The Foundations of Phenomenological Psychotherapy

Part IThe Crisis: The Natural Sciences and the Unthought Debt

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018

Giampiero Arciero, Guido Bondolfi and Viridiana MazzolaThe Foundations of Phenomenological Psychotherapyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78087-0_1

1. On the Care Path

Giampiero Arciero¹, ² , Guido Bondolfi² and Viridiana Mazzola³

(1)

IPRA, Rome, Italy

(2)

Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Geneva, Department of Psychiatry, Genève, Switzerland

(3)

Liaison Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of Geneva, Department of Psychiatry, Genève, Switzerland

Keywords

Care of selfMotility of lifeTheoretical knowledge

When people enter into therapy, they bring a story that usually corresponds to the way in which they account for a series of events, to which they assign causative value, with respect to the condition for which care is being sought. The narrative in question, a particular way of configuring events, is often accompanied by a certain malaise. At times this corresponds to specific symptoms; at other times, it amounts to an incapacity to gain access to oneself or to a sense of inadequacy in the way of relating to oneself. In all cases, it is a form of personal disunity that is suffered and experienced as a disorder. Usually, therefore, the story which the person tells is also accompanied by suffering, and it is this which leads the patient to seek treatment. So, in order to explore the topic of care, let us start by addressing the question of how this need of the patient emerges from the cracks of a narrative developed by Maria, with the aid of her therapist, during her first session.

Maria, a separated 40-year-old woman with a son just over one, starts off by saying that she is visiting our practice on account of the problems she has with the father of the child, with whom she would like to build a peaceful relationship. Maria had first met this man, whom we will call Carlo, 3 years earlier, at the end of a long and extremely fraught process of separation, which she experienced in a condition of complete sentimental and sexual isolation. The origins of the difficult nature and duration of this separation (3 years) are explained by Maria by referring to the episode that triggered it. By chance, her husband had unexpectedly learned about an affair which had been going on for a few months. This discovery was followed by a de facto separation—in the sense that the two spouses now no longer live together—but not by a legal separation. This is an interesting detail, because Maria will interpret this failure to lend official acknowledgment to an existing condition as a sign of indecision on the part of her husband and therefore as a possibility for them to recover their relationship. A few days after leaving their shared home, Maria realizes what a serious mistake she has made: the freedom she had yearned for in the last months of her relationship with her husband is of no use to her now. Her affair is soon over and Maria finds herself alone. This loneliness is marked by terrible feelings of guilt about her infidelity, combined with a hope for reconciliation, which is left open by the lack of any request for divorce on her husband’s part. Maria spends 3 years in this condition, without as much as a one-night stand. Positive that she could never find a man to match her husband, she is caught in a limbo, as she waits to return to him.

Three years after learning about his wife’s affair, however, the husband decides to file for divorce. Maria’s reaction is ambiguous: on the one hand, she is stunned, bewildered, and painfully surprised; on the other, she feels free because her guilt has finally lifted. It is against this background that the relationship between Maria and Carlo blossoms. One day, a few months later, Maria is suddenly struck by Carlo’s gaze in her office. The same day, the two brush by each other during lunch break—an erotically charged encounter. Carlo looks younger than his age. He is elegant and ready to pick up any woman’s gaze; in other words, he looks like a man who is after some fun rather than a stable relationship.

Maria, however, is soon forced to change her mind: after a few months, Carlo asks her if she would like a child from him. Maria can hardly believe her ears. In the grip of a deep and unexpected passion, she immediately accepts the suggestion. She envisages a new horizon with a man who, unlike her ex-husband, has asked her to give him a child, thereby setting their relationship within the framework of a shared life project. Strangely, though, in the following 4 months of cohabitation, Maria does not become pregnant. In fact, the relationship grows strained. Maria is wary and throws jealous fits. She becomes intrusive and is easily irritated by the flirtatious attitude which Carlo continues to display toward his female colleagues at work. The situation becomes so critical that Maria ends up doing the house move they had planned together 4 months earlier all on her own. Carlo, stifled by her jealousy and aggressiveness, explains that he needs a break: he takes a 2-month vacation, interrupting all regular contact. Maria realizes that she has gone too far and awaits his return, swallowing the bitter pill of his summer pause for reflection. During his 2 months of leave, Carlo only phones now and then, but his behavior is erratic: he buzzes Maria’s door out of the blue, then phones her three times in one day, and then writes to her. In any case, he avoids meeting her.

In this period, however, something peculiar happens. One August afternoon, Maria receives a strange phone call; on the other end of the line, she hears a woman’s voice: My name is Cecilia Smith and I’m calling you to tell you that I’m 10 years younger than you and have been seeing Carlo for some time. We have a shared dream and some problems that unfortunately are preventing us from fulfilling it…. Maria is speechless, dumbstruck, and stunned.

