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Edited and with an Introduction
by Arnold |. Davidson

Philosophy as a Way of Life

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Philosophy as a Way of Life

Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault

Pierre Hadot

Edited with an introduction by
Arnold I. Davidson

Translated by
Michael Chase

Il
BLACKWELL

Ontord UK 6 Cambridae USA

Copyright © Pierre Hadot, 1995
English translation © 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 Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique
by Etudes Augustiniennes, Paris 1987 (2nd edition)

English edition first published 1995
Reprinted 1996 (twice), 1997, 1998, 1999

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hadot, Pierre.

[Exercices spirituels et philosophie 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 @lk. paper) - ISBN 0-631-18033-8 @bk.:alk. paper)
1. Philosophy. 2.Spiritual exercises - History. I. Davidson, Amold Ira.
II. Title
B105.S66H3313 1995
100-dc20 94-28788 CIP

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 ptEhrhardt
by Pure Tech Corporation, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Comwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Contents

Translator’s Note

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of
Ancient Philosophy Amold I. Davidson

Part I Method
1 Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy
2 Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes

Part II Spiritual Exercises
3 Spiritual Exercises
4 Ancient Spiritual Exercises and “Christian Philosophy”

Part III Figures
5 The Figure of Socrates
6 Marcus Aurclius
7 Reflections on the Idea of the “Cultivation of the Self”

Part IV Themes
8 “Only the Present is our Happiness”: The Value of the Present
Instant in Goethe and in Ancient Philosophy
9 The View from Above
1.) The Sage and the World
11 Philosophy as a Way of Life

Postscript. An Interview with Pierre Hadot
Select Bibliography
Index

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,' 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.? 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:

1 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 translators 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 translators; his own translations
consequently differ, sometimes fundamentally, from the existing English
versions.’

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
book.

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
Hadow’s thought.

NOTES

1 CP above
2 Among the resttlas of his work on thin stage of his method are Hadot's projects

vill

Translator's Note

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

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.

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 Quasten 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 Church. A New Translation, Washington DC.

GCS: Die Griechischen Christlichen Scriftsteller der Ersten Jahrhunderte, ed.
Kommission fiir Spatantike Religionsgeschichte der Deutschen Akademie
der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.

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

LCL: Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge MA.

PG: Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.P. Migne, Paris 1844-55.

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

SC: Sources chrétiennes, Paris 1940ff.

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

Introduction: Pierre 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, Fou-
cault’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 history “of philosophy
and philosophy proper. Expressed in a lucid prose whose clarity and precision
ure 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
all of us interested in the history of philosophical thought.

Pierre Hadot has spent most of his academic career at the Ecole pratique
des Hautes Etudes and at the Collége de France. Appointed a directeur d'études
of the fifth section of the Ecole in 1964, Hadot occupied a chair in Latin
Patristics, 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
thought, the title of his chair was changed to “Theologies and Mysticisms of
I lellenistic Greece and the End of Antiquity.” Hadot gave courses on Plotinus
and Marcus Aurclius, but also began to devote increased attention to more
general themes in the history of ancient philosophical and theological thought.
In Mebruary 1983 he assumed the chair of the History of Hellenistic and
Roman Thought at the Collége de France. He has published translations of
wid commentarics on Marius Victorinus, Porphyry, Ambrose, Plotinus, and
Marcon Aurclius. [His essays on ancient philosophy range over virtually every

2 Introduction

topic of major significance, and constitute nothing less than a gencral
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, recognizing 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 Exercices spirituels
et philosophie antique, originally published in 1987 and now out of print.' 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 Evxercices spirituels.
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 cssays 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 Collége de
France, Hadot wrote:

The problems, the themes, the symbols from which Western thought
has developed werc 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.’

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 faced with a

Introduction 3

vast phenomenon of transposition, a gigantic meta-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.} 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 in 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 sclfsame.” He thus discovers here a
metaphysics of identity and divine immutability, interpreting the expression
as meaning “in him who is identical with himself.” * 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 specifi-
cally, the use of texts from Plotinus that relate to the detachment from the body
und 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 Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs. But in this encounter between
Plotinian and Origenean mysticism, Plotinian mysticism loses its specificity. One
doves 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
ecstasy. Such texts concerning the mysticism of the One are translated by
Ambrose in such a way that they lose this meaning and are related to the union
al the soul with the Logos. So Hadot speaks of “a Plotinian ascesis put in the
wervice of an Origenean mysticism that is a mysticism of Jesus.”’ Thus Ambrose
can identify the Good and Christ, since with respect to the Good he brings in
Paul's Colossians I: 20, which does indeed concern Christ. Yet, as Hadot remarks,
“this identification is absolutely foreign to the whole economy of the Plotinian
wystem.”* Borrowings, contresens, the introduction of a logic into texts that had a
difterent lagic’ = this whole phenomenon is central to the development of
ancient thought, and, as Fladot mukes clear, not to ancient thought alonc.

4 Introduction

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 complete-
ly 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.'®
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.'! In the
case of some individuals one could legitimately wonder whether they were
pagans or Christians. The Hymns of Syncesius could be considered as having
been inspired by the Christian trinitarian doctrine or, on the contrary, as a
representative of a pagan theology that onc could link to the tradition of
Porphyry.”

More historically subtle is the process that Hadot has labeled “contamina-
tion,” that is, “the process according to which paganism or Christianity were
lead to adopt the ideas or the behaviors characteristic of their adversary.” 3
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 Iirst and Second God with the Christian
doctrine of the Father and the Son and their relations." 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. '5

Most important from a philosophical 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.”'" Not only was

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.'? 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 commen-
taries on the text.!8

‘I'he exegetical phase of the history of ancient philosophy was characterized
by the tact that the principal scholarly exercise was the explication of a text.
l’xegetical 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.” " For the philosopher during this
period, truth is founded on the authority of this tradition, and it is given in
fhe texts af the founders of the tradition.

Perhaps the most extraordinary instance of the weight and pressures of
exegetical thought is to be found in the example, extensively discussed by
IHladot, of the appearance of the distinction between “being” as an infinitive
(ta einai) and “being” as a participle (to on). In a series of articles Hadot has
whown that this distinction arose as a result of the need to give a coherent
exegesis of Plato’s second hypothesis in the Parmenides, “If the one is, how is
it possible that it should not participate in being [ousia]?” 2° The Neoplatonist
exegenis of the Parmenides required that cach of Plato’s hypotheses correspond
to a different hypostasis; thus, this second hypothesis corresponded to the
accond One. Since this second One must participate in ousia, 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 under-
stood to be participation in an ousia in itself which transcends the participat-
ing 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 litcral text became reconcilable only with
difficulty with what he believed to be Plato’s meaning.” 2! 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 spcaks 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 einat) “not in the sense of a subject but in the sense of an activity
of being, considered as pure and without subject.”?? Thus, as Hadot shows,
we can see appear for the first time in the history of onto-thcology a
remarkable distinction between being as an infinitive and being as a participle.
Being as an infinitive charactcrizes the first One, pure absolutely indetermin-
ate 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, joincd 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? The result,
according to Hadot, was “certainly a misinterpretation, but a creative
misinterpretation, sprung from the very difficulties of the excgetical
method.”*4 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 believes

Introduction 7

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

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.””

In his inaugural lecture to the Collége 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 philosophia,
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.”

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.” 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.
l.iterary structure and conceptual structure must never be separated.”
Describing his method of study for Latin Patristics, Hadot has invoked an
exceptionally illuminating analogy, comparing what happens in these studies
to what takes place in those curious paintings where

onc sces 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
one looks at the whole painting from a certain angle the landscape
transforms itself into a hidden figure, a face or a human body, and one
understands then that the house or the tree was not there out of pure

8 Introduction

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.?!

This description brilliantly captures the significance of placing the work
studied in the framework of its literary genre, the transformation in under-
standing brought about when one moves from the insignificant and arbi-
trary 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,”*? 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.
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
3 or . 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 - fs Peter’s monogram can also be
adjoined to a monogram for Christ (Q), so that we find on wall g of the
Vatican this kind of graffiti, YF, expressing the indissoluble union of Peter
and Christ.*s 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 I.1) wishes life in Christ and
Peter to the deceased. The bivalence of the Greek rho and the Latin pi is used
to superpose the monogram of Christ (f) with the letters P£ thus forming,

Introduction 9

, which is inserted within the preposition in.* 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 significance.” 7

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 byiera 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.** A funereal
stele, datable from the first century AD, of a deceased man named “Pythago-
ras” 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 are scenes personifying virtuc, to the left
are 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.” *? It is indeed casy 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
difference between recognizing profound significance and trivial error or
arbitrariness will depend on whether the true form has escaped us or has
transformed our understanding."

Onc 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, ancient texts, like many modern ones, will exhibit their structure more
or less on the surface. And then when we fail to discern this structure, we
conclude, as Hadot remarks, that ancient authors “write badly, that the sequence
of ideas lacks coherence and connection.” * That the assumption on which this
conclusion is based is false, that the structure of even extended ancient
philosophical texts may not lic casily open to view, is clearly shown by Hadot’s
own discovery of the underlying structure or fundamental form of Marcus
Aurelius’ Meditations. Indeed, Hadot’s description of the experience of seeing a
text transform itkelf once one has discovered its hidden form very compellingly
reprenents, yeurs before the fact, his own discovery about Marcus Aurelius’ text.

10 Introduction

a
ad

The first printed edition of Marcus Aurclius’ 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."
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 accompa-
nied the Meditations throughout its history, always trying to account for the
disorder and haphazardousness of this work." 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 empcror-philosopher.” “

Hadot has recognized that Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations belong to the type
of writing known as Aypomnemata, personal notcs 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 1]

as consisting of personal notes.*”? Marcus wrote day to day without trying to
compose a work intended for the public; his Meditations are for the most part
exhortations to himself, a dialogue with himself." Morcover, his thoughts and
reflections were written down according to “a very refined literary form,
because it was preciscly the perfection of the formulas that could assure them
their psychological efficacy, their power of persuasion.” ” Thus, although
Marcus’ work belongs to the literary genre of personal notes written day to
day (Aypomnemata), they are also quite distinct from other examples of such
notes. As Hadot concludes, “it appears indeed that unlike other Aypomnemata,
the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are ‘spiritual exercises,’ practiced accord-
ing to a certain method.” ©

Spiritual exercises are practiced in the Meditations according to a method,
Hadot has written, “as rigorous, as codified, as systematic as the famous
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius.” *' And the key to this method, and thus
to the Meditations, is to be found in the three philosophical topo: distinguished
by Kpictetus. Epictetus distinguished three acts or functions of the soul -
judgment, desire, and inclination or impulsion. Since each of these activities
of the soul depends on us, we can discipline them, we can choose to judge or
not to judge and to judge in a particular way, we can choose to desire or not
to desire, to will or not to will. And so to cach of these activities corresponds
Woapiritual exercise, a discipline of representation and judgment, a discipline
of desire, and a discipline of inclinations or impulses to action.” 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.*> 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.”*4 Thus Epictetus’ three topoi are three lived spiritual exercises.

Marcus Aurelius took up these three fopoi 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 topo: that Epictetus distinguishes in his Discour-
ses. 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 fopoi, or two of them, or three of them.*

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 judg-
ment 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.

Each maxim, aphorism, sentence of the Meditations is an exercise of actualiz-
ation and assimilation of one or more of the three disciplines of life.*” 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 onc of reading a rigorously structured
philosophical work.

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 Meditations are

Introduction 13

traditional Stoic spiritual exercises, we must be very prudent about drawing
conclusions concerning the personal psychological states of Marcus. 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. 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 philo-
sophy . . . [the Meditations] are an exercise realized according to definite
rules; they imply...a pre-existent outline which the emperor-
philosopher 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.”

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.* 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 in-
fluence himself, to produce an effect in himself.

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.

These foods and dishes...are only dead fish, birds and pigs; this
Falernian wine is a bit of grape-juice; this purple-edged toga is some
sheep’s hairs dipped in the blood of shellfish; as for sex, it is the rubbing
together of pieces of gut, followed by the spasmodic secretion of a little bit
of slime.”

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.” 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.” ® 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.°

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.™
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.” ”

Marcus is not giving us his personal perception of reality, from which we
may then deduce conclusions about his sensibility or characteristic disposi-
tions. 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.” 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 valuc, 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 15

that Nature looks at them. ... This inner attitude by which the soul
does not make differences, but remains indifferent before things,
corresponds to magnanimity of the soul [grandeur d’ame].”

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.”

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
Confessions, “the modern self rises into view in history.” 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.”’* 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.”’> The “I” of Augustine’s Confessions continues the “TI” of Job, David,
or Paul, that is, Augustine “identifies himself with the se// who speaks in the
Scriptures. Ultimately the human se// who speaks in the Bible is Adam, a sinner
without doubt, but converted by God and renewed in Christ.” * Thus, following
Pierre Courcelle, Hadot recognizes that the Confessions is essentially a theological
work, in which cach scene may assume a symbolic meaning. So “in this literary
genre... it is extremely difficult to distinguish between a symbolic enactment
and an account of a historical event.” ”

16 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.”* 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.”” 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, 13), 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 appears thus as an upside-down
imitation of the divine reality.”

Instead of engaging in a psychological interpretation of Augustine’s adol-
escence, Hadot’s reading allows us to sec that we are 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.” *! 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 sccond state it received the illumination
of the Fiat /ux.*? 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 Confessions
to describe the chaos of Gen 1, 2.”8 Furthermore, in Book XIII the images
of darkness and fluctuation serve precisely to describe “the state of the soul

Introduction 17

still ‘formless,’ before its conversion to God.” * Thus Hadot can claim that
“the idea of the passage of the creature from a formless state to a state of
formation and of conversion dominates the whole work.” ® fn Book XIII the
biblical account of creation becomes the description of the phases and stages
of the salvation of humanity." 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.” * 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
Confessions. 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.”*

Hadot’s insistence on not separating conceptual structure from literary
structure also played a significant role in his interpretation of Wittgenstcin’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 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the Philosophical Investigations and
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics™ In his 1959 discussion of
the later Wittgenstein, Hadot argucs, quite remarkably, that the goal of
Philosophical Investigations requires a certain literary genre, that one cannot
dissociate the form of the /nvestigations 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 . . . Wittgenstein continues [from the Tractatus to
the Investigations]... to devote himself to the same mission: to bring a
radical and 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 . . . [Philo-
sophical [nvestigations| wishes to act little by little on our spirit, like a

18 Introduction

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

At the time Hadot was writing about Wittgenstein, and even today, so many
philosophers ignored the way Philosophical Investigations 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.”
As early as 1960 Hadot wrote that in ancient philosophy “more than theses,
one teaches ways, methods, spiritual exercises,” that “dogmas” have only a
secondary aspect. 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.” 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.” 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.”®* 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 situating oneself in one of these traditions
predetermines the very content of the doctrine that is expressed in this
language game.”” By overcoming the temptation to see philosophical lan-
guage 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 (/e sens ‘‘voulu’’ par l'auteur),
of these ancient texts.”* More often than not, as is evident from the examples

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 philosophical 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.*? On the one hand, like his predecessors and contempor-
aries, 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 organiza-
tion of language, comprised of propositions having as their object the
universe, human society, and language itself.”'™ 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.” '®! 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.'

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.” '%
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 trans-
mission.” ! 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.” ® All of ancient philosophy believed in what
Hadot once called, thinking of Plato’s Phaedrus, the “ontological value of the
spoken word”; this living and animated discourse was not principally intended
to transmit information, but “to produce a certain psychic effect in the reader

20 Introduction

or listener.” ' 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.” '!”

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.'®

This is one reason why, for Hadot, to philosophize is to learn how to
dialoguc.'” A Socratic dialogue is a spiritual exercise practiced in common,
and it incites onc 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.” '" 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.'!' 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.'"2

Although Hadot recognizes that some ancient philosophical works are so to
speak “more written” than others, he insists that even these works “are closcly
linked to the activity of teaching” and must “be understood from the
perspective of dialectical and exegctical scholarly exercises.” "") he task of the

Introduction 2]

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.” '" Therefore, even
definitions were nothing by themselves, independently of the road traveled to
reach them. The philosophers of antiquity were concerned not with ready-
made 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.” ''> 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 exposi-
tion.” "6

Moreover, these exercises were not conceived of as purely intellectual, as
mercly theorctical 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.''’ 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.”''® 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." Spiritual exercises were e.vercises 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.'!” 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.” '?! Rhetorical resources were abundantly made use
of by the philosopher, and in attempting to influence himself and others all
means were good.’” 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.” ' In ancient texts,
we discover that “one slides rapidly from theoretical exposition to

22 Introduction

exhortation,” as often happens in Plotinus’ treatises;'*4 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 specific
conception of the good life.'* The “presentation, literary form and content”
of philosophical discourse were modified by “the intention to influence the
disciples.”'6 It is from this perspective that Hadot believes we must
understand “the effort of systematization of the Stoics and Epicureans.” '?? 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.'%

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.” '? As Hadot says, “their systematic presentation produces
assurance [/a certitude] in the soul, therefore peace and serenity.” '*9

In studying the literary genre of the ancient consolation, Ilsetraut 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.'" 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.” '” 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 espccially 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. . .'3

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.'*

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.'35 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.” '* 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.”'” 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
have said, spiritual exercises involved all aspects of one’s existence; they did
not attempt only to insure behavior in accordance with a code of good

24 Introduction

conduct; they had, as Hadot says, not only a moral value, but an existential
value.'38 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.'> 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.'”

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 cthics that puts into
practice the fundamental rules of life.'*' 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 theorctical
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.”'” Finally, the discipline of physics
included not only a theory, but a lived physics, a true spiritual exercise, which
involved a way of sccing the world, a cosmic consciousness, and procured
pleasure and joy for the soul.'* 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.” '4

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 cthics, but that he limited the “care of the self” to ethics
alone.'** 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 see the full scope of spiritual

Introduction 25

exercises, that physics (and logic), as much as ethics, aimed at self-
transformation. Indeed, in a very different context, Paul Veyne 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!’” !*6
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 philo-
sopher’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.'” The Stoics held that “these parts could only appear distinct
and separate in the discourse of teaching and of exposition of the philosophi-
cal dogmas,” and that philosophy, strictly speaking, was not divided into
parts.'8 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.” "9 That is to say, in the lived singular act of philosophy, logic,
physics, and cthics are but “aspects of the very same virtue and very same
wisdom”; 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.” 5° As Hadot summarizes this view, “logic, physics and
ethics distinguish themselves from one another when one speaks of philos-
ophy, but not when one /ives it.” 5!

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.'*

This fundamental intuition of the Stoics, according to which the Logos is the
common object of logic, physics, and ethics, is continued by those early

26 Introduction

Christian thinkers who present God as the common object of the three parts
of philosophy.'*3 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 interiority of the divine Persons.” '*4

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.”'*’ Although emphasizing that
the parts of philosophy are 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.” ' The theoretical 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.!5?

Recently, Hadot has distinguished between two senses of the word “dis-
course” in ancient philosophy.

On the one hand, discourse insofar as it is addressed to a disciple or to
onesclf, 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 does not do philosophy.'*

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 wish to live in
such and such a way, with all the concrete consequences that that
implies in everyday life.!?

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

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.”'*' 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 . . .'*

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.” ' And in commenting on Epicte-
tus’ Manual, Simplicius writes,

One must produce the actions that are 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 read them with insight 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.'*

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 for-
mulated. But he has also argued that “this distinction was clearly implicit in
the previous period in Plato and Aristotle.” '* 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 /earn anything, but they experience a certain impression or
emotion.'@ The initiate did not Icarn his other-worldly fate at Eleusis, but
lived this supra-individual life of the other world.'®? The “true secret
of Eleusis is therefore this very experience, this moment when one plunges
into the completely other, this discovery of an unknown dimension of
existence.” '@

Hadot also finds an implicit distinction between philosophy and philosoph-
ical discourse in Plato’s definition of philosophy (Phaedo, 67 c-d) as a
training for death. The purification of the soul, its separation as far as possible
from the body and its gathering itsclf 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.”
Plotinus continues this tradition when in Ennead, IV, 7, 10, he argues that the
soul cannot become aware of its own immatcriality if it does not perform a
moral purification that liberates it from its passions, that strips away
everything that is not truly itself.'”" 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 mcthod drawn from the
knowledge of the things that come from the Good, and the method of stages
or degrees (anabasmoi;, Symposium, 21\c) 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.’ 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 theological methods, can raise itself to the

Introduction 29

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

Furthermore, as Hadot writes, “it is mystical experience that founds negative
theology, and not the reverse.” '3 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.” '”

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.” '’5 For Aristotle, to dedicate oneself to philosophy
is to chose a dios, a way of life, that is the best realization of those capacities
that are essential to being human. The dios theoretikos, the life of contempla-
tion, is a way of life that is also the realization of our supreme happiness, an
activity that contains the purest pleasures.'’® 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.” '” 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.'"* And
it is a way of life that is, in one sense of the term, practical, since Aristotle
says that those thoughts are 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.” '” This life of theoria is thus not
opposed to the practical, since it is a life of philosophy lived and practiced; it
is precisely the “exercise of a life.”

Hadot has distinguished two senses of the term “theoretical,” for which he
has employed the terms théorique and théorétique. The first meaning of “thcore-
tical” is opposed to “practical,” since it designates theoretical discourse as
opposed to lived philosophy. But the adjective théorétique 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 théorétique] is not a pure abstraction, but a life of the intellect, which, no
doubt, can use a theoretical discourse [discours théorique], but nonetheless
remains a life and a praxis, and which can even make room for a nondiscursive
activity of thought, when it is a question of perceiving indivisible objects and
God himself by noetic intuition.”"' Thus to think of Aristotle as a pure
theoretician is to focus exclusively on his theoretical discourse without bearing
in mind that it is a way of life, however intellectualized, that he is recommend-
ing, and which is the ultimate basis of his philosophy.

The idea of philosophy as a way of life, and not just as philosophical
discourse, was also exhibited in antiquity 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 profes-
sor 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.” '’ 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.'® It was not only
Chrysippus or Epicurus who were considered philosophers, because they had
developed a philosophical discourse, but also every person who lived accord-
ing to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus.'™

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 [/eur franc parler], by
their way of nourishing themselves or dressing themselves, by their attitude
with respect to wealth and to conventional values.” '*5 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.'” 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.*

The philosopher was a philosopher because of his existential attitude, 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 life." 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 sct 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 thcorics that
are intended to justify the existential attitude. One could say, to exprens

Introduction 31

it otherwise, that every existential attitude implies a representation of
the world that must necessarily be expressed in a discourse. 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.'™

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: medita-
tion, 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 indifferent things, the fulfilment of
the duties of social life in Stoicism, the discipline of desires in
Epicurcanism."*!

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 repres-
entation of philosophy that have contributed to our current understanding of
it as a purcly theoretical, abstract activity, and to our identification 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 architec-
ture that he has constructed, without putting into question his own life.” '”
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.”'? To this
tendency is opposed the equally natural inclination of the philosophical mind
to want to examine itself, to want 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.'*
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?”'* 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.” '%

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 move-
ments, 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 theologiae.'” 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.” '” Philosophical speculation thus
became a purely abstract and theoretical activity, which was set strictly
apart from theological thought and religious practice and _ spirituality.'”
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?”

A third aspect underlying our modern 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 profession-
als 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.” 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.” This sociological requirement of profes-
sionalism, this situation of scholasticism, facilitates and reinforces the tend-

Introduction 33

ency to take refuge in the “comfortable universe of concepts and of
discourses”,”3 it gives this natural tendency a social basissand 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 proposi-
tions.

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 redis-
covered.4 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 Militis Christiani: “Let this book lead to a theological life rather
than theological disputation.” 2° 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 Descartes’ advice that one invest some months or at
least weeks meditating on his first and second Meditations, which Hadot says
ultimatcly shows that for Descartes “evidence can only be perceived thanks
to a spiritual exercise.”2°? 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." 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.” 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.?'® In the twentieth century, Hadot points to
Bergson, to Wittgenstein, to Foucault, and to certain aspects of phenomeno-
logy and existentialism as embodying the ancient attitude, practices, and sense
of what philosophy means.?"' 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.?!* This constant reoccurrence of the ancient experience of
philosophy, side by side with the tendency to understand philosophy as a
conceptual structure, an abstract 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 evalu-
ations 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.”?8 From this point of view, Hadot has discerned a universal
Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Pyrrhon-
ism, each of which corresponds to a permanent possibility of the human spirit,
and which are independent of the particular “philosophical or mythical
discourses that have claimed or claim to justify them definitively.” 2'4 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.?' 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.?!

With respect to Stoicism, Hadot has described four features that constitute
the universal Stoic attitude. They are, 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.”?””
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.” ?"* Platonism,
Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Pyrrhonism also each have a universal charac-
ter, and one of the historical and philosophical tasks called forth by Hadot's

Introduction 35

work is precisely to provide a description of each of these 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 con-
sequences of the different possible fundamental attitudes of reason, thus
offering us “a privileged field of experimentation.” 2!" 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.“° That is precisely how Hadot charactcrizes Goethe, Rousseau, and
Thoreau.”! 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 cvery test and ordeal we face, Pyrrhonic suspension of
judgment and absolute indifference.”” It is these experiences and ideals, more
than any concepts, that are the legacy of ancient philosophy to Western
civilization.“* 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.”25 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 philosophes antiques, Hadot
surveys all of the insufficiently exploited resources that are available to the
historian of ancient philosophy. He shows how the lists of titles of philosoph-
ical 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 philo-
sophy. This final task will consist in asking oneself, with an increased
lucidity, the decisive question: “What is it to philosophize?”?

Pierre Hadot’s own work itself provokes us to reask the question of what it
means to philosophize, and he provides a 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

1 Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, 2nd edn, Paris 1987.

2 Pierre Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Auréle,
Paris 1992.

3 Pierre Hadot, Titres et travaux de Pierre Hadot, privately printed for the Collége
de France, p. 9.

4 Pierre Hadot, “Patristique Latinc,” Problémes et methodes d'histoire des religions,
Meélanges publiés par la Section des Sciences religieuses a l'occasion du centenaire de
l'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris 1968, pp. 211-13. 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 misunder-
standing and misinterpretation. I return to this aspect of Hadot’s thought in what
follows.

5 Hadot, Titres et travaux, p. 8.

6 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 212, and Pierre Hadot, “Patristique,” in Encyclo-

pedia Universalis, vol. 12, p. 608, Paris, 1972. Among other texts of Augustine,

see Confessions, IX, 4, 11.

Pierre Hadot, Comptes rendus des conferences données a l’Ecole pratique des Hautes

Etudes de 1964 a 1980, privately printed. I have paraphrased the compte rendu

from 1964-1965. The quotation is from pp. 2-3.

8 Pierre Hadot, “Platon et Plotin dans trois sermons de saint Ambrose,” Revue des
études latines XXXIV (1956), p. 209, n. 5.
9 Hadot, “Patristique,” p. 608.

10 Pierre Hadot, “La fin du paganisme,” in H.-Ch. Peuch, ed., Histoire des religions,
vol. Il, pp. 101-7, Paris 1972.

11 Ibid, p. 109. See also Margherita Guarducci, // primato della Chiesa di Roma.
Documenti, riflessioni, conferme, Milan 1991, pp. 85-7.

12 Hador, “La fin du paganisme,” p. 110.

13 Ibid, pp. 107-8.

14 Ibid, p. 108. See also Edouard des Places, “Numenius et Eusébe de Césarée,” in
Etudes platoniciennes 1929-1979, Leiden 1981, esp. pp. 322-5.

15 Hadot, “La fin du paganisme,” p. 111.

16 Ibid, pp. 108 and 105. Also, Pierre Hadot, “Théologie, exégése, révélation,
écriture, dans la philosophie grecque,” in Michel Tardieu, ed., Les régles de
l‘interprétation, Paris 1987.

17 Hadot, “La fin du paganisme,” pp. 83-4, 109.

18 Hadot, “Théologie, cxégése, révélation,” p. 14.

19 Ibid, p. 22.

~

Introduction 37

20 In trying to summarize Hadot’s very complex discussion, without distorting it, I
have mainly followed “L’étre et Pétant dans le néoplatonisme,” in Etudes
neoplatoniciennes, Neuchatel 1973; ‘“Théologie, exégése, révélation,” esp.
pp. 19-20; and “Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes,” this volume. See
also Pierre Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols, Paris 1968.

21 Hadot, “Théologie, exégése, révélation,” p. 20.

22 Ibid.

23 Hadot, “L’étre et l’étant dans le néoplatonisme,” pp. 34-5.

24 Hadot, “Théologie, exégése, révélation,” p. 20.

25 Hadot, “L’étre et l’étant dans le néoplatonisme,” pp. 34-5; Pierre Hadot, “La
distinction de l’étre et de l’étant dans le ‘De Hebdomadibus’ de Boéce,” in
Miscellanea Mediaevalia, vol. 2, Berlin 1963; and Pierre Hadot, “Forma essends.
Interprétation philologique et interprétation philosophique d’une formule de
Boéce,” Les Etudes classiques XXXVII (1970), pp. 143-56. Hadot also explicitly
relatcs this distinction to Heidegger’s writings; see Hadot, “L’étre et ’étant dans
le néoplatonisme,” p. 27.

26 Pierre Hadot, “Heidegger et Plotin,” Critique 145 (1959), p. 542.

27 Sce 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 et travaux, p. 23.

30 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 218.

31 Ibid, pp. 216-17.

32 Margherita Guarducci, “La Crittografia mistica e i graffiti vaticani,” Archeologia
Classica XIII (1961), p. 236, my emphasis.

33 Margherita Guarducci, “Dal Gioco letterale alla crittografia mistica,” in
Scritti scelti sulla religione greca e romana e sul cristianesimo, Leiden 1983,
pp. 421-2.

34 Ibid, p. 441. On the relationship between the three teeth of the £ and the symbol
of the key see also Margherita Guarducci, “Ancora sul misterioso £ di Delfi,” in
Scritti scelti.

35 Margherita Guarducci, “La Crittografia mistica,” p. 219.

36 Guarducci, // primato della 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 Fora superb example, see ibid, p. 206.

42 Quoted above, p. 8.

43 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 39-40. See also Pierre Hadot, “Les
Pensées de Marc Auréle,” Bulletin de l'Association Guillame Budé (June 1981),
pp. 183-4.

44 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 41.

45 Ibid, pp. 39:42,

46 Pierre Hadot, “Une cle des Pensces de Mare Auréle: les trois Topot philosophiques

38 Introduction

selon Epictéte,” in Exercices spirituels, p. 135. This essay was originally published
in 1978.

47 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 40-1, 46-7. See also Hadot, “Les Pensées de
Marc Auréle,” pp. 183-4.

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

49 Ibid, p. 49.

50 Ibid.

51 Hadot, “Les Pensées de Marc Auréle,” p. 185. See also Hadot, Titres et travaux,
p. 29.

52 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 85-6, 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 Citadelle intérieure, pp. 85, 99, 145.

53 Ibid, pp. 106-15. Sce also Pierre Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, et
divisions de la philosophie chez les stoiciens,” Revue internationale de la philosop-
hie 178 (1991), pp. 205-19.

54 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 106. 1 will return to Hadot’s discussion of the
distinction between philosophical discourse and philosophy.

55 Hadot, “Une clé des Pensées de Marc Auréle,” p. 135.

56 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 62.

57 Hadot, “Les Pensées de Marc Auréle,” p. 187. See also Hadot, “Une clé des
Pensées de Marc Auréle,” p. 150.

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

59 Hadot, Titres et travaux, p. 12. See also “Marcus Aurelius,” this volume, p. 186.

60 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 10. Hadot has applied these remarks to other
ancient works. See Hadot, Titres et travaus’, p. 13; and “Forms of Life and Forms
of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” this volume, pp. 65-6.

61 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 262-75. See also Pierre Hadot, “Marc Auréle
était-il opiomane?,” in E. Lucchesi and H.D. Saffrey, eds, Memorial André-Jean
Festugiére, Geneva 1984.

62 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 261-2, 274.

63 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 24. Cited in “Marcus Aurelius,” this volume,
p. 184.

64 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 13. Cited in “Marcus Aurelius,” this volume,
p. 185.

65 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 194.

66 Ibid, p. 181. On physical definitions, see also pp. 122-3; and Hadot, “Les Pensées
de Marc Auréle,” pp. 188-9.

67 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IIl, 11. Cited in “Marcus Aurelius,” this volume,
p. 187.

68 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 123.

69 Ibid.

70 Hadot, “Les Pensées de Marc Aureéle,” p. 189.

71 Pierre Hadot, “La Physique comme exercice spirituel ou pessimisme et
optimisme chez Marc Auréle,” in Exercices spirituels, pp. 132-3. This article was

Introduction 39

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

72 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 268. See also Hadot, Titres et trabaux, p. 12. For
other methodological limitations of this kind of psychological interpretation, see
Hadot’s remarkable discussion of the Passio Perpetuae in his compte rendu from
1967-8, in Hadot, Comptes rendus des conférences, pp. 19-23. Of course, Hadot
does not believe that Marcus is totally absent from the Meditations. See Hadot,
La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 261-2, 275-314. See also “Marcus Aurelius,” this
volume, pp. 196-9.

73 Pierre Hadot, “De Tertullien 4 Boéce. Le développement de la notion de
personne dans les controverses théologiques,” in I. Myerson, ed., Problémes de la
personne, Colloque du Centre de recherches de Psychologie comparative, Paris/La
Haye 1973, p. 132.

74 Ibid, p. 133. These claims of Hadot continue to be cited with approval. See, for
example, Jean-Pierre Vernant, “L’individu dans la cité,” in Sur l'individu, Paris
1987, p. 37. For another expression of this early view of Hadot, see Hadot,
“L’image de la Trinité dans l’ame chez Victorinus et chez saint Augustin,” in
Studia Patristica, vol. V1, part IV, Berlin 1962. See esp. p. 440 where Hadot
writes, “From Victorinus to Augustine, there is all of the distance that separates
the ancient soul from the modern self.”

75 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 215.

76 Ibid.

77 Hadot, “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” this
volume, p. 52. For Pierre Courcelle, see Recherches sur les ‘'Confessions" de saint
Augustin (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1950).

78 Hadot, Comptes rendus des conférences, p. 8. This is the compte rendu from 1965-6.

79 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 215.

80 Hadot, Comptes rendus des conferences, p. 9. For a good discussion of the literature
on Book II of the Confessions, see Franco De Capitani, “Il libro II delle Confession
di sant’Agostino,” in ‘Le Confessioni” di Agostino d'Ippona, Libri I-11, Palermo
1984.

81 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” pp. 215-16, together with Hadot, Comptes rendus des
conferences, p. 9.

82 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 215.

83 Hadot, Comptes rendus des conferences, p. 8.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid, p. 9.

86 Compte rendu from 1970-71, in ibid, pp. 45-8.

87 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 215.

88 Ibid, p. 216, 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 Hadot, “Patristique Latine,” p. 215.

40 Introduction

90 See, among other essays, Pierre Hadot, “Wittgenstein, philosophe du langage
(I),” Critique 149 (October 1959), pp. 866-81; and “Wittgenstein, philosophe du
langage (II),” Critique 150 (November 1959), pp. 972-83.

91 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 1969, pp. 70-3. I bring together Hadot and Cavell’s work in

“La découverte de Thoreau et d’Emerson par Stanley Cavell ou les exercices

spirtuels de la philosophie” (forthcoming in Sandra Laugier, ed., Lire Cavell ).

Hadot has highlighted these claims in the overview of his work that he presented

to the Collége International de Philosophie in May, 1993. I will refer to the

unpublished typescript of his presentation as “Présentation au Collége Interna-

tional de Philosophie.” See, for example, pp. 2-3.

93 Pierre Hadot, “Jeux de langage et philosophie,” Revue de Métaphysique et de
Morale LXIV (1960), p. 341.

94 Ibid, p. 340.

95 Ibid, pp. 339-43.

2 Ibid, pp. 342-3.

7 Ibid, p. 343.

a Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 9. See also Hadot, Titres et travaux, p. 12.

99 Pierre Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” in Paul
Demont, ed., Problémes de la morale antique, Amiens 1993, pp. 7-8. Sce also the
section “Learning How to Read” in “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume,
pp. 101-9.

100 Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophie chez
les stoiciens,” p. 205.

101 Pierre Hadot, “Preface,” in Richard Goulet, ed., Dictionnaire des philosophes
antiques, Paris 1989, p. 12.

102 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 8. See also
Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” pp. 1-2.

103 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 10.

144 “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” this volume,
p. 62.

105 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 9. See also
Pierre Hadot, “Préface,” in M.D. Richard, L'Enseignement oral de Platon, Paris
1986, pp. 9-10.

106 Reading together Hadot, “Jeux de langage et philosophie,” p. 341, and Hadot,
“Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 2.

107 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 2. To the best
of my knowledge, Hadot first invoked this formula of Goldschmitt in “Jeux de
langage et philosophie,” p. 341.

108 Hadot, “Préface,” in L'Enseignement oral de Platorn, p. 11.

109 See the section “Learning to Dialogue” in “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume,
pp. 89-93.

110 “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume, pp. 19-20.

9

N

Introduction 41

111 Ibid, p. 21.

112 Ibid, pp. 21-2. (I have modified the translation.)

113 “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” this volume,
pp. 63-4.

114 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 11.

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid, my emphasis.

117 Ibid, pp. 11-12.

118 Ibid, p. 12. See also “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume.

119 See the section “Learning to Live” in “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume,
pp. 82-9. Also see Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une
pratique?,” pp. 12-14.

120 Sce esp. the opening pages of “Ancient Spiritual Exercises and ‘Christian
Philosophy’,” this volume.

121 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthiquc ou une pratique?,” p. 13. On the
direction of souls in Seneca, see Ilsetraut Hadot, Seneca und die griechisch-rimische
Tradition der Seelenleitung, Berlin, 1969. 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 1986.

122 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” pp. 17-18.

123 Ibid, p. 118, speaking of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

124 Ibid, p. 17.

125 Carlo Natali, Bios Theoretikos. La vita d’Aristotele e l'organizzazione della sua
scuola, Bologna 1991, p. 98.

126 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” pp. 16-17.

127 Ibid, p. 15.

128 Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophie chez
les stoiciens,” p. 216, and Hadot, “La philosophie antique: unc éthique ou une
pratique?,” p. 16.

129 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une ¢thique ou une pratique?,” p. 16.

130 Ibid.

131 See the section “Learning to Die” in “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume,
pp. 93-101.

132 Ilsetraut Hadot, “Préface,” in Seneca, Consolations, Paris 1992, p. 17.

133 Ibid, pp. 18-19.

134 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.

136 Hadot, “Préface,” in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, p. 12.

137 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 philosophie antique: une éthique ou une
pratique?,” p. 36.

138 Sce the opening pages of both “Spiritual Exercises” and “Ancient Spiritual
Exercises and ‘Christian Philoxophy’,” this volume.

42 Introduction

139 On the ancient doctrine of the division of the parts of philosophy, see Pierre
Hadot, “Les divisions des parties de la philosophie,” Museum Helveticum 36
(1979), pp. 201-23.

140 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” pp. 18-29;
Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophie chez
les stoiciens”; and Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, ch. 5.

141 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” pp. 19-20.

142 Ibid, pp. 20-1.

143 Ibid, pp. 21-4.

144 Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophic chez
les stoiciens,” p. 212. See also Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 98, and
“Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume.

145 See ch. 7, this volume. I have discussed Hadot’s criticisms of Foucault at
length in “Ethics as ascetics: Foucault, the history of ethics and ancient thought,”
in Jan Goldstein, ed., Foucault and the Writing of History, Oxford 1994.

146 See Veyne’s remarks in Les Grecs, les Romains et nous. L’Antiquité est-elle
moderne?, ed. Roger Pol-Droit, Paris 1991, pp. 57-8.

147 See Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, ct divisions de la philosophie
chez les stoiciens”; Hadot, ‘La philosophic antique: une éthique ou une
pratique?,” pp. 25-6; and Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 94-8. Zeno of Tarsus
was an exception to this doctrine; see Diogencs Laertius, Lives of Eminent
Philosophers, VII, 39 and 41.

148 Hadot, “Philosophic, discours philosophique, et divisions dela philosophie chez
les stoiciens,” p. 211.

149 Reading together Hadot, “La philosophic antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,”
p. 26, and Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, ct divisions de la
philosophic chez les stoiciens,” p. 212.

150 Reading together Hadot, “Philosophie, discours philosophique, et divisions de la
philosophie chez les stoiciens,” p. 212, and Hadot, “Ia philosophie antique: une
éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 26.

151 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 98. Sec also Hadot, “Philosophie, discours
philosophique, ct divisions de la philosophic chez les stoiciens,” p. 212.

152 Hadot, “Les divisions des parties de la philosophie,” p. 211.

153 Ibid, p. 212.

154 Ibid. For Augustine, see The City of God, book 8, ch. 4, and book 2, ch. 25.

155 Hadot, “Les divisions des parties de la philosophie,” p. 211. See also Hadot,
“Philosophie, discours philosophique, et divisions de la philosophie chez les
stoiciens,” pp. 218-19, and Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 99-115. 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. 218-21.

156 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 27.

157 Ibid, p. 28.

158 Hadot, “Présentation au College International de Philosophie,” p. 4.

159 Hadot, “La philosophic antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 28.

160 Hadot, “Présentation au College International de Philosophie,” p. 4. Sec

Introduction 43

also “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume. Hadot also develops this theme
at the conclusion of his unpublished paper on Thoreau’s Walden, ‘Réflexions sur
Walden,” delivered at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, June 1993.

161 Cited by Hadot in “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,”
pp. 13-14.

162 Cited in “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, p. 267.

163 Epictetus, Discourses, IV, 4, 13. Cited in Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une
éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 21.

164 Cited by Ilsetraut Hadot, “Aristote dans l’enseignement philosophique néo-
platonicien. Les préfaces des commentaires sur les Catégories,” Revue de théologie
et de philosophie 124 (1992), p. 419, n. 38.

165 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” pp. 28-9.

166 Picrre Hadot, “Le Génie du lieu dans la Gréce antique,” in Michel Crépu,
Richard Figuier, and René Louis, eds, Hauts Lieux, Paris 1990, p. 150. For a
discussion of the role of this fragment, especially in the mysticism of Pseudo-
Dionysius, see Ysabel de Andia, “naO@v ta Bera”, in Stephen Gersh and
Charles Kannengiesser, eds, Platonism in Late Antiquity, Notre Dame 1992.

