Emily Dickinson and Perspectivism

 

Emily Dickinson and Perspectivism

            Throughout the vast work of Emily Dickinson there is a common theme that connects her poems together, which is the theme of perspective. The perspective on life, nature, and death are concepts that Dickinson conveys throughout her texts. These concepts lend themselves to poetry and philosophy. Dickinson bridges the gaps between the two to reconcile the chaotic world that she perceived and the lawful world in which she drew her inspirations from. The goal of this paper is to put Dickinson in conversation with Foucault and Nietzsche to create a justification for Dickinson’s most outward philosophy which is that experience through perception is a core drive within human action and conduct. For Dickinson this allows the self to be malleable, as dictated by perspective but also rigid as dictated by the core “rules” of the self.

            Before we can use Dickinson’s poems to framework her position within a perspectivist narrative we must analyze her outward position as a rhetorical writer. As a writer, Dickinson uses metaphors and similes to try and persuade the reader into “coming into their own” (Hamilton 2005). The reader coming into their own simply delineates an idea that her poetry is fundamentally designed to stimulate a response in the reader (Hamilton 2005). By this it means that Dickinson’s poetry asserts a perspective that makes the reader react in a way that facilitates their own experience.

Dickinson is sharp in her use of metaphors to provoke a response from the reader. It iss almost as if by simply reading her poetry the reader engages with a conversation with her. The poetry allows you to craft your own perspective that is just as justified as hers. Hamilton uses Dickinson’s poem “The Heart is the Capital of the Mind” to describe the kind of precise metaphors she uses. In this poem Dickinson says, “The Heart is the Capital of the Mind, the Mind is a single State”. In each stanza she uses metaphors to cohesively describe the self, the interpretation of the poem is mostly left to the reader to inherit as way to come into their own. But what Dickinson does to persuade the reader into stimulating a response is by saying at the end of the stanza after “This ecstatic Nation seek” she says, “It is Yourself”.

This poem clearly shows Dickinson’s favor for rhetorical, dialogic structures to her poems, they give a sense of weight that only the reader and her can understand. “Yourself” is capitalized and comes after the constant defining and redefining of terms (Hamilton 2005). Dickinson in this regard facilitates the role of a rhetorical partner of another. That being the reader in this case, to create a perspective that defines and redefines their own worldview. If we supplement “It is Yourself” with the Greek maxim “Know Thyself” we get a clear path for which Dickinson lays out for the reader. To extrapolate upon Dickinson’s motives for “It is Yourself” and that we have shown Dickinson to be rhetorical and dialogic poet, we must put her in conversation with Foucault to give Dickinson’s meaning within her poems a perspectivist vocalization.

To compare the two writers there should be a contextual foundation in which they approach each other. A framework in which both Foucault and Dickinson can interact in so that a synthesis between their thought may be found in the Nietzschean ideas of what Deppman calls “literary pragmatism” and the recurring concept of Nietzsche called “the Free Spirit”. What Deppman defines as literary pragmatism in a Nietzschean context is that thoughts, beliefs, and language ought to be tools that best help us in life. As Nietzsche writes at the beginning of Beyond Good & Evil. In the beginning Nietzsche proposes a question, one that questions the very foundation of the human tendency to find truth through logic and objectivity “Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants “truth”?” (BGE 9). Nietzsche questions the validity of the will to truth by asking why we not prefer deception, untruth, uncertainty, and ignorance.

In Dickinson’s poems her relationship with the truth is filled with the rush of uncertainty and its consequences. Dickinson will express her thinking as a way to facilitate a sense of order to her unreliable thoughts. Dickinson reflects the questions that Nietzsche raises and his subsequent rejection of a traditional structure of truth.

I STEPPED from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.
I knew not but the next	5
Would be my final inch, —
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experiences.

           

In the first stanza Dickinson embodies this perspective that is constant throughout her writing that commitment to a perspective on the world and the weight that comes with it brings order to realm of shifting and disorderly thought. Stepping from plank to plan is the brains basic operation of receiving and storing stimuli and experiences. The speaker’s cautiousness in the movements on the planks tells us that these thoughts are not entirely chaotic. The immense and seemingly unknowable forces of nature such as the stars and the sea give the speaker a chance the begin asserting a perspective on the world, one that is pragmatic and that best allows us to live a life.

