Epictetus

=Background=

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/epit.htm

=Texts=

Works at MIT Classics

http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Epictetus.html

(but the Discourses are incomplete . . .)

For #19:

http://greektexts.com/library/Epictetus/Discourses_-_Book_I/eng/179.html

=Commentary=

from Michel Foucault. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981-82. Ed. Frederic Gros. Trans. Graham Burchell. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.

"It is, if you like, the inverted figure of the Platonic reciprocity . . . in which, for Plato, you should take care of the self for others and it was the others who, in the community formed by the city-state, ensured your own salvation" (Foucault 195).

"The conception of the care of the link between care of the self and care of others unfolds at two levels in Epictetus. First, at a natural level.  This is the conception of the providential bond.  Actually, Epictetus says, the order of the world is so organized that all living beings, whatever they are . . . seek their own good" (Foucault 196).