Um exercício foucaultiano de práticas de liberdade

Abstract

This thesis has as a starting point a question asked by Foucault during the The Hermeneutics of the Subject 1981-1982 course, in a class taught at the Collège de France on January 6th, 1982: “In which historical way, in the Western civilization, were the relationships between subject and truth, which are not raised by usual practical or historical analysis, plotted?”. The discussion presented here is designed in the context of a change of historic perspective by Foucault. It unfolds over the relation between the ethical and epistemological subject. First, the way that Foucault resorts to the Greek to think about other possibilities of the subject from their actions. We will focus on the way that, in his analysis, the author favors the relations of the care for self and self-knowledge from Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Alcibiades. Also, the presence of those concepts in the Hellenistic-Roman period will be discussed. Afterwards, we will address the course The Courage of Truth, which is a compilation of the classes taught between 1983 and 1984. Then, we will present the origins of the actions by discussing the means by which the subject is capable of telling the truth about themselves, since the examples of these actions are found in the cynics. As a conclusion, we see how the relations between the conducts of care of self and self-knowledge had an influence on the ancient subject’s conduct and their philosophical articulation with the true telling about themselves