Department of Philosophy2024-11-0920210969-725X10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863593http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2021.1863593https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/12643Building and expanding on Peter Sloterdijk's work, in this essay I explore the interrelation between anthropotechnics qua practice of the self and the political sphere, with a view, in particular, to providing a genealogy of some of its recent developments. I first analyse the birth of anthropotechnics within the framework of the axial revolution (Karl Jaspers), as withdrawal and return to a common world bereft of certainty and self evidence (section 2). Next, I show how the rise of asceticism shaped some of the central problematiques of classical politics and, in particular, political agonism and metaphysics, the latter here understood as a geometrical theory of political order (section 3). Against this background, I discuss how modern anthropotechniques have altered the classical relation between individual askesis and collective security, and how this, in turn, has paved the way for a certain understanding of self-mobilisation to saturate the government of the self in the twenty-first century (section 4).HumanitiesJournal Article1469-2899611584500008Q16925