"The Care of the Self” Practice in a Contemporary Culture

Abstract

The current reference to the ancient practice of “the care of the self” is caused by its methodological saturation that makes it possible and necessary to use this practice nowadays. The specificity of the contemporary culture is determined primarily by its loss of limiting and general principles in the area of various cultural forms - in morality, aesthetics, law and etc. Stating this cultural condition, the authors have high hopes for the pedagogical culture, which in its new orientation is able to perceive those methodological approaches to human formations that were discovered by ancient Greek philosophers. As a research method it was decided to take sociocultural and historical comparativism that gives an opportunity to compare authentic state of “the care of the self” (as it was in the antiquity) and demonstration of this practice nowadays. The philosophical approach to the research of the problem allowed us to see in the style of philosophical thinking (different at different history stages) the fundamental cause of changes of ancient “the care of the self”. The style of philosophical thinking creates the type of rationality that at different historical stages varies and thus determines the different character and content of all cultural practices including the practice of “the care of the self”.