Philosophy as a way of life

BLACl

Od•tJ UIC I\ f•"'�''"'' USA

Copyright 0 Pierre Hadot, 1995

English translation C Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1995

The right of Pierre Hadot to be Identified as author of this work has been asserted In accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Parts of this work first published as Exerclcu 1plrltuel1 et philo1ophle antique by Etudes Augustiniennes, Paris 1987 (2nd edition) English edition first published 1995

Reprinted 1996 (twice), 1997, 1998, 1999

Blackwell Publishers Ltd

l 08 Cowley Road

Oxford OX4 lJF, UK

Blackwell Publishers Inc

350 Main Street

Malden, Massachusetts 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes or criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a rcb'ieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission or the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise; be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that In which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being Imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Brltlah Library Cataloguing In Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congru1 Cataloging In Publication Data

Hadot, Pierre.

[Exercices spirituels et philosophic antique. English]

Philosophy as a way of life: spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault/Pierre Hadot; edited by Arnold Davidson; translated by Michael Chase.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-631-18032-X (alk. paper) - ISBN 0-631-18033-8 O>bk.:alk. paper) 1. Philosophy. 2. Spiritual exercises - History. I. Davidson, Arnold Ira.

II. Title

Bl05.S66H3313

1995

100-dc20

94-28788

CIP

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Ehrhardt

by Pure Tech Corporation, Pondicherry, India

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Translator's Nott

v1

list of Abbreviations

ix

Introduction: Pie"e Hadol and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy Arnold I. Davidson

Part I Method

47

l Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy 49

2 Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes

7 1

Part II Spiritual Exercises

79

3 Spiritual Exercises

8 1

4 Ancient Spiritual Exercises and "Christian Philosophy"

1 26

Part Ill Figures

145

5 The Figure of Socrates

147

6 Marcus Aurelius

179

7 Reflections on the Idea of the "Cultivation of the Selr'

206

Part IV Themes

215

8 "Only the Present is our Happiness": The Value of the Present Instant in Goethe and in Ancient Philosophy

2 1 7

9 The View from Above

238

10 The Sage and the World

25 1

11 Philosophy as a Way of Life

264

/111stsrrip1: An 1'1terviem with Pierre Hadot

277

Srlrl'I Ri/Jli11grt1pliy

287

l"'lr.t·

301

Translator's Note

The thought of Pierre Hadot is based on a lifetime's study of, and meditation upon, ancient Greek and Latin philosophical texts. In the course of this long period, he has, of course, developed his own methodology for the study of such texts. Based as it is on the methods of his own teachers, such as Paul Henry and Pierre Courcelle, 1 this method is distinctly his own, and he has transmitted it to a whole generation of French scholars in the field of late antique thought.

The first stage of Hadot's method is a scrupulous, textually critical reading of the original texts, followed by an equally exacting translation of these texts into French. 2 Only on the foundation of the intense, detailed confrontation with the text which real translation demands, Hadot feels, can one begin the processes of exegesis, interpretation, and, perhaps, criticism. Thus, Hadot's thought is, at least to a large extent, based on his methods of translation. This being the case, it is impossible to understand the former without understanding the latter.

Such a situation presents obvious difficulties for Hadot's translators. Given the importance he accords to the study of ancient texts, Hadot tends to quote them frequently and extensively, in his own translations from the Greek, the Latin, and the German. Now, a translator's normal procedure would be to dig up the already existing English translations of the respective texts, and insert them where Hadot's own translations had stood in the original. After much consultation, we have found this method inadequate, for the following reasons: Many existing English translations are themselves inadequate; some are old and outdated; others based on different textual readings from those adopted by Hadot. In the case of still others, finally, no English translation exists at all.

2 There is no such thing as an "objective translation." All ttanslators base their work on their own conception of what their author was trying to say.

Naturally, Hadot has often arrived at views of what his authors meant which differ from those of the various other ttanslators; his own translations consequently differ, sometimes fundamentally, from the existing J<:nglish versions.3

Translator's Note

vii

3 The use of existing English translations would often make Hadot's thought impossible to understand. If we were to insert, for example, a 60-year-old English translation of, say, Marcus Aurelius into the text, and then follow it with Hadot's explanation of the passage, the result would be ludicrously incoherent. Most importantly, it would make it impossible for the reader to gain any notion of the genesis and development of Hadot's thought -

which is, after all, the goal of this publication. As I have said, the origin of Hadot's thought is to be sought in his interpretation of ancient texts, and his translations of these texts are both the result and an integral part of his hermeneutical method. Deprived of his translations, we could simply not see how Hadot had arrived at his particular interpretations of particular ancient texts, and consequently we would be at a loss to understand the conclusions he has based on these interpretations.

This being the case, the method I have chosen to follow in the translation of Spiritual Exercises is the following: in the case of each of Hadot's quotations of passages in Greek, Latin, or German, I have begun by a simple English translation of Hadot's French version. I have then checked the result against the original Greek, Latin, or German. If the English translation of Hadot's version, read on its own, then seemed to me to be a good translation of the original text, I let it stand; if not, I modified it slightly, with two goals in mind: first, to bring it into accord with modern English usage; secondly, to make sure the English transmitted, as far as possible, all the nuances of the original languages. In cases of particular difficulty, I have benefited from Hadot's thoughtful advice and comments, partly by correspondence, and partly during the course of a memorable stay at the Hadot's home in the summer of 1991.4

The resulting translations therefore often bear little resemblance to existing English translation; this is especially so in the case of authors like Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Plotinus, to whom M. Hadot has devoted a lifetime of study. Nevertheless, we have decided to include references to the most accessible - not necessarily the best - extant English translations, in case the interested reader should care to consult the ancient authors cited in this hook.

Such a method is, obviously, more time-consuming than the usual slapdash method of translation. My hope is that the result justifies the delays incurred: I would like to think the result is a scholarly and above all faithful version of 1-lndot's thought.

NOTES

I ( :r. 11b11vc

l funnnl( the 1·c1111ll11 of hi11 work 1111 thi11 Ktllgc of hiN method nrc Hndot's projcc11;

viii

Translator's Note

for completely new translations of those thinkers who have particularly occupied his attention: Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Marius Victorinus, etc.

3 This is so even in the case of so eminent a student of Plotinus, and so conscientious a translator, as A.H. Armstrong. Although he, too, has devoted a lifetime of careful study to Plotinus, he often reaches conclusions in the interpretation of particular Plotinian passages which differ from those of Hadot.

The reason for this is not hard to seek: Plotinus is an extremely difficult author, and his writings are susceptible of many different interpretations.

4 Here I should like to express, on behalf of my wife Isabel and myself, our deep gratitude for the Hadots' wonderful hospitality.

Abbreviations

ACW: Ancient Christian Writers, The Works of the Fathers in Translation, eds Johannes Qµasten and Joseph C. Plumpe, Westminster MD/London.

ANF: The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, eds Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, American Reprint of the Edinburgh Edition, revised and chronologically arranged, with brief prefaces and occasional notes, by A. Cleveland Coxe, Buffalo.

FC: The Fathers of the Chu1·ch. A NeJP Translation, Washington DC.

GCS: Die Griechischen Christ/ichen Scriftsteller der Ersten Jahrhunderte, ed.

Kommission filr Splitantike Religionsgeschichte der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.

GW: Gesammelte Werke, S0ren Kierkegaard, Diisseldorf/Cologne 1961.

! CL: Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge MA.

..

PG: Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.P. Migne, Paris 18#-55.

PL: Patrologia Latina, ed. J.P. Migne, Paris 1857-66.

SC: Sources chretiennes, Paris 1940ff.

SVF: Stoicorum Vetenum Fragmenta, ed. H. Von Arnim, 4 vols, Leipzig 1903.

Introduction: Pie"e Hadot and the Spiritual

Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy

I believe it was in 1982 that Michel Foucault first mentioned Pierre Hadot to me. Struck by Foucault's enthusiasm, I photocopied a number of Hadot's articles, but, to my regret, never got around to reading them until several years after Foucault's death. I immediately understood, and shared, Foucault's excitement, for Hadot's work exhibits that rare combination of prodigious historical scholarship and rigorous philosophical argumentation that upsets any preconceived distinction between -the h1story--of phDosophy and philosqphy proper. Expressed in a lucid prose whose clarity and precision urc remarkable, Hadot's work stands as a model for how to write the history of philosophy. This collection of essays will, I hope, help to make his work better known in the English-speaking world; the depth and richness of his writing contain lessons not only for specialists in ancient philosophy, but for nil of us interested in the history of philosophical thought.

Pierre Hadot has spent most of his academic career at the Ecole pratique dL•s Hautes Etudcs and at the College de France. Appointed a directeur d'etudes of the fifth section of the Ecole in 1964, Hadot occupied a chair in Latin Pntristics, where he gave extraordinary lectures, many of which remain unpublished, on, among other topics, the works of Ambrose and Augustine.

In 1972, in response to Hadot's interest in and work on non-Christian I houl{ht, the title of his chair was changed to "Theologies and Mysticisms of I lcllcnistic Greece and the End of Antiquity." Hadot gave courses on Plotinus 111111 M11rcus Aurelius, but also began to devote increased attention to more Ml'ncrnl themes in the history of ancient philosophical and theological thought.

In Fdnunry 1983 he assumed the chair of the History of Hellenistic and Runum Thought at the College de France. He has published translations of 1111d ,·onu11cn111rics on Marius Victorinus, Porphyry, Ambrose, Plotinus, and M111'l"llN AurdiuN. I liM CNNllYN on 11ncicnl philosophy rungc over virtually every

2

Introduction

topic of major significance, and constitute nothing less than a general perspective, both methodologically and substantively, on how to approach and understand the development of the entire history of ancient thought. A reading of Hadot's complete corpus of writings reveals, as one might expect, important essays on the history of medieval philosophy, but also, perhaps more surprisingly, brilliant" contributions to our understanding of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. Hadot has also been increasingly preoccupied with the pertinence of ancient thought for philosophy today, recogmzing that ancient experience raises questions that we cannot and should not overlook or ignore.

This collection of essays is based on the second edition of Exercfres spiritue/s el philosophic antique, originally published in 1987 and now out of print.1 But it also includes a number of essays that were written subsequent to the book, essays that take up, develop, and extend the themes of E:rercices spiritttels.

Moreover, Hadot has made revisions in some of the chapters for their inclusion in this volume, and he has rewritten his discussion of Marcus Aurelius in light of his commentary on the Meditations. 2 Thus this collection represents an expanded discussion of the topics of spiritual exercises and ancient philosophy.

In my introduction, I shall not summarize the individual essays. Rather, I shall try to indicate the general orientation of Hadot's thought, as well as relate these essays to other questions and problems - methodological, historical, and philosophical - treated elsewhere by Hadot. Instead of concentrating on questions of detail, I shall try to highlight some of the philosophical lessons and insights offered to us by Hadot's work.

1 Method and Practices of Interpretation in the History of Ancient Philosophy and Theology

In the summary of his work prepared for his candidacy at the College de France, Hadot wrote:

The problems, the themes, the symbols from which Western thought has developed were not all born, quite obviously, in the period that we have studied. But the West has received them for the most part in the form that was given to them either by Hellenistic thought, or by the adaptation of this thought to the Roman world, or by the encounter between Hellenism and Christianity.J

The historical period he has studied has led Hadot to be especially sensitive to the ways in which different systems of thought Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian

-

-

have interacted with one another. At the end of antiquity, one is foccll with n

lnlroduction

3

vast phenomenon of transposition, a gigantic mela-phora in which all the forms of structures, political, juridical, literary, philosophical, artistic, have crossed over into new environments, have contaminated themselves with other forms or structures, thus modifying, more or less profoundly, their original meaning, or losing their meaning, or receiving a new meaning (which sometimes is a "mistranslation") [contresens]}

For example, the development of a Latin philosophical language required the adaptation of Greek models, so that to each term of this technical Latin language corresponded a quite specific Greek term; but "on the occasion of this translation many slippages of meaning, if not misinterpretations," were produced.5 Furthermore, when it was a question of the philosophical and theological exegesis by Latin Christian writers of biblical texts, additional problems were posed by the presence of Latin versions of Greek versions of the original Hebrew. Along with the misinterpretations brought about by these translations, Christian writers added their own lack of understanding of Hebraic ideas. Hadot gives the wonderful example of Augustine, who read in the Latin version of Psalm IV: 9 the expression ;,, idipsum. Although the Hebrew text contains wording that simply means "at this very moment" or

"immediately," Augustine, prompted by Neoplatonist metaphysics, discovers in this in idipsum a name of God, "the selfsame." He thus discovers here a metaphysics of identity and divine immutability, interpreting the expression as meaning "in him who is identical with himself." 6 Both a Latin translation and a Neoplatonist metaphysics come between his reading and the text.

