Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values.

\n This article provides a rejoinder to Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of the Hadot-Foucault dialogue, which appeared in the pivotal ‘Intermezzo’ of The Use of Bodies. In ‘Pushing against the open door’ section, we provide a close reading of Agamben’s claims about Hadot’s alleged misreadings of Foucault on the ancients and on subjectivity more widely. We demonstrate how, far from rebutting Hadot, these claims end up confirming the latter’s positions on Foucault malgré Agamben. In ‘Wisdom, the cosmic dimension, and the “objectivist-exercisant” self’ section, we draw on classicist Christopher Gill’s notion of the ‘objectivist-participant’ self in Greco-Roman Antiquity, to argue that the deepest stakes of the debate between Foucault and Hadot do not implicate Hadot’s incompetence, as Agamben suggests. They concern Foucault’s unease, as well as Agamben’s misunderstanding, of the objective and participative dimensions of ancient conceptions of selfhood. In ‘The ghosts of christianities past’ section, we contest the recurrent tendency of commentators, like Agamben, to assume latent carry-overs of Hadot’s early religiosity in his later works on Greek and Roman philosophy and spiritual exercises as reflecting the long shadow of Christianity in postmodern thought.

Pushing against an open door: Agamben on Hadot and Foucault

This article provides a critical overview of the current scholarly debate regarding ancient notions of selfhood and personal identity. It does so by focusing on the ideas of two of the most prominent contributors to this debate, Christopher Gill and Richard Sorabji. The views of these two scholars appear to be in direct opposition: while Gill claims that there is a fundamental difference between ancient and modern conceptions of personality (he identifies these as “objective-participant” and “subjective-individualist”), Sorabji, on the other hand, stresses continuity and identifies a number of central recurring elements of selfhood. Through an analysis of several relevant examples from ancient literature and philosophy (Cicero on the theory of personae , Epictetus’ concept of prohaeresis , the motives of Medea in Euripides’ play), it is argued that the two positions are not as contradictory as they may at first appear. Instead, the readings point toward a synthesis in which central elements of both perspectives are combined.

M. J. O. Verheij

Papers

Selves in Conflict: Gill vs. Sorabji on the Conception of Selfhood in Antiquity: A Reconciliatory Review