The Soul of Theory

‘Soul’ is a very traditional, old-fashioned, now archaic, and even obsolete term. Instead of ‘soul,’ today ‘ego’ and ‘self’ have become the dominant terms in both academic and general usage. ‘Self-development’ emphasizes the infinite enhancement of individual ego on the one hand, and ‘self-healing’ trend acknowledges the limitations of this situation on the other. Foucault’s last lectures, however, recalled the case of Socrates’ “taking care of one’s soul.” Socratic care of the soul goes beyond ‘self-reflection’ and forward to the ‘self-care’ of individual inner standards. Socrates puts another emphasis upon ‘parrhèsia’(free speech) so as to avoid the potentially extreme individualist turn of the self care. Foucault wanted to present the Cynic model as a clear example of going further than that of Socrates. Cynics seek to grasp their souls in tense dynamics of subjectivity and its others, and intentionally and constantly test themselves with extreme experiences of even sub-human as well as metaphysical dimension. Here, the soul is not a substance of eternal nature, but rather a constantly doubting and experimenting subject to be established and managed. Theory, as a space of criticism, conjecture, and fiction, creates and maintains its subject of tension and balance between objective reason and subjective argument. Here, intuitive and rational logic interweaves with personal judgment and lifestyle. Freud’s, Foucault’s, and Derrida’s theories represent prototypes of the individual subject’s soul that survives in the age of information and data.