To take another example, in Ambrose's sermon De Isaac vel anima, we find undeniable borrowings, indeed literal translations, from Plotinus; more specific11lly, the use of texts from Plotinus that relate to the detachment from the body 11nd to the withdrawal from the sensible as a condition of contemplation. These texts of Plotinian mysticism are joined to texts of Origenean mysticism that derive from Origcn 's commentary on the Song of So11gs. But in this encounter between Plotinian and Origenean mysticism, Plotinian mysticism loses its specificity. One dues not find in Ambrose any important trace of what is essential to Plotinus'

thought, namely the surpassing of the intelligible in order to attain the One in (.'CKtruly. Such texts concerning the mysticism of the One are translated by Ambrose in such a way that they lose this meaning and arc related to the union of lhe soul with the Logos. So Hadot speaks of "a Plotinian ascesis put in the KC:f\' ice of an Origenean mysticism that is a mysticism of Jesus." 7 Thus Ambrose nm identify the Good and Christ, since with respect to the Good he brings in 1'1aul'11 Colossians I: 20, which does indeed concern Christ. Yet, as Hadot remarks,

"thi11 idcntifiuation is absolutely foreign to the whole economy of the Plotinian 11yNtc:m." � Borrowings, ro1111·esms, the introduction of a logic into texts that had a tlilfort

1hi11 whole phenomenon is central to the development of 1111dm1 1huul(lll, 1md, 1111 I l11dot m11kc11 clear, not to ancient thought alone.

4

lntroduclion

In his essay "La fin du paganisme" Hadot examines the struggles, contaminations, and symbioses between paganism and Christianity at the end of antiquity. We can relatively straightforwardly reconstruct the philosophical struggles and divergences; for instance, the claim on the part of pagan polemicists that at the time of his trial and death Jesus did not behave like a sage, the pagan philosophy of history that charged Christians with lacking historical roots and that denied them the right to claim that their tradition was the sole possessor of the truth, the pagan argument that the Christians imagined God as a tyrant with unforeseeable whims who carries out completely arbitrary and irrational actions, such as the creation of the world at a specific moment of time, the election and then rejection of the Jewish people, the incarnation, the resurrection, and, finally, the destruction of the world.1°

We can also discover in the pagan world certain attempts to assimilate Christian elements, and even, in certain epochs, the phenomenon of symbiosis between pagan and Christian thought. Thus, for example, the emperor Alexander Severus used to render honor to certain portraits (effigies) of men who, thanks to their exceptional virtue, had entered the sphere of divinity.

Among these men were Orpheus, Appollonius of Tyana, Abraham, and Christ, and so the emperor made a place for Christ in his pantheon.11 In the case of some individuals one could legitimately wonder whether they were pagans or Christians. The Hymns of Synesius could be considered as having been inspired by the Christian trinitarian doctrine or, on the contrary, as a representative of a pagan theology that one could link to the tradition of Porphyry .12

More historically subtle is the process that Hadot has labeled "contamination," that is, "the process according to which paganism or Christianity were lead to adopt the ideas or the behaviors characteristic of their adversary." 11

Such contamination, which could operate with different degrees of awareness, extended from specific doctrines and behaviors to very general ideas and institutions. Eusebius of Caesarea could bring together the doctrines of Plotinus and Numenius on the First and Second God with the Christian doctrine of the Father and the Son and their relations. 14 And the emperor Julian could wish to impose the organization of the Christian church on paganism, wanting the pagan church to imitate the Christian church's activities.15

Most important from a

point of view, Christianity borrowed

the very idea of theology, its methods and principles, from paganism. As Hadot has shown, both pagans and Christians had an analogous conception of truth; truth was an historical reality of divine origin, a revelation given by God to humanity at a particular time. As a consequence, their conceptions of philosophy and theology were identical - "human thought could only be exegetical, that is, it must try to interpret an initial datum: the revelation contained in myths, traditions, the most ancient laws." 11' Not only wns

Introduction

5

Christianity contaminated by the pagan idea of theology, but the ancient Christian idea of hierarchical monotheism, so central to early Christianity, could be found within the evolution of paganism itself, especially under the influence of the imperial ideology. The conceptions of monotheism and hierarchy that served to define the Byzantine Christian world were thus also contaminations from the pagan world; indeed, these ideas could be said to sum up the entire essence of late paganism. 17 These contaminations inevitably led to distortions, deformations, misunderstandings of all kinds, but the overlap and intersections brought about by these contaminations also led to the evolution of thought, the development of fresh ideas, the creation, by way of creative misinterpretations, of new concepts, categories, arguments, and conclusions.

In the first century BC, as a consequence of the destruction of most of the permanent philosophical institutions in Athens (which had existed from the fourth to the first century BC), the four great philosophical schools - Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism - could no longer be supported by the Athenian institutions created by their founders.

In order to affirm their fidelity to the founder, the four philosophical schools, scattered in different cities of the Orient and Occident, can no longer depend on the institution that he had created, nor on the oral tradition internal to the school, but solely on the texts of the founder.

The classes of philosophy will therefore consist above all in commentaries on the text. '8

The exegetical phase of the history of ancient philosophy was characterized hy the ract that the principal scholarly exercise was the explication of a text.

Exeietical philosophy conceived of the philosopher not as a "solitary thinker who would invent and construct his system and his truth in an autonomous way. The philosopher thinks in a tradition." 19 For the philosopher during this period, truth is founded on the authority of this tradition, and it is given in fhc texts of the founders of the tradition.

Perhaps the most extraordinary instance of the weight and pressures of nc:gctical thought is to be found in the example, extensively discussed by I l1ulot, of the appearance of the distinction between "being" as an infinitive (111 1•11mi) and "being" as a participle (to on). In a series of articles Hadot has

"lu1wn thnt this distinction arose as a result of the need to give a coherent L'Xcgc:11i11 of Plato's second hypothesis in the Parmenides, "If the one is, how is II 1m1111iblc that it should not participate in being [ 011sia ]?" 20 The Neoplatonist exegesis of the Parmtnitles required that each of Plato's hypotheses correspond to 11 diflcrcnt hypo11ta11ili; thui;, thi11 S'-'C<>nd hypothesis corresponded to the llL'L'otul ( >nc:. Since thi11 11ccond One mui;t 1>articipate in 011sia, and since by

6

Introduction

"participation'' the Neoplatonists meant "receiving a form from a superior and transcendent Form," the second One's participation in ousia is understood to be participation in an ousia in itself which transcends the participating subject. However, according to good Neoplatonist doctrine, above the second One there is only the first One, and this first One, absolutely simple, cannot be an ousia. The first ousia must be the second One. So how could Plato have spoken of an ousia that precedes the second One? An anonymous Neoplatonist commentator on the Parmenides, whom Hadot has identified as Porphyry, squarely confronted these difficulties: "influenced by the exegetical tradition characteristic of his school, the words of Plato evoked for him the entities of a rigid system, and the literal text became reconcilable only with difficulty with what he believed to be Plato's meaning."21 Porphyry's solution to this difficulty would consist in presenting an exegesis according ·to which Plato had employed the word ousia in an enigmatic way, instead of another word whose meaning is close to the word ousia, namely the word einai. If Plato speaks of an ousia in which the second One participates, he wants it to be understood that the second One receives the property of being a "being"

(to on} and of being "ousia" from the first One, because the first One is itself

"being" (to einai} "not in the sense of a subject but in the sense of an activity of being, considered as pure and without subject. "22 Thus, as Hadot shows, we can see appear for the first time in the history of onto-theology a remarkable distinction between being as an infinitive and being as a participle.

Being as an infinitive characterizes the first One, pure absolutely indeterminate activity, while being as a participle is a property of the second One, the first substance and first determination that participates in this pure activity.

This distinction arises from the formulation used by Plato at the beginning of the second hypothesis of the Parmenides, joined to the Neoplatonist exegesis of the Parmenides and the need for Porphyry to try to explain, from within this system of exegesis, why Plato said what he did. 21 The result, according to Hadot, was "certainly a misinterpretation, but a creative misinterpretation, sprung from the very difficulties of the exegetical method."24 This creative misunderstanding was to have a profound influence on the development of a negative theology of being, and, by way of Boethius'

distinction between esse and id quod est, was decisively to affect the history of Western philosophical thought.25

As early as 1959, Hadot described a phenomenon, constant in the history of philosophy,

that stems from the evolution of the philosophical consciousness: it is impossible to remain faithful to a tradition without taking up again the formulas of the creator of this tradition; but it is also impossible to use these formulas without giving them a meaning that the previous philosopher could not even have suspected. One then sincerely bclicvt'!I

Introduction

7

that this new meaning corresponds to the deep intention of this philosopher. In fact, this new meaning corresponds1 to a kind of possibility of evolution of the original doctrine.26

Not all such bestowals of new meaning are creative misunderstandings, as Hadot well realizes. But some of them have led to new ideas of great philosophical significance. We must study the history of these exegeses, discover how these misunderstandings have been used, what philosophical consequences and what paths of evolution have resulted from them, in order to determine whether they have indeed been creative. In the most interesting of cases, we may find that a history of misinterpretation and a history of philosophical creativity are intimately linked.27

In his inaugural lecture to the College de France, Hadot writes: It seems to me, indeed, that in order to understand the works of the philosophers of antiquity we must take account of all the concrete conditions in which they wrote, all the constraints that weighed upon them: the framework of the school, the very nature of phi/osophia, literary genres, rhetorical rules, dogmatic imperatives, and traditional modes of reasoning. One cannot read an ancient author the way one does a contemporary author (which does not mean that contemporary authors are easier to understand than those of antiquity). In fact, the works of antiquity are produced under entirely different conditions than those of their modern counterparts.2JI

Hadot's studies of the history of ancient philosophy and theology have always included the analysis of "the rules, the forms, the models of discourse," the framework of the literary genre whose rules are often rigorously codified, in which the thoughts of the ancient author are expressed.29 Such analysis is necessary in order to understand both the details of the work, the exact import of particular statements, as well as the general meaning of the work as a whole.

Literary structure and conceptual structure must never be separated. 30

Describing his method of study for Latin Patristics, Hadot has invoked an exceptionally illuminating analogy, comparing what happens in these studies lo what takes place in those curious paintings where one secs at first sight a landscape that seems to be composed normally.

One thinks that if there is, in such and such a place in the picture, a house or a tree it depends solely on the imagination of the artist. But if nnc looks at 1he whole painting from a certain angle the landscape 1r111111form11 it11clf into 11 hidden figure, a face or a human body, and one 11mlcr11t11nll11 then th11t the hou11t• or the tree wa11 not there out of pure

8

fancy, but was necessary because it made up part of the hidden figure.

When one discovers the structure or the fundamental form of a text, one has an analogous experience: certain details that seemed to be there only in an arbitrary way become necessary, because they make up an integral part of the traditional figure used. And just as one can contrast or compare the sense of the face and the sense of the countryside, one can compare the meaning of the traditional form or structure, considered in themselves, and that of the text which has borrowed them . . . We often have the impression when we read ancient authors that they write badly, that the sequence of ideas lacks coherence and connection. But it is precisely because the true figure escapes us that we do not perceive the form that renders all the details necessary . .. once discovered, the hidden form will make necessary all of the details that one often believed arbitrary or without importance.31

This description brilliantly captures the significance of placing the work studied in the framework of its literary genre, the transformation in understanding brought about when one moves from the insignificant and arbitrary to the meaningful and necessary. Hadot's methodological prescriptions can be fruitfully applied at virtually every level in the analysis of ancient thought.

I want to consider briefly a series of examples not taken up ·by Hadot in order to emphasize the depth and accuracy of his analogy. I have in mind the extraordinary work on mystical cryptography undertaken by Margherita Guarducci. By carefully delineating the historical and geographical context and by discovering "a coherent and rational system," 32 Guarducci was able to show that certain ancient graffiti, both pagan and Christian, contained hidden and almost dissimulated thoughts of a philosophical and religious character.33

The situation that results is precisely one in which phenomena that were neglected or unacknowledged now assume a profound significance. So, for example, she has demonstrated that the letters PE, the two initial letters of the name Petrus, sometimes take on the form of the characteristic monogram t or l that this monogram represents the keys of the first vicar of Christ, and that the monogram sometimes even visually resembles, with the three teeth of the E adjoined to the P, a key t.34 Peter's monogram can also be

-

adjoined to a monogram for Christ Cf>. so that we find on wall g of the Vatican this kind of graffiti, fl, expressing the indissoluble union of Peter and Christ.35 By unraveling the rational and coherent system formed by this mystical cryptography she can show that an inscription that previously found no plausible explanation can be clearly and convincingly explained. Thus the inscription found on a tomb (and shown in plate 1.1) wishes life in Christ and Peter to the deceased. The bi valence of the Greek rho and the Latin pi is used to superpose the monogram of Christ <£) with the letters PE thus forming,

Introduction

9

f which is inserted within the preposition in.36 Just as Hadot has described it, these are cases where "once discovered, the hidden form will make necessary all of the details that one often believed arbitrary or without sigrtificance." 37

This mystical cryptography can also be found in the pagan world, where a form that can seem to be intrinsically insignificant is transformed, once the hidden figure is discovered, into the expression of a philosophical doctrine.

Thus not only did the Pythagoreans recognize in the letter Y the initial letter of the word vriera and therefore the concept of "salvation"; they also used this letter to represent graphically the ancient concept of the divergent paths of virtue and vice, the doctrine that life presented a forking path and that one must choose between the path of virtue on the right, which will lead to peace, and the path of vice on the left, where one will fall into misery.38 A funereal stcle, datable f�om the first century AD, of a deceased man named "Pythagoras" exhibits a large Y that divides the stone into five sections (shown in plate 1.2). Each section contains various scenes inspired by Pythagorean doctrine.