The speaker comments on the immediate uncertainty of perceiving a thing and crafting a judgement from it. For Dickinson this could represent many things, including what conclusions and new thoughts a judgement might lead them to. It also represents the fear that comes with experience and its relation to an eventual death. This gives the speaker a precarious or uncertain gait yet confidently asserts that the judgements one makes over objects keeps them upright and moving with the line “some call Experiences”. Dickinson gives Nietzsche’s doubts on truth an emphatic weight to them, her words embodying a preferred world where the truth is based on perspective. Dickinson’s poems then represent a variety of perspectivism that is intimate and original. Deppman labels this kind of idiosyncratic truth-telling as the “Nietzschean accomplished nihilist” (Deppman 22). The nihilist for Deppman, brandishes a language of self-interpretation and self-creation.

Self-creation in the context of Dickinson is a rather hermeneutic empowerment brought upon by her open and deferential language. Foucault enters the conversation with his analysis of the ethical power of truth-telling and the role of otherness as core tenet of governmentality and care of oneself. Dickinson and Foucault’s comparisons should be first discussed through their contrasts. Within the Courage of Truth, Foucault highlights the differences between rhetoric and parrhesia. Foucault says that rhetoric is the exact opposite of parrhesia, rhetoric as defined by Foucault is an art, technique, or process that is concerned with the way things are said (Courage of Truth 13). Rhetoric is not necessarily concerned with the relationship between the speaker and what he is saying. The good rhetor to Foucault is someone who may well say, and who is perfectly capable of saying, something completely different from what he knows, believes, and thinks (Courage of Truth 13).

There exists a sense of disconnect between the rhetors words and the speaker’s relationship to them. The disconnect in which Foucault comments on is also inherent in the writings of Dickinson. Dickinson’s poems are written in a way that does not always put herself as the speaker of those words. Dickinson’s writings represent a multitude of perspectives and their contexts are blended with her own in the poems but also the readers perspective. The rhetor’s disconnect from their own words does not imply a disconnect between their words and another. The rhetorician’s goal is create a constraining bond between the words they speak and to whom those words are said. What is unique for Dickinson is that this bond is constraining yet open. For Dickinson this means that the constraining aspect of her rhetorical message is meant to compel the reader to engage in a dialogue with her.

Dickinson seeks closeness with the reader, her goal was to stimulate the readers mind but not determine their thoughts. Deppman cites Derrida in saying that lyric poetry incites philosophical force through response and experience in reading of the poetry (Deppman 10).  The reader in being exposed to Dickinson’s writings is constrained to understand her perspective, mending her own thoughts with the readers. It could be said then that Dickinson does not fit into the parrhesiastic structure that Foucault discusses, the lyrical poetry of Dickinson is bound to the rhetorical nature of its language. However, Dickinson understood the paradox of the hierarchal structure of poetry but maintained a self-conscious effort to be prosaic in her approach to truth.

Deppman seeks to place Dickinson within a role of postmodern thought to better understand her writings and her thinking and gives his own interpretation of such. It should be considered then, how Dickinson fits within the role of what could be called the “Foucauldian truth-teller”. Foucault writes that there are, what he calls, “modes of veridiction” these modes being prophecy, wisdom, teaching, and parrhesia (Courage of Truth 25). These modes of veridiction involve different personages, call for different modes for speech, and third relate to different domains (Courage of Truth 25). What is compelling for Dickinson is that she is a verdictive thinker. Dickinson’s veridiction conveys different personages through her ability to adopt and vocalize different personae in her writing, her different modes of speech are lyrical and her lexicon poetic. If parrhesia’s mode of veridiction lies within the domain of ethos, then Dickinson’s mode of veridiction lies somewhere between pathos and logos.

Dickinson, as stated by Harold Bloom was “besieged by perspectives” by this it means that her thoughts and her language were contingent on the perspective of others (Bloom 305). Deppman calls this siege later in his book Dickinson’s partial attitude towards associationism (Deppman 92). Associationists generally try to show ways in which thoughts join together through the association of experiences. Dickinson’s constant besiegement by perspectives was something she considered as a given, rather than an axiomatic assertion. For Dickinson she sought to exercise her thoughts, expanding the limits of her mind and thoughts to elasticize and toughen it at the core. What Dickinson herself embraces is the perspective of others but most importantly, craves the intimacy of thought, the associations between language and relationships. Recollecting upon the Greek idea of “Know yourself” Dickinson’s words and her role as a truth-teller conform to Foucault’s assertions of the role of the other surrounding truth and surrounding perspective