167 Hadot, “Le Génie du lieu dans la Gréce antique,” p. 150. Hadot is following the
interpretation of D. Sabbatucci, Essas sur le mysticisme grec, Paris 1982.

168 Hadot, “Le Génie du lieu dans la Gréce antique,” p. 150, my emphasis.

169 Hadot, “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 34.

170 Ibid.

171 Ibid. p. 35. For extensive discussion, see Pierre Hadot, Plotin. Traité 38, Paris
1988, pp. 44-52 and 347-51.

172 Hadot, Plotin. Traité 38, reading together p. 45 and p. 349.

173 Pierre Hadot, “Apophatisme et théologie négative,” in Exercices spirituels, p. 193.

174 Hadot, “Le Génie du lieu dans la Gréce antique,” p. 152, my emphasis. For a
discussion of Hadot’s interpretation of Plotinus’ mysticism, see my “Reading
Hadot reading Plotinus,” intro. in Pierre Hadot, Plotinus or the Simplicity of
Vision, Chicago 1993.

175 Pierre Hadot, “Postface a la seconde édition,” in Exercices spirituels, p. 236.

176 Ibid.

177 Natali, Bios Theoretikos, pp. 137-8. Natali’s remark is made with particular
reference to On the Parts of Animals, 645a 7-10. For the dangers of viewing
Aristotle as if he were a modern university professor, and as if the life of theoria
were purely abstract, or the career of a modern scientist, see Natali, Bios
Theoretikos, pp. 67-74 and 129-38.

178 Pierre Hadot, “Les modéles de bonheur proposés par les philosophes antiques,”
La Vie spirituelle (Jan._Feb. 1992), pp. 34-6. See also Hadot, “Postface 4 la
seconde édition,” p. 236. Hadot has in mind primarily Nicomachean Ethics, X, 7,
and Metaphysics, 1072b 28.

179 Aristotle, Politics, VI, 3, 8, 1325b. Cited by Hadot in “La philosophie antique:
une éthique ou une pratique?,” pp. 31-2.

180 Hladot, “l.a philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?,” p. 31, my
emphasis.

181 Ibid, p. 32.

44 Introduction

182 Hadot, “Préface,” in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, pp. 11-12.

183 Ibid.

184 “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, pp. 272-3.

185 Hadot, “Préface,” in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, p. 13.

186 Ibid.

187 Ibid. See also “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,”
this volume, pp. 55-8.

188 Giuseppe Cambiano, “La figura del filosofo e le altre forme del sapere,” Quadernt
di Storia XIX, 37 (Jan.—June 1993), p. 81.

189 On the importance of the act of conversion, see Pierre Hadot, “Epistrophé et
metanoia dans histoire de la philosophie,” in Actes du XI*™ congrés international
de philosophie, XII, Amsterdam 1953, and Pierre Hadot, “Conversion,” in
Exercices spirituels.

190 Pierre Hadot, “La philosophie hellénistique,” in Histoire de la philosophie. I. Les
pensées fondatrices, Paris 1993, pp. 69-70. See also Hadot, “Présentation au
Collége International de Philosophie,” pp. 3-4.

191 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 3.

192 Ibid, reading together p. 7 and p. 6.

193 Ibid, p. 5.

194 Pierre Hadot, “La philosophie est-elle un luxe?,” Le Monde de |'éducation
(Mar. 1992), p. 91.

195 Thid.

196 Reading together ibid p. 92, and Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International
de Philosophie,” p. 9.

197 On early Christianity as a philosophy, see “Ancient Spiritual Exercises and
‘Christian Philosophy” and “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume. The
quoted words come from Hadot, ‘Présentation au Collége International de
Philosophie,” p. 7.

198 “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, p. 270.

199 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 7.

200 Hadot says that it is with Suarez that the idea of systematic philosophy would

appear for the first time. See ibid.

“Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, pp. 270 and 272-3. (I have slightly

modified the translation.) Sce also Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International

de Philosophie,” p. 7.

“Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, p. 271. (I have slightly modified the

translation.)

203 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 7.

204 “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, pp. 271-2.

205 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” pp. 7-8.
The quotation from Erasmus is taken from a letter he wrote to Abbot
Voltz in 1518. See The Essential Erasmus, ed. John P. Dolan, New York 1964,
p. 28.

206 Pierre Hadot, “Emerveillements,” in La Bibliothégue imaginaire du Gollége de
France, Paris 1990, p. 122.

207 Pierre Hadot, “Un dialogue interrompu avee Michel Foucault. Convergences et

20

—

20

N

Introduction 45

divergences,” in Exercices spirituels, p. 232. See also “Philosophy as a Way of
Life,” this volume, pp. 271-2.

208 “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, pp. 271-2, and Hadot, “Présentation
au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 8.

209 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” pp. 8-9.

210 On Schopenhauer, the young Hegelians and Marx, see “Philosophy as a Way of
Life,” this volume, pp. 271-2. On Goethe’s relation to ancient philosophy, see
especially “‘Only the Present is our Happiness’: The Value of the Present Instant
in Goethe and in Ancient Philosophy,” this volume. On Nietzsche and Kierke-
gaard, see especially “The Figure of Socrates,” this volume.

211 On twentieth-century philosophy, see, among other essays, “Philosophy as a Way
of Life,” “The Sage and the World,” and “Reflections on the Idea of the
‘Cultivation of the Self’,” all in this volume.

212 Hadot, “Réflexions sur Walden.”

213 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 9. See also
Hadot, La Citadelle Intérieure, p. 330.

214 Hadot, “Présentation au Collége International de Philosophie,” p. 9.

215 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, p. 329.

216 Reading together ibid, pp. 329-30, and “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this
volume, pp. 272—3. The quoted words arc used with respect to Stoicism, but it
is clear that Hadot would apply them to the other universal attitudes as well.

217 Hadot, La Citadelle intérieure, pp. 331-2.

218 Hadot, “Réflexions sur Walden,” p. 6.

219 “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, pp. 272-3.

220 Hadot, “Reéflexions sur Walden,” pp. 7-8.

221 Ibid.

222 “Spiritual Exercises,” this volume, p. 108 (translation slightly modified). See also
“Philosophy as a Way of Life,” this volume, pp. 272-3.

223 On Cynicism and Pyrrhonism, see Hadot, “La philosophie hellénistique,”
pp. 70, 77-8.

224 Ibid, p. 79.

225 Hadot, “Emerveillements,” p. 122.

226 Hadot, “Préface,” in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, p. 16.

Part I
Method

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse
in Ancient Philosophy

Mr Administrator,
Dear colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

“Each one of you expects two things from me on the occasion of this
inaugural lecture: first of all, that I express my thanks to those who made my
presence here possible and second, that I present the method that I will use
to carry out the task entrusted to me.” ' Petrus Ramus, who held the chair in
rhetoric and philosophy at the Collége Royal, opened his inaugural lecture,
delivered in Latin, with words to this effect on August 24, 1551, only twenty
years after the founding of this institution. We sce that the practice of giving
this lecture dates back more than four hundred years and that even at that
time its major themes were already set. And I in turn will remain faithful to
this venerable tradition today.

More than a year has gone by already, dear colleagues, since you decided
to create a chair in the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Shortly
thereafter you honored me by entrusting it to me. How, without being
awkward or superficial, can I express the extent of my gratitude and my joy
at the confidence you have shown toward me?

I am able to see in your decision a reflection of that freedom and
independence of mind that have traditionally characterized the great institu-
tion into which you have welcomed me. For, despite my election, I possess
few of the qualities that would usually attract notice, and the discipline I
represent is not among those in fashion today. In a way I am what the Romans
called a homo nouus, as I do not belong to that intellectual nobility one of
whose principal titles is traditionally that of “former student of the Ecole
Normale Supérieure.” Moreover, you certainly noticed during my visits to
you that 1 lack that tranquil authority conferred by the use and mastery of

50 Method

the idioms currently spoken in the Republic of Letters. My language, as you will
again ascertain today, is not graced with those mannerisms that now seem to be
required when one ventures to speak of the human sciences. However, several of
you encouraged me to present my candidacy, and during the traditional visits,
which so enriched me, I was extremely touched to find so much sympathy and
interest, particularly among those of you who are specialists in the exact sciences,
for the field of research I have come before you to defend. In other words, I
believe I did not have to convince you — you were persuaded already — of the
need for the Collége to ensure a way to maintain the close bonds between areas
of teaching and research that are too often artificially separated: Latin and Greek,
philology and philosophy, Hellenism and Christianity. I thus marveled to
discover that at the end of the twentieth century, when many of you on a daily
basis employ technical procedures, modes of reasoning, and representations of the
universe of almost superhuman complexity that open a future to humanity we
could not even conceive of earlier, the ideal of humanism, which inspired the
foundation of the Collége de France, continues to retain for you, undoubtedly in
a more conscious and critical but also more vast, intense, and profound form, all
of its value and significance.

I spoke of a close connection between Greek and Latin, philology and
philosophy, Hellenism and Christianity. I believe that this formulation
corresponds exactly to the inspiration found in the teaching of Pierre
Courcelle, who was my colleague at the Fifth Section of the Ecole Pratique
des Hautes Etudes and to whom I wish to render homage today, indeed,
whom I succeed, if I may say so, in an indirect line, via the appointment of
Rolf Stein. I believe that Pierre Courcelle, who was so brutally taken from us,
is intensely present in the hearts of many of us tonight. For me he was a
teacher who taught me much, but he was also a friend who showed great
concern for me. I will speak now only of the scholar, to recall his immense
output of truly great books, innumerable articles, and hundreds of reviews. I
do not know if the scope of this gigantic labor has been sufficiently measured.
The first lines of his great work Lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe a
Cassiodore give a clear idea of the revolutionary direction his work had for his
time. “A substantial book on Hellenistic literature in the West from the death
of Theodosius up to the time of the Justinian reconquest may seem
surprising,” wrote Courcelle. First of all, it was surprising for a Latinist to be
interested in Greek literature. However, as Courcelle noted, this Greek
literature made possible the flowering of Latin literature and produced
Cicero, who represented the most complete development of Greco-Roman
culture at its apex, and it was this literature that nearly became a substitute
for Latin when during the second century AD Latin was overshadowed by
Greek as a literary language. However, it still must be stated and deplored
that, despite Courcelle’s initiative and example and owing to a prejudice that

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 51

has not been totally overcome and that maintains the disastrous break made
in French scholarship between Greek and Latin, what he had to say in 1943,
forty years ago, is unfortunately still true today: “I know of no synthetic work
that examines the Greek influence on the thought and culture of the Roman
Empire.” Once again it was surprising to see a Latinist devote such an
important study to a later period and show that in the fifth and sixth
centuries, a time of so-called decadence, Greek literature had undergone a
remarkable renaissance, which, thanks to Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius,
Martianus Capella, and Cassiodorus, was to make it possible for the European
Middle Ages to maintain contact with Greek thought until the Arab
translations made possible its rediscovery in richer sources. Again, it was
surprising to see a philologist attack problems in the history of philosophy,
showing the key influence exercised on Latin Christian thought by Greek and
pagan Neoplatonism, not only by Plotinus but — this was an important detail
— by his disciple Porphyry as well. Even more surprising, this philologist
based his conclusions on a rigorously philological method. I mean that he was
not content merely to reveal vague analogies between Neoplatonic and
Christian doctrines or to evaluate influences and originalities in a purely
subjective way — in a word, to rely on rhetoric and inspiration to establish his
conclusions. No, following the example of Paul Henry, the learned editor of
Plotinus who has also been a model of scientific method for me, Courcelle
compared the texts. He discovered what anyone could have seen but no one
had seen before him, that a certain text of Ambrose had been literally
translated from Plotinus, that one of Boethius had been literally translated
from a Greek Neoplatonic commentator on Aristotle. This method madc it
possible to establish indisputable facts, to bring the history of thought out of
the vagueness and artistic indistinctness into which certain historians, even
contemporaries of Courcelle, tended to relegate it.

If Les Lettres grecques en Occident provoked surprise, the Recherches sur les
“Confessions” de saint Augustin, the first edition of which appeared in 1950,
almost caused a scandal, particularly because of the interpretation Courcelle
proposed for Augustine’s account of his own conversion. Augustine recounts
that as he was weeping beneath a fig trce, overcome with pressing questions
and heaping bitter reproaches upon himself for his indecision, he heard a
child’s voice repeating, “Take it ip and read.” He then opened Paul’s Epistles
at random, as if he were drawing a lot, and read the passage that converted
him. Alerted by his profound knowledge of Augustine’s literary procedures
and the traditions of Christian allegory, Courcelle dared to write that the fig
tree could well have a purely symbolic value, representing the “mortal shadow
of sin,” and that the child’s voice could also have been introduced in a purely
literary way to indicate allegorically the divine response to Augustine’s
questioning. Courcelle did not suspect the uproar his interpretation would
unleash. It lasted almost twenty years. The greatest names in international

52 Method

patristics entered the fray. Obviously I do not wish to rekindle the flames
here. But I would like to stress how interesting his position was from a
methodological point of view. Indeed it began with the very simple principle
that a text should be interpreted in light of the literary genre to which it
belongs. Most of Courcelle’s opponents were victims of the modern, ana-
chronistic prejudice that consists in believing that Augustine’s Confessions is
primarily an autobiographical account. Courcelle on the contrary had under-
stood that the Confessions is essentially a theological work, in which each scene
may take on a symbolic meaning. One is always surprised, for example, by
the length of Augustine’s account of his stealing pears while he was an
adolescent. But this is explained by the fact that these fruits stolen from a
garden become symbolically, for Augustine, the forbidden fruit stolen from
the Garden of Eden, and the episode gives him the opportunity to develop a
theological reflection on the nature of sin. In this literary genre, then, it is
extremely difficult to distinguish between a symbolic enactment and an
account of a historical event.

A very large part of Courcelle’s work was devoted to tracing the fortunes
of great themes such as “Know thyself” or great works such as Augustine’s
Confessions or Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy in the history of Western
thought. Not the least original of his contributions, appearing in several of
the major works he wrote from this perspective, was his association of literary
study and iconographical inquiry, pertaining, for example, to illustrations
produced throughout the ages for the Confessions or the Consolation. These
iconographical studies, which are fundamental in reconstructing the history
of religious mentalities and imagination, were all undertaken in collaboration
with Mrs Jeanne Courcelle, whose great knowledge of the techniques of art
history and iconographic description greatly enriched her husband’s work.

This all-too-brief recollection permits a glimpse, I hope, of the general
development, the itinerary, of Courcelle’s research. Starting from late anti-
quity, he was led to go back in time, especially in his book on the theme of
“Know thyself,” toward the philosophy of the imperial and Hellenistic period,
and, on the other hand, to follow, across the years, ancient works, themes,
and images as they evolved in the Western tradition. Finally, it is my hope
that this history of Hellenistic and Roman thought I am now going to present
to you reflects the spirit and the profound orientation of Courcelle’s teaching
and work.

According to the scheme given by Petrus Ramus, I have just spoken of what
he himself called the ratio muneris officiique nostri: the object and method of
the teaching entrusted to me. In the title of my chair, the word thought can
seem very vague; indeed it can be applicd to an immense and undefined
domain ranging from politics to art, from poctry to science and philorophy,
or religion and magic. In any event, the term invites one to make breathtaking

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 53

excursions into the vast world of wondrous and fascinating works produced
during the great period of the history of humanity that I propose to study.
Perhaps we will accept this invitation from time to time, but our intention is
to turn to the essential, to recognize the typical or the significant, to attempt
to grasp the Urphdnomene, as Goethe would say. And specifically, philosophia,
the way the term was understood then, is one of the typical and significant
phenomena of the Greco-Roman world. It is this above all which engages our
attention. Nevertheless, we have preferred to speak of “Hellenistic and Roman
thought” to reserve the right to follow this pAi/osophia in its most varied
manifestations and above all to eliminate the preconceptions the word
philosophy may evoke in the modern mind.

“Hellenistic and Roman”: these words themselves open an immense period
before us. Our history begins with the highly symbolic event represented by
Alexander’s fantastic expedition and with the emergence of the world called
Hellenistic, that is, with the emergence of this new form of Greek civilization
beginning from the moment when Alexander’s conquests and, in their wake,
the rise of kingdoms extended this civilization into the barbarian world from
Egypt to the borders of India, and then brought it into contact with the most
diverse nations and civilizations. The result is a kind of distance, a historical
distance, between Hellenistic thought and the Greek tradition preceding it.
Our history then covers the rise of Rome, which will lead to the destruction
of the Hellenistic kingdoms, brought to completion in 30 BC with Cleopatra’s
death. After that will come the expansion of the Roman empire, the rise and
triumph of Christianity, the barbarian invasions, and the end of the Western
empire.

Wc have just traversed a millennium. But from the standpoint of the
history of thought, this long period must be treated as a whole. Indeed it is
impossible to know Hellenistic thought without recourse to later documents,
those of the imperial era and late antiquity, which reveal it to us; and it is
equally impossible to understand Roman thought without taking its Greek
background into account.

We need to recognize from the outset that almost all of Hellenistic
literature, principally its philosophical productions, has disappeared. The
Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, to cite only one example, among many, wrote
seven hundred works, all of which are lost; only a few fragments have come
down to us. We would undoubtedly have a very different idea of Hellenistic
philosophy if this gigantic catastrophe had not occurred. How can we hope
to compensate in some way for this irreparable loss? Obviously, there is the
chance that discoveries might sometimes bring unknown texts to light. For
example, in the mid-cighteenth century, an Epicurean library was found at
Herculaneum. It contained texts of remarkable interest, not only for the
knowledge it provided of that school but also regarding Stoicism and
Platonism. Even today the Institute of Papyrology in Naples continues to

54 Method

mine, in an exemplary manner, these precious documents, endlessly improv-
ing both the texts and the commentaries. Another example: during the
excavations, led for fifteen years by our colleague Paul Bernard in Ai
Khanoun, near the border between Afghanistan and the USSR, to find the
remains of a Hellenistic town of the kingdom of Bactrian, a philosophical text,
unfortunately terribly mutilated, was discovered. The presence of such a
document in such a place suffices, furthermore, to make one recognize the
extraordinary expansion of Hellenism brought on by the Alexandrian con-
quests. Most likely it dates from the third or second century BC and
represents a fragment, unfortunately very difficult to read, of a dialogue in
which it is possible to recognize a passage inspired by the Aristotelian
tradition.’

Except for finds of this type, which are extremely rare, one is obliged to
exploit existing texts to their fullest, which often are of a much later date, in
order to find information about the Hellenistic period. Obviously, it is
necessary to begin with the Greek texts. Despite many excellent studies, much
remains to be done in this area. For example, the collections of philosophical
fragments that have come down to us need to be completed or updated. Hans
von Arnim’s collection of fragments from the earliest Stoics is exactly eighty
years old and requires serious revision. Moreover, there exists no collection
of fragments for the Academicians from the period that runs from Arcesilas
to Philo of Larissa. On the other hand, mines of information, such as the
works of Philo of Alexandria, Galen, Athenaeus, and Lucian, or the comment-
aries on Plato and Aristotle written at the end of antiquity, have never been
systematically made use of. But the Latin writers are also indispensable to this
line of inquiry. For although the Latinists do not always agree, one has to
admit that Latin literature, except for the historians (and even there!), is
comprised largely of either translations, paraphrases, or imitations of Greek
texts. Sometimes this is completely evident, for one can compare line by line
and word for word the Greek originals that were translated or paraphrased by
the Latin writers; sometimes the Latin writers themselves also quote their
Greek sources; sometimes, finally, one can legitimately speculate about these
influences with the help of reliable evidence. Thanks to the Latin writers, a
large part of Hellenistic thought was preserved. Without Cicero, Lucretius,
Seneca, or Aulus Gellius, many aspects of the philosophy of the Epicureans,
Stoics, and Academicians would be irretrievably lost. The Latins of the
Christian period are moreover just as precious: without Marius Victorinus,
Augustine, Ambrose of Milan, Macrobius, Boethius, or Martianus Capella, how
many Greek sources would be completely unknown to us! Two projects are thus
inseparable: on the one hand, to explain Latin thought in light of its Greek
background, and, on the other hand, to rediscover Greek thought, which has
been lost to us, in the works of Latin writers. If both these tasks are to be carried
out, any separation of Greek and Latin scholarship is totally imponible.

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 55

Here we are witness to the great cultural event of the West, the emergence
of a Latin philosophical language translated from the Greek. Once again, it
would be necessary to make a systematic study of the formation of this
technical vocabulary that, thanks to Cicero, Seneca, Tertullian, Victorinus,
Calcidius, Augustine, and Boethius, would leave its mark, by way of the
Middle Ages, on the birth of modern thought. Can it be hoped that one day,
with current technical means, it will be possible to compile a complete lexicon
of the correspondences of philosophical terminology in Greek and Latin?
Furthermore, lengthy commentaries would be needed, for the most interest-
ing task would be to analyze the shifts in meaning that take place in the
movement from one language to another. In the case of the ontological
vocabulary the translation of ousia by substantia, for example, is justly famous
and has again recently inspired some remarkable studies. This brings us once
more to a phenomenon we discretely alluded to earlier with the word
philosophia, and which we will encounter throughout the present discussion:
the misunderstandings, shifts or losses in meaning, the reinterpretations,
sometimes even to the point of misreadings, that arise once tradition,
translation, and exegesis coexist. So our history of Hellenistic and Roman
thought will consist above all in recognizing and analyzing the evolution of
meanings and significance.

It is precisely the need to explain this evolution that justifies our intention
to study this period as a whole. Translations from the Greek into Latin are
indeed only a particular aspect of this vast process of unification, that is, of
Hellenization, of the different cultures of the Mediterranean world, Europe,
and Asia Minor that took place progressively from the fourth century BC up
until the end of the ancient world. Hellenic thought had the strange capacity
to absorb the most diverse mythical and conceptual themes. All the cultures
of the Mediterranean world thus eventually expressed themselves in the
categories of Hellenic thought, but at the price of important shifts in meaning
that distorted the content of the myths, the values, and the wisdom of
each culture, as well as the content of the Hellenic tradition itself. First
the Romans, who were able to retain their language, then the Jews, and
then the Christians fell into this sort of trap. Such was the price for the
creation of the remarkable linguistic and cultural community that charac-
terizes the Greco-Roman world. This process of unification also ensured a
surprising continuity at the heart of philosophical and religious literary
traditions.

This evolutionary continuity and progressive unification can be seen most
remarkably in the area of philosophy. At the beginning of the Hellenistic
period an extraordinary proliferation of schools emerged in the wake of the
Sophist movement and the Socratic experience. But beginning with the
third century BC a kind of sorting out occurred. In Athens the only schools
to survive were those whose founders had thought to establish them as

56 Method

well-organized institutions: the school of Plato, the school of Aristotle and
Theophrastus, the school of Epicurus, and that of Zeno and Chrysippus. In
addition to these four schools there were two movements that are primarily
spiritual traditions: Skepticism and Cynicism. After the institutional founda-
tions of the schools in Athens collapsed at the end of the Hellenistic period,
private schools and even officially subsidized teaching posts continued to be
established throughout the empire, and here the spiritual traditions of their
founders were their reference points. Thus, for six centuries, from the third
century BC until the third century AD, we witness a surprising stability
among the six traditions we have just mentioned. However, beginning with
the third century AD, Platonism, in the culmination of a movement underway
since the first century, yet again at the price of subtle shifts in meaning and
numerous reinterpretations, came to absorb both Stoicism and Aristotelianism
in an original synthesis, while all the other traditions were to become
marginal. This unifying phenomenon is of major historical importance.
Thanks to the writers of lesser antiquity but also to the Arab translations and
the Byzantine tradition, this Neoplatonist synthesis was to dominate all the
thought of the Middle Ages and Renaissance and was to provide, in some
fashion, the common denominator among Jewish, Christian, and Moslem
theologies and mysticisms.

We have just given a very brief outline of the main paths of the history of
the philosophical schools of antiquity. But as a history of ancient philosophia,
our history of Hellenistic and Roman thought is less focused on studying the
doctrinal diversities and particularities of these different schools than it is on
attempting to describe the very essence of the phenomenon of pAi/osophia and
finding the traits shared by the “philosopher” or by “philosophizing” in
antiquity. We must try to recognize in some way the strangeness of this
phenomenon, in order then to try to understand better the strangeness of its
permanence throughout the whole history of Western thought. Why, you may
ask, speak of strangeness when philosop/ia is a very general and common
thing? Doesn’t a philosophical quality color all of Hellenistic and Roman
thought? Weren’t the generalization and popularization of philosophy charac-
teristics of the time? Philosophy is found everywhere — in speeches, novels,
poetry, science, art. However, we must not be deceived. These general ideas,
these commonplaces that may adorn a literary work, and true “philosophiz-
ing” are separated by an abyss. Indeed, to be a philosopher implies a rupture
with what the skeptics called divs, that is, daily life, when they criticized other
philosophers for not observing the common conduct of life, the usual manner
of seeing and acting, which for the Skeptics consisted in respecting customs
and laws, practicing a craft or plying a trade, satisfying bodily needs, and
having the faith in appearances indispensable to action. It is true that even
while the Skeptics chose to conform to the common conduct of life, they
remained philosophers, since they practiced an exercise demanding something

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 57

rather strange, the suspension of judgment, and aiming at a goal, uninter-
rupted tranquillity and serenity of the soul, that the common conduct of life
hardly knew.

This very rupture between the philosopher and the conduct of everyday life
is strongly felt by non-philosophers. In the works of comic and satiric authors,
philosophers were portrayed as bizarre, if not dangerous characters. It is true,
moreover, that throughout all of antiquity the number of charlatans who
passed themselves off as philosophers must have been considerable, and
Lucian, for example, freely exercised his wit at their expense. Jurists too
considered philosophers a race apart. According to Ulpian, in the litigation
between professors and their debtors the authorities did not need to concern
themselves with philosophers, for these people professed to despise money. A
regulation made by the emperor Antoninus Pious on salaries and compensa-
tions notes that if a philosopher haggles over his possessions, he shows he is
no philosopher. Thus philosophers are strange, a race apart. Strange indeed
are those Epicureans, who lead a frugal life, practicing a total equality between
the men and women inside their philosophical circle — and even between
marricd women and courtesans; strange, too, those Roman Stoics who
disinterestedly administer the provinces of the empire entrusted to them and
are the only ones to take seriously the laws promulgated against excess;
strange as well this Roman Platonist, the Senator Rogatianus, a disciple of
Plotinus, who on the very day he is to assume his functions as praetor gives
up his responsibilities, abandons all his possessions, frees his slaves, and eats
only every other day. Strange indeed all those philosophers whose behavior,
without being inspired by religion, nonetheless completely breaks with the
customs and habits of most mortals.

By the time of the Platonic dialogues Socrates was called atopos, that is,
“unclassifiable.” What makes him atopos is precisely the fact that he is a
“philo-sopher” in the etymological sense of the word; that is, he is in love
with wisdom. For wisdom, says Diotima in Plato’s Symposium, is not a human
state, it is a state of perfection of being and knowledge that can only be divine.
It is the love of this wisdom, which is foreign to the world, that makes the
philosopher a stranger in it.

So each school will elaborate its rational depiction of this state of perfection
in the person of the sage, and each will make an effort to portray him. It is
truc that this transcendent ideal will be deemed almost inaccessible; according
to some schools there never was a wise man, while others say that perhaps
there were one or two of them, such as Epicurus, this god among men, and
still others maintain that man can only attain this state during rare, fleeting
moments. In this transcendent norm established by reason, each school will
express its own vision of the world, its own style of life, and its idea of the
perfect man. ‘Thin is why in every school the description of this transcendent
norm ultimately coincides with the rational idea of God. Michelet remarked

58 Method

very profoundly, “Greek religion culminated with its true god, the sage.” We
can interpret this remark, which Michelet does not develop, by noting that
the moment philosophers achieve a rational conception of God based on the
model of the sage, Greece surpasses its mythical representation of its gods. Of
course, classical descriptions of the sage depict the circumstances of human
life and take pleasure in describing how the sage would respond to this or that
situation, but the beatitude the wise man resolutely maintains throughout his
difficulties is that of God himself. Seneca asks what the sage’s life would be
in solitude, if he were in prison or exile, or cast upon the shores of a desert
island. And he answers that it would be the life of Zeus (that is, for the Stoics,
the life of universal Reason), when, at the end of each cosmic period, after
the activity of nature has ceased, he devotes himself freely to his thoughts;
like Zeus the sage would enjoy the happiness of being self-sufficient. Thus
the thoughts and will of the Stoic wise man completely coincide with the
thoughts, will, and development of Reason immanent to the evolution of the
Cosmos. As for the Epicurean sage, he, like the gods, watches the infinity of
worlds arising out of atoms in the infinite void; nature is sufficient for his
needs, and nothing ever disturbs the peace of his soul. For their part, the
Platonic and Aristotelian sages raise themselves in subtly different ways, by
their life of the mind, to the realm of the divine Mind itself.

Now we have a better understanding of atopia, the strangeness of the
philosopher in the human world. One does not know how to classify him, for
he is neither a sage nor a man like other men. He knows that the normal,
natural state of men should be wisdom, for wisdom is nothing more than the
vision of things as they are, the vision of the cosmos as it is in the light of
reason, and wisdom is also nothing more than the mode of being and living
that should correspond to this vision. But the philosopher also knows that this
wisdom is an ideal state, almost inaccessible. For such a man, daily life, as it
is organized and lived by other men, must necessarily appear abnormal, like
a state of madness, unconsciousness, and ignorance of reality. And nonethe-
less he must live this life every day, in this world in which he feels himself a
stranger and in which others perceive him to be one as well. And it is
precisely in this daily life that he must seek to attain that way of life which is
utterly foreign to the everyday world. ‘The result is a perpetual conflict
between the philosopher’s effort to see things as they are from the standpoint
of universal nature and the conventional vision of things underlying human
society, a conflict between the life one should live and the customs and
conventions of daily life. This conflict can never be totally resolved. The
Cynics, in their refusal of the world of social convention, opt for a total break.
On the contrary, others, such as the Skeptics, fully accept social convention,
while keeping their inner peace. Others, the Epicureans, for example, attempt
to recreate among themselves a daily life that conforms to the ideal of wisdom.
Others still, such as the Platonists and the Stolcs, strive, at the cost of the

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 59

greatest difficulties, to live their everyday and even their public lives in a
“philosophical” manner. In any event, for all of them, the philosophical life
will be an effort to live and think according to the norm of wisdom, it will
be a movement, a progression, though a never-ending one, toward this
transcendent state.

Each school, then, represents a form of life defined by an ideal of wisdom.
The result is that each one has its corresponding fundamental inner attitude
— for example, tension for the Stoics or relaxation for the Epicureans — and
its own manner of speaking, such as the Stoic use of percussive dialectic or
the abundant rhetoric of the Academicians. But above all every school
practices exercises designed to ensure spiritual progress toward the ideal state
of wisdom, exercises of reason that will be, for the soul, analagous to the
athlete’s training or to the application of a medical cure. Generally, they
consist, above all, of self-control and meditation. Self-control is fundamentally
being attentive to oneself: an unrelaxing vigilance for the Stoics, the renunci-
ation of unnecessary desires for the Epicureans. It always involves an effort
of will, thus faith in moral freedom and the possibility of self-improvement;
an acute moral consciousness honed by spiritual direction and the practice of
examining one’s conscience; and lastly, the kind of practical exercises
described with such remarkable precision particularly by Plutarch: controlling
one’s anger, curiosity, speech, or love of riches, beginning by working on what
is easiest in order gradually to acquire a firm and stable character.

Of first importance is “meditation,” which is the “exercise” of reason;
moreover, the two words are synonymous from an etymological point of view.
Unlike the Buddhist meditation practices of the Far East, Greco-Roman
philosophical meditation is not linked to a corporeal attitude but is a purely
rational, imaginative, or intuitive exercise that can take extremely varied
forms. First of all it is the memorization and assimilation of the fundamental
dogmas and rules of life of the school. Thanks to this exercise, the vision of
the world of the person who strives for spiritual progress will be completcly
transformed. In particular, philosophical meditation on the essential dogmas
of physics, for example the Epicurean contemplation of the genesis of worlds
in the infinite void or the Stoic contemplation of the rational and necessary
unfolding of cosmic events, can lead to an exercise of the imagination in
which human things appear of little importance in the immensity of space and
time. It is necessary to try to have these dogmas and rules for living “ready
to hand” if one is to be able to conduct oneself like a philosopher under all
of life’s circumstances. Moreover, one has to be able to imagine these
circumstances in advance in order to be ready for the shock of events. In all
the schools, for various reasons, philosophy will be especially a meditation
upon death and an attentive concentration on the present moment in order to
enjoy itor live it in full consciousness. In all these exercises, all the means
obtainable by dialectic and rhetoric will be utilized to obtain the maximum

60 Method

effect. In particular, this consciously willed application of rhetoric explains the
impression of pessimism that some readers believe they discern in the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. All images are suitable for him if they strike
the imagination and make the reader conscious of the illusions and conven-
tions of mankind.

The relationship between theory and practice in the philosophy of this
period must be understood from the perspective of these exercises of
meditation. Theory is never considered an end in itself; it is clearly and
decidedly put in the service of practice. Epicurus is explicit on this point: the
goal of the science of nature is to obtain the soul’s serenity. Or else, as among
the Aristotelians, one is more attached to theoretical activity considered as a
way of life that brings an almost divine pleasure and happiness than to the
theories themselves. Or, as in the Academicians’ school or for the skeptics,
theoretical activity is a critical activity. Or, as among the Platonists, abstract
theory is not considered to be true knowledge: as Porphyry says, “Beatific
contemplation does not consist of the accumulation of arguments or a
storehouse of learned knowledge, but in us theory must become nature and
life itself.” And, according to Plotinus, one cannot know the soul if one does
not purify oneself of one’s passions in order to experience in oneself the
transcendence of the soul with respect to the body, and one cannot know the
principle of all things if one has not had the experience of union with it.

To make possible these exercises in meditation, beginners are exposed to
maxims or summaries of the principal dogmas of the school. Epicurus’ Letters,
which Diogenes Laertius preserved for us, are intended to play this role. To
ensure that these dogmas have a great spiritual effectiveness, they must be
presented in the form of short, striking formulae, as in Epicurus’ Principal
Doctrines, or in a rigorously systematic form, such as the Letter to Herodotus
by the same author, which permitted the disciple to grasp in a kind of single
intuition the essentials of the doctrine in order to have it more easily at hand.
In this case the concern for systematic coherence was subordinated to spiritual
effectiveness.

The dogmas and methodological principles of each school are not open to
discussion. In this period, to philosophize is to choose a school, convert to its
way of life, and accept its dogmas. This is why the core of the fundamental
dogmas and rules of life for Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and
Epicureanism remained unchanged throughout antiquity. Even the scientists
of antiquity always were affiliated with a philosophical school: the develop-
ment of their mathematical and astronomical theorems changed nothing of the
fundamental principles of the school to which they claimed allegiance.

This does not mean that theoretical reflection and elaboration are absent
from the philosophical life. However, this activity never extended to the
dogmas themselves or the methodological principles but rather to the ways of
demonstrating and systematizing these dogmas and to secondary, doctrinal

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 61

points issuing from them on which there was not unanimity in the school.
This type of investigation is always reserved for the more advanced students,
for whom it is an exercise of reason that strengthens them in their philosoph-
ical life. Chrysippus, for example, felt himself capable of finding the
arguments justifying the Stoic dogmas established by Zeno and Cleanthes,
which led him, moreover, to disagree with them not concerning these dogmas
but on the way of establishing them. Epicurus, too, leaves the discussion and
study of points of detail to the more advanced students, and much later the
same attitude will be found in Origen, who assigns the “spiritual ones” the
task of seeking, as he himself says, by way of exercise, the “hows” and “whys”
and of discussing these obscure and secondary questions. This effort of
theoretical reflection can result in the composition of enormous works.

Obviously, these systematic treaties and scholarly commentaries, such as
Origen’s treatise on Principles or Proclus’ Elements of Theology, very legitim-
ately attract the attention of the historian of philosophy. The study of the
progress of thought in these great texts must be one of the principal tasks in
a reflection on the phenomenon of philosophy. However, it must be recog-
nized that generally speaking the philosophical works of Greco-Roman
antiquity almost always perplex the contemporary reader. I do not refer only
to the general public, but even to specialists in the field. One could compile
a whole anthology of complaints made against ancient authors by modern
commentators, who reproach them for their bad writing, contradictions, and
lack of rigor and coherence. Indeed, it is my astonishment both at these critics
and at the universality and persistence of the phenomenon they condemn that
inspires the reflections I have just presented, as well as those I wish to turn
to now.

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 philosophia, 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. I will
not discuss the problem of material support: the vo/umen or codex, cach of
which has its own constraints. But I do want to stress the fact that written
works in the period we study are never completely free of the constraints
imposed by oral transmission. In fact, it is an exaggeration to assert, as has
still been done recently, that Greco-Roman civilization carly on became a
civilization of writing and that one can thus treat, methodologically, the
philosophical works of antiquity like any other written work.

62 Method

For the written works of this period remain closely tied to oral conduct.
Often they were dictated to a scribe. And they were intended to be read aloud,
either by a slave reading to his master or by the reader himself, since in
antiquity reading customarily meant reading aloud, emphasizing the rhythm
of the phrase and the sounds of the words, which the author himself had
already experienced when he dictated his work. The ancients were extremely
sensitive to these effects of sound. Few philosophers of the period we study
resisted this magic of the spoken word, not even the Stoics, not even Plotinus.
So if oral literature before the practice of writing imposed rigorous constraints
on expression and obliged one to use certain rhythmic, stereotypic, and
traditional formulae conveying images and thoughts independent, if one may
say so, of the author’s will, this phenomenon is not foreign to written
literature to the degree that it too must concern itself with rhythm and sound.
To take an extreme but very revealing example, the use of poetic meter in De
rerum natura dictates the recourse to certain somewhat stereotypical formulae
and keeps Lucretius from freely using the technical vocabulary of Epicurean-
ism that he should have employed.

This relationship between the written and the spoken word thus explains
certain aspects of the works of antiquity. Quite often the work proceeds by
the associations of ideas, without systematic rigor. The work retains the starts
and stops, the hesitations, and the repetitions of spoken discourse. Or else,
after re-reading what he has written, the author introduces a somewhat forced
systematization by adding transitions, introductions, or conclusions to differ-
ent parts of the work.

More than other literature, philosophical works arc linked to oral trans-
mission because ancient philosophy itself is above all oral in character.
Doubtless there are occasions when someone was converted by reading a
book, but one would then hasten to the philosopher to hear him speak,
question him, and carry on discussions with him and other disciples in a
community that always serves as a place of discussion. In matters of
philosophical teaching, writing is only an aid to memory, a last resort that will
never replace the living word.

True education is always oral because only the spoken word makes dialogue
possible, that is, it makes it possible for the disciple to discover the truth
himself amid the interplay of questions and answers and also for the master
to adapt his teaching to the needs of the disciple. A number of philosophers,
and not the least among them, did not wish to write, thinking, as did
Plato and without doubt correctly, that what is inscribed in the soul by the
spoken word is more real and lasting than letters drawn on papyrus or
parchment.

Thus for the most part the literary productions of the philosophers are a
preparation, extension, or echo of their spoken lessons and are marked by the
limitations and constraints imposed by such a situation.

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 63

Some of these works, moreover, are directly related to the activity of
teaching. They may be either a summary the teacher drafted. in preparing his
course or notes taken by students during the course, or else they may be texts
written with care but intended to be read during the course by the professor
or a student. In all these cases, the general movement of thought, its
unfolding, what could be called its own temporality, is regulated by the
temporality of speech. It is a very heavy constraint, whose full rigor I am
experiencing today.

Even texts that were written in and for themselves are closely linked to the
activity of teaching, and their literary genre reflects the methods of the
schools. One of the exercises esteemed in the schools consists of discussing,
either dialectically, that is, in the form of questions and answers, or
rhetorically, that is, in a continuous discourse, what were called “theses,” that
is, theoretical positions presented in the form of questions: Is death an
evil? Is the wise man ever angry? This provides both training in the mastery
of the spoken word and a properly philosophical exercise. The largest portion
of the philosophical works of antiquity, for example those of Cicero, Plutarch,
Sencca, Plotinus, and more generally those classified by the moderns as
belonging to what they called the genre of diatribe, correspond to this
exercise. They discuss a specific question, which is posed at the outset of the
work and which normally requires a yes or no answer. In these works, the
course of thought consists in going back to general principles that have been
accepted in the school and are capable of resolving the problem in question.
This search to find principles to solve a given problem thus encloses thought
within narrowly defined limits. Different works written by the same author
and guided according to this “zetetic” method, “one that sceks,” will not
necessarily be coherent on all points because the details of the argument in
each work will be a function of the question asked.

Another school exercise is the reading and exegesis of the authoritative texts
of cach school. Many literary works, particularly the long commentaries from
the end of antiquity, are the result of this exercise. More generally, a large
number of the philosophical works from that time utilize a mode of exegetical
thinking. Most of the time, discussing a “thesis” consists in discussing not
the problem in itself but the meaning that one should give to Plato’s or
Aristotle’s statements concerning this problem. Once this convention has been
taken into account, one does in fact discuss the question in some depth, but
this is done by skillfully giving Platonic or Aristotelian statements the
meanings that support the very solution one wishes to give to the problem
under consideration. Ariy possible meaning is true provided it cohcres with
the truth one believes onc has discovered in the text. In this way there slowly
emerges, in the spiritual tradition of each school, but in Platonism above all,
uxcholasticism which, relying on argument from authority, builds up gigantic
doctrinal edifices by means of an extraordinary rational reflection on the

64 Method

fundamental dogmas. It is precisely the third philosophical literary genre, the
systematic treatise, that proposes a rational ordering of the whole of doctrine,
which sometimes is presented, as in the case of Proclus, as a more geometrico,
that is, according to the model of Euclid’s Elements. In this case one no longer
returns to the principles necessary to resolve a specific question but sets down
the principles directly and deduces their consequences. These works are, so
to speak, “more written” than the others. They often comprise a long
sequence of books and are marked by a vast, overarching design. But, like the
Summae theologicae of the Middle-Ages that they prefigure, these works must
themselves also be understood from the perspective of dialectical and
exegctical scholarly exercises.

Unlike their modern counterparts, none of these philosophical productions,
even the systematic works, is addressed to everyone, to a general audience,
but they are intended first of all for the group formed by the members of the
school; often they echo problems raised by the oral teaching. Only works of
propaganda are addressed to a wider audience.

