Philosophy as a way of life

26 Andre Chenier, "Hermes," in A. Chenier,

27 Philo Judaeus, On the Special la111s, 2, 44. Cf ibid, 3, 1 .

28 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 32.

29 Ibid, 7, 47 -8.

30 Ibid, 1 1 , I 2.

3 1 /,uf. I'll .. 2. 1 7.

250

Themes

32 Cf. C.F. von Weizsiicker, "Einige Begriffe aus Goethes Naturwissenschaft," in Goethes Werke, HA, vol. 13, p. 548.

33 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1 5, 147 ff.

34 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 2, 7 ff.

35 Seneca, Natural fbestions, Preface, 7-1 1 .

36 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 48.

37 Ibid, 9, 30.

38 Lucian, lcaromenippus, vol. 2, pp. 268 ff. Harmon.

39 Ibid, 1 1 , p. 287.

40 Ibid, 1 2, p. 289.

41 This is also the theme of Lesage's eighteenth-century novel, u diable boiteux

["The Limping Devil " - Trans.]. The idea of a trip to the moon or to the stars was the inspiration for many a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century novel; an example would be Voltaire's Micromegas.

42 Lucian, Charon sive contemplantes, vol. 2, pp. 397ff. Harmon.

43 Lucian himself describes the Cynic in this way. Cf. Dialogues of the Dead, 10, 2.

44 Cf. E. Norden, "Beitriige zur Gcschichte der gricchischen Philosophic,"

Jahrbiicher jiir dassische Philologie, supplementary vol. 1 9, Leipzig 1 893; Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 22, 24.

45 Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit, ch. 49.

46 Ernest Renan,

47 Charles Baudelaire, "Elevation."

1 0

The Sage and the World

1 Definition of the Problem

No one has described the relationship between the ancient sage and the world around him better than Bernard Groethuysen:

The sage's consciousness of the world is something peculiar to him alone. Only the sage never ceases to have the whole constantly present to his mind. He never forgets the world, but thinks and acts with a view to the cosmos. . . . The sage is a part of the world; he is cosmic. He does not let himself be distracted from the world, or detached from the cosmic totality . . . . The figure of the sage forms, as it were, an indissoluble unity with man's representation of the world.1

This is particularly true of the Stoic sage, whose fundamental attitude consisted in a joyful "Yes!" accorded at each instant to the movement of the world, directed as it is by universal reason. We recall Marcus Aurelius'

well-known prayer to the universe: "All that is in tune with you, 0 universe, is in tune with me." 2 Perhaps less well known is the aesthetic theory Marcus developed from the same point of view:

If a person has experience and a deeper insight into the processes of the universe, there will be hardly any phenomenon accompanying these processes that does not appear to him, at lea'>t in some of its aspects, as pleasant. And he will look upon the actual gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than upon all the imitations of them that sculptors and painters off er us . . . . and there are many such things, which do not appeal to everyone; only to that person who has truly familiarized himself with nature and her wurkintCI'· 1

252

Themes

We recall, moreover, that the Stoic sage, like Seneca, was conscious of being a part of the world, and plunged himself into the totality of the cosmos: Ioli se inserens mundo.4

The same could be said of the Epicurean sage, even though the physics he professed considered the world to be the result of chance, excluding all divine intervention. Nevertheless, this conception of the world suited the Epicurean perfectly: it brought with it pure pleasure and peace of mind, freed him from unreasonable fear of the gods, and made him consider each instant as a kind of unexpected miracle. As Hoffmann pointed out,5 it is precisely because the Epicurean considered existence to be the result of pure chance that he greeted each moment with immense gratitude, like a kind of divine miracle. The sage's pleasure came from contemplating the world in peace and serenity; and in this he resembled the gods, who took no part in the management of the world, lest their eternal repose be disturbed. Describing the sage's contemplation, analogous to that of the gods, Lucretius exclaimed: the terrors of the mind fly away, the walls of the world part asunder, I see things moving on through all the void . : . At these things, as it were, some godlike pleasure and a thrill of awe seizes on me, to think that thus

. . . nature is made so clear and manifest, laid bare to sight on every side.6

This cosmic dimension is thus essential to the figure of the antique sage.

Here the reader may object: it could well be that ancient wisdom - whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, or Epicurean - was intimately linked with a relationship to the world; but isn't this ancient vision of the world out of date?

The quantitative universe of modern science is totally unrepresentable, and within it the individual feels isolated and lost. Today, nature is nothing more for us than man's "environment"; she has become a purely human problem, a problem of industrial hygiene. The idea of universal reason no longer makes much sense.

All this is quite true. But can the experience of modern man be reduced to the purely technico-scientific? Does not modern man, too, have his own experience of the world qua world? Finally, might not this experience be able to open up for him a path toward wisdom?

2 The World of Science and the World of Everyday Perception It would be stating the obvious to affirm that the world which we perceive in our everyday experience is radically different from the unrepresentable world constructed by the scientist. The world of science docs indeed, by mennK of its multiple tcchnic11I npplicnl ions, r11d ic111ly 1 rnm1form 1mme 11s11ectK of our

The Sage and the World

253

daily life. Yet it is essential to realize that our way of perceiving the world in everyday life is not radically affected by scientific concepti9ns. For all of us

- even for the astronomer, when he goes home at night - the sun rises and sets, and the earth is immobile.

Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty developed some noteworthy reflections on this opposition between the world of science and the world of perception:

The entire world of science is constructed on the basis of the world as we experience it [sur le monde vecu], and if we want rigorously to think through science itself, in order precisely to appreciate its range and its meaning, we must first of all reawaken this experience of the world, of which science is the secondary expression.7

For lived, existential experience, the earth is nothing other than the immobile ground8 in relation to which I move, the fundamental referent of my existence. It is this earth, immobile in relation to our experienced movements, that even the astronaut uses as a reference point, including when, from the depths of space, the earth appears to him like a little blue ball. The analyses of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty thus let us see that the Copernican revolution, of which so much is made in philosophy handbooks, upset only the theoretical discourse of the learned about the world, but did not at all change the habitual, day-to-day perception we have of the world.

We must, however, be more specific about the opposition between the world of science and the world of everyday perception. The reason why Husserl and Merleau-Ponty want us to return to the world of lived perception, or rather to this perception-as-a-world, is so that we may become awa.re of it. This awareness, in tum, will radically transform our very perception of the world, since it will no longer be a perception of distinct objects, but perception of the world as a world, and, especially for Merleau

Ponty, perception of the uni()' of the world and of perception. In their view, philosophy is nothing other than this process by means of which we try "to relearn to see the world." 9

In a sense, one might say that the world of science and the world of philosophy are both, in their own way, opposed to the world of habitual perception. In the case of science, this opposition takes the form of the elimination of perception. Science discloses to us a universe reduced, by both mathematical and technological means, to its quantitative aspects. Philosophy, for its part, deepens and transforms h:\_bitual perception, forcing us to become aware of the very fact the we are perceiving the world, and that the world is that which we perceive.

We fine.I n Himilar di11tinction between habitual and philosophical perception in the wri1 inl(N of UcrgKon He describes this difference as follows:10

.

254

Themes

Life requires that we put on blinkers; we must not look to the right, to the left, or behind, but straight ahead, in the direction in which we are supposed to walk. In order to live, we must be selective in our knowledge and our memories, and retain only that which may contribute to our action upon things.

Bergson continues: "We could say the same thing about perception. As an auxiliary of action, it isolates, out of the totality of the real, that which interests us." Some people, however, are born detached: artists.

When they look at a thing, they see itfor itselJ, and no longer for lhem. They no longer perceive merely for the sake of action: they perceive for the sake of perceiving; that is, for no reason, for the pure pleasure of it . . .

That which nature does once in a long while, out of distraction, for a few privileged people; might not philosophy . . . attempt the same thing, in another sense and in another way, for everybody? Might not the role of philosophy be to bring us to a more complete perception of reality, by means of a kind of displacement of our attention?

