Epictetus obviously never had the chance to read Foucault on discipline or punishment (though Foucault did read Epictetus), but he did know how to guide his students toward a type of self-criticism that Foucault himself brilliantly thematized two millennia later: by conducting his relations with others “as if Another is looking on from above” (Disc. 1.30.1–2), the student constructs a Monitor who keeps watch over his life.