Foucault emphasizes the emphatic weight that relationships have on the ability to tell the truth. The culture of self that was prevalent in antiquity depended upon this relationship to what Foucault calls “the other”. One cannot take care of oneself, attend to themselves without the role of the other (Government of Self and Others 43). The role of the other for Foucault is to precisely tell the truth whether it is the whole truth or the necessary truth the latter form of truth is emphasized by Dickinson’s own words ” Tell all the truth but tell it slant” . The reader and Dickinson’s relationship are that of the other in this regard, for the reader it gives us a sense of openness to turn to, to associate with the thoughts of Dickinson. The relationship with Dickinson and the reader is symbiotically related. Dickinson’s thoughts being put into a dialogic and lyrical discourse in a way that she and the reader can connect on the same mental associations. Deppman’s introduction serves as rationalization of this concept of associative intimacy, arguing that Dickinson’s lyrical language can help us see what we are “well-nigh thinking and saying” (Deppman 1).

According to Deppman Dickinson is par excellence for what Derrida describes as poetry’s ability to neutralize the “thetic” naivety of transcendent reading. Derrida, in an interview states that poetry has the ability to enact a philosophical force of experience, a force of provocation to think “phenomenality” (Derrida 46). Poetry and literature, for Derrida and furthermore, Deppman facilitate a phenomenological access to what makes of a thesis a thesis as such. Poetry in this regard has the ability to provoke a philosophical experience for one to think of the thesis and the belief. Dickinson’s lyrical poetry fits a role akin to Gianni Vatimo’s “weak thought” in which Deppman discusses. Her language which is a synthesis of perception, veridiction, and judgement, relays to the reader a philosophical force for them to derive belief and come to their own thetic conclusions. Dickinson’s poetry then perpetuates the besiegement of perspectives to her readers.

It can be shown then that Dickinson’s lyrical poetry has a phenomenological underpinning. Before analyzing Dickinson and her relation to the poets of antiquity it should be important to understand the apogee of Dickinson’s thought in regard to perspective. Dickinson did not reject the perspectivist life, but she did not passively accept perspectives or assert them in a philosophical, and ethical way. Dickinson took perspective as a given as she did with many other disciplines of her time. This, for Dickinson allowed the self to malleable as the association with concepts dictated a mode of thinking. But for Dickinson to take this as a given meant that perspectives were a core tenet to the human life. This led Dickinson to believe that our phenomenological and idiosyncratic nature should be directed towards something. For our perspectives should be used to find new directions in life and as Bloom describes it, as if no one had perceived and described them before us (Bloom 305).

This led Dickinson to accept both the perspectivist life, but also the visceral life, one that should put forward our instincts, but also our emotions. Dickinson realized that perspectivism can be a powerful tool in creating a selfhood out of dialectical relation. Dickinson’s strive for a conservational attitude is brought out through the Ancient Greek poet, Bacchylides. In his poem about truth, he says:

As gold the Lydian touch-stone tries,

So, man-the virtuous, valiant, wise

Must to all-powerful Truth submit

His virtue, valor, and his wit.

While Dickinson’s poems are not comparable to Bacchylides’ lyrics directly, both poets have a common ground in the nature of self and selfhood. Phenomenologically speaking, Bacchylides is putting forth the same dialectical relation with the reader. Like Dickinson he provokes his reader into a philosophical force of experience. The structure of experience is Truth and man Must submit. Dickinson’s poems take great inspiration from Bacchylides’ words, her provocations like the Greek poets, invite the reader to enter a conversational ecosystem in which both the speaker and the are equals. Like man and Bacchylides are beholden to all powerful Truth, Dickinson and her readers are bound to each other through conversation, and through attitude. The ancient Roman poet Horace speaks upon the poet’s history and their benefits, the poet is constantly in relation to the other, expressing emotions to a reader who exists in the same space. For Horace, the merits of the poet come from their love of verse and their ability to temper or amplify emotion that is reflected back upon the poet herself. The effect of this relationship is highlighted by how Horace says that the poet “Quickly shaping thought with his kindly precepts” (Horace 152).

Dickinson quickly shapes her own thought through the canon of her writing, Dickinson, in contact with Higginson was trained to express herself in a principled manner. Dickinson, to Deppman was sometimes something she did rather than made (Deppman 60). She vocalized herself in a way so that her own mind could expand herself, to expand its need for an analytical to answer to deep concepts. Dickinson sought hermeneutics and conversations as a remedy to the chaotic mind, it was her own precepts shaping her own thought as Horace puts it. These themes of chaos play into Dickinson’s relation with the concept of death, something that constantly affected her thought. Deppman says that Dickinson could not think death or eternity but cannot “not think” about them either (Deppman 31).