The "displacement of attention" of which Bergson speaks, as in the case of Merleau-Ponty's "phenomenological reduction," is in fact a conversion: 1 1 a radical rupture with regard to the state of unconsciousness in which man normally lives. The utilitarian perception we have of the world, in everyday life, in fact hides from us the world qua world. Aesthetic and philosophical perceptions of the world are only possible by means of a complete transformation of our relationship to the world: we have to perceive it for itself, and no longer for ourselves.

3 Aesthetic Perception

Bergson and, as we shall see later, Merleau-Ponty consider the aesthetic perception of the world as a kind of model for philosophical percep,tion. In fact, as J. Ritter has pointed out,12 it is only with the flourishing of modem science, from the eighteenth century on, and the transformation of the philosopher's relationship to nature which came about as a result, that we find an awareness of the necessity of an "aesthetic" mode of perception, in order to allow existence - man's Dasein - to maintain the cosmic dimension essential to human existence. As early as 1 750, Baumgarten,u in his Aeslhetica, had opposed veritas /ogica to verilas aesthetica1•: veritas /ogica was, for example, the knowledge of an eclipse appropriate to an astronomer, while aesthetic truth might be, for example, a shepherd's emotional perception of the same phenomenon, 1111 he dcKcribcs it tu his hclovcd . In hiH C:riti1111e njJ111lxemt111 of

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255

1 790, Kant also opposed aesthetic perception to scientific knowledge. In order to perceive the ocean as sublime, writes Kant, it is not necessary to associate with it all sorts of geographical or meteorological knowledge while we look at it. Rather: "one must come to see the ocean, all by itself - just as the poets do, exclusively according to what it displays to the eye, when it is contemplated either at rest, in the form of a limpid mirror of water, or when it is violently stirred, like an abyss threatening to swallow up everything." 15 When, between 1 8 1 5 and 1 830, C.G. Carus wrote his Lettres sur la peinture de paysage,16 he characterized landscape-painting as the "art of the representation of the life of the earth [Erdlebenbildkunst]." For Carus, it is thanks to aesthetic perception that we may continue to live in that perceptive, lived relationship with the earth, which constitutes an essential dimension of human existence.

Thus, a disinterested, aesthetic perception of the world can allow us to imagine what cosmic consciousness might signify for modern man. Modern artists, reflecting on their art, regard it as inseparable from a completely characteristic experience of the world.

In the first place, the modern artist consciously participates in cosmic life as he creates. "The dialogue with nature," writes Paul Klee, 17 "remains for the artist the condition sine qua non. The artist is a man. He is himself nature, a part of nature within the domain of nature." This dialogue with nature presupposes an intense communication with the world, carried out not merely through visual channels: "Today, the artist is better and more subtle than a camera . . . he is a creature upon earth and a creature within the universe; a creature on one star among the other stars." This is why there are, according to Klee, means other than visual for establishing the relationship between the self and its object. There is the fact that we plunge our roots into the same soil, and that we share a common participation in the cosmos. This means that the artist must paint in a state in which he feels his unity with the earth and with the universe.

For Klee, then, abstract art appears as a kind of prolongation of the work of nature:

[The artist's] progress in the observation and vision of nature gradually lets him accede to a philosophical vision of the universe which allows him freely to create abstract forms . . . Thus, the artist creates works of art, or participates in the creation of works, which are an image of the creative work of God . . . Just as children imitate us while playing, so we, in the game of art, imitate the forces which created, and continue to create, the world . . . Natura naturans is more important to the painter than ttaturti ttaturata. 18

We rc-enl·ountcr this cosmic consciousness in Cezanne. 19 "Have you seen thnt l(il{1mtk Tintorclto in Venice," he writes,

256

Themes

in which the earth and the sea, the terraqueous globe, are hanging above people's heads? The horizon is moving off into the distance; the depth, the ocean distances, and bodies are taking flight, an immense rotundity, a mappamundi; the planet is hurled, falling and rolling in mid-ether! . . . He was prophesying for us. He already had the same cosmic obsession which is consuming us now . . . . As for me, I want to lose myself in nature, to grow again with her, like her . . . . In a patch of green, my whole brain will flow along with the flowing sap of the trees . . . . The immensity, the torrent of the world, in a tiny thumb's worth of matter.

As we saw, the painter, according to Klee, feels himself to be a

"piece of nature, within the domain of nature." We find the same theme in Roger Caillois' Generalized Aesthetics,11.l apropos of the experience of beauty:

Natural structures constitute both the initial and the final reference point of all imaginable beauty, although beauty is human appreciation.

Since man himself belongs to nature, the circle can easily be closed, and the feeling man has of beauty merely reflects his condition as a living being and integral part of the universe. It does not follow from this that nature is the model of art, but rather that art constitutes a particular instance of nature: that which occurs when the aesthetic act undergoes the additional process of design and execution.

The artistic process shares with the creative process of nature the characteristic of rendering things visible, causing them to appear. Merleau-Ponty laid great stress on this idea:21 "Art no longer imitates visible things; it makes things visible. 22 It is the blueprint of the genesis of things. Paintings show how things become things and how the world becomes a world . . . . how mountains become, in our view, mountains." Painting makes us feel the presence of things: the fact that "things arc here.'' "When CCzannc strives after depth,"

continues Mcrleau-Ponty, "what he's really seeking is the combustion of being."

The experience of modern art thus allows us to glimpse - in a way that is, in the last analysis, philosophical - the miracle of perception itself, which opens up the world to us. Yet we can only perceive this miracle by reflecting on perception, and converting our attention. In this way, we can change our relationship to the world, and when we do so, we arc astonished by it. We break off "our familiarity with the world, and this break can teach us nothing other than the unmotivated surging f

-

orth of the world ." 2·1 At such

moments, it is as if we were seeing the world nppcnr before our eyes for the first t ime.

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257

4 Spectator Novus

There is nothing new in what we have said so far. Our reason for recalling it was in order to define the area of our experience in which there might be possible a relationship to the world bearing some resemblance to that which existed between the ancient sage and the cosmos: the world, that is, of perception. We are now in a position to show that, since ancient times, there have existed exercises by means of which philosophers have tried to transform their perception of the world, in a way analogous to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological reduction, or to the conversion of attention spoken of by Bergson. Obviously, the philosophical discourses by which Bergson, Merleau

Ponty, and the philosophers of antiquity express or justify the procedure which leads to the transformation of perception are very different from one another, just as the discussions of Klee or CCzanne about painting are not to be confused with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Be that as it may, Mcrleau-Ponty was deeply conscious of the sense in which, above and beyond differences of discourse, the experiences of Klee or CCzanne coincided with his own. One could say the same about the similar experience which can be glimpsed behind certain quite striking texts from antiquity.

For example, let us consider this passage from one of Seneca's Leuers lo Luci/ius: "As for me, I usually spend a great deal of time in the contemplation of wisdom. I look at it with the same stupefaction with which, on other occasions, I look at the world; this world that I quite often feel as though I were seeing for the first time [ 1amquam spectatt1r novus ]. " 24 If Seneca speaks of stupefaction, it is because he sometimes finds that he discovers the world all of a sudden, "as though [he] were seeing it for the first time." At such moments, he becomes conscious of the transformation taking place in his perception of the world. Normally, he had not been in the habit of seeing the world, and consequently was not astonished by it. Now, all of a sudden, he is stupefied, because he sees the world with new eyes.