A few days after this episode Carlo shows up again, as if by magic. He repeatedly phones Maria, but she does not answer his calls. He comes round to her place and rings the doorbell. She ignores him at first but then finally opens the door. He asks her to listen to him. The story Carlo tells is a rather unlikely one, but Maria chooses to believe it anyway. Carlo explains that his ex-lover—Cecilia Smith—has been stalking him for a year, trying to sabotage all his relationships. A few days earlier that woman had entered his office and stolen his mobile phone. Knowing Maria’s full name, she had stolen his phonebook to call her. This is the explanation Carlo wanted to give her. But he goes even further by telling Maria that he has finally made his choice: From tomorrow I’ll be moving in with you. The following day Carlo indeed moves into Maria’s house. Four months later Maria is pregnant.

At this point, their relationship takes a radical new turn. During her pregnancy Maria gains more and more weight. As her body image changes, she become more insecure and hence more distrustful and jealous. She clearly feels she cannot live up to other women, and this leads her to hate Carlo: she attacks, provokes, and exasperates him and cannot bear the sight of him. The pregnancy turns into a nightmare. At last, Maria gives birth. But Carlo shows very little enthusiasm for the child. In fact, he starts getting home increasingly late. He joins a fitness center far from home where he goes every evening, and when he gets back he mistreats and insults Maria. A month goes by, and one morning Carlo wakes up and tells Maria: I can’t bear you any longer. I don’t love you anymore. Don’t stand in my way, or in the way of my choices—I’m leaving. I don’t think this will come as a surprise to you: we haven’t had intercourse for months. I’ve been wanting to leave you for months and you know this full well, because you chose to ignore it and… I don’t think it’s right to raise the child in a situation like this. In that period—although Maria only discovered it later—Carlo had just begun a relationship with a colleague of theirs, a woman about 15 years younger than her. This event triggered what Maria refers to as her obsession with women in general, an obsession which flares up—in an increasingly intense way—each time she meets Carlo or her rival in the office. Carlo is a handsome 36-year-old man who seduces 20-year-olds and is involved with a woman 15 years his junior, a young woman with whom Maria cannot compete. And here is where Maria’s obsession lies: the only way she has found to survive the separation is to constantly engage with Carlo’s real or imaginary women—a soul-shattering film that is constantly playing in her head! Even the love she feels for her child is not enough to get Carlo out of her mind and free her from all the resentment, rage, but also desire she is experiencing. This is the affliction for which Maria has entered into therapy: she would like to change her life condition but is having trouble doing so. She is looking therefore for some care that would promote, engender, or bring about the end of the affliction she is suffering from. But what does it mean to bring someone into care? What is healing based on and how is it accomplished?

1.1 On Healing

There is a principle, an echo from the ancient world, which still underlies the praxis and research of all the various schools of psychotherapy. Aristotle formulates it in chapter 12 of Metaphysics book 5: "Potency (dynamis) means a source of movement or change, which is in another thing than the thing moved or in the same thing qua other. The art of building, for example, is a potency which is not in the thing built, while the art of healing, which is a potency, may be in the man healed, but not in him qua healed" (Met. book Δ 12, 1019 a 15 ff.).

Aristotle’s definition first of all establishes an equivalence between movement and change. Potency therefore describes a principle that is the source of all change. Aristotle then states its location: this principle, potency, may reside either in another thing than the thing moved or in the same thing, which, however, is moved qua other. In order to explain these two aspects of potency, he uses two examples: the art of building and that of healing.

When we build a house, for example, in order for a range of materials such as stones, bricks, mortar, and tiles to turn into the house, it is necessary for these elements to be arranged according to a specific plan. The idea of the house and, more generally, the art of building it do not lie in the materials themselves: the starting point of this change is, rather, the architect who foresees it and hence another thing than the changing one. Just as the principle of movement lies in something other (the architect) than what is moved (the building material), so the principle of change originates from something other than what changes.

The second example concerns the art of healing. It is similar to the first, but more complex: for the principle of transformation here may reside not just in something else (as in the case of the architect with respect to the house) but also in the changing thing itself. A doctor will heal his patients but may also heal himself when he is ill; in this case, he can alter his health condition because, apart from being an ill person, he is also something else, namely, a doctor. In other words, in order for a patient to be healed, it is necessary for him either to undergo a change at the hands of the person capable of exercising the art of healing or, if the patient himself is a doctor and hence capable of providing treatment, to become the object of his own treatment. The principle of healing, therefore, lies either in another or in oneself as other; therefore, change brought about by another lies at the heart of the healing process. It is evident here that the Greeks were already familiar with the notion of the being of a person qua object (as was bound to be the case, given the primacy assigned to theory). Immediately afterward, however, Aristotle adds: Potency means … the source of a thing’s being moved by another thing or by itself qua other: for in virtue of that principle by which a patient undergoes some change, we say that the patient himself is capable of undergoing changes (Met. book Δ 12, 1019 a 20 ff.).

Aristotle better articulates the first definition of potency by reaffirming its defining features, this time in passive terms. This perspective, complementary to the previous one, reverses the examples: potency is now seen to lie in the materials which determine the possibility for the builder to employ them and set limits to this operation. We cannot build a house by arranging prime numbers one on top of the other, for instance, because they do not possess the capacity to be used in construction work. Likewise, the potency to heal, the disposition toward recovery, pertains to the patient, who may or may not be capable of enduring and reacting to the stimuli provided by the person treating him. In other words, in order for care to prove effective, the healing method must conform to the nature of the patient rather than seek to replace it as the foundation for health.

