Foucault News

[…] this problem of being “on time” and not being on time as you know was one of the main problems in Greek ethics— the notion of kairos. Kairos is the right moment. In the first Greek texts, the problem for ethics was choosing the right moment to do something.
[…]
In general, I think the Greeks’ problem was how to deal with necessity and fortune—Ananke and Tykhe. The Greeks had what you might call a very fatalistic attitude toward Ananke and Tykhe, as you know. Anyway, the problem faced by ethics, behavior, conduct, and politics was definitely not in trying to change things in relation to Ananke and Tykhe, but in dealing with them as they were and catching the right moment when you could actually do something. Kairos was the play, the element through which human freedom could deal with and manage Ananke, the world’s necessity. That, I think, is the reason why kairos, the problem of the right moment, was one of the central problems in Greek ethics.

Michel Foucault, Discussion with the Department of Philosophy in What Is Critique? & The Culture of the Self. Edited by Henri-Paul Fruchaud, Daniele Lorenzini, and Arnold I. Davidson. Translated by Clare O’Farrell, Chicago University Press, 2024, pp.84-5.