The Epicurean Lucretius was familiar with the same experience as the Stoic Seneca. In book 2 of his On the Ntiture of Things,- he announces that he is going to proclaim a new teaching: "A truth wondrously new is struggling to fall upon your ears, and a new face of things to reveal itself." Indeed, it is not surprising if this new teaching strikes the imagination: Lucretius is about to assert the existence of infinite space, and, within this infinite space, of a plurality of worlds. In order to prepare his reader for this novelty, Lucretius introduces some considerations about mankind's psychological reactions to novelties. On the one hand, he says, we find that which is new difficult to believe; whatever disturbs our mental habits seems to us a priori false and inadmissible. Once we have admitted it, however, the same force of habit which mudt• 1 hc novelty surprising and paradoxical subsequently makes it

258

Themes

seem banal, and our admiration gradually diminishes. Lucretius then describes how the world would look to us if we saw it for the first time: First of all, the bright, clear colour of the sky, and all it holds within it, the stars that wander here and there, and the moon and the radiance of the sun with its brilliant light; all these, if now they had been seen for the first time by mortals, if, unexpectedly, they were in a moment placed before their eyes, what story could be told more marvelous than these things, or what that the nations would less dare to believe beforehand? Nothing, I believe; so worthy of wonder would this sight have been. Yet think how no one now, wearied with satiety of seeing, deigns to gaze up at the shining quarters of the sky!25

These texts are extremely important for our purpose. They show that, already in antiquity, people were not conscious of living in the world. They had no time to look at the world, and philosophers strongly sensed the paradox and scandal of the human condition: man lives in the world without perceiving the world. Bergson correctly grasped the reason for this situation, when he distinguished between habitual, utilitarian perception, necessary for life, and the detached, disinterested perception of the artist or philosopher.

What separates us from the world is thus not the irrepresentable character of the scientific universe - the world we live in is, after all, that of lived perception - and neither is it contemporary doubts about the rational character of the world: Lucretius had already denied this rationality. People in antiquity were unfamiliar with modern science, and did not live in an industrial, technological society; yet the ancients didn't look at the world any more than we usually do. Such is the human condition. In order to live, mankind must "humanize" the world; in other words transform it, by action as well as by his perception, into an ensemble of "things" useful for life.

Thus, we fabricate the objects of our worry, quarrels, social rituals, and conventional values. That is what our world is like; we no longer see the world qua world. In the words of Rilke, we no longer see "the Open"; we see only the "future." Ideally, we would

see everything

and ourselves in everything

healed and whole

forever.26

The obstacle to perceiving the world is not to be found in modernity, but within man himself. We must separate ourselves from the world qua world in order to live our daily life, but we muHI 11cpnrate oursclve11 from the

"everyday" world in order tu 1·edi11covcr 1hc wcll'ld llllll world .

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259

S The Instant

There is a well-known text, in which we can see both the echo of ancient traditions and the anticipation of certain modern attitudes: Rousseau's Reveries du promeneur solitaire.21 What is remarkable in this passage is that we cannot help but recognize the intimate connection which exists, for Rousseau, between cosmic ecstasy and the transformation of his inner attitude with regard to time. On the one hand, "every individual object escapes him; he sees and feels nothing which is not in the whole." 28 Yet, at the same time,

"Time no longer means anything [to him] . . . the present lasts forever, without letting its duration be sensed, and without any trace of succession.

There is no sensation - either of privation or of enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear - other than the one single sensation of our existence. " 29 Here Rousseau analyzes, in a most remarkable way, the elements which constitute and make possible a disinterested perception of the world. What is required is concentration on the present moment, a concentration in which the spirit is, in a sense, without past nor present, as it experiences the simple "sensation of existence." Such concentration is not, however, a mere turning in upon oneself. On the contrary: the sensation of existence is, inseparably, the sensation of being in the whole and the sensation of the existence of the whole.

In Rousseau, all this is a passive, almost mystical state. For the ancients, however, it is quite apparent that the transformation of one's view of the world was intimately linked to exercises which involved concentrating one's mind on the present instant.30 In Stoicism as well as in Epicureanism, such exercises consisted in "separating oneself from the future and past," in order to "delimit th e present instant." 31 Such a technique gives the mind, freed from the burden and prejudices of the past, as well as from worry about the future, tha t inner detachment, freedom, and peace which are indispensable prerequisites for perceiving the world qua world. We have here, moreover, a kind of reciprocal causality: the mind acquires peace and serenity by becoming aware of its relationship with the world, to the extent that it re-places our existence within the cosmic perspective.

This concentration on the present moment lets us discover the infinite value and unheard-of miracle of our presence in the world. Concentration on the present instant implies the suspension of our projects for the future. In other words, it implies that we must think of the present moment as the last moment, and that we live each day and each hour as if it were our last. For the Epicureans, th is exercise reveals the incredible stroke of luck thnnks to which each moment we live in the world is made po1111ihlc.

260

Themes

Believe that every day that dawns will be the final one for you. If you do, you will receive each unexpected hour with gratitude.32

Receive each moment of accumulating time as though it came about by an incredible stroke of luck. 33

Let the soul find its joy in the present, and learn to hate worries about the future. 34

Albeit for different reasons, the Stoics also shared this attitude of wonder at what appears and occurs in the present instant. For them, each instant and each present moment imply the entire universe, and the whole history of the world. Just as each instant presupposes the immensity of time, so does our body presuppose the whole universe. It is within ourselves that we can experience the coming-into-being of reality and the presence of being. By becoming conscious of one single instant of our lives, one single beat of our hearts, we can feel ourselves linked to the entire immensity of the cosmos, and to the wondrous fact of the world's existence. The whole universe is present in each part of reality. For the Stoics, this experience of the instant corresponds to their theory of the mutual interpenetration of the parts of the universe. Such an experience, however, is not necessarily linked to any theory. For example, we find it expressed in the following verses by Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.35

To sec the world for the last time is the same thing as to see it for the first time, tamqutim spectator 11ovus. 36 This impression can be caused by the thought of death, which reveals to us the miraculous character of our relationship to the world: always in peril, always unforeseeable. Alternatively, it can be caused by the feeling of novelty brought about by concentrating one's attention on one instant, one moment of the world: the world then seems to come into being and be born before our eyes. We then perceive the world as a "nature" in the etymological sense of the world: physis, that movement of growth and birth by which things manifest thcmselves.37 We experience ourselves as a moment or instant of this movement; this immense event which reaches beyond us, is always already there before us, and is always beyond us.

We are born along with38 the world. The feeling of existence of which Rousseau spoke is precisely this feeling of identity between univl�rsul bcinic and our own existence.

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261

6 The Sage and the World

Seneca was equally stupefied by the spectacle of the world (which he contemplated tamquam spectator novus), and by the spectacle of wisdom. By

"wisdom,'' he meant the figure of the sage, as he saw it personified in the personality of the philosopher Sextus.

This is a very instructive parallel. There is in fact a strict analogy between the movement by which we accede to the vision of the world, and that by which we postulate the figure of the sage. In the first place, ever since Plato's Symposium, ancient philosophers considered the figure of the sage as an inaccessible role model, whom the philo-sopher (he who loves wisdom) strives to imitate, by means of an ever-renewed effort, practiced at each instant. 39 To contemplate wisdom as personified within a specific personality was thus to carry out a movement of the spirit in which, via the life of this personality, one was led toward the representation of absolute perfection, above and beyond all of its possible realizations. Similarly, in considering a partial aspect of the world, contemplation discovers the totality of the world, going beyond the landscape�0 glimpsed at a given moment, and transcending it on the way to a representation of totality which surpasses every visible object.

The contemplation mentioned by Seneca is, moreover, a kind of unitive contemplation. In order to perceive the world, we must, as it were, perceive our uni()! with the world, by means of an exercise of concentration on the present moment. Similarly, in order to recognize wisdom, we must, so to speak, go into training for wisdom. We can know a thing only by becoming similar to our object. Thus, by a total conversion, we can render ourselves open to the world and to wisdom. This is why Seneca was just as stupefied and filled with ecstasy by the spectacle of wisdom as he was by the spectacle of the world. For him, in both instances, it was a case of a discovery obtained by dint of an interior transformation and complete change in his way of seeing and living.

In the final analysis, both the world as perceived in the conseiousness of the sage, and the sage's consciousness itself, plunged in the totality of the world, are revealed to the lover of wisdom in one single, unique movement.

NOTES

B. Groethuysen, Anthropologie philosophique, Paris 1 952, rcpr. 1980, p. 80.

2 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4, 23,

3 Ibid 3, 2.

4 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 66, 6.

