Self-care and total care: the twofold return of care in twentieth-century thought

The paper studies two fundamentally different forms in which the concept of care makes its comeback in twentieth-century thought. We make use of a distinction made by Peter Sloterdijk, who argues that the ancient and medieval ‘ascetic’ ideal of self-enhancement through practice has re-emerged in the...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Backman, Jussi 1977- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Taylor & Francis 2020
Dans: International journal of philosophy and theology
Année: 2020, Volume: 81, Numéro: 3, Pages: 275-291
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Sloterdijk, Peter 1947- / Autonomie personnelle
RelBib Classification:NBE Anthropologie
TK Époque contemporaine
VA Philosophie
Sujets non-standardisés:B Hellenistic Philosophy
B Michel Foucault
B Christianity
B Martin Heidegger
B Self-care
B Care
B Peter Sloterdijk
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Résumé:The paper studies two fundamentally different forms in which the concept of care makes its comeback in twentieth-century thought. We make use of a distinction made by Peter Sloterdijk, who argues that the ancient and medieval ‘ascetic’ ideal of self-enhancement through practice has re-emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in the form of a rehabilitation of the Hellenistic notion of self-care (epimeleia heautou) in Michel Foucault’s late ethics. Sloterdijk contrasts this return of self-care with Martin Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world as ‘total care’ (Sorge), an utterly ‘secularized’ understanding of the human being as irreducibly world-embedded that rejects the classical ascetic ideal of world-secession. We examine further the historical roots and emergence of these contrasting contemporary reappropriations of care in the Western tradition of thought and show them to be rooted in two different ontologies and ethics of the self as either world-secluded or world-immersed, autonomous or constitutively relational. The historical point of divergence of these two approaches to care, we argue, can be found in the Christian transformation of Hellenistic ethics.
ISSN:2169-2335
Contient:Enthalten in: International journal of philosophy and theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/21692327.2020.1786301