Aristotle thus furnishes a series of specific indications with regard to the art of healing. First of all, this is modelled after the art of building and hence regarded as a techne : as the kind of knowledge, that is, which governs those activities which have the crafting of objects or the construction of a house as their aim. Moreover, the art of healing corresponds to a principle of movement or change: healing implies the transition from one condition to another, from illness to health. Finally, the capacity to heal lies either in something else or in oneself qua other: the source of the kind of movement with which healing is identified is to be found in alterity vis-à-vis the person to be healed. On the other hand, the healer’s action is accepted and received according to the patient’s pre-existing possibilities.¹ This view of healing opens up a range of thematic areas which have been shaping therapeutic knowledge since Antiquity, without ever having been disputed.

If healing is governed by the same fundamental relationship which enables the potter to mold his vase and the architect to design his house, if—that is—healing stems from the application of knowledge in the light of which the being of a person may be transformed, what way of understanding man makes the art of healing accessible?

Healing, envisaged as a transformation leading from one existential condition to another, concerns the life of the patient, even though it occurs through a relationship with the healer or, rather, the person providing care. In other words, to every change there are two complementary sides, which correspond to the two Aristotelian determinations of potency: the active and the passive. On the one hand, the person who provides care must possess the knowledge required to trigger a transformation; on the other hand, the person who is being treated must undergo change. The healing process, therefore, takes shape through a relationship. On what way of envisaging this interpersonal foundation is the healing relationship based?

Finally, if the origin of healing lies in the person who provides treatment, while the patient receives his action according to pre-existing dispositions which determine its meaning, is it possible to identify a method to govern both the healing process and the processes of change of the patient?

These three questions, around which the present work will revolve, concern the basic themes, and hence issues and empirical data, which have defined and lent support to studies on psychotherapy and its praxis so far. What are at stake are three underlying aspects of every form of psychotherapy: (1) What view of man is care based on? (2) What way of envisaging one’s relationship with the other is implicit in a therapeutic relationship? (3) By what path can care take shape?

Evidently, addressing the issue of the horizons of psychotherapeutic practice and research requires us to rethink the experiences which the above principles are meant to account for. These principles have provided a basis and context for developments which began in Antiquity and which, in the nineteenth century, led to the establishment of psychology as a branch of natural science and to the birth of the science of the care of the psyche.

1.2 The Man of Psychotherapies

Psychotherapy, in all its various forms, has been determined by the way in which psychology has thematized human life. Starting from the second half of the nineteenth century, psychology has conceived man on the basis of the suggestions provided by the natural sciences, using the conceptual tools and categories favored by them. The definition of the psyche as a natural entity, a thing among other things, is what has determined the limits and horizons of the field of inquiry, as well as of all praxis and research; it has fixed the boundaries of the subject matter and hence the way in which the fundamental structures related to it are to be investigated.

This preestablished mode of approaching the realm of the psyche, which has never really been brought into focus, has determined the path (methodos) of psychology and therefore the way in which its research and experiments are to be conducted. In other words, if the psyche is conceived from the perspective of the natural sciences, what psychology employs in order to convey its distinctive essence on the conceptual level are not just categories appropriate for grasping natural entities but also the appropriate method for studying them. It is therefore possible to look at one’s psyche (or that of another person) as though it were an object, just as I might gaze at the car parked opposite my house, observing its shape, seats, wheels, color, etc. What I grasp of the psyche, understood as a thing that meets my gaze, are those properties that fall within the field of my disinterested vision—be they isolated or interconnected.

In this respect, it makes little difference what aspects the various currents of psychology may focus on: inner states, behavior, cognitions, emotions, feelings, narratives, relations, the flow of consciousness, or dreams. Different schools of psychology are distinguished by different focuses of observation, more or less articulated within given heuristic models—comparable to different car models in the previous example. Ultimately, however, they all share the same ontological foundation and the same method of inquiry.

All the various forms of psychotherapy deriving from this way of understanding psychology emerged over the course of the twentieth century as a sort of testing ground, or justification, for the psychological theories which had inspired them. So whereas psychic suffering and related therapies have been explained in the light of psychological models of reference, at best therapeutic practice has tended to prescribe a series of rules and patterns—more or less consistent with those of the model of reference—for structuring therapeutic action. In most cases, these rules have become methods of intervention. In recent years, starting from these premises and under the influence of insurance companies requiring an increasing degree of certainty in the choice of effective treatments, there is a growing pretension to measure the effectiveness of therapeutic intervention: evidence-based psychotherapy. This quality label for treatments that have been proven demonstrably effective, according to the empirical evidence, both certifies their scientific standing and ensures insurance reimbursement. But this claim to a scientific standing—as we shall see—is comparable to collecting data to prove the usefulness of prayer!

