Heidegger and Foucault: Truth-telling and technologies of the self

Foucauldian philosophical notions of 'technologies' and in particular 'technologies of the self' are derived from Nietzsche's 'genealogy' and Heidegger's understanding of technology in a reconsideration of Greco-Roman antiquity and early Christianity. The first section of this paper explores Heidegger's work as a basis for Foucault's understanding of 'technology' in relation to the self. The second examines Foucault's understandings about the self, parrhesia (truth telling), culminating in his formulation of 'technologies of the self'. The third section provides a genealogy of Foucault's notions of confession that are outlined in Technologies of the Self (Foucault, 1988b).