Moreover, while he writes the philosopher often extends his activity as
spiritual director that he exercises in his school. In such cases the work may
be addressed to a particular disciple who needs encouragement or who finds
himself in a special difficulty. Or else the work may be adapted to the spiritual
level of the addressees. Not all the details of the system can be explained to
beginners; many details can be revealed only to those further along the path.
Above all, the work, even if it is apparently theoretical and systematic, is
written not so much to inform the reader of a doctrinal content but to form
him, to make him traverse a certain itinerary in the course of which he will
make spiritual progress. This procedure is clear in the works of Plotinus and
Augustine, in which all the detours, starts and stops, and digressions of the
work are formative elements. One must always approach a philosophical work
of antiquity with this idea of spiritual progress in mind. For the Platonists,
for example, even mathematics is used to train the soul to raise itself from the
sensible to the intelligible. The overall organization of a work and its mode
of exposition may always answer to such preoccupations.

Such then are the many constraints that are exercised on the ancient author
and that often perplex the modern reader with respect to both what is said
and the way in which it is said. Understanding a work of antiquity requires
placing it in the group from which it emanates, in the tradition of its dogmas,
its literary genre, and requires understanding its goals. One must attempt to
distinguish what the author was required to say, what he could or could not
say, and, above all, what he meant to say. For the ancient author’s art consists
in his skillfully using, in order to arrive at his goals, all of the constraints that
weigh upon him as well as the models furnished by the tradition, Mont of the
time, furthermore, he uses not only ideas, images, and patterns of argument
in this way but also texts or at least pre-existing formulae Means plagiarism

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 65

pure and simple to quotation or paraphrase, this practice includes — and this
is the most characteristic example — the literal use of formulae or words
employed by the earlier tradition to which the author often gives a new
meaning adapted to what he wants to say. This is the way that Philo, a Jew,
uses Platonic formulae to comment on the Bible, or Ambrose, a Christian,
translates Philo’s text to present Christian doctrines, the way that Plotinus
uses words and whole sentences from Plato to convey his experience. What
matters first of all is the prestige of the ancient and traditional formula, and
not the exact meaning it originally had. The idea itself holds less interest than
the prefabricated elements in which the writer believes he recognizes his own
thought, elements that take on an unexpected meaning and purpose when
they are integrated into a literary whole. This sometimes brilliant reuse of
prefabricated elements gives an impression of “bricolage,” to take up a word
currently in fashion, not only among anthropologists but among biologists.
Thought evolves by incorporating prefabricated and pre-existing elements,
which are given new meaning as they become integrated into a rational
system. It is difficult to say what is most extraordinary about this process of
integration: contingency, chance, irrationality, the very absurdity resulting
from the elements used, or, on the contrary, the strange power of reason to
integrate and systematize these disparate elements and to give them a new
meaning.

An extremely significant example of this conferring of a new meaning can
be seen in the final lines of Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations.
Summing up his own theory, Husserl writes, “The Delphic oracle yy @6@r
ceavtév [know thyself] has acquired a new meaning. ... One must first lose
the world by the ézoy7 [for Husserl, the ‘phenomenological bracketing’ of
the world], in order to regain it in a universal self-consciousness. Noli foras
ire, says St Augustine, in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas.” This
sentence of Augustine’s, “Do not lose your way from without, return to
yourself, it is in the inner man that truth dwells,” offers Husserl a convenient
formula for expressing and summarizing his own conception of consciousness.
It is true that Husserl gives this sentence a new meaning. Augustine’s “inner
man” becomes the “transcendental ego” for Husserl, a knowing subject who
regains the world in “a universal self-consciousness.” Augustine never could
have conceived of his “inner man” in these terms. And nonetheless one
understands why Husserl was tempted to use this formula. For Augustine’s
sentence admirably summarizes the whole spirit of Greco-Roman philosophy
that prepares the way for both Descartes’ Meditations and Husser!’s Cartesian
Meditations. And by the same procedure of taking up such a formula again,
we ourselves can apply to ancient philosophy what Husserl says of his own
philosophy: the Delphic oracle “Know thyself” has acquired a new meaning.
lor all the philosophy of which we have spoken also gives a new meaning to
the Delphic formula, ‘This new meaning already appeared among the Stoics,

66 Method

for whom the philosopher recognizes the presence of divine reason in the
human self and who opposes his moral consciousness, which depends on him
alone, to the rest of the universe. This new meaning appeared even more
clearly among the Neoplatonists, who identify what they call the true self with
the founding intellect of the world and even with the transcendent unity that
founds all thought and all reality. In Hellenistic and Roman thought this
movement, of which Husserl speaks, is thus already outlined, according to
which one loses the world in order to find it again in universal self-conscious-
ness. Thus Husserl consciously and explicitly presents himself as the heir to
the tradition of “Know thyself” that runs from Socrates to Augustine to
Descartes. But that is not all. This example, borrowed from Husserl, better
enables us to understand concretely how these conf errals of new meaning can
be realized in antiquity as well. Indeed, the expression in interiore homine
habitat veritas, as my friend and colleague Goulven Madec has pointed out to
me, is an allusion to a group of words borrowed from chapter 3, verses 16
and 17, of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, from an ancient Latin version, to be
exact, in which the text appears as in interiore homine Christum habitare. But
these words are merely a purely material conjunction that exists only in this
Latin version and do not correspond to the contents of Paul’s thought, for
they belong to two different clauses of the sentence. On the one hand, Paul
wishes for Christ to dmell in the heart of his disciples through faith, and, on
the other hand, in the preceding clause, he wishes for God to allow his
disciples to be strengthened by the divine Spirit in the inner man, in interiorem
hominem, as the Vulgate has it. So the earlier Latin version, by combining in
interiore homine and Christum habitare, was either a mistranslation or was
miscopied. The Augustinian formula, in intertore homine habitat veritas, is thus
created from a group of words that do not represent a unified meaning in St
Paul’s text; but taken in itself, this group of words has a meaning for
Augustine, and he explains it in the context of De vera religione where he uses
it: the inner man, that is, the human spirit, discovers that what permits him
to think and reason is the truth, that is, divine reason — that is, for Augustine,
Christ, who dwells in, who is present within, the human spirit. In this way
the formula takes on a Platonic meaning. We see how, from St Paul to
Husserl, by way of Augustine, a group of words whose unity was originally
only purely material, or which was a misunderstanding of the Latin translator,
was given a new meaning by Augustine, and then by Husserl, thus taking its
place in the vast tradition of the deepening of the idea of self-consciousness.

This example borrowed from Husser] allows us to touch on the importance
of what in Western thought is called the topos. Literary theories use the term
to refer to the formulae, images, and metaphors that forcibly impose
themselves on the writer and the thinker in such a way that the use of these
prefabricated models scems indispensable to them in order to be able to
express their own thoughts.

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 67

Our Western thought has been nourished in this way and still lives off a
relatively limited number of formulae and metaphors borrowed from the
various traditions of which it is the result. For example, there are maxims that
encourage a certain inner attitude such as “Know thyself”; those which have
long guided our view of nature: “Nature makes no leaps,” “Nature delights
in diversity.” There are metaphors such as “The force of truth,” “The world
as a book” (which is perhaps extended in the conception of the genetic code
as a text). There are biblical formulae such as “I am who I am,” which have
profoundly marked the idea of God. The point I strongly wish to emphasize
here is the following: these prefabricated models, of which I have just given
some examples, were known during the Renaissance and in the modern world
in the very form that they had in the Hellenistic and Roman tradition, and
they were originally understood during the Renaissance and in the modern
world with the very meaning these modcls of thought had during the
Greco-Roman period, especially at the end of antiquity. So these models
continue to explain many aspects of our contemporary thought and even the
very significance, sometimes unexpected, that we find in antiquity. For
example, the classical prejudice, which has done so much damage to the study
of late Greek and Latin literatures, is an invention of the Greco-Roman
period, which created the model of a canon of classical authors as a reaction
against mannerism and the baroque, which, at that time, were called
“Asianism.” But if the classical prejudice already existed during the Hellen-
istic and especially imperial eras, this is precisely because the distance we feel
with respect to classical Greece also appeared at that time. It is precisely this
Hellenistic spirit, this distance, in some ways modern, through which, for
example, the traditional myths become the objects of scholarship or of
philosophical and moral interpretations. It is through Hellenistic and Roman
thought, particularly that of late antiquity, that the Renaissance was to
perceive Greek tradition. This fact was to be of decisive importance for the
birth of modern European thought and art. In another respect contemporary
hermeneutic theories that, proclaiming the autonomy of the written text, have
constructed a veritable tower of Babel of interpretations where all meanings
become possible, come straight out of the practices of ancient exegesis, about
which I spoke earlier. Another example: for our late colleague Roland Barthes,
“many features of our literature, of our teaching, of our institutions of
language .. . would be elucidated and understood differently if we fully knew
...the rhetorical code that gave its language to our culture.” This is
completely true, and we could add that this knowledge would perhaps enable
us to be conscious of the fact that in their methods and modes of expression
our human sciences often operate in a way completely analogous to the
models of ancient rhetoric.

Our history of Flellenistic and Roman thought should therefore not only
analyze the movement of thought in philosophical works, but it should also

68 Method

be a historical topics that will study the evolution of the meaning of the topoi,
the models of which we have spoken, and the role they have played in the
formation of Western thought. This historical topics should work hard at
discerning the original meanings of the formulae and models and the different
significances that successive reinterpretations have given them.

At first, this historical topics will take for its object of study those works
that were founding models and the literary genres that they created. Euclid’s
Elements, for example, served as a model for Proclus’s Elements of Theology
but also for Spinoza’s Ethics. Plato’s Timaeus, itself inspired by pre-Socratic
cosmic poems, served as a model for Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and the
eighteenth century, in turn, was to dream of a new cosmic poem that would
exhibit the latest discoveries of science. Augustine’s Confessions, as it was
misinterpreted, moreover, inspired an enormous literature up to Rousseau
and the romantics.

This topics could also be a topics of aphorisms: for example, of the maxims
about nature that dominated the scientific imagination until the nineteenth
century. This year [at the Collége de France], we will study in this way the
aphorism of Heraclitus that is usually phrased as “Nature loves to hide
herself,” although this is certainly not the original meaning of the three Greck
words so translated. We will examine the significance this formula takes on
throughout antiquity and later on, as a function of the evolution of the idea
of nature, the very interpretation proposed by Martin Heidegger.

Above all, this historical topics will be a topics about the themes of
meditations of which we spoke a few minutes ago, which have dominated and
still dominate our Western thought. Plato, for example, had defined philo-
sophy as an exercise for death, understood as the separation of the soul from
the body. For Epicurus this exercise for death takes on a new meaning; it
becomes the consciousness of the finitude of existence that gives an infinite
value to each instant: “Persuade yourself that every new day that dawns will
be your last one. And then you will receive each unhoped for hour with
gratitude.” In the perspective of Stoicism, the exercise for death takes on a
different character; it invites immediate conversion and makes inner freedom
possible: ‘“‘Let death be before your eyes each day and you will not have any
base thoughts or excessive desires.” A mosaic at the Roman National Museum
is inspired, perhaps ironically, by this meditation, as it depicts a skeleton with
a scythe accompanied by the inscription Gnothi seauton, “Know thyself.” Be
that as it may, Christianity will make abundant use of this theme of meditation.
There it can be treated in a manner close to Stoicism, as in this monk’s
reflection: “Since the beginning of our conversation, we have come closer to
death. Let us be vigilant while we still have the time.” But it changes radically
when it is combined with the properly Christian theme of participation in
Christ’s death. Leaving aside all of the rich Western literary tradition, so well
illustrated by Montaigne’s chapter “That to philosophize in to learn ta die,”

Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse 69

we can go straight to Heidegger in order to rediscover this fundamental
philosophical exercise in his definition of the authenticity of existence as a
lucid anticipation of death.

Linked to the meditation upon death, the theme of the value of the present
instant plays a fundamental role in all the philosophical schools. In short it is
a consciousness of inner freedom. It can be summarized in a formula of this
kind: you need only yourself in order immediately to find inner peace by
ceasing to worry about the past and the future. You can be happy right now,
or you will never be happy. Stoicism will insist on the effort needed to pay
attention to oneself, the joyous acceptance of the present moment imposed on
us by fate. The Epicurean will conceive of this liberation from cares about the
past and the future as a relaxation, a pure joy of existing: “While we are
speaking, jealous time has flown; seize today without placing your trust in
tomorrow.” This is Horace’s famous /aetus in praesens, this “enjoyment of the
pure present,” to use André Chastel’s fine expression about Marsilio Ficino,
who had taken this very formula of Horace’s for his motto. Here again the
history of this theme in Western thought is fascinating. I cannot resist the
pleasure of evoking the dialogue between Faust and Helena, the climax of part
two of Gocthe’s Faust: “Nun schaut der Geist nicht vorwarts, nicht zuriick, /
Die Gegenwart allcin ist unser Gliick” (“And so the spirit looks neither ahead
nor behind. The present alonc is our joy ... Do not think about your destiny.
Being here is a duty, even though it only be an instant”].

I have come to the end of this inaugural address, which means that I have
just completed what in antiquity was called an epideixis, a set speech. It is in
a direct line with those that professors in the time of Libanius, for example,
had to give in order to recruit an audience while at the same time trying to
demonstrate the incomparable worth of their speciality and to display their
eloquence. It would be interesting to investigate the historic paths by which
this ancient practice was transmitted to the first professors at the Collége de
France. In any case, at this very moment, we are in the process of fully living
a Greco-Roman tradition. Philo of Alexandria said of these set speeches that
the lecturer “brought into broad daylight the fruit of long efforts pursued in
private, as painters and sculptors seek, in realizing their works, the applause
of the public.” And he opposed this behavior to the true philosophical
instruction in which the teacher adapts his speech to the state of his listeners
and brings them the cures they need in order to be healed.

The concern with individual destiny and spiritual progress, the intransi-
gent assertion of moral requirements, the call for meditation, the invitation to
seck this inner peace that all the schools, even those of the skeptics, propose
as the aim of philosophy, the feeling for the seriousness and grandeur
of existence this seems to me to be what has never been surpassed in
ancient philosophy and what always remains alive. Perhaps some people will
sce in these attitudes an escape or evasion that is incompatible with the

70 Method

consciousness we should have of human suffering and misery, and they will
think that the philosopher thereby shows himself to be irremediably foreign
to the world. I would answer simply by quoting this beautiful text by Georges
Friedmann, from 1942, which offers a glimpse of the possibility of reconciling
the concern for justice and spiritual effort; it could have been written by a
Stoic of antiquity:

Take flight each day! At least for a moment, however brief, as long as
it is intense. Every day a “spiritual exercise,” alone or in the company
of a man who also wishes to better himself.... Leave ordinary time
behind. Make an effort to rid yourself of your own passions. . . . Become
eternal by surpassing yourself. This inner effort is necessary, this
ambition, just. Many are those who are entirely absorbed in militant
politics, in the preparation for the social revolution. Rare, very rare, are
those who, in order to prepare for the revolution, wish to become
worthy of it.

NOTES

Delivered as the inaugural lecture to the chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman
Thought, Collége de France, 18 February 1983. © 1983 by The Collége de France,
Trans. Arnold I. Davidson and Paula Wissing. First published in English in Critical
Inquiry 16 (spring 1990)

1 Petrus Ramus, Regii Eloguentiae Philosophiaeque Professoris, Oratio Initio Suae
Professionis Habita, Paris 1551. See Walter J. Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory:
A Short-Title Inventory of the Published Works of Peter Ramus (1515-1572) and
of Omer Talon (ca. 1510-1562) in Their Original and in Their Variously Altered
Forms, Cambridge MA 1958, p. 158.

2 See Pierre Hadot and Claude Rapin, “Les Textes littéraires grecs de la Trésorerie
d’Ai Khanoun,” pt. 1, Etudes, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 111 (1987):
225-

3 Georges Friedmann, La Puissance de la sagesse, Paris 1970, p. 359.

2

Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative
Mistakes

Everyone is familiar with Whitehead’s remark: “Western philosophy is
nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato’s dialogues.” This statement could
be interpreted in two ways: we could take it to mean that Plato’s problematics
have made a definitive mark upon Western philosophy, and this would be
true. Alternatively, it could be taken to mean that, in a concrete sense,
Western philosophy has assumed the form of commentaries — be they on Plato
or on other philosophers — and that, more generally speaking, it has taken the
form of exegesis. This, too, is to a very large extent true. It is important to
realize that, for almost two thousand years — from the mid-fourth century BC
to the end of the sixteenth century AD — philosophy was conceived of, above
all, as the exegesis of a small number of texts deriving from “authorities,”
chief among whom were Plato and Aristotle. We are, moreover, justified in
asking ourselves if, even after the Cartesian revolution, philosophy does not
still bear traces of its lengthy past, and if, even today, at least to a certain
extent, it has not remained exegesis.

The long period of “exegetical” philosophy is linked to a sociological
phenomenon: the existence of philosophical schools, in which the thought,
life-style, and writings of a master were religiously preserved. This phenome-
non seems already to have existed among the Presocratics, but we are best
able to observe it from Plato on.

Plato had given his Academy an extremely solid material and juridical
organization. The leaders of the school succeeded one another! in a continu-
ous chain until Justinian’s closure of the school of Athens in 529, and
throughout this entire period, scholarly activity was carried out according to
fixed, traditional methods. The other great schools, whether Peripatetic,
Stoic, or Epicurean, were organized along similar lines. The writings of each
school's founder served as the basis for its instruction, and it was determined

72 Method

in which order the student should read these writings, in order to acquire the
best possible education. We still have some of the writings in which Platonists
gave advice on the order in which Plato’s dialogues were to be read. Thus,
we can tell that from the fourth century BC on, Aristotle’s logical writings
were arranged in a definite scholastic order — the Organon — which would not
change until modern times.

Instruction consisted above all in commenting on Plato and Aristotle, using
previous commentaries and adding a new interpretation here and there. In
this regard, we have an interesting testimony from Porphyry about the lessons
of Plotinus:

During his classes, he used to have the commentaries read, perhaps of
Severus or of Cronius or of Numenius or Gaius or Atticus, or of
Peripatetics like Aspasius, Alexander, or whichever other came to hand.
Yet he never repeated anything from these commentaries word for
word, restricted himself to these readings alone. Rather, he himself used
to give a general explanation [theoria] of (Plato’s or Aristotle’s) text in
his own personal way, which was different from current opinion. In his
investigations, moreover, he brought to bear the spirit of Ammonius.?

The first commentator on Plato’s Timaeus seems to have been Crantor
(ca. 330 BC), and Platonic commentators continued their activity until the
end of the Athenian school in the sixth century. From this point, the tradition
was continued, both in the Arab world and in the Latin West, up until the
Renaissance (Marsilio Ficino). As for Aristotle, he was first commented upon
by Andronicus of Rhodes (first century BC), who was the first in a series
extending through the end of the Renaissance, in the person of Zabardella. In
addition to commentaries stricto sensu, the exegetical activity of the philosoph-
ical schools took the form of dogmatic treatises, devoted to particular points
of exegesis, and manuals designed to serve as introductions to the study of
the masters. Moreover, the end of antiquity witnessed the appearance of other
authorities, in addition to Plato and Aristotle: the authority of Revelations.
For Christians and Jews, this meant primarily the Bible, and for pagan
philosophers, the Chaldaean Oracles. Both Judaism and Christianity sought to
present themselves to the Greek world as philosophies; they thus developed,
in the persons of Philo and Origen respectively, a biblical exegesis analogous
to the traditional pagan exegesis of Plato. For their part, such pagan
commentators on the Chaldaean Oracles as Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus
did their best to show that the teachings of the “gods” coincided with Plato's
doctrines. If we understand by “theology” the rational exegesis of a sacred
text, then we can say that during this period philosophy was transformed into
theology, and it was to stay that way throughout the Middle Ages. From this
perspective, medieval Scholastics appears ax the logical continuation of the

Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes 73

ancient exegetical tradition. M.-D. Chenu? has defined the specific character
of Scholastics as “dialectics applied to the comprehension of a text: either a
continuous text, in which case the goal is the writing of a commentary, or of
a series of texts, which are selected to serve as bases and proofs for a given
speculative construction.”* For this scholar, Scholastics is “‘a rational form of
thought which is consciously and deliberately elaborated, taking as its
starting-point a text considered as authoritative.” > If we accent these defini-
tions, we can assert that Scholastic thought did nothing other than adopt
thought-processes already traditionally used in the majority of ancient philo-
sophical schools. Conversely, we could also say that these schools were already
engaging in Scholastic thought. Throughout the Middle Ages, instruction
consisted essentially in textual commentary, whether of the Bible, Aristotle,
Boethius, or the Sentences of Peter Lombard.

These facts have important consequences for the gencral interpretation of
the history of philosophy, especially during its pre-Cartesian period. Insofar
as philosophy was considered exegesis, the search for truth, throughout this
period, was confounded with the search for the meaning of “authentic” texts;
that is, of those texts considered as authoritative. Truth was contained within
these texts; it was the property of their authors, as it was also the property of
those groups who recognized the authority of these authors, and who were
consequently the “heirs” of this original truth.

Philosophical problems were expressed in exegetical terms. For example, we
find Plotinus writing the following in the course of his investigation of the
problem of evil: “We must try to find out in what sense Plato says that evils shall
not pass away, and that their existence is necessary.”* Typically, the rest of
Plotinus’ inquiry consists in a discussion of the terminology used by Plato in his
Theaetetus.’ The famous battle over universals, which divided the Middle Ages,
was based on the exegesis of a single phrase from Porphyry’s /sagoge. It would
be possible to make a list of all the texts which, upon being discussed, formed
the basis of all ancient and medieval problematics. The list would not be long: it
might contain a few passages from Plato (especially the Tismaeus), Aristotle,
Boethius, the first chapter of Genesis, and the prologue to the Gospel of John.

The fact that authentic texts raise questions is not due to any inherent
defect. On the contrary: their obscurity, it was thought, was only the result
of a technique used by a master, who wished to hint at a great many things
at once, and therefore enclosed the “truth” in his formulations. Any potential
meaning, as long as it was coherent with what was considered to be the
master’s doctrine, was consequently held to be true. Charles Thurot’s remark*
about the commentators on the grammarian Priscianus is applicable to all the
philosopher exegetes:

In their explanations of a text, the glossators did not seek to understand
the author's thought; but rather to teach the doctrine itself which they

74 Method

supposed to be contained in it. What they termed an “authentic” author
could neither be mistaken, nor contradict himself, nor develop his
arguments poorly, nor disagree with any other authentic author. The
most forced exegesis was used in order to accommodate the letter of the
text to what was considered the truth.’

It was believed that the truth had been “given” in the master’s texts, and that
all that had to be done was to bring it to light and explicate it. Plotinus, for
example, writes: “These statements are not new; they do not belong to the
present time, but were made long ago, although not explicitly, and what we
have said in this discussion has been an interpretation of them, relying on
Plato’s own writings for evidence that these views are ancient.” '® Here we
encounter another aspect of the conception of truth implied by “exegetical”
philosophy. Each philosophical or religious school or group believed itself to
be in possession of a traditional truth, communicated from the beginning by
the divinity to a few wise men. Each therefore laid claim to being the
legitimate depositary of the truth.

From this perspective, the conflict between pagans and Christians, from the
second century AD on, is highly instructive. As both pagans and Christians
recognized affinities between their respective doctrines, they accused each
other of theft. Some claimed Plato plagiarized Moses, while others affirmed
the contrary; the result was a series of chronological arguments destined to
prove which of the two was historically prior. For Clement of Alexandria, the
theft dated back even before the creation of humanity. It had been some
wicked angel who, having discovered some traces of the divine truth, revealed
philosophy to the wise of this world."

Pagans and Christians explained in the same way the differences which,
despite certain analogies, persisted between their doctrines. They were the
result of misunderstandings and mistranslations — in other words, bad exegesis
- of stolen texts. For Celsus, the Christian conception of humility was nothing
but a poor interpretation of a passage in Plato’s Laws;'* the idea of the
kingdom of God only a misreading of a passage in Plato’s text on the king of
all things,"’ and the notion of the resurrection only a misunderstanding of the
idea of transmigration. On the Christian side, Justin asserted that some of
Plato’s statements showed that he had misunderstood the text of Moses."*

In this intellectual atmosphere, error was the result of bad exegesis,
mistranslation, and faulty understanding. Nowadays, however, historians
seem to consider a// exegetical thought as the result of mistakes or misunder-
standings. We can briefly enumerate the forms these alleged mistakes and
deformations are thought to assume: in the first place, the exegetes make
arbitrary systematizations. For instance, they take out of context passages
originally widely separated from each other, and analyze them in a purely
formal way, in order to reduce the texts to be explained toa body of coherent

Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes 75

doctrine. In this way, for instance, a four- or five-tiered hierarchy of being
was extracted from various dialogues of Plato.

Nor is this the most serious abuse. Whether consciously or not, systemat-
ization amalgamates the most disparate notions, which had originated in
different or even contradictory doctrines. Thus we find the commentators on
Aristotle using Stoic and Platonic ideas in their exegesis of Aristotelian texts.
It is fairly frequent, especially in the case of translated texts, to find
commentators trying to explain notions which simply do not exist in the
original. In Psalm 113: 16, for example, we read: “The heaven is the heaven
of the Lord.” Augustine, however, started out from the Greek translation of
the Bible, and understood: “The heaven of heavens is of [i.e. belongs to] the
Lord.” Augustine is thus led to imagine a cosmological reality, which he
identifies with the intelligible world, which he then goes on to try and locate
with relation to the “heaven” mentioned in the first verse of Genesis. From
the point of view of the actual text of the Bible, this whole construction is
based on thin air.

Cases of misunderstanding are not always this extreme. Nevertheless, it
frequently occurs that exegeses construct entire edifices of interpretation on
the basis of a banal or misunderstood phrase. The whole of Neoplatonic
exegesis of the Parmenides seems to be an example of such a phenomenon.

The modern historian may be somewhat disconcerted on coming across
such modes of thought, so far removed from his usual manner of reasoning.
He is, however, forced to admit one fact: very often, mistakes and misunder-
standings have brought about important evolutions in the history of philo-
sophy. In particular, they have caused new ideas to appear. The most
interesting example of this seems to me to be the appearance of the distinction
between “being” as an infinitive and “being” as a participle,'> which, as I have
shown clsewhere,"* was thought up by Porphyry in order to solve a problem
posed by a passage in Plato. In the Parmenides," Plato had asked: “If the One
is, is it possible that it should not participate in being [ousia]?” For the
Neoplatonist Porphyry, the Once in question here is the second One. If this
second One participates in ousia, he reasons, we must assume that ousia is
prior to the second One. Now, the only thing prior to the second Onc is the
first One, and this latter is not in any sense ousia. Thus, Porphyry concludes
that, in this passage, the word ousia designates the first One in an enigmatic,
symbolical way. The first Onc is not ousia in the sense of “substance”; rather,
it js being (étre) in the sense of a pure, transcendent act, prior to being as a
substantial object (étant). L’étant, then, is the first substance and the first
determination of /étre.

The history of the notion of being is, moreover, marked by a whole series
of such creative mistakes. If we consider the series formed by ousia in Plato,
ousia in Aristotle, ousia in the Stoics, vusia in the Neoplatonists, and substantia
or essenta in the church Fathers and the Scholastics, we shall find that the

76 Method

idea of ousia or essence is amongst the most confused and confusing of
notions. I have tried to show elsewhere’® that the distinction, established by
Boethius, between esse and quod est” did not originally have the meaning that
the Middle Ages was later to attribute to it.

It is clear that historians of philosophy must use the greatest caution in
applying the idea of “system” for the comprehension of the philosophical
works of antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is not the case that every properly
philosophical endeavor is “systematic” in the Kantian or Hegelian sense. For
two thousand years, philosophical thought utilized a methodology which
condemned it to accept incoherences and far-fetched associations, precisely to
the extent that it wanted to be systematic. But to study the actual progress of
exegetical thought is to begin to realize that thought can function rationally
in many different ways, which are not necessarily the same as those of
mathematical logic or Hegelian dialectic.

Philosophers of the modern era, from the seventeenth to the beginning of the
nineteenth centuries, refused the argument from authority and abandoned the
exegetical mode of thinking. They began to consider that the truth was not a
ready-made given, but was rather the result of a process of elaboration, carried
out by a reason grounded in itself. After an initial period of optimism, however,
in which people believed it was possible for thought to postulate itself in an
absolute way, philosophy began to become more and more aware, from the
nineteenth century on, of its historical and especially linguistic conditioning.

This was a legitimate reaction, but it could be that its result has been that
philosophers have let themselves be hypnotized by philosophical discourse
taken in and for itself. In the last analysis, philosophical discourse now tends
to have as its object nothing but more philosophical discourse. In a sense,
contemporary philosophical discourse has once again become exegetical, and,
sad to say, it often interprets its texts with the same violence used by ancient
practitioners of allegory.

NOTES

1 Even if, from a juridical point of view, the succession of Platonic diadochoi was
interrupted in the first century BC, the successors of Plato nevertheless always
considered themselves heirs of an unbroken spiritual tradition.

2 Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 14, 11.

3 M.-D. Chenu, /ntroduction @ l'étude de saint Thomas d'Aquin, Paris 1954.

4 Ibid, p. 55.

5 Ibid.

6 Plotinus, Enneads, I, 8, 6, 1.

7 Plato, Theaetetus, 176a5-8.

8 Charles Thurot, Extratts de... manuscrits latins pour servir d Uhastoire des doctrines
grammaticales, Paris 1869,

Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes 77

9 Ibid, p. 103.

10 Plotinus, Enneads, 5 1, 8, 11-14.

11 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I, 17, 81, 4.

12 Plato, Laws, 716a.

13 Plato, Second Letter, 312a.

14 For the texts from Celsus and Justin, cf. C. Andresen, Logos und Nomos, Berlin
1955, pp. 146 ff. On the idea of the “ownership of the truth,” cf. Hans
Blumenberg, Die Legitimitiit der Neuzeit, Frankfurt 1966, p. 47.

15 [The distinction alluded to here is that between the French words étre — ‘to be’
or ‘being’ - and the participle ésant, ‘a being’ (the corresponding Greek terms are
to einai and to on.) Porphyry conceived of the infinitive ‘being’ as pure activity;
while ‘bcing’ as a noun was an emanation from, and substantification of, this
being gua pure activity. - Trans.]

16 Pierre Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols, Paris 1968, vol. I, pp. 129-32.

17 Plato, Parmenides, 142b.

18 Pierre Hadot, “La distinction de l’étre et Pétant dans le ‘De Hebdomadibus’ de
Boéce,” in Miscellania Mediaevalia, vol. 2, Berlin 1963, pp. 147-53.

19 [“Being” / “to be,” and “that which is.” - Trans.]

Part II

Spiritual Exercises

3

Spiritual Exercises

To take flight every day! At least for a moment, which may be brief, as
long as it is intense. A “spiritual exercise” every day — either alone, or
in the company of someone who also wishes to better himself. Spiritual
exercises. Step out of duration . .. try to get rid of your own passions,
vanities, and the itch for talk about your own name, which sometimes
burns you like a chronic disease. Avoid backbiting. Get rid of pity and
hatred. Love all free human beings. Become eternal by transcending
yourself.

This work on yourself is necessary; this ambition justified. Lots of people
Ict themselves be wholly absorbed by militant politics and the preparation
for social revolution. Rare, much more rare, are they who, in order to
prepare for the revolution, are willing to make themselves worthy of it.

With the exception of the last few lines, doesn’t this text look like a pastiche
of Marcus Aurelius? It is by Georges Fricdmann,' and it is quite possible that,
when he wrote it, the author was not aware of the resemblance. Moreover, in
the rest of his book, in which he secks a place “to re-source himself”,? he
comes to the conclusion that there is no tradition — be it Jewish, Christian, or
Oriental — compatible with contemporary spiritual demands. Curiously,
however, he does not ask himself about the value of the philosophical tradition
of Greco-Roman antiquity, although the lines we have just quoted show to
just what extent ancient tradition continues — albeit unconsciously — to live
within him, as it does within each of us.

‘Spiritual exercises.” The expression is a bit disconcerting for the contem-
porary reader. In the first place, it is no longer quite fashionable these days
to use the word “spiritual.” It is nevertheless necessary to use this term, I
believe, because none of the other adjectives we could use — “psychic,”
“moral,” “ethical,” “intellectual,” “of thought,” “of the soul” — covers all the
aspects of the reality we want to describe. Since, in these exercises, it is
thought which, as it were, takes itself as its own subject-matter,’ and seeks to

82 Spiritual Exercises

modify itself, it would be possible for us to speak in terms of “thought
exercises.” Yet the word “thought” does not indicate clearly enough that
imagination and sensibility play a very important role in these exercises. For
the same reason, we cannot be satisfied with “intellectual exercises,” although
such intellectual factors as definition, division, ratiocination, reading, invest-
igation, and rhetorical amplification play a large role in them. “Ethical
exercises” is a rather tempting expression, since, as we shall see, the exercises
in question contribute in a powerful way to the therapeutics of the passions,
and have to do with the conduct of life. Yet, here again, this would be too
limited a view of things. As we can glimpse through Friedmann’s text, these
exercises in fact correspond to a transformation of our vision of the world,
and to a metamorphosis of our personality. The word “spiritual” is quite apt
to make us understand that these exercises are the result, not merely of
thought, but of the individual’s entire psychism. Above all, the word
“spiritual” reveals the true dimensions of these exercises. By means of them,
the individual raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit; that is to
say, he re-places himself within the perspective of the Whole (“Become
eternal by transcending yourself”).

Here our reader may say, “All right, we'll accept the expression ‘spiritual
exercises’. But are we talking about Ignatius of Loyola’s Exercitia spiritualia?
What relationship is there between Ignatian meditations and Friedmann’s
program of “stepping out of duration... becoming eternal by transcending
oneself?” Our reply, quite simply, is that Ignatius’ Exercitia spiritualia are
nothing but a Christian version of a Greco-Roman tradition, the extent of which
we hope to demonstrate in what follows. In the first place, both the idea and the
terminology of exercitium spirituale are attested in early Latin Christianity, well
before Ignatius of Loyola, and they correspond to the Greek Christian term
askesis> In turn, askesis - which must be understood not as asceticism, but as the
practice of spiritual exercises — already existed within the philosophical tradition
of antiquity.® In the final analysis, it is to antiquity that we must return in order
to explain the origin and significance of this idea of spiritual exercises, which, as
Fricdmann’s example shows, is still alive in contemporary consciousness.

The goal of the present chapter is not merely to draw attention to the
existence of spiritual exercises in Greco-Latin antiquity, but above all to
delimit the scope and importance of the phenomenon, and to show the
consequences which it entails for the understanding not only of ancient
thought, but of philosophy itself.’

1 Learning to Live

Spiritual exercises can be best observed in the context of Hellenintic and
Roman schools of philosophy, ‘The Stoics, for instance, dechired explicitly

Spiritual Exercises 83

that philosophy, for them, was an “exercise.” * In their view, philosophy did
not consist in teaching an abstract theory’ — much less in the exegesis of texts!®
— but rather in the art of living.'! It is a concrete attitude and determinate life-
style, which engages the whole of existence. The philosophical act is not
situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of the self and of being. It
is a progress which causes us to de more fully, and makes us better." It is a
conversion” which turns our entire life upside down, changing the life of the
person who goes through it."* It raises the individual from an inauthentic
condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and harassed by worry, to an
authentic state of life, in which he attains self-consciousness, an exact vision
of the world, inner peace, and freedom.

In the view of all philosophical schools, mankind’s principal cause of
suffering, disorder, and unconsciousness were the passions: that is, unregu-
lated desires and exaggerated fears. People are prevented from truly living, it
was taught, because they are dominated by worries. Philosophy thus appears,
in the first place, as a therapeutic of the passions’ (in the words of
Friedmann: “Try to get rid of your own passions”). Each school had its own
therapeutic method,'* but all of them linked their therapeutics to a profound
transformation of the individual’s mode of sceing and being. The object of
spiritual exercises is precisely to bring about this transformation.

To begin with, Ict us consider the example of the Stoics. For them, all
mankind’s woes derive from the fact that he seeks to acquire or to keep
possessions that he may cither lose or fail to obtain, and from the fact that he
tries to avoid misfortunes which are often inevitable. The task of philosophy,
then, is to educate people, so that they seek only the goods they are able to
obtain, and try to avoid only those evils which it is possible to avoid. In order
for something good to be always obtainable, or an evil always avoidable, they
must depend exclusively on man’s freedom; but the only things which fulfill
these conditions are moral good and evil. They alone depend on us;
everything else does not depend on us. Here, “everything else,” which does
not depend on us, refers to the necessary linkage of cause and effect, which
is not subject to our freedom. It must be indifferent to us: that is, we must
not introduce any differences into it, but accept it in its entirety, as willed by
fate. This is the domain of nature.

We have here a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at things. We
are to switch from our “human” vision of reality, in which our values depend
on our passions, to a “natural” vision of things, which replaces each event
within the perspective of universal nature.!”

Such a transformation of vision is not easy, and it is precisely here that
spiritual exercises come in. Little by little, they make possible the indispens-
able metamorphosis of our inner self.

No systematic treatise codifying the instructions and techniques for
apiritual exercises has come down to us.'* However, allusions to one or the

84 Spiritual Exercises

other of such inner activities are very frequent in the writings of the Roman
and Hellenistic periods. It thus appears that these exercises were well known,
and that it was enough to allude to them, since they were a part of daily life
in the philosophical schools. They took their place within a traditional course
of oral instruction.

Thanks to Philo of Alexandria, however, we do possess two lists of spiritual
exercises. They do not completely overlap, but they do have the merit of
giving us a fairly complete panorama of Stoico-Platonic inspired philosophical
therapeutics. One of these lists'? enumerates the following elements: research
(zetesis), thorough investigation (skepsis), reading (anagnosis), listening (ak-
roasis), attention (prosoche), self-mastery (enkrateia), and indifference to indif-
ferent things. The other? names successively: reading, meditations (me/etar),
therapies?! of the passions, remembrance of good things,” self-mastery
(enkrateia), and the accomplishment of duties. With the help of these lists, we
shall be able to give a brief description of Stoic spiritual exercises. We shall
study the following groups in succession: first attention, then meditations
and “remembrances of good things,” then the more intellectual exercises:
reading, listening, research, and investigation, and finally the more active
exercises: self-mastery, accomplishment of duties, and indifference to indif-
ferent things.

Attention (prosoche) is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude.” It is a
continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self consciousness which never
sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit.4 Thanks to this attitude, the
philosopher is fully aware of what he does at each instant, and he mills his
actions fully. Thanks to his spiritual vigilance, the Stoic always has “‘at hand”
(procheiron) the fundamental rule of life: that is, the distinction between what
depends on us and what does not. As in Epicureanism, so for Stoicism: it is
essential that the adepts be supplied with a fundamental principle which is
formulable in a few words, and extremely clear and simple, precisely so that it
may remain easily accessible to the mind, and be applicable with the sureness
and constancy of a reflex. ““You must not separate yourself from these general
principles; don’t sleep, eat, drink, or converse with other men without them.” 4
It is this vigilance of the spirit which lets us apply the fundamental rule to each
of life’s particular situations, and always to do what we do “appropriately.”
We could also define this attitude as “concentration on the present moment”: ”

Everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is
occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards the
people who are present here and nom, and to apply rules of discemment to your
present representations, so that nothing slips in that is not objective.

Attention to the present moment is, in a sense, the key to spiritual exercises.
It frees us from the passions, which are always caused by the past or the

Spiritual Exercises 85

future” — two areas which do not depend on us. By encouraging concentration
on the minuscule present moment, which, in its exiguity, is always bearable
and controllable,” attention increases our vigilance. Finally, attention to the
present moment allows us to accede to cosmic consciousness, by making us
attentive to the infinite value of each instant,*! and causing us to accept each
moment of existence from the viewpoint of the universal law of the cosmos.

Attention (prosoche) allows us to respond immediately to events, as if they
were questions asked of us all of a sudden.* In order for this to be possible,
we must always have the fundamental principles “at hand” ( procheiron).> We
are to steep ourselves in the rule of life (ganon), by mentally applying it to
all life’s possible different situations, just as we assimilate a grammatical or
mathematical rule through practice, by applying it to individual cases. In this
case, however, we are not dealing with mere knowledge, but with the
transformation of our personality.

We must also associate our imagination and affectivity with the training of
our thought. Here, we must bring into play all the psychagogic techniques
and rhetorical methods of amplification.> We must formulate the rule of life
to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way. We must keep life’s events
“before our eyes,” 36 and see them in the light of the fundamental rule. This
is known as the exercise of memorization (mneme)>’ and meditation (melete)*
on the rule of life.

The exercise of meditation*’ allows us to be ready at the moment when an
unexpected — and perhaps dramatic — circumstance occurs. In the exercise
called praemeditatio malorum,® we are to represent to ourselves poverty,
suffering, and death. We must confront life’s difficulties face to face,
remembering that they are not evils, since they do not depend on us. This is
why we must engrave striking maxims in our memory,*' so that, when the
time comes, they can help us accept such events, which are, after all, part of
the course of nature; we will thus have these maxims and sentences “at
hand.” What we need are persuasive formulae or arguments (epilogismoi ),“
which we can repeat to oursclves in difficult circumstances, so as to check
movements of fear, anger, or sadness.

First thing in the morning, we should go over in advance what we have to
do during the course of the day, and decide on the principles which will guide
and inspire our actions."* In the evening, we should examine ourselves again,
so as to be aware of the faults we have committed or the progress we have
made.** We should also examine our dreams.*°

As we can see, the exercise of meditation is an attempt to control inner
discourse, in an effort to render it coherent. The goal is to arrange it around
a simple, universal principle: the distinction between what does and does not
depend on us, or between freedom and nature. Whoever wishes to make
progress strives, by means of dialogue with himself‘ or with others,’ as well
as by writing,” to “carry on his reflections in due order” ® and finally to arrive

86 Spiritual Exercises

at a complete transformation of his representation of the world, his inner
climate, and his outer behavior. These methods testify to a deep knowledge
of the therapeutic powers of the world.*!