This state of affairs, which, on the whole, concerns these disciplines both in the professional sphere and in the academic and educational one, has to do with two foundational aspects that are closely interconnected and reflect the Western tradition to which they belong. On the one hand, the interpretation of the soul (psyche), which predetermines the course of this research, is based on an ontology which has remained the same ever since Greek Antiquity and which envisages human life according to the essential category of production (poiesis): a category implying a relation with a creator, a demiurge. The art of healing, therefore, takes shape in the light of such knowledge. This way of conceiving man understands human existence according to the model of the production of objects and of the way we experience objects produced—as things that stand on their own and are available to us. Starting from this vision, the object of psychology, its positum, becomes accessible: the self as a subsisting entity, as a thing among other things.

On the other hand, grasping the self as an object, envisaging it as something complete that resists all transformation, as that which already was (to ti en einai), to quote Aristotle—in other words, its remaining ever the same—defines the way in which it is possible to study the self but also the limits to every possible cure. This immutability is precisely what shapes one’s observational relation to this object. The self can only be grasped through the regularity of its existing and occurring through the kind of theoretical knowledge which, freed from all prospectivism, makes it possible to identify its objective properties. Clearly, then, any form of change too can only be grasped by reducing it to the stability of the entity under consideration.

1.3 A Gaze Fixed on the Self?

Psychology (and consequently psychotherapy) may be regarded as a theoretical science, on account of both the ontological characteristics of the positum—the self as an unchanging substantial unity that constitutes the foundation of any transformation—and of the mode of observation which distinguishes its scientific method. This way of grasping things, i.e., theoretical knowledge (theorein), shaped the various currents of psychology and psychotherapy over the course of the twentieth century, down to its contemporary expressions.

On a practical level, the same kind of knowledge provides a range of interpretative rules to be followed in the care of self, which is to say, in psychotherapy. The idea is to treat this self—by promoting self-knowledge—according to a theoretical approach whose object is to be found within the so-called inner experience: within consciousness.

From being a science of the spirit, psychology therefore becomes a science of psychic phenomena to be investigated in the light of the knowledge which distinguishes the natural sciences. Natural-scientific psychology thus irrupts with its methodology into the sphere of awareness: while searching for invariants, it devitalizes lived experience and dehistoricizes factical experience. The development of physiological psychology is the first major achievement of this epistemological transformation, which finds its origin in Descartes and its culmination today in cognitive psychology.

At this stage we are bound to follow a path that is usually of little interest to psychotherapists, as it apparently adds nothing to the knowledge of practices which might make therapeutic intervention more effective. Therapists who share the everyday problems, dramas, events, and troubles of their patients would certainly prefer to be presented with the analysis of a noteworthy session within a given course of treatment, with a new technique or with some intervention guidelines. What would appear to shape their practice is especially the need to know in advance how to deal with this or that problem, how to react to this or that situation or disorder. It is baffling how the requests advanced by therapists in training coincide with those of many professionals who have long completed their education: both are searching for reliable tools, categories that may be applied, manuals telling them what to do, and preestablished patterns on which to model their treatment. The simpler the guidelines, the more likely they are to be followed.

Faced with patients who feel at a complete loss and seek help, novices and established professionals alike claim to possess a priori a degree of certainty ensured by the model they subscribe to and in the light of which they interpret all evidence—a model which provides a key for them to access the workings of the human mind and to operate upon it. Once acquired, this certainty often becomes dogma: it is no longer thematized, but is rather confirmed through the constant application of patterns deriving from one’s model of reference. Thus psychotherapy parishes are established—of the sort that sparked the holy wars of the 1970s and 1980s. Each has its own truth and liturgies, its own shrines and saints, and its own gospel, to be applied and adapted over and over again to the lives of patients seeking help.

1.4 The Theory and the Philosophers

While the ontology on which psychology is based (and which has never been thematized) reflects a conception of being as a single whole, which remains itself unchanged but provides the basis for all change, theoretical knowledge is the method that ensures a firm understanding of divine and human things. Both of these are founded on the same nature (physis), in an original and fundamental sense. Philosophy has laid claim to this detached form of knowledge from its outset: the Greeks called it theorein. According to Chantraine (1977), the word theoros (spectator) describes someone who is sent somewhere to consult an oracle or to take part in a religious celebration but also a traveler visiting unknown lands.

From the very beginning, then, this term must have been used to describe he who goes as a spectator to certain places and is engrossed by the spectacle before his eyes. Starting with Plato, the word theoria acquired the meaning of contemplation, consideration, which it retained in Hellenistic Greek, where it is used to indicate theory and speculation, as opposed to practice.

