The Care of the Self and the Care of the Other: From Spiritual Exercises to Political Transformation

What is the relationship between the ethical transformation of the self and the political transformation of the world? This book explores the ways several twentieth-century thinkers can help us relate the ＂care of the self＂ to the ＂care of the other,＂ tracing their accounts of how and why practices intended to change an individual can help spur social and political change, just as collective political action can produce a transformation of the self.

Daniel Louis Wyche examines the political implications of what he calls practices of ethical self-change. These include Pierre Hadot’s notion of ＂spiritual exercises＂; what the French sociologist of labor Georges Friedmann calls the ＂interior effort＂; Michel Foucault’s ethics of the ＂care of the self＂; what Martin Luther King Jr. refers to as the work of ＂self-purification＂ integral to direct action; and Audre Lorde’s claim that caring for herself constitutes a form of ＂political warfare.＂ Wyche argues that these concepts can collectively provide an understanding that effaces distinctions between the care of the self, the other, and the community in a way that avoids reducing the political to the ethical. Ambitious and nuanced, The Care of the Self and the Care of the Other offers a framework for unifying individual moral action and collective political life.

Daniel Louis Wyche is a senior fellow at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought.