>>7683395
I'm about to dive into the book later today, so not sure how much I could add until then. My only familiarity thus far comes from a (very) few essays and interviews I've read by/of him.

The basic understanding that he operates with is a basic adherence to ideology as the driving force for action, thought, and thus ethics; the dichotomies set up by a society determine what is considered deviant (obviously) and dangerous (a very loaded term when he uses it, which I'd recommend that anons look up in greater detail).

Ethics, as they concern the "self" (which is what The Care of Self is supposedly about), arise along three axes, depending on the type of society you're in: pleasure, actions, and desire. They become more or less relevant in a particular culture's context.

An interesting subtext that I've found so far is how Foucault deviates from Marxism, in the sense that the "self" is conceived of and cared for on a personal/individual level. i.e. the "self" isn't a direct result of the Marxist idea of economic reproduction and ideological apparatuses. The ideology produced in society instead merely determines the particulars of a society's ethics (as they pertain to pleasure, action, and desire) and thus the ways in which someone can deviate, but doesn't implicate the actual production of the self.