These different meanings, which Chantraine traces in the etymology and history of the word, provide the background to a testimony on the life of Pythagoras (Malingrey 1961) that sheds light on the origin of the term. This account (fr. 88 Wehrli) comes from Heraclides Ponticus (c. 390–320 BC), a disciple of Plato’s; it was quoted by Cicero and then taken up by Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras, written roughly seven centuries later.² According to this account, when Pythagoras was visiting the city of Phlius, he discussed certain questions with the local tyrant Leon. Struck by Pythagoras’ sharp mind, the latter asked him what art he practiced: Pythagoras replied that he specialized in no art but was a philosopher.³ Leon, who had never heard that term before, asked Pythagoras what a philosopher might be and how he differs from other men. Pythagoras then told him that there is an analogy between the way in which men come into life and the way in which crowds attend solemn celebrations.⁴ All sorts of people would flock to these celebrations, for a variety of reasons. Some would go there to sell their wares and earn a little money, others to compete and seek glory. Then there was a third category of people, comprising the noblest individuals, who seek neither approval nor profit, but simply go there to see and carefully observe what takes place and how it takes place. So just as people will set out from different cities to gather at the same crowded celebration, by setting out from different natures in life, we find ourselves driven by monetary greed and ambitions of glory; only a few people—rare types—devote themselves to the study of nature. These, Pythagoras explained, are the philosophers, who investigate and learn about nature as disinterested observers (theoroi). It is worth noting that what is meant by nature here is the unity of the whole.

Iamblichus adds the following words to Cicero’s account, lending it a distinctly Neoplatonist twist: It is beautiful to contemplate the whole heavenly vault and to recognize the order of the stars moving across it … philosophy for him (i.e. Pythagoras) was the search for this sort of contemplation (philosophia e zelosis tes toiautes theorias).

We do not know within what narrative context Heraclides Ponticus presented the above anecdote, given that the work De mortua, which reportedly included it, is now lost. What emerges from the various accounts of the episode, spanning several centuries, are two aspects which raise some interesting questions even today.

The first aspect is the close connection between philosophy and theoria. The difference between men and philosophers—the rarest and most noble of men—lies in the fact that the latter are capable of grasping the real being of things through a disinterested mode of observation. Understanding the being of things known to man (sophia) requires a particular inclination (philia) toward things, an inclination sustained by prolonged and intense exercise: contemplation, theorein. ⁵ From the outset, then, philosophy has been conceived as an activity aimed at the attainment of firm knowledge, as a practice that, while leading one to understand (sophos) those things which cannot be in any other way, brings about a transformation of one’s way of life.

Yet this episode also presents a second striking aspect: it draws a contrast between the mode of acting of the few—the philosophers—who see and carefully observe what takes place and how it takes place and that of the majority of people, who are driven by their desires and passions.

1.5 The Theoretical Way of Life and the Care of Self

Where does this difference between men stem from? The most explicit answer provided in Antiquity comes from Socrates in the First Alcibiades. The young Alcibiades, a youth who has spent his best years indulging in soft living, now realizes that his beauty is fading. At a loss as to what he should do with his life, he dreams of becoming a politician, but actually has no means of taking his life into his own hands. Socrates makes an explicit suggestion to him. Most men, he explains, believe that taking care of oneself means taking care of one’s business; but the art by which we take care of ourselves is not the same as that by which we take care of what belongs to us.⁶ In order to know what art (techne) makes us better, we must first know ourselves, which is to say, our soul. This notion is reflected by the famous saying gnothi seauton, the injunction which the Delphic oracle would always address to those who consulted her.

If the soul must know itself, what must it turn toward in order to see at the same time itself and what it really is? To answer this question, the well-known metaphor of reflexiveness is introduced. Just as an eye gazing at itself in the pupil of another eye facing it can see, in addition to this pupil and reflected within it, the part in which its own visual capacity (arete) lies, so the soul, in order to know itself, must reflect itself in the brightest part of another soul, the part where the virtue of the soul lies: its sophia. He who gazes into that region sees all that is divine (Friedländer et al. 2004, p. 656). This means that the act of reflexion, by which the soul can simultaneously know itself and what it is, only takes place provided one’s gaze is turned toward another soul engaged in the same quest. Patočka notes: Self-awareness requires two elements, namely the power to see and to seek, reflected in another power to seek: it corresponds to the power of questions and answers, the power to remain in dialogue; and this, clearly, means remaining within the problem, within the question (p. 383, Patočka 2003). In other words, the movement by which the soul knows itself, while at the same time gaining access to the being of things—what endures in an unbroken present—is necessarily associated with a constant questioning, jointly conducted with others engaged in the same quest. The care of self, therefore, entails the establishment of a relationship with another person. In Greek Antiquity, this person was one’s philosophical master; in early Christianity, one’s spiritual father. Then, in the modern age, the idea emerged that access to the truth could be ensured by acts of conscience alone (Foucault 2001).

Socrates’ advice to Alcibiades, who seeks to administer the city and therefore claim responsibility for the public good, is that, in order to correctly and honestly engage in politics, he must first of all be capable of seeing things for what they really are, rather than what they appear to be. And you will act with your eyes turned on the divine light, Socrates states (134d). By following the divine light, the soul finds stable guidance in its relations with things, people, and the ever-changing affairs of the world. Only by looking to what is bright and divine can the person wishing to take care of the common good act according to justice and wisdom. Besides, self-knowledge corresponds to a way of living that acknowledges the value of truth above all, and entails a constant attempt to cultivate one’s relationship with it, and therefore a constant testing of our capacity to gain access to things in themselves. The difference between men emerges and takes shape starting from a different care of the soul. The practice of self-knowledge as the contemplation of the being of things, theorein, is thus connected to the knowledge of the care of self and hence to a tendency to question one’s own opinions, to the suspension of judgment, and to the ongoing quest to uncover the meaning of the famous Socratic notion of knowing that you know nothing.⁷

Patočka is right in stating that what makes the care of the soul necessary is the dualism distinguishing its movement: on the one hand, we find the immediacy of things, which by their very nature can only show us indeterminate shadows of the real forms; on the other, the reflexive quest for what is not subject to change, for unalterable principles, and for the ultimate sources of all things. Self-knowledge and human finiteness therefore coincide with the knowledge that one does not know; and it is only in the light of this awareness of existing limits that consulting an oracle makes any sense.