The exercise of meditation and memorization requires nourishment. This
is where the more specifically intellectual exercises, as enumerated by Philo,
come in: reading, listening, research, and investigation. It is a relatively simple
matter to provide food for meditation: one could read the sayings of the poets
and philosophers, for instance, or the apophthegmata.* “Reading,” however,
could also include the explanation of specifically philosophical texts, works
written by teachers in philosophical schools. Such texts could be read or heard
within the framework of the philosophical instruction given by a professor.*}
Fortified by such instruction, the disciple would be able to study with
precision the entire speculative edifice which sustained and justified the
fundamental rule, as well as all the physical and logical research of which this
rule was the summary.* “Research” and “investigation” were the result of
putting instruction into practice. For example, we are to get used to defining
objects and events from a physical point of view, that is, we must picture
them as they are when situated within the cosmic Whole.* Alternatively, we
can divide or dissect events in order to recognize the elements into which
they can be reduced.*

Finally, we come to the practical exercises, intended to create habits. Some
of these are very much “interior,” and very close to the thought exercises we
have just discussed. “Indifference to indifferent things,” for example, was
nothing other than the application of the fundamental rule.*’ Other exercises,
such as self-mastery and fulfilling the duties of social life, entailed practical
forms of behavior. Here again, we encounter Friedmann’s themes: “Try to get
rid of your own passions, vanities, and the itch for talk about your own name
... Avoid backbiting. Get rid of pity and hatred. Love all free human beings.”

There are a large number of treatises relating to these exercises in Plutarch:
On Restraining Anger, On Peace of Mind, On Brotherly Love, On the Love of
Children, On Garrulity, On the Love of Wealth, On False Shame, On Envy and
Hatred. Seneca also composed works of the same genre: On Anger, On
Benefits, On Peace of Mind, On Leisure. In this kind of exercise, one very
simple principle is always recommended: begin practicing on easier things, so
as gradually to acquire a stable, solid habit.**

For the Stoic, then, doing philosophy meant practicing how to “live”: that
is, how to live freely and consciously. Consciously, in that we pass beyond the
limits of individuality, to recognize ourselves as a part of the reason-animated
cosmos. Freely, in that we give up desiring that which docs not depend on us
and is beyond our control, so as to attach ourselves only to what depends on
us: actions which are just and in conformity with reason.

It is easy to understand that a philosophy like Stoicism, which requires
vigilance, energy, and psychic tension, should consist essentially in spiritual

Spiritual Exercises 87

exercises. But it will perhaps come as a surprise to learn than Epicureanism,
usually considered the philosophy of pleasure, gives just as prominent a place
as Stoicism to precise practices which are nothing other than spiritual
exercises. The reason for this is that, for Epicurus just as much as for the
Stoics, philosophy is a therapeutics: “We must concern ourselves with the
healing of our own lives.” ° In this context, healing consists in bringing one’s
soul back from the worries of life to the simple joy of existing. People’s
unhappiness, for the Epicureans, comes from the fact that they are afraid of
things which are not to be feared, and desire things which it is not necessary
to desire, and which are beyond their control. Consequently, their life is
consumed in worries over unjustified fears and unsatisfied desires. As a result,
they are deprived of the only genuine pleasure there is: the pleasure of
existing. This is why Epicurean physics can liberate us from fear: it can show
us that the gods have no effect on the progress of the world and that death,
being complete dissolution, is not a part of life.“ Epicurean ethics: Epicurean,
as deliverance from desires can deliver us from our insatiable desires, by
distinguishing between desires which are both natural and necessary, desires
which are natural but not necessary, and desires which are neither natural nor
necessary. It is enough to satisfy the first category of desires, and give up the
last — and eventually the second as well — in order to ensure the absence of
worries,"' and to reveal the sheer joy of existing: “The cries of the flesh are:
‘Not to be hungry’, ‘not to be thirsty’, ‘not to be cold’. For if one enjoys the
possession of this, and the hope of continuing to possess it, he might rival
even Zeus in happiness.”® This is the source of the feeling of gratitude,
which one would hardly have expected, which illuminates what one might call
Epicurean piety towards all things: “Thanks be to blessed Nature, that she
has made what is necessary easy to obtain, and what is not easy unnecess-
ary.” 6

Spiritual exercises are required for the healing of the soul. Like the Stoics,
the Epicureans advise us to meditate upon and assimilate, “day and night,”
brief aphorisms or summaries which will allow us to keep the fundamental
dogmas “at hand.” For instance, there is the well-known tetrapharmakos, or
four-fold healing formula: “God presents no fears, death no worries. And
while good is readily attainable, evil is readily endurable.”®* The abundance
of collections of Epicurean aphorisms is a response to the demands of the
spiritual exercise of meditation. As with the Stoics, however, the study of
the dogmatic treatises of the school’s great founders was also an exercise
intended to provide material for meditation,” so as more thoroughly to
impregnate the soul with the fundamental intuitions of Epicureanism.

The study of physics is a particularly important spiritual exercise: “we
should not think that any other end is served by knowledge of celestial
phenomena... than {reedam from disturbance and firm confidence, just as
in the other fields of study." Contemplation of the physical world and

rf

88 Spiritual Exercises

imagination of the infinite are important elements of Epicurean physics. Both
can bring about a complete change in our way of looking at things. The closed
universe is infinitely dilated, and we derive from this spectacle a unique
spiritual pleasure:

the walls of the world open out, I see action going on throughout the
whole void, ... Thereupon from all these things a sort of divine delight
gets hold upon me and a shuddering, because nature thus by your power
(i.e. Epicurus’) has been so manifestly laid open and unveiled in every
part.”

Meditation, however, be it simple or erudite, is not the only Epicurean
spiritual exercise. To cure the soul, it is not necessary, as the Stoics would
have it, to train it to stretch itself tight, but rather to train it to relax. Instead
of picturing misfortunes in advance, so as to be prepared to bear them, we
must rather, say the Epicureans, detach our thought from the vision of painful
things, and fix our eyes on pleasurable ones. We are to relive memories of
past pleasures, and enjoy the pleasures of the present, recognizing how intense
and agreeable these present pleasures arc.” We have here a quite distinctive
spiritual exercise, different from the constant vigilance of the Stoic, with his
constant readiness to safeguard his moral liberty at each instant. Instead,
Epicureanism preaches the deliberate, continually renewed choice of relax-
ation and serenity, combined with a profound gratitude”! toward nature and
life”? which constantly offer us joy and pleasure, if only we know how to find
them.

By the same token, the spiritual exercise of trying to live in the present
moment is very different for Stoics and Epicureans. For the former, it means
mental tension and constant wakefulness of the moral conscience; for the
latter, it is, as we have seen, an invitation to relaxation and serenity. Worry,
which tears us in the direction of the future, hides from us the incomparable
value of the simple fact of existing: “We are born once, and cannot be born
twice, but for all time must be no more. But you, who are not master of
tomorrow, postpone your happiness: life is wasted in procrastination and each
one of us dies overwhelmed with cares.” This is the doctrine contained in
Horace’s famous saying: carpe diem.

Life ebbs as I speak:
so seize each day, and grant the next no credit.”

For the Epicureans, in the last analysis, pleasure is a spiritual exercise. Not
pleasure in the form of mere sensual gratification, but the intellectual pleasure
derived from contemplating nature, the thought of pleasures past and present,
and lastly the pleasure of friendship. In Epicurean communities, friendship’

Spiritual Exercises 89

also had its spiritual exercises, carried out in a joyous, relaxed atmosphere.
These include the public confession of one’s faults;”® myitual correction,
carried out in a fraternal spirit; and examining one’s conscience.” Above all,
friendship itself was, as it were, the spiritual exercise par excellence: “Each
person was to tend towards creating the atmosphere in which hearts could
flourish. The main goal was to be happy, and mutual affection and the
confidence with which they relied upon each other contributed more than
anything else to this happiness.” 7°

2 Learning to Dialogue

The practice of spiritual exercises is likely to be rooted in traditions going
back to immemorial times.” It is, however, the figure of Socrates that causes
them to emerge into Western consciousness, for this figure was, and has
remained, the living call to awaken our moral consciousness.” We ought not
to forget that this call sounded forth within a specific form: that of dialogue.

In the “Socratic” ™ dialogue, the question truly at stake is not what is being
talked about, but who is doing the talking.

anyone who is close to Socrates and enters into conversation with him
is liable to be drawn into an argument, and whatever subject he may
start, he will be continually carried round and round by him, until at
last he finds that he has to give an account both of his present and past
life, and when he is once entangled, Socrates will not let him go until
he has completely and thoroughly sifted him... And I think there is no
harm in being reminded of any wrong thing which we are, or have been,
doing; he who does not run away from criticism will be sure to take
more heed of his afterlife.”

In a “Socratic” dialogue, Socrates’ interlocutor does not learn anything, and
Socrates has no intention of teaching him anything. He repeats, moreover, to
all who are willing to listen, that the only thing he knows is that he does not
know anything.* Yet, like an indefatigable horsefly,“ Socrates harassed his
interlocutors with questions which put themselves into question, forcing them
to pay attention to and take care of themselves."

My very good friend, you are an Athenian, and belong to a city which
is the greatest and most famous in the world for its wisdom and
strength. Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring
us much moncy as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour,
and give no attention or thought to truth [a/etheia] or thought [pAronesis]
or the perfection of your soul | psyche |?™

90 Spiritual Exercises

Socrates’ mission consisted in inviting his contemporaries to examine their
conscience, and to take care for their inner progress:

I did not care for the things that most people care about — making
money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all
the other activities, political appointments, secret societies, party organ-
izations, which go on in our city ... I set myself to do you — each one
of you, individually and in private — what I hold to be the greatest
possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself
less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as
excellent and as rational as possible.*’

In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades describes the effect made on him by
dialogues with Socrates in the following terms: “this latter-day Marsyas, here,
has often left me in such a state of mind that I’ve felt I simply couldn't go
on living the way I did .. . He makes me admit that while I’m spending my
time on politics, I am neglecting all the things that are crying for attention in
myself.”

Thus, the Socratic dialogue turns out to be a kind of communal spiritual
exercise. In it, the interlocutors are invited® to participate in such inner
spiritual exercises as examination of conscience and attention to oneself; in
other words, they are urged to comply with the famous dictum, “Know
thyself.” Although it is difficult to be sure of the original meaning of this
formula, this much is clear: it invites us to establish a relationship of the self
to the self, which constitutes the foundation of every spiritual exercise. To
know oneself means, among other things, to know oneself gua non-sage: that
is, not as a sophos, but as a philo-sophos, someone on the way toward wisdom.
Alternatively, it can mean to know oneself in one’s essential being; this entails
separating that which we are not from that which we are. Finally, it can mean
to know oneself in one’s truce moral state: that is, to examine one’s con-
science.”

If we can trust the portrait sketched by Plato and Aristophanes, Socrates,
master of dialogue with others, was also a master of dialogue with himself,
and, therefore, a master of the practice of spiritual exercises. He is portrayed
as capable of extraordinary mental concentration. He arrives late at Agathon’s
banquet, for example, becausc “as we went along the road, Socrates directed
his intellect towards himself, and began to fall behind.” Alcibiades tells the
story of how, during the expedition against Poteidaia, Socrates remained
standing all day and all night, “lost in thought.” In his Clouds, Aristophanes
seems to allude to these same Socratic habits:

Now, think hard and cogitate; spin round in every way as you
concentrate. If you come up against an insoluble point, jump to another

Spiritual Exercises 91

... Now don’t keep your mind always spinning around itself, but let
your thoughts out into the air a bit, like a may-beetle tied by its foot.”

Meditation — the practice of dialogue with oneself — seems to have held a
place of honor among Socrates’ disciples. When Antisthenes was asked what
profit he had derived from philosophy, he replied: “The ability to converse
with myself.”™ The intimate connection between dialogue with others and
dialogue with oneself is profoundly significant. Only he who is capable of a
genuine encounter with the other is capable of an authentic encounter with
himself, and the converse is equally true. Dialogue can be genuine only within
the framework of presence to others and to oneself. From this perspective,
every spiritual exercise is a dialogue, insofar as it is an exercise of authentic
presence, to oneself and to others.”

The borderline between “Socratic” and “Platonic” dialogue is im-
possible to delimit. Yet the Platonic dialogue is always “Socratic” in inspira-
tion, because it is an intellectual, and, in the last analysis, a
“spiritual” exercise. This characteristic of the Platonic dialogue needs to be
emphasized.

Platonic dialogues are model exercises. They are models, in that they are
not transcriptions of real dialogues, but literary compositions which present
an ideal dialogue. And they are exercises precisely insofar as they are
dialogues: we have already seen, apropos of Socrates, the dialectical character
of all spiritual exercises. A dialogue is an itinerary of the thought, whose route
is traced by the constantly maintained accord between questioner and
respondent. In opposing his method to that of eristics, Plato strongly
emphasizes this point:

When two friends, like you and I, feel like talking, we have to go about
it in a gentler and more dialectical way. “More dialectical,” it seems to
me, means that we must not merely give true responses, but that we
must base our replies only on that which our interlocutor admits that
he himself knows.”

The dimension of the interlocutor is, as we can see, of capital importance. It
is what prevents the dialogue from becoming a theoretical, dogmatic exposé,
and forces it to be a concrete, practical exercise. For the point is not to set
forth a doctrine, but rather to guide the interlocutor towards a determinate
mental attitude. It is a combat, amicable but real.

‘The point is worth stressing, for the same thing happens in every spiritual
exercise: we must /ef ourselves be changed, in our point of view, attitudes,
and convictions. This means that we must dialogue with ourselves, and hence
we must do battle with ourselves. This is why, from this perspective, the
methodology of the Platonic dialogue ix of such crucial interest:

92 Spiritual Exercises

Despite what may have been said, Platonic thought bears no resem-
blance to a light-winged dove, who needs no effort to take off from earth
to soar away into the pure spaces of utopia... at every moment, the
dove has to fight against the soul of the interlocutor, which is filled with
lead. Each degree of elevation must be fought for and won.®’

To emerge victorious from this battle, it is not enough to disclose the truth.
It is not even enough to demonstrate it. What is needed is persuasion, and for
that one must use psychagogy, the art of seducing souls. Even at that, it is
not enough to use only rhetoric, which, as it were, tries to persuade from a
distance, by means of a continuous discourse. What is needed above all is
dialectic. which demands the explicit consent of the interlocutor at every
moment. Dialectic must skillfully choose a tortuous path — or rather, a series
of apparently divergent, but nevertheless convergent, paths” — in order to
bring the interlocutor to discover the contradictions of his own position, or
to admit an unforeseen conclusion. All the circles, detours, endless divisions,
digressions, and subtleties which make the modern reader of Plato’s Dialogues
so uncomfortable are destined to make ancient readers and interlocutors travel
a specific path. Thanks to these detours, “with a great deal of effort, one rubs
names, definitions, visions and sensations against one another”; one
“spends a long time in the company of these questions”; one “lives with
them”™ until the light blazes forth. Yet one keeps on practicing, since “for
reasonable people, the measure of listening to such discussions is the whole
of life.” !

What counts is not the solution of a particular problem, but the road
travelled to reach it; a road along which the interlocutor, the disciple, and the
reader form their thought, and make it more apt to discover the truth by
itself"!

Stranger: Suppose someone asked us this question about our class of
elementary school-children learning to read. “When a child is asked
what letters spell a word — it can be any word you please — are we to
regard this exercise as undertaken to discover the correct spelling of the
particular word the teacher assigned, or as designed rather to make the
child better able to deal with all words he may be asked to spell?”
Young Socrates: Surely we reply that the purpose is to teach him to
read them all.

Stranger: How does this principle apply to our present search for the
statesman? Why did we set ourselves the problem? Is our chief purpose
to find the statesman, or have we the larger aim of becoming better
dialecticians, more able to tackle all questions?

Young Socrates: Were, too, the answer is clear, we aim to become
better dialecticians with regard to all possible subjects.

Spiritual Exercises 93

As we see, the subject-matter of the dialogue counts less than the method
applied in it, and the solution of a problem has less value than the road
travelled in common in order to resolve it. The point is not to find the answer
to a problem before anyone else, but to practice, as effectively as possible, the
application of a method:

ease and specd in reaching the answer to the problem propounded are
most commendable, but the /ogos requires that this be only a secondary,
not a primary reason for commending an argument. What we must
value first and foremost, above all else, is the philosophical method
itself, and this consists in ability to divide according to forms. If,
therefore, cither a lengthy /ogos or an unusually brief one leaves the
hearer more able to find the forms, it is this presentation of the /ogos
which must be diligently carried through.'™

As a dialectical exercise, the Platonic dialogue corresponds exactly to a
spiritual exercise. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, discreetly
but genuinely, the dialogue guides the interlocutor — and the reader — towards
conversion. Dialogue is only possible if the interlocutor has a real desire to
dialogue: that is, if he truly wants to discover the truth, desires the Good from
the depths of his soul, and agrees to submit to the rational demands of the
Logos.'“ His act of faith must correspond to that of Socrates: “It is because
I am convinced of its truth that I am ready, with your help, to inquire into
the nature of virtue.”!5

In fact, the dialectical effort is an ascent in common towards the truth and
towards the Good, “which every soul pursucs.”' Furthermore, in Plato’s
view, every dialectical exercise, precisely because it is an exercise of pure
thought, subject to the demands of the Logos, turns the soul away from the
sensible world, and allows it to convert itsclf towards the Good.'” It is the
spirit’s itinerary towards the divine.

3 Learning to Die

There is a mysterious connection between language and death. This was
one of the favorite themes of the late Brice Parain, who wrote:
“lvanguage develops only upon the death of individuals.” For the
Logos represents a demand for universal rationality, and presupposes a
world of immutable norms, which are opposed to the perpetual state of
becoming and changing appetites characteristic of individual, corporeal
life. In this opposition, he who remains faithful to the Logos risks losing his
life. ‘This was the cause with Socrates, who died for his faithfulness to the
Logon.

94 Spiritual Exercises

Socrates’ death was the radical event which founded Platonism. After
all, the essence of Platonism consists in the affirmation that the Good
is the ultimate cause of all beings. In the words of a fourth-century Neo-
platonist:

If all beings are beings only by virtue of goodness, and if they participate
in the Good, then the first must necessarily be a good which transcends
being. Here is an eminent proof of this: souls of value despise being for
the sake of the Good, whenever they voluntarily place themselves in
danger, for their country, their loved ones, or for virtue.'™

Socrates exposed himself to death for the sake of virtue. He preferred to die
rather than renounce the demands of his conscience,'® thus preferring the
Good above being, and thought and conscience above the life of his body.
This is nothing other than the fundamental philosophical choice. If it is true
that philosophy subjugates the body’s will to live to the higher demands of
thought, it can rightly be said that philosophy is the training and apprentice-
ship for death. As Socrates puts it in the Phaedo: “it is a fact, Simmias, that
those who go about philosophizing correctly are in training for death, and that
to them of all men death is least alarming.” '"'

The death in question here is the spiritual separation of the soul and the
body:

separating the soul as much as possible from the body, and accustoming
it to gather itself together from every part of the body and concentrate
itself until it is completely independent, and to have its dwelling, so far
as it can, both now and in the future, alone and by itself, freed from the
shackles of the body.!!?

Such is the Platonic spiritual exercise. But we must be wary of misinterpret-
ing it. In particular, we must not isolate it from the philosophical death of
Socrates, whose presence dominates the whole of the Phaedo. The separation
between soul and body under discussion here — whatever its prehistory — bears
absolutely no resemblance to any state of trance or catalepsy. In the latter, the
body loses consciousness, while the soul is in a supernatural visionary state.'"
All the arguments in the Phaedo, both preceding and following the passage
we have quoted above, show that the goal of this philosophical separation is
for the soul to liberate itself, shedding the passions linked to the corporeal
senses, so as to attain to the autonomy of thought.!"4

We can perhaps get a better idea of this spiritual exercise if we understand
it as an attempt to liberate ourselves from a partial, passionate point of view ~
linked to the senses and the body - so as to rise tu the universal, normative
viewpoint of thought, submitting ourselves to the demands of the Logos and

Spiritual Exercises 95

the norm of the Good. Training for death is training to die to one’s
individuality and passions, in order to look at things from the perspective of
universality and objectivity.
Such an exercise requires the concentration of thought upon itself, by
means of meditation and an inner dialogue. Plato alludes to this process in
the Republic, once again in the context of the tyranny of individual passions.
The tyranny of desire, he tells us, shows itself particularly clearly in dreams:

The savage part of the soul . . . does not hesitate, in thought, to try to
have sex with its mother, or with anyone else, man, god, or animal. It
is ready to commit any bloody crime; there is no food it would not eat;
and, in a word, it does not stop short of any madness or shameless-
ness. !!5

To liberate ourselves from this tyranny, we are to have recourse to a spiritual
exercise of the same type as that described in the Phaedo:

When, however, a man does not go to sleep before he has awakened his
rational faculty, and regaled it with excellent discourses and investig-
ations, concentrating himself on himself, having also appeased the
appetitive part... and calmed the irascible part . . . once he has calmed
these two parts of the soul, and stimulated the third, in which reason
resides . . . it is then that the soul best attains to truth.!"¢

Here we shall ask the reader’s indulgence to embark on a brief digression.
To present philosophy as “training for death” was a decision of paramount
importance. As Socrates’ interlocutor in the Phaedo was quick to remark, such
a characterization seems somewhat laughable, and the common man would be
right in calling philosophers moribund mopers who, if they are put to death,
will have earned their punishment well.'"’ For anyone who takes philosophy
seriously, however, this Platonic dictum is profoundly true. It has had an
enormous influence on Western philosophy, and has been taken up even by
such adversaries of Platonism as Epicurus and Heidegger. Compared to this
formulation, the philosophical verbiage both of the past and of the present
seems empty indecd. In the words of La Rochefoucauld, “Neither the sun nor
death can be looked at directly.” "8

Indeed, the only ones even to attempt to do so are philosophers. Beneath
all their diverse conceptions of death, one common virtue recurs again and
again: lucidity. For Plato, he who has already tasted of the immortality of
thought cannot be frightened by the idea of being snatched away from
sensible life. For the Epicurean, the thought of death is the same as the
consciousness of the finite nature of existence, and it is this which gives an
infinite value to each instant. Each of life’s moments surges forth laden with

96 Spiritual Exercises

incommensurable value: “Believe that each day that has dawned will be your
last; then you will receive each unexpected hour with gratitude.” |"

In the apprenticeship of death, the Stoic discovers the apprenticeship of
freedom. Montaigne, in one of his best-known essays, That Philosophizing is
Learning how to Die, plagiarizes Seneca: “(He who has learned how to die, has
un-learned how to serve.” '2° The thought of death transforms the the tone
and level of inner life: “Keep death before your eyes every day ... and then
you will never have any abject thought nor any excessive desire.” 7! This
philosophical theme, in turn, is connected with that of the infinite value of
the present moment, which we must live as if it were, simultaneously, both
the first moment and the last.'”

Philosophy is stull “a training for death” for a modern thinker such as
Heidegger. For him, the authenticity of cxistence consists in the lucid
anticipation of death, and it is up to each of us to choose between lucidity
and diversion.'23

For Plato, training for death is a spiritual cxercise which consists in
changing one’s point of view. We are to change from a vision of things
dominated by individual passions to a representation of the world governed
by the universality and objectivity of thought. This constitutes a conversion
(metastrophe) brought about with the totality of the soul.'* From the
perspective of pure thought, things which are “human, all too human” seem
awfully puny. This is one of the fundamental themes of Platonic spiritual
exercises, and it is this which will allow us to maintain serenity in misfortunes:

The rational law declares that it is best to keep quiet as far as possible
in misfortune, and not to complain, because we cannot know what is
really good and evil in such things, and it does us no good for the future
to take them hard, and nothing in human life is worthy of great concern,
and our grieving is an obstacle to the very thing we need to come to our
aid as quickly as possible in such cases.

What do you mean?

To deliberate, I said, about what has happened to us, and, as in
dice-games, to re-establish our position according to whatever numbers
turn up, however reason indicates would be best, and... always
accustom the soul to come as quickly as possible to cure the ailing part
and raise up what has fallen, making lamentations disappear by means
of its therapy.

One could say that this spiritual exercise is already Stoic,'** since in it we can
see the utilization of maxims and principles intended to “accustom the soul,”
and liberate it from the passions. Among these maxims, the one affirming the
unimportance of human affairs plays an important role. Yet, in its turn, this
maxim is only the consequence of the movement described in the Phaedo,

Spiritual Exercises 97

whereby the soul, moving from individuality to universality, rises to the level
of pure thought.

The three key concepts of the insignificance of human attains: contempt for
death, and the universal vision characteristic of pure thought are quite plainly
linked in the following passage:

there is this further point to be considered in distinguishing the
philosophical from the unphilosophical nature... the soul must not
contain any hint of servility. For nothing can be more contrary than
such pettiness to the quality of a soul which must constantly strive to
embrace the universal totality of things divine and human... But that
soul to which pertain grandeur of thought and the contemplation of the
totality of time and of being, do you think that it can consider human
life to be a matter of great importance? Hence such a man will not
suppose death to be terrible. '2”

Here, “training for death” is linked to the contemplation of the Whole and
elevation of thought, which rises from individual, passionate subjectivity to
the universal perspective. In other words, it attains to the exercise of purc
thought. In this passage, for the first time, this characteristic of the
philosopher receives the appellation it will maintain throughout ancient
tradition: greatness of soul.'8 Greatness of soul is the fruit of the universality
of thought. Thus, the whole of the philosopher’s speculative and contemplat-
ive effort becomes a spiritual exercise, insofar as he raises his thought up to
the perspective of the Whole, and liberates it from the illusions of indi-
viduality (in the words of Friedmann: “Step out of duration ... become
eternal by transcending yourself”).

From such a perspective, even physics becomes a spiritual exercise, which
is situated on three levels. In the first place, physics can be a contemplative
activity, which has its end in itself, providing joy and serenity to the soul, and
liberating it from day-to-day worries. This is the spirit of Aristotelian physics:
“nature, which fashioned creatures, gives amazing pleasure in their study to
all who can trace links of causation, and are naturally philosophers.”'” As we
have scen, it was in the contemplation of nature that the Epicurean Lucretius
found “a divine delight.” "" For the Stoic Epictetus, the meaning of our
existence resides in this contemplation: we have been placed on earth in order
to,contemplate divine creation, and we must not dic before we have witnessed
its marvels and lived in harmony with nature.!?!

Clearly, the precise meaning of the contemplation of nature varies widely
(rom one philosophy to another. There is a great deal of difference between
Aristotelian physics, for example, and the feeling for nature as we find it in
Philo of Alexandria and Plutarch. It is nevertheless interesting to note with
what enthusiasm these two authors speak about their imaginative physics:

98 Spiritual Exercises

Those who practice wisdom... are excellent contemplators of nature
and everything she contains. They examine the earth, the sea, the sky,
the heavens, and all their inhabitants; they are joined in thought to the
sun, the moon, and all the other stars, both fixed and wandering, in their
courses; and although they are attached to the earth by their bodies, they
provide their souls with wings, so that they may walk on the ether and
contemplate the powers that live there, as is fitting for true citizens of the
world . .. and so, filled with excellence, accustomed to take no notice of
ills of the body or of exterior things . . . it goes without saying that such
men, rejoicing in their virtues, make of their whole lives a festival."

These last lincs are an allusion to an aphorism of Diogenes the Cynic, which
is also quoted by Plutarch: “Does not a good man consider every day a
festival?” “And a very splendid one, to be sure,” continues Plutarch,

if we are virtuous. For the world is the most sacred and divine of
temples, and the one most fitting for the gods. Man is introduced into
it by birth to be a spectator: not of artificial, immobile statues, but of
the perceptible images of intelligible essences ... such as the sun, the
moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the
earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike. A life which
is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be
filled with tranquillity and joy.’

Physics as a spiritual exercise can also take on the form of an imaginative
“overflight,” which causes human affairs to be regarded as of little import-
ance.'4 We encounter this theme in Marcus Aurelius:

Suppose you found yourself all of a sudden raised up to the heavens,
and that you were to look down upon human affairs in all their motley
diversity. You would hold them in contempt if you were to see, in the
same glance, how great is the number of beings of the ether and the air,
living round about you.'5

The same theme occurs in Seneca:

The soul has attained the culmination of happiness when, having
crushed underfoot all that is evil, it takes flight and penetrates the inner
recesses of nature. It is then, while wandering amongst the very stars,
that it likes to laugh at the costly pavements of the rich... But the soul
cannot despise [all these riches] before it has been all around the world,
and casting a contemptuous glance at the narrow globe of the carth from
above, says to itself; “So this is the pin-point which so many nations

Spiritual Exercises 99

divide among themselves with fire and sword? How ridiculous are the
boundaries of men!”"!6

In this spiritual exercise of the vision of totality, and elevation of thought
to the level of universal thought, we can distinguish a third degree, in which
we come closer to the Platonic theme from which we started out. In the words
of Marcus Aurelius:

Don’t limit yourself to breathing along with the air that surrounds you;
from now on, think along with the Thought which embraces all things.
For the intellective power is no less universally diffused, and does not
penetrate any the less into each being capable of receiving it, than the
air in the case of one capable of breathing it .. . you will make a large
room at once for yourself by embracing in your thought the whole
Universe, and grasping ever-continuing Time."

At this stage, it is as though we die to our individuality; in so doing, we
accede, on the one hand, to the interiority of our consciousness, and on the
other, to the universality of thought of the All.

You were already the All, but because something else besides the
All came to be added on to you, you have become less than the All, by
the very fact of this addition. For the addition did not come about
from being — what could be added to the All? — but rather from
not-being. When one becomes “someone” out of not-being, one is no
longer the All, until one leaves the not-being behind. Moreover, you
increase yourself when you reject everything other than the All, and
when you have rejected it, the All will be present to you... The All
had no need to come in order to be present. If it is not present, the reason
is that it is you who have distanced yourself from it. “Distancing
yourself” does not mean leaving it to go someplacc else — for it would
be there, too. Rather, it means turning away from the All, despite the
fact that it is there.'*

With Plotinus, we now return to Platonism. The Platonic tradition remained
faithful to Plato’s spiritual exercises. We need only add that, in Neoplatonism,
the idea of spiritual progress plays a much more explicit role than in Plato’s
writings. In Neoplatonism, the stages of spiritual progress corresponded to
different degrees of virtue. The hierarchy of these stages is described in many
Neoplatonic texts,” serving in particular as the framework for Marinus’ Life
of Proclus.\“ Porphyry, editor of Plotinus’ Enneads, systematically arranged his
master’s work according to the stages of this spiritual progress. First, the soul
wak purified by its gradual detachment from the body; then came the

100 Spiritual Exercises

knowledge of, and subsequent passing beyond, the sensible world; finally, the
soul achieved conversion toward the Intellect and the One."!

Spiritual exercises are a prerequisite for spiritual progress. In his treatise
On Abstinence from Animate Beings, Porphyry sums up the Platonic tradition
quite well. We must, he tells us, undertake two exercises (me/etat): in the first
place, we must turn our thought away from all that is mortal and material.
Secondly, we must return toward the activity of the Intellect.'” The first stage
of these Neoplatonic exercises includes aspects which are highly ascetic, in the
modern sense of the word: a vegetarian diet, among other things. In the same
context, Porphyry insists strongly on the importance of spiritual exercises.
The contemplation (theoria) which brings happiness, he tells us, does not
consist in the accumulation of discourse and abstract teachings, even if their
subject is true Being. Rather, we must make sure our studies are accompanied
by an effort to make these teachings become “nature and life” within us.'?

In the philosophy of Plotinus, spiritual exercises are of fundamental
importance. Perhaps the best example can be found in the way Plotinus
defines the essence of the soul and its immateriality. If we have doubts about
the immortality and immateriality of the soul, says Plotinus, this is because
we are accustomed to see it filled with irrational desires and violent sentiments
and passions.

If one wants to know the nature of a thing, one must examine it in its
pure state, since every addition to a thing is an obstacle to the knowledge
of that thing. When you examine it, then, remove from it everything
that is not itself; better still remove all your stains from yourself and
examine yourself; and you will have faith in your immortality.'“

If you do not yet see your own beauty, do as the sculptor does with a
statue which must become beautiful: he removes one part, scrapes
another, makcs one area smooth, and cleans the other, until he causes
the beautiful face in the statue to appear. In the same way, you too must
remove everything that is superfluous, straighten that which is crooked,
and purify all that is dark until you make it brilliant. Never stop
sculpting your own statue, until the divine splendor of virtue shines in
you... If you have become this... and have nothing alien inside you
mixed with yourself... when you see that you have become this...
concentrate your gaze and see. For it is only an eye such as this that can
look on the great Beauty.'*5

Here we can see how the the demonstration of the soul’s immateriality has
been transformed into experience. Only he who liberates himself sand purifies
himself from the passions, which conceal the true reality of the soul, can
understand that the soul is immaterial and immortal. Here, knowledge is a

Spiritual Exercises 101

spiritual exercise."* We must first undergo moral purification, in order to
become capable of understanding.

When the object of our knowledge is no longer the soul, but the Intellect'*’
and above all the One, principle of all things, we must once again have
recourse to spiritual exercises. In the case of the One, Plotinus makes a clear
distinction between, on the one hand, “instruction,” which speaks about its
object in an exterior way, and, on the other, the “path,” which truly leads to
concrete knowledge of the Good: “We are instructed about it by analogies,
negations, and the knowledge of things which come from it... we are led
towards it by purifications, virtues, inner settings in order, and ascents into
the intelligible world.” '** Plotinus’ writings are full of passages describing
such spiritual exercises, the goal of which was not merely to know the Good,
but to become identical with it, in a complete annihilation of individuality. To
achieve this goal, he tells us, we must avoid thinking of any determinate
form," strip the soul of all particular shape,’ and set aside all things other
than the One."*! It is then that, in a fleeting blaze of light, there takes place
the metamorphosis of the self:

Then the seer no longer sees his object, for in that instant he no longer
distinguishes himself from it; he no longer has the impression of two
separate things, but he has, in a sense, become another. He is no longer
himself, nor does he belong to himself, but he is one with the One, as
the centre of one circle coincides with the centre of another.'*

4 Learning How to Read

In the preceding pages, we have tried to describe — albeit too briefly — the
richness and variety of the practice of spiritual exercises in antiquity. We have
seen that, at first glance, they appear to vary widely. Some, like Plutarch’s
ethismot, designed to curb curiosity, anger or gossip, were’ only practices
intended to ensure good moral habits. Others, particularly the meditations of
the Platonic tradition, demanded a high degree of mental concentration.
Some, like the contemplation of nature as practiced in all philosophical
schools, turned the soul toward the cosmos, while still others — rare and
exceptional — led to a transfiguration of the personality, as in the experiences
of. Plotinus. We also saw that the emotional tone and notional content of these
exercises varied widely from one philosophical school to another: from the
mobilization of energy and consent to destiny of the Stoics, to the relaxation
and detachment of the Epicureans, to mental concentration and renunciation
of the sensible world among the Platonists.

Beneath this apparent diversity, however, there is a profound unity, both
in the means employed and in the ends pursued, ‘The means employed are

102 Spiritual Exercises

the rhetorical and dialectical techniques of persuasion, the attempts at
mastering one’s inner dialogue, and mental concentration. In all philosophical
schools, the goal pursued in these exercises is self-realization and improve-
ment. All schools agree that man, before his philosophical conversion, is in a
state of unhappy disquiet. Consumed by worries, torn by passions, he does
not live a genuine life, nor is he truly himself. All schools also agree that man
can be delivered from this state. He can accede to genuine life, improve
himself, transform himself, and attain a state of perfection. It is precisely
for this that spiritual exercises are intended. Their goal is a kind of self-
formation, or paideia, which is to teach us to live, not in conformity with
human prejudices and social conventions — for social life is itself a product of
the passions — but in conformity with the nature of man, which is none other
than reason. Each in its own way, all schools believed in the freedom of the
will, thanks to which man has the possibility to modify, improve, and realize
himself. Underlying this conviction is the parallelism between physical and
spiritual exercises: just as, by dint of repeated physical exercises, athletes give
new form and strength to their bodies, so the philosopher develops his
strength of soul, modifies his inner climate, transforms his vision of the world,
and, finally, his entire being.'> The analogy seems all the more self-evident
in that the gymnasion, the place where physical exercises were practiced, was
the same place where philosophy lessons were given; in other words, it was
also the place for training in spiritual gymnastics.'™

The quest for self-realization, final goal of spiritual exercises, is well
symbolized by the Plotinian image of sculpting one’s own statue.'® It is often
misunderstood, since people imagine that this expression corresponds to a
kind of moral aestheticism. On this interpretation, its meaning would be to
adopt a pose, to select an attitude, or to fabricate a personality for oneself. In
fact, it is nothing of the sort. For the ancients, sculpture was an art which
“took away,” as opposed to painting, an art which “added on.” The statue
pre-existed in the marble block, and it was enough to take away what was
superfluous in order to cause it to appear.'*¢

One conception was common to all the philosophical schools: people are
unhappy because they are the slave of their passions. In other words, they are
unhappy because they desire things they may not be able to obtain, since they
are exterior, alien, and superfluous to them. It follows that happiness consists
in independence, freedom, and autonomy. In other words, happiness is the
return to the essential: that which is truly “ourselves,” and which depends on
us.

This is obviously true in Platonism, where we find the famous image of
Glaucos, the god who lives in the depths of the sea. Covered as he is with
mud, seaweed, seashells, and pebbles, Glaucos is unrecognizable, and the
same holds true for the soul: the body is a kind of thick, coarse crust, covering
and completely disfiguring it, and the soul's true nature would appear only if

Spiritual Exercises 103

it rose up out of the sea, throwing off everything alien to it.'57 The spiritual
exercise of apprenticeship for death, which consists in separating oneself from
the body, its passions, and its desires, purifies the soul from all these
superfluous additions. It is enough to practice this exercise in order for the
soul to return to its true nature, and devote itself exclusively to the exercise
of pure thought.

Much the same thing can be said for Stoicism. With the help of the
distinction between what does and does not depend on us; we can reject all
that is alien to us, and return to our true selves. In other words, we can
achieve moral freedom.

Finally, the same also holds true for Epicureanism. By ignoring unnatural
and unnecessary desires, we can return to our original nucleus of freedom and
independence, which may be defined by the satisfaction of natural and
necessary desires.

Thus, all spiritual exercises are, fundamentally, a return to the self, in
which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been
plunged by worries, passions, and desires. The “self” liberated in this way is
no longer merely our egoistic, passionate individuality: it is our moral person,
open to universality and objectivity, and participating in universal nature or
thought.

With the help of these exercises, we should be able to attain to wisdom;
that is, to a state of complete liberation from the passions, utter lucidity,
knowledge of ourselves and of the world. In fact, for Plato, Aristotle, the
Epicureans, and the Stoics, such an ideal of human perfection serves to define
divine perfection, a state by definition inaccessible to man.'*8 With the possible
exception of the Epicurean school,'®? wisdom was conceived as an ideal after
which one strives without the hope of ever attaining it. Under normal
circumstances, the only state accessible to man is philo-sophia: the love of, or
progress toward, wisdom. For this reason, spiritual exercises must be taken
up again and again, in an ever-renewed effort.

The philosopher lives in an intermediate state. He is not a sage, but he is
not a non-sage, either.'@ He is therefore constantly torn between the
non-philosophical and the philosophical life, between the domain of the
habitual and the everyday, on the one hand, and, on the other, the domain of
consciousness and lucidity.'*' To the same extent that the philosophical life is
equivalent to the practice of spiritual exercises, it is also a tearing away from
eyeryday life. It is a conversion,'® a total transformation of one’s vision,
life-style, and behavior.

Among the Cynics, champions of askesis, this engagement amounted to a
total break with the profane world, analogous to the monastic calling in
Christianity. he rupture took the form of a way of living, and even of dress,
completely foreign to that of the rest of mankind. This is why it was
sometimes said that Cynicism was not a philosophy in the proper sense of the

104 Spiritual Exercises

term, but a state of life (enstasis)."° In fact, however, all philosophical schools
engaged their disciples upon a new way of life, albeit in a more moderate way.
The practice of spiritual exercises implied a complete reversal of received
ideas: one was to renounce the false values of wealth, honors, and pleasures,
and turn towards the true values of virtue, contemplation, a simple life-style,
and the simple happiness of existing. This radical opposition explains the
reaction of non-philosophers, which ranged from the mockery we find
expressed in the comic poets, to the outright hostility which went so far as to
cause the death of Socrates.

The individual was to be torn away from his habits and social prejudices,
his way of life totally changed, and his way of looking at the world radically
metamorphosed into a cosmic-“physical” perspective. We ought not to
underestimate the depth and amplitude of the shock that these changes could
cause, changes which might seem fantastic and senseless to healthy, everyday
common sense. It was impossible to maintain oncself at such heights
continuously; this was a conversion that needed always to be reconquered. It
was probably because of such difficulties that, as we learn in Damascius’ Life
of Istdorus, the philosopher Sallustius used to declare that philosophy was
impossible for man.' He probably meant by this that philosophers were not
capable of remaining philosophers at every instant of their lives. Rather, even
though they kept the title of “philosophers,” they would be sure to fall back
into the habits of everyday life. The Skeptics, for instance, refused outright
to live philosophically, deliberately choosing to “live like everybody else,” '®
although not until affer having made a philosophical detour so intense that it
is hard to believe that their “everyday life” was quite so “everyday” as they
seem to have pretended.

Our claim has been, then, that philosophy in antiquity was a spiritual
exercise. As for philosophical theories: they were either placed explicitly in
the service of spiritual practice, as was the case in Stoicism and Epicureanism,
or else they were taken as the objects of intellectual exercises, that is, of a
practice of the contemplative life which, in the last analysis, was itself nothing
other than a spiritual exercise. It is impossible to understand the philosophical
theories of antiquity without taking into account this concrete perspective,
since this is what gives them their true meaning.

When we read the works of ancient philosophers, the perspective we have
described should cause us to give increased attention to the existential
attitudes underlying the dogmatic edifices we encounter. Whether we have to
do with dialogues as in the case of Plato, class notes as in the case of Aristotle,
treatises like those of Plotinus, or commentaries like those of Proclus, a
philosopher’s works cannot be interpreted without taking into consideration
the concrete situation which gave birth to them. They are the products of a
philosophical school, in the most concrete sense of the term, in which a muster
forms his disciples, trying to guide them to. self-transformation and

Spiritual Exercises 105

-realization. Thus, the written work is a reflection of pedagogical, psycha-
gogic, and methodological preoccupations.

