“Finding the Self or Losing the Self: Authority and Allegiance in Stoicism, Early Christianity, and Ruism (Confucianism),” Buddhist-Christian Studies. 2026 (46): 43-56.

Abstract:

Spiritual authority and allegiance take strikingly different forms in Stoicism and Ruism (Confucianism) in comparison to early Christianity. Drawing on Pierre Hadot’s account of philosophy as a way of life and Michel Foucault’s analysis of the “care of the self,” a pre-Christian vision of philosophy emerges as transformative spiritual practice rather than mere analytic discourse. Within this horizon, Stoicism locates authority in a disciplined community of teachers and texts, yet ultimately in the autonomous exercise of reason capable of examining doctrine and experience alike. Early Christianity reconfigures authority through obedience to divine revelation mediated by ecclesial structures. Ruism articulates a distinctive model: while affirming hierarchies of heaven, earth, sovereign, parent, and teacher, it subjects all authority to the cosmic Dao as discerned through the conscientious heartmind of each self-cultivating person. Despite significant differences—especially regarding the relation of reason and emotion—Stoicism and Ruism converge in placing final authority within a genuine self transformed through sustained practice. On this basis, a transreligious theology of religious diversity becomes possible, integrating experiential exclusivity, nonconfessional particularity, and relational openness beyond standard typologies of exclusivism, particularism, inclusivism, and pluralism.

Afterthought:

This article marks the first time I have brought Michel Foucault’s later thought into conversation with Pierre Hadot and Ruism. It is also the first time I have explicitly affirmed the similarity between Ruism and Stoicism in terms of their spiritual structure (rather than content).

When I read Foucault’s later work on the so-called hermeneutics of the subject, I was excited. I read it very quickly, as if reading a detective novel, with each page enticing me to turn to the next. It was one of the highlights of my reading last year.

I hope this article has done some justice to his wonderful thought during that period of his intellectual development.