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We try to show in this article the “author function” Plutarch occupies in Foucault's work, while highlighting its educational dimension. The study shows a significant use of the work of Plutarch as a conceptual tool and highlights two figures – the biographer and the philosopher therapist. These two figures represent two key aspects of the educational thought of Foucault: the rejection of the imitation of the models of the past, embodied in the humanist paradigm of the biographies of famous men, and the promotion of a pedagogy of practices on the self. This reflection prompts the educational problematization of the link and the path developed by Foucault from Plutarch’s concept of an “ethopoetic” knowledge to the possibility of building a certain aesthetic idea of man.