Death for Dickinson is powerfully personal, in her poem “Of Death I try to think like this” Dickinson shows her pragmatic and conversationalist approach to death. She is neither analytical nor creative in her assertions of death. Dickinson’s tone is that death is always impending, always an object in which our perspective and scrutiny is leveled upon but never known. It is not only deeply personal but phenomenologically reflective. Death is a destination for each of us and how each of us think about death. Dickinson views death as a given but it also represents to us how we think and how we choose to think shapes our perspective. For Dickinson death is entirely conversational and personal. Her use of the Flow Hesperian in this poem indicates a sort of therapeutic conversation on thinking about death and how thinking about death gives us a perspective about all of our other thoughts it could be enticing to think about the destination we take our perspectives by viscerally understanding death (McClaran 18).

Further, and finally what Dickinson’s poems represent is what Nietzsche called in The Birth of Tragedy that the well of human consciousness or what Nietzsche calls “Primal unity”. The well is where each individual has sort of shared Dionysian joy where their underlying wills lies. Nietzsche describes lyrical poetry as something that expresses nothing that did not already lie hidden in the vast universality and absoluteness in the music that compelled the poet to figurative speech (Birth of Tragedy 55). For Dickinson this “music” is perspective, and it is the phenomenological notions of death and that she pragmatically approached in her writings. Nietzsche describes the genius artist as one who “turns its eyes at will and beholds itself; he is at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator (Birth of Tragedy 52).

If we consider Dickinson a kind of tragic artist, she is all of these things. She expresses her own art to the reader, a subject using the multitude of voices, and object of perception as the reader engages with her and conversates with her. She is a poet, an actor, and a spectator who Deppman says is invested in describing her own mental facts. These facts are meant to create a destination and an odyssey of thought for her and the reader. The journey is meant to explore her own thoughts but also consider the readers as well and vice versa. While Dickinson might be relatively apolitical, her thought tells us well-nigh what we are thinking. With Dickinson we can think of life as one that embraces action and embraces reason but doing so should come with the idea that we must make something of ourselves, we should remain conversationalist but also individualistic. In a Democracy we are in conversation with each other in society, through our politics, our economics, our institutions. This idea is not meant to convey a vague esotericism, democracy and society have individuals constantly interacting with each other and making decisions and what Dickinson’s thought represent is how we all choose to manifest our thoughts and our perspectives into the society around us

Dickinson rejected the traditional biblical interpretation that man is born depraved, instead favoring an Emersonian view that the greatness of the soul is the source of immortality. If Foucault’s final thoughts were that we cannot have truth without the other that our commitment to truth manifests ideas and causes. Then, Dickinson’s final thoughts would be that we cannot have action without perspective and greatness without action. Dickinson wants us to start thinking in conversations so it may lead ourselves to directions that are most pleasurable and echoing Nietzsche, tools that help us best in life. The precarious gait that Dickinson describes is the same gait that leads her to new directions and new perspectives so that we may live a life which is best for us, a life which makes us the happiest.

On this wondrous sea
Sailing silently,
Ho! Pilot, ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar —
Where the storm is o'er?

In the peaceful west
Many the sails at rest —
The anchors fast —
Thither I pilot thee —
Land Ho! Eternity!
Ashore at last!

Citations

 

Bloom, Harold. The western canon: The books and school of the ages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.

Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature

Deppman, Jed. Trying to think with Emily Dickinson

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Foucault, Michel. Courage of Truth

Foucault, Michel. The Government of Self and Others

Hamilton, Craig. "A cognitive rhetoric of poetry and Emily Dickinson." Language and Literature 14, no. 3 (2005): 279-294.

Horace. Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica

Nietzsche, Fredrich. Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy

McClaran, Nancy. "Dickinson's OF DEATH I TRY TO THINK LIKE THIS." Explicator 35, no. 2 (1976): 18.

Power and Its Uses in The Modern Age

Power and Its Uses in the Modern Age  

Power is a symbolization for self-cultivation of the individual, however, its use has changed in the modern era leading to power being harder to achieve for the individual. Power here is fairly vague but its explanation and exploration will serve as the rich and fulfilling answer to such a rigorous concept. The exploration of power will inevitably lead to it’s dynamic within the individual and its role in self-cultivation. An attempt will be made to back up these claims from various resources, such as Plato to give a contextual setting to our problem while other writers such as Foucault and Nietzsche will be used interchangeably to explicitly show the change in power from antiquity to modern times.

