Hadot On The Philosophical Way of Life

Related:

Don’t Forget to Live: Goethe and the Tradition of Spiritual Exercises.

What Is Contemplation? An Interview With Michael Chase.

Pierre Hadot, whose inaugural lecture to the chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought at the College de France we are publishing here, is one of the most significant and wide-ranging historians of ancient philosophy writing today. His work, hardly known in the English-reading world except among specialists, exhibits that rare combination of prodigious historical scholarship and rigorous philosophical argumentation that upsets any preconceived distinction between the history of philosophy and philosophy proper. 

. . .Even someone who neither wrote nor taught anything was considered a philosopher, if his life was, for instance, perfectly Stoic.There were men who lived all of Stoicism, who spoke like Stoics and who saw the world like Stoics. They attempted to realize the ideal of Stoic wisdom, a certain way of being a man; their whole being, and not only their moral behavior, was involved in trying to live a particular kind of philosophical life. Such a way of life was the ancient embodiment of philosophy. “Ancient philosophy proposes an art of living to man; modern philosophy, on the contrary, presents itself above all as the construction of a technical language reserved for specialists” (ES, p. 225).

By focusing on the askesis of philosophy, on the practice of spiritual exercises, and by linking this practice to a specific representation of the goals and motivations of philosophy, Hadot forces us to rethink our own modern presumptions in reading ancient texts (see ES, pp. 52, 56-57, 222). But Hadot’s interest in ancient spiritual exercises is not merely a literary or historical one, since he recognizes in this work of the self on itself an essential aspect of the philosophical life: “philosophy is an art of life, a style of life that engages the whole of existence” (ES, p. 230). 

We must discern the philosopher’s underlying intention, which was not to develop a discourse which had its end in itself but to act upon souls. In fact, each assertion must be understood from the perspective of the effect it was intended to produce in the soul of the auditor or reader. Whether the goal was to convert, to console, to cure, or to exhort the audience, the point was always and above all not to communicate to them some ready-made knowledge but to form them. In other words, the goal was to learn a type of know-how; to develop a habitus, or new capacity to judge and to criticize; and to transform—that is, to change people’s way of living and of seeing the world.

. . .The reader will also no doubt wish to ask if I think the ancient concept of philosophy might still exist today. I think I have already answered this question, at least in part, by showing how many philosophers of the modern period, from Montaigne to the present, have considered philosophy not as a simple theoretical discourse but as a practice, an askesis, and a transformation of the self. This concept is therefore still “actual” and can always be reactualized. For my part, I would put the question differently: Isn’t there an urgent need to rediscover the ancient notion of the “philosopher”—that living, choosing philosopher without whom the notion of philosophy has no meaning? Why not define the philosopher not as a professor or a writer who develops a philosophical discourse, but, in accordance with the concept which was constant in antiquity, as a person who leads a philosophical life? Shouldn’t we revise the habitual use of the word “philosopher” (which usually refers only to the theoretician) so that it applies to the person who practices philosophy, just as Christians can practice Christianity without being theorists or theologians? Do we ourselves have to construct a philosophical system before we can live philosophically? This does not mean, of course, that we needn’t reflect upon our own experience, as well as that of philosophers of both past and present.

. . .Throughout the history of ancient philosophy, and in all the schools, we encounter the same warnings against the danger the philosopher incurs, if he thinks his philosophical discourse can be sufficient unto itself without being linked to a philosophical life. Plato already sensed this ever-present danger when, in order to justify his decision to go to Syracuse, he wrote: “I was afraid that I would see myself as a fine talker, incapable of resolutely undertaking an action.”

Another danger, the worst of all, is to believe that one can do without philosophical reflection. The philosophical way of life must be justified in rational, motivated discourse, and such discourse is inseparable from the way of life. Nevertheless, we have to reflect critically on the ancient, modern, and oriental discourses which justify a given way of life. We must try to render explicit the reasons we act in such-and-such a way, and reflect on our experience and that of others. Without such reflection, the philosophical life risks sinking into vapid banality, “respectable” feelings, or deviance. To be sure, we cannot wait until we have read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in order to live as philosophers. Nevertheless, living as a philosopher also means to reflect, to reason, to conceptualize in a rigorous, technical way—or, as Kant used to say, “to think for oneself.” The philosophical way of life is a never-ending quest.

Finally, and despite the tenacious cliches which still clog philosophy manuals, we must never forget that ancient philosophical life was always intimately linked to the care of others, and that this demand is inherent in the philosophical life, especially when it is lived in the contemporary world. In the words of Georges Friedmann: “A modern sage—if such existed—would not turn away from the human sewer, as so many disgusted aesthetes have done. That said, however, Friedmann found the problems in the relations between ancient philosophers and the State almost insoluble. We must agree, for the “engaged” philosopher always runs the risk of letting himself be swept along by political passions and hatreds. This is why it was vital, in Friedmann’s view, that in order to improve the human situation we concentrate our strength “on limited groups, even on individuals,” and “on the spiritual effort (the transformation of a few),” which, he thought, would eventually be communicated and diffused. The philosopher is cruelly aware of his solitude and impotence in a world which is torn between two states of unconsciousness: that which derives from the idolatry of money, and that which results in the face of the misery and suffering of billions of human beings. In such conditions, the philosopher will surely never be able to attain the absolute serenity of the sage. To do philosophy will therefore also mean to suffer from this isolation and this impotence. But ancient philosophy also teaches us not to resign ourselves, but to continue to act reasonably and try to live according to the norm constituted by the Idea of wisdom, whatever happens, and even if our action seems very limited to us. In the words of Marcus Aurelius: “Do not wait for Plato’s Republic, but be happy if one little thing leads to progress, and reflect on the fact that what results from such a little thing is not, in fact, so very little.”