Dare to Care: Between Stiegler’s Mystagogy
and Foucault’s Aesthetics of Existence
Ed Cohen
Philosophy is, for me, before anything else, to learn to repeat repe-
titions that are good. To learn ways that the pharmakon, which is
always that which repeats, does not destroy me or render me indif-
ferent by its repetitions, but rather takes care of me ( me soigne). That
is to say, individuates me, distinguishes me, differentiates me, . . .
in order to permit me to discern in myself—to distinguish—alterity,
difference [differ ance?], . . . the future. Philosophy is undertaken in
order that these repetitions make a difference.
—Bernard Stiegler (2014a)
Philosophy takes care of me. It provides a therapeutic practice of the
self, a repetition with a difference that opens me to the differ ance that hap-
pens as I defer toward a future that differs in and from me. But how does
such taking care happen? That’s where the mystery comes in.
For a number of years, in his courses, seminars, lectures, and
boundary 2 44:1 (2017) DOI 10.1215/01903659-3725917 © 2017 by Duke University Press
Bernard Stiegler’s lecture “The Proletarianization of Sensibility,” published in this special
issue, is cited parenthetically in the text as “Proletarianization.”
boundary 2
Published by Duke University Press