First, it might help to explore power through its definition and Plato as our source and guide for this definition. Power, to Plato, is conceptualized and formatted differently in comparison to Socrates. For Socrates, the concept of power can only be known through serious questioning of the concept. “What is power?” is something Socrates would ask to those thinking they understand it while Plato’s approach would define the question with “How is power?”. The conceptual analysis used is a dialectical approach to format power into the governmental system in which people live. Plato does this for a variety of reasons, mostly to juxtapose the dialectic of power in a political system and power that an individual has, however, that idea will be explored later.

So, Plato and his definition and conceptualization of power can be found within various dialogues. For starters, The Alcibiades will serve as the dialogue that will give the conceptualization immediate utility. The usefulness of The Alcibiades lies within the dialectic of its two center actors, Socrates, and Alcibiades. The greatest insight to this dialectic is located toward the end of the dialogue, the very end. Socrates tells Alcibiades after the latter expresses that he will cultivate justice within himself “I should like to believe that you will persevere, but I’m afraid-not because I distrust your nature, but because I know how powerful the city is, I’m afraid it might get the better of both me and you.” (Plato, 207). Here, is the first insight into the power that is gained. What Plato means by this line in particular that the will of the state is far stronger and in tandem more dominant than the will of the individual. For, Socrates he is an individual that chooses to live outside the city, an isolated individual who views the power of the state from and outside perspective. It is easy to understand Socrates’ worries for himself as his words foreshadow his impending demise at the hands of the state itself.

But for Alcibiades, who is someone that is the complete opposite of Socrates in almost every regard, “the powerful city” getting the best of him exposes Plato’s ideas on power and how they’re used with rule of law. Working backward, Socrates tells Alcibiades that individuals, as well as the state, are dangerous if left to their own devices, at liberty to do anything they want. If a sick person is free to do as he wishes with no medical insight, then the body will suffer as a result. The same goes for the state, if a ruler, administrator or city itself is lacking in control, or virtue then the city suffers. Here, the platonic form of power is revealed, and its definition exists as effort exhibited over the self or within the city. This concept is echoed first in The Alcibiades, then Symposium, and The Republic. First, with The Alcibiades, Plato argues that first power is gained in the self when an individual puts in the effort to control and ascertain justice for himself.

A good example is when Socrates asks Alcibiades to clearly explain how he learned justice. Alcibiades claims that he learned it from the various teachers and also from self-teaching, however, Socrates prods Alcibiades enough to get him to admit that he knows nothing of justice or in-justice and that the supposed teachers that Alcibiades claims he initially learned it from are flawed in their expressions of justice. Here, Plato shows that power and effort are not something gained or learned through experience, only something gained through the soul and its efforts. Like many dialogues before, Plato would argue that power and effort are bound up together along with knowledge. Therefore, it would not be illogical to assert that power is begetting on the soul. Just how Plato argues that beauty is an essential axiom in the world of forms (Plato, 67), as is power.

In a philosophically consistent move, Plato then uses the world of forms to argue that “Man is one of three things, the body, the soul, or the two of them together, the whole thing” (Plato, 197). Plato uses this statement to format man as one of complex actions and movements. As Plato moves along, he will continuously argue that man is not ruled by his body neither does he rule his body. As Plato highlights once again towards the end of The Alcibiades “I think, is either that he’s nothing, or else if he is something, he’s nothing other than his soul” (Plato, 198). Furthermore, Plato sees the issue and rigor of claiming such an argument like this, stating that man is such a complex animal. Further dialogues such as The Republic will echo these axioms such as when Plato goes onto list the souls of the various classes within the good and just city. These souls, Plato would argue make up the body of the state and thus must be regulated to express the state's will.

