System and Subjectivity: the Stoic Self of the Moderns

Abstract

This paper draws on Shaftesbury’s reading of Marcus Aurelius in order to compare Stoic views about individuality and personal identity with the Lockean concept of the self and more generally with modern philosophical accounts of selfhood. The emphasis is on the intrinsic connection between system and subjectivity in Roman Stoicism. The paper discusses contemporary unwillingness to describe the Stoic rational soul as a “self”. Michel Foucault’s application of his concept of “subjectivation” to the Stoic idea of selfhood is also called into question.