Foucault, care of the self and the privileged status of old age

This paper draws attention to Foucault’s 1981/82 lecture series on The Hermeneutics of the Self . These contain perhaps the only direct reference Foucault ever made to the topic of old age. In them, he observes how, in the first and second centuries of the Common Era, Greco-Roman philosophy shifted its emphasis from ‘knowing thyself’ to ‘becoming one’s self’. While these writers saw the practice of the arts of living as desirable at every stage of life, they considered them most effectively cultivated in later life, when the individual is least constrained by the subjectifications imposed by the world. Their focus upon the ‘arts of living’ was later replaced by what Foucault considererd a ‘rules of living’ approach, evident in the early Christian church teachings, and later by the institutions of the state. Foucault’s endorsement of the art of living in later life can in turn be contrasted with other modern thinkers who have perpetuated such ‘rules of living’ approaches. Set against Foucault’s support for an aesthetics of lifestyle, writers working largely within an ageing studies/gerontology framework have advocated what might be called a public health endorsed agenda to age actively or successfully or have prescribed other morally desirable pathways for older people to develop integrity, self-realisation and/or bodily transcendence. Foucault’s advocacy of an art of living in later life has been neglected by those using his work to emphasise the governance, rather than the freedoms of old age. Drawing attention to these overlooked lectures may help re-balance this view.