5 E. Hoffmann, "Epikur," in M. Dessoir, ed., Die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol.

I, W icshn

(1 l .uc1'l'l i11-, 011 1/11· N111111·r 11./' 111i11xs, 3, I <> 1 7, 28 -30.

262

Themes

7 M. Merleau-Ponty, La Phenomenologit dt la perception, Paris 1 945, pp. ii-iii.

8 M. Merleau-Ponty, Elogt de la philosoph� ti aulres essais, Paris 1953, pp. 285-6.

Cf. E. Husserl, "Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phiinomenologiscen Ursprung der Rliumlichkeit der Natur" (= Umsturz der Kopeinkanischen Lehre), in Marvin Faber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memory of E. Husserl, Cambridge MA 1 940, pp. 309-25.

9 Merleau-Ponty, La Phenomenologit, p. xvi.

10 H. Bergson, La Pensee el It mouvanl, Paris 1 946, pp. 1 52f.

1 1 [Cf. P. Hadot's important article "Conversion" in En,ydopaedia Universalis, pp. 979-81 . - Trans.]

12 J. Ritter, Subju1ivitiit. Suhs Aufiiilu, Frankfurt 1 974.

13 Cited in Ritter, Subjtlttivitllt, p. 1 55.

14 ["Logical truth" versus "aesthetic truth." - Trans.]

15 Immanuel Kant, Critique of'Judgement, §29 (general remark).

16 ["Letters on Landscape-painting." They may be found in French translation in C.D. Friedrich and C.G. Carus, De la peinture de paysage, Paris 1988. - Trans.]

17 P. Klee, Theorie de /'art modeme, Paris 1964, repr. 1 985, pp. 42-6.

18 ["La 11aturt naluranle importe advantage au peintrt que la nature naturee." I have translated nature naturanlt back into its Latin form, in which, issuing from Scholastic philosophy, it was made famous by Spinoza (cf. Ethics, I, 29).

According to Lalande's Vo,abulaire ttchnique et 'ritique de la philosophit (Paris 1 988, 1 6th edn, p. 673), natura naturans traditionally designates God, insofar as he is creator and principle of all action; while 11atura naturata is "the totality of beings and laws he has created." Klee's meaning is that the artist is more interested in the dynamics of creative processes than in the visible world as end-result of these processes. - Trans.]

19 Cf. J. Gasquet, Cezanne, Paris 1 988, p. 1 54.

20 R. Caillois, Esthetique gb1eralisee, Paris 1 962, p. 8.

21 M. Merleau-Ponty, "L'oeil et l'esprit," Les Temps Modemes 27 ( 1961 ), pp. 2 1 7, 219.

22 This idea was borrowed from Klee; cf. Klee, Theorie, p. 34.

23 Merleau-Ponty, la Phenomtnologie, p. viii.

24 Seneca, Letters to Ludlius, 64, 6.

25 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 2, 1023-5, 1030-9. Similar remarks can be found in Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 3, 38, 96; Seneca, Natural Questions, 7, I ; Augustine, On the Usefulness of Belief, 1 6, 34.

26 Rainer Maina Rilke, Duino Elegies, Eighth Elegy.

27 ["Musings of a Solitary Stroller," written between 1 776 and Rousseau's death in 1 n8. - Trans.)

28 J .-J. Rousseau 1 964, 7th Promenade, p. 1 26.

29 Ibid, 5th Promenade, p. 102.

30 See above.

3 1 Marcus Aurelius, Meditatio11s, 1 2, 3, 3--4; 7, 29, 3; 3, 1 2, I .

32 Horace, Epistle, I , 4, 13.

33 M . Gigante, Richerd1e Fil11Jemee, Naples 1 983, 1>1>. 1 8 1 , 2 1 5- 1 (,, 34 Horace, OJrs, 2, H1, 25.

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35 William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence" in Complete Writings 111ith Variant Readings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, London 1 972, p. 435, 1 -5.

36 ["Like a new spectator." - Trans.]

37 [Cf. P. Hadot, "Remarques sur la notion de et de nature," in Hermineutique el ontologie: Hommage ti Pie"e-Aubenque, Paris 1990, pp. 1-15. -

Trans.]

38 "Nous co-naissons au monde." The phrase is that of Paul Claude!, Ari Poitique, Paris 1946, pp. 54ff.

39 Cf. above.

40 Cf. Ritter, Subjelttiviliil, p. 1 5 1 .

1 1

Philosophy as a Way of Life

Every person - whether Greek or Barbarian - who is in training for wisdom, leading a blameless, irreproachable life, chooses neither to commit injustice nor return it unto others, but to avoid the company of busybodies, and hold in contempt the places where they spend their time - courts, councils, marketplaces, assemblies - in short, every kind of meeting or reunion of thoughtless people. As their goal is a life of peace and serenity, they contemplate nature and everything found within her: they attentively explore the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, and every nature found therein. In thought, they accompany the moon, the sun, and the rotations of the other stars, whether fixed or wandering.

Their bodies remain on earth, but they give wings to their souls, so that, rising into the ether, they may observe the powers which dwell there, as is fitting for those who have truly become citizens of the world. Such people consider the whole world as their city, and its citizens are the companions of wisdom; they have received their civic rights from virtue, which has been entrusted with presiding over the universal commonwealth. Thus, filled with every excellence, they are accustomed no longer to take account of physical discomforts or exterior evils, and they train themselves to be indifferent to indifferent things; they are armed against both pleasures and desires, and, in short, they always strive to keep themselves above passions . . . they do not give in under the blows of fate, because they have calculated its attacks in advance (for foresight makes easier to bear even the most difficult of the things that happen against our will; since then the mind no longer supposes what happens to be strange and novel, but its perception of them is dulled, as if it had to do with old and worn-out things). It is obvious that people such as these, who find their joy in virtue, celebrate a festival their whole life long. To be sure, there is only a small number of such people; they arc like embers of wisdom kept smouldering in our cities, so that virtue may not be altogether sn uffed out 111ul d i!111ppe11r from our ritl'C. But if only

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265

people everywhere felt the same way as this small number, and became as nature meant for them to be: blameless, irreproachable, and lovers of wisdom, rejoicing in the beautiful just because it is beautiful, and considering that there is no other good besides it . . . then our cities would be brimful of happiness. They would know nothing of the things that cause grief and fear, but would be so filled with the causes of joy and well-being that there would be no single moment in which they would not lead a life full of joyful laughter; indeed, the whole cycle of the year would be a festival for them.1

In this passage from Philo of Alexandria, inspired by Stoicism, one of the fundamental aspects of philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman eras comes clearly to the forefront. During this period, philosophy was a way of life. This is not only to say that it was a specific type of moral conduct; we can easily see the role played in the passage from Philo by the contemplation of nature.

Rather, it means that philosophy was a mode of existing-in-the-world, which had to be practiced at each instant, and the goal of which was to transform the whole of the individual's life.

For the ancients, the mere word philo-sophia

the love of wisdom - was

-

enough to express this conception of philosophy. In the Symposium, Plato had shown that Socrates, symbol of the philosopher, could be identified with Eros, the son of Poros (expedient) and of Penia (poverty). Eros lacked wisdom, but he did know how to acquire it. 2 Philosophy thus took on the form of an exercise of the thought, will, and the totality of one's being, the goal of which was to achieve a state practically inaccessible to mankind: wisdom. Philosophy was a method of spiritual progress which demanded a radical conversion and transformation of the individual's way of being.

Thus, philosophy was a way of life, both in its exercise and effort to achieve wisdom, and in its goal, wisdom itself. For real wisdom docs not merely cause us to know: it makes us "be" in a different way. Both the grandeur and the paradox of ancient philosophy are that it was, at one and the same time, conscious of the fact that wisdom is inaccessible, and convinced of the necessity of pursuing spiritual progress. In the words of Qµintillian : "We must . . . strive after that which is highest, as many of the ancient<> did. Even though they believed that no sage had ever yet been found, they nevertheless continued to teach the precepts of wisdom." ·1 The ancients knew that they would never be able to realize wisdom within themselves as a stable, definitive state, but they at least hoped to accede to it in certain privileged moments, and wisdom was the transcendent norm which guided their action.

