I have an odd relationship to Foucault. I'm not a Foucauldian, and I dislike how he and Laclau are used as a battering ram against Marxism in the academy, but the people who hate him the most all end up talking like Jordan Peterson jacking himself off by endlessly retelling the story about how the dragon of postmodernism/identity politics killed the noble knight of Real Marxism in the sixties. Obviously, I think that's a stupid narrative/framework, but the relevant point in this case is just that I came to this book more or less disinterestedly: take what's valuable and leave the rest.
I picked it up because I was interested in this idea of the "care of the self" that Foucault apparently got into in his later life. But actually this idea--a particular ethic focusing on cultivating "a whole set of occupations" around your body--is presented here as a late-Greek, early-Roman invention, not given any particular contemporary relevance (for instance, as something we should learn from). In general, Foucault's approach is one of close reading, very minute attention to nuances and distinctions rather than ambitious conceptualizations, which is both his strength and his danger.
