THE ART OF LIVING BETWEEN SOCRATES AND EPICTETUS

The concept of philosophy as an art or a way of life is an invention of Socratic philosophy. During the Hellenistic era, later Stoics developed the original Socrates' conviction of the care of the self into a systematic attitude called "art of living". The paper deals with differences we see between Socratic and Stoic concepts of philosophy on the background of the lectures on ancient problematizations of life given by Michel Foucault. The main purpose of the paper is an interpretation of Epictetus' concept of art of living as a philosophical attitude to the life of the individual, which is not primary connected with philosophical knowledge (mathesis) but rather with constant work of the self on the self (askesis).