Wisdom, then, was a way of life which brought peace of mind (alaraxia), inner freedom (11u1arkeia), and a cosmic consciousness. First and foremost, philrnmphy Jll'l'Mcrllcd itself as n therapeutic, intended to cure mankind's

266

Themes

anguish. This concept is stated explicitly in Xenocrates; and in Epicurus:5

"We must not suppose that any other object is to be gained from the knowledge of the phenomena of the sky . . . than peace of mind and a sure confidence." This was also a prominent idea for the Stoics6 and for the Skeptics, apropos of whom Sextus Empiricus7 utilizes the following splendid image:

Apelles, the famous painter, wished to reproduce the foam from a horse's mouth in a painting. He was not able to get it right, and decided to give up. So, he threw the sponge he used to wipe his brushes against the painting. When the sponge hit the painting, it produced nothing other than an imitation of a horse's foam. In the same way, the Skeptics start off like the other philosophers, seeking peace of mind in firmness and confidence in their judgments. When they do not achieve it, they suspend their judgment. No sooner do they they do this than, by pure chance, peace of mind accompanies the suspension of judgment, like a shadow follows a body.

Philosophy presented itself as a method for achieving independence and inner freedom (autarkeia), that state in which the ego depends only upon itself. We encounter this theme in Socrates,8 among the Cynics, in Aristotle

- for whom only the contemplative life is independent9 - in Epicurus,10 and among the Stoics. 1 1 Although their methodologies differ, we find in all philosophical schools the same awareness of the power of the human self to free itself from everything which is alien to it, even if, as in the case of the Skeptics, it does so via the mere refusal to make any decision .

In Epicureanism and in Stoicism, cosmic consciousness was added to these fundamental dispositions. By "cosmic consciousness," we mean the consciousness that we are a part of the cosmos, and the consequent dilation of our self throughout the infinity of universal nature. In the words of Epicurus'

disciple Metrodorus: "Remember that, although you are mortal and have only a limited life-span, yet you have risen, through the contemplation of nature, to the infinity of space and time, and you have seen all the past and all the future." 12 According to Marcus Aurelius: "The rational soul . . . travels through the whole universe and the void that surrounds it . . . it reaches out into the boundless extent of infinity, and it examines and contemplates the periodic rebirth of all things. " 13 At each instant, the ancient sage was conscious of living in the cosmos, and he placed himself in harmony with the cosmos.

In order better to understand in what way ancient philosophy could be a way of life, it is perhaps necessary to have recourse to the dist inct ion proposed by the Stoics, 1� between discourse a/10111 philosophy and pllilosopliy its1.•(/: For the Stoics, the parts of philosophy physici;, cthicH, nnd logic W(�rc nor, in

Philosophy as a Way of Life

267

fact, parts of philosophy itself, but rather parts of philosophical discourse. By this they meant that when it comes to teaching philosophy, it is necessary to set forth a theory of logic, a theory of physics, and a theory of ethics. The exigencies of discourse, both logical and pedagogical, require that these distinctions be made. But philosophy itself - that is, the philosophical way of life - is no longer a theory divided into parts, but a unitary act, which consists in living logic, physics, and ethics. In this case, we no longer study logical theory - that is, the theory of speaking and thinking well - we simply think and speak well. We no longer engage in theory about the physical world, but we contemplate the cosmos. We no longer theorize about moral action, but we act in a correct and just way.

Discourse aboul philosophy is not the same thing as philosophy. Polemon, one of the heads of the Old Academy, used to say:

we should exercise ourselves with realities, not with dialectical speculations, like a man who has devoured some textbook on harmonics, but has never put his knowledge into practice. Likewise, we must not be like those who can astonish their onlookers by their skill in syllogistic argumentation, but who, when it comes to their own lives, contradict their own teachings. 15

Five centuries later, Epictetus echoed this view: 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. 16

We can immediately foresee the consequences of this distinction, formulated by the Stoics but admitted by the majority of philosophers, concerning the relationship between theory and practice. An Epicurean saying puts it clearly: "Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man." 11 Philosophical theories are in the service of the philosophical life. That is why, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, they were reduced to a theoretical, systematic, highly concentrated nucleus, capable of exercising a strong psychological effect, and easy enough to handle so that it might always be kept close at hand (procheiro11).18 Philosophical discourse was not systematic because it wanted to provide a total, systematic explanation of the whole of reality. Rather, it was systematic in order that it might provide the mind with a small number of principles, tightly linked together, which derived greater persuasive force and mnemonic effectiveness precisely from suc:h systcm111ii111ion. Short sayings summed up, sometimes in striking form,

268

Themes

the essential dogmas, so that the student might easily relocate himself within the fundamental disposition in which he was to live.

Does the philosophical life, then, consist only in the application, at every moment, of well-studied theorems, in order to resolve life's problems? As a matter of fact, when we reflect on what the philosophical life implies, we realize that there is an abyss between philosophical theory and philosophizing as living action. To take a similar case: it may seem as though artists, in their creative activity, do nothing but apply rules, yet there is an immeasurable distance between artistic creation and the abstract theory of art. In philosophy, however, we are not dealing with the mere creation of a work of art: the goal is rather to transform ourselves. The act of living in a genuinely philosophical way thus corresponds to an order of reality totally different from that of philosophical discourse.

In Stoicism, as in Epicureanism, philosophizing was a continuous act, permanent and identical with life itself, which had to be renewed at each instant. For both schools, this act could be defined as an orientation of the attention.

In Stoicism, attention was oriented toward the purity of one's intentions.

In other words, its objective was the conformity of our individual will with reason, or the will of universal nature. In Epicureanism, by contrast, attention was oriented toward pleasure, which is, in the last analysis, the pleasure of existing. In order to realize this state of attention, however, a number of exercises were necessary: intense meditation on fundamental dogmas, the ever-renewed awareness of the finitude of life, examination of one's conscience, and, above all, a specific attitude toward time.

Both the Stoics and the Epicureans advised us to live in the present, letting ourselves be neither troubled by the past, nor worried by the uncertainty of the future. For both these schools of thought, the present sufficed for happiness, because it was the only reality which belongs to us and depends on us. Stoics and Epicureans agreed in recognizing the infinite value of each instant: for them, wisdom is just as perfect and complete in one instant as it is throughout an eternity. In particular, for the Stoic sage, the totality of the cosmos is contained and implied in each instant. Moreover, we not only can but we must be happy right 11ow. The matter is urgent, for the future is uncertain and death is a constant threat: "While we're waiting to live, life passes us by." 1'1 Such an attitude can only be understood if we assume that there was, in ancient philosophy, a sharp awareness of the infinite, incommensurable value of existence. Existing within the cosmos, in the unique reality of the cosmic event, was held to be infin itely precious.

Thus, as we have seen, philosophy in the 1-lellcnistic nnd Greek period rook on the form of a way of life, 1m arr of living, and a wny of hcing. Thi11, however, was not hinl( new: nncicn r llhilm;ophy hud lml t hi11 ch1l l'lll'tcr nt lc11111

Philosophy as a Way of Life

269

as far back as Socrates. There was a Socratic style of life (which the Cynics were to imitate), and the Socratic dialogue was an exercise which brought Socrates' interlocutor to put himself in question, to take care of himself, and to make his soul as beautiful and wise as possible.20 Similarly, Plato defined philosophy as a training for death, and the philosopher as the person who does not fear death, because he contemplates the totality of time and of being.21

It is sometimes claimed that Aristotle was a pure theoretician, but for him, too, philosophy was incapable of being reduced to philosophical discourse, or to a body of knowledge. Rather, philosophy for Aristotle was a quality of the mind, the result of an inner transformation. The form of life preached by Aristotle was the life according to the mind. 22

We must not, therefore, as is done all too often, imagine that philosophy was completely transformed during the Hellenistic period, whether after the Macedonian domination over the Greek cities, or during the imperial period.