In the center is an image of the deceased (or perhaps of his homonym, Pythagoras of Samo); to the right arc scenes personifying virtue, to the left arc scenes personifying dissoluteness. Guarducci concludes that it is "easy to recognize in the succession of these scenes that which the literary sources have handed down to us ... : the Pythagorean Y, symbol of the divergent paths of virtue and of vice, one of which brings ... eternal pleasure, the other ...

definitive ruin." ·19 Ir is indeed easy to come to this recognition, once one has uncovered and deciphered the genre of mystical cryptography. But if one fails to perceive the rigorously codified rules, one will see nothing of importance, one will be forced to resort to lapidary error and accident to explain away various features, one will find no coherence in many of the inscriptions."° The diff crence between recognizing profound significance and trivial error or arbitrariness will depend on whether the true form has escaped us or has transformed our understanding.41

One might well imagine that the endeavor to hide religious and philosophical thoughts within inscriptions and graffiti would require that we discover the hidden form necessary to give coherence and sense to these graffiti. But one might also assume that when we are confronted with extended philosophical writing, andcnt texts, like many modem ones, will exhibit their structure more or less on the surface. And then when we fail to discern this we

conclude, as Hadot remarks, that ancient authors "write badly, that the sequence of ideas lacks coherence and conncction."42 That the assumption on which this conclusion is based is false, that the structure of even extended ancient rhilosophical texts may not lie easily open to view, is clearly shown by Harlot's own discuvcry of the underlying structure or fundamental form of Marcus Aurelius' Mt'tlitfltim1s. Indeed, Hadot's description of the experience of seeing a IC' hidden form very compellingly n•prl'Nl'nlN, yc11111 hcfol'l� thl' foci, hiN own dist.'O\•cry uhout Marcus Aurelius' text.

10

Introduction

., .

'i!:�,(:

.. -.: .

The first printed edition of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations appeared in 1559, accompanied by a Latin translation. The editor, "Xylander" (Wilhelm Holzmann), faced with what he saw as the total disorder of the text, conjectured that the Meditations, as presented in the manuscript he edited, were only disconnected extracts from the work of Marcus Aurelius, that Marcus' book had reached us in a mutilated, incomplete, disordered state.43

This conjecture was taken up again in 1624 by Caspar Barth, who, recognizing that one could detect traces of organization and sometimes lengthy reasoning in the Meditations, claimed that the text that had reached us consisted only of extracts from a vast, systematic treatise of ethics that the emperor had written."" Such conjectures, and their variations, have accompanied the Medi1atio11s throughout its history, always trying to account for the disorder and haphazardousness of this work.45 The contemporary reader may find individual aphorisms that seem to speak for themselves, but will be left with the basic impression that, as Hadot puts it, "these sentences seem to follow one another without order, with the randomness of the impressions and states of soul of the emperor-philosopher."46

Hadot has recognized that Marcus Aurelius' Meditations belong to the type of writing known as h_ypomnemata, personal notes and reflections written day to day. This kind of writing existed throughout antiquity, and at least two of Marcus' seventeenth-century editors and translators also recognized his work

Introduction

11

as consisting of personal notes.47 Marcus wrote day to day without trying to compose a work intended for the public; his Meditations arc for the most part exhortations to himself, a dialogue with himself. 4H Moreover, his thoughts and reflections were written down according to "a very refined literary form, hccause it was precisely the perfection of the formulas that could assure them their psychological efficacy, their power of persuasion." 49 Thus, although Marcus' work belongs to the literary genre of personal notes written day to dny (�l'Pomne111att1), they are also quite distinct from other examples of such notes. As Hadot concludes, "it appears indeed that unlike other /1ypomnemt1lt1, the Metlilt1lions of Marcus Aurelius are 'spiritual exercises,' practiced accordinl( to a certain method." 50

Spiritual exercises arc practiced in the Meditations according to a method, I ludot has written, "as rigorous, as codified, as systematic as the famous Spirit11t1/ E.l'ercises of Saint Ignatius." 51 And the key to this method, and thus 111 the Metlitt1tio11s, is to be found in the three philosophical topoi distinguished hy Epictetus. Epictetus distinguished three acts or functions of the soul -

iudl(tnent, desire, and inclination or impulsion. Since each of these activities 11f' 1hc soul depends on us, we can discipline them, we can choose to judge or 11111 111 judl(c ;1nd to judge in a particular way, we can choose to desire or not lo llcHirc, to will en· not to will. And so to each of these activities corresponds 11 r.pirit 11111 exercise, n discipline of representation and judgment, a discipline 111 1h·Nil'l'i nnd 11 lliNciplinc of inclin111ions or impulses to action.12 Moreover,

12

Introduction

Hadot has shown that Epictetus identified the three disciplines with the three parts of philosophy - the discipline of assent with logic, the discipline of desire with physics, and the discipline of inclinations with ethics.53 And he used the word topos "to designate the three lived exercises that ... are in a certain way the putting into practice of the three parts of philosophical discourse."54 Thus Epictetus' three topoi are three lived spiritual exercises.

Marcus Aurelius took up these three topoi and employed them as the underlying structure of his Meditations. They are the key to the interpretation of virtually the entire work, and our recognition of their role allows the surface disorder of the Meditations to transform itself, so that we see beneath this apparent lack of order a rigorous underlying form or structure: beneath this apparent disorder hides a rigorous law that explains the content of the Meditations. This law is, moreover, expressed clearly in a ternary schema that reappears often in certain maxims. But this schema was not invented by Marcus Aurelius: in fact it corresponds exactly to the three philosophical topoi that Epictetus distinguishes in his Discourses. It is this ternary schema that inspires the whole composition of the Meditations of the emperor. Each maxim develops either one of these very characteristics topoi, or two of them, or three of them.5s These three disciplines of life are truly the key to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It is in fact around each of them that the different dogmas ... are organized, are crystallized. To the discipline of judgment are linked the dogmas that affirm the freedom of judgment, the possibility that man has to criticize and modify his own thought; around the discipline that directs our attitude with regard to external events are gathered all the theorems on the causality of universal Nature; lastly, the discipline of action is nourished by all the theoretical propositions relative to the mutual attraction that unites reasonable beings.

Finally, one discovers that behind an apparent disorder, one can uncover, in the Meditations, an extremely rigorous conceptual system.56

Each maxim, aphorism, sentence of the Meditations is an exercise of actualization and assimilation of one or more of the three disciplines of life. 57 Thus Hadot, discovering the form "that renders all the details necessary," allows us to read the Meditations coherently, transforms our experience from that of reading a disconnected journal to one of reading a rigorously structured philosophical work.sx

Hadot's discovery of the ternary schema underlying the Meditations not only allows us to give structure to its merely apparent disorder. It also allows us to keep from falling into misplaced psychological judgments about the author of these spiritual exercises. Precisely because the Meditatitms arc

Introduction

13

traditional Stoic spiritual exercises, we must be very prudent about drawing conclusions concerning the personal psychological states of iyiarcus. As Hadot has said, we are all too ready to project our own attitudes and intentions on ancient works, to see the Meditations as the spontaneous effusion of Marcus'

everyday feelings, to see Lucretius' On the Nature of Things as the work of an anxious man attempting to combat his anxiety, or to understand Augustine's Confessions as the expression of his desire to confess and so to give us an autobiographical account of his life.59 But in antiquity, the rules of discourse were rigorously codified: in order to say what one wanted to say, an author had to say it in a certain way, according to traditional models, according to rules prescribed by rhetoric and philosophy . . . [the Meditations] are an exercise realized according to .definite rules; they imply . . . a pre-existent outline which the emperorphilosopher can only amplify. Often, he only says certain things because he must say them in virtue of the models and precepts that impose themselves on him. One will therefore only be able to understand the sense of this work when one has discovered, among other things, the prefabricated schemata that were imposed on it.60

Hadot has charted all of the supposed psychological portraits of Marcus drawn from the Meditations, which see him as suffering from gloomy resignation, extreme skepticism, despair. Some modern authors have claimed to find in the Meditations evidence of a gastric ulcer and its psychological consequences, or of the psychological effects of Marcus' abuse of opium.61 But all of these attempts at historical psychology ignore the mechanisms of literary composition in antiquity, and fail to take into account Marcus' modes of thought, the fact that he was practicing spiritual exercises, derived from Stoicism, more particularly from Epictetus, whose essential goal is to influence himself, to produce an effect in himself.62

Take, for example, the repeated claims that the Meditations show us that Marcus was a pessimist. After all, he does write things such as the following:

Just like your bath-water appears to you - oil, sweat, filth, dirty water, all kinds of loathsome stuff - such is each portion of life, and every substance.6.1

These foods and disht>s . . . arc only dead fish, birds and pigs; this Falcrnian wine is a bit of grape-juice; this purple-edged toga is some sheep's luiirs dipped in the blood of shellfish; as for sex, it is the rubbing to[(cthcr of pieces of gut, followed by the spasmodic secretion of a little bit of slime. 111

14

Introduction

What are these remarks, if not the expression of Marcus' characteristic pessimism? In each of these cases of supposed pessimism, Hadot has been able to show specifically that Marcus was not giving us his personal impressions, that he was not expressing a negative experience that he had lived, but was rather "exercising himself, spiritually and literarily." 65 Marcus is, first of all, practicing the Stoic discipline of giving physical definitions which, adhering to the objective representation of the phenomenon, are employed "to dispel the false conventional judgements of value that people express concerning objects." 66 Marcus writes:

always make a definition or description of the object that occurs in your representation, so as to be able to see it as it is in its essence, both as a whole and as divided into its constituent parts, and say to yourself its proper name and the names of those things out of which it is composed, and into which it will be dissolved.67

This kind of definition is intended to strip representations of "all subjective and anthropomorphic considerations, from all relations to the human point of view," thus defining objects, in a certain way, scientifically and physically.68

Such definitions belong both to the discipline of judgment, or logic, and to the discipline of desire, or physics. The critique of representations and the pursuit of the objective representation are, obviously enough, part of the domain of logic; but these definitions can only be realized if one places oneself in "the point of view of physics, by situating events and objects in the perspective of universal Nature." h9

Marcus is not giving us his personal perception of reality, from which we may then deduce conclusions about his sensibility or characteristic dispositions. He is rather employing various means to transform himself, to acquire a certain inner state of freedom and peace. To do so he must overcome

"solidly rooted prejudices, irrational terrors," employing all the means available to him.m Here is how Hadot describes the ultimate goal of these physical definitions:

This spiritual exercise of "physical" definition has exactly the effect of rendering us indifferent before indifferent things, that is, of making us renounce making differences among things that do not depend on us, but which depend on the will of universal Nature. No longer to make differences is therefore, first of all, to renounce attributing to certain things a false value, measured only according to human scale. This is the meaning of the apparently pessimistic declarations. But to no longer make differences is to discover that all things, even those which seem disgusting to us, have an equal value if one measures them according to the scale of universal Nature, that is, looks at things with the same vision

Introduction

1 5

that Nature looks at them . . . . This inner attitude by which the soul does not make differences, but remains indifferent �efore things, corresponds to magnanimity of the soul [grandeur J'time).11

Thus with respect to the issue of Marcus' pessimism, we see the importance of placing the Meditations in its literary and philosophical context. Abstracting from this context leads to an improper psychology, and to an uncreative misreading of the force of the Meditations, ignoring its basic philosophical aims and procedures. Hadot diagnoses, with great insight, the dangers of historical psychology:

We have here a fine example of the dangers of historical psychology applied to ancient texts. Before presenting the interpretation of a text, one should first begin by trying to distinguish between, on the one hand, the traditional elements, one could say prefabricated, that the author employs and, on the other hand, what he wants to do with them. Failing to make this distinction, one will consider as symptomatic formulas or attitudes which are not at all such, because they do not emanate from the personality of the author, but are imposed on him by tradition. One must search for what the author wishes to say, but also for what he can or cannot say, what he must or must not say, as a function of the traditions and the circumstances that are imposed on him.72

That the temptation to read ancient texts as expressions of their author's psychological states and character is extremely difficult to overcome is shown by the development of Hadot's own interpretation of Augustine's Confessions. In a widely cited paper, originally delivered in 1960, Hadot concludes his discussion of the development of the notion of the person with the claim that in Augustine's Co11fossions, "the modem self rises into view in history." 73 Citing various passages from Augustine on the mystery of the self, and following Groethuysen's interpretation, Hadot is led to conclude, on the basis of these passages, that "With Augustine the 'I' makes its entry into philosophical reasoning in a way that implies a radical change of inner perspective. " 7� Hadot came little by little to realize, however, that one must not be misled by Augustine's use of "I," that "the autobiographical part of the Confessions is not as important as one might believe." 75 The "I" of Augustine's Confessions continues the "I" of Job, David, or Paul, that is, Augustine "identifies himself with the self who speaks in the Scriptures. Ultimately the human sell who speaks in the Bible is Adam, a sinner without doubt, but converted by God and renewed in Christ." 76 Thus, following Pierre Courcelle, Hadot recognizes that the Confessions is essentially a theological work, in which each scene may assume a symbolic meaning. So "in this literary genre . . . il is extremely d ifficult to distinguish between a symbolic enactment nml 1111 11ccoun1 of 11 hiKloricnl event." 77

1 6

Introduction

Hadot therefore insists on the theological significance, in the first part of Book II of the Confessions, of the images used by Augustine in order to describe his inner state.78 And in the second part of Book II, when Augustine recounts at length his adolescent theft of pears, we are in fact confronted with a theological account concerning original sin. The "psychology of Augustine the sinner is reconstructed from the ideal psychology of Adam, disobedient to God in order to imitate, in a perverse way, the divine freedom . " 7'l Rather than using this scene to draw a psychological portrait of Augustine the individual, Hadot understands it as part of an anti-Manichean theological polemic. Here is his interpretation, which is a model of how to avoid the excesses of historical psychology when reading ancient texts: the psychological and theological problem of original sin is posed on the occasion of Augustine's theft, and we find ourselves once again in an anti-Manichean problematic: in stealing the pears, as Adam stealing the forbidden fruit, Augustine did not desire the fruit itself, that is, an existing reality; rather he desired evil itself, that is, something that doesn't have any substance. How is this possible? After having posed the problem at length (4, 9-6, 1 3), Augustine responds by showing that he had loved something "positive" in the evil: to imitate the freedom of God, but in a perverse way. Every sin appt."llrs thus as an upside-down imitation of the divine reality.1111

Instead of engaging in a psychological interpretation of Augustine's adolescence, Hadot's reading allows us to sec that we arc in the presence of a theological discussion of the nature of sin, and that Augustine's lengthy recounting of his theft is not autobiographically motivated, but is necessary in order for us to see the way in which sin is a perverse imitation of divine reality.