Building upon what was stated earlier, if the society in which people like Alcibiades can live as free as possible and are allowed to ignorantly claim that they “know” justice then the body is compromised or better, the soul is compromised. It can be said then, that the symbol of self-cultivation and self-care begins with the effort an individual puts in to extract the maximum value of the thing he puts in. The value, however, is not self-interested but rather, virtuous, allowing the maximum value to be extracted so that citizens within the city can live a life that is in their best interest. This is essentially an extended application of the Delphic maxim gnōthi seauton or “Know thyself.”

gnōthi seauton has been introduced into the argument for Plato and it is used as a juxtaposition of the self and the state. The state can easily “know thyself” through its philosopher-king enacting the maxim onto the very soul of the citizens within the just city. The soul for Plato then must be moderated to control the complex outcomes of human action. Plato argues this because he sees the immense power that the soul has and highlights this power at the end of The Alcibiades. The powerful city that might get the better of both Alcibiades and Socrates is just Plato’s feeling towards the souls of free-spirited individuals. Their souls threaten the very foundation of the polis. Plato will use the opportunity in further dialogues to give methods to moderate the free spirted and other threats to the form of the good.  

It is important to remember that power of the self in antiquity was a simple object placed upon the form of man and the complex actions that he aims completely. The movement of self-cultivation through power was then a much more stable concept. We see this idea in motion through the ending of The Alcibiades with Alcibiades choosing Socrates as his mentor to “cultivate” justice within himself. This is Alcibiades’ effort, but it is also the effort of Socrates to further cultivate himself, to sow the seeds of justice within the soul of Alcibiades so that he may go and extract the value that the city is owed, to secure the best interest for the citizens. But this is also a way for Plato to cultivate his reader's minds, to expose them to various complex ideals through various dialogues so that their souls may begin a stage of begetting with power.

The platonic framework to power has been achieved, however, there must be an extension to its framework. Also, an analytical approach to platonic assumptions is required to prove that power and its use in the modern age are fettered. For this, Foucault’s interpretation and further, the hermeneutic approach will assist the argumentation. During antiquity, it is obvious that power and its use were a finite resource akin to a commodity. It was exchanged, sought after, supplied and demanded, etc. However, even though gaining power was finite it was had far fewer restrictions to it. The reason for this unregulated exchange is simple and a combination of a few things. First, the institutions that existed in a society like ancient Athens were in an infantile stage. They served their function as an arm of the state and were not like an inflated apparatus. The insight into this again is located within The Alcibiades.

Within the dialogue, Socrates questions Alcibiades in how he will offer good counsel to Athens. Alcibiades admits in the beginning that he doesn’t know a lot about war but his experiences as a commander during the Peloponnesian War would certainly benefit the state. Alcibiades takes this approach as his thoughts on counsel, justice, and power were all influenced by the dramatic ideas of those concepts that were asserted through the works of Homer on The Iliad. For, Socrates and for Plato, this is fallacious because both thinkers viewed the epic as far too simplistic of a view on the use of power, and the metaphysics of war. Alcibiades, in this instance, is just the simulacrum of Achilles. Alcibiades' ideas would be the representation of the persuasive force of poetry but also the representation of the youthful thoughts in Athens at the time.

            Alcibiades fallacy ties back into the way power were unregulated during antiquity through the notion of idealist structures that were pillars in an ancient society. Alcibiades thought that by going through the physical struggles of war would give him enough wisdom, virtue, and power to give his city the counsel it needs. However, despite Plato having an issue with this sentiment, it was precisely this sentiment that still existed within a platonic theory of forms. For Plato, there was still a base to the notions of justice, power, rule of law, etc. For the people in power in ancient society, which were very low and came from privileged backgrounds their exchange of power was mostly unfettered due to their inherited traits given to them by their ancestry, as well as their society. An upper-class person like Alcibiades or even Plato with aspirations of political power had the moral inheritance to set them on the path to achieving mastery overpower. The schools in which future political players attended were preliminary stages of their political life. It was up to the actor, the student, and the individual to use the tools given to them to seek truths about this world which would elevate them above even their upper-class peers.

            In short, the unfettered use of power in an ancient society stems from the collective gift of moral judgments, societal ideals, and even institutional frameworks that upper-class groups crystalized. However, this isn’t a value judgment placed onto the society of the past, it is merely an interpretation of the ideas, morals, and writings of the time. To say that these frameworks were just an example of historical materialism would be naïve and hollow. For example, in writing to his brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero describes how his brother should go about winning elections and consul in Rome. This is an example of a gift given between those who hold power to one another. Both of the Cicero brothers, Marcus and Quintus were Roman statesmen and their base of knowing the power was something merely given off to them by those before them. This is how those wanting power or having power cultivated themselves. They used the concepts given to them to put the effort into achieving gnōthi seauton.