Plato’s answer is clear, then: the rift between those who live according to wisdom (sophia), i.e., philosophers, and the multitude of people who are not philosophers, is reflected in the way in which the former lead their lives, day after day, on a quest for the being of things. What distinguishes the philosopher’s way of life is this stable relation between knowledge of the self and care of the self. It is only by virtue of the capacity for permanent reflection, which guides his investigation, that the philosopher can keep his gaze fixed on ever-changing things, acquiring an enduring knowledge which resists all changes of opinion: care of the soul (tes psyches epimeleisthai). This constant practice regulates one’s explicit relationship with truth and hence with the good. It is developed through dialogue, which challenges the interlocutor and calls his beliefs into question. This dialogue may also be one which the soul entertains with itself. In all cases, it reveals one’s limits, lack of knowledge and lack of wisdom; and through this experience of not knowing, it makes the soul aware of its own being. In this respect, the care of self is a self-oriented praxis, a practice oriented toward one’s self-determination, one’s thinking and acting well. This is why we can only grasp the nature of the soul through its care. The care of the soul discovers this dualism … discovers the splitting, both what is changeless and stable, and what flows—and both discoveries are equally crucial. The care of the soul therefore coincides with the discovery of the two fundamental possibilities of the soul, the discovery of the double path along which the soul moves (Patočka p. 123, 1997). Indeed, this dual, dialogue-based structure is what provided the matrix for the examination of conscience and confession, understood as modes of exposition of the soul and its errors to oneself or others, in Hellenistic philosophy first and then—with some nuances—in Christianity. From our perspective, the archaeology of the subject which Foucault explored in his final years constitutes precisely a development in the ethico-political sphere of this underlying ontological theme, which has shaped the course of European history (Patočka 1976, 1977). Foucault argued that the mutual implication between knowledge and care of the self represents a problem which varies considerably with different balances and relations, with different emphases on one or the other, and with a different distribution of the moments of self-knowledge and care of the self in the various systems of thought (Foucault 2001, p. 60). As we shall see, while grasping the remarkable richness of this mutual relation, Foucault somewhat overlooked the fact that every interpretative configuration of the self—be it the Stoic, the Epicurean, or that of the Greek Fathers or of the cenobitic tradition, down to John Cassian and the Christian technologies of the self—is always defined from the point of view of the gaze directed toward the eternal truths. What Foucault never discusses is the fact that theoretical knowledge, understood as a life praxis, underpins the ethico-political sphere and hence both Classical techniques and Christian interpretative analyses. The ethical distinction between good and evil, in other words, presupposes a more fundamental ontological knowledge—an enduring focus—on the basis of which to grasp the distinction between the being of things and their appearance; and the care of the soul, the exercising of which has evolved over the centuries, giving rise to different technologies of the self, remains oriented on the same ontology.

1.6 Theoretical Knowledge and the Essence of Movement

In chapter 8 of Metaphysics book 9, Aristotle offers what is arguably one of the most significant passages from Greek Antiquity, a passage which also sheds light on the later development of the relation between self-knowledge and the care of self in the Hellenistic period. Within the context of a discussion of the relation between corruptible things and eternal beings, Aristotle provides a surprising, yet at the same time enlightening, indication as to the emotional climate of the earliest philosophy: And so the sun and the stars and the whole heaven are ever active, and there is no fear that they may sometime stand still, as the natural philosophers fear they may (1050 b 22 ff.).⁸

The ancient physiologists, the first to have thought about the being of nature, developed their considerations out of fear that the sun, the rotation of the planets, and the whole sky might suddenly cease to be. This fear led them to focus their observations on the notion of what endures unchanged. The fear that, here, leads the analysis of being, lives from the hope or conviction that beings, genuinely speaking, may and should have to be being-there-always, Heidegger notes (GA 18 2002, p. 289).⁹ By practicing a new form of knowledge, these early thinkers succeeded in grasping the unity of an indivisible nature which endures as the foundation of all transformation. At the same time, they discovered that they were able to use this knowledge to govern all forms of emotional immediacy.¹⁰

Theoretical knowledge thus started shaping education, the care of self, and, more generally, the ethico-political sphere. Not only that, but on the basis of the above fear, the Ancients started cultivating a fundamental attitude which endured throughout Western history: they learned how to grasp the meaning of being as presence, as the present time. They were the first to bear witness to the fact that man understands being starting from time, from the enduring present that is always on hand.