Although every written work is a monologue, the philosophical work is
always implicitly a dialogue. The dimension of the possible interlocutor is
always present within it. This explains the incoherencies and contradictions
which modern historians discover with astonishment in the works of ancient
philosophers.'* In philosophical works such as these, thought cannot be
expressed according to the pure, absolute necessity of a systematic order.
Rather, it must take into account the level of the interlocutor, and the
concrete tempo of the /ogos in which it is expressed. It is the economy proper
to a given written /ogos which conditions its thought content, and it is the
logos that constitutes a living system which, in the words of Plato, “ought to
have its own body... it must not lack either head or feet: it must have a
middle and extremities so composed as to suit each other and the whole
work,” !67

Each Jogos is a “system,” but the totality of /ogoi written by an author does
not constitute a system. This is obviously true in the case of Plato’s dialogues,
but it is equally true in the case of the lectures of Aristotle. For Aristotle’s
writings are indeed neither more nor less than lecture-notes; and the error of
many Aristotelian scholars has been that they have forgotten this fact, and
imagined instead that they were manuals or systematic treatises, intended to
propose a complete exposition of a systematic doctrine. Consequently, they
have been astonished at the inconsistencies, and even contradictions, they
discovered between one writing and another. As Diiring'* has convincingly
shown, Aristotle’s various /ogoi correspond to the concrete situations created
by specific academic debates. Each lesson corresponds to different conditions
and a specific problematic. It has inner unity, but its notional content docs
not overlap precisely with that of any other lesson. Moreover, Aristotle had
no intention of setting forth a complete system of reality.'® Rather, he wished
to train his students in the technique of using correct methods in logic, the
natural sciences, and ethics. Diiring gives an excellent description of the
Aristotelian method:

the most characteristic feature in Aristotle is his incessant discussion of
problems. Almost every important assertion is an answer to a question
put in a certain way, and is valid only as an answer to this particular
_ question. That which is really interesting in Aristotle is his framing of
the problems, not his answers. It is part of his method of inquiry to
approach a problem or a group of problems again and again from
different angles, His own words are GAA nvaprn v nono apevot [“now,
taking a different starting-point...”]...From_ different starting-
points, a@pyat he strikes off into different lines of thought and
ultimately reaches inconsistent answers. ‘Take as example his discussion

106 Spiritual Exercises

of the soul . . . in each case the answer is the consequence of the manner
in which he posits the problem. In short, it is possible to explain this
type of inconsistencies as natural results of the method he applies.'7°

In the Aristotelian method of “different starting-points,” we can recognize
the method Aristophanes attributed to Socrates, and we have seen to what
extent all antiquity remained faithful to this method.'” For this reason,
Diring’s description can in fact apply, mutatis mutandis, to almost all the
philosophers of antiquity. Such a method, consisting not in setting forth a
system, but in giving precise responses to precisely limited questions, is the
heritage — lasting throughout antiquity — of the dialectical method; that is to
say, of the dialectical exercise.

To return to Aristotle: there is a profound truth in the fact that he himself
used to call his courses met/odoi."? On this point, moreover, the Aristotelian
spirit corresponds to the spirit of the Platonic Academy, which was, above all,
a school which formed its pupils for an eventual political role, and a research
institute where investigations were carried out in a spirit of free discussion.'”

It may be of interest to compare Aristotle’s methodology with that of
Plotinus. We learn from Porphyry that Plotinus took the themes for his
writings from the problems which came up in the course of his teaching.'™
Plotinus’ various /ogoi, situated as they are within a highly specific problem-
atic, are responses to precise questions. They are adapted to the needs of his
disciples, and are an attempt to bring about in them a specific psychagogic
effect. We must not make the mistake of imagining that they are the
successive chapters of a vast, systematic exposition of Plotinus’ thought. In
each of these /ogoi, we encounter the spiritual method particular to Plotinus,
but there is no lack of incoherence and contradictions on points of detail when
we compare the doctrinal content of the respective treatises. '75

When we first approach the Neoplatonic commentaries on Plato and
Aristotle, we have the impression that their form and content are dictated
exclusively by doctrinal and exegetical considerations. Upon closer examin-
ation, however, we realize that, in each commentary, the exegetical method
and doctrinal content are functions of the spiritual level of the audience to
which the commentary is addressed. The reason for this is that there existed
a cursus of philosophical instruction, based on spiritual progress. One did not
read the same texts to beginners, to those in progress, and to those already
having achieved perfection, and the concepts appearing in the commentaries
are also functions of the spiritual capacities of their addressees. Consequently,
doctrinal content can vary considerably from one commentary to anothcr,
even when written by the same author. This does not mean that the
commentator changed his doctrines, but that the needs of his disciples were
different.'” In the literary genre of parenesis, used for exhorting beginners, one
could, in order to bring about a spccific effect in the interlocutor’s xoul, utilize

Spiritual Exercises 107

the arguments of a rival school. For example, a Stoic might say, “even if
pleasure is the good of the soul (as the Epicureans would haye it), nevertheless
we must purify ourselves of passion.” '” Marcus Aurelius exhorted himself in
the same manner. If, he writes, the world is a mere aggregate of atoms, as the
Epicureans would have it, then death is not to be feared.'”

Moreover, we ought not to forget that many a philosophical demonstration
derives its evidential force not so much from abstract reasoning as from an
experience which is at the same time a spiritual exercise. We have seen that
this was the case for the Plotinian demonstration of the immortality of the
soul. Let the soul practice virtue, he said, and it will understand that it is
immortal.'” We find an analogous example in the Christian writer Augustine.
In his On the Trinity, Augustine presents a series of psychological images of
the Trinity which do not form a coherent system, and which have con-
sequently been the source of a great deal of trouble for his commentators. In
fact, however, Augustine is not trying to present a systematic thcory of
trinitarian analogies. Rather, by making the soul turn inward upon itself, he
wants to make it experience the fact that it is an image of the Trinity. In his
words: “These trinities occur within us and are within us, when we recall,
look at, and wish for such things.”'® Ultimately, it is in the triple act of
remembering God, knowing God, and loving God that the soul discovers
itself to be the image of the Trinity.

From the preceding examples, we may get some idea of the change in
perspective that may occur in our reading and interpretation of the philosoph-
ical works of antiquity when we consider them from the point of view of the
practice of spiritual exercises. Philosophy then appears in its original aspect:
not as a theoretical construct, but as a method for training people to live and
to look at the world in a new way. It is an attempt to transform mankind.
Contemporary historians of philosophy are today scarcely inclined to pay
attention to this aspect, although it is an essential onc. The reason for this is
that, in conformity with a tradition inherited from the Middle Ages and from
the modern cra, they consider philosophy to be a purely abstract-theoretical
activity. Let us briefly recall how this conception came into existence.

It seems to be the result of the absorption of philosophia by Christianity.
Since its inception, Christianity has presented itself as a philosophia, insofar
as it assimilated into itself the traditional practices of spiritual exercises. We
sec this occurring in Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and monasti-
cism.""" With the advent of medieval Scholasticism, however, we find a clear
distinction being drawn between theologia and philosophia. Theology became
conscious of its autonomy gua supreme science, while philosophy was emptied
of its spiritual exercises which, from now on, were relegated to Christian
mysticism and ethics. Reduced to the rank of a “handmaid of theology,”
philosophy’s role was henceforth to furnish theology with conceptual — and
hence purely theoretical — material. When, in the modern age, philosophy

108 Spiritual Exercises

regained its autonomy, it still retained many features inherited from this
medieval conception. In particular, it maintained its purely theoretical
character, which even evolved in the direction of a more and more thorough
systematization.'® Not until Nietzsche, Bergson, and existentialism does
philosophy consciously return to being a concrete attitude, a way of life and
of seeing the world. For their part, however, contemporary historians of
ancient thought have, as a general rule, remained prisoners of the old, purely
theoretical conception of philosophy. Contemporary structuralist tendencies
do not, moreover, incline them to correct this misconception, since spiritual
exercises introduce into consideration a subjective, mutable, and dynamic
component, which does not fit comfortably into the structuralists’ models of
explanation.

We have now returned to the contemporary period and our initial point of
departure, the lines by G. Friedmann we quoted at the beginning of this
study. We have tried to reply to those who, like Friedmann, ask themselves
the question: how is it possible to practice spiritual exercises in the twentieth
century? We have tried to do so by recalling the existence of a highly rich and
varied Western tradition. There can be no question, of course, of mechan-
ically imitating stereotyped schemas. After all, did not Socrates and Plato urge
their disciples to find the solutions they needed by themselves? And yet, we
cannot afford to ignore such a valuable quantity of experience, accumulated
over millennia. To mention but one example, Stoicism and Epicureanism do
seem to correspond to two opposite but inseparable poles of our inner life:
tension and relaxation, duty and serenity, moral conscience and the joy of
existence."

Vauvenargues said, “A truly new and truly original book would be one
which made people love old truths.” It is my hope that I have been “truly
new and truly original” in this sense, since my goal has indeed been to make
people love a few old truths. Old truths: ...there are some truths whose
meaning will never be exhausted by the generations of man. It is not that they
are difficult; on the contrary, they are often extremely simple.'*> Often, they
even appear to be banal. Yet for their meaning to be understood, these truths
must be /ived, and constantly re-expericnced. Each generation must take up,
from scratch, the task of learning to read and to re-read these “old truths.”

We spend our lives “reading,” that is, carrying out exegeses, and sometimes
even exegeses of exegeses. Epictetus tells us what he thinks of such activities:

“Come and listen to me read my commentaries...1 will explain
Chrysippus to you like no one else can, and Ill provide a complete
analysis of his entire text... If necessary, I can even add the views of
Antipater and Archedemos” .. . So it’s for this, is it, that young men
are to leave their fatherlands and their own parents: to come and listen
to you explain words? ‘Trifling lithe words?"

Spiritual Exercises 109

And yet we have forgotten how to read: how to pause, liberate ourselves from
our worries, return into ourselves, and leave aside our search for subtlety and
originality, in order to meditate calmly, ruminate, and let the texts speak to
us. This, too, is a spiritual exercise, and one of the most difficult. As Goethe
said: “Ordinary people don’t know how much time and effort it takes to learn
how to read. I’ve spent eighty years at it, and I still can’t say that I’ve reached
my goal.” !®

NOTES

1 Georges Friedmann, La Puissance et la Sagesse, Paris 1970, p. 359. On June 30,
1977, shortly before his death, Friedmann was kind enough to write me to tell
me how much he had been “moved” by my reaction to his book. In the same
letter, he referred me to the final remarks he had presented at the close of the
Colloquium organdies by the CNRS [National Centre of Scientific Research],
3-5 May, 1977, to commemorate the tricentenary of the death of Spinoza.

There, apropos of a passage from Spinoza’s Ethics, he spoke of the Stoicism of

the ancients. Cf. Georges Friedmann, “Le Sage et notre siécle,” Revue de

Synthése 99 (1978), p. 288.

Friedmann, La Puissance, pp. 183-284.

3 Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 22, 20: “From now on my mind [dianoia] is the material
with which I have to work, as the carpenter has his timbers, the shoemaker his
hides.”

4 [Ignatius of Loyola (ca. 1491-1556), founder of the Jesuit Order, wrote his
handbook entitled Spiritual Evercises beginning in 1522. The goal of the work was
to purify its reader from sin and lead him to God, via a four-stage meditation:
beginning with meditation on sin, the reader progresses to considering the
kingdom of Christ, the passion, and finally the risen and glorified Lord. - Trans.]

5 In Latin literature, cf., for example, Rufinus, History of the Monks [written
ca. AD 403], ch. 29, PL 21, 410D: “Cum quadraginta annis fuisset in exerci-
tiis spiritualibus conversatus” (“After he had become conversant with spiritual
exercises for forty years” - Trans.], and ch. 29 (ibid., col. 453D): “Ad acriora
semetipsum spiritalis vitae extendit exercitia” (“He excrted himself to the more
zealous exercises of the spiritual life.” — Trans. ].

In the Greek world, we find this terminology already in Clement of Alexandria,
Stromata, 4, 6, 27, 1. Cf. J. Leclercq, “Exercices spirituels,” in Dictionnaire de
Spiritualité, vol. 4, cols 1902-8.

© In his very important work Seelenfiihrung. Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike,
Munich 1954, Pau! Rabbow situated Ignatius of Loyola’s Exercitia spiritualia back
within the ancient tradition.

7 There have been relatively few studies devoted to this subject. The fundamental
work is that of Rabbow, Seelen/ftihrung, cf. also the review of Rabbow’s work by
G. Luck, Gnomon 28 (1956), pp. 208 71; B.-L. Hijmans Jr ASKEZIE, Notes on
Kprctetus' Kducational System, Assen 1959; AVC. Van Geytenbeek, Musonius Rufus

N

110

co

9
10

—_
—

Spiritual Exercises

and Greek Diatribes, Assen 1963; W. Schmid, “Epikur,” in Reallexikon fiir Antike
und Christentum, vol. 5, 1962, cols 735-40; I. Hadot “Epicure et P'enseignement
philosophique hellénistique et romain,” in Actes du Ville Congrés Budé,
Paris 1969; H.-G. Ingenkamp, Plutarchs Schriften siber die Heilung der Seele,
Gottingen 1971; V. Goldschmidt, Le systéme stoicien et l'idée de temps, 4th edn,
Paris 1985.

Pseudo-Galen, Philosophical History, 5, in H. Diels, ed., Doxographi Graeci,
p. 602, 18; Pseudo-Plutarch, Placita, I, 2, ibid, p. 273, 14. The idea originates
with the Cynics; cf. Diogenes Laertius, 6, 70-1, and now the important work of
M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, L’Ascése cynique. Un commentaire de Diogéne Laérce, VI,
70, 71, Paris 1986. Lucian (Toxaris, 27; Vitarum auctio, 7) uses the word askesis to
designate philosophical sects themselves. On the need for philosophical exercises,
cf. Epictetus, Discourses, 2, 9, 13; 2, 18, 26; 3, 8, 1; 3, 12, 1-7; 4, 6, 16; 4, 12, 13;
Musonius Rufus, p. 22, 9ff Hense; Seneca, Letter, 90, 46.

Seneca, Letter, 20, 2: “Philosophy teaches us how to act, not how to talk.”
Epictetus, Discourses, I, 4, 14ff: spiritual progress does not consist in learning how
to explain Chrysippus better, but in transforming one’s own freedom; cf. 2, 16,
34.

Epictetus, Discourses, I, 15, 2: “The subject-matter of the art of living
(i.e. philosophy) is the life of every individual;” cf. I, 26, 7. Plutarch, Table-talk,
I, 2, 623B: “Since philosophy is the art of living, it should not be kept apart from
any pastime.”

Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, 1, 4, p. 11, 4 Marquardt:
“make yourself better.”

On conversion, cf. Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion, Oxford 1933, pp. 164-86;
Pierre Hadot “Epistrophée ct Metanoia dans l’historie de la philosophie,” in Actes
du lle Congrés International de Philosophie 12, Brussels 1953, pp. 31-6; Pierre
Hadot, “Conversio,” in Historiches Worterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 1, cols 1033-6,
1971.

Seneca, Letter, 6, 1: “I feel, my dear Lucilius, that I am being not only reformed,
but transformed ...1 therefore wish to impart to you this sudden change in
myself.”

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 3, 6: “Truly, philosophy is the medicine of the
soul”; cf. Epictetus, Discourses, 2, 21, 15; 22. Chrysippus wrote a Therapeutics of
the Passions, cf. SVF, vol. 3, §474. Cf. also the aphorism attributed to Epicurus
by Usener (Epicurea, fr. 221 = Porphyry Ad Marcellam, 31, p. 294, 7-8 Nauck):
“Vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man.”
According to H. Chadwick, The Sentences of Sextus, Cambridge 1959, p. 178, n.
336, this sentence is Pythagorean. Cf. Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 23, 30: “The
philosopher’s school is a clinic.”

The Epicurean method must be distinguished from that of the Stoics. According
to Olympiodorus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, pp. 6, ff, 54, 15¢f;
145, 12ff Westerink, the Stoics cure contrarics by contraries; the Pythagoreans
let the patient taste the passions with his fingertips; and Socrates treats his
patients by homeopathy, leading them, for example, from the love of terrestrial

17

18

19
20
21

22

2

w

24

25

26

27°

28
29

Spiritual Exercises 111

beauty to the love of eternal beauty. Cf. also Proclus, Jn Alcibordem, p. 151, 14,
vol. 2, p. 217 Segonds.

Cf. below. We find the distinction between what depends on us and what does
not depend on us in Epictetus, Discourses, I, 1, 7; 1, 4, 27; I, 22, 9; 2, 5, 4; and
Epictetus, Manual, ch. 4.

Many Stoic treatises entitled On Exercises have been lost; cf. the list of titles in
Diogenes Laertius, 7, 166-7. A short treatise entitled On Exercise, by Musonius
Rufus, has been preserved (pp. 22-7 Hense). After a general introduction
concerning the need for exercises in philosophy, Rufus recommends physical
exercises: becoming used to foul weather, hunger, and thirst. These exercises
benefit the soul, giving it strength and temperance. He then recommends
exercises designed particularly for the soul, which, says Rufus, consist in steeping
oneself in the demonstrations and principles bearing on the distinction between
real and apparent goods and evils. With the help of these exercises, we will get
into the habit of not fearing what most people consider as evils: poverty,
suffering, and death. One chapter of Epictetus’ Discourses is dedicated to askesis
(3, 12, 1-7). Cf. below. The treatise On Exercise by the PscudoPlutarch, preserved
in Arabic (cf. J. Gildmeister and F. Biicheler, “PseudoPlutarchos Peri askésedés,”
Rheinisches Museum NF 27 (1872), pp. 520-38), is of no particular interest in this
context.

Philo Judaeus, Who is the Heir of Divine Things, 253.

Philo Judaeus, Allegorical Inter pretations, 3, 18.

The word therapeiai can also mean acts of worship, and this meaning would be
entirely possible in Philo’s mind. Nevertheless, in the present context it seems to
me that it designates the therapeutics of the passions. Cf. Philo Judaeus, On the
Special Laws, 1, 191; 197; 230; 2, 17.

Ton kalon mnemai. Cf. Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, I, 5,
25, pp. 19, 8 Marquardt.

On this theme, cf. Rabbow, Seelenfiihnung, pp. 249-50; Hijmans, ASKEZI/5,
pp. 68-70. Cf. especially Epictetus, Discourses, 4, 12, 1-21.

The idea of tension (tonos) is particularly in evidence in Epictetus, Discourses, 4,
12, 15 and 19. The concept of fonos is central to Stoicism, as is that of relaxation
(anesis) in Epicureanism. Cf. F. Ravaisson, Essai sur la Metaphysique d'Austote,
Paris, 1846, repr. Hildesheim 1963, p. 117.

Epictetus, Discourses, 4, 12, 7; cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3,
13; Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, 1, 9, 51, p. 40, 10
Marquardt.

Epictetus, Discourses, 4, 12, 15-18.

Cf. below.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 54; cf. 3, 12; 8, 36; 9, 6.

Only the present depends on us, since our free action cannot be extended either
to the past or to the future. Free action is that which either brings about
something in the present, or else accepts the present event, which has been willed
by fute; cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2, 14; 4, 26, 5; 12, 26; Seneca, On
Renefits, 7, 2, 4: “Rejoicing in these prevent events.”

112

30
31

32
33

34
35

36

37

38

39

40

Spiritual Exercises

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3, 10; 2, 14; 8, 36.

Cf., for instance, Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4, 23. Marcus also stresses the
cosmic value of the instant in 5, 8, 3: “This event occurred for you, was
prescribed for you, and had some kind of relationship to you, having been woven
since the beginning, from the most ancient causes.”

Epictetus, Discourses, 2, 16, 2-3; 3, 8, 1-5.

Cf. Rabbow, Seelenftihnung, pp. 124-30, 334-6; I. Hadot, Seneca und die
griechisch-rémische Tradition der Seelenleitung, Berlin 1969, pp. 57-8. See also
Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, \, 5, 24, p. 18, 19 Marquardt;
Seneca, On Benefits, 7, 2, 1; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 63.

Seneca, On Benefits, 7, 2, 1-2; Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 3, 14-16.

On the role of rhetoric in spiritual exercises, see Rabbow, Seelenfiihnung,
pp. 55-90; Hijmans, AZKEZIZ, p. 89; I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 17, 184. For
examples in Plutarch, sce Ingenkamp, Plutarchs Schriften, pp. 99ff.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 58: “In every contingency, keep before your eyes
those who, when the same thing befell them, were saddencd, astonished,
resentful. Where are they now? Nowhere.” Epictetus, Manual, ch. 21: “Keep
before your eyes every day death and exile, and everything that scems terrible, but
most of all death; and then you will never have any abject thought, nor excessive
desire.” On this exercise, see Rabbow, Seelenfithrung, p. 330.

Cf. the passage from Philo cited above. Hijmans, AEKEZ/Z, p. 69, calls attention
to the frequency of the expression “Remember!” in Epictetus. It recurs quite
often in Marcus Aurelius, for instance, Meditations, 2, 4; 8, 15; 29. Cf. Galen,
Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, 1, 5, 25, p. 19, 8-10 Marquardt:
“With the help of memory, kcep ‘at hand’ the ugliness of those who succumb to
anger, and the beauty of those who master it.”

It is only after much hesitation that I have translated me/ete by “meditation.” In
fact, melete and its Latin cquivalent meditatio designate “preparatory exercises,”
in particular those of rhctoricians. If I have finally resigned myself to adopting
the translation “meditation,” it is because the exercise designated by melete
corresponds, in the last analysis, rather well to what we nowadays term
meditation: an effort to assimilate an idea, notion, or principle, and make
them come alive in the soul. We must not, however, lose sight of the term’s am-
biguity: meditation is exercisc, and exercise is meditation. For instance, the “pre-
meditation” of death is a “pre-exercise” of death; the cottidiana meditatio cited in
the following note could just as well be translated as “daily exercises.”

See Rabbow, Seelenftihrung, pp. 23-150, 325-8; and Seneca, On Benefits, 7, 2, 1:
“These are the things that my friend Demetrius says the beginner in philosophy
must grasp with both hands, these are the precepts that he must never let go.
Rather, he must cling fast to them and make them a part of himself, and by daily
meditation reach the point where these salutary maxims occur to him of their
own accord.” Cf. also Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, 1, 5,
25, p. 19, 13 Marquardt.

[“Pre-meditation of misfortunes" ‘Trans.] On the praemeditatio matorum, see
Rabhow, Seelenfiihrung, pp. 169 70; 1. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 60-1.

Spiritual Exercises 113

41 See above.

42 See above.

43 Cf. Ingenkamp, Plutarchs Schuften, pp. 99-105; Rabbow, Seelenfiihrung, pp. 148,
340-2.

44 Cf. Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, 1, 5, 24, p. 18, 12
Marquardt: “As soon as we get up in the morning, we must consider in advance,
with regard to the various acts we will perform throughout the day, whether it
is better to live as a slave of our passions, or to utilize reason against all of them.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2, 1, 1: “At the break of dawn, say to yourself: ‘I’m
going to come across a nosy person, an ingrate, a thug, a cheat, a jealous man,
and an anti-social man. All these defects have afflicted them because of their
ignorance of what is truly good and evil.’ ” Cf ibid, 5, 1, 1: “In the morning,
when you have trouble getting up, have this thought at hand [procheiron): ‘I’m
getting up to do a man’s work.’ ”

45 On the examination of the conscience, sce Rabbow, Seelenfiihrung, pp. 180-8,
344-7; I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 68-70; Hijmans, AEKEZI/Z, p. 88.

46 Cf. Plutarch, How One may Knom One is Making Progress in Virtue, §12, 82F: “It
was Zcno’s belief that everyone could, thanks to his dreams, have knowledge of
what progress he was making. One has made real progress if he no longer dreams
that he is giving in to some shameful passion, or giving his consent to something
evil or unjust — or even committing it — and if, instead, the soul’s faculties of
representation and affectivity, relaxed by reason, shine as if in an ocean of
diaphanous serenity, untroubled by waves.”

47 Sec below.

48 This is the domain of spiritual guidance; see I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 5-97.
Note especially Galen, Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, 1, 7, 36,
p. 27, 22 Marquardt: we are to ask an older man to tell us frankly about our
defects.

49 Cf. Rabbow, Seelenftihrung, p. 311, n. 64; I. Hadot, Seneca, p. 59. Marcus
Aurclius’ Meditations are, of course, the example par excellence of. this. Note also
Horace, Satires, 1, 4, 138: “When I have some spare time, I amuse myself by
writing these thoughts down on paper.” ;

50 The phrase is Descartes’, but it gives good expression to the Stoic ideal of inner

coherence. [This is the third of René Descartes’ well-known “four laws” which

he exposes in Part 2 of his Discourse on the Method. — Trans.]

On this subject, see P. Lain Entralgo, “Die platonische Rationalisienung .der

Besprechung (€xyd7) und dic Erfindung der Psychotherapie durch das Wort,”

Hermes 68 (1958), pp. 298-323; P. Lain Entralgo, The Therapy of the Word in

Classical Antiquity, New Haven 1970; and the review of this latter work by F.

Kudlien, Gnomon 45 (1973), pp. 410-12.

[“Collections of aphorisms” — Trans.] Cf. Rabbow, See/enfiihrung, pp. 215-22,

352-4; GA. Gerhard, Phoiniy von Kolophon, Leipzig 1909, pp. 228-84; I.

Hadot, Seneca, pp. 16-17, See also Seneca, Letter, 94, 27; 43; 98, 5; 108, 9. On

collections of poetical and philosophical aphorisms, see W. Spoerri, “Gnome,” in

Der kleme Pauly, vol, 2, 1967, cols 822 9; Chadwick, Sentences of Sextus;

5

-

5

N

114 Spiritual Exercises

T. Klauser, “Apophthegma,” Reallexicon ftir Antike und Christentun 1 (1950),
pp. 545-50. See also P. Wendland, Anaximenes von Lampsakos, Berlin 1905,
pp. 1 00ff.

53 The term akroasis as used by Philo could designate, among other things, attending
a course in philosophy; cf. Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 23, 27; 38. Normally, the course
included the reading, with commentary, of a philosophical text (anagnosis), often
done by the disciple and criticized by the master (cf. Epictetus, Discourses, I, 26,
1; Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, ch. 14). See also I. Bruns, De schola Epictetc, Kiel
1897. This does not, of course, exclude the individual reading of philosophical
texts; cf. Epictetus, Discourses, 4, 4, 14-18 (where Epictetus reproaches his
disciples for reading texts without putting them into practice). After the reading
with commentary, a philosophy class would normally include a discussion
(diatribe) with the audience, as well as individual discussions (cf. I. Hadot, Seneca,
p. 65). For the listener, this entire ensemble could be a spiritual exercise. With
regard to reading, we should add that exegesis, whether literal or allegorical, was
one of the most important spiritual exercises at the end of antiquity, among both
pagans and Christians.

54 On the educational program in Hellenistic schools, with its transition from
aphorisms to epitomai (summaries of basic principles), and finally to full-scale
treatises, see I. Hadot 1969a, pp. 53-6; 1969b.

55 On the exercise of definition, see below.

56 On this exercise, see Rabbow, Seelenfiihrung, pp. 42-9.

57 Philo’s expression “indifference to indifferent things” corresponds exactly to the
spiritual exercises mentioned by Marcus Aurclius, Meditations, 11, 16: “Our
soul finds within itself the power to live a perfectly happy life, if we can
remain indifferent towards indifferent things.” This formula seems to be a
reminiscence of the definition of the goal of human life according to Aristo of
Chios (SVF, 1, §360, = Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2, 21, 129, 6, p. 183,
14-16 Stihlin): “And why should I mention Aristo? He said the goal was
indifference, but he leaves ‘the indifferent’ as simply ‘the indifferent.’ ” On this
theme, see below. We must bear in mind that here “indifference” does not mean
a lack of interest, but rather equal love for cach of life’s instants; that is, we are
not to make any “difference” between them.

58 See Rabbow, Seeclenfiihrung, pp. 223-49; Ingenkamp, Plutarchs Schiiften,
pp. 105-18. The technical term for this process is et/tismos.

59 Epicurus, Gnomologium Vaticanum, §64. Cf. also Letter to Menoecus, §122: “No
one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul.”

60 Epicurus, Ratae Sententiae, §11: “If we were not troubled by our suspicions of
the phenomena of the sky and about death, fearing that it concerns us, and also
by our failure to grasp the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need
of natural science [ph ysiologia].” On Epicurean theology, see Schmid, “Epikur”;
D. Lemke, Die Theologie Epikurs, Munich 1973.

61 Epicurus, Ratae Sententiae, §29; Epicurus, Letter to Menoecus, §127,

62 Epicurus, Gnom, Vat. §33, Cl. A.-J. Festugi¢re, Epicure et ses dieux, Paris 1946,
p. 44.

Spiritual Exercises 115

63 Epicurus Fr. 469, p. 300, 26ff Usener.
64 On these Epicurean exercises of meditation, see Schmid, “Epikur,” p. 744;

65

Rabbow, Seelenfiihrung, pp. 129, 336-8; I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 5243. Cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Menvecus, §135, 5-8: “Meditate therefore on these things and things like
them night and day by yourself, and with someone similar to yourself, and you
shall be disturbed, either awake or asleep, but you shall live like a god among
men.” Ibid, §123, 1-2: “That which I used constantly to recommend to you, put
it into practice and meditate upon it [meleta], considering them to be the elements
of the living well.” Ibid, §124, 7-8: “Become accustomed (sunethize] to considering
that death is nothing to us.”

Cf. Philodemus, Adversus sophistas, col. 4, 10-14, p. 87 Sbordone, cited by
Festugiére, Epicure, p. 46, n. 1, Schmid, “Epikur,” col. 744; translation by A.A.
Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1: Translations of the
Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary, Cambridge 1987, repr. 1988, p.
156, section J; Greek text, vol. 2, Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and
Bibliography, p. 161. The technical term used here to indicate that this aphorism
must always be “at hand” is parhepomenon.

66 For instance, the Ratae Sententiae or Kuriai Doxai (“Principal Doctrines”, which

were known to Cicero (On Ends, 2, 20), and the Gnorn. Vat.

67 On the curriculum in the Epicurean school, see above.
68 Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, §85 = Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers,

6

70

7

ve)

—

section 18 C (1), vol. 1, pp. 91-2; Greek text, vol. 2, p. 94. Cf. Letter to Herodotus,
§37: “I recommend . . . constant occupation in the investigation of the science of
nature, since I consider that this activity provides the greatest serenity in life.”
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 3, 16f, 28ff. This passage is quite remarkable.
On the one hand, it illustrates the fact that Epicurean physics was a true source
of pleasure for the sage: it allowed him to have a grandiose imaginative vision of
the formation and dissolution of the universe in the infinity of space. On the
other, it throws light on one of the most fundamental feelings of the human
experience: jorror in the face of the enigma of nature. One thinks of Gocthe’s
formulation in Faust, Part 2, 6272ff: “The shudder is the best part of man.
However dearly the world makes him pay for it, he feels the Prodigious deep
inside, seized with astonishment.” (“Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes
Teil. Wie auch die Welt ihm das Gefiihl vertcure, Ergriffen fiihlt er tief das
Ungeheurc.”) On Epicurean spiritual exercises in general, see P.-H. Schrijvers,
Horror ac Divina Voluptas. Etudes sur la poétique et la poésie de Lucréce, Amsterdam
1970.

I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 62-3; Rabbow, Scelenftihrung, p. 280. Cf. Cicero, On Ends,

I, 17, 55; I, 19, 62; Tusculan Disputations, 15, 32-3.

Epicurus, Grom. Vat., §75: “The saying, ‘Wait till the end of a long life’ (to know
if you’ve been happy) is ungrateful towards the good things of the past.” Cf. ibid,
§69; §19: “He who has forgotten yesterday’s good fortune is already an old man.”

72 Cf. KE. Hoffmann, “Epikur,” in M. Dessoir, ed., Die Geschichte der Philosophie,

vol, I, Wiesbaden 1925, p. 223: “F:xistence is to be considered, first and
foremost, as a pure accident, so that it may then be lived as a completely unique

116

Spiritual Exercises

miracle. We must first realize that existence, inevitably, is a one-shot affair, in
order to be able to celebrate that in it which is irreplaceable and unique.”

73 Epicurus, Gnom. Vat., §14. Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 3, 957-60,

and G. Rodis-Lewis, Epicure et son école, Paris, 1975, pp. 269-83.

74 Horace, Odes, I, 11, 7: “Dum loquimur, fugerit invida / aetas: carpe diem, quam

75

76

77
78
79

80

8

—_

minimum credula postero.” Cf. ibid, 2, 16, 25: “A soul content with the present.”
On Epicurean friendship, see Schmid, “Epikur,” cols 740-55; Festugiére,
Epicure, pp. 36-70; I. Hadot 1969a, pp. 63ff; Rodis-Lewis, Epicure, pp. 362-9.
Cf. S. Sudhaus, “Epikur als Beichtirater,” Archiv ftir Religionswissenschaft 14
(1911), pp. 647ff. The fundamental text is Philodemus, Peri parrhésias (“On Free
Speech”], ed. A. Olivieri, Leipzig 1914; cf. I. Hadot, Seneca, p. 63; M. Gigante
1968, pp. 196-217.

Schmid, “Epikur,” cols. 741-3.

Festugicre, Epicure, p. 69.

The prehistory of spiritual exercises is to be sought, first of all, in traditional rules
of life and popular exhortation (cf. I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 10-22). Must we go back
further still, and look for it first of all in Pythagoreanism, and then, beyond
Pythagoras, in magico-religious/shamanistic traditions of respiratory techniques
and mnemonic exercises? This theory, defended by E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and
the Irrational (= Sather Classical Lectures 25), 3rd edn, Berkeley/London 1963;
L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Gréce antique, Paris 1968, pp. 423-5; J.-P. Vernant,
Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs, Paris 1971, pp. 94ff, 108ff; M. Detienne, De /a
pensée religieuse a la pensée philosophique. La notion de Daimon dans le pythagoisme
ancien, Paris 1963; M. Détienne, Les maitres de vénilé dans la Gréce archaique,
Paris 1967, pp. 124ff; H. Joly, Le renversement platonicien, Paris 1974, pp. 67-70;
is entirely plausible. However, I shall not go into the matter here, first of all
owing to my lack of competence in the field of the anthropology of prehistory
and of archaic Greece, and secondly, because it seems to me that the problems
inherent in the history of Pythagoreanism are extremely complex, so that it
presupposes a rigorous criticism of our sources (many of which are late, idyllic
projections, reflecting Stoic and Platonic concepts). Thirdly, the spiritual exer-
cises under discussion here are mental processes which have nothing in common
with cataleptic trances, but, on the contrary, respond to a rigorous demand for
rational control, a demand which, as far as we are concerned, emerges with the
figure of Socrates.

The historical Socrates is a probably insoluble enigma. But the /igure of
Socrates, as it is sketched by Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes, is a well-
attested historical fact. When, in what follows, I speak of “Socrates,” I
shall be referring to this figure of Socrates. See below, ch. 5, “The Figure of
Socrates.”

By using quotation marks, I wish to underline the fact that we are not
dealing with authentically Socratic dialogues, but with literary compositions
which imitate - more or less faithfully — the dialogues of Socrates, or in which
the figure of Socrates plays a role, It is in this sense that Plato's dialogues are
Socratic.

Spiritual Exercises 117

82 Plato, Laches, 187e-188b.

83 Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations, 183b8: “Socrates used to ask questions and not
to answer them — for he used to confess that he did not know.” Cf. Plato,
Apology, 21d5: “I do not think that I know what I do not know.”

84 Plato, Apology, 30e1—5: “If you put me to death, you will not easily find anyone
to take my place... God has specially appointed me to this city, as though it
were a large thoroughbred horse which...needs the stimulation of some
stinging fly.”

85 On taking care of oneself, cf. Plato, Apology, 29d; 31b; 36c.

86 Ibid, 29d5-e3. Cf. 30a6-b1: “For I spend my time going about trying to persuade
you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor
for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls.”

87 Plato, Apology, 36b4—-c6.

88 Plato, Symposium, 215e6—216a5.

89 In this respect, Stoic exhortation remains Socratic. More than onc of Epictetus’
Discourses seems to imitate the Socratic style; cf., for instance, Discourses, I, 11,
1-40. Epictetus praises the Socratic method gt 2, 12, 5-16, but he emphasizes
that, in his day, it is no longer easy to practice it: ‘Nowadays, especially in Rome,
it is not at all a safe business” (2, 12, 17; 24). Epictetus pictures a philosopher
trying to have a Socratic dialogue with a consular personage, and ending up
recciving a fist in the face. If we can trust Diogencs Lacrtius, Lives of the
Philosophers, 2, 21, a similar incident had happened to Socrates himself.

90 On the history of this theme, see Pierre Courcelle, Connais-toi toi-méme. De
Socrate a saint Bernard, 3 vols, Paris 1974-5.

91 Plato, Symposium, 174d.

92 Plato, ibid, 220c--d.

93 Aristophanes, Clouds, 700-6,°761-3; cf. 740-5. As a matter of fact, the true
meaning of these verses is not entirely clear. They could be interpreted as an
allusion to an exercise of mental concentration; this is the view of G. Méautis,
L'éme hellénique, Paris 1932, p. 183, A.-J. Festugiére, Contemplation et vie
contemplative selon Platon, 2nd cdn, Paris 1950, pp. 67-73; W. Schmid, “Das
Sokratesbild der Wolken,” Phitologus 97 (1948), pp. 209-28; A.E. Taylor, Vaina
Socratica, Oxford 1911, pp. 129-75. The terms phrontizein and ekphrontizein,
used in Aristophanes’ description, became — perhaps under Aristophanes’
influence — technical terms for designating Socrates’ habits. Cf. Plato, Symposium,
220c: Socrates stays standing, phrontizon ti; Xenophon, Symposium, 6, 6: Socrates
is nicknamed the phrontistes. But it is not certain that, in Aristophanes, this
phrontizein corresponds to an exercise of meditation directed towards oneself. In

, the first place, the comparison with the may-beetle gives us to understand that
thought takes flight toward “elevated” things. In his Symposium, Xenophon tells
us it relates to the “meteora,” in other words to celestial phenomena (cf. Plato,
Apology, 18b). Secondly, in the Clouds, Strepsiades phrontizei about the means he
will use to settle a business affair, not about himself. It is more a question of the
methodology of research (cf. 1. 742: divide and examine). The most interesting
detail seems to me to be the phrase: “If you come up against an insoluble point,

118

Spiritual Exercises

jump to another” (702-4), repeated at 743ff: “If an idea gets you into
any difficulty, let go of it, withdraw for a bit, then submit it to your judgement
again, shift it around and weigh it carefully.” This means that, when one
arrives at an aporia, one must take up the question again, from a new point of
departure. This method is constantly applied in the Platonic dialogues, as has
been shown by René Schaerer, La Question platonicienne. Etudes sur les rapports
de la pensée et de l'expressions dans les Dialogues (= Mémoires de l’Université
de Neuchatel 10), 2nd edn with postscript, Neuchatel 1969, pp. 84-7; citing
Meno, 79e; Phaedo, 105b; Theaetetus, 187a—-b; Philebus, 60a. As Schaerer
points out (p. 86), we have to do with a process “which forces the
mind indefatigably to turn around in circles, in search of the True.” It is perhaps
this aspect of Socratic methodology which explains Aristophanes’ allusions to
detours and circuits of thought. Be this as it may, this method is also discernible
in Aristotle, as we can sce by the examples collected by H. Bonitz, Index
aristotelicus, Berlin 1870, repr. Graz 1955, col. 111, 35ff: “Taking another point
of departure, we shall say.” We find Plotinus using the same method, for instance
in Ennead, 5, 8, 4, 45; 5, 8, 13, 24; 6, 4, 16, 47. On Aristotle, cf. the remarks
of I. Diring, “Aristotle and the heritage from Plato,” Eranos 62 (1964),
pp. 84-99.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 6, 6. Ancient man frequently spoke to
himself out loud. Some examples: Pyrrho in Diogenes Laertius 9, 64 (= Long and
Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers, 1A, vol. 1, p. 13; vol. 2, p. 3): “When once discovered
talking to himself, he was asked the reason, and said that he was training to be
virtuous.” Philo of Athens, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 9, 69: “Philo
... had a habit of very often talking to himself . .. that is why Timon says of him:
‘Philo . . . he who, apart from mankind, used to speak and converse with himself, with
no concern for glory or disputes.” Cleanthes, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the
Philosophers, 7, 171: [Cleanthes] used often to scold himself out loud. Upon hearing
him, Ariston once asked him: ‘Who are you scolding?’ Cleanthes laughed and replied,
‘Some old man who has grey hair but no brains.’ ” Horace, Satires, 1, 4, 137: “Thus,
with lips shut ght, I debate with myself.” (“Hacc ego mecum compressis agito
labris.”) Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 14, 2: “Man — if you really are a man - then walk by
yourself, talk to yourself, and don’t hide yourself in the chorus.” On meditating while
walking, cf. Horace, Letter, 1, 4, 4-5: “strolling peacefully amid the healthful woods,
bearing in mind all the thoughts worthy of a sage and a good man.” — On the problems
posed by interior and exterior dialogue with oneself, see F. Leo, “Der Monolog im
Drama,” Abhandlungen der Goting. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft. NF 10, 5 (1908);
Wolfgang Schadewelt, Monolog und Selbstgespiach. Untersuchungen zur Formgeschichte
der griechischen Tragédte, Berlin 1926; F. Dirlmeier, “Vom Monolog der Dichting zum
‘inneren’ Logos bei Platon und Aristoteles,” in Augewahlte Schriften 2u Dichtung und
Philosophie der Griechen, Heidelberg 1970, pp. 142-54, G. Misch, Geschichte der
Autobiographie, vol. 1, Berlin 1949, pp. 86, 94, 363, 380, 426, 450, 408. Con-
cerning the prehistory of this spiritual exercise, one may note Elomer, Odyssey, 20,
17-23:

Spiritual Exercises 119

He struck himself on the chest and spoke to his heart and scolded it:

“Bear up, my heart. You have had worse to endure before this

on that day when the irresistible Cyclops ate up my strong companions . . .”
So he spoke, addressing his own dear heart within him;

and the heart in great obedience endured and stood it

without complaint, but the man himself was twisting and turning.

This passage is quoted by Plato, Republic, 441b: “there Homer has clearly
represented that in us which has reflected about the better and the worse as
rebuking that which feels unreasoning anger as if it were a distinct and different
thing.” Cf. Phaedo, 94d-e.

95 Thus, according to Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 8, 19: “Plotinus was present at the

same time to himself and to others.” [On this theme, see Pierre Hadot, Plotin ou
la simplicité du regard, 3rd edn, Paris 1989. An English translation of this work is
in preparation. — Trans.]