Moreover, by placing the Confessions within the Christian exegetical tradition, Hadot is able to show that the last three books of the Confessions, in which Augustine seems to abandon autobiography to devote himself to exegesis, far from being foreign to the rest of the work, do not ultimately have

"a different object from the account that is narrated in the biographical part." 81 Hadot demonstrates that Augustine very often brings together the two states of his soul - obscurity, then light - with the two states of the earth at the beginning of the account of Genesis. In its first state the earth was invisibilis and incomposita, and in its second state it received the illumination of the Fiat lux.82 In Book II, Augustine presents his adolescence as a state of obscurity and bubbling fluidity, and Hadot has shown that in this description one can recognize "the vocabulary employed in Book XIII of the Crmfessions to describe the chaos of Gen 1 , 2."83 Furthermore, in Book XIII the images of darkness and fluctuation serve precisely to describe "the state of the soul

Introduction

1 7

still 'formless,' before its conversion to God." M Thus Hadot can claim that

"the idea of the passage of the creature from a formless to a state of

formation and of conversion dominates the whole work." 85

Book XIII the

biblical account of creation becomes the description of the phases and stages of the salvation of humanity.86 Putting together Augustine's autobiographical and exegetical descriptions, Hadot can demonstrate the inner unity of the work, the fact that for Augustine "Genesis is . . . the account produced by the Holy Spirit of the conversion of the soul, as the Confessions is the account that he himself produces of his own conversion." 117 Hadot therefore warns us that we must interpret this text in light of the literary genre to which it belongs, the tradition of exegesis of Ambrose and Origen, and that we will commit a misunderstanding if we believe we have discovered the self "already" in the Crmfessions.Hll We find in Hadot's own interpretation of Augustine the initial outline of a kind of historical psychology, one that discovers in the Confessions the beginnings of the modern self. However, this is followed by a more detailed attention to the mechanisms of literary composition and to the theological genre of the Confessions, an attention that both prevents the apparent autobiography from becoming the philosophical center of the work and permits us to see the unity between the first ten books and the last three.

There is, of course, a self to be found in the Confessions, but "it must not be understood as the incommunicable singularity of the man Augustine, but, on the contrary, as universal humanity of which the events of the life of Augustine are only the symbols. " 89

Hadot's insistence on not separating conceptual structure from literary structure also played a significant role in his interpretation of Wittgenstein's work. As far as I have been able to determine, Hadot presented the first detailed discussions in French of Wittgenstein's books, reviewing everything from the Tractalus Logico-Philosophicus to the Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.'m In his 1959 discussion of the later Wittgenstein, Hadot argues, quite remarkably, that the goal of Philosophical Investigations requires a certain literary genre, that one cannot dissociate the form of the Investigations from Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy.

It is a therapeutics that is offered to us. Philosophy is an illness of language . . . The true philosophy will therefore consist in curing itself of philosophy, in making every philosophical problem completely and definitively disappear . . . Wittgenstei n continues [from the Tractatus to the Investigations] . . . to devote himself to the same mission: to bring a radical ;•nd definitive peace to metaphysical worry. Such a purpose imposes a certain literary genre: the work cannot be the exposition of a system , a doctrine, a philosophy in the traditional sense . . . [Philos11pl1in1/ hn•rstiRt1l1tms l wi11hcs to Rel liulc by little on our spirit, like a

1 8

Introduclion

cure, like a medical treatment. The work therefore does not have a systematic structure, strictly speaking [pas de plan, a proprement parler].91

At the time Hadot was writing about Wittgenstein, and even today, so many philosophers ignored the way Philosophical Jnvesligalions is written that it is astonishing, at first sight, to see an historian of ancient philosophy clearly understanding the import of this aspect of Wittgenstein's work. But Hadot has long emphasized that ancient philosophy presented itself as a therapeutics and that this goal profoundly affected the philosophical writing of antiquity.92

As early as 1 960 Hadot wrote that in ancient philosophy "more than theses, one teaches ways, methods, spiritual exercises," that "dogmas" have only a secondary aspect.93 No doubt it was precisely Hadot's understanding of the history of ancient philosophy that made it possible for him to see central, but still neglected, characteristics of Wittgenstein's work.

In "Jeux de langage et philosophic," Hadot was to employ Wittgenstein's notion of a language game in an historical perspective that, as he recognized, went well beyond anything with which Wittgenstein was preoccupied. Hadot argued that we must "break with the idea that philosophical language functions in a uniform way" and that ''it is impossible to give a meaning to the positions of philosophers without situating them in their language game." 'H Aware of the different philosophical language games of antiquity, Hadot could well insist that an ancient formula be placed in the concrete context of its determinate language game, that its meaning could change as a function of a change in language game.95 Thus Hadot could draw the general historiographical conclusion that we must "consider as very different language games those literary genres, so profoundly diverse, represented by the dialogue, the exhortation or protreptic, the hymn or prayer . . . the manual, the dogmatic treatise, the meditation . " 96 And we must also distinguish between the attitudes represented by dialectic, rhetorical argumentation, logical reasoning, and didactic exposition, since we will often be able to establish that "the very fact of sitt1ating oneself in one of these traditions predetermines the very content of the doctrine that is expressed in this language game." 97 By overcoming the temptation to see philosophical language as always functioning in the same way, Hadot could take account of the conceptual and literary specificity of different philosophical attitudes.

Whether reading Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, or Augustine, Hadot has made detailed use of his methodological prescriptions, not allowing the surface pronouncements of the texts to obscure the underlying structure, the literary genre and modes of thought that confer a determinate meaning on these pronouncements. Employing all of their resources, Hadot has used these practices of interpretation to try to reconstruct the fundamental meaning (sens de base), the meaning "intended" by the author (le sens "t,tm/11 " p11r l't111/e11r), of these ancient tcxts.'18 More often than not , as is c\•idcnt from the cxnmplci;

Introduction

19

I have given, this meaning will not be apparent. And if Hadot's practices of interpretation are most often employed with respect to ancient p�ilosophical and theological writing, his discussion of Wittgenstein makes clear the need, throughout the history of philosophy, for such practices. To restrict the importance of Hadot's lessons to one period in the history of thought would be radically to misunderstand the techniques and procedures of human thought.

2 Spiritual Exercises

Hadot has written that he was led to become aware of the importance of what he has called "spiritual exercises" by his work of interpretation of ancient philosophical texts.99 On the one hand, like his predecessors and contemporaries, Hadot encountered the well-known phenomenon of the incoherences, even contradictions, in the works of ancient philosophical authors. On the other hand, many modern historians of ancient philosophy have begun from the assumption that ancient philosophers were attempting, in the same way as modern philosophers, to construct systems, that ancient philosophy was essentially a philosophical discourse consisting of a "certain type of organization of language, comprised of propositions having as their object the universe, human society, and language itself." 100 Thus the essential task of the historian of philosophy was thought to consist in "the analysis of the genesis and the structures of the literary works that were written by the philosophers, especially in the study of the rational connection and the internal coherence of these systematic expositions." 101 Under these interpretive constraints, modern historians of ancient philosophy could not but deplore the awkward expositions, defects of composition, and outright incoherences in the ancient authors they studied. 1112

Hadot, however, rather than deploring these ancient authors' failures to measure up to the modern standard of the systematic philosophical treatise, realized that in order to understand and explain these apparent defects, one must not only analyze the structure of these ancient philosophical texts, but one must also situate them in the "living praxis from which they emanated." 103

An essential aspect of this living praxis was the oral dimension of ancient philosophy, and the written philosophical works of Greco-Roman antiquity were "never completely free of the constraints imposed by oral transmission." uu Hadot has described this written work as only a material support for a spoken word intended to become spoken word again, "like a modern record or cassette which are only an intermediary between two events: the recording and the rehearing. " 105 All of ancient philosophy believed in what 1-ladot once called, thinking of Plato's Phaedrus, the "ontological value of the spoken word"; 1 his living and animated discourse was not principally intended to 1 r1111Nmi1 inform11 1 ion, hu1 "10 tlrod ucc a certain psychic effect in the reader

20

Introduction

or listener." 106 Thus the "propositional element" was not the most important element of ancient philosophical teaching, and Hadot has frequently cited Victor Goldschmitt's formula, originally applied to the Platonic dialogues but used by Hadot to characterize ancient philosophy more generally, that ancient philosophical discourse intended "to form more than to inform." 107

Hadot claims that it is probably a mistake about the nature of ancient philosophy to consider abstraction, made possible by writing, its most important characteristic:

For ancient philosophy, at least beginning from the sophists and Socrates, intended, in the first instance, to form people and to transform souls. That is why, in Antiquity, philosophical teaching is given above all in oral form, because only the living word, in dialogues, in conversations pursued for a long time, can accomplish such an action.

The written work, considerable as it is, is therefore most of the time only an echo or a complement of this oral teaching. 108

This is one reason why, for Hadot, to philosophize is to learn how to dialogue.109 A Socratic dialogue is a spiritual exercise practiced in common, and it incites one to give attention to oneself, to take care of oneself, to know oneself. The Socratic maxim "know thyself" requires a relation of the self to itself that "constitutes the basis of all spiritual exercises. " i m Every spiritual exercise is dialogical insofar as it is an "exercise of authentic presence" of the self to itself, and of the self to others. 1 1 1 The Socratic and Platonic dialogues exhibit this authentic presence in the way that they show that what is most important is not the solution to a particular problem, but the path traversed together in arriving at this solution. Hence, we can understand the critical significance of the dimension of the interlocutor, with all of its starts and stops, hesitations, detours, and digressions. This essential dimension prevents the dialogue from being a theoretical and dogmatic account and forces it to be a concrete and practical exercise, because, to be precise, it is not concerned with the exposition of a doctrine, but with guiding an interlocutor to a certain settled mental attitude: it is a combat, amicable but real. We should note that this is what takes place in every spiritual exercise; it is necessary to make oneself change one's point of view, attitude, set of convictions, therefore to dialogue with oneself, therefore to struggle with oneself.1 IZ

Although Hadot recognizes that some ancient philosophical works are so to speak "more written" than others, he insists that even these works "are closely linked to the activity of teaching" and must "be understood from the perspective of dialectical and exegetical scholarly exercises." 1 1 ·1 The tnsk of I he

Introduction

21

philosopher was not primarily one of communicating "an encyclopedic knowledge in the form of a system of propositions and of concepts that would reflect, more or less well, the system of the world." 1 14 Therefore, even definitions were nothing by themselves, independently of the road traveled to reach them. The philosophers of antiquity were concerned not with readymade knowledge, but with imparting that training and education that would allow their disciples to "orient themselves in thought, in the life of the city, or in the world." 1 15 If this is most obviously true of the Platonic dialogues, Hadot has reminded us that it is also true of the methods of Aristotle and the treatises of Plotinus: "the written philosophical work, precisely because it is a direct or indirect echo of oral teaching, now appears to us as a set of exercises, intended to make one practice a method, rather than as a doctrinal exposition." 1 16

Moreover, these exercises were not conceived of as purely intellectual, as merely theoretical and formal exercises of discourse totally separated from life.

Throughout the history of ancient philosophy, we can find criticisms of those philosophers who went no further than to develop a beautiful style of discourse or dialectical subtlety, who wished to stand out by making an ostentatious display of their philosophical discourse, but did not exercise themselves in the things of life. 1 17 Rather than aiming at the acquisition of a purely abstract knowledge, these exercises aimed at realizing a transformation of one's vision of the world and a metamorphosis of one's personality. The philosopher needed to be trained not only to know how to speak and debate, but also to know how to live. The exercise of philosophy "was therefore not only intellectual, but could also be spiritual. " 1 18 Hence, the teaching and training of philosophy were intended not simply to develop the intelligence of the disciple, but to transform all aspects of his being - intellect, imagination, sensibility, and will. Its goal was nothing less than an art of living, and so spiritual exercises were exercises in learning to live the philosophical life. 1 19 Spiritual exercises were e.wrcises because they were practical, required effort and training, and were lived; they were spiritual because they involved the entire spirit, one's whole way of being. 120 The art of living demanded by philosophy was a lived exercise exhibited in every aspect of one's existence.

