The Care Of The Self: Of The History Of Sexuality

The Care of the Self A lso by Michel Foucault Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences The Archaeology of Knowledge (and The Discourse on Language) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother. . . . A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison The History of Sexuality, Volumes 1 and 2 Herculine Barbin, Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1 972- 1 977 The Foucault Reader (edited by Paul Rabinow) The Care of the Self Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality Michel Foucault Translated from the French by Robert Hurley Pantheon Books New York Translation Copyright @ 1 986 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-Ameri­ can Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Ran­ dom House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally pub­ lished in France as Le sauci de sai by Editions Gallimard. Copyright @ 1 984 by Editions Gallimard. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foucault, Michel. The history of sexuality. Translation of Histoire de la sexualite. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. An introduction sure v. 2. The use of plea- v. 3. The care of the self. 1 . Sex customs-History-Collected works. I. Title. HQ 1 2 . F68 1 3 1 978 306. 7 78- 5 1 804 ISBN 0-394-4 1 775-5 (v. I) ISBN 0-394-54349-1 (v. 2) ISBN 0-394-548 1 4-0 (v. 3) Manufactured in the United States of America First American Edition Contents Translator's Acknowledgments Vll Dreaming of One's Pleasures 1 The Method of Artemidorus 17 Chapter 2 The Analysis Chapter 3 Dream and Act 26 PART ONE Chapter The Cultivation of the Self PART TWO 4 37 Self and Others 69 The Marital Role 72 Chapter 2 The Political Game 81 PART THREE Chapter 1 97 The Body 1 Galen 105 Chapter 2 Are They Good? Are They Bad? Chapter 3 The Regimen of Pleasures 124 Chapter 4 The Work of the Soul 133 PART FOUR Chapter The Wife 145 1 The Marriage Tie 150 Chapter 2 The Question of Monopoly Chapter 3 The Pleasures of Marriage PART FIVE Chapter PART SIX Boys Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Conclusion 187 Plutarch 193 Pseudo-Lucian A New Erotics 233 v 211 228 165 176 112 vi Contents Notes 241 Bibliography Index 267 257 Translator's Acknowledgments My thanks go to Stephen William Foster and to Dennis Hollier for their help with this volume of The History of Sexuality. R.H .. July 1986 P A R T ONE Dreaming of One's Pleasures I will begin by analyzing a rather singular text. It is a "practical" work dealing with everyday life, not a work of moral reflection or prescription. Of all the texts that have survived from this period, it is the only one that presents anything like a systematic exposition of the different forms of sexual acts. By and large it does not make direct and explicit moral judgments concerning those acts, but it does reveal schemas of valuation that were generally accepted. And one notes that the latter are quite close to the general principles that, already in the classical epoch, organized the ethical expe­ rience of the