96 Plato, Meno, 75c-d.
97 V. Goldschmidt, Les dialogues de Platon. Structure et méthode dialectique

(=Bibliothéque de philosophie contemporaire, Histoire de la Philosophie et
Philosophie générale), 2nd edn, Paris 1963, pp. 337-8.

98 See above. In La Question platonicienne, pp. 84-7, Schaerer has admirably

demonstrated the significance of this Platonic method.

99 Plato, Seventh Letter, 344b; 341c-d. Cf. Goldschmidt, Les dialogues, p. 8;

Schaerer, La Question platonicienne, p. 86. For the perspective we are adopting,
these two works are of fundamental importance.

100 Plato, Republic, 450b.

“The dialogue’s goal is more to form than to inform,” writes Goldschmidt, Les
dialogues, p. 3, citing Plato, Statesman, 285-6. Cf. ibid, pp. 162-3; Schaerer, La
Question platonicienne, p. 216.

102 Plato, Statesman, 285c-d.
103 Ibid, 286d. In the words of Schaerer (La Question platonicienne, p. 87): “Defini-

tions are worthless in and of themselves. Their entire value consists in the road
travelled to achieve them. Along the way, the interlocutor acquires more mental
penetration (Sophist, 227a—b), more confidence (Theaetetus, 187b), and more
skillfulness in all things (Statesman, 285dff). His soul is thereby purified, as he
rejects the opinions which formerly barred the way to enlightenment (Sophist,
230b-c). But whatever words one uses to designate this dialectical progress, it
always takes place in the soul of the interlocutor — and, by the same token, in the
soul of the intelligent reader.”

104 Cf. Schaerer, La Question platonicienne, pp. 38-44; Goldschmidt Les dialogues, pp.

79-80, 292, and 341: “The Republic solves the problem of Justice and its
advantages. At the same time, and by the same token, it urges us on towards
Justice.” On the exhortatory character of the dialogues, see K. Gaiser, Protreptik
und Pardnese bei Platon. Untersuchungen zur Form des platonischen Dialogs,
Stuttgart 1959; K. Gaiser, Platone come scrittore filosofico, Naples 1984.

105 Plato, Meno, 8le.
106 Plato, Republic, 50Se.

120 Spiritual Exercises

107 The dialectical exercise, as it rids our thought of the illusions of the senses, brings
about the apprenticeship for death which we are about to discuss; cf. Plato,
Phaedo, 83a.

108 Brice Parain, “Le langage et J’existence” [“Language and existence”], in L’Exist-
ence, Paris 1945, p. 173. Parain’s novels, especially La mort de Socrate (“The
Death of Socrates”], Paris 1950, try to make comprehensible this relationship
between language and death.

109 Sallustius, Sallustius: Concerning the Gods and the Universe, 5, 3, p. 11 Nock.

110 Plato, Apology, 28b-30b.

111 Plato, Phaedo, 67e. Cf. ibid, 64a, 80e.

112 Plato, ibid, 67c. Note the use of the verb “to accustom” (ethisar), which
presupposes the practice of exercises.

113 Cf. above.

114 Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 84a: “The philosophical soul calms the sea of the passions,
following the course of reasoning and always being present within it, contemplat-
ing and drawing nourishment from the true, the divine, and that which is not
subject to opinion.” Cf. ibid, 65e, 66c, 79c, 81b, 83b—d.

115 Plato, Republic, 571d.

116 Plato, Republic, 571d—572a.

117 Plato, Phaedo, 64a-b. This is probably an allusion to Aristophanes, Clouds, verses
103, 504.

118 La Rochefoucauld, Ma.vimes, no. 26.

119 Horace, Letter, 1, 4, 13-14: “Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum; gratia
superveniet quae non sperabitur hora.” Once again, we encounter the Epicurean
theme of gratitude.

120 Michel de Montaigne, Essays, bk I, ch. 20, vol. 1, p. 87 Villey/Saulnier = vol.

1, p. 111 Ives. Cf. Seneca, Letter, 26, 8: “Meanwhile Epicurus will oblige me with

these words: ‘Think on death,’ or rather, if you prefer the phrase, on ‘migration

to heaven.’ The meaning is clear — that it is a wonderful thing to learn thoroughly
how to die... ‘think on death.’ In saying this, he bids us think on freedom...

He who has learned to die has un-learned slavery. [Qui mori didicit, servire

dedidicit.)” As we can see, the Stoic Seneca borrowed the maxim “Meditare

mortem” from Epicurus.

Epictetus, Manual, ch. 21. Cf. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2, 11: “Let your

every deed and word and thought be those of one who might depart from this

life this very moment.”

122 See above.

123 Cf. A. de Waclhens, La philosophie de Martin Heidegger (= Bibliotheque
Philosophique de Louvain 2), 4th edn, Louvain 1955, pp. 135-51; and especially
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §53, pp. 260ff. As R. Brague pointed out in his review
of the first edition of this work (Etudes philosophiques, 1982), Heidegger here “is
careful to distinguish Being-for-Death from the meditatio mortis.” It is perfectly
true that Heideggerian Being-for-Death only takes on its full meaning within the
perspective particular to Heidegger; it is nonetheless true that we have here a
system which makes of the anticipation or forestalling of death a precondition of
authentic existence, We must not forget that in Platonic philosophy, the point is

12

Spiritual Exercises 121

not simply to think about death, but to carry out a training for dying which is, in
reality, a training for life.

124 Cf. Plato, Republic, 525c, 532b8, and especially 518c: “the true analogy for this
indwelling power in the soul and the organ whereby each of us learns is that of an
eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning
the whole body. Even so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the
world of becoming together with the entire soul... until it is able to endure the
contemplation of that which is. Education is the art of turning this eye of the soul.”

125 Plato, Republic, 604b-d.

126 Should we call this exercise already Stoic, or should we rather say that Stoic
exercises are still Platonic?

127 Plato, Republic, 486a. This passage is quoted by Marcus Aurelius in his
Meditations, 7, 35.

128 Cf. I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 115-17, 128-30.

129 Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 2, 3, 5, 645a 9-10.

130 See above.

131 Epictetus, Discourses, I, 6, 19-25; “God has brought man into the world to be a
spectator of himself and his works, and not merely a spectator, but also an
interpreter ... Nature... did not end [i.e. in the case of mankind] until she
reached contemplation and understanding and a manner of life harmonious with
nature. Take heed, therefore, lest you die without ever having been spectators of
these things. You are willing to travel to Olympia to look at the work of Pheidias,
and cach of you regards it as a misfortune to die without secing such sights; yet
when there is no nced to travel at all, when you have such works near you and
under your noses, will you not yearn to look at these works and know them? Will
you consequently refuse to learn either who you are, or for what you have been
born, or what is the meaning of the spectacle to which you have been admitted?”

132 Philo Judaeus, On the Special Laws, 2, chs. 44-6; cf. the other passages from Philo
on the contemplation of the world quoted by A.-J. Festugié¢re, La révélation
d’Hermés Trismégiste, vol. 2, Paris 1949, p. 599.

133 Plutarch, On Peace of Mind, §20, 477c.

134 On this theme, sec Festugiére, La révélation, vol. 2, pp. 441-57; P. Courcelle, La
Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire, Paris 1967, pp. 355-72.

135 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12, 24. Cf. ibid, 9, 30: “Contemplate from up
above.”

136 Seneca, Natural Questions, 1, Preface, 7-9.

137 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8, 54; 9, 32.

138 Plotinus, Ennead, 6, 5, 12, 19-29.

139 For example, Plotinus, Ennead, 1, 2; Porphyry, Sentences, ch. 32; Macrobius,
Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, 1, 8, 3-11; Olympiodorus, Commentary on
Plato’s Phaedo, pp. 23, 25ff, 45, 14ff. Cf. O. Schissel von Fleschenberg, Marinos
von Neapolis und die neuplatonischen Tugendgrade, Athens 1928, with the review
by W. Theiler in Gnomon 5 (1929), pp. 307-17; I. Hadot, Le probléme du
néoplatonisme alexandrin, Hiéroclés et Simplicus, Paris 1978, pp. 152ff. On the
important role played by this theme in the systematization of Christian mysti-
cism, see HL van Lieshout, La théorie plotinienne de la vertu. Essai sur la genése

122 Spiritual Exercises

d'un article de la Somme Théologique de saint Thomas, Fribourg 1926, as well as
the texts cited in P. Henry, Plotin et l’Occident. Firmicus Maternus, Marius
Victorinus, Saint Augustin et Macrobe (= Spicileguim sacrum Lovaniense, Etudes
et Documents 15), Louvain 1934, pp. 248-50.

140 Marinus, Life of Proclus, chs 14, 18, 21, 22, 24, 28.

141 Cf. P. Hadot, “La métaphysique de Porphyre,” in Porphyre (= Entretiens Hardt
sur l’Antiquité Classique 12), Vandoeuvres/Geneva 1966, pp. 127-9.

142 Porphyry, On Abstinence, I, 30.

143 Ibid, I, 29 (phystosis kai zoe).

144 Plotinus, Ennead, 1, 5, 7, 10, 28-32.

145 Ibid, 1, 6, 9, 8-26.

146 To put this observation into relation with what we have said above, we may say
that the spirit of Platonism consists precisely in making knowledge into a spiritual
exercise. In order to know, one must transform oneself.

147 As, for example, at Ennead, 5, 8, 11, 1-39. As has been shown by P. Merlan,
Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness. Problems of the Soul in the Neo-
aristotelian and Neoplatonic Tradition (= Archives internationaux d’Histoire des
idées 2), The Hague 1963, this experiential knowledge of the Intellect has much
in common with certain aspects of the Aristotelian tradition.

148 Plotinus, Ennead, 6, 7, 36, 6-9.

149 Ibid, 6, 7, 33, 1-2.

150 Ibid, 6, 7, 34, 2-4.

151 Ibid, 5, 3, 17, 38.

152 Ibid, 6, 9, 10, 14-17. At this point, we ought to take into account the entire
post-Plotinian tradition. Perhaps it will suffice to recall that Damascius’ Life of
Isidore, one of the last works of the Neoplatonic school, is full of allusions to
spiritual exercises.

153 This comparison is quite frequent in Epictetus; cf. Discourses, 1, 4, 13; 2, 17, 29;
3, 21, 3. The metaphor of the Olympic games of the soul is also quite common;
cf. Epictetus, Manual, ch. 51, 2; Plato, Phaedrus, 256b; Porphyry, On Abstinence,
1, 31.

154 According to J. Delorme, Gymnasion, Paris 1960, pp. 316ff, 466: “Athletic
exercises were always accompanied by intellectual exercises.”

155 Cf. above.

156 Cf. K. Borinski, Die Antike in Poetik und Kunsttheorie, vol. 1, Leipzig 1914,
pp. 169ff.

157 Plato, Republic, 611d-e.

158 Cf. K. Schneider, Die schweigenden Gétter, Hildeshcim 1966, pp. 29-53.

159 Cf. Lucretius, 5, 8 (referring to Epicurus): “He was a god” (Deus ille fuit);
Epicurus, Letter to Menoecus, §§135; 23, J, Long and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosop-
hers vol. 2, p. 152; vol. 1, p. 144: “You will live like a god among men.”

160 The philosopher is neither a sage, nor a non-sage; cf. H.- J. Kramer, Plotonisinus
und hellenistische Philosophie, Berlin/New York 1971, pp. 174-5, 228-9.

161 Heidegger’s analyses of the authentic and inauthentic modes of existence can help
to understand this situation; cf. A. de Waclhens, La plilosophie de Martin
Heidegger, pp. 109, 169.

Spiritual Exercises 123

162 [On conversion, cf. above. — Trans.]

163 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 6, 103.

164 Damascius, Life of Isidorus, §147, p. 127, 12-13 Zinzten.

165 Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, 2, vol. 2, pp. 426-8 Bury; Against the
Physicists, 1, vol. 3, pp. 26-8 Bury; Against the Physicists, 2, vol. 3, p. 292 Bury;
Outlines of Pyrrhonism, vol. 1, pp. 324-6 Bury. Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of
the Philosophers, 9, 61-2: “He lived in conformity with everyday life [bios].” Such
was Pyrrho’s life-style, which, at least on the surface, was not very different from
the average man’s: “He lived in fraternal piety with his sister, a midwife . . . now
and then even taking things for sale to market, poultry or pigs for instance, and
with complete indifference he would clean the house. It is said that he was so
indifferent that he washed a piglet himself.” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the
Philosophers, 9, 66.) All that mattered was one’s inner attitude; therefore the sage
conformed to “life,” i.e. to the opinions of non-philosophers. But he did so with
indifference, that is, with an inncr frecdom which preserved his serenity and
peace of mind. This is, incidentally, the same Pyrrho who, when frightened by
a dog, replied to his mocking onlookers: “It is difficult to strip oneself completely
of being human.” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 9, 66, fr. 1C Long
and Sedley, Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1, p. 14; vol. 2, p. 3.)

166 Cf., with regard to Plato, V. Goldschmidt, “Sur le probleme du ‘systéme de
Platon’,” Rivista critica di stonia della filosofia 5(1959), pp. 169-78. The recent
researches of K. Gaiser and H.-J. Kramer on Plato’s unwritten teachings have
once again raised doubts about the existence of systematic thought in antiquity.

167 Plato, Phaedrus, 264c.

168 I. Diiring, Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens, Heidelberg
1966, pp. 29, 33, 41, 226.

169 Cf. I. Diring, “Von Aristoteles bis Leibniz. Einige Haupttinien in der Geschichte
des Aristotelismus,” in P. Mordux, ed., Aristoteles in der neuren Forschung
(= Wege der Forschung 61), Darmstadt 1968, p. 259: “In reality, Aristotle
thought in terms of problems: he was a creator of methods, a pedagogue, and an
organizer of collaborative scientific work. He did, of course, have strong
systematic tendencies, but what he was striving after was a systematic way of
approaching problems . . . The idea of creating a self-contained system, however,
never even entered his mind.”

170 Diiring, ‘Aristotle and the heritage from Plato,” pp. 97-8.

171 See above.

172 Diiring, Aristoteles, p. 41, n. 253.

173 Ibid, pp. 5, 289, 433.

174 Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 4, 11; 5, 60.

175 Cf., for instance, with regard to Plotinus’ doctrine of the soul, Henry Blumenthal,
“Soul, world-soul, and individual soul in Plotinus,” in Le Néoplatortisme, 197).

176 Cf. 1. Hadot, “Le systéme théologique de Simplicius dans son commentaire sur

Ie Manuel d’Epictete,” in Le Neoplatonisme, 1971, pp. 266, 279; I. Hadot, Le

probléme, pp. 47-65, 147-67.

Cf. the quotation from Chrysippus’ Therapeutikos in SVF 3, § 474, pp. 124-5,

taken from Origen, <lgainst Celsus, 1, 64, 8, 51, Note how Origen introduces his

7

~J

124

178
179
180

18

182

183

184

Spiritual Exercises

citation: “Chrysippus . . . in his endeavours to restrain the passions of the human
soul, not pretending to determine what doctrines are the true ones, says that
those who have been brought under the dominion of the passions are to be
treated according to the principles of the various schools.” On this theme,
cf. I. Hadot, Seneca, pp. 3, 21, 44, 54, 83; 1969b, p. 351. We ought therefore not
to be surprised to find the Stoic Seneca utilizing Epicurean aphorisms to exhort
his disciple Lucilius; cf. I. Hadot, Seneca, p. 83. A concrete example of this
parenetic eclecticism may be found in the manuscript Vaticanus Graecus 1950.
According to Festugiére, La révélation, vol. 2, p. 90, n. 2: “It is interesting to
note that the second half of Vat. gr. 1950... . which forms an independent whole,
contains the Memorabilia of Xenophon (f. 280ff), followed by the Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius (f. 341ff), then the Manual of Epictetus (f. 392’), and finally,
after a page of rhetorical pieces (f. 401), the collection of Epicurean aphorisms
entitled Gnomologium Vaticanum (f. 401*ff.). This whole ensemble, including the
selections from Epicurus, is the work of a Stoic, who has gathered together for
his personal use a number of fundamental texts on moral doctrine — a kind of
‘book of devotion’, as it were. Now, the first item on the list is the Socrates of
the Memorabilia.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 39; 4, 3, 2.

Sec above.

Augustine, On the Trinity, 15, 6, 10: “Quia in nobis fiunt vel in nobis sunt, cum
ista meminimus, aspicimus, volimus.” Memory, knowledge, and will are, for
Augustine, the three trinitary images. On the evercitatio animi (“exercise of the
soul”) in Augustine, sce H.-I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture
antique, Paris 1938, p. 299.

On the utilization of the word philosophia in Christianity, see A.N. Malingrey,
“Philosophia.” Etude d'un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Préso-
cratiques au [Ve siécle ap. J.-C., Paris 1961. Clement of Alexandria is one of the
best witnesses for the ancient tradition of spiritual exercises. He emphasizes the
importance of the master-disciple relationship (Stromata, I, 1, 9, 1), the value of
psychagogy (ibid, I, 2, 20, 1), and the need for exercises and a hunt after the
truth (ibid, I, 2, 21, 1: “the truth reveals itself full of sweetness when one has
scarched for it and obtained it at the cost of great efforts.”)

For H. Happ, Hy/e, Berlin 1971, p. 66, n. 282, the concern for “systems” goes
back to Francisco de Suarez (1548-1617).

Cf. K. Jaspers, “Epikur,” in Weltbewohner und Weimarianer (Festschift
E. Beutter), Zurich 1960, p. 132; and Immanuel Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten
(1797), Ethische Methodenlehre, Zwieter Abschnitt. Die ethische Asketik, in Imma-
nuel Kant’s Werke, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Berlin 1916, §53. Here Kant shows how
the practice of virtue — which he calls ascetics — should be carried out with Stoic
energy combined with Epicurean joie de vivre.

Vauvenargues, Réflections et maximes, §400 [Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de
Vauvenargues (1715-1747), friend of Voltaire. — Trans.], together with §398:
“Every thought is new when the author expresses it in his own way,” and above
all §399: “There are many things we do not know well cnough, and that it is good
to have repeated.”

Spiritual Exercises 125

185 “It is contained in the very briefest statements,” says Plato, speaking of the
essence of his own doctrine (Seventh Letter, 334e). “The essence of philosophy
is the spirit of simplicity . . . always and everywhere, complication is superficial,
construction is an accessory, and synthesis an appearance. Philosophizing is a
simple act” (Henri Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant, Paris 1946, p. 139).

186 Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 21, 7-8.

187 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann, trans. John Oxen-
ford, 2 vols, 1850, 25 January, 1830.

4

Ancient Spiritual Exercises
and “Christian Philosophy”

It was the great merit of Paul Rabbow to have shown, in his Seelenfiihrung,'
in what sense the methods of meditation set forth and practiced in Ignatius
of Loyola’s Evxercitia spiritualia? were deeply rooted in the spiritual
exercises of ancient philosophy. Rabbow begins his book by discussing the
various techniques by means of which rhetoricians throughout antiquity
sought to persuade their audiences. These included, for example, oratorical
amplification and lifelike, stirring descriptions of events.’ Above all, Rabbow
gives a remarkable analysis of the exercises practiced by the Stoics and
Epicureans, emphasizing the point that they were spiritual exercises of
the same kind as we find in Ignatius of Loyola. On both these points,
Rabbow’s book opened the way to new areas of research. It is possible,
however, that even the author himself did not foresee all the consequences of
his discovery.

In the first place, Rabbow seems to me to have linked the phenomenon of
spiritual exercises too closely to what he terms the “inward orientation”
(Jnnenwendung)' which, he claims, took place in the Greek mentality in the
third century BC, and which manifested itself in the development of the Stoic
and Epicurean schools. As a matter of fact, however, this phenomenon was
much more widespread. We can already detect its outlines in the So-
cratic/ Platonic dialogues, and it continues right up until the end of antiquity.
The reason for this is that it is linked to the very essence of ancient
philosophy. It is philosophy itself that the ancients thought of as a spiritual
exercise.

If Rabbow tends to limit the extent of spiritual exercises to the Hellenis-
tic/Roman period, the reason is perhaps that he restricts himself to consider-
ing their ethical aspect alone. Morcover, he considers ethics only in
philosophies like Stoicism and Epicureanism, which appear to accord pre-

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 127

dominance to ethical questions in their instruction. In fact, Rabbow goes so
far as to define spiritual exercises as moral exercises:

By “moral exercise,” we mean a procedure or determinate act, intended
to influence oneself, carried out with the express goal of achieving a
determinate moral effect. It always looks beyond itself, in as much as it
repeats itself, or at least is linked together with other acts to form a
methodical ensemble.°

With the advent of Christianity, Rabbow continues, these moral exercises
were transformed into spiritual exercises:

Spiritual exercises, then, which resemble moral exercises like a twin,
both in essence and structure, were raised to their classical rigor and
perfection in the Exercitia spiritualia of Ignatius of Loyola. Spiritual
exercises thus belong properly to the religious sphere, since their goal is
to fortify, maintain, and renew life “in the Spirit,” the vita spiritualis.®

Christian spiritual exercises did indeed take on a new meaning by virtue of
the specific character of Christian spirituality, inspired as it is by the death of
Christ and the Trinitarian life of the divine Persons. But to speak, apropos of
the philosophical exercises of antiquity, of simple “moral exercises” is to
misunderstand their importance and significance. As we showed above, these
exercises have as their goal the transformation of our vision of the world, and
the metamorphosis of our being. They therefore have not merely a moral, but
also an existential value. We are not just dealing here with a code of good
moral conduct, but with a way of being, in the strongest sense of the term. In
the last analysis, then, the term “spiritual exercises” is the best one, because
it leaves no doubt that we are dealing with exercises which engage the totality
of the spirit.’

Secondly, one gets the impression from reading Rabbow that Ignatius of
Loyola rediscovered spiritual exercises thanks to the sixteenth-century
renaissance of rhetorical studies.’ In fact, however, rhetoric for the ancients
was only onc of many ingredients of exercises which were first and foremost
philosophical in the strict sense of the term. Moreover, ever since the first
centuries of the church’s existence, Christian spirituality has been the heir of
ancient philosophy and its spiritual practices. There was thus nothing to
prevent Ignatius from finding the methodology for his Exercitia within the
Christian tradition itself. In the following pages, we hope to show, with
the help of a few quotations, in what way ancient spiritual exercises
were preserved and transmitted by an entire current of ancient
Christian thought: that current, namely, which defined Christianity itself as
a philosophy.

128 Spiritual Exercises

Before we begin our study, we must be more specific about the notion of
spiritual exercises. “Exercise” corresponds to the Greek terms askesis or
melete. Let us be clear at the outset about the limits of the present inquiry:
we shall not be discussing “asceticism” in the modern sense of the word, as
it is defined, for instance, by Heussi: “Complete abstinence or restriction in
the use of food, drink, sleep, dress, and property, and especially continence
in sexual matters.”’ Here, we must carefully distinguish between two
different phenomena. On the one hand, there is the Christian - and
subsequently modern — use of the word “asceticism”, as we have just seen it
defined. On the other, there is use of the word askesis in ancient philosophy.
For ancient philosophers, the word askesis designated exclusively the spiritual
exercises we have discussed above:" inner activities of the thought and the
will. Whether or not sexual or alimentary practices analogous to those of
Christian asceticism existed among certain ancient philosophers — the Cynics,
for example, or the Neoplatonists — is a wholly different question. Such
practices have nothing to do with philosophical thought-exercises. This
question has been competently dealt with by many authors,'"' who have shown
both the analogies and the differences between asceticism (in the modern
sense of the word) in ancient philosophy and in Christianity. What we
propose to examinc here is rather the way in which askesis, in the philosophical
sense of the term, was received into Christianity.

In order to understand the phenomenon under consideration, it is essential
to recall that there was a widespread Christian tradition which portrayed
Christianity as a philosophy. This assimilation began with those Christian
writers of the second century who are usually referred to as the Apologists, and
in particular with Justin. The Apologists considered Christianity a philosophy,
and to mark its opposition to Greek philosophy, they spoke of Christianity as
“our philosophy” or as “Barbarian philosophy.” "= They did not, however,
consider Christianity to be just one philosophy among others; they thought of
it as the philosophy. They believed that that which had been scattered and
dispersed throughout Greek philosophy had been synthesized and systematized
in Christian philosophy. Each Greek philosopher, they wrote, had possessed
only a portion of the Logos,'3 whereas the Christians were in possession of the
Logos itself, incarnated in Jesus Christ. If to do philosophy was to live in
accordance with the law of reason, then the Christians were philosophers, since
they lived in conformity with the law of the divine Logos."4

Clement of Alexandria dwells at length on this theme. He establishes a close
link between philosophy and paideia, by which he means the education of
mankind. Already within Greek philosophy, the Logos, or divine pedagogue,
had been at work educating humanity, but Christianity itself, as the complete
revelation of the Logos, was the true philosophy!’ which “teaches us to
conduct ourselves so that we may resemble God, and to accept the divine plan
[otkonomia] as the guiding principle of all our education.”

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 129

The identification of Christianity with true philosophy inspired many
aspects of the teaching of Origen, and it remained influential throughout the
Origenist tradition, especially among the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil of
Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa. It is also in evidence in
John Chrysostom."’ All these authors speak of “our philosophy”; of the
“complete philosophy”; or of “the philosophy according to Christ.”

We may well ask ourselves if such an identification was legitimate, and
wonder whether it did not contribute to a large extent to the notorious
“Hellenization” of Christianity, about which so much has been written. I will
Not go into this complex problem here, but shall limit myself to pointing out
that in portraying Christianity as a philosophy, this tradition was the heir —
almost certainly consciously so — of a tendency already at work in the Jewish
tradition, particularly in Philo of Alexandria."* Philo portrayed Judaism as a
patrios philosophia: the traditional philosophy of the Jewish people. The same
terminology was used by Flavius Josephus."?

When, a few centuries later, monasticism came to represent the culmination
of Christian perfection, it, too, could be portrayed as a philosophia. From the
fourth century on, this is exactly how it was in fact described, by church
Fathers such as Gregory Nazianzen,” Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysos-
tom,?! and especially by Evagrius Ponticus.” This viewpoint was still current
in the fifth century, for instance in Theodoret of Cyrrhus.”

Here again, it was Philo of Alexandria who had shown the way. He had
given the name “philosophers” to the Therapeutae, who, according to his
description,” lived in solitude, meditating on the law and devoting themselves
to contemplation. Jean Leclercq?* has shown that, under the influence of
Greek tradition, the monastic life continued to be designated by the term
philoso phia throughout the Middle Ages. Thus, a Cistercian monastic text tells
us that Bernard of Clairvaux used to initiate his disciples “into the disciplines
of celestial philosophy.” Finally, John of Salisbury maintained that it was
the monks who “philosophized” in the most correct and authentic way.’

The importance of this assimilation between Christianity and philosophy
cannot be over-emphasized. Let us be clear on one point, however: there can
be no question of denying the incomparable originality of Christianity. We
shall return to this point later; in particular, we shall emphasize the
specifically Christian character of this “philosophy,” as well as the care
Christians have taken to connect it with the biblical/evangelical tradition.
Moreover, the tendency to assimilation was confined within strict historical
limits, and always linked more or less closely to the tradition of the Apologists
and of Origen. This tendency did, however, exist; its importance was
considerable, and its result was the introduction of philosophical spiritual
exercises into Christianity.

Along with its absorption of spiritual exercises, Christianity acquired a
specific style of life, spiritual attitude, and tonality, which had been absent

130 Spiritual Exercises

from primitive Christianity. This fact is highly significant: it shows that if
Christianity was able to be assimilated to a philosophy, the reason was that
philosophy itself was already, above all else, a way of being and a style of life.
As Jean Leclercq points out: “In the monastic Middle Ages, just as much as
in Antiquity, philosophia did not designate a theory or a means of knowledge,
but a lived, experienced wisdom, and a way of living according to reason.” #

We remarked above” that the fundamental attitude of the Stoic philosopher
was prosoche: attention to oneself and vigilance at every instant. For the Stoics,
the person who is “awake” is always perfectly conscious not only of what he
does, but of what he is. In other words, he is aware of his place in the universe
and of his relationship to God. His self-consciousness is, first and foremost,
a moral consciousness.

A person endowed with such consciousness seeks to purify and rectify his
intentions at every instant. He is constantly on the lookout for signs within
himself of any motive for action other than the will to do good. Such
self-consciousness is not, however, merely a moral conscience; it is also cosmic
consciousness. The “attentive” person lives constantly in the presence of God
and is constantly remembering God, joyfully consenting to the will of
universal reason, and he sees all things with the eyes of God himself.

Such is the philosophical attitude par excellence. It is also the attitude of the
Christian philosopher. We encounter this attitude already in Clement of
Alexandria, in a passage which foreshadows the spirit which was later to reign
in philosophically-inspired monasticism: “It is necessary that divine law
inspire fear, so that the philosopher may acquire and conserve peace of mind
[amerimnia), by dint of prudence [eu/abeia] and attention to himself [prosoche],
and that he may remain exempt from sins and falls in all things.”” For
Clement, the divine law is simultaneously the universal reason of the
philosophers, and the divine word of the Christians. It inspires fear, not in
the sense of a passion — which, as such, would be condemned by the Stoics —
but rather in the sense of a certain circumspection in thought and action.
Such attention to oneself brings about amerimnia or peace of mind, one of the
most sought-after goals in monasticism.

Attention to oneself is the subject of a very important sermon by Basil of
Caesarea.*! Basil bases his sermon on the Greek version of a passage from
Deuteronomy: “Give heed to yourself, lest there be a hidden word in your
heart.” * On this basis, Basil develops an entire theory of prosoche, strongly
influenced by the Stoic and Platonic traditions. We shall return to this point
later. For the moment, let us simply note that Basil’s reason for commenting
on this particular passage of Deuteronomy is that, for him, it evokes a technical
term of ancient philosophy. For Basil, attention to oneself consists in
awakening the rational principles of thought and action which God has placed
in our souls.’? We arc to watch over ourselves — that is, over our spirit and our
soul - and not over that which is ours (our body) or that which is round about

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 131

us (our possessions).4 Thus, prosoche consists in paying attention to the
beauty of our souls, by constantly renewing the examination of our conscience
and our knowledge of ourselves.*> By so doing, we can correct the judgments
we bring upon ourselves. If we think we are rich and noble, we are to recall
that we are made of earth, and ask ourselves where are the famous men who
have preceded us now. If, on the contrary, we are poor and in disgrace, we
are to take cognizance of the riches and splendors which the cosmos offers us:
our body, the earth, the sky, and the stars, and we shall then be reminded of
our divine vocation.** It is not hard to recognize the philosophical character
of these themes.

Prosoche or attention” to oneself, the philosopher’s fundamental attitude,
became the fundamental attitude of the monk. We can observe this phenome-
non in Athanasius’ Life of Antony, written in AD 357. When describing the
saint’s conversion to the monastic life, Athanasius simply says: “He began to
pay attention to himself.” * Antony himself, we read later, is supposed to have
said to his disciples on his deathbed: “Live as though you were dying every
day, paying heed to yourselves [prosechontes heautois] and remembering what
you heard from my preaching.” ”

In the sixth century, Dorotheus of Gaza remarked: “We are so negligent
that we do not know why we have gone out of the world . .. That is why we
are not making progress... The reason for it is that there is no prosoche in
our hearts.” * As we have seen," attention and vigilance presuppose continuous
concentration on the present moment, which must be lived as if it were,
simultaneously, the first and last moment of life. Athanasius tells us that
Antony used to make no attempt to remember the time he had already spent
at his exercises, but rather made a brand new effort every day, as if starting
afresh from zero.” In other words, he lived the present moment as if it were
his first, but also his last. We also saw that Antony told his disciples to “Live
as though you were dying every day.”*? Athanasius reports another of
Antony’s sayings: “If we live as if we were going to die each day, we will not
commit sin.” * We arc to wake up thinking it possible that we may not make
it until the evening, and go to sleep thinking that we shall not wake up.*
Epictetus had spoken along similar lines: “Let death be before your eyes every
day, and you will never have any abject thought nor excessive desire.” *

In the same vein, Marcus Aurelius wrote: “Let your every deed and word
and thought be those of one who might depart from this life this very
moment.” *? Dorotheus of Gaza also established a close link between prosoche
and the imminence of death: “Let us pay heed to ourselves, brothers, and be
vigilant while we still have time . . . Look! Since the time we sat down at this
conference we have used up two or three hours of our time and got that much
nearer to death. Yet though we see that we are losing time, we are not
afraid!”* And again: “J.ct us pay heed to ourselves and be vigilant, brothers.
Who will give ux back the present time if we waste it?” ”

132 Spiritual Exercises

Attention to the present is simultaneously control of one’s thoughts,
acceptance of the divine will, and the purification of one’s intentions with
regard to others. We have an excellent summary of this constant attention to
the present in a well-known Meditation of Marcus Aurelius:

Everywhere and at all times, it is up to you to rejoice piously at what is
occurring at the present moment, to conduct yourself with justice towards
the people who are present here and now, and to apply rules of
discernment [emphilotekhnein] to your present representations [ phanta-
siat], so that nothing slips in that is not objective.”

We encounter the same continuous vigilance over both thought and
intentions in monastic spirituality, where it is transformed into the “watch of
the heart,” *! also known as nepsis® or vigilance. We are not dealing here with
a mere exercise of the moral conscience. Rather, prosoche relocates man within
his genuine being: that is, his relationship to God. It is thus equivalent to the
continuous exercise of the presence of God. In the words of Plotinus’ disciple
Porphyry: “Let God be present as overseer and guardian of every action, deed
and word!” 3 Here we have one of the fundamental themes of philosophical
prosoche: presence both to God and to oneself.

“Have your joy and your rest in one thing only: in progressing from
one action done for the sake of others to another such act, always accom-
panied by the remembrance of God.” This Meditation of Marcus Aurelius
has to do, once again, with the theme of exercises involving the presence of
God. At the same time, it introduces to us an expression which was later
to play an important role in monastic spirituality. The “remembrance of
God” is a perpetual reference to God at each instant of life. Basil of
Caesarea links it explicitly with the “watch of the heart”: “We must keep
watch over our heart with all vigilance...to avoid ever losing the
thought of God.” ** Diadochus of Photice often evokes this theme. For him,
the remembrance of God is entirely equivalent to prosocie: “Only they know
their failures who never let their intellects be distracted from the remem-
brance of God.” * “Since then [i.e. since its fall], it is only with difficulty that
the human intellect can remember God and His commandments.”*’ We are
to

close off all the intellect’s avenues of escape, by means of the remem-
brance of God.

What distinguishes a man who is virtue’s friend is that he constant-
ly consumes everything that is earthly in his heart by means of
the remembrance of God, so that, bit by bit, the evil in it is dis-
persed by the fire of the remembrance of the Good, and his soul

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 133

returns in perfection to its natural brilliance; nay, even with increased
splendor.*

Clearly, remembrance of God is, in some sense, the very essence of prosoche.
It is the most radical method for ensuring one’s presence to God and to
oneself.“ Vague intentions, however, are not sufficient for true attention to
one’s self. We noted that Diadochus of Photice speaks of the “remembrance
of God and of His commandments.” In ancient philosophy as well, prosoche
required meditating on and memorizing rules of life (kanones), those prin-
ciples which were to be applied in each particular circumstance, at each
moment in life. It was essential to have the principles of life, the fundamental
“dogmas,” constantly “at hand.”

We encounter this same theme once again in the monastic tradition. Here,
however, philosophical dogmas are replaced by the Commandments as an
evangelical rule of life, and the words of Christ, enunciating the principles of
Christian life. Yet the rule of life could be inspired not only by the evangelical
commandments, but also by the words of the “ancients;” in other words, of
the first monks. We have only to recall Antony, on his deathbed, recommend-
ing that his disciples remember his exhortations.*' Evagrius Ponticus declares:
“It is a very necessary thing... to examine carefully the ways of the monks
who have traveled, in an earlier age, straight along the road and to direct
oneself along the same paths.”

Both the evangelical commandments and the words of the ancients were
presented in the form of short sentences, which — just as in the philosophical
tradition — could be easily memorized and meditated upon. The numerous
collections of Apophthegmata and of Kephalata we find in monastic literature
are a response to this need for memorization and meditation. Apophthegmata™
were the famous sayings which the ancients — that is to say, the Desert
Fathers — pronounced in specific circumstances. This literary genre was
already in existence in the philosophical tradition, and we find numerous
examples of it in the works of Diogenes Laertius. As for Kephalaia,™ these
are collections of relatively short sentences, usually grouped into “centuries.”
This, too, was a literary genre much in vogue in traditional philosophical
literature; some examples are Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Porphyry’s
Sentences. Both these literary genres are responses to the requirements of
meditation.

Like philosophical meditation, Christian meditation flourished by using
all available means of rhetoric and oratorical amplification, and by mobilizing
all possible resources of the imagination. Thus, for example, Evagrius
Ponticus uscd to invite his disciples to imagine their own death, the
decomposition of their bodies, the terrors and sufferings of their souls in Hell,
and cternal fire; then, by way of contrast, they were to picture the happiness
of the just.

134 Spiritual Exercises

Meditation must, in any case, be constant. Dorotheus of Gaza insists
strongly on this point:

Meditate constantly on this advice in your hearts, Brothers. Study the
words of the holy Elders.

If we remember the sayings of the holy Elders, brothers, and meditate
on them constantly, it will be difficult for us to sin.”

If you wish to possess these sayings at the opportune moment, meditate
on them constantly.”

In the spiritual life, there is a kind of conspiracy between, on the one
hand, normative sayings, which are memorized and meditated upon, and, on
the other, the events which provide the occasion for putting them into
practice. Dorotheus of Gaza promised his monks that, if they constantly
meditated on the “works of the holy Elders,” they would “be able to profit
from everything that happens to you, and to make progress by the help of
God.”*®? Dorotheus no doubt meant that after such meditation, his
monks would be able to recognize the will of God in all events,
thanks to the words of the Fathers, which were likewise inspired by the will
of God.

Vigilance and self-attention clearly presuppose the practice of examining
one’s conscience. We have already seen, in the case of Basil of Caesarea,” the
close link between prosoche and the examination of conscience. It seems that
the practice of the examination of the conscience occurs for the first time,
within the Christian tradition, in Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs.”
In the course of his interpretation of verse |: 8, “Unless thou know thyself,
O fair one among women,” ” Origen explains that the soul must examine its
feelings and actions. Does it have the good as a goal? Does it seek after the
various virtues? Is it making progress? For instance, has it completely
suppressed the passions of anger, sadness, fear, and love of glory? What is its
manner of giving and receiving, or of judging the truth?

This series of questions, devoid as it is of any exclusively Christian feature,
takes its place in the philosophical tradition of the examination of conscience,
as it had been recommended by the Pythagoreans, the Epicureans, the Stoics
— especially Seneca and Epictetus — and many other philosophers, such as
Plutarch and Galen.’ We find the practice recommended again by John
Chrysostom,” and especially by Dorotheus of Gaza:

We ought not only to examine ourselves every day but also every scason,
every month, and every week, and ask ourselves: “What stage am I at
now with regards to the passion by which I was overcome last week?”

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 135

Similarly every year: “Last year I was overcome by such and such a
passion; how about now?”

The Fathers have told us how useful it is for each of us to purify
himself in turn, by examining, every evening, how we have spent the
day, and every morning, how we have spent the night... . Truly,
however, we who sin so much and are so forgetful, really need to
examine ourselves every six hours also, so that we may know how we
have spent these hours and in what way we have sinned.”

In this regard there is an interesting detail in Athanasius’ Life of Antony.
According to his biographer, Antony used to recommend to his disciples that
they take written notes of the actions and movements of their souls. It is
possible that written examinations of conscience were already part of the
philosophical tradition; they would have been useful, if not necessary, in
order to ensure that the investigation was as precise as possible. For Antony,
however, the important aspect was the therapeutic value of writing: “Let each
one of us note and record our actions and the stirrings of our souls as though
we were going to give an account of them to each other.”” Surely, he
continues, we would not dare to commit sins in public, in full view of others:
“Let this record replace the eyes of our fellow ascetics.” According to Antony,
the act of writing gives us the impression of being in public, in front of an
audience. We can also discern the therapeutic value of writing in a passage in
which Dorotheus of Gaza reports that he felt “help and relief” ’® by the mere
fact of having written to his spiritual director.

Another interesting psychological point: Plato and Zeno had remarked that
the quality of our dreams allows us to judge the spiritual state of our soul.”
We find this observation repeated by Evagrius Ponticus®® and Diadochus of
Photice.®!

Finally, prosoche implies self-mastery. That is, it implies the triumph of
reason over the passions, since it is the passions that cause the distraction,
dispersion, and dissipation of the soul. Monastic literature insists tirelessly on
the misdeeds of the passions, which were often personified in demoniacal
form.

Many recollections of ancient philosophy were preserved in monastic
exercises of self-mastery. For instance, we find Dorotheus of Gaza, like
Epictetus, advising his disciples to begin by training themselves in little
things, so as to create a habit,*? before moving on to greater things. Similarly,
he advises them to diminish the number of their sins bit by bit, in order to
defeat a passion.® We find Evagrius Ponticus proposing that one passion
ought to be combated by means of another — fornication, for instance, by the
concern for one’s good reputation — as long as it remains impossible to combat
the passion directly by the virtue which is opposed to it. This was the method
already suggested by Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations.®

136 Spiritual Exercises

We said above that Christianity’s acceptance of spiritual exercises had
introduced into it a certain spiritual attitude and style of life which it had
previously lacked. As an example, let us consider the concept of exercises as
a whole. In the very process of performing repetitious actions and undergoing
a training in order to modify and transform ourselves, there is a certain
reflectivity and distance which is very different from evangelical spontaneity.
Attention to oneself — the essence of prosoche — gives rises to a whole series of
techniques of introspection. It engenders an extraordinary finesse in the
examination of conscience and spiritual discernment. Most significantly, the
ideal sought after in these exercises, and the goals proposed for the spiritual
life, became tinged with a strong Stoico-Platonic coloration; that is to say,
since by the end of antiquity Neoplatonism had integrated Stoic ethics within
itself, that they were deeply infused with Neoplatonism. This is the case, for
instance, in Dorotheus of Gaza, who describes spiritual perfection in com-
pletely Stoic terms: it is the transformation of the will so that it becomes
identified with the Divine Will:

He who has no will of his own always does what he wishes. For since
he has no will of his own, everything that happens satisfies him. He
finds himself doing as he wills all the time, for he does not want things
to be as he wills them, but he wills that they be just as they are.*

The most recent editors of Dorotheus compare this text with a passage from
the Manual of Epictetus: “Do not seek to have everything that happens
happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does
happen, and your life will be serene.” *

Spiritual perfection is also depicted as apatheia — the complete absence of
passions — a Stoic concept taken up by Neoplatonism. For Dorotheus of Gaza,
apatheia is the end-result of the annihilation of one’s own will: “From this
cutting off of self-will a man procures for himself detachment [aprospatheia),
and from detachment he comes, with the help of God, to perfect apatheia.””
We may note in passing that the means Dorotheus recommends for cutting
off self-will are wholly identical to the exercises of self-mastery of the
philosophical tradition. In order to cure curiosity, for instance, Plutarch
advised people not to read funeral epitaphs, not to snoop on their neighbors,
and to turn their backs on street scenes.* Similarly, Dorotheus advises us not
to look in the direction where we want to look; not to ask the cook what he’s
preparing for dinner; and not to join in a conversation we find already
underway.” This is what Dorotheus means by “cutting off self-will.”