Since the ultimate goal of the theoretical discourse of philosophy was to produce an effect in the soul of the listener or reader, this discourse had to bear in mind not only pedagogical constraints, but "the needs of psychagogy, of the direction of souls." 121 Rhetorical resources were abundantly made use of by the philosopher, and in attempting to influence himself and others all means were good. 122 In order "to rectify distorted opinions, tenacious prejudices, irrational terrors," the philosopher might have "to twist them in the other direction, to exaggerate in order to compensate." 123 In ancient texts, we dii;cover thiu "one slides rapidly from theoretical exposition to

22

Introduction

exhortation," as often happens in Plotinus' treatises;1H we even find at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics an accentuated protreptic and exhortative character, as Aristotle is recommending to others a certain kind of life, a spetific conception of the good life. 125 The "presentation, literary form and content"

of philosophical discourse were modified by "the intention to influence the disciples." 126 It is from this perspective that Hadot believes we must understand "the effort of systematization of the Stoics and Epicureans." 127 He has argued that the systematic discourse of these schools did not have for its chief goal

to procure a total and exhaustive explanation of all reality, but to link, in an unshakable way, a small group of principles, vigorously articulated together, which, on the one hand, on the basis of this systematization, possess a greater persuasive force, a better psychological efficacy and which, on the other hand, enable the philosopher to orient himself in the world.128

This systematization thus allows the philosopher to bring together and focus the fundamental rules of life so that he can "keep them ready to hand at each instant of his life." 129 As Hadot says, "their systematic presentation produces assurance [la certitude] in the soul, therefore peace and serenity." 130

In studying the literary genre of the ancient consolation, llsetraut Hadot has clearly demonstrated the intimate connection between the practice of spiritual exercises, the use of rhetoric and psychagogy, and literary form and content. Since, beginning with Plato, ancient philosophy represented itself as an exercise and training for death, the consolation is an ideal genre in which to observe the ancient practice of philosophy. 1.11 Noting that in all the written consolations of antiquity, we encounter nearly always the same arguments, she remarks that new and original arguments were not what the ancients sought after; in the best instances, the consolations had as their goal "to recall well-known things, to reactivate them in the soul." 1.12 These consolations were one important place where ancient philosophers tried to provide their followers with the spiritual means to maintain their psychic equilibrium, a goal that was especially acute and difficult in situations that were precarious and painful.

In order to obtain this result, they had, on the one hand, to develop and teach their philosophical doctrines, but, on the other hand, they were perfectly conscious of the fact that the simple knowledge of a doctrine, beneficial as it was, did not guarantee its being put into practice. To have learned theoretically that death is not an evil does not suffice to no longer fear it. In order for this truth to be able to penetrate to the depths of one's being, so that it is not believed only for a brief moment, but

Introduction

23

becomes an unshakable conviction, so that it is always "ready," "at hand," "present to mind," so that it is a "habitus of the ,soul" as the Ancients said, one must exercise oneself constantly and without respite

- "night and day," as Cicero said. To this is joined a simple mode of life, in order not to be accustomed to what is superfluous the day it will be necessary to separate oneself from it.

These exercises are certainly exercises of meditation, but they do not only concern reason; in order to be efficacious, they must link the imagination and affectivity to the work of reason, and therefore all the psychagogical means of rhetoric . . . 1.13

Hence we also find recommended, especially by the Stoics, the practice of premeditation on future evils that may occur, and the need to keep present and available in one's memory "all the edifying examples that history, epic poetry and tragedy" entrust to us. •.M

The central place accorded to spiritual exercises in ancient philosophy determines how we should situate and understand the writings of ancient philosophers, their philosophical discourse. The significance and aims of this discourse were conditioned by the ultimate goal of transforming the lives of individuals, of providing them with a philosophical art of living that required nothing less than spiritual metamorphosis. We must not forget that in the philosophy of this period, "theory is never considered an end in itself, it is clearly and decidedly put in the service of practice," a practice so radical and all-encompassing as to make the philosopher atopos, unclassifiable, since he is in love with wisdom, which makes him strange, and foreign to the world of most mortals. us Hadot pointedly captures the relation between philosophical writing, the oral tradition, and an art of living when he writes that ancient philosophy "always endeavored to be more a living voice than writing and still more a life than a voice.'' llh The animated words of the philosopher are at the service of the philosopher's way of life, and his writing is an echo of these words. We might think here of Socrates, of his constant dialogue with himself and others. This dialogue is never closed in on itself, separate and isolated, but is part of, and in service to, Socrates' way of living and way of dying.

According to Xenophon, when Hippias demanded the definition of justice from Socrates, he finally responded with these words: "Instead of speaking of it, I make it understood by my acts." 137 If spiritual exercises were the core of ancient philosophy, that is because philosophy was essentially a way of life.

In order to understand the centrality of spiritual exercises to ancient philosophy, it is crucial not to limit or reduce them to ethical exercises. As I hove said, spiritual exercises involved all aspects of one's existence; they did not nl lcmpt only lo immrc behavior in 11ccord11ncc with a code of good

24

Introduction

conduct; they had, as Hadot says, not only a moral value, but an existential value. ll8 More specifically, if we recall the traditional distinction between the three parts of philosophy - dialectic or logic, physics, and ethics - we must not place the practice of spiritual exercises simply in the ethical part of philosophy.139 We must not represent logic and physics as being those parts of philosophy where theoretical discourse is located, presenting ethics as the practical part where spiritual exercises are enacted. As Hadot has argued at length, the distinction between theory and practice is located within each of the parts of philosophy; there is a theoretical discourse concerning logic, physics and ethics, but there is also a practical or lived logic, a lived physics, and a lived ethics. Ho

Ethics itself contains a theoretical discourse that sets forth principles, definitions, distinctions, and analyses of the virtues and vices. But, more importantly for the philosopher, there is also a lived ethics that puts into practice the fundamental rules of life. 141 Similarly, there is a theory of logic, which includes a conception of the proposition, and explains different forms of syllogisms, and different ways of refuting sophisms; in addition, the theory of logic was comprised of scholarly exercises in which one learned to apply the abstract rules. These rules of logic were also employed in the theoretical discourses of physics and ethics, the two other parts of philosophy. Yet, again, there was also an everyday practice of logic that had to be carried out in the domain of judgment and assent. This lived logic consisted in "not giving one's consent to what is false or doubtful." 142 Finally, the discipline of physics included not only a theory, but a lived physics, a true spiritual exercise, which involved a way of seeing the world, a cosmic consciousness, and procured pleasure and joy for the soul. Ml The spiritual exercises of ethics, logic, and physics meant that the practice of philosophy did not ultimately consist in

"producing the theory of logic, that is the theory of speaking well and thinking well, nor in producing the theory of physics, that is of the cosmos, nor in producing the theory of acting well, but it concerned actually speaking well, thinking well, acting well, being truly conscious of one's place in the cosmos." 141

The significance of locating spiritual exercises within each of the parts of philosophy can be seen clearly in Hadot's criticisms of Michel Foucault. One way of describing Hadot's misgivings about Foucault's interpretation of ancient spiritual exercises is to say that Foucault not only gave a too narrow construal of ancient ethics, but that he limited the "care of the self" to ethics alone. 145 Foucault made no place for that cosmic consciousness, for physics as a spiritual exercise, that was so important to the way in which the ancient philosopher viewed his relation to the world. By not attending to that aspect of the care of the self that places the self within a cosmic dimension, whereby the self, in becoming aware of its belonging to the cosmic Whole, thus transforms itself, Foucault was not able to sec the full scope of spirir unl

Introduction

25

exercises, that physics (and logic), as much as ethics, aimed at selftransformation. Indeed, in a very different context, Paul Vey,ne has reported the following exchange with Foucault: "One day when I asked Foucault: 'The ·

care of the self, that is very nice, but what do you do with logic, what do you do with physics?', he responded: 'Oh, these are enormous excrescences!' " 146

Nothing could be further from Hadot's own attitude, since for him logic and physics, as lived spiritual exercises, are as central to the nature of philosophy as is ethics. Far from being excrescences, disfiguring and superfluous, the practices of logic and physics were a necessary part of the ancient philosopher's way of life, were crucial to his experience of himself as a philosopher, a lover of wisdom.

In recent writings, Hadot has focused on the Stoic doctrine that logic, physics, and ethics are not parts of philosophy itself, but are parts of philosophical discourse (logos kata philosophian), of the discourse relating to philosophy. 147 The Stoics held that "these parts could only appear distinct and separate in the discourse of teaching and of exposition of the philosophical dogmas," and that philosophy, strictly speaking, was not divided into parts. 148 Although expository, didactic, and pedagogical requirements made it necessary "to cut up" philosophy into parts, philosophy proper, as an exercise of wisdom, was considered a "single act, renewed at every instant, that one can describe, without breaking its unity, as being the exercise of logic as well as of physics or of ethics, according to the directions in which it is exercised." 149 That is to say, in the lived singular act of philosophy, logic, physics, and ethics are but "aspects of the very same virtue and very same

\l;sdom"; they are not really distinguished with respect to one another, but only by "the different relations that relate them to different objects, the world, people, thought itself." 150 As Hadot summarizes this view, "logic, physics and ethics distinguish themselvt..'S from one another when one speaks of philosophy, but not when one lives it." 151

For the Stoics the dynamic unity of reality, the coherence of reason with itself, meant that

It is the same Logos that produces the world, enlightens the human being in his faculty of reasoning and expresses itself in human discourse, while remaining completely identical with itself at all stages of reality.

Therefore, physics has for its object the Logos of universal nature, ethics the Logos of reasonable human nature, logic this same Logos expressing itself in human discourse. From start to finish, it is therefore the same force and the same reality that is at the same time creative Nature, Norm of conduct and Rule of discourse.152

This func.lnmental intuit ion of the Stoics, according to which the Logos is the common object of logic, llhysics, and ethics, is continued by those early

26

Introduction

Christian thinkers who present God as the common object of the three parts of philosophy.m So, according to Augustine, the object of physics is God as cause of being, the object of logic is God as norm of thought and the object of ethics is God as rule of life. Moreover, this order - physics, logic, ethics -

corresponds to the order of the divine persons in the Trinity: the Father is the Principle of being, the Son is Intellect and the Holy Spirit is Love. Thus, as Hadot writes, "the systematic unity of the parts of philosophy reflects here the reciprocal intcriority of the divine Persons." 154

When the Stoic philosopher, such as Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, acts according to the Logos, he puts into practice spiritual exercises, that is, he disciplines his judgments, his desire, his inclinations, he enacts a lived logic, a lived physics, a lived ethics. These three acts of the soul exhibit the coherence and harmony of reason with itself, and from this perspective

"the three parts of philosophy are no longer anything but three aspects of the fundamental spiritual attitude of the Stoic. " 155 Although emphasizing that the parts of philosophy arc required by and located within philosophical discourse and that philosophy itself is the site of spiritual exercises, Hadot also insists on the central role that discourse plays in the philosophical life. The philosopher can "only act on himself and others through discourse," and philosophy is thus "a mode of life that includes as an integral part a certain mode of discourse." 156 The theoreti<.-al discourse of the school to which he belongs is inwardly repeated and assimilated by the philosopher so that he can master his own inner discourse, so that his discourse will be ordered according to the fundamental choices and principles that were the starting point and basis for the theoretical discourse of his school. 157

Recently, Hadot has distinguished between two senses of the word "discourse" in ancient philosophy.

On the one hand, discourse insofar as it is addressed to a disciple or to oneself, that is to say, the discourse linked to an existential context, to a concrete praxis, discourse that is actually spiritual exercise; on the other hand, discourse considered abstractly in its formal structure, in its intelligible content. It is the latter that the Stoics would consider different from philosophy, but which is precisely what is usually made the object of most of the modern studies of the history of philosophy.

But in the eyes of the ancient philosophers, if one contents oneself with this discourse, one docs not do philosophy. 158

Although discourse, both inner and outer, is essential to the philosopher, and although it can even take on the dimensions of a spiritual exercise, it is not the unique component of the philosophical life, and this life must not be reduced to discourse.

Introduction

27

The essential element [of philosophical life] is in fact, one could say, non-discursive, insofar as it represents a choice of life, a wi'h to live in such and such a way, with all the concrete consequences that that implies in everyday life.159

In Antiquity the philosopher regards himself as a philosopher, not because he develops a philosophical discourse, but because he lives philosophically .160

We find this essential clement, this orientation and point of view, in the remark of Epicurus' that "Our only occupation should be the cure of ourselves," or in the sentence attributed to him, "Empty is the discourse of that philosopher by which no human passion is attended to." 161 Or we find Epictetus saying,

A carpenter does not come up to you and say "Listen to me discourse about the art of carpentry," but he makes a contract for a house and builds it . . . Do the same thing yourself. Eat like a man, drink like a man . . . get married, have children, take part in civic life, learn how to put up with insults, and tolerate other people . . . 1 62

Epictetus elsewhere rebukes the person who, in the discipline of judgment, is presented with representations some of which are adequate and others not, yet who refuses to differentiate between them, but "would prefer to read theoretical treatises on the understanding." 163 And in commenting on Epictetus' Manut1l, Simplicius writes, One must produce the actions that arc taught by discourses. The goal of discourse is actually actions. It is for the sake of them that the discourses were uttered (or written) . . . In fact, Chrysippus did not write on this subject [the nature of man] with the goal of being interpreted and understood, but so that one makes use of his writings in life. If therefore I make use of his writings in life, at that very moment I participate in the good they contain. But if I admire the:: exegete because he provides good explanations, and if I can understand and myself interpret the text and if, quite frankly, everything falls to my lot except the fact of making use of these writings in life, would I have become anything other than a grammarian instead of a philosopher? . . .

the fact of just simply reading the writings of Chrysippus or of explaining them on the request of somebody else, and of not making use of them in life, is reprehensible. In fact, he should rightly be ashamed who, being ill, would find some writings containing cures for his illness, would rc:1ul 1 hcm with insiicht and, distinguishing clearly (the different

28

Introduction

parts), would explain them if need be to others, but would not make use of these cures for his illness.164

Philosophy is an art of living that cures us of our illnesses by teaching us a radically new way of life.

