F. goes on to discuss Seneca in On Anger (Bk. III 36.2–4).
1. Seneca casts things as one administrating himself. Stock-taking (“How calm, deep and unimpeded it [sleep] must be, when the mind has been praised or admonished and—its own sentinel and censor—has taken stock secretly of its own habits” Bk III 36.2, Cooper & Procope). Or again “This [the mind] should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: ‘what bad habit have you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In what respect are you better?’ Anger will cease and become more controllable if it finds that it must appear before a judge everyday. Can anything be more excellent than this practice of thoroughly sifting the whole day?” (On Anger, III, 36.1–2). See also Care of the Self 60-62, and Self-Writing. It is not a question of discovering the truth about yourself, but recalling the truth forgotten by the subject.
2. As part of this, any faults arise due to mistakes from not applying the rules of conduct. What he forgets is not himself (which would have to be delved out in Xtianity) but these rules of conduct.
3. Faults do not lead to punishment, but rather to trying better to apply the rules. Contrast to Xtianity.
What about confessing to others? Mentions again the Epicurean and medical practice. People were encouraged to speak out about themselves to be cured. This clears up a bit what he meant on p. 164. Cf this to the analogy in Catholic Enc. about confession being like going to the doctor’s:
The Cath. Enc. makes this connection explicit between the confessor and the doctor with his patient by quoting St. John Chrysostom (d. 347): “Be not ashamed to approach (the priest) because you have sinned, nay rather, for this very reason approach. No one says: Because I have an ulcer, I will not go near a physician or take medicine; on the contrary, it is just this that makes it needful to call in physicians and apply remedies. We (priests) know well how to pardon, because we ourselves are liable to sin. This is why God did not give us angels to be our doctors, nor send down Gabriel to rule the flock, but from the fold itself he chooses the shepherds”. Origen (d. 154) goes further and says that confessing is like vomiting, but you’ll feel better afterwards.
In the next part F. introduces what he sees as a “force” ie that which is added by a person to the pure rules of conduct. Some of this still needs to be worked out. But he makes several distinctions:
1. Truth is not a correspondence to reality but a force which has to be developed in a discourse.
2. Truth is not hidden within the person, or their soul. It is actually before as something they are attracted to. Herm. of the self are not “to decipher a hidden truth in the depth of the individual” p. 169.
3. Truth is obtained not by examining what is real within you, but by explaining with discourse (rhetoric) what is the good.
4. Confession is not meant to discover personal characteristics, but “subject of knowledge and subject of will” 167–8. This might also be phrased as constituting the self as “the ideal unity of the will and the truth” p. 169. So the truth of the moral precepts rings within you, and it is necessary to recall, use memory to make it ring as a force. The self is constituted through the force of truth (168).
5. Again this confession falls within what is called gnomé, or the unity of will and knowledge. [In the Lexicon gnomé is a means of knowing, a mark, token. II the mind, the judgment, 2. Will, purpose. 3. A judgment, opinion, also a mistaken judgment, fancy. 4. A purpose, intention, resolution. Note also that a gnomon can be a carpenter’s rule (Lat. norma) and hence a rule or guide of life. NT Lexicon: 1. Purpose, intention, mind. (1 Cor. 1.10) 2. Opinion, judgment. I Cor 7:40 “in my judgment…” 3. Previous knowledge, consent. 4. Decision, declaration. ]This approach existed at least to the 1st century AD. The gnomic self.
He does say, and I am still working on the reasons why, that this gnomic self idea is very different, “deeply different to what we meet in the Christian technologies of the self” (168). Why? Well in the latter the aim is to discover what is hidden inside the self, and not “something which has to be constructed by the superposition, the superimposition, of the will and the truth” (168–9). He also states that the modern herm. of the self is much more from the Xtian than the classical notions.