On the one hand, it is not the case, as tenacious, widely-held cliches would have us believe, that the Greek city-state died after 330 BC, and political life along with it. Above all, the conception of philosophy as an art and form of living is not linked to political circumstances, or to a need for escape mechanisms and inner liberty, in order to compensate for lost political freedom. Already for Socrates and his disciples, philosophy was a mode of life, and a technique of inner living. Philosophy did not change its essence throughout the entire course of its history in antiquity.

In general, historians of philosophy pay little attention to the fact that ancient philosophy was, first and foremost, a way of life. They consider philosophy as, above all, philosophical discourse. How can the origins of this prejudice be explained? I believe it is linked to the evolution of philosophy itself in the Middle Ages and in modem times.

Christianity played a considerable role in this phenomenon. From its very beginnings - that is, from the second century AD on - Christianity had presented itself as a philosophy: the Christian way of lifc.23 Indeed, the very fact that Christianity was able to present itself as a philosophy confirms the assertion that philosophy was conceived in antiquity as a way of life. If to do philosophy was to live in conformity with the law of reason, so the argument went, the Christian was a philosopher, since he lived in conformity with the law of the Logos - divine reason.24 In order to present itself as a philosophy, Christianity was obliged to integrate elements borrowed from ancient philosophy. It had to make the Logos of the gospel according to John coincide with Stoic cosmic reason, and subsequently also with the Aristotelian or Platonic intellect. It also had to integrate philosophical spiritual exercises into Christian life. The phenomenon of integration appears very clearly in Clement of Alexnndrin, and was intensely developed in the monastic movement, where we find l hl.' S1oico/ Plntonic exercises of attention to oneself ( prosoche),

270

Themes

meditation, examination of conscience, and the training for death. We also re-encounter the high value accorded to peace of mind and impassibility.

The Middle Ages was to inherit the conception of monastic life as Christian philosophy, that is, as a Christian way of life. As Dom Jean Leclerq has written: "As much as in antiquity, philosophia in the monastic Middle Ages designates not a theory or a way of knowing, but a lived wisdom, a way of living according to reason." 25 At the same time, however, the medieval universities witnessed the elimination of the confusion which had existed in primitive Christianity between theology, founded on the rule of faith, and traditional philosophy, founded on reason. Philosophy was now no longer the supreme science, but the "servant of theology;" it supplied the latter with the conceptual, logical, physical, and metaphysical materials it needed.

The Faculty of Arts became no more than a preparation for the Faculty of Theology.

If we disregard, for the moment, the monastic usage of the word philnsophia, we can say that philosophy in the Middle Ages had become a purely theoretical and abstract activity. It was no longer a way of life. Ancient spiritual exercises were no longer a part of philosophy, but found themselves integrated into Christian spirituality. It is in this form that we encounter them once again in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. 26 Neoplatonic mysticism was prolonged into Christian mysticism, especially among such Rhineland Dominicans as Meister Eckhardt.

Thus, the Middle Ages saw a radical change in the content of philosophy as compared to antiquity. Moreover, from the medieval period on, theology and philosophy were taught in those universities which had been creations of the medieval church. Even though attempts have been made to use the word

"university" in reference to ancient educational institutions, it appears that neither the notion nor the reality of the university ever existed during antiquity, with the possible exception of the Orient near the end of the late antique period.

One of the characteristics of the university is that it is made up of professors who train professors, or professionals training professionals. Education was thus no longer directed toward people who were to be educated with a view to becoming fully developed human beings, but to specialists, in order that they might learn how to train other specialists. This is the danger of "Scholasticism," that philosophical tendency which began to be sketched at the end of antiquity, developed in the Middle Ages, and whose presence is still recognizable in philosophy today.

The scholastic university, dominated by theology, would continue to function up to the end of the eighteenth century, but from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, genuinely creative philosophical activity would develop outside the university, in the persons of Descartes, Spinoza, Mnk'branche, and Leibn iz. Philosophy l ltuH reconquered it11 lllllonomy vi11-1\-vis

Philosophy as a Way of Life

27 1

theology, but this movement - born as a reaction against medieval Scholasticism - was situated on the same terrain as the latter. In opposition to one kind of theoretical philosophical discourse, there arose yet another theoretical discourse.

From the end of the eighteenth century onward, a new philosophy made its appearance within the university, in the persons of Wolff, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. From now on, with a few rare exceptions like Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, philosophy would be indissolubly linked to the university. We see this in the case of Bergson, Husserl, and Heidegger. This fact is not without importance. Philosophy - reduced, as we have seen, to philosophical discourse - develops from this point on in a different atmosphere and environment from that of ancient philosophy. In modern university philosophy, philosophy.is obviously no longer a way of life or form of life

- unless it be the form of life of a professor of philosophy. Nowadays, philosophy's element and vital milieu is the state educational institution; this has always been, and may still be, a danger for its independence. In the words of Schopenhauer:

Generally speaking, university philosophy is mere fencing in front of a mirror. In the last analysis, its goal is to give students opinions which are to the liking of the minister who hands out the Chairs . . . . As a result, this state-financed philosophy makes a joke of philosophy. And yet, if there is one thing desirable in this world, it is to see a ray of light fall onto the darkness of our lives, shedding some kind of light on the mysterious enigma of our existence. 27

Be this as it may, modern philosophy is first and foremost a discourse developed in the classroom, and then consigned to books. It is a text which requires exegesis.

This is not to say that modern philosophy has not rediscovered, by different paths, some of the existential aspects of ancient philosophy. Besides, it must be added that these aspects have never completely disappeared. For example, it was no accident that Descartes entitled one of his ·works Meditations. They are indeed meditations - meditatio in the sense of exercise - according to the spirit of the Christian philosophy of St Augustine, and Descartes recommends that they be practiced over a certain period of time. Beneath its systematic, geometrical form, Spinoza's Ethics corresponds rather well to what systematic philosophical discourse could mean for the Stoics. One could say that Spinoza's discourse, nourished on ancient philosophy, teaches man how to transform, radically and concretely, his own being, and how to accede to beatitude. The figure of the sage, moreover, appears in the final lines of the Ethics: "the sage, in so far as he is regarded as such, is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, hut, hring conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a

272

Themes

certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of the spirit." 28 The philosophies of Nietzsche and of Schopenhauer are also invitations to radically transform our way of life. Both · men were, moreover, thinkers steeped in the tradition of ancient philosophy.

According to the Hegelian model, human consciousness has a purely historical character; and the only lasting thing is the action of the spirit itself, as it constantly engenders new forms. Under the influence of Hegel's method, the idea arose among Marx and the young Hegelians that theory cannot be detached from practice, and that it is man's action upon the world which gives rise to his representations. In the twentieth century, the philosophy of Bergson and the phenomenology of Husserl appeared less as systems than as methods for transforming our perception of the world. Finally, the movement of thought inaugurated by Heidegger and carried on by existentialism seeks -

in theory and in principle - to engage man's freedom. and action in the philosophical process, although, in the last analysis, it too is primarily a philosophical discourse.

One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much of a philosopher as they. A politician like Cato of Utica was considered a philosopher and even a sage, even though he wrote and taught nothing, because his life was perfectly Stoic. The same was true of Roman statesmen like Rutilius Rufus and Qµintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex, who practiced Stoicism by showing an exemplary disinterestedness and humanity in the administration of the provinces entrusted to them. These men were not merely examples of morality, but men who lived the totality of Stoicism, speaking like Stoics (Cicero tells us explicitly29 that they refused to use a certain type of rhetoric in the trials in which they testified), and looking at the world like Stoics; in other words, trying to live in accord with cosmic reason. They sought to realize the ideal of Stoic wisdom: a certain way of being human, of living according to reason, within the cosmos and along with other human beings.

What constituted the object of their efforts was not merely ethics, but the human being as a whole.

Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast, modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists.