Hadot recognizes that it is only in Hellenistic philosophy that one finds a distinction between philosophy and philosophical discourse explicitly formulated. But he has also argued that "this distinction was clearly implicit in the previous period in Plato and Aristotle." 165 Indeed, recalling the importance of the mysteries of Eleusis in the history of ancient thought, Hadot reminds us of the famous sentence attributed to Aristotle that the initiates of Eleusis do not learn anything, but they experience a certain impression or emotion.166 The initiate did not learn his other-worldly fate at Eleusis, but lived this supra-individual life of the other world. 167 The "true secret of Eleusis is therefore this very e:rperience, this moment when one plunges into the completely other, this discovery of an unknown dimension of existence." 168

Hadot also finds an implicit distinction between philosophy and philosophical discourse in Plato's definition of philosophy (Phaedo, 67 <..--d) as a tr.iining for death. The purification of the soul, its separation as far as possible from the body and its gathering itself together within itself, is the true practice of philosophy. Hence philosophy consists of a lived concrete exercise and not of a theory or a conceptual edifice: "The theoretical philosophical discourse is completely different from the lived exercises by which the soul purifies itself of its passions and spiritually separates itself from the body. " 169

Plotinus continues this tradition when in Ennead, IV, 7, 10, he argues that the soul cannot become aware of its own immateriality if it docs not perform a moral purification that liberates it from its passions, that strips away everything that is not truly itsclf. '711 It is this purification that allows us to gain knowledge of the immateriality of our soul. More generally, in Ennead, VI, 7, 36, Plotinus distinguishes carefully between the methods of rational theology that teach us about the Good, and the spiritual exercises that lead us to the Good. The four methods of rational theology, the method of analogy, the negative method, the affirmative method drawn from the knowledge of the things that come from the Good, and the method of stages or degrees (anabasmoi; Symposium, 21 lc) all give us knowledge about the Good.

However, only the spiritual exercises of purification, of the practice of the virtues, of putting ourselves in order, allow us to touch the Good, to experience it. 171 Plotinus' philosophy does not wish only

to be a discourse about objects, be they even the highest, but it wishes actually to lead the soul to a living, concrete union with the Intellect and the Good . . . Reason, by theolop;ical methods, can raise itself tu the

Introduction

29

notion of the Good but only life according to Intellect can lead to the reality of the Good.112

Furthermore, as Hadot writes, "it is mystical experience that founds negative theology, and not the reverse." 173 This mystical experience, like the mysteries of Eleusis, does not consist in learning something, but in "living another life"

where the self "becomes the absolutely Other." 174

It is perhaps Aristotle whom we are most tempted to think of as a pure theoretician. Although it is true that Aristotle's philosophy is a philosophy of theoria, "this Aristotelian theoria is nevertheless not purely theoretical in the modern sense of the word." 175 For Aristotle, to dedicate oneself to philosophy is to chose a bios, a way of life, that is the best realization of those capacities that are essential to being human. The bios theoretikos, the life of contemplation, is a way of life that is also the realization of our supreme happiness, an activity that contains the purest pleasures. 176 Even scientific research on the entities of nature is not proposed by Aristotle as an end in itself, but as "a particular way of carrying out 'the philosophical life', one of the possible practical realizations of the aristotelian prescription for happiness, the life devoted to the activity of the intellect." 177 Moreover, the life of the intellect is a participation in the divine way of life, it is the actualization of the divine in the human, and it requires inner transformation and personal askesis. 118 And it is a way of life that is, in one sense of the term, practical, since Aristotle says that those thoughts arc practical not only that calculate the results of action, but which are "contemplation and reasoning, that have their end in themselves and take themselves as object." 179 This life of theoria is thus not opposed to the practical, since it is a life of philosophy lived and practiced; it 180

is precisely the "exercise of a life."

Hadot has distinguished two senses of the tenn "theoretical,'' for which he has employed the tcnns theorique and theoretique. The first meaning of "theoretical" is opposed to "practical," since it designates theoretical discourse as opposed to lived philosophy. But the adjective theorhique which characterizes the life of contemplation, the life according to the intellect, is not opposed by Aristotle to philosophy as practiced and lived. In Aristotle this "theoretical life

[vie theoretique] is not a pure abstraction, but a life of the intellect, which, no doubt, can use a theoretical discourse [discours theorique], but nonetheless remains a life and a praxis, and which can even make room for a nondiscursivc activity of thought, when it is a question of perceiving indivisible obj<..'Cts and God himself by noetic intuition."181 Thus to think of Aristotle as a pure theoretician is to focus exclusively on his theoretical discourse without hearing in mind that it is a way of life, however intellectualized, that he is recommending, and which is the ultimate basis of his philosophy.

The idc11 of philosophy as 11 way of life, and not just as philosophical lliscourHe, WilH also exhihiled in nntiquity by the designation of individuals as

30

Introduction

philosophers who were neither scholars, professors, nor authors, but who were honored as philosophers because of their way of life. As Hadot says, the extension of the concept of philosopher was quite different from that of our modern concept. In antiquity, the philosopher was not necessarily "a professor or a writer. He was first of all a person having a certain style of life, which he willingly chose, even if he had neither taught nor written." 182 Thus we find philosophical figures not only such as Diogenes the Cynic and Pyrrho, but also women who did not write, and celebrated statesmen who were considered true philosophers by their contemporaries.18l It was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who were considered philosophers, because they had developed a philosophical discourse, but also every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus. 131

True philosophers lived in society with their fellow citizens, and yet they lived in a different way from other people. They distinguished themselves from others by "their moral conduct, by speaking their mind [leur franc par/er], by their way of nourishing themselves or dressing themselves, by their attitude with respect to wealth and to conventional values." 185 Although they did not live a cloistered life, as in Christian monasticism, philosophy was nevertheless analogous to the monastic movement in requiring that one convert oneself so as to fervently adhere to a philosophical school: the philosopher had to "make a choice that obliged him to transform his whole way of living in the world." "'"

Hence the felt rupture of the philosophical life with the conduct and perceptions of everyday life.187 The significance of philosophy as a way of life can also be seen in the importance given to biographies in ancient philosophical work. As Giuseppe Cambiano has emphasized, a philosophical biography was not predominantly a narrative intended to allow one to understand an author and his doctrines; it was not just a report of what the author said and believed.

Rather, "it was, in the first place, a tool of philosophical battle," since one could defend or condemn a philosophy by way of the characteristics of the mode of life of those who supported it.11'8

The philosopher was a philosopher because of his existential atlitude, an attitude that was the foundation of his philosophy and that required that he undergo a real conversion, in the strongest sense of the word, that he radically change the direction of his lifc.189 All six schools of philosophy in the Hellenistic period present themselves

as choices of life, they demand an existential choice, and whoever adheres to one of these schools must accept this choice and this option.

One too often represents Stoicism or Epicureanism as a set of abstract theories about the world invented by Zeno or Chrysippus or Epicurus.

From these theories would spring, as if by accident one could say, a morality. But it is the reverse that is true. It is the abstract theories th111

arc intended to justify the existential nttitudc. One could 1my, tu cxpn·N11

Introduction

3 1

it otherwise, that every existential attitude implies a representation of the world that must necessarily be expressed in a discour,e. But this discourse alone is not the philosophy, it is only an element of it, for the philosophy is first of all the existential attitude itself, accompanied by inner and outer discourses: the latter have as their role to express the representation of the world that is implied in such and such an existential attitude, and these discourses allow one at the same time to rationally justify the attitude and to communicate it to others.190

Hence we begin with a fundamental existential choice on behalf of a style of life that consists of certain practices, activities, and conduct that are precisely what Hadot calls "spiritual exercises." This style of life is given concrete form either in the order of inner discourse and of spiritual activity: meditation, dialogue with oneself, examination of conscience, exercises of the imagination, such as the view from above on the cosmos or the earth, or in the order of action and of daily behavior, like the mastery of oneself, indifference towards ill.different things, the fulfilment of the duties of social life in Stoicism, the discipline of desires in Epicurcanism.191

Philosophical discourse, of oneself with oneself and of oneself with others, will, of course, be needed to justify and communicate these spiritual exercises, to represent the fundamental existential attitude, but philosophy itself consists primarily in choosing and living the attitude.

Hadot recognizes that this ancient understanding of philosophy can appear very far removed from the way in which we now understand the nature of philosophy. He has pointed to three aspects of the evolution of the representation of philosophy that have contributed to our current understanding of it as a purely theoretical, abstract activity, and to our identific.ation of it with philosophical discourse alone. The first aspect, which Hadot has called "a natural inclination of the philosophical mind" and "connatural to the philosopher," is the "constant tendency that the philosopher always has, even in Antiquity, to satisfy himself with discourse, with the conceptual architecture that he has constructed, without putting into question his own life." 192

This tendency, which was already criticized in antiquity, has been said by Hadot to be "the perpetual danger of philosophy" - the philosopher is always tempted to take refuge in, to shut himself up in, the "reassuring universe of concepts and of discourse instead of going beyond discourse in order to take upon himself the risk of the radical transformation of himself." 193 To this tendency is opposed the equally natural inclination of the philosophical mind to Wllnl lo examine itself, tu w11111 to learn how to live the philosophical life.

32

Introduction

Faced with the overwhelming reality of life, with worries, anxiety, suffering, death, philosophical discourse can appear to be nothing but "empty chattering and a derisive luxury," mere words when what is needed is a new attitude towards life, one which will produce inner freedom, tranquillity, happiness. 194

It is at these moments that our contrary natural inclinations will be felt to be most acutely opposed to one another. We will then be forced to ask, "What is finally most beneficial to the human being as a human being? Is it to discourse on language, or on being and non-being? Or is it not rather to learn how to live a human life?" 195 Yet despite our "elementary need" for this philosophical consciousness and way of life, the history of philosophy also testifies unambiguously to the powerful tendency of our "self-satisfaction with theoretical discourse. " 196

A second aspect that helps to account for the changed understanding and representation of philosophy in the modern world has to do with the historical evolution of philosophy, especially with the relation between philosophy and Christianity. Although in early Christianity, especially the monastic movements, Christianity itself was presented as a philosophia, a way of life in conformity with the divine Logos, as the Middle Ages developed, one witnessed a "total separation" of ancient spiritual exercises, which were no longer considered a part of philosophy but were integrated into Christian spirituality, and philosophy itself, which became a "simple theoretical tool" at the service of theology, an ancilla tl1eo/ogiae.191 Philosophy's role was now to provide theology with the "conceptual, logical, physical and metaphysical materials it needed," and the "Faculty of Arts became no more than a preparation for the Faculty of Theology." 198 Philosophical speculation thus became a purely abstract and theoretical activity, which was set strictly apart from theological thought and religious practice and spirituality. l'l'J

No longer a way of life, philosophy became a conceptual construction, a servant of theology, and the idea of philosophy as a system began to appear.200

A third aspect underlying our modem representation of philosophy is of a sociological nature, and can be traced back to the functioning of the university, as it was created by the medieval church. One central feature of the university is that it is an institution made up of professors who train other professors, of specialists who learn how to train other specialists. Unlike in antiquity, when philosophical teaching was directed towards the human being so as to form him as a human being, the modern university forms professionals who teach future professionals, and thus philosophy, rather than proposing an art of living, is presented above all as a "technical language reserved for specialists." 201 As Hadot says, in "modern university philosophy, philosophy is obviously no longer a way of life, a kind of life, unless it is the kind of life of the professor of philosophy." 2112 This sociological requirement of profossionalism, this situation of scholasticism, fncilitnl'cs nnd rcinforccN the wnd·

Introduction

33

ency to take refuge in the "comfortable universe of concepts and of discourses"; 203 it gives this natural tendency a social basis J and impetus, encouraging the display of a specialized technical language, as if philosophical depth were exhausted by one's ability to make use of conceptual abstractions and by one's skill at demonstrating the truth and falsity of various propositions.

Thus Hadot has provided three reasons, which one could think of as, respectively, philosophical, historical, and sociological, that help to account for the representation of philosophy as a purely theoretical activity, and for the reduction of philosophy to philosophical discourse. But he has not overlooked the fact that one can find elements of the ancient representation of philosophy throughout the history of philosophy, that certain of the

"existential aspects of ancient philosophy" have been constantly rediscovered.:!GI Among the philosophers he has named as exhibiting this ancient representation are Abelard and the Renaissance humanists, such as Petrarch and Erasmus. We might think here of the latter's remark with respect to his Enchiridion Mi/itis Christiani: "Let this book lead to a theological life rather than theological disputation." 205 Hadot has repeatedly pointed to Montaigne's Essays, especially "That to Philosophise is to Learn How to Die," as embodying the ancient exercise of philosophy, referring to the Essays as "the breviary of ancient philosophy, the manual of the art of living." ™ Among modern philosophers, Hadot has singled out certain aspects of Descartes'

Meditations, particularly D<..-scartes' advice that one invest some months or at least weeks meditating on his first and second Meditations, which Hadot says ultimately shows that for Descartes "evidence can only be perceived thanks to a spiritual exercise." 207 Hadot also mentions Spinoza's Ethics, and its emphasis on teaching us how to radically transform ourselves, to accede to beatitude, to approach the ideal of the sage, as well as Shaftesbury's remarkable Exercises, inspired by the spiritual exercises of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. 268 He has indicated, too, the continuation of the ancient idea of philosophy in the French philosophes of the eighteenth century, and in Kant's ideas of the interest of reason and the primacy of the practical. 209 In more recent times, we can find the spirit of the ancient philosopher's demand that we radically change our way of living and of seeing the world in Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, and, in different ways, in the young Hegelians and Marx.210 In the twentieth century, Hadot points to Bergson, to Wittgenstein, to Foucault, and to certain aspects of phenomenology and existentialism as embodying the ancient attitude, practices, and sense of what philosophy means.21 1 And recently, Hadot has taken up Thoreau's Walden, finding in his decision to live in the woods Thoreau's undertaking of a philosophical act. 212 This constant reoccurrence of the ancient experience of phih111ophy, side by side with the tendency to understand philosophy as a cnnccptunl Hlrucr urc, :in 11hHl rnc1 discourse, shows how complex and even

34

Introduction

contradictory philosophy's own self-understanding has been. Hadot's work calls for a detailed historical account of philosophy's representations of itself, of the various ways in which philosophy imagines itself and exercises its ideals, and of the factors that contribute to its changing evaluations of itself, to how it views and reviews its own purposes and ultimate goals.

