Free Yourself from Yourself: The Ethics of the Self as an Emancipatory Educational Practice

Abstract

The paper deals with Foucault's analysis of certain aspects of Stoicism and its relation to education. Foucault begins with the thesis that “our etho-poetic practices have become oriented toward discovering our true and substantive nature.” He turns to the ethics that separates our ethical or self-forming practices from the obligation to tell the truth about our nature. The first question is whether the concepts and practices of Stoicism such as Stultitia and Askesis, in their relation to truth or truth-telling and their specific relation to listening, reading, and writing, constitute educational practice. Also, if the goal of the ethics of the self is the constitution of the subject through the conscious practice of liberty, and if we define Askesis as the subjectivation of the discourse of truth, the question arises as to whether this is the kind of learning that could emancipate. More precisely, whether self-care or the ethics of self as transformation, which is achieved through the appropriation of truth and becoming the subject of truth-telling, can be free and independent, or emancipated.