Setting out from the fear that everything might vanish, the Greek world first and, later, Western man came to value sight above all and, through it, the ideal of direct knowledge, which is chiefly defined by the fact of being present, of being an eyewitness (Brague 2009). From the very outset, therefore, privilege has been assigned to theoria, the meaning of which is essentially connected to the action of seeing. The privilege assigned to it is a double one: for, on the one hand, contemplation directly partakes of what subsists in a stable form, as sheer presence—through a spiritual contact, as Festugière (1950) phrased it; but, on the other hand, this hope of salvation silences all fear, neutralizes all emotional excesses, and frees one from the worries of everyday life. A famous passage of the Iliad illustrates the sense of wonder which the Greeks experienced at the sight of the heavens: These then with high hearts stayed the whole night through along the lines of war, and their fires burned in multitudes. Just as in the sky about the gleaming moon the stars shine clear when the air is windless, and into view come all mountain peaks and high headlands and glades, and from heaven breaks open the infinite air, and all the stars are seen, and the shepherd rejoices in his heart (VIII, 553–559). This wonder also brought a sense of security on earth, since the light of the sky illumines all things and gives each its place, as well as providing a sense of certainty with regard to the alternation of light and darkness, works and days, and—last but not least—an unshakable faith in everlasting time, in the intangible eternity of the motion of the stars, a movement which unfolds before the eyes of those capable of grasping it.

With theoretical knowledge life forgoes its circumspection and practical engagement and is instead absorbed, through sheer contemplation, by those entities which cannot be other than what they are, those entities which preserve a degree of constancy in their being and occurring—and the shepherd rejoices in his heart.¹¹

An entity of this sort, whose mode of being consists in enduring as a whole (entelekeia monon), was never generated or produced and cannot cease to exist or become other than what it is: it is simply present. Hence the movement of the stars, which is always already completed,which is neither thought of nor simply observed, but is rather experienced through fear and grasped as being-there-always (as a presence) even when it vanishes from sight. Here is the god of the philosophers (Rm 8:19) that Luther thundered against!

1.7 Above and Below the Moon

Being, therefore, primarily coincides with that being whose movement is always already completed and knows neither beginning nor end. This is the crucial point which Aristotle—drawing upon the legacy of the ancient physiologists—turned into the centerpiece of his Physics: he sought to access the meaning of being by interpreting movement. His investigation would still appear to proceed from the key experience of the fear of the end, which distinguishes the discussion on nature (physis) conducted by the ancient philosophers, precisely because Aristotle provides a single, certain answer to this concern: movement is eternal and incorruptible and represents a constant presence free of all change.

Alongside those entities which, being complete, manifest themselves as sheer presence, we find other entities whose character consists in being incomplete and, therefore, open to the possibility of being other than what they are. This is the case with human life, for example, which in its movement of maturation, in its transformation (metabole) and constant potential for completeness (energeia), is negatively defined by contrast to those entities which are ever perfect (entelekeia monon). This incorruptible presence becomes the precondition for conceiving the precariousness, emotivity, and changeability of human life, whereas movement in all its various forms represents the common matrix which enables one to account for every entity.

"From what has been said, then—Aristotle concludes in chapter 4 of Metaphysics book 5—the original and fundamental sense of nature (physis) is the substantiality (ousia) of those things which contain in themselves, as such, a source of movement" (1015 a 13–15). Anything that changes is grasped, therefore, on the basis of a certain and ever-present foundation which always remains the same: nature (physis) as the unity of all, as the substantiality determining all beings both above and below the moon qua substances.

Heidegger always maintained that Aristotle’s Physics is the book that secretly underpins all Western philosophy, which is to say, Aristotelian ontology, and therefore also all the theoretical, practical, and poietic disciplines which rest on an interpretation of the being of nature (physis). The principle of movement, the foundation of all things divine as well as of the sublunary world, thus coincides with substantiality (ousia), which pre-structures the mode of being of God, the world, and things (Marx 1961). In this respect, asking what being is means asking what its substance is. This view finds support in the first chapter of Metaphysics book 7, which states: Indeed, the question which was raised of old, as it still is and always will be, and which is always an object of enquiry, viz. ‘What is Being?’, is in other words ‘What is substance?’ (1028 b 2–4). It is chiefly the theoretical faculty which enables the contemplation of substance understood as sheer presence (substantiality (ousia), movement (kinesis), nature (physis))—and this is precisely what makes such faculty divine.

1.8 Different Men, Different Forms of Knowledge

On the one hand, we have the pursuit of firm knowledge, of theoretical wisdom (theorein); on the other, we have praxis, the exercising of this attitude of detachment as a mode of life, and the permanent relation and intertwining between self-knowledge and the care of self: philosophy. Philosophers integrate theoretical research within a mode of living, which from Socrates onward has chiefly concerned the ethico-political sphere.

But what about all other people, the multitude of people who are driven by the desire to acquire wealth or who act in the pursuit of glory and success?¹² If it is different ways of living which engender the differences between men, why do men enter life with these different inclinations, as illustrated by the crowds at celebrations? Evidently, that kind of knowledge, theoretical knowledge, which finds its object in the kind of beings which cannot be other than what they are, is ill suited to understanding men’s praxis, which is unstable, variable, and dependent upon changing circumstances.

