Abstract

Within Western thought the discipline of ethics originates with the figure of Socrates. This dissertation traces the emergence of ethics within the Socratic discourses in order to demonstrate that epimeleia heautou, 'the care of the self,' is central to the good life as Socrates conceived it. I substantiate this thesis by turning to the Cynic development of Socratic ethics as well as the Stoic inheritance of Cynic tenets. The Cynics radicalize Socratic care through galvanizing the practices of the self that rest at the core of the Socratic notion of care of the self. The Stoics then mitigate Cynic practices by focusing on indifference and inventing the notion of duty. By tracing ethics from its first instantiation in the Socratic dialogues through the example of the Cynic and into the Stoic system, an intellectual lineage emerges wherein the viability of ethics hinges upon the exercise of practices of the self. ;After having established this account of Socratic ethics, I turn to a unique contemporary study of the topic by engaging the late thought of Michel Foucault. In his last works Foucault departs from his earlier themes in order to take up the ethical relation of the self to the self and the creation of subjectivity. His insights into the care of the self frame a conception of ethics as an aesthetics of existence, or an art of living. Ethics, as it is conceived in Socratic thought as well as in the late work of Foucault is not, however, a care of the self alone. The care of the self and the practices that support such a care already entail a concern for others. Thus, I argue that the ethical stance expressed in antiquity and in the work of Foucault is necessarily intersubjective. By examining the legacy of the ethical injunction to care for oneself, a care that is inseparable from a care for others, I am able to elaborate a conception of ethics that approaches philosophy itself as a practice of self-invention