Everyone is free to define philosophy as he likes, to choose whatever philosophy he wishes, or to invent - if he can - whatever philosophy he may think valid. Descartes and Spinoza still remained faithful to the ancient definition: for them, philosophy wai; "the 1m1cticc of wisdom. " 111 I f, following their cx11mplc, we believe t hat it iN eNNcntii1l fur m1111kind to try 111 11n:cdc lo

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273

the state of wisdom, we shall find in the ancient traditions of the various philosophical schools - Socratism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Skepticism - models of life, fundamental forms in accordance with which reason may be applied to human existence, and archetypes of the quest for wisdom. It is precisely this plurality of ancient schools that is precious. It allows us to compare the consequences of all the various possible fundamental attitudes of reason, and offers a privileged field for experimentation. This, of course, presupposes that we reduce these philosophies to their spirit and essence, detaching them from their outmoded cosmological or mythical elements, and disengaging from them the fundamental propositions that they themselves considered essential. This is not, by the way, a matter of choosing one or the other of these traditions to the exclusion of the others. Epicureanism and Stoicism, for example, correspond to two opposite but inseparable poles of our inner life: the demands of our moral conscience, and the flourishing of our joy in existing.31

Philosophy in antiquity was an exercise practiced at each instant. It invites us to concentrate on each instant of life, to become aware of the infinite value of each present moment, once we have replaced it within the perspective of the cosmos. The exercise of wisdom entails a cosmic dimension. Whereas the average person has lost touch with the world, and does not see the world qua world, but rather treats the world as a means of satisfying his desires, the sage never ceases to have the whole constantly present to mind. He thinks and acts within a cosmic perspective. He has the feeling of belonging to a whole which goes beyond the limits of his individuality. In antiquity, this cosmic consciousness was situated in a different perspective from that of the scientific knowledge of the universe that could be provided by, for instance, the science of astronomical phenomena. Scientific knowledge was objective and mathematical, whereas cosmic consciousness was the result of a spiritual exercise, which consisted in becoming aware of the place of one's individual existence within the great current of the cosmos and the perspective of the whole, Ioli se inserens mundo, in the words of Seneca.32 This exercise was situated not in the absolute space of exact science, but in the lived experience of the concrete, living, and perceiving subject.

We have here to do with two radically different kinds of relationship to the world. We can understand the distinction between these two kinds by recalling the opposition pointed out by HusserP3 between the rotation of the earth, affirmed and proved scientifically, and the earth's immobility, postulated both by our day-to-day experience and by transcendental/ constitutive consciousness. For the latter, the earth is the immobile ground of our life, the reference point of our thought, or, as Merleau-Ponty put it, "the womb of our time and of our space." :w In the same way, nature and the cosmos are, for our livintit llcrccption, the infinite horizon of our lives, the enigma of our

274

Themes

existence which, as Lucretius said, inspires us with ho"or et divina voluptas, a shudder and a divine pleasure. As Goethe put it in admirable verses: The best part of man is the shudder.

However dearly the world makes him pay for this emotion, He is seized by amazement when he feels the Prodigious. 35

Ancient philosophical traditions can provide guidance in our relationship to ourselves, to the cosmos, and to other human beings. In the mentality of modem historians, there is no cliche more firmly anchored, and more difficult to uproot, than the idea according to which ancient philosophy was an escape mechanism, an act of falling back upon oneself. In the <."Ilse of the Platonists, it was an escape into the heaven of ideas, into the refusal of politics in the case of the Epicureans, into the submission to fate in the case of the Stoics.

This way of looking at things is, in fact, doubly false. In the first place, ancient philosophy was always a philosophy practiced in a group, whether in the case of the Pythagorean communities, Platonic love, Epicurean friendship, or Stoic spiritual direction. Ancient philosophy required a common effort, community of research, mutual assistance, and spiritual support. Above all, philosophers - even, in the last analysis, the Epicureans - never gave up having an effect on their cities, transforming society, and serving their citizens, who frequently accorded them praise, the vestiges of which are preserved for us by inscriptions. Political ideas may have differed from school to school, but the concern for having an effect on city or state, king or emperor, always remained constant. This is particularly true of Stoicism, and can easily be seen in many of the texts of Marcus Aurelius. Of the three tasks which must be kept in mind at each instant, alongside vigilance over one's thoughts and consent to the events imposed by destiny, an essential place is accorded to the duty always to act in the service of the human community; that is, to act in accordance with justice. This last requirement is, moreover, intimately linked to the two others. It is one and the same wisdom which conforms itself to cosmic wisdom and to the reason in which human beings participate. This concern for living in the service of the human community, and for acting in accordance with justice, is an essential element of every philosophical life. In other words, the philosophical life normally entails a communitary engagement. This last is probably the hardest part to carry out.

The trick is to maintain oneself on the level of reason, and not allow oneself to be blinded by political passions, anger, resentments, or prejudices. To he sure, there is an equilibrium - almost impossible to achieve - between the inner peace brought about by wisdom, and the passions to which the sight of the injustices, sufferings, and misery of mankind cannot help but give rise.

Wisdom, however, consists in precisely such nn equilibrium, nnd inner l'cnce is indispensable for cnicnciuu11 act ion .

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Such is the lesson of ancient philosophy: an invitation to each human being to transform himself. Philosophy is a conversion, a transformation of one's way of being and living, and a quest for wisdom. This is not an easy matter.

As Spinoza wrote at the end of the Ethics:

If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. It must indeed be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were easy to find, and could without great labour be found, that it should be neglected by almost everybody? But all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.36

NOTES

Philo Judaeus, On the Special Laws, 2, #-8.

2 Cf. above.

3 Quintillian, Oratori,al Institutions, bk I, Preface, 19-20.

4 Xenocrates, fr. 4 Heinze.

5 Epicurus, Letter to Pythodes, §85.

6 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 3 1 .

7 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Py"ho11ism, I , 28.

8 Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, 2, 14.

9 Aristotle, Ni,omad1ean Ethi,s, 1 0, 7, 1 1 78b3.

10 Epicurus, Gnomologicum Vati,anum, §77.

1 1 Epictetus, Dis,ourses, 3, 13, 7.

12 Cf. above.

13 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 1 1 , 1 .

14 E.g. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 7, 39.

15 Ibid, 4, 1 8.

16 Epictetus, Dis,ourses, 3, 2 1 , 4--6.

1 7 Cf. below.

18 On the concept of pro,heiron, see above.

19 Seneca, Letters lo L1uilius, I, 1 .

20 Plato, Apology, 29e 1 ff.

21 Plato, Republic, 486a.

22 Aristotle, Ni,oma,hean Ethi(S, 1 0, 7, 1 1 78aff.

23 Cf. below.

24 Justin, Apology, I, 46, 1-4.

25 J. Leclerq, "Pour l'histoire de l'exprcssion 'philosophic chri:tienne'," Melanges de S,ience Religieuse 9 ( 1 952), p. 22 1 .

26 Cf. below.

27 A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representatio11, trans. E.F.J.

Payne, 2 vols, Indian Hills CO 1958, London/Toronto 1909, ch. 1 7, vol. 2, pp.

1 63-4.

28 Spinozn, fl't/1ir1, Pnrt 5, Prop. 42, p. 270 Elwcs.

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Themes

29 Cicero, On Oratory, I, 229ff.

30 Rene Descartes, Principii philosophiae, Foreword to Picot.

31 See the references from Kant, Goethe, and Jaspers cited above.

32 "Plunging oneself into the totality of the world." Seneca, Lellers lo Lucilius, 66, 6.

33 E. Husserl, "Grundlegende Untersuchungcn zum phiinomenologiscen Urspung der Riiumlichkeit der Natur" (= Umsturz der Kopernikanischen Lehre), in Marvin Faber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memo')' of E. Husserl, Cambridge MA 1 940, p. 1 32.

34 M. Merleau-Ponty, Eloge de la pliilosoplzie et autres essais, Paris 1 953, p. 285.

35 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, 6272ff.