The ancient world was therefore faced with the question of how concrete life gives rise to two distinct kinds of existence and of how men may attain happiness by choosing different modes of living. Aristotle discusses the main aspects of this problem in a way that illustrates the defining features of his method on a broader, epistemological level.¹³ The issue which Aristotle addresses is the precariousness of human life, its fragility: the fact that it is subject to constant transformation depending on the circumstances at hand.¹⁴ The crucial step he takes lies in the discovery that the human soul has different ways of revealing things and hence making them available. By adopting as his starting point the wide range of attitudes displayed by the human soul, Aristotle refocuses his inquiry on that original movedness of life (kinesis tou biou), whose articulation produces all the various dispositions. The inquiry cannot be restricted to an attempt to grasp the kind of entity which endures unchanged—that which necessarily is what it is—but must take account of human life in its different concrete expressions, i.e., of that kind of entity which may become other than what it is.

The philosopher’s contemplation, the profit-oriented transactions of someone attending a celebration in order to sell his goods, and the Olympic athlete’s assessment of his own prowess are three different dispositions which reflect three different ways of articulating the movement of life: for the philosopher, non-prospective knowledge, theorein; for the tradesman, the performance of an action (trading) aimed at producing a profit, poiein; and for the athlete, an evaluation of how to deliver the highest performance, prattein.

Unlike theorein, however, doing (poiein) and acting (prattein) refer to two determinations of the movement of life pertaining to what can become different from what it is and therefore can be an object of both production and action (Et. Nic. VI, 4, 1140a 1–5). In the case of the tradesman, in other words, as in any other context of production, the aim coincides with what is produced (i.e., money). The aim therefore lies outside the action itself.

In the athlete’s case, by contrast, as in any other circumstance in which the aim of the action is intrinsic to the action itself (as in the case of acting well or making the right choice), the movement of life is co-determined by the concrete situation in which the individual finds himself acting and in which he actualizes his existence.¹⁵

These three modes of actualization of human life, corresponding to as many ways of accessing and discovering the world, go hand in hand with different forms of knowledge which shape the care of self. Contemplation, theorein, the highest human activity, is guided by wisdom (sophia); doing, poiein, which has production as its aim, is directed by technical knowledge (techne)—the kind of knowledge which, as we have seen, will guide the healing of the sufferer (therapy) as much as the building of a house; and acting, prattein, where the self is always at stake, is oriented by the kind of reasonableness or practical wisdom (phronesis)¹⁶ which changes depending on the context and whose exercising implies the search for a mean between excess and deficiency. The division of knowledge into theoretical, poietic, and practical disciplines therefore reflects the view of man on which they are based.

1.9 Movement and Desire

Research on human life—the defining feature of which is the fact of being in movement or, rather, of orienting itself by moving toward something that is meaningful for life itself—thematizes not just the formation of the three abovementioned inclinations but the very essence of movedness. What is it that drives man to choose one kind of life over another? It is apparent to be sure that these two are movers, either desire or mind … both these therefore have the power to move according to place, mind and desire (Arist., De anima 3, 433a9-15). What is meant by mind here is the intellect which reasons with a practical end in sight and which therefore differs from the theoretical mind with respect to its aim.¹⁷

According to Aristotle, therefore, what underpins the various expressions of the movement of life is the integration between desire and discernment. Life moves by approaching one thing but avoiding another. The structure of desire determines not only the possible sphere of action, pursuit, or avoidance but also one’s perceptual orientation. The object of desire, in other words, reveals itself in relation to desire itself; at the same time, the life which craves for, or shuns, something finds itself either pleasantly or unpleasantly disposed toward what it perceives through its various emotional forms (Befindlichkeit).

Whereas an animal realizes its existence by nature, and it is only by nature that it becomes what it can be, man is not bound to the sphere of natural instincts. Since man can speak, he can grasp through language the object of his desire, not simply as something to be craved for or avoided, but as the reason for his way of acting. Man, that is, is capable of accounting for his actions because, in accordance with his mode of being, he is capable of discursively justifying his choices (Rede).

While desire is what determines one’s conduct in relation to existing circumstances, the human capacity for discernment modulates the intensity of desire and the ability to control it, to the point of altering its structure. Human beings are capable of anticipating (prohairesis, verstehen) things as the reason for a certain action or choice with respect to the existing circumstances. This means that, although human beings may fall under the spell of desire, in every situation they can still choose between one thing and another, as well as determine the direction of their lives—so as to transcend mere craving—through the possibility of anticipating a given thing as the basis of their actions. This is due to the distinctly human quality of lending meaning to one’s existence, even by going against one’s immediate desires, based on the perception of time: for while the mind bids us to hold back because of what is future, desire is influenced by what is just at hand: a pleasant object which is just at hand presents itself as both pleasant and good in an absolute sense because of want of foresight into what is farther away in time (Arist. De anima 3, 433 b5-11).¹⁸ Taking this fragile balance between the passions, the mind and existing circumstances as his starting point, Aristotle attempts to