I was re-reading a text on Foucault, and came across this passage,
Foucault’s genealogies question such sociological categories as ‘society’ and the ‘individual’ by emphasizing their historical development. Even more, they reconceptualize the relationship between the ‘individual’ and ‘society’, as it has traditionally been understood. Since it emerged in the nineteenth century sociology has treated ‘society’ as a modern phenomenon, while ‘individuals’ were thought to have existed since the beginning of human history, organizing themselves in ‘natural’, face-to-face relationships. Foucault’s genealogical histories show that the formation of ‘individuals’ has been contemporaneous with the formation of the ‘social’ or ‘society’.
I thought that, by "pre-modern time", much of what addressed by Foucault (and I suppose by other philosophers and sociologists) is actually "middle age". They don't seem to address what happened in "ancient time". Religious officials who act as the spiritual intermediaries to the common person sounds really middle age to me. But of course this is an uneducated guess.
Today we understand individuals as autonomous agents, men who decide their own fate, not dependent on another person-in-authority (like the religious officials who act as spiritual intermediaries), the "creator" of their own self.
Do we know how common people in antiquity see themselves?
I'm most curious especially in early and late antique era Christianity (somewhere along 1 AD - 600 AD). But other eras/areas are also really welcomed. Thank you!
I'm a bit confused by your question regarding "pre-modern time" and "middle age." However, Foucault explicitly addresses the self/individual (what he calls 'subjectivity') in ancient thought in his Lectures on the Will to Know as well as in Subjectivity and Truth (unpublished still in English), The Hermeneutics of the Subject, and The Courage of Truth. He also discusses aspects of the ancient self in The History of Sexuality: Volume 2 and Volume 3.
Foucault addresses subjectivity in early Christianity in his lectures On the Government of the Living, as well as a bit in The Hermeneutics of the Subject and The Courage of Truth. He also discusses the influence of Christian confessional subjectivity with modern forms of government in The History of Sexuality: Volume 1.
Foucault believes one of the biggest difference is that in ancient thought, the individual never has access to the truth by the simple fact that they exist. Foucault argues that the individual in ancient culture had to go through a long process of work, what he calls spiritual exercises (following Pierre Hadot's book titled Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucualt in English), in order to access the truth. He contrasts this to the modern conception of the self, in which we are entitled to say and speak the truth by our simple fact of being alive. He attributes this change to the development of scientific rationality and the privileging of self-evidence of perception as opposed to the self-transformation of ancient spiritual exercises. Indeed, your description of the modern self matches some of Foucault's own thoughts on it. One of the biggest noticable differences is that clearly we no longer require direction (in the form of a 'spiritual intermediary') by another in order to access the truth: we are capable of doing it alone now. This is all discussed in The Hermeneutics of the Subject.
Another difference between the ancient and modern self is due to Christian confessional practices. These have generated a picture of the modern self involving a deep connection between desires (such as sexual desires) and truths about the self. Foucault thinks that the modern individual is always interpreting their sexual desires in order to reveal a fundamental personal truth (and is always liable to their sexual desires being interpreted by others). This also involves the idea that the self may be fundamentally deceiving itself about its own nature and its own desires. Furthermore, these confessional practices have engrained in us, according to Foucault, that the confession of our sexual desires will in some way grant us freedom. Foucault thinks that psychoanalysis emerges precisely in the wake of the Christian confessional practices which have generated this form of subjectivity and also argues that the sexual liberation movement has done nothing other than reiterate the basic claims of the form of power which it is attempting to escape from (namely that the demonstration of sexuality will result in a kind of freedom). You can find more of this in The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, and a more detailed look at confessional practices in On the Government of the Living.