The permanence of the existential aspects of ancient philosophy has been highlighted by Hadot in his most recent discussions of what he has called "the fundamental and universal attitudes of the human being when he searches for wisdom." 213 From this point of view, Hadot has discerned a universal Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Pyrrhonism, each of which corresponds to a permanent possibility of the human spirit, and which arc independent of the particular "philosophical or mythical discourses that have claimed or claim to justify them definitively." m Hadot, obviously enough, does not believe that we can adopt any of these attitudes wholly and unmodified, as if we could totally convert to the dogmas and practices of these schools of ancient philosophy.215 But he does believe that detached from their outmoded elements and reduced to their essence, to the extent that "we try to give a meaning to our life, they call upon us to discover the transformation that could be brought about in our life, if we realized (in the strongest sense of the term) certain values" that constitute the spirit of each of these attitudes.21r.

With respect to Stoicism, Hadot has described four features that constitute the universal Stoic attitude. They arc, first, the Stoic consciousness of "the fact that no being is alone, but that we make up part of a Whole, constituted by the totality of human beings as well as by the totality of the cosmos"; second, the Stoic "feels absolutely serene, free, and invulnerable to the extent that he has become aware that there is no other evil but moral evil and that the only thing that counts is the purity of moral consciousness"; third, the Stoic

"believes in the absolute value of the human person," a belief that is "at the origin of the modern notion of the 'rights of man' "; finally, the Stoic exercises his concentration "on the present instant, which consists, on the one hand, in living as if we were seeing the world for the first and for the last time, and, on the other hand, in being conscious that, in this lived presence of the instant, we have access to the totality of time and of the world." 217

Thus, for Hadot, cosmic consciousness, the purity of moral consciousness, the recognition of the equality and absolute value of human beings, and the concentration on the present instant represent the universal Stoic attitude.

The universal Epicurean attitude essentially consists, by way of "a certain discipline and reduction of desires, in returning from pleasures mixed with pain and suffering to the simple and pure pleasure of existing. " 218 Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Pyrrhonism also each have 11 univcr11nl chnrncter, and one of the historical and philosophical t11Hks cnllcd for1 h h�· I IMl111 'N

Introduction

35

work is precisely to provide a description of each of ttiese universal existential attitudes, each of the styles of life that they propose.

/

Moreover, Hadot has insisted that we do not have to choose between these different universal attitudes, opting for one to the exclusion of all of the others. The plurality of ancient schools allows us to compare the consequences of the different possible fundamental attitudes of reason, thus offering us "a privileged field of experimentation." 219 And we should not be surprised to find, for example, that there are certain people who are half Stoic and half Epicurean, who accept and combine "Epicurean sensualism" and

"Stoic communion with nature," who practice both Stoic spiritual exercises of vigilance and Epicurean spiritual exercises aimed at the true pleasure of existing.220 That is precisely how Hadot characterizes Goethe, Rousseau, and Thoreau.221 Indeed, Hadot has said that Stoicism and Epicureanism seem to correspond to "two opposite but inseparable poles of our inner life: tension and relaxation, duty and serenity, moral consciousness and the joy of existing." 222 To these poles of our inner life, we must add the experiences of Platonic love and the ascent of the soul as well as of Plotinian unity, Aristotelian contemplation, Cynic criticism of conventional values and the effort to endure every test and ordeal we face, Pyrrhonic suspension of judgment and absolute indifference.223 It is these experiences and ideals, more than any concepts, that arc the legacy of ancient philosophy to Western civilization.224 The study of ancient philosophy has taught Hadot that "human reality is so complex that one can only live it by using simultaneously or successively the most different methods: tension and relaxation, engagement and detachment, enthusiasm and reserve, certainty and criticism, passion and indifference." 225 Lessons in how to live human reality, with all that that implies - those are the enduring lessons of ancient philosophy.

In his preface to the monumental Dictionnaire des p/1ilosophes antif/ues, Hadot surveys all of the insufficiently exploited resources that arc available to the historian of ancient philosophy. He shows how the lists of titles of philosophical works as well as iconography, papyruses, and inscriptions can all be used to characterize more fully and accurately the phenomena of philosophy. But even this vast historical undertaking would not fulfill Hadot's own ultimate aims:

for the historian of philosophy the task will not be finished for all that: or more exactly, it should cede place to the philosopher, to the philosopher who should always remain alive in the historian of philosophy. This final task will consist in asking oneself, with an increased lucidity, the decisive question: "What is it to philosophize?"226

Pierre Hndot's own work itself prnvokes us to rcask the question of what it me11ns to philnKophiil', 11nll he provides 11 response as relevant, profound, and

36

Introduction

unsettling today as it was centuries ago. In the last analysis, that is what makes Pierre Hadot not just a consummate historian of philosophy, but also a philosopher for our own times.

Arnold I. Davidson

NOTES

Pierre Hadot, Exercices spin"tuels et philosophie antique, 2nd edn, Paris 1987.

2 Pierre Hadot, La Citadel/e interieure. Introduction aux Pensees de Marc Aurele, Paris 1 992.

3 Pierre Hadot, Titres et travau.t de Pierre Hadot, privately printed for the College de France, p. 9.

4 Pierre Hadot, "Patristiquc Latinc," Prob/emes el melhodes d 'hisloire des religions, Melanges publies par la Section des Sciences re/igieuses a /'occasion du centenaire de

/'Ecole pratique des Hau/es Etudes, Paris 1968, pp. 21 1-13. Contresens is a central concept in Hadot's interpretation of the history of exegetical thought. It covers strict cases of mistranslation as well as more general phenomena of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. I return to this aspect of Hadot's thought in what follows.

5 Hadot, 1i'tres el lravaw:, p. 8.

6 Hadot, "Patristique Latine," p. 2 1 2, and Pierre Hadot, "Patristique," in Encyclopedia U11iversalis, vol. 1 2, p. 608, Paris, 1972. Among other texts of Augustine, see Confessions, IX, 4, 1 1 .

7 Pierre Hadot, Comples rend11s des conferences donnees a /'Ecole pratique des Haules Etudes de 1964 a 1980, privately printed. I have paraphrased the compte rendu from 1 964- 1 965. The quotation is from pp. 2-3.

8 Pierre Hadot, "Platon et Plotin dans trois sermons de saint Ambrose,'' Revue des eludes la1ines XXXIV ( 1 956), p. 209, n. 5 .

9 Hadot, "Patristique,'' p. 608.

IO Pierre Hadot, "La fin du paganisme," in H.-Ch. Peuch, ed., Histoire des religi01n, vol. II, pp. IOl-7, Paris 1 972.

1 1 Ibid, p. 109. See also Margherita Guarducci, II primato de/la Chiesa di Roma.

Docmnenti, rijlessioni confenne, Milan

,

1 99 1 , pp. 85-7.

12 Hadot, "La fin du paganisme," p. I JO.

1 3 Ibid, pp. 1 07-8.

14 Ibid, p. 1 08. See also Edouard des Places, "Numenius et Eusebe de Cesaree,'' in Etudes platonicie1111es 1929-1979, Leiden 1981, esp. pp 322

.

-5 .

1 5 Hadot, "La fin du paganisme,'' p. 1 1 1 .

1 6 Ibid, pp. JOB and 105. Also, Pierre Hadot, "Theologie, exegese, revelation, ecriture, dans la philosophic grecque," in Michel Tardieu, ed., Les reg/es de

/'interpretation, Paris 1 987.

17 Hadot, "La fin du paganisme," pp. 83-4, 1 09.

18 Hadot, "Theologie, exegcse, revelation," p. 14.

1 9 Ibid, p. 22.

Introduction

37

20 In trying to summarize Hadot's very complex discussion, without distorting it, I have mainly followed "L'etre et l'etant dans le neoplatonisme,'' in Etudts ntoplatonidtnnts, Neuchitel 1973; ''Theologie, exegese, reJetation," esp.

pp. 19 2

-

0; and "Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes," this volume. See also Pierre Hadot, Porphyrt ti Victorinus, 2 vols, Paris 1 968.

21 Hadot, "Theologie, exegese, revelation," p. 20.

22 Ibid.

23 Hadot, "L'etre et l'etant dans le neoplatonisme," pp. 34-5.

24 Hadot, ''Theologie, exegese, revelation, .. p. 20.

25 Hadot, "L'etre et l'etant dans le neoplatonisme," pp. 34-5; Pierre Hadot, "La distinction de l'etre et de l'etant dans le 'De Hebdomadibus' de Boece,'' in Miscellanea Mtdiaevalia, vol. 2, Berlin 1 963; and Pierre Hadot, "Fom1a essendi.

Interpretation philologique et interpretation philosophique d'une formule de Boece,'' Les Etudts dassiques XXXVII ( 1 970), PP• 143-56. Hadot also explicitly relates this distinction to Heidegger's writings; see Hadot, "L'etre et l'etant dans le neoplatonisme, .. p. 27.

26 Pierre Hadot, "Heidegger et Plotin," Critiqut 145 ( 1 959), p. 542.

27 Sec Hadot's discussion in "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy," this volume, especially pp. 65-6.

28 Ibid, pp. 61-2.

29 For the quoted phrase, see Hadot, Titres ti lravaux, p. 23.

30 Hadot, "Patristique Latine," p. 2 1 8.

3 1 Ibid, pp. 2 1 6- 1 7.

32 Margherita Guarducci, "La Crittografia mistica e i graffiti vaticani," Archeologia Classica XIII ( 1 961), p. 236, my emphasis.

33 Margherita Guarducci, "Dal Gioco letterale alla crittografia mistica," in Serini see/ti sulla religio11e grtca t romana e sul cristianesimo, Leiden 1983, pp. 42 1 -2.

34 Ibid, p. 441 . On the relationship between the three teeth of the E and the symbol of the key see also Margherita Guarducci, "Ancora sul misterioso E di Delfi," in Scrilli see/ti.

35 Margherita Guarducci, "La Criuografia mistica," p. 2 1 9.

36 Guarducci, // primato de/la Chiesa di Roma, pp. 126-7.

37 Quoted above, p. 8.

38 Guarducci, "Dal Gioco letterale alla crittografia mistica," p. 427.

39 Ibid, p. 428.

40 On the resort to lapidary error and accident, see Guarducci, "La Crittografia mistica," pp. 203-10.

41 For a superb example, see ibid, p. 206.

42 Qµoted above, p. 8.

43 Hadot, La Citadelk interieure, pp. 39-40. Sec also Pierre Hadot, "Les Pe11sees de Marc Aurele," Bulletin dt /'Association Gui/lame Bude (June 198 1 ), pp. 1 83--4.

44 1-ladot, La Citadcl/e i"1erie11re, p. 41 .

45 Ibid, pp. 311- �2.

4t1 Pierre I lild111 1 "Unc de tics l'emrc•s de Marc Aurclc: les rrois Topoi philosophiques

38

Introduction

scion Epictete," in Exmices spirituels, p. 13S. This essay was originally published in 1 978.

47 Hadot, La Citadelle interiture, pp. 40- 1 , 46-7. See also Hadot, "Les Pensees de Marc Aurcle,'' pp. 1 83-4.

48 Hadot, La Citadelle interieure, pp. 47, 49.

49 Ibid, p. 49.

SO Ibid.

S t Hadot, "Les Pensees de Marc Aurcle," p. 1 8S. See also Hadot, Titres et travaur, p. 29.

S2 Hadot, La Citadelle interieure, pp. 8S-6, 98-106. Sec also "Marcus Aurelius," this volume. Hadot has argued that, before Marcus, Epictetus was the only Stoic to have distinguished between three activities or functions of the soul. See Hadot, La Citadel/e i11terieure, pp. 8S, 99, 14S.

S3 Ibid, pp. 1 06-lS. See also Pierre Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophic chez les stoiciens," Revue internationale de la philosophie 178 ( 1 99 1 ), pp. 20S-19.

S 4 Hadot, La Citadelle interieure, p. 1 06. I will return to Hadot's discussion of the distinction between philosophical discourse and philosophy.

SS Hadot, "Une de des Pensees de Marc Aurclc," p. l JS.

S6 Hadot, la Citadelle interieure, p. 62.

S7 Hadot, "Les Pensees de Marc Aurele," p. 1 87. See also Hadot, "Une de des Pensees de Marc Aurele," p. I SO.

