MF 05: the end is self

For Socrates, care of the self is for the young aristocrats: to run the city-state one day, to exercise power properly and virtuously, and to gain knowledge of oneself. 

In the neoclassical culture, of the imperial golden age, care of the self changed around 1st and 2nd century. It became the art of living, a general and unconditional principle, a requirement addressed to everyone, all the time, and without any condition of status, self as object and end, and not determined solely by self-knowledge.

epimeleisthai heautou also means to practice, train, and exercise. Four families of expressions:

1. pay attention to self, close the window and concentrate, analysis of the self, turn around towards self (p85), collect oneself, install oneself in a place of refuge, a well-fortified citadel, a fortress protected by walls
2. in medical terms: treat oneself, cure oneself, conduct amputations on self
3. in legal terms: lay claim to yourself, assert the right to yourself, free oneself, honor oneself, respect oneself.
4. a relationship of mastery and sovereignty. a relationship of sensations: have pleasure in oneself, be happy with oneself, be content with oneself, experience delight with oneself.

the art of living: tekhne tou biou （p86) - it is the fundamental definition of philosophy. Care of the self becomes coextensive with life.

hora: the moment or season of life when one must take care of oneself. In Alcibiades, it is the age young people enter adulthood because education deficiency and political and erotic reasons. Later care of the self becomes an obligation that should last for the whole of one's life. young to prepare for life, old to grow young again.

Epicurus: we must not hesitate to practice philosophy when we are young or grow weary of it when we are old. It is never too early or too late for taking care of one's soul.

Musonius Rufus: we can save ourselves by constantly treating ourselves.

Seneca in De Tranquillitate Animi, Natural Questions, De Vita Contemplativa.

Lucian's satire. 20 years taking lessons from philosophers.

Care of the self is an adult activity and that far from adolescence being the focal point and the privileged temporal axis in the care of the self, it is rather the middle of adult life, and perhaps even the end of adult life rather than the end of adolescence.(p88)

Pythagoreans divided human life into four periods of twenty years.

paraskheue (instructio in Latin): The training for care of the self is not a professional kind of preparation or preparation for social activity, but rather of training him, as in Alcibiades, to withstand in the right way all the possible accidents, misfortunes, disgrace, and setbacks that may befall him. It is the individual's armature for dealing with events rather training for definite professional goal.

The practice of self is no longer imposed simply against a background of ignorance, and of ignorance unaware of itself, as in the case of Alcibiades. The practice of the self is established against a background of errors, bad habits, and an established and deeply ingrained deformation and dependence that must be shaken off.
Seneca: In this practice of ourselves we must work to expel and expurgate this evil within us, to master it, throw it off and free ourselves from it.
Seneca: the bona mens (the noble soul) never comes before the mala mens, the soul's imperfection.
virtutes discere vitia dediscere est: learning virtue is unlearning vices.

To become what we never were is one of the most fundamental elements of this practice of the self.

Cicero in Tusculan Disputations: "As soon as we are born and admitted into our families we find ourselves in an entirely distorted milieu in which the perversion of judgment is so complete that we say we took in error with our nursemaid's milk."

Seneca to Lucilius: I desire for you a general contempt for everything that your parents wished for you in abundance.

The care of the self must completely reverse the system of values conveyed and laid down by the family.

Rhetoric is a teaching of embellishment, pretence, and seduction. It is not a matter of taking care of oneself but of pleasing others.

Musonius: We call on the philosopher as we call on he doctor in cases of illness. The philosopher's action on the soul is in every respect analogous to the doctor's action on the body.

pathos (pertubatio in Latin): an irrational impulse of the soul.

therapeuein: to perform a medical action whose purpose is to cure or to treat. the activity of the servant who obeys and serves his master. to worship. The word means to give medical care to oneself, to be one's own serant, and to devote oneself to oneself.

Philo of Alexandria: the Therapeutae people

A philosophy school is an iatrion (a clinic). You should not come to the philosophy school because you are well and in good health. You should not walk out of the philosophy school in pleasure, but in pain.

The intelligence from from passions is citadel.

Marcus Aurelius: "Remember that your inner guide becomes impregnable when it withdraws into itself and is content not to do what it does not wish to...The intelligence free from passions is citadel. Man has no stronger place into which to withdraw and henceforth be impregnable. Philosophy raises an impregnable wall around us that Fortune attacks with its thousand engines without gaining entrance. The soul detached from external things holds an unassailable position, defending itself in the fortress it has constructed."

raison d'etre: 存在的理由和目的