本体的分析 or 主体的分析
Epmeleia heautou (Latin: cura sui): care of oneself
Socrates is essentially the only philosopher who stopped young people in the street and tell them: "You must care about yourself."
epimeleia heautou is fundamental principle for describing the philosophical attitude throughout Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman culture.
Greek Delphic precepts in the cult of Apollo:
1: neden agan (not too much)
2. eggue (the pledges. do not make vows that you will not be able to honor)
3. gnothi seauton (know yourself)
In general, the precepts demand for prudence: not too much in your requests and hopes and no excess in how you conduct yourself. People who came to the god should always remember that you are only a mortal, not a god, and that you should neither presume too much on your strength nor oppose the powers of the deity.
Plato's Apology 《申辩篇》 柏拉图的申辩
Different ways to say "care of the self": taking care of the self, withdrawing into oneself, retiring into the self, finding one's pleasure in oneself, seeking no other delight but in the self, remaining in the company of oneself, being the friend of oneself, devoting oneself to oneself, respecting oneself...
epimeleia heautou is an attitude towards the self, others, and world. It is a general standpoint that we should have and a certain ways for us to behave in the world, undertake actions, and have relations with other people.
epimeleia heautou asks us for certain form of attention or looking. Being concerned about oneself implies that we look away from the outside world to the inside towards ourselves, attending to what we think and what takes place in our thought.
epimeleia also designates a number of actions exercised on the self by the self, taking responsibility for oneself and by which changes, purifies, transforms, and transfigures oneself through meditation, memorization of the past, examination of conscience...
Care of the self describes a fundamental philosophical attitude throughout Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman culture. (Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus, Seneca, Plotinus...)
From fifth century B.C. up to fifth century A.D， from the Greek to the first forms of Christian asceticism, with the notion of epimeleia heautou, we have a body of work that defines a way of being, a standpoint, and certain forms of reflections and practices.
Socrates in Apology: "Dear friend, you are an Athenian citizen of the greatest city, more famous than any other for its knowledge and might, yet are you not ashamed for devoting all your care to increasing your wealth, reputation and honors while not caring for or even considering your reason, truth and the constant improvement of your soul?" For Socrates, the care of oneself is a sort of thorn which must be stuck in men's flesh, driven into their existence, and which is a principle of restlessness and movement, of continuous concern throughout life.
Gregory of Nyssa On Virginity: "That the care of oneself begins with freedom from marriage."That has become the matrix of Christian asceticism.
Epicurus: "Every man should take care of his soul day and night and throughout his life."
Philosophy: the form of thought that asks what determines that there is and can be truth and falsehood and whether or not we can separate the true and the false.
Spirituality: the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth.
Spirituality postulates that 1) the truth is never given to the subject by right; 2) for the subject to have right of access to the truth he must be changed, transformed, shifted, and become, to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself (through love-eros and ascesis), for as he is, the subject is not capable of truth; 3) the truth enlightens the subject, gives beatitude to the subject, the tranquility of the soul.
（In modern sense, if knowledge is the only necessity to truth, then without any request on the subject's being, the truth can't save the subject.)
(The Cartesian moment: know yourself, which overshadowed care of the self.)
The epimeleia heautou designates precisely the set of conditions of spirituality, the set of transformations of the self, that are the necessary conditions for having access to the truth. So, throughout Antiquity, the philosophical theme (how to have access to the truth?) and the question of spiritualty (what transformations in the being of the subject are necessary for access to the truth?) were never separate.
In modern age, the condition for the subject's access to the truth is knowledge and knowledge alone. It is when the philosopher can recognize the truth and have access to it in himself and solely through his activity of knowing, without anything else being demanded of him and without him having to change or alter his being as subject.
There are all conditions that are either intrinsic to knowledge or extrinsic to the act of knowledge, but which do not concern the subject in his being; they only concern the individual in his concrete existence, and not the structure of the subject as such.
The access to truth, whose sole condition is henceforth knowledge, will find reward and fulfillment in nothing else but the indefinite development of knowledge. The point of enlightenment and fulfillment, the moment of the subject's transfiguration by the "rebound effect" on himself of the truth he knows, and which passes through, permeates, and transfigures his being, can no longer exist. Henceforth the truth cannot save the subject.
Writings related to epimeleia:
Philo: De Vita contemplative
Plotinus: Ennead, II
Methodius of Olympus (Christian ascenticism)
Basil of Caesarea
Gregory of Nyssa: The Lofe of Moses
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