            Another reason as to why that power was unfettered in the ancient sense was also due in part to the perspective of a regular citizen of a city-state or grand empire. Their relationships were far more familial and duty-bound, their opportunities to cultivate themselves were very little. The ideas they inherited from their predecessors were one that enforces the virtues of family, honor, and duty. The lower-middle-class society had different moral sentiments to that of those who engage with powerful political institutions. It can be argued that the foundations of the modern unfeasibility of power lie in the struggles of changing moral dynamics. For example, with Plato, he wanted to create an ideal society in which there were very few people living in this society, the state-owned the children, people were moderated in their daily lives to a degree but also the small class structures that were enforced. The elite in Plato’s ideal state would never be questioned by other classes and vice versa. Plato saw that increasing the utility of a powerful, unfettered state would benefit everyone in the long run. For someone like Aristotle he saw that those not in power were there for a reason, even saying that some are born slaves as he writes in Politics “He who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man who, being a human being is also a possession” (Aristotle 1132).

            Here, we see the dynamics of an ancient civilization begin to move towards a modern period, still very far off but the foundations are set for future epochs to draw inheritance from. Although the life of a citizen was not as important as those governing those lives and protecting those lives. It was still up to those political institutions to cultivate themselves so that the lives of citizens within the polis can live “good” lives. This good life is something more enforced by Aristotle than Plato, however, both are still relatively based in gnōthi seauton. For ancient times gnōthi seauton was merely a tool used by the state. This allowed the state to use its power in a manner that was free from internal power struggles. It was not so much that the institutions that held power would bounce the tool back and forth between upper-class families but so much that the upper-class had its duty to legitimize the power of the state over its citizens.  

            Finally, this is Plato and later Aristotle’s dialectic of power juxtaposed onto the individual and the state. Which can be explored through Plato’s The Republic and Aristotle’s Politics. The individual is fractured for both writers, and in turn, so is the state and its various functions. So, it is up to the individual to find himself and go through the necessary steps to be just, or powerful. For Plato, this might be recognizing yourself as a being who can attain virtue through practice but for Aristotle, he writes “Every state is a community of some kind and every community is stabled with a view to some good; for mankind always act to obtain that which they think good.” (Aristotle 1127). This is, in essence, the crystallization of all the moral sentiments of the time. States are just made up of communities, these communities of individuals who want to achieve the best good they can. For Aristotle, these are virtues of political forms, actions, practices, habits, and also relations. Politics, and in turn power is about relationships. Plato would also agree with Aristotle here, certain political axioms are integral to the power structure and not just those with power but also the state and its citizens have relational power in which they can achieve political “goodness”.

            This was the sum of the ancient period; the climax was those philosopher's influences and moral ideas implemented into the minds of their time. The importance of philosopher-kings was an idea that lasted beyond just antiquity. However, a shift occurred within the substance of power. It meant that the “goodness” or effort that individuals aimed for as well as states were tough for not only individuals within various communities but also the institutions that had power.

            For starters, a particularly lucid insight comes from Michel Foucault as he lectures about “care of the self” in the ancient period. The change in how power is used stems from this concept, a concept that was heavily drawn from by Plato, Socrates, and even Aristotle. Foucault believes that this shift occurred sometime within the 18^th-20^th century, as a myriad of philosophers would offer their ideas for the truths of this world and reject the previous standard. It was different from past epochs as mentioned before the ideas of moral justifications for power were passed from previous generations to the next. Keeping the use of power as loose as possible for those who had power in ancient times was a pillar. Philosophers of those eras would extrapolate on previous philosophers thought, however in this new age, the ideas of previous philosophers were rejected en masse in favor of a different idea of power.

            As Foucault discusses in his Hermeneutics of The Subject “I The entire history of nineteenth-century philosophy can, I think, be thought of as a kind of pressure to try to rethink the structures of spirituality within a philosophy that, since Cartesianism, or at any rate since seventeenth-century philosophy, tried to get free from these self-same structures” (Foucault 28). Epimeleia heautou, or “care of the self” exists within the same framework as gnōthi seauton, they interact with one another in a way like bodies of water meeting each other, on the surface the two looks practically different from each other, however, looking deeper the two are mixing but still completely separable. Regarding Epimeleia heautou and its relation to Foucault’s quote, it can be shown that within the framework 18^th-20^th-century philosophy this shift occurred in a way that wanted to account more for Epimeleia heautou than gnōthi seauton. Still, there is a glaring issue that exists within this realization, why did philosophers of this age focus on this concept while seemingly rejecting others or concepts previously established.

