leader. (751-22/13) The central tenor of all of these statements shows, I believe, a remarkable consonance with the path taken by Heidegger's analytic of Dasein. …