1 Caring for the ‘soul’ with Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault by Frederik Boven My aim in this paper is to clarify the views of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault on the relation between ethics and politics, by way of comparison. Even though Arendt and Foucault are in many ways strange bedfellows, several scholars have recently compared their philosophies, especially their political ideas. 1 Starting point for such comparisons are a number of similarities in their philosophies, their obvious differences notwithstanding. Both are influenced, for example, by the anti-metaphysics of Heidegger and Nietzsche, and engage in historically informed reflection on the (political) present. On a more substantive note, Arendt and Foucault are both critical of the normalizing impact of social scientific rationality on modern subjectivity, and draw attention to the human capacity to take our ethical and political life in our own hands. Their many differences, not only in ideas but also in style, make such a comparison an endeavour with many pitfalls. Some of these difficulties can be resolved, I think, by introducing a ‘mediator’, viz. the Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka. Under the heading of ‘care for the soul’ he suggests a framework that on the one hand takes its lead from Heidegger’s ontology, but on the other moves beyond it in the realms of ethics and politics. This allows me to frame the philosopher’s role with regard to ethics and politics in a way that renders Arendt and Foucault comparable, but without having to discuss the philosophy of one in terms of the other. Moreover, it highlights their shared debt to Heidegger, while acknowledging where they move beyond his ontological framework. The first section will introduce Patočka’s framework. 1. Introduction: three forms of care The term ‘care for the soul’ stems from Plato’s Pheado, where Socrates instructs his listeners to live truthfully, in the sense of being concerned with what shows itself as the present as such, that is, with the things themselves. Socrates calls for an examined life, oriented towards truth rather than ordinary understanding. 2 Influenced by Heidegger’s anti-metaphysics, Patočka interprets this metaphysical symbolism negatively, by combining Plato’s idea of ‘learning to die’ (melete thanatou) with the Heideggerian notion of ‘care’ (Sorge) into ‘care for death’. 3 Both Plato and Heidegger suggest that the authentic way to ‘care for life’ is to ‘care for death’ (in the sense of car- ing about your morality), and that the soul is what connects life and death, mortality and eternity. For Plato, the soul is essentially what is capable of seeing absolute truth. Authentic living entails placing the care for the soul (truth) above the preservation of your finite self (life). Under influ- ence of Heidegger, Patočka inverts this Platonic idea: the soul is no longer the place of certainty, 1 Dolan, “The paradoxical liberty of bio-power” (2005); Havercroft, “Heidegger’s bastards” (2003); Allen, “Power, Subjectivity and Agency” (2002), Gordon, “On Visibility and Power” (2002), Edwards, “Cutting off the King’s Head: The ‘Social’ in Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault” (1999). 2 Patočka, Plato and Europe [1979], p. 77. The concept (not the term) first appears in Democritus. 3 E.F. Findlay, Caring for the soul in a postmodern age (2002), p. 62. The notion ‘soul’, to which Arendt and Fou- cault would certainly object in its literal sense, should thus be read with some irony.