36 Spinoza, Ethics, pp. 270-1 .

Postscript: An Interview with Pierre

Hadot

M. C. Pierre Hadot, you were born in Reims, France, in 1922. What were the earliest and strongest influences on your spiritual and intellectual development?

P.H. I received a very intense Catholic religious education. I gradually became detached from it, but it played a considerable role in my formation, both because of the first impressions it made upon me, and because of the problems it raised for me.

The first philosophy I came across was Thomism, which I encountered especially in the books of Jacques Maritain; thus it was a kind of Aristotelianism tinged with Neoplatonism. I think it was a good thing for me to have begun my philosophical studies with a highly systematic, structured philosophy, which was based on a long ancient and medieval tradition. It gave me a lasting distaste for philosophies which don't clearly define the vocabulary they use. Besides, it was thanks to Thomism, and especially to Etienne Gilson,! that I discovered very early on the fundamental distinction between essence and existence, which is dear to existentialism.

At the time, I was very much influenced by Newman's Grammar of Assent.

Newman shows in this work that it's not the same thing to give one's assent to an affirmation which one understands in a purely abstract way, and to give one's assent while engaging one's entire being, and "realizing" - in the English sense of the word - with one's heart and one's imagination, just what this affirmation means for us. This distinction between real and notional assent underlies my research on spiritual exercises.

My religious education also made me come face to face with the phenomenon of mysticism, which I probably didn't understand at the time, but which has continued to fascinate me all my life.

We would need a very long discussion if we were seriously to approach the problem posed by the survival of Christianity in the modern world. From the point of view of my uwn personal experience, I can say that one of the great

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difficulties of Christianity - I'm thinking here of the textual criticism of the Bible - was what revealed to me a more general problem, which could be formulated in the following terms: is modem man still able to understand the texts of antiquity, and live according to them? Has there been a definitive break between the contemporary world and ancient tradition?

While studying at the Sorbonne in 1946 and 1947, I discovered Bergson, Marxism, and existentialism, three models which have had a strong influence on my conception of philosophy. Bergsonism was not an abstract, conceptual philosophy, but rather took the form of a new way of seeing the world, and of transforming one's perception. Existentialism - Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau

Ponty, Albert Camus; but also Gabriel Marcel - made me become aware of my simultaneous engagement in the world of experience, in perception, in the experience of my body, and in social and political life. Marxism, finally, proposed a theory of philosophy in which theory and praxis were intimately linked, and where daily life was never separated from theoretical reflection. I found this aspect of Marxism very seductive, but economic materialism was profoundly alien to me. I also had other influences: Montaigne, whom I have been reading since my adolescence, and the poet Rilke; for a while, I thought about writing my thesis on "The Relationship between Rilke and Heidegger."

M. C. Your career has always taken place more or less on the outskirts of the French intellectual "establishment." You took your diploma from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 196 1 , and you then became director of studies at the same institution, where you remained from 1964 on. In 1 982, you were elected to the chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought at the College de France. Now, in France, this is the most prestigious position which a historian of philosophy can obtain, and arrived there without

passing through the almost obligatory stage of the

Normale Superieure,

or any other of the so-called "great schools."

Did these somewhat unusual circumstances contribute anything to your conception of philosophy? I'm thinking in particular of your remarks on the negative influence which the university has exerted on philosophy.

P.H. My remarks on the negative influence which the university has exerted on philosophy have nothing to do with the fact that my career has taken place outside the university. Generally speaking, I admired the professors who taught me philosophy at the Sorbonne, from either an intellectual or a human point of view - or both. They devoted themselves to the task of teaching with exemplary dedication, and they had a highly-developed moral conscience. I'm thinking here of men like Emile Brehier,2 R. Bayer, jean Wahl,3 Paul Ricoeur, Maurice de Gandillac,• Jean Hyppolite,5 R. Le Senne, Louis Lavelle, Maurice Merlcau-Ponty, and j. Vuillemin.

The idea of a conflict between philosophy and the teaching of philosophy goes back to my youth . I think I came across it in C:h11rlcs Pc((uy, who said :

"Philosophy doesn't go to philosophy d111111c11," 1md l:crt11inly in j&1ClJUC11

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279

Maritain, who wrote: "Thomist metaphysics is called 'Scholastic' after its most severe trial. Scholastic pedagogy is its own worst enemy: it always has to triumph over its intimate adversary, the professor." Ever since I started doing philosophy, I've always believed that philosophy was a concrete act, which changed our perception of the world, and our life: not the construction of a system. It is a life, not a discourse.

M. C. Your own philosophical trajectory is rather remarkable. To begin with, in the 1950s, you wrote reviews of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Berdiaev. At the same time, you were making a name for yourself on the one hand in Latin Patristics and textual criticism, and on the other as a specialist on Plotin us. In 19 57, you presented a remarkable paper at the meeting of the Fondation Hardt devoted to Plotinus; this was followed, in 1 963 by your first book, Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision.6 In 1 96 1 , in collaboration with Paul Henry, you had translated and given a copious commentary on the theological treatises of the Latin church Father Marius Victorious. The year 1 968 saw the publication of your monumental work Porphyre et Victorinus,1 in which you gave a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of a commentary on Plato's Parmenides, which you attributed for the first time to Porphyry of Tyre. But this wasn't all; the work contained a summa of Neoplatonic metaphysics, in which you covered the immensely complex, hierarchic conceptual constructions of post-Plotinian metaphysics. After you were named to the College de France, you devoted your attention mainly to the seemingly more simple philosophies of Stoicism and Epicureanism, as well as continuing your study of Plotinus.

Perhaps your career could be summed up as follows: beginning with the bone-dry discipline of textual criticism, you then moved on to master the ontological complexities of Neoplatonism; surely among the most complicated creations of the human spirit. Then, however, it's as if you had turned back, in a way, to your point of departure: from this point on, it's no longer the great speculative edifices which occupy your attention, but those philosophers who teach us how to live: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucretius, and, of course, your beloved Plotinus. Wouldn't you say that your own philosophical trajectory can serve as a paradigm for the "return to simplicity," the importance of which you have stressed in your teaching?

P.H. I'd be inclined to look at my intellectual and spiritual itinerary somewhat differently. From 1942 to 1946, I was only interested in metaphysics and in mysticism, in all their forms: Christian first and foremost, but also Arabic, Hindu, and Neoplatonist. It was my interest in mysticism that led me to Plotinus, and to the great Plotinian specialist Paul Henry. I went to see him in 1 946, so that he could guide me in my Plotinian studies. He was interested, above all, in the influence of Plotinus on St Augustine, and on Christianity in general; he had written a book on the subject entitled Plotin et / 'OcciJmt." He ndvised me to study Marius Victorious, in the belief that I

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would find, in the almost incomprehensible Latin of this ecclesiastical author, some translated fragments of Plotinus. He suggested that we edit the theological works of Victorious together, leaving the translation and the commentary up to me. Thus, he was the one who initiated me to textual criticism and philological studies; being a pure philosopher, I had had no preparation in either of these fields, and the only knowledge I had of Greek and Latin was what I had been taught by my secondary-school teachers.

All this was a long way from mysticism. I can say that I worked for twenty years on a subject that I had not chosen; I was interested in it, of course, but not fascinated by it. It was then that I learned how to read Latin manuscripts and, thanks to Paul Henry, how to prepare a critical edition. I also tried to understand, and explain as well as I could, the text of Victorious. My book Porphyre et Victorinus was the result of this exegetical work, and in it I showed that Victorious was the disciple of Porphyry rather than of Plotinus.

What attracted me in Wittgenstein - whom I first read around 1 960 was

-

the problem of mysticism, which he mentions in the last pages of the Tractalus. My reading of Wittgenstein was very stimulating for me, and it brought about my lasting interest in the question of "language games," which are, he tells us, "forms of life." These ideas had a great deal of influence on my subsequent studies of ancient philosophy.

I returned to the mysticism of Plotinus in 1963, when Georges and Angele de Radkowski asked me to write the little book entitled Plotin ou la simplicite du regard.