            For a place to start, shifting the focus to the prevalent 19^th-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. In his work Beyond Good & Evil, Nietzsche tackles the hard subject of previous truths that were once upheld in society and how they relate to the individual. For Nietzsche, these issues were so costly on the human mind that the philosophers who tackled them packaged their “fix” to these issues under the guide of virtue, objectivity, and reason. However, as Nietzsche would claim, these are just the prejudices of the philosophers of the time, each of them had moral inclinations to these issues and sought that the best way to relieve their psyche was the justify their proposed fixes under the guise of wisdom or intelligence, but in turn, it was just those philosophers moralizing the issues. “As soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its image; it cannot do otherwise” (Nietzsche 16). Philosophy has always believed in “itself” but the philosophy that does this more frequently than others was the philosophy of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Their philosophy was based in gnōthi seauton after all, to those philosophers, their philosophy was the world or what Nietzsche would call, “First cause” or causa prima.

          In the instance of Nietzsche, we see the goal for him the issue is that these philosophers take their philosophy and rearrange the world according to their prejudices it or “tyrannize” it as Nietzsche would say. It would seem then, for Nietzsche but also for the sake of explaining that there was a shift of gnōthi seauton to epimeleia heautou that causa prima is bound up in gnōthi seauton. The reason for this is because gnōthi seauton is the first cause of the self, it is the effort one puts into itself to beget knowledge, power, wisdom. Ancient philosophers used causa prima and gnōthi seauton to reshape the world into something that begins with the self and ends with the soul being cultivated, and in turn, the state being cultivated, and power is achieved.

            So, how is power formed today and what can be said about it concerning some of the concepts already discussed earlier. To look for its form Foucault gives an insight into within Discipline & Punish. Without discussing the entire book, the highlights here are the shift away from public executions as a way of showing the states might, towards the prison system as a new legal, and moral way of handling those that have wronged the state. The state executed wrongdoers so that it may reinforce its claims to power but also keep consistent with gnōthi seauton. This is the case because “knowing yourself” is a fundamental pillar to the polis and assaulting the values of the polis means that gnōthi seauton is impossible, so the state ordered that felons were made a spectacle so that it could retain its unfettered power that was the tradition for so long.

But, for the move towards the prison system where the goal was surveillance, normalization, and examination there were many ways for the states to move towards this and why it is a function of epimeleia heautou. First, using Nietzsche as our guide once again he writes on the free-spirited, those who are different from the masses and how they use their spirit to manifest power. Nietzsche would come to abhor a certain “free spirit” known as “levelers” or richtmaschinen. These levelers aimed to bring forth “modern ideas” of justice, power, and wisdom. Only, these were the people that made it so the idea of the prison system model was pushed through as it was seen as the “equality of rights” as Nietzsche would put it or “sympathy for all that suffers” (Nietzsche 54). Foucault as well would agree with Nietzsche “Today, we are rather inclined to ignore it; perhaps, in its time, it gave rise to too much-inflated rhetoric; perhaps it has been attributed too readily and too emphatically to a process of ‘humanization’ “(Foucault 7).

So, these “levelers” combined with the philosophers who began to reject the truths of the world that were pillars to the philosophers in antiquity as well as the state looking for better ways to keep its power set the foundation for power in the modern times. This power in the modern age is fettered, it's fettered on the state but also fettered on the individual to allow themselves to cultivate. This goes back to the Platonic “Form of the Good”, it is impossible to know a thing through experience, only through the soul. But in the modern age, however, ideas of a spiritual realm holding the vast sums of all knowledge has been rejected not only by the philosophers of the new age, and the levelers, but also the masses, and the state as well. This leaves humanity alone and isolated, only have to tackle subjects of the being of their knowledge which Foucault argues is the crux of the modern idea “The subject only has to be what he is for him to have access in knowledge” (Foucault 190).

So, the power to cultivate, and the effort that power requires to exist are hard for humanity to attain due to the modernization of our lives. We are disorientated by the realization that the spiritual realm is nonexistent and that the answers don’t exist in a practical sense. The idea of power is lost on us in the waves of a new life. There are no stakes in the modern use of power, it is merely a concept that entertains individuals for a while and then they move onto something else. Power then in the modern sense, is not a long-term endeavor, paradoxically we are held back by our revelation of the truth, and the simplicities that accompany it. Power is still attainable for the individual, but it is harder and more laborious than ever.