I demonstrate how Foucault misconstrued Zen Buddhism as a practical philosophy that is concerned with the self, and failed to recognize the extent to which the Zen Buddhism he was confronted with is a modern ideological construct informed by quintessentially Western philosophical sensibilities. Foucault seems to have been interested in Zen Buddhism as a possible Eastern variant of Hellenistic self-care. The question driving this thesis is whether we could understand Tanabe's call for self-abandonment as a Foucauldian technique of the self. By contrast, Tanabe thought that any reliance on the self should be abandoned in favor of a life of compassionate action lived hearing the calling of a religious Other-power. In his later work, Foucault shows how in Hellenistic and Roman culture immanent values were shaped through self-care, thereby bringing to the attention a compelling alternative to the dependence on transcendent values that we have grown accustomed to through centuries of Christianity. This master's thesis sets out to compare the thought of the Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Tanabe Hajime (1889-1962) with that of the French philosopher and social critic Michel Foucault (1926-1984), particularly on the topic of self-care and the possibility of personal transformation.
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