Heidegger and Foucault

Reflections for Understanding Self-Care and the Care of the Self

Abstract

Here we discuss the approximations and distances between the contributions of Heidegger’s and Foucault’s thought. We are interested in knowing about the ideas of self-care articulated by Martin Heidegger and of care of the self, according to Michel Foucault, analyzing the convergences and divergences. Contrastive systematization was used in order to highlight the encounters and disagreements between the thinkers. There are similarities regarding the importance given to the issue of caring as something that constitutes the human being, but the distances are given by the way in which the meanings of care are conceived. The approximations and distances regarding self-care and care of the self thought by Heidegger and Michel
Foucault make us reflect that each thinker was crossed by singularities, historical, social and cultural processes, unfolding in specific understandings around care.