S8 The words quoted are from the quotation above, p. 8.

S9 Hadot, Titres et travau.\', p. 1 2. See also "Marcus Aurelius," this volume, p. 1 86.

60 Hadot, La Citadelle interieure, p. 10. Hadot has applied these remarks to other ancient works. See Hadot, Titres el trava11l·, p. 1 3; and "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy," this volume, pp. 6S-6.

61 Hadot, la Citadelle i11terieure, pp. 262-7S. See also Pierre Hadot, "Marc Aurele etait-il opiomane?," in E. Lucchesi and H.D. SatTrey, eds, Memorial Andre-Jean Festugiere, Geneva 1 984.

62 Hadot, la Citadelle interieure, pp. 261-2, 274.

63 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 24. Cited in "Marcus Aurelius," this volume, p. 1 84.

64 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 1 3. Cited in "Marcus Aurelius," this volume, p. 1 8S.

6S Hadot, la Citadelle i11terie11re, p. 1 94.

66 Ibid, p. 1 8 1 . On physical definitions, see also pp. 122-3; and Hadot, "Les Pensees de Marc Aurcle," pp. 1 88-9.

67 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Ill, 1 1 . Cited in "Marcus Aurelius," this volume, p. 1 87.

68 Hadot, La Citadelle interieure, p. 1 23.

69 Ibid.

70 Hadot, "Les Pensees de Marc Aurele," p. 1 89.

7 1 Pierre Hadot, "La Physique commc exercice spirituel ou pcss1mu;mc ct optimismc chcz Marc Aurclc," in E.\·crrim spirit11els, pp. 1 32 .l Thi11

·

nrtich: wns

Introduction

39

originally published in 1972. For Hadot's argument that this inner attitude is not one of fatalist resignation, see Hadot, La Citadelle intirieure, pp. 224-6.

72 Hadot, La Citadelle intirieure, p. 268. See also Hadot, Titres et tra�aw:, p. 1 2. For other methodological limitations of this kind of psychological interpretation, see Hadot's remarkable discussion of the Passio Perpetuae in his rompte rendu from 1 967-8, in Hadot, Comptes rendus des ronflrenm, pp. 1 9-23. Of course, Hadot does not believe that Marcus is totally absent from the Meditations. See Hadot, La Citadelle intiriture, pp. 26 1-2, 275-3 14. See also "Marcus Aurelius," this volume, pp. 196-9.

73 Pierre Hadot, "De Tertullien a Boece. Le developpement de la notion de personne dans les controverses theologiques," in I. Myerson, ed., Probltmes de la pmonnt, Colloque du Centre de rerherrhes tk Psychologie comparative, Paris/La Haye 1 973, p. 1 32.

74 Ibid, p. 133. These claims of Hadot continue to be cited with approval. See, for example, Jean-Pierre Vemant, "L'individu dans la cite," in Sur l 'individu, Paris 1 987, p. 37. For another expression of this early view of Hadot, see Hadot,

"L'image de la Trinite dans l'ame chez Victorious et chez saint Augustin," in Studia Patristica, vol. VI, part IV, Berlin 1 962. See esp. p. 440 where Hadot writes, "From Victorious to Augustine, there is all of the distance that separates the ancient soul from the modem self."

75 Hadot, "Patristique Latine," p. 2 1 5.

76 Ibid.

77 Hadot, "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy," this volume, p. 52. For Pierre Courcelle, see Recherrhes sur /es "Co1tfessions " tk saint Augustin (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1 950).

78 Hadot, Comptes rendus des confirenm, p. 8. This is the compte rendu from 1 965-6.

79 Hadot, "Patristique Latine," p. 2 1 5.

80 Hadot, Comptes rendus des ronflrences, p. 9. For a good discussion of the literature on Book II of the Confessions, see Franco De Capitani, "II libro II dclle Confessim1i di sant'Agostino," in "Le Confessioni" di Agostino d l Libri l-ll,

' ppona,

Palermo

1 984.

81 Hadot, "Patristique Latine," pp. 21 5-1 6, together with Hadot, Comp/es rendus des corifirences, p. 9.

82 Hadot, "Patristique Latine," p. 2 1 5 .

8 3 Hadot, Comples rendus des confirenres, p . 8.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid, p. 9.

86 Comple rendu from 1970-7 1 , in ibid, pp. 45-8.

87 Hadot, "Patristique Larine," p. 2 1 5.

88 Ibid, p. 2 1 6, together with "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy," this volume, p. 52. I have quoted extensively from Hadot's various discussions of Augustine, since many of them are not easily available. Hadot had once intended to publish a translation and commentary on the Confessions, a project he never completed.

89 Had111 , "Pa1ri111ique Larine.'' p. 2 1 5.

40

Introduction

90 See, among other essays, Pierre Hadot, "Wittgenstein, philosophe du langage (I)," Critique 1 49 (October 1 959), pp. 866-81 ; and "Wittgenstein, philosophe du langage (II)," Critique 1 50 (November 1959), pp. 972-83.

9 1 Hadot, "Wittgenstein, philosophe du langage (II)," p. 973. The importance of the connection between Wittgenstein's literary style and his thought has been a constant theme of Stanley Cavell's writing. For an early statement, see Cavell,

"The availability of Wittgenstein's later philosophy," in Must We Mean What We Say?, New York 1 969, pp. 70-3. I bring together Hadot and Cavell's work in

"La decouverte de Thoreau et d'Emerson par Stanley Cavell ou les exercices spirtuels de la philosophic" (forthcoming in Sandra Laugier, ed., Lire Cavel/ ).

92 Hadot has highlighted these claims in the overview of his work that he presented to the College International de Philosophic in May, 1 993. I will refer to the unpublished typescript of his presentation as "Presentation au College International de Philosophic." Sec, for example, pp. 2-3.

93 Pierre Hadot, "Jcux de langagc et philosophic," Revue de Metaplrysique et de Morale LXIV ( 1 960), p. 34 1 .

94 Ibid, p . 340.

95 Ibid, pp. 339--43.

96 Ibid, pp. 342-3 .

97 Ibid, p. 343.

98 Hadot, La Citadelle interieure, p. 9. See also Hadot, Titres et travaux, p. 1 2.

99 Pierre Hadot, "La philosophic antique: unc ethique ou unc pratiquc?," in Paul Demont, ed., Prob/emes de la morale antique, Amiens 1993, pp. 7-8. See also the section "Learning How to Read" in "Spiritual Exercises," this volume, pp. 1 01-9.

1 00 Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, ct divisions de la philosophic chcz lcs stoiciens," p. 205 .

1 0 1 Pierre Hadot, "Preface," in Richard Goulet, ed., Dictionnaire des philosoplies tmtiques, Paris 1 989, p. 1 2.

1 02 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: unc ethiquc ou une pratique?," p. 8. See also Hadot, "Presentation au College International de Philosophie," pp. 1 -2.

1 03 Hadot, "La philosophie antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," p. 1 0.

104 "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy," this volume, p. 62.

1 05 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," p. 9. Sec also Pierre Hadot, "Preface," in M.D. Richard, L 'Enseignement oral de Platon, Paris 1 986, pp. 9-1 0.

1 06 Reading together Hadot, "Jcux de langage et philosophic," p. 341 , and Hadot,

"Presentation au College International de Philosophic," p. 2.

107 Hadot, "Presentation au College International de Philosophic," p. 2. To the best of my knowledge, Hadot first invoked this formula of Goldschmitt in "Jcux de langage et philosophic," p. 341 .

1 08 Hadot, "Preface," i n L 'Enseignement oral de Pla1011, p . 1 1 .

1 09 See the section "Learning to Dialogue" in "Spiritual Exercises," this volume, pp. 89-93 .

1 1 0 "Spiritual Exercises," this volume, pp. 1 9 20.

Introduction

41

1 1 1 Ibid, p. 2 1 .

1 1 2 Ibid, pp. 2 1 -2. ( I have modified the translation.) 1

1 1 3 "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy," this volume, pp. 63-4.

1 14 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," p. 1 1 .

1 1 5 Ibid.

1 1 6 Ibid, my emphasis.

1 1 7 Ibid, pp. 1 1-12.

1 1 8 Ibid, p. 1 2. Sec also "Spiritual Exercises," this volume.

1 1 9 See the section "Learning to Live" in "Spiritual Exercises," this volume, pp. 82-9. Also see Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," pp. 1 2-14.

1 20 Sec esp. the opening pages of "Ancient Spiritual Exercises and 'Christian Philosophy'," this volume.

1 2 1 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," p. 1 3 . On the direction of souls in Seneca, see Ilsetraut Hadot, Seneca und die griechisch-riimische Tradition der Seelenleitung, Berlin, 1 969. In antiquity, the philosopher was not the only kind of spiritual guide; for other figures of spiritual guidance, sec Ilsetraut Hadot, "The spiritual guide," in A.H. Armstrong, ed., Classical Mediterranean Spirituality, New York 1 986.

1 22 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," pp. 1 7-18.

1 23 Ibid, p. 1 1 8, speaking of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

1 24 Ibid, p. 1 7.

1 25 Carlo Natali, Rios Theoretikos. La vita d 'Aristotele e l'orga11iuazione de/la sua scuola, Bologna 1 99 1 , p. 98.

1 26 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une cthique ou une pratiquc?,'' pp. 1 6- 1 7 .

1 27 Ibid, p . 1 5 .

1 28 Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, e t divisions d e l a philosophic chez les stoiciens," p. 2 1 6, and Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une cthique ou une pratique?," p. 1 6.

1 29 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une cthique ou une pratique?," p. 1 6.

1 30 Ibid.

1 3 1 See the section "Learning to Die" in "Spiritual Exercises," this volume, pp. 93-1 0 1 .

1 32 Ilsetraut Hadot, "Preface," i n Seneca, Consolations, Paris 1 992, p. 1 7.

1 33 Ibid, pp. 1 8-19.

1 34 Ibid, p. 19.

135 "Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,'' this volume, pp. 58-60. On the unclassifiability of the philosopher, see pp. 55-60.

1 36 1-Iadot, "Preface,'' in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, p. 12.

1 37 Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, 4, 10. Hadot offers two slightly different translations of this remark. One can be found in the essay "The Figure of Socrates,'' this volume. I have cited the one from "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratiquc?," p. 36.

1 38 See the opening pages of both "Spiritual Exercises" and "Ancient Spiritual l•:xerciNc11 and 'ChriHliim PhiloNophy'," this volume.

42

Introduction

1 39 On the ancient doctrine of the division of the parts of philosophy, see Pierre Hadot, "Les divisions des parties de la philosophic," Museum Helveticum 36

( 1 979), pp. 201 -23.

1 40 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou unc pratique?," pp. 1 8-29; Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophic chez Jes stoiciens"; and Hadot, la Citatklk interiturt, ch. S.

1 4 1 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," pp. 1 9-20.

1 42 Ibid, pp. 20-- 1 .

1 43 Ibid, pp. 2 1 -4.

1 44 Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophic chez Jes stoiciens," p. 212. See also Hadot, la Citarltllt interiturt, p. 98, and

"Philosophy as a Way of Life," this volume.

1 4S See ch. 7, this volume. I have discussed Hadot's criticisms of Foucault at length in "Ethics as ascetics: Foucauh, the history of ethics and ancient thought,"

in Jan Goldstein, ed., Foucault a11rl tht Writing of History, Oxford 1994.

1 46 See Veyne's remarks in lts Crees, Its Romai11s ti nous. l 'Antiquite est-tile modtrnt?, ed. Roger Pol-Droit, Paris 199 1 , pp. S7 8.

-

1 47 Sec Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophiquc, ct divisions de la philosophic chez Jes stoiciens"; Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?," pp. 25-6; and Hadot, la Citadellt irllerit11rt, pp. 94-8. Zeno of Tarsus was an exception to this doctrine; see Diogenes Laertius, lives of Eminml Philosophers, VII, 39 and 4 1 .

1 48 Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions d e l a philosophic chez les stoiciens," p. 21 1 .

1 49 Reading together Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique ou une pratique?,"

p. 26, and Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, ct divisions de la philosophic chcz les stoicicns," p. 2 1 2.

I SO Reading together Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophiquc, et divisions de la philosophic chez lcs stoiciens," p. 212, and Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une ethique OU unc pratique? ,'' p. 26.

I S l Hadot, la Citadtllt interiturt, p. 98. Sec also Hadot, "Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophic chez Jes stoiciens," p. 2 1 2.

I S2 Hadot, "Les divisions des parties de la philosophic," p. 2 1 1 .

1 S3 Ibid, p. 2 1 2.

1 54 Ibid. For Augustine, see Tht Cio1 of God, book 8, ch. 4, and book 2, ch. 2S.

l SS Hadot, "Les divisions des parties de la philosophic," p. 2 1 1 . See also Hadot,

"Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophic chez Jes stoiciens," pp. 218-19, and Hadot, la Citatkllt interiturt, pp. 99-1 1 5. I have not presented here Hadot's discussion of those classifications of the parts of philosophy based essentially on the notion of spiritual progress. See Hadot, "Les divisions des parties de la philosophic," pp. 218-2 1 .

1 S6 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: une cthique ou une pratiquc?," p . 27.

1 S7 Ibid, p. 28.

1 58 Hadot, "Presentation au College International de Philosophic," p. 4.

1 59 Hadot, "La philosophic antique: unc ethi,1ue ou unc pratiquc?,'' p. ZH.

1 <10 Had111, "Presentation au Collc!(c International de Philosophic," p.