Abstract
In this essay I discuss two interesting claims of Michel Foucault concerning ancient dietetics: first that dietetic treatises should be rendered as „a manual” one can use for reacting to various lifesituations in which one might find oneself, and second that ancient dietetics made common activities of existence „a matter both of health and of ethics”. I will argue on behalf of the first claim and draw some important consequences for the status of dietetics within the ancient medicine.
Concerning the second claim, I will suggest that the dietetic therapy (as presented in the Hippocratic On regimen) reflects upon certain limitations concerning the treatment of human character and distances itself from judging problems connected with morality, laws and other human conventions. Such topics were often discussed by philosophers in the Socratic tradition and indicate the main difference between the philosophical ethics and medical dietetics of the day.