Self-care, self-knowledge and self-transformation. On the trail of Michel Foucault’s Advice to Athletes

Authors

  • Karen Joisten University of Kaiserslautern

Keywords:

Self-care, self-knowledge, the Olympic idea, the athlete, the art of living

Abstract

The subject of concern for oneself, which is inseparably connected with self-knowledge and enables a self-transformation of the human being, is extremely important in the Western tradition from ancient times to the present. In his book “The Hermeneutics of the Subject†Michel Foucault meticulously elaborates this complex of themes. In doing so, he also occasionally makes references to the athlete, the “athletic concentrationâ€, the wrestler and the so-called “paraskeueâ€. The thesis of the contribution is that Olympism and the Olympic idea has its origin in this philosophical strand, in which philosophy is not pure theory, but theory in the service of human self-transformation.

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Published

2020-10-28

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Section

Articles