It is with Evagrius, however, that we can see most clearly just how closely
Christian apatheia can be linked to philosophical concepts. In Evagrius’
Praktikos, we find the following definition: “The Kingdom of Heaven. is
apatheia of the soul along with true knowledge of existing things." When

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 137

we turn to comment on a formula such as this, we find how great is the
distance separating such speculations from the evangelical spirit. As we know,
the evangelical message consisted in the announcement of an eschatological
event called “the Kingdom of Heaven” or “the Kingdom of God.” Evagrius
begins by differentiating between the two expressions, and interpreting them
in a highly personal way. Enlarging upon the Origenist tradition,” he
considers that the two expressions designate two inner states of the soul. More
precisely, they designate two stages of spiritual progress:

The Kingdom of Heaven is apatheia of the soul along with true
knowledge of existing things.

The Kingdom of God is knowledge of the Holy Trinity co-extensive
with the capacity of the intelligence and giving it a surpassing incorrup-
tibility.”

Two levels of knowledge are distinguished here: the knowledge of beings and
the knowledge of God. We then realize that this distinction corresponds
exactly to a division of the parts of philosophy which was well known to
Origen, and is attested in Platonism at least since the time of Plutarch.” In
this division, three separate stages or levels of spiritual progress are distin-
guished, which correspond to the three parts of philosophy: ethics — or
“practics,” as Evagrius calls it — physics, and theology. Ethics corresponds to
initial purification, physics to definitive detachment from the sensible world
and contemplation of the order of nature; finally, theology corresponds to
contemplation of the principle of all things. According to the Evagrian
schema, however, ethics corresponds to praktike, physics to “the Kingdom of
Heaven,” which includes the true knowledge of beings, and theology corres-
ponds to “the Kingdom of God,” which is the knowledge of the Trinity. In
Neoplatonic systematization, these degrees also correspond to degrees of
virtue. According to Porphyry,™ the soul begins by utilizing the political
virtues to dominate the passions via the state of metriopatheia. It then rises to
the level of the éathartic virtues. These virtues begin to detach the soul from
the body, but do not yet do so completely; this is only the beginning of
apatheia. Not until the level of the theoretical virtues does the soul attain to
full apatheia and perfect separation from the body. It is at this level that the
soul is able to contemplate the forms within the divine intellect, which are the
models for the phenomenal world.” This level, characterized by apatheia
and the contemplation of existents, corresponds to Evagrius’ “Kingdom
of Heaven.” According to Evagrius, the soul now contemplates the
multiplicity of physeis (“natures”; hence the denomination “physical”): on the
one hand, the intelligible forms, and on the other the logoi of sensible
beings.” The final stage, noctic in nature, is the contemplation of God
Himself. ‘Thus, Evagrius sums up his thought in these terms: “Christianity is

138 Spiritual Exercises

the doctrine of Christ our Savior. It is composed of praktike, of physics, and
of theology.” ”

Apatheia plays an essential role, not only in theoretical constructions such
as Evagrian metaphysics, but also in monastic spirituality. There, its value is
closely linked to that of peace of mind and absence of worry: amerimnia® or
tranqguillitas®? Dorotheus of Gaza!™ does not hesitate to declare that peace of
mind is so important that one must, if necessary, drop what one has
undertaken if one’s peace of mind is endangered. Peace of mind — tranquillitas
animi — had, moreover, always been a central value within the philosophical
tradition.’

For Porphyry, as we have seen, apatheia was a result of the soul’s
detachment from the body. Here we touch once again upon the philosophical
exercise par excellence. As we saw above, Plato had declared: “those who go
about philosophizing correctly are in training for death.”'® As late as the
seventh century, we still find the echo of this saying in Maximus Confessor:
“In conformity with the philosophy of Christ, let us make of our life a
training for death.” '3

Yet Maximus himself is only the inheritor of a rich tradition, which
repeatedly identified Christian philosophy with training for death. We cn-
counter this theme already in Clement of Alexandria,' who understood such
training in a thoroughly Platonic sense, as the attempt spiritually to separate
the soul from the body. For Clement, perfect knowledge, or gnosis, is a kind
of death. It separates the soul from the body, and promotes the soul to a life
entirely devoted to the good, allowing it to devote itself to the contemplation
of genuine realities with a purificd mind. Again, the same motif recurs in
Gregory Nazianzen: “Makc of this life, as Plato said, a training for death, while
— to speak in his terms — separating the soul from the body as far as
possible.” '% “This,” he tells us, “is the practice of philosophy.” Evagrius, for
his part, expresses himself in terms strikingly similar to Porphyry’s:

To separate the body from the soul is the privilege only of Him who
has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as
well in the power of the person who pursues virtue. For our Fathers
gave to the training for death and to the flight from the body a special
name: anachorests [i.e. the monastic life].!%

It is easy to see that the Platonic concept of the flight from the body, which
exercised such an attraction upon the young Augustine, was an clement added on
to Christianity, and not essential to it. Nevertheless, this concept determined the
orientation of the whole of Christian spirituality in a quite specific dircction.

So far, we have noted the permanent survival of certain philosophical spiritual
exercises in Christianity and monasticism, and we have tried to make

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 139

comprehensible the particular tonality that their reception introduced into
Christianity. We must not, however, exaggerate the importance of this
phenomenon. In the first place, as we have said, it manifested itself only in a
rather restricted circle: among Christian writers who had received a philosoph-
ical education. Even in their case, however, the final synthesis is essentially
Christian.

To be sure, our authors strove to Christianize their borrowings as much as
possible; but this is perhaps the least important aspect of the matter. They
believed they recognized spiritual exercises, which they had learned through
philosophy, in specific scriptural passages. Thus, we saw Basil of Caesarea
making a connection between prosoche and a text from Deuteronomy.'” Then,
in Athanasius’ Life of Antony, and throughout monastic literature, prosoche
was transformed into the “watch of the heart,” under the influence of
Proverbs, 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart.” '® Examination of one’s
conscience was often justified by the Second Letter to the Corinthians, 13:5:
“Examine yourselves ... and test yourselves.” Finally, the meditation on
death was recommended on the basis of First Corinthians, 15: 31: “I die every
day.” "0

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to believe that these references were
enough, all by themselves, to Christianize spiritual exercises. The reason why
Christian authors paid attention to these particular biblical passages was that
they were already familiar, from other sources, with the spiritual exercises of
prosoche, meditation on death, and examination of the conscience. By them-
selves, the texts from scripture could never have supplicd a method for
practicing these exercises. Often, in fact, a given scriptural passage has only
a distant connection with a particular spiritual exercise.

More important is the overall spirit in which Christian and monastic
spiritual exercises were practiced. They always presupposed the assistance of
God’s grace, and they made of humility the most important of virtues. In the
words of Dorotheus of Gaza: “The closer one comes to God, the more one
sces oneself as a sinner.”''' Such humility makes us consider ourselves
inferior to others. It leads us to maintain the greatest reserve in both conduct
and speech, and to adopt certain significant bodily positions, for instance
prostration before other monks.

Two other fundamental virtues were penitence and obedience. Penitence,
inspired by the fear and love of God, could take the form of extremely severe
self-mortification. The remembrance of death was intended not only to make
people realize the urgency of conversion, but also to develop the fear of God.
In turn, it is linked to meditation on the Last Judgment, and thereby to the
virtue of penitence. The same holds true of the examination of conscience.

Obedience — the renunciation of one’s own will, in complete submission to
the orders of a superior - completely transformed the philosophical practice
of spiritual direction. We can see to just what extremes such obedience could

140 Spiritual Exercises

be taken in Dorotheus’ Life of Dositheus."* The director of conscience had an
absolute power of decision over his disciple’s possessions, eating habits, and
entire way of life.

In the final analysis, all these virtues were transfigured by the transcendent
dimension of the love of God and of Christ. Thus, to train for death, or to
separate the soul from the body, was at the same time to participate in the
death of Christ. To renounce one’s will was to adhere to divine love.

Generally speaking, we can say that monasticism in Egypt and Syria’? was
born and developed in a Christian milieu, spontaneously and without the
intervention of a philosophical model. The first monks were not cultivated
men, but Christians who wanted to attain to Christian perfection by the
heroic practice of the evangelical prescriptions, and the imitation of the Life
of Christ. It was, therefore, natural that they should seek their techniques of
perfection in the Old and the New Testament. Under Alexandrian influence,
however — the distant influence of Philo, and the more immediate influence
of Origen and Clement of Alexandria, magnificently orchestrated by the
Cappadocians - certain philosophical spiritual techniques were introduced
into Christian spirituality. The result of this was that the Christian ideal was
described, and, in part, practiced, by borrowing models and vocabulary from
the Greek philosophical tradition. Thanks to its literary and philosophical
qualities, this tendency became dominant, and it was through its agency that
the heritage of ancient spiritual exercises was transmitted to Christian
spirituality: first to that of the Middle Ages, and subsequently to that of
modern times.

NOTES

_

See above.

See above.

Paul Rabbow, Seelenfiihrung. Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike, Munich 1954,
p. 23.

Ibid, p. 17.

Ibid, p. 18.

Ibid.

See above.

Rabbow, Seelenfiihrung p. 301, n. 5; p. 306, nn. 14, 17.

K. Heussi, Der Ursprung des Ménchtums, Tiibingen 1936, p. 13.

See above.

For example, G. Kretschmar, “Der Ursprung der friichristlichen Askese,”
Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche 61 (1964), pp. 27-67; P. Nagel, Die Motivie-
rung der Askese in der alten Kirche und der Ursprung des Ménchums (= Texte und
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 95), Berlin 1966;
B. Lohse, Askese und Monchtum in der Antike und ine der alten” Kirche,

why

i oi oo

—

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 141

Munich/Vienna 1969; K.S. Frank, ed., Askese und Ménchtum in der alten Kirche
(= Wege der Forschung 409), Darmstadt 1975; R. Hauser and G. Lanczkowski,
“Askese,” in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 1, cols 538-41, 1971
(with good bibliography); J. de Guibert, “Ascése,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité,
vol. 1, cols 936-1010.

12 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 8, 1; Tatian, Address to the Greeks, 31, 35, 55; Melito
in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 4, 26, 7.

13 Justin, Second Apology, 2, 13, 3; Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 7, 7, 7: “if someone
had arisen who could collect the truth scattered and dispersed among the
individual philosophers and sects and reduce it to one body, that one... would
not disagree with us”; 7, 8, 3: “We... are able to pick out the truth by surer
signs; we who gather it, not from fluctuating suspicion, but who know it from
divine tradition.”

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

15 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I, 13, 57, 1-58, 5; I, 5, 28, 1-32, 4.

16 Ibid, I, 11, 52, 3.

17 Most of the relevant texts have been assembled in A.N. Malingrey, ‘“‘Philosophia.”
Etude d'un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siécle
ap. 7.-C., Paris 1961.

18 Philo Judaeus, The Legation to Gatus, 156; 345; Life of Moses, 2, 216; On the
Contemplative Life, 26.

19 Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18, 11; 23.

20 Gregory Nazianzen, Apologetica, 103, PG 35, 504A.

21 John Chrysostom, Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life, 3, 13, PG 47, col.
372.

22 See below.

23 Theodorcet of Cyrrhus, History of the Monks of Syria, 2, 3, 1; 4, 1, 9; 4, 2, 19; 4,
10, 15; 6, 13, 1; 8, 2, 3 Canivet.

24 Philo Judaeus, On the Contemplative Life, 2; 30.

25 J. Leclercq, “Pour histoire de expression ‘philosophic chrétienne’,” Mélanges
de Science Religeuise 9 (1952), pp. 22)-6.

26 Exordium magnum Cisterciense, PL 185, 437.

27 John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, 7, 21, PL 199, 696.

28 Leclercq “Pour histoire,” p. 221.

29 See above.

30 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2, 20, 120, 1.

31 Basil of Caesarea, Jn I/lud Attende tibs ipsi, PG 31, cols 197-217. P. Adnés, “Garde
du ceeur,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 6, col. 108, points to the existence of a
multitude of sermons relating to this theme. He cites C. Baur, /nitia Patrum

» Graecorum (= Studi e Testi 181, 2), Vatican City 1955, p. 374.

32 Deuteronomy, 15: 9. [The Septuagint Greek version of the Bible renders this
phrase as proseche seautoi me genetai rhema krypton en tei kardiai sou: “Pay
attention to yourself, lest a hidden word come to be in your heart,” which the
King James Version renders as “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked
heart.” ‘Ihe Greek title of Basil’s sermon is consequently eis to Proseche seautot:
“On the words, ‘Give heed to yourself?” Trans.]

142 Spiritual Exercises

33 Basil, In Illud Attende, 2, 201B, pp. 433-4 Wagner.

34 Ibid, 3, 204A, p. 435 Wagner. This distinction was current in Platonic circles; cf.
Plato, First Alcibiades, 130-1d; Apology, 36b4-c6.

35 Ibid, 3, 204B; 5, 209B, pp. 435, 440 Wagner.

36 Ibid, 5-6, 209C-213A, pp. 440-2 Wagner.

37 On the following exercises, the reader may consult the following articles in the
Dictionnaire de S piritualité: “Attention,” “Apatheia,” “Contemplation,” “Examen
de Conscience,” “Direction spirituelle,” “Exercices spirituels,” “Garde du
coeur.”

38 Prosechon heautoi. Athanasius, Life of Antony, 3, PG 26, 844B, p. 32 Gregg.

39 Ibid, 91, 969B, p. 97 Gregg.

40 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, 10, §104, line 9 Regnault/de Préville = p. 163
Wheeler. The concept of prosoche plays a very important role throughout the
monastic tradition; cf. for instance Diadochus of Photice, Kephalaia Gnostica,
§27, p. 98, 19 Des Places.

41 See above.

42 Athanasius, Life of Antony, 853A; 868A; 969B; pp. 37, 43, 97 Gregg/Clebsch.

43 Cf. above.

44 Ibid, 19, 872A, p. 45 Gregg/Clebsch.

45 Ibid.

46 Epictetus, Manual, 21. See above.

47 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2, 11.

48 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §114, 1-15 Regnault/de Préville = p. 173
Wheeler.

49 Ibid, §104, 1-3 Regnault/de Préville = p. 163 Wheeler.

50 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 54.

51 Athanasius, Life of Antony, 873C; Basil of Caesarea, Regulae fusius tractatae, PG
31, 921 B = p. 243 Wagner. Cf. John Cassian, Collationes, vol. 1, p. 84 Pichery
= p. 84 Luibheid: “we must practice the reading of the Scripture, together with
all the other virtuous activities, and we do so to trap and to hold our hearts free
of the harm of every dangerous passion.” [Basil and Athanasius use the term
phulake, among whose many meanings are “protection,” “control,” “guarding,”
and “observance.” It can also mean a prison or a prisoner. Originally, however,
phulake meant a night-watch or the person charged with this duty (the Latin
custodia); and this is the meaning I have tricd to convey by translating Ae tes
kardias phulake by “watch of the heart.” All the other meanings, however, are
relevant and should be borne in mind. — Trans.]

52 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didoskaliai, §104 Regnault/de Préville = p. 163 Wheeler.

53 Porphyry, Porphyry the Philosopher, To Marcella, 12.

54 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6, 7.

55 Basil, Jn Illud attende, p. 243 Wagner.

56 Diadochus of Photice, Kephalaia Gnostica, 27, p. 98, 11 Des Places.

57 Ibid, 56, p. 117, 15.

58 Ibid, 59, p. 119, 1-2.

59 Ibid, 97, p. 160, 3.

60 On the theme of presence, see above.

Ancient Spiritual Exercises 143

61 See above.

62 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikos, §91, p. 91 Bamberger.

63 Cf. T. Klauser, “Apophthegmata,” Reallexicon fiir Antike und Christentum 1
(1950), pp. 545-50.

64 Cf. E. von Ivanka, “Kephalaia,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 47 (1954), pp. 258-91.

65 Apophthegmata Patrum, PG 65, 173A-B.

66 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §60, 27, p. 120 Wheeler.

67 Ibid, §69, 2, p. 131 Wheeler.

68 Ibid, §189, 4-5.

69 Ibid, §60, 30, pp. 120-1 Wheeler.

70 See above.

71 Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, pp. 143, 27ff. Baehrens = pp. 128ff
Lawson.

72 [Again, while the King James Bible reads “If thou know not, O thou fairest
among women”, the Greek Septuagint version gives “Unless you know yourself”
(Ean me gnois seauten) — Trans.]

73 See the references in I. Hadot, Seneca und die griechisch-rémische Tradition der
Seelenleitung, Berlin 1969, pp. 66-71.

74 John Chrysostom, Non esse ad gratiam concionandum, PG 50, 659-60.

75 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §§111, 13; 117, 7, pp. 170; 175 Wheeler.

76 Cf. I. Hadot, Seneca, p. 70.

77 Athanasius, Life of Antony, PG 26, 924B, p. 73 Gregg/Clebsch.

78 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §25, 11, p. 91 Wheeler.

79 See above.

80 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikos, §§54-6, p. 31 Bamberger. Cf. F. Refoulé, “Réves
et vie spirituelle d’aprés Evagre le Pontique,” Supplément de la Vie Spirituelle 59
(1961), pp. 470-516.

81 Diadochus of Photice, Kephalaia Gnostica, 37, p. 106 Des Places.

82 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didskaliai, §20, p. 89 Wheeler. L. Regnault and J. de Préville,
editors of the Sources Chrétiennes edition, cite as a parallel Epictetus, Discourses,
I, 18, 18.

83 Ibid, §120, p. 178 Wheeler. Regnault and de Préville compare Epictetus,
Discourses, 2, 18.

84 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikos, §58, p. 32 Bamberger. In their Sources Chrétiennes
edition, A. and C. Guillaumont cite as a parallel Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4, 75.

85 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §202, 12.

86 Epictetus, Manual, 8.

87 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §20, 11-13, p. 88 Wheeler.

88 Plutarch, On Curiosity, 520Dff.

89 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, 20, pp. 88-9 Wheeler.

90 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikos, 2, p. 15 Bamberger.

91 Sce the texts cited by A. and C. Guillaumont in the notes to their commentary
on the Praktikos (SC 171), p. 499, n. 2; p. 501, n. 3.

92 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikas, §§2--3, pp. 15-16 Bamberger.

93 CP. Madot, “La division des parties de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité,”
Museum Helveticum do (1979), pp. 201 23.

144 Spiritual Exercises

94 Cf. L Hadot, Le probléme du néoplatonisme alexandrin, Hiéroclés et Simplicus, Paris
1978, pp. 152-8.

95 Porphyry, Sentences, p. 27, 9, Lamberz.

96 Cf. the note in A. and C. Guillaumont, 1971, p. 500.

97 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikos, §1, p. 15 Bamberger.

98 On amerimnia, see Diadochus of Photice, Kephalaia Gnostica, 25, p. 97, 7; 30, p.
100, 19; 65, p. 125, 12; 67, p. 127, 22 Des Places. For Dorotheus of Gaza, see,
inter alia, Didaskaliai, §68, 2.

99 For occurrences of tranguillitas, cf. John Cassian, Conferences, I, 7, vol. 1, p. 85
Pichery = p. 42 Luibheid; 19, 11, vol. 3, p. 48 Pichery.

100 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §58-60, pp. 118-20 Wheeler.

101 In the treatises of Plutarch and Seneca, for instance.

102 See above.

103 Maximus Confessor, Commentary on the Our Father, PG 90, 900A = p. 114
Berthold.

104 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 5, 11, 67, 1, pp. 370-1 Stahlin.

105 Gregory Nazianzen, Epistula 31, vol. 1, p. 39 Gallay.

106 Evagrius of Pontis, Praktikos, §52, p. 30 Bamberger. Compare Porphyry,
Sentences, 8, p. 3, 6 Lamberz: “What nature has bound together, she also
unbinds, but that which the soul binds, the soul likewise unbinds. It was nature
that bound the body within the soul, but it was the soul which bound itself
within the body. Therefore, while it is nature that unbinds the body from the
soul, it is the soul which unbinds itself from the body.”

107 Cf. above.

108 Athanasius, Life of Antony, 873C, p. 47 Gregg/Clebsch.

109 Ibid, 924A, p. 72 Gregg/Clebsch.

110 Ibid, 872A, p. 45 Gregg/Clebsch.

111 Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai, §151, 47.

112 Dorotheus of Gaza, Life of Dositheus, §§5-9, edited among Dorotheus’ Spiritual
Works in Regnault/de Préville 1963, pp. 129ff.

113 Cf. A. Védbus, A History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient (= CSCO vol. 184,
Subsidia 14, vol. 197, Subsidia 17), Louvain 1958-60.

Part III

Figures

5

The Figure of Socrates

Since the dawn of Greek thought, the sage has functioned as a living, concrete
model. Aristotle testifies to this in a passage from his Protrepticus: “What more
accurate standard or measure of good things do we have than the Sage?” !
There were several reasons for the fact that my research on the sage as a model
gradually became fixed upon Socrates. In the first place, I found in him a
figure who had exercised a widespread influence of the greatest importance on
the entire Western tradition. Secondly, and most importantly, the figure of
Socrates — as sketched by Plato, at any rate — had, it seemed to me, one unique
advantage. It is the portrait of a mediator between the transcendent ideal of
wisdom and concrete human reality. It is a paradox of highly Socratic irony
that Socrates was not a sage, but a “philo-sopher”: that is, a lover of wisdom.

To speak about Socrates is, of course, to expose oneself to all sorts of
historical difficulties. The accounts we have of him by Plato and by
Xenophon have transformed, idealized, and deformed the historical Socrates.’
I shall not attempt here to uncover or reconstruct the historical Socrates.
Instead, what I shall try to set forth is the figure of Socrates, as it has
influenced our Western tradition. Since this is a phenomenon of immense
proportions, however, I shall restrict myself to two of its aspects: the figure
of Socrates as depicted in Plato’s Symposium, and as it was perceived by those
two great Socratics, Kierkegaard? and Nietzsche.‘

1 Silenus

Socrates thus functions as a mediator between ideal norms and human reality.
The concepts of “mediation” and “intermediate” call to mind the ideas of
equilibrium and the Golden Mean. We should therefore expect to see in
Socrates a harmonious figure, combining divine and human characteristics in
delicate nuances,

148 Figures

Nothing could be further from the truth. The figure of Socrates is
ambiguous, troubling, and strangely disconcerting. The first surprise in store
for us is his physical ugliness, which is well attested by the testimony of Plato,
Xenophon, and Aristophanes.’ “It is significant,” wrote Nietzsche, “that
Socrates was the first great Hellene to be ugly.”® “Everything in him is
exaggerated, buffo, a caricature.”’ Nietzsche goes on to evoke his “‘crab-like
eyes, puffed-up lips, and hanging belly,” ® and he takes pleasure in telling the
story of how the physiognomist Zopyrus once told Socrates he was a monster,
keeping hidden within himself the worst vices and appetites. Socrates, says
Nietzsche, simply replied: “How well you know me!”® If Socrates really did
resemble a Silenus, as he is depicted in Plato’s Symposium,'° such suspicions
were quite understandable. In popular imagination, Sileni and satyrs were
hybrid demons, half-animal, half-men, who made up the escort of Dionysos.
These impudent, ribald buffoons also constituted the chorus of satyr-plays, a
literary genre of which Euripides’ Cyclops is one of the few remaining
examples.

The Sileni were purely natural beings. They stood for the negation of
culture and civilization, for grotesque buffoonery, and for the license of the
instincts."

To use Kierkegaard’s expression, Socrates was a cobold.’? To be sure, Plato
gives us to understand that Socrates’ resemblance to Silenus was only an
appearance, beneath which something else was hidden. Alcibiades, in his
famous speech in praise of Socrates at the end of the Symposium,'} compares
Socrates to the little statues of Sileni that could be found in sculptors’ shops,
which concealed little figurines of the gods inside themselves. Similarly,
Socrates’ exterior appearance — ugly, buffoon-like, impudent, almost mon-
strous — was only a mask and a facade.

Here we are led to another paradox: Socrates was not only ugly, but a
dissimulator as well. Nietzsche writes: “Everything in him is concealed,
ulterior, subterranean.” * Socrates masks himself, and at the same time is used
as a mask by others.

Socrates masks himself: here we encounter that famous Socratic irony, the
meaning of which we shall have to clarify later on. Socrates pretends to be
ignorant and impudent. “He spends his whole life,” says Alcibiades, “playing
the part of a simpleton and a child.” § “The nouns and verbs which form the
outer envelope of his words are like the hide of an impudent satyr.”'® His
ignorant appearance and amorous attentions “are what he has wrapped around
himself, like a carved Silenus.” ”

Socrates pulled off his enterprise of dissimulation so well that he succeeded
in definitively masking himself from history. He wrote nothing, engaging only
in dialogue. All the testimonies we possess about him hide him from us more
than they reveal him, preciscly because Socrates has always been used as a
mask by those who have spoken about him.

The Figure of Socrates 149

Because he was himself masked, Socrates became the prosopon, or mask, of
personalities who felt the need to take shelter behind him. It was from him
that they got the idea both to mask themselves, and to use Socratic irony as
a mask. We have here a phenomenon extremely rich in its literary, pedagog-
ical, and psychological implications.

The original nucleus of this phenomenon was the irony of Socrates himself.
Socrates, the eternal interrogator, used skillful questions to bring his inter-
locutors to admit their ignorance. By so doing, he disturbed them so much
that they were eventually led to question their entire lives. After Socrates’
death, the memory of his Socratic conversations inspired a new literary genre,
the /ogoi sokratikoi, which imitated the conversations Socrates had had with a
wide variety of interlocutors. In these /ogoi sokratikoi, Socrates became a
prosopon — an interlocutor or character — and hence, if we recall the meaning
of prosopon in the ancient theater, a mask. Especially in the subtle, refined
form given it by Plato, the Socratic dialogue was intended to provoke in its
readers an effect analogous to that produced by the living discourse of
Socrates himself. Thus, the reader of these dialogues finds himself in the same
situation as Socrates’ interlocutors: he does not know where Socrates’
questions are going to lead him. Socrates’ elusive, unsettling prosopon/mask
sows disquiet in the soul of the readcr, leading it to a heightening of
consciousness which may go as far as far as a philosophical conversion. As
Konrad Gaiser has convincingly shown,'* the reader himself is invited to take
refuge behind the mask of Socrates. In almost all Plato’s Socratic dialogues,
there comes a moment of crisis, when the interlocutors are overcome by
discouragement. They no longer have confidence in the possibility of
continuing the discussion, and it seems as though the dialogue is about to be
broken off. This is where Socrates intervenes: he takes the others’ doubt,
uneasiness, and discouragement upon himself. He assumes all the risks of the
dialectical adventure, and carries out a complete switching of roles. If the
enterprise fails, it will henceforth be his responsibility. In this way, he shows
his interlocutors a projection of their own selves. They can now transfer their
personal uneasiness onto Socrates, and regain confidence in dialectical
research and in the logos itself.

In his dialogues, Plato too uses Socrates as a mask, or, in Nietzsche’s
terminology, as a “semiotics.”'? As Paul Friedlander? has pointed out,
whereas the “ego” had long since made its appearance in Greek literature —
Hesiod, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles, the Sophists, and even Xeno-
phon do not hesitate to speak in the first person — Plato completely effaces
himself behind Socrates in his dialogues, and systematically avoids the use of
the first person singular. We are dealing here with an extremely subtle
relationship, whose significance is extremely hard to grap. Are we to
suppose, with Gaiser and FL-J. Kramer! that Plato carefully distinguished
between two kinds of teaching: his own, which wie niel, secret, and reserved

150 Figures

for members of the Academy, and his written dialogues, in which he utilized
the mask of Socrates to exhort his readers to philosophy? Alternatively,
should we conclude that Plato uses the figure of Socrates to set forth his
doctrines with a certain degree of distance and irony? In any case, this initial
situation has indelibly influenced Western consciousness. Whenever thinkers
have been aware of — and frightened by — the radical renewal of which they
were the bearers, they too have used a mask to confront their contemporaries.
They have usually chosen to use the ironic mask of Socrates.

When, in the nineteenth century, J.G. Hamann praised Socrates in his
Socratic Memorabilia, he did so, to use his own term, to mimike.2 In other
words, Hamann himself took up the mask of Socrates — the rationalist par
excellence in the eyes of the eighteenth century” — in order to make people
see, behind the mask, a figure prophetic of Christ.

What, for Hamann, was only a temporary expedient became a fundamental,
existential attitude for Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s penchant for masks is most
evident in his use of pseudonyms. As is well known, most of Kierkegaard’s
works were first published under a variety of pseudonyms: Victor Eremita,
Johannes Climacus, etc. We are not dealing here with an editorial caprice.
Rather, for Kierkegaard, all these pseudonyms correspond to different levels
— the “aesthetic,” “ethical,” and “religious” — at which the author was
supposed to be situated. Kierkegaard speaks successively of Christianity as an
aesthete, then as a moralist, in order to force his contemporaries into the
awareness that they are not true Christians. “He hid himself beneath the mask
of an artist and half-believing moralist to speak about what he believed most
deeply.” #4

Kierkegaard was perfectly aware of the Socratic character of his method:

From the point of view of my whole activity as an author, integrally
conceived, the aesthetic work is a deception, and herein is to be found
the deeper significance of the use of pseudonyms. A deception, however,
is a rather ugly thing. To this I would make answer: One must not let
oneself be deceived by the word “deception.” One can deceive a person
for the truth’s sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person
into the truth. Indeed, it is only by this means, i.e. by deceiving him,
that it is possible to bring into the truth one who is in an illusion.”

Kierkegaard’s goal was to make the reader aware of his mistakes, not by
directly refuting them, but by setting them forth in such a way that their
absurdity would become clearly apparent. This is as Socratic as can be. At the
same time, Kierkegaard used pseudonymy to give voice to all the different
characters within him. In the process, he objectificd his various selves,
without recognizing himself in any of them, just as Socrates, by means of his
skillful questions, objectified the self of his interlocutors without recognizing

The Figure of Socrates 151

himself in any of them. Thus we find Kierkegaard writing: “Because of my
melancholy, it was years before I was able to say ‘thou’ to myself. Between
my melancholy and my ‘thou,’ there was a whole world of fantasy. I exhausted
it, in part, in my pseudonyms.” ¢ Yet Kierkegaard was not content to mask
himself behind pseudonyms. His real mask was Socratic irony itself; it was
Socrates himself: “O Socrates! Yours and mine are the same adventure! I am
alone. My only analogy is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task.” 2”

Kierkegaard termed this Socratic method his “method of indirect com-
munication.”* We encounter it once again in Nietzsche, for whom it is the
method of the great educator: “An educator never says what he himself
thinks, but always only what he thinks of a thing in relation to the
requirements of those he educates. He must not be detected in this dissimu-
lation.” This method is justified by the educator’s transcendent mission:
“Every profound spirit needs a mask; better yet, around every profound spirit
a mask is continually growing, thanks to the constantly false — that is to say,
superficial — interpretation of his every word, step, and manifestation of
life.” °° The mask of the Socratic Silenus served as the model for Nietzsche’s
theory of the mask. As he wrote in the unpublished writings of the last period
of his life:

I believe that this was the magic of Socrates: he had one soul, and
another one in behind it, and behind it still another one. It was in the
first one that Xenophon lay down to sleep; in the second, Plato; and in
the third one Plato again, but this time Plato with his own second soul.
Plato himself is a man with many a hidden cave behind and facades out
front.*!

As for Kierkegaard, so for Nietzsche: masks were a pedagogical necessity,
but also a psychological need. Nietzsche himself could be included in his
category of “men who want only to be seen shining through others. And
there’s a lot of wisdom in this.”*? In his Ecce Homo, Nietzsche himself
admits that he used his masters Schopenhauer and Wagner as masks in
writing his Untimely Meditations, just as Plato had used Socrates as a
“semiotics.” There is indced a relationship comparable to that between Plato
and Socrates here: Nietzsche was speaking of an ideal Wagner and an ideal
Schopenhauer, who were really nothing other than Nietzsche himself. As
Bertram has convincingly shown, one of Nietzsche’s masks was certainly
Socrates himself; Socrates, whom he pursued with the same amorous hatred
that Nietzsche feels for Nietzsche; that same Socrates who, he tells us, “is so
close to me, that I am almost always fighting with him.”* The side of
Socrates Nietzsche hates is identical with the Nietzsche who dissolves myths,
replacing the gods by the knowledge of good and evil; the Nietzsche who
brings men’s minds back to things human, all too human, The side of

152 Figures

Socrates which Nietzsche loves, and of which he is jealous, is what he himself
would like to be: the seducer, the educator, and the guide of souls. We shall
have occasion to return to this amorous hatred.

The Socratic mask is the mask of irony. If we examine the texts — by Plato,**
Aristotle,” or Theophrastus®® — in which the word ¢éironeia appears, we can
conclude that irony is a psychological attitude in which the individual uses
self-deprecation in an attempt to appear inferior to what he really is. In the
art and usage of discourse, it takes the form of pretending to concede that
one’s interlocutor is right, and to adopt the point of view of one’s adversary.
The rhetorical figure of eironeia, then, consists in using words or speeches
which the audience would rather have expected to hear coming from the
mouth of one’s adversary.” This is certainly the form assumed by Socratic
irony. In the words of Cicero: “By disparaging himself, Socrates used to
concede more than was necessary to the adversaries he wanted to refute.
Thus, thinking one thing and saying another, he enjoyed using the kind of
dissimulation which the Greeks call ‘irony’.” ® Socratic irony is thus a feigned
self-deprecation, which consists primarily in passing onesclf off as someone
completely ordinary and superficial. As Alcibiades puts it in his praise of
Socrates:

His speech is for all the world like those Sileni that open up down the
middle. When you listen to it for the first time, you just can’t help
finding it absolutely ridiculous. He talks about pack asses and black-
smiths and shoemakers and tanners, and he always seems to be repeating
the same thing, so that anyone who wasn’t used to his style and wasn’t
very quick on the uptake would naturally take it for the most utter
nonsense."!

Not only was Socrates guilty of banality in the subjects he discussed, but
his interlocutors were banal, as well. He sought out and found his audience
in the marketplace, the gymnasia, artists’ workshops, and shops. He was a
street person. In the words of Nietzsche: “Mediocrity is the most appropriate
mask the superior spirit can wear.” ‘? Socrates talked and debated, but he
refused to be considered a master. “When people came to see him,” remarks
Epictetus, “and asked him to introduce them to other philosophers, he
complied readily, and willingly accepted to pass unnoticed himself.” “

Here we touch the heart of Socratic irony: if Socrates refused to teach or
be considered a master, it was because he had nothing to say or to
communicate, for the excellent reason that, as he frequently proclaimed, he
did not know anything. Since he had nothing to say, and no thesis to defend,
all Socrates could do was to ask questions, even though he himself refused to
answer them. In the first book of the Republic, ‘Vhrasymachus cries out: “Ye
gods! Here we have the well-known efroneia of Socrates, and [knew it and

The Figure of Socrates 153

predicted that when it came to replying you would refuse and dissemble and
do anything rather than answer any question that anyome asked you.”
Aristotle described the situation even more clearly: “Socrates used to ask
questions and not answer them — for he used to confess that he did not
know.”

Obviously, we cannot know exactly how Socrates’ discussions with the
Athenians took place. Plato’s dialogues — even the most “Socratic” — are only
a doubly weak imitation of them. In the first place, they are not spoken, but
written, and, as Hegel remarked, “in printed dialogue, answers are altogether
under the author’s control; but to say that in actual life people are found to
answer as they are here made to do, is quite another thing.” Moreover,
beneath the surface charm of literary fiction, we can recognize in Plato’s
dialogues the trace of the scholastic exercises of the Platonic Academy.
Aristotle codified the rules of these dialectical jousts in his Topics.” There were
well-defined roles for both questioner and respondent in these argumentation
exercises, and the rules of this intellectual fencing were rigorously defined.

It is not our task here to try to disentangle what may be properly “Socratic”
in the conversations reported by Plato; rather, we are concerned to uncover
the significance of Socratic irony as it was known to tradition, and the
movements of consciousness to which it corresponds.

Otto Apelt* has given a good description of the mechanism of Socratic
irony: Spaltung und Verdoppelung.” Socrates splits himself into two, so that
there are two Socrates: the Socrates who knows in advance how the discussion
is going to end, and the Socrates who travels the entire dialectical path along
with his interlocutor. Socrates’ interlocutors do not know where he is leading
them, and therein lies the irony. As he travels the path along with his
interlocutors, Socrates constantly demands total agreement from them. He
takes his partner’s position as his starting point, and gradually makes him
admit all the consequences of his position. This a priori agreement is founded
on the rational demands of the Logos,* or reasonable discourse. By constantly
demanding assent, Socrates leads his interlocutor to recognize that his initial
position was contradictory, and he thereby objectifies their common under-
taking. As a rule, Socrates chooses an activity familiar to his interlocutor as
the subject of discussion, and tries to define, together with him, the practical
knowledge required to carry out this activity. For example, a general must
know how to fight bravely, and a soothsayer must behave piously towards the
gods. At the end of the road, however, the general turns out to have no idea
of what courage really is, and the soothsayer doesn’t know what piety is. It is
then that the interlocutor realizes that he doesn’t really know the reasons
for his actions. Suddenly, his whole value-system seems to him without
foundation. Up until then, he had, to a certain extent, identified with the
valueesystem which had dictated to him his way of thinking and speaking.
Henceforth, he is opposed to it.

154 Figures

Thus, the interlocutor, too, is cut in two: there is the interlocutor as he was
before his conversation with Socrates, and there is the interlocutor who, in the
course of their constant mutual accord, has identified himself with Socrates,
and who henceforth will never be the same again.

The absolutely essential point in this ironical method is the path which
Socrates and his interlocutor travel together. Socrates pretends he wants to
learn something from his interlocutor, and this constitutes his ironic self-
deprecation. In fact, however, even while Socrates appears to identify himself
with the interlocutor, and enter completely into his’ discourse, in the last
analysis it is the interlocutor who unconsciously enters into Socrates’ dis-
course and identifies himself with Aim. Let us not forget: to identify oneself
with Socrates is to identify oneself with aporia and doubt, for Socrates doesn’t
know anything; all he knows is that he knows nothing. Therefore, at the end
of the discussion, the interlocutor has not learned anything; in fact, he no
longer even knows anything. And yet, throughout the duration of the
discussion, he has experienced what true activity of the mind is. Better yet,
he has been Socrates himself. And Socrates is interrogation, questioning, and
stepping back to take a look at oneself; in a word, he is consciousness.

Such is the profound meaning of Socratic maieutics. In a famous passage
of the Theaetetus,:' Socrates tells how he practices the same trade as did his
mother, who was a midwife, attending corporeal births. Socrates himself, he
claims, is a midwife of the mind, and it is to the birth of minds that he
attends. Socrates himself does not engender anything, since he knows
nothing; he merely helps others to engender themselves. As Kierkegaard was

well aware, Socratic maieutics stands the master—disciple relationship on its
head:

to be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so,
or to deliver a lecture, & etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to
be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the
learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he
understands and in the way he understands it.*

The disciple is the opportunity for the master to understand himself, as
the master is the opportunity for the disciple to understand himself.
When he dies, the master has no claim on the disciple’s soul, no more
than the disciple has on that of the master...The best way to
understand Socrates is precisely to understand that we do not owe him
anything. That is what Socrates preferred, and it is good that he was
able to prefer this.»

Here we touch upon one of the possible meanings of Socrates’ enigmatic
declaration: “TI only know one thing: that is, that [don't know anything.” 4

The Figure of Socrates 155

This statement could be interpreted as meaning that Socrates did not possess
any transmissible knowledge, and was unable to cause ideas to pass from his
mind into that of others. As Socrates is made to say in Plato’s Symposium, “My
dear Agathon ...I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed
... from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty.” ©

In Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, Hippias tells Socrates that, instead of
always asking questions about justice, he would do better simply to say, once
and for all, what justice is. Socrates replies: “If I don’t reveal my views on
justice in words, I do so by my conduct.”** To be sure, Socrates was a
passionate lover of words and dialogue. With just as much passion, however,
he sought to demonstrate to us the limits of language. What he wanted to
show us is that we can never understand justice if we do not /ive it. Justice,
like every authentic reality, is indefinable, and this is what Socrates sought to
make his interlocutor understand, in order to urge him to “live” justice. The
questioning of discourse leads to the questioning of the individual, who must
decide whether or not he will resolve to live according to his conscience and
to reason. In the words of one of Socrates’ interlocutors: “Anyone who enters
into conversation with Socrates is liable to be drawn into an argument, and
whatever subject he may start, he will be continually carried round and round
by him, until at last he finds that he has to give an account both of his present
and past life.” >? The individual thus finds himself called into question in the
most fundamental bases of his action, and he becomes aware of the living
problem he himself represents for himself. All values are consequently turned
upside down, as is the importance previously accorded them. As Socrates says
in Plato’s Apology:

I care nothing for what most people care about: money-making,
administration of property, generalships, success in public debates,
magistracies, coalitions, and political factions ...I did not choose that
path, but rather the one by which I could do the greatest good to each
of you in particular: by trying to persuade each of you to concern
himself less about what he Aas that about what he js, so that he may
make himself as good and as reasonable as possible.**

The Socratic enterprise is existential in that it appeals to the individual.
This is why Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, each in his own way, tricd to repeat
it. In the following text by Nietzsche, where he describes the “Schopenhauer-
ian man,” isolated in the midst of his contemporaries, it is hard not to think
of Socrates’ constant appeal to “take care of yourself,” and his continual
calling into question of the individual:

his fellow men... strut about in a hundred masqueradces, as youths, old
men, fathers, citizens, priests, officials, merchants, mindful solely of

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their comedy and not at all of themselves. To the question: “To what
end do you live?” they would all quickly reply with pride: “To become
a good citizen, or scholar, or statesman!”

the objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one’s
thoughts to cease to be aware of life.*!

Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”

Already in Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades had said: “Socrates makes me admit
to myself that, even though I myself am deficient in so many regards, I
continue to take no care for myself, but occupy myself with the business of
the Athenians.” ™ This passage allows us to glimpse the political consequences
of such a reversal of values and upending of the guiding norms of life.
Concern for one’s individual destiny cannot help but lead to conflict with
the state. This is the deepest meaning of the trial and death of Socrates.
Socratic irony becomes especially dramatic when, thanks to the evidence of
Plato’s Apology of Socrates, we see it being used at the expense of the
philosopher’s accusers, and, in a sense, bringing about his condemnation to
death.*

Here we have an instance of the “seriousness of existence” of which
Kierkegaard speaks.“ For Kierkegaard, Socrates’ merit was that he was an
existing thinker, not a speculative philosopher who has forgotten what it
means to exist. Kierkegaard’s fundamental category of existence is the
individual, or the unique, isolated in the solitude of his existential respons-
ibility. For Kierkegaard, Socrates was its discoverer.”

Here we come upon one of the most profound reasons for Socratic irony:
direct language is not adequate for communicating the experience of existing,
the authentic consciousness of being, the seriousness of life as we live it, or
the solitude of decision making. To speak is to be doubly condemned to
banality. In the first place, there can be no direct communication of existential
experience, and in this sense, every speech-act is “banal.” Secondly, however,
it is this same banality which, in the form of irony, can make indircct
communication possible." In the words of Nietzsche: “I believe I sense that
Socrates was profound; his irony was above all the necessity to pass himsclf
off as superficial, in order to be able to associate with people at all.” For the
existential thinker, banality and superficiality are a vital necessity. The
existentialist must remain in contact with mankind, even if the latter is at a
level of less-than-adequate consciousness. At the same time, however, we have
here to do with a pedagogical artifice. The circuitous detours of irony, and
the shock of aporia, can cause the reader to attain to the seriousness of
existential consciousness, especially if, us we shall see later, the power of Eros
is thrown in for good measure.

The Figure of Socrates 157

Socrates had no system to teach. Throughout, his philosophy was a
spiritual exercise, an invitation to a new way of life, active reflection, and
living consciousness.

Perhaps the Socratic formula: “I know that I know nothing” ought to be
given a deeper meaning. We are thus brought back to our starting point:
Socrates knows that he is not a sage.” As an individual, his conscience was
aroused and spurred on by this feeling of imperfection and incompleteness.

In this regard, Kierkegaard can help us to understand the significance of
the figure of Socrates. Kierkegaard asserts that he knows only one thing: that
he is not a Christian. He was intimately convinced of this fact, because to be
a Christian is to have a genuine personal and existential relationship with
Christ; it is to intcriorize Christ in a decision emanating from the depths of
the self. Since such interiorization is so very difficult, it is virtually impossible
for anyone truly to be a Christian. The only true Christian was Christ. At any
rate, the least we can say is that the best Christian is he who is aware of not
being a Christian, insofar as he recognizes that he is not a Christian.”!

Like every existential consciousness, Kierkegaard’s was divided. It existed
only in its consciousness of not truly existing. Kierkegaardian consciousness
is identical to Socratic consciousness:

O Socrates, you had the accursed advantage of making it painfully
obvious, by means of your ignorance, that others were even less wise
than you. They didn’t even know that they were ignorant. Your
adventure was the same as mine. People become exasperated with me
when they sec that I can show that others are even less Christian than
I; I who respect Christianity so much that I see and admit that I am not
a Christian!”

Socratic consciousness is also torn and divided: not by the figure of Christ,
but by the transcendent norm of the figure of the sage.

Justice, as we have seen, cannot be defined. It must be lived. All the human
discourse in the world could never suffice to express the depth of one person’s
resolution to be just. All human decisions are, however, fragile and precarious.
When a person chooses to be just in the context of a particular act, he has the
inkling of an existence which could be just in the full sense of the term. Such
a fully just existence is that of the sage, who is not sop/ios, but philo-sophos: not
a wise man, but one who desires wisdom, precisely because he lacks it. Paul
Friedlander puts it well: “Socratic irony, at its center, expresses the tension
between ignorance — that is, the impossibility ultimately to put into words
‘what justice is’ — and the direct experience of the unknown, the existence of
the just man, whom justice raises to the level of the divine.” ”

Just us Kierkeguard was only Christian insofar as he was conscious of not being
a Christian, Socrates was a sage only insofar as he was conscious of not

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being wise. An immense desire arises from such an awareness of privation,
and this is why, for Western consciousness, Socrates the philosopher takes on
the features of Eros, the eternal vagabond in search of true beauty.

2 Eros

It could be said that Socrates was the first individual in the history of Western
thought. Werner Jaeger” was right to point out that Plato and Xenophon, in
their Socratic writings, strive to make the reader sense Socrates’ originality
and uniqueness as they sketch his literary portrait. This need of theirs was
certainly the result of the extraordinary experience of having known an
incomparable personality, and, as Kierkegaard pointed out,” it is the true
explanation of the terms atopos, atopia, and atopotatos, which recur so often
in the Platonic corpus” to describe Socrates’ character. In the Theaetetus, for
instance, Socrates declares: “They say I am atopotatos, and all I create is
aporia.”™ Etymologically, atopos means “out of place,” hence strange, extrava-
gant, absurd, unclassifiable, and disconcerting. In the Symposium, Alcibiades
insists on this point in his specch in praise of Socrates. Normally, he
says, there are classes of men, idcal types to which individuals correspond.
For example, there is the type of the “great general, noble and courageous,”
represented in Homeric antiquity by Achilles, and among contemporary
figures by the Spartan leader Brasidas. Then there is the type of the “clever
and eloquent statesman,” represented in antiquity by Nestor the Greek and
Antenor the Trojan, and by Pericles among contemporaries. Socrates, how-
ever, does not fit into any category. He cannot be compared to any man,
concludes Alcibiades; only to Sileni or satyrs.”8

Socrates was indeed an individual: that individual so dear to Kierkegaard
that he would have liked to have as an epitaph: “He was That Individual.” ”

And yet, although Socrates was unlike anyone else, we shall now see him
take on the mythic characteristics of Eros;® an Eros, that is, conceived as a
projection of the figure of Socrates.

In Socrates, erotic irony is intimately connected to dialectical irony, and it
leads to reversals of situation quite analogous to those caused by the latter.
Let us be quite clear: the love in question here is homosexual love, precisely
because it is educative love. In the Greece of Socrates’ day, masculine love
was a vestige and remainder of archaic warrior education, in which the young
nobleman was trained in the aristocratic virtues, within the frame-
work of virile friendship, and under the direction of an older man. The
master—disciple relationship was conceived during the period of the Sophists,
on the model of this archaic relationship, and it was frequently spoken of in
crotic terms. We must not, of course, forget the role played by rhetoric and
literary fiction in this way of speaking.”

The Figure of Socrates 159

Socrates’ erotic irony consisted in pretending to be in love until, thanks to
the reversal brought about by irony, the object of his amorous attentions fell
in love himself. Such is the story Alcibiades tells in his speech in praise of
Socrates. Alcibiades, believing in the sincerity of the numerous declarations
of love Socrates had made to him, invited Socrates home one night in order
to seduce him. He slipped into bed with him, and wrapped his arms around

“him. Much to Alcibiades’ surprise, however, Socrates remained in complete
control of himself, and did not let himself be seduced at all. “Since that time,”
declares Alcibiades,

I am the one who has been reduced to slavery, and I’m in the state of a
man bitten by a viper.®2

I’ve been bitten in the heart, or the mind, or whatever you like to call
it, by Socrates’ philosophy ...the moment I hear him speak I am —
smitten with a kind of sacred rage, worse than any Corybant, and my
heart jumps into my mouth and the tears start into my eyes... I’m not
the only one, either; there’s Charmides, and Euthydemus, and ever so
many more. He’s made fools of them all, just as if he were the beloved,
not the lover.®

It is hard to imagine a better commentary on this passage than the following
one, by Kierkegaard:

one might possibly call him a seducer, for he deceived the youth and
awakened longings which he never satisfied . .. He deceived them all in
the same way as he deceived Alcibiades who . . . observes that instead of
the lover, Socrates became the beloved... he attracted the youth to
him, but when they looked up to him, when they sought repose in him,
when forgetting all else they sought a safe abode in his love, when they
themselves ceased to exist and lived only in being loved by him — then
he was gone, then the enchantment was over, then they felt the deep
pangs of unrequited love, felt that they had been deceived and that it
was not Socrates who loved them but they who loved Socrates."

Socrates’ erotic irony consisted in pretending to be in love. In dialectic
irony, Socrates pretended, as he asked his questions, that his real desire was
that his interlocutor communicate to him his knowledge or wisdom. In fact,
however, this game of questions and answers resulted in the interlocutor
realizing that he was incapable of curing Socrates’ ignorance, for he in fact
had ncither wisdom nor knowledge to give to Socrates. What the interlocutor
really desired, then, was to enrol in Socrates’ school: the school of the
consciousness of noteknowing,

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In erotic irony, Socrates used amorous declarations to pretend that he
wanted his ostensible lover to hand over to him not his knowledge, but his
physical beauty. This situation is understandable: Socrates was not attractive,
whereas the young man was. In this case, however, the beloved — or
supposedly beloved — discovered through Socrates’ attitude that he was
incapable of satisfying Socrates’ love, because there was no true beauty within
him. Upon discovering his shortcomings, the beloved would then fall in love
with Socrates. It was not beauty with which the beloved fell in love — Socrates
did not have any - rather, he fell in love with the love which, according to
Socrates’ definition in the Symposium,® is desire for the beauty which all of
us lack. To be in love with Socrates, then, was to be in love with love.

This is precisely the meaning of the Symposium. The whole dialogue is
constructed so as to make the reader guess the identity between the figures of
Socrates and Eros. Plato depicts the guests taking turns, going from left to
right, giving speeches in praise of Eros. In succession, we hear Phaedrus and
Pausanias, then Eryximachus the doctor, Aristophanes the comic poet, and
finally the tragic poet Ariston. When Socrates’ turn comes, he does not give
a straightforward speech in praise of love, for that would be contrary to his
method. Instead, he reports the conversation he had once had with Diotima,
a priestess from Mantinea, who told him the myth of the birth of Eros.
Theoretically, the dialogue would have ended here, were it not for Alcibiades’
sudden intrusion into the banquet room. Crowned with violets and ivy leaves
and rather drunk, Alcibiades submits to the rules of the banquet, but instead
of praising Eros, he gives a speech in praise of Socrates.

The identity between Socrates and Eros is underlined in several ways: not
only does the speech in praise of Socrates take its place in the series of
speeches already given in praise of Eros, but, in addition, there are many
significant features in common between the portrait of Eros, as sketched by
Diotima, and the portrait of Socrates given by Alcibiades.

On the day of Aphrodite’s birth, recounts Diotima, the gods had a banquet.
Penia — that is, “Poverty” or “Privation” — came begging at the end of the
meal. There she espied Poros — “Means,” “Expedient,” or “Wealth” — drunk
on nectar and asleep in Zeus’ garden. As a way out of her destitution, Penia
decided to have a child by Poros, so she lay with him while he slept, and
conceived Eros.

This account of the genealogy of Eros allows Diotima to give a description
of him so subtle that it can be interpreted on a variety of levels. In the first
place, following the exact words of the myth, we can recognize in Eros the
features of both his mother and his father. From his father’s side, he gets his
clever, inventive mind (in Greek exporia). From his mother, he inherits the
condition of a poverty-stricken beggar: aporia. Behind this description, we can
distinguish a quite particular conception of love. Whereas the other guests had
described ros in an idealized way, Socrates recounts his conversation with

The Figure of Socrates 161

Diotima in order to introduce some realism into the vision of love. Contrary
to what the other guests assume, says Socrates, it is not the case that love is
beautiful. If it were, it would no longer be love, for Eros is essentially desire,
and the only thing that can be desired is that which one does not have. Eros,
then, cannot be beautiful: as the son of Penia, he lacks beauty, but as the son
of Poros, he knows how to remedy his lack. Agathon has confused love with
its object, the beloved.

For Socrates, love is a /over. It is therefore not, as most people think, a god,
but only a daimon; a being intermediate between the human and the divine.

This is why there is something comic about Diotima’s description of Eros.
In it, we can perceive the beggarly existence to which love can condemn us.
This is the familiar theme of “Militat omnis amans”:* in which the lover
stands guard on his beloved’s doorstep, or spends the night sleeping on the
ground. Eros is both beggar and soldier, but also inventor, sorcerer, magician,
and clever talker, for love makes him ingenious. For him, life is an
uninterrupted suite of discouragement and hope, necd and satisfaction, which
succeed one another in accordance with the successes and defcats of his love.

This is Eros in his monstrous aspect — good-for-nothing, shameless,
obstinate, loud-mouthed and savage — whose misdeeds are depicted with such
relish in Greek poetry, right down to the Byzantine period.*

And yet, with astonishing skill, Plato makes the features of Socrates “the
philosopher” appear beneath the figure of Eros the hunter. Agathon may
think Eros is delicate and lovely, but Diotima asserts he is, in reality, always
poor, rough, dirty, and barefoot. In his speech in praise of Socrates,
Alcibiades likewise portrays Socrates as barefoot, covered only by a coarse
coat which barely protects him from the winter cold.” From the context of
the dialogue, we learn that Socrates has, exceptionally, taken a bath before
coming to the symposium.” The comic poets, too, had a good laugh at the
expense of Socrates’ bare feet and old cloak.”

The figure of Socrates as Eros the beggar was subsequently taken up by the
Cynic philosophers, in particular Diogenes. Diogenes, who seems to have
designated himself as a “furious Socrates,” used to go wandcring with only
his cloak and knapsack, bereft of hearth and home.” As Friedlander points
out,” barefooted Eros also calls to mind primitive man, as he is depicted by
Plato in the Protagoras (321c5) and the Statesman (272a5).

We arc thus brought back to the figure of that purely natural being, Silenus,
with his primitive strength, more primal than culture and civilization. The fact
that this element enters into the complex portrait of Socrates/Eros is not a matter
of indifference. Rather, it corresponds perfectly to the reversal of values brought
about by Socratic consciousness. For the person concerned about his soul, what
is essential is not to be found in appearance, dress, or comfort, but in freedom.

And yet, Diotima stresses that Eros has inherited some features from his
father: “he sets traps for noble souls, for he is bold, headstrong, and full of

162 Figures

endurance. He’s a dangerous hunter, always plotting some trick; he lusts
after cleverness,™ is full of resources, and is always thinking up some scheme;
he’s a terrible sorcerer, magician, and sophist.”** We could very well be
listening to Strepsiades in Aristophanes’ Clouds, describing what he wants
to become after his Socratic education: “audacious, glib, daring and head-
strong... never at a loss for words, a real fox.” In his speech prais-
ing Socrates, Alcibiades had called him an impudent Silenus,” and
Agathon had bestowed upon Socrates the epithet of Aybristes™ For
Alcibiades, Socrates is a magician” and a smooth talker, skilled in attracting
pretty boys.'®

Eros’ toughness appears once again in the portrait which Alcibiades
sketches of Socrates on campaign with the army. He could, Alcibiades says,
put up with cold, hunger, and fear, and hold his wine as easily as he endured
long bouts of meditation." During the retreat from Delion, Alcibiades tells
us, Socrates walked as calmly as if he were in the streets of Athens, where
Aristophanes describes him as “holding his head high... rolling his eyes,
barefoot, looking solemn.” ' As we can see, this portrait of Socrates/Eros is
not very flattering; we are clearly smack in the midst of Platonic — if not
Socratic — irony. Nevertheless, this image is not without its profound
psychological truth.

Eros, Diotima tells us, is a daimon: that is, a being intermediate between
gods and men. Once more, we are forced to consider the problem of
intermediary states, and we realize once more just how uncomfortable such a
situation is. Eros the daimon, as Diotima describes him to us, is undefinable
and unclassifiable: he too, like Socrates, is atopos. He is neither god nor man,
fair nor ugly, wise nor foolish, good nor evil.'® Yet he still embodies desire,
for, like Socrates, he is aware that he is neither handsome nor wise. This is
why he is a philo-sopher — a lover of wisdom. In other words, he desires to
attain to the level of being of divine perfection. Thus, according to Diotima’s
description, Eros is the desire for his own perfection, which is to say, for his
true self. He suffers from being deprived of the plenitude of being, and he
strives to attain it. When other men fall in love with Socrates/ Eros — that is,
when they fall in love with love, such as Socrates reveals it to them — what
they love in Socrates is his love for, and aspiration toward, beauty and the
perfection of being. In Socrates, they find the path toward their own
perfection.

Eros, like Socrates, is merely a call and a possibility; he is neither wisdom
nor beauty itself. To be sure, if one opens up the little Sileni mentioned by
Alcibiades, they turn out to be full of statues of gods.'"* The Sileni, however,
are not themselves the statues. They only open up so that onc can get at them.
The etymological meaning of Poros, Fros’ father, is “means of access” or
“way out.” Socrates is only a Silenus, opening up onto something beyond
himself.

The Figure of Socrates 163

The philosopher, too, is nothing other than this: a summons to existence.
As Socrates puts it ironically to the handsome Alcibiades: “If you love me, it
must be because you have seen in me a beauty which bears no resemblance
to your own physical beauty . . . But consider the matter more carefully, lest
you make a mistake both about me and about me and about my real
nothingness.” !5 Here Socrates gives Alcibiades a warning. In loving Socrates,
he is really only loving Eros: not Aphrodite’s son, but the son of Poros and
Penia. The cause of his love is that he senses that Socrates can open up to
him a path toward an extraordinary beauty, transcending all earthly beauties.
Socrates’ virtues — those statues of the gods hidden within the ironical Silenus
- which Alcibiades admires so much,'™ are only a reflection and a foretaste of
that perfect wisdom which Socrates desircs, and which Alcibiades desires
through Socrates.

In Socratic Eros, we find the same basic structure as in Socratic irony: a
divided consciousness, passionately aware that it is not what it ought to be. It
is from this feeling of separation and lack that love is born.

One of Plato’s greatest merits will always be that he was able, via the myth
of Socrates/Eros, to introduce into the philosophical life the dimension of
love — that is, of desire and the irrational. He accomplished this in several
ways: in the first place, in the experience of dialogue itself, in which two
interlocutors experience a passionate will to clarify a problem together. Quite
apart from the dialectical movement of the logos, the path traveled together
by Socrates and his partner, and their common will to come to an agreement,
are already a kind of love. There is a great deal more philosophy in spiritual
exercises like Socrates’ dialogues than in the construction of a philosophical
system. The task of dialogue consists essentially in pointing out the limits of
language, and its inability to communicate moral and existential experience.
Yet the dialogue itself, qua event and spiritual activity, already constitutes a
moral and existential experience, for Socratic philosophy is not the solit-
ary elaboration of a system, but the awakening of consciousness, and accession
to a level of being which can only be reached in a person-to-person
relationship.

Just like ironical Socrates, Eros teaches nothing, for he is ignorant. He does
not make people more wise; he makes them other. He, too, is maieutic: he
helps souls to engender themselves.

It is touching to trace the influence of Socratic Eros throughout his-
tory.’ In third-century Alexandria, for instance, the Christian
writer Gregory Thaumaturgus praised his master Origen in the following
terms:

And thus, like some spark lighting upon our inmost soul, love was
kindled and burst into flame within us - a love at once for the Logos...
and for thix man, its friend and advocate... sometimes he would

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approach us in the genuine Socratic fashion, and trip us up by his
argumentation whenever he saw us getting restive under him, like so
many unbroken horses.!

As Bertram has shown in some splendid pages,'® we encounter the tradition
of Socratic Eros and the educative daimon in Nietzsche. According to
Bertram, three sayings sum up perfectly this erotic dimension of pedagogy.
One is by Nietzsche himself: “The deepest insights spring from love alone.” ''°
Another is by Goethe: “We learn only from those we love.”"'' Finally, there
is Hélderlin’s dictum: “Mortal man gives his best when he loves.” '!? These
three maxims go to show that it is only through reciprocal love that we can
accede to genuine consciousness.

Using Goethe’s terminology, we could characterize this dimension of love,
desire, and the irrational as the “demonic.” Plato had encountered this
dimension in the person of Socrates himself. As is well known, Socrates’
daimon was a kind of inspiration which sometimes,came over him in a
completely irrational way, as a negative sign telling him not to do such and
such a thing. It was, in a sense, his real “character,” or true self. Moreover,
this irrational element in Socratic consciousness is probably not without
relation to Socratic irony. It is possible that Socrates’ reason for asserting that
he did not know anything was that, when it came time for action, he trusted
in his own daimon, as he also trusted in the daimon of his interlocutors. In any
case, as James Hillman pointed out in 1966, if Plato was able to bestow upon
Socrates the figure of the great daimon Eros, it was probably because, in
Socrates, he had encountered a demonic man."

How can we describe this dimension of the demonic? No one could be a
better guide for us in this matter than Goethe, who was fascinated and
troubled by the mystery of the “demonic” all throughout his life. His first
encounter with the demonic had probably been Socrates’ daimon, as depicted
in Hamann’s Socratic Memorabilia.“ Socrates fascinated Goethe to such an
extent that we find the following extraordinary exclamation in his letter to
Herder of 1772: “If only I could be Alcibiades for one day and one night, and
then die!” "5 For Goethe, the demonic had all the ambiguous and ambivalent
features of Socratic Eros. It is, as he writes in Book 20 of Poetry and Truth,'"*
a force which is neither divine nor human, neither diabolical nor angelic,
which simultaneously unites and separates all beings. Just as in the case of
Eros in the Symposium, it can only be defined by simultaneous and contradic-
tory negations. Yet it is a force which gives its holders an incredible power
over beings and things. The demonic represents a kind of natural magic
within the dimension of the irrational and inexplicable. This irrational
element is the motor force indispensable for all creation; it is the blind,
inexorable dynamic which we cannot escape, but must rather learn how to
use. In his Urmorte, Goethe writes as follows about the damon of individuals:

The Figure of Socrates 165

So must you be; you cannot escape yourself.
... Mo time nor power may destroy
Form marked with a seal, which develops as it lives.'"”

In Goethe, the creatures who most faithfully represent this demonic element
take on the features of Eros in the Symposium. As Raabe has demonstrated,
this is particularly true in the case of Mignon.''® Mignon, like Eros, is
indigent, but she aspires to purity and beauty. Although her clothing is poor
and coarse, her musical gifts reveal her inner riches. Like Eros, she sleeps on
the bare ground, or on Wilhelm Meister’s doorstep. Finally, like Eros, she is
the projection and incarnation of Wilhelm Meister’s nostalgia for a higher
form of life.

Another demonic figure in Goethe is Ottilia, heroine of the Elective Affinities.
She is depicted as a natural force, powerful, strange, and fascinating. Her
profound relationship to Eros is more discreetly indicated than in the case of
Mignon, but it is no less real. Mention should also be made of the
hermaphroditic figure of Homunculus, whose relationship to Eros is emphas-
ized so clearly in Act II of the Second Faust.!"

As an ambiguous, ambivalent, indecisive element, the demonic is neither
good nor evil. Only mankind’s moral decision can give it its definitive valuc.
And yet, this irrational, inexplicable element is inseparable from existence.
The encounter with the demonic, and the dangerous game with Eros, cannot
be avoided.

3 Dionysos

We shall now return to Nietzsche’s odd, amorous hatred for Socrates. To be
sure, Bertram has already stated the essential on this point,'”? but perhaps
Nietzsche’s complex attitude can be better understood by considering some
of the less frequently noticed elements which go to make up the Socrates of
the Symposium.

Nietzsche was quite familiar with the strange seductive powers of Socrates,
whom he termed “This mocking and enamored monster and pied piper of
Athens, who made the most overweening youths tremble and sob.”!?! Nietz-
sche tries to define the mechanism of this seduction: “I have made under-
standable how it was that Socrates could repel: it is therefore all the more
necessary to explain his fascination.” '!2 Nietzsche then goes on to propose
several explanations: Socrates flattered the Greeks’ taste for combat with his
dialectics; he was a great crotic; he understood his historical role of counter-
acting instinctive decadence by means of rationality. The truth is that none of
these explanations is particularly fascinating. Nietzsche does, however, suggest
a more profound cause: the seduction Socrates exercised on all posterity came

166 Figures

from his attitude in the face of death. More specifically, it came from the
semi-voluntary nature of his death. As early as his first work, The Birth of
Tragedy, Nietzsche summed up the last pages of the Phaedo and the
Symposium in a grandiose image:

that he was sentenced to death, not exile, Socrates himself seems to have
brought about with perfect awareness and without any natural awe of
death. He went to his death with the calm with which, according to
Plato’s description, he leaves the Symposium at dawn, the last of the
revelers, to begin a new day, while on the benches and on the ground
his drowsy table companions remain behind to dream of Socrates, the
true Eroticist. The dying Socrates becomes the new ideal, never seen
before, of noble Greek youths.'?!

Nietzsche sensed and foresaw, in the concluding scene of Plato’s Sympo-
sium, a symbol of Socrates’ death. Taken by itself, Plato’s description of the
scene was as simple as could be:

Only Agathon, Aristophanes and Socrates were still awake, and they
were passing a huge bowl from left to right, and drinking from it.
Socrates was holding a discussion with them... he was gradually
forcing them to admit that one and the same author ought to be able to
compose both comic and tragic poetry... Aristophanes was the first to
fall asleep, and then, when the sun had already risen, Agathon. Socrates
... then got up and left. He headed for the Lyceum, and, after splashing
himself with water, he spent the rest of the day just like he would have
any other.’

The ambiguous symbolism latent in this sober passage has not been lost on
modern poets. C.F. Meyer, for instance, gave the following picture of the
figure of the dying Socrates, in that dawn when only the philosopher is still
awake:

While Socrates’ friends drank with him

And their heads sank down on their pillows

A young man came in — I remember it well

Along with two lithe flute-players.

We drained our cups to the dregs,

And our lips, tired from so much talk, fell silent
A song hovered above the withered garlands...
Silence! The sleepy flutes of death are sounding!""'

The Figure of Socrates 167

By contrast, what Holderlin saw in this episode was Socrates the lover of life:

Yet each of us has his measure.

For hard to bear

Is misfortune, but harder still good fortune.
Yet one wise man was able

From noon to midnight, and on

Till morning lit up the sky

To keep wide awake at the banquet.'”

Herein lies the enigma Socrates posed for Nietzsche. How could someone
who loved life as much as Socrates loved it seem, by his will to die, to hate
existence? For Nietzsche was quite familiar with the Socrates who loved life;
indeed, he loved him:

If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the
Memorabilia'”’ of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and
reason, and when Montaigne and Horace will be employed as forerunners
and signposts to an understanding of Socrates, that simplest and most
imperishable of intercessors. The pathways of the most various philosoph-
ical modes of life lead back to him... Socrates excels the founder of
Christianity in possessing a joyful kind of seriousness and that wisdom full
of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul.'#

We can see Socrates’ “wisdom full of rogutshness” in Xenophon’s depiction of
Socrates dancing;'”’ in the jesting, ironical Socrates of the Platonic dialogues;
and in the figure of the life-loving philosopher in Hdlderlin’s poem “Socrates
and Alkibiades”:

“Holy Socrates, why do you always
Pay court to this young man?

Do you know nothing greater?

Why do your eyes gaze lovingly on him
As on a god?”

“He who has thought most deeply
Loves that which is the most alive.

He who has seen the world

Can understand lofty Youth.

And often, in the end,

The wise bow down before the fair.”'°

In Nietzsche's essay Schopenhauer as Educator, the figure of Schopenhauer is
merged with thin figure of Socrates-as-lover-of-life. In the following

168 Figures

extraordinary passage, Nietzsche has recourse to Hdlderlin’s verses in order
to describe the sage’s gaiety:

Nothing better or happier can befall a man than to be in the proximity
of one of those victorious ones, who, precisely because they have thought
most dee ply, must love what is most living and, as sages, incline in the end to
the beautiful . .. They are active and truly alive .. . which is why, in their
proximity, we feel human and natural for once, and feel like exclaiming
with Goethe: “How glorious and precious is a living thing! how well
adapted to the conditions it lives in, how true, how existent!” !3!

In The Birth of Tragedy,'* Nietzsche thought he could foresee the coming
of a musical Socrates. Socrates the musician, he thought, would answer the
call which, in Socrates’ dreams, had invited the philosopher to devote himself
to music; he would thereby reconcile the ironic lucidity of rational conscious-
ness with demonic enthusiasm. Such a figure, says Nietzsche in his unpub-
lished writings, would be a true example of “tragic man.” Nietzsche projected
his own dream of a reconciliation between Apollo and Dionysos into this
image of Socrates as musician.

In the dying Socrates, Nietzsche saw yet another reflection of his own
drama. Socrates wanted to die — this is what was so shocking to Nietzsche —
and at the moment of his death his spoke these enigmatic words: ‘“O Crito,
we owe a rooster to Asclepius.” '} It was as if he had been cured from some
illness, and owed a debt to the god of healing.

This ridiculous and terrible “last word” means, for those who have ears:
“O Crito, life is a disease.” Is it possible that a man like him... should
have been a pessimist? He had merely kept a cheerful mien while
concealing all his life long his ultimate judgment, his inmost feeling.
Socrates, Socrates sufJered life! And then he still revenged himself — with
this veiled, gruesome, pious, and blasphemous saying. . . I wish he had
remained taciturn also at the last moment of his life; in that case he
might have belonged to a still higher order of spirits.'*

As Bertram has shown so well, Nietzsche here gives us the clue to his own secret,
intimate doubt, and to the drama of his entire existence. Nietzsche would have
liked to be the bard of the joy of life and existence; yet, in the final analysis,
wasn’t he, too, afraid that life might be nothing but a disease? By letting what he
thought of terrestrial existence be known, Socrates gave his secret away. Yet
Nietzsche manted to belong to that “higher order of spirits”: those, that is, who
can keep quiet about this terrifying secret. In Bertram’s words: “Was his extreme,
Dionysiac pacan to life, and to life alone, only the kind of silence, beneath which
av great educator for life did not believe in life?"

The Figure of Socrates 169

In the Twilight of the Idols, we find one final reversal in Nietzsche’s
reinterpretation of Socrates’ last words. Here, the sickness from which
Socrates is to be cured is not life itself, but the kind of life Socrates led:
“* ‘Socrates is no physician,” he said softly to himself; ‘here death alone is the
physician. Socrates himself has merely been sick for a long time.’ ”'* On this
interpretation, Socratic lucidity and Socratic morality correspond to a sickness
gnawing away at life. Yet, here again, might not Socrates’ illness be the same
as that of Nietzsche himself? This myth-dissolving lucidity, this pitiless
consciousness; are they not those of Nietzsche himself? Nietzsche’s amorous
hatred for Socrates was, in the last analysis, identical with the amorous hatred
Nietzsche felt for himself. Perhaps the ambiguity of the figure of Socrates in
Nietzsche was rooted in the ambiguity of the central figure of Nietzschean
mythology: Dionysos, god of death and of life.

For reasons which, in the last analysis, remain rather mysterious for us,
Plato in his Symposium surrounded Socrates with a whole cluster of Dionysiac
symbols.'*” In fact, the entire dialogue could have been entitled The Judgment
of Dionysos, since Agathon tells Socrates that, when it comes to finding out
who is wiser, he or Socrates, they will leave the question up to Dionysos. In
other words, whoever drinks the most will win this contest of sophia — wisdom
and knowledge — placcd as it is under the sign of the god of wine.'3*> When
Alcibiades later bursts into the banquet room, he is crowned with violets and
ivy leaves, just like Dionysos.'» As soon as he comes in, Alcibiades places a
crown of headbands around Socrates’ head, as it was the custom to do for the
victor in poetry contests."° We recall that Dionysos was the god both of
tragedy and of comedy. In the course of his speech in praise of Socrates,
Alcibiades composes what Socrates later terms “a drama of satyrs and
Sileni,” “' since these are the beings to which he compares Socrates. Again,
we recall that satyrs and Sileni formed the accompanying entourage of
Dionysos, and that the centre of satyric drama was, originally, the passion
of Dionysos. In the final scene of the Symposium, we find Socrates alone with
the tragic poet Agathon and the comic poet Aristophanes, gradually convinc-
ing them that one and the same man should be able to be both a tragic
and a comic poet.'” Agathon, in his praise of Eros, ‘had said that love was the
greatest of poets." Thus, Socrates, who excels in the field of Eros, also
excels in that of Dionysos. After all, he has no rival when it comes to holding
his wine,'* and if, as a result of the “Judgment of Dionysos,” he wins the
wisdom contest, it is because he is the only one still awake at the end of the
banquet.'5 Can we discern yet another Dionysiac characteristic in his
prolonged ccstasics and transports, which are mentioned twice in the dia-
logue?!

Thus, we find in Plato’s Symposium what seems to be a conscious and
deliberate ensemble of allusions to the Dionysiac nature of the figure of
Socrates. ‘Thin ensemble culminates in the final scene of the dialogue, in

170 Figures

which Socrates emerges victorious from the judgment of Dionysos, as the best
drinker and the best poet.

We should not be surprised if, paradoxically, secretly, and perhaps
unconsciously, the figure of Socrates comes, for Nietzsche, to coincide with
the figure of Dionysos.

At the end of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche dedicates to Dionysos an
extraordinary panegyric of the “genius of the heart,” which he repeats, as
evidence of his skill in psychological mastery, in the Ecce Homo," although
this time he makes a point of refusing to say whom he is addressing. In this
hymn, it is as though we hear an echo of the Veni Sancte Spiritus,"*® that old
medieval encomium of the Holy Ghost (of which Hamann"? considered
Socrates’ daimon to be a prefiguration): “Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod
est frigidum, rege quod est devium.” '° For Nietzsche, the genius of the heart
has the same marvelously delicate power of softening, warming, and straighten-
ing. In his portrait of the spiritual guide with demonic powers, Nietzsche
intended to describe the action of Socrates. But as Bertram has suggested,'>!
wasn’t he also thinking — consciously or unconsciously — of Socrates?

We will conclude with Nietzsche’s encomium, since it sums up admirably
all the themes of our discussion:

The genius of the heart, as that great concealed one possesses it, the
tempter god and born pied piper of consciences, whose voice knows how
to descend into the netherworld of every soul; who does not say a word or
cast a glance in which there lies no secret goal of seduction . . . the genius
of the heart who silences all that is loud and self-satisfied, teaching it to
listen; who smooths rough souls and lets them taste a new desire — to lie
stll as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them. . . the genius
of the heart from whose touch everyone walks away richer, not having
received grace and surprised, not as blessed and oppressed by alien goods,
but richer in himself, newer to himself than before, broken open and
sounded out by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps; tenderer, more
fragile, more broken, but full of hopes that as yet have no name.'*?

NOTES

1 Aristotle, Protrepticus, frg. 5, p. 33 Ross. Cf. the German translation in I. Diiring
Aristoleles. Darstellung und Inter pretationen seines Denkens, Heidelberg 1966, p. 414
and n. 87 = frg. B 39 in Diiring’s 1969 German translation of the Protepticus,
p. 47.

2 On the problem of the historical Socrates, see the collection of articles in
Andreas Patzer, ed., Der historische Sociates (= Wege der Forschung 585),
Darmstadt 1987.

3 On Kierkegaard and Socrates, cf J. Eimmelatrup, §. Aterkegaards Sakrates.

The Figure of Socrates 171

Auffassung, Neumiinster 1927; J. Wild, “Kierkegaard and classical philology,”
Philosophical Review 49 (1940), pp. 536-7; J. Wahl, Etudes kierkegaardiennes, 3rd
edn, Paris 1967; E. Pivcevic, Jronie als Daseinsform bei Séren Kierkegaard,
Gitersloh 1960; T. Bohlin 1941.

On Nietzsche and Socrates, see E. Bertram, Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie,

Berlin 1918, repr. Bonn, 8th edn, 1965; H. Hasse, Das Problem des Sokrates bei

F. Nietzsche, Leipzig 1918, K. Hildebrandt, Nietzsches Wettkampf mit Sokrates

und Platon, Dresden 1922; E. Sandvoss, Sokrates und Nietzsche, Leiden 1966; H.J.

Schmidt, Nietzsche and Sokrates, Meisenheim 1969; Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche.

Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th edn, Princeton NJ 1974. On the vast

phenomenon of Socrates’ influence in the West, the reader will find a handy

collection of texts in H. Spiegelberg, The Socratic Enigma, New York 1964. For
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see B. Bohm, Sokrates im achtzehnten

Jahrhundert Studien zum Werdegang des modernen Pérsonlichkeitsbewusstseins,

Leipzig 1929; H.-G. Seebeck, Das Sokratesbild vom 19. Jahrhundert, Gottingen

1947.

Plato, Symposium, 215b-c; Xenophon, Symposium, 4, 19; 5, 7; Aristophanes,

Clouds, 362 (Socrates as cross-cyed). Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 117b.

6 Fricdrich Nietzsche, “Socrates and Tragedy,” Posthumous Writings 1870-1873,

Second Lecture, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Samtliche Werke, eds G. Colli and

M. Montinari, 15 vols, Berlin 1980 (hereafter Colli/Montinari), vol. 1, p. 545.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, 3-4, vol. 6,

pp. 68-9, Colli/Montinari = The Portable Nietzsche, trans., intro., preface and

notes Walter Kaufmann (= Viking Portable Library 62), New York 1954, repr.

1968 (hereafter PN), pp. 474-5.

Nietzsche, “Socrates and Tragedy,” vol. 1, p. 544, Colli/Montinari.

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, 3. On this anecdote,

cf. Cicero, On Fate, 5, 10; Tusculan Disputations, 4, 37, 80; Alexander of

Aphrodisias, On Fate, p. 171, 11 Bruns. According to Zopyrus, Socrates was

stupid and slow because he lacked a hollow space between his collar-bones. We

can perhaps detect an echo of this notion in Carus’ description of the “Boeotian
type”; cf. C.G. Carus, Symbolik der menschlichen Gestalt, 1858, repr. Hilde-

sheim/Damstadt 1962, p. 267.

10 Sce above.

1] In The Birth of Tragedy, 8, Nietzsche insists on the alliance between wisdom and
primitive instinct in the figure of the Sileni and Satyrs. Compare Jung’s remarks
on the alliance between wisdom and buffoonery in the nature of the elf (C.G.
Jung, Von den Wurzeln des Berussteins, Zurich 1954, p. 42). See also the following
note.

12 Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates, GW
31, p. 10 = trans., intro., and notes Lee M. Capel, New York 1965 (hereafter
Capel), p. 50.

13 Plato, Symposium, 215b.

14 Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, 4, vol. 6, p. 69
Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 475.

1§ Plato, Symposunm, 216.

>

wn

“n

‘© 0

172 Figures

16 Ibid, 22le.

17 Ibid, 216d.

18 K. Gaiser, Protreptik und Pardnese bei Platon. Untersuchungen zur Form des
platonischen Dialogs, Stuttgart 1959, pp. 26, 149ff, 197.

19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 3, vol. 6, p. 320 Colli/Montinari = in Friedrich
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J.
Hollingdale, New York 1969 (hereafter Kaufmann and Hollingdale), p. 280.

20 P. Friedlander, Plato = An Introduction (= Bollingen Series 59.1), trans.
H. Meyerhoff, vol. 1, 2nd edn, Princeton NJ 1969, p. 126.

21 Cf. K. Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre. Studien zur systematischen und
geschichtlichen Begriindung der Wissenschaften in der platonischen Schule, Stuttgart
1963, 2nd edn 1968; H.-J. Kramer, Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles. Zum Wesen
und zur Geschichte der platonischen Ontologie, Heidelberg 1959; 2nd edn,
Amsterdam 1967. On the history and current state of the question, see
J. Wippern, ed., Das Problem der ungeschriebenen Lehre Platons (= Wege der
Forschung 186), Darmstadt 1972; M.-D. Richard, L’Enseignement oral de Platon,
une nouvelle inter prétation du platonisme, preface Pierre Hadot, Paris 1986.

22 J.G. Hamann, Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten, with notes by F. Blanke, Giitersboh
1959, p. 74. [“In an imitative way.” — Trans.]

23 Cf. Bohm, Sokrates, cited above, n. 4.

24 J. Wahl, Etudes kierkegaardiennes, 3rd edn, Paris 1967, p. 282.

25 Soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for my Work as an Author, GW 33, II, 1,
A&5, p. 48 = trans., intro. and notes Walter Lowrie, New York 1962, Ist edn
1939 (hereafter Lowrie), pp. 39-40.

26 Seren Kierkegaard, Tagebiicher (Diaries), Diisseldorf/Cologne 1982, vol. 2,
p. 84 [= 8, A 27 (1847).

27 Soren Kierkegaard, The Instant, GW 34, p. 329.

28 Cf. Seren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (GW 16, p. 240: “Socrates
was very careful that there should be no direct relationship between the teacher
and the student.” On indirect communication, see Wahl, Etudes Kierkagaardiennes,
pp. 281-8, 584 (on Nietzsche’s theory of the mask).

29 Friedrich Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragments, June-July 1885, 37 (7), vol. 11,

p. 580 Colli/Montinari = WP 980 (1885), p. 512.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §40, vol. 5, p. 58 Colli/Montinari =

trans. with commentary Walter Kaufmann, New York 1966 (hereafter Kauf-

mann), p. 51.

Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragments, April-June 1885, 34 (66), vol. 11, p. 440

Colli/Montinari.

32 Nietzsche, The Dawn, 4, §421, vol. 3, p. 257 Colli/Montinari.

33 Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, §3, vol. 6, pp. 319-21 Colli/Montinari = pp. 280-2
Kaufmann and Hollingdale.

34 E. Bertram, Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie, Berlin 1918, repr. Bonn, 8th edn
1965, p. 182. Bertram’s entire chapter on Nietzsche and the Mask is essential reading.

35 Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragments, 6 (3), Summer 1875, vol. 8, p. 97 Colli/Mon-
tinari.

36 Plato, Republic, 3370; Symposium, 2100 5; Apology, 380 1,

3

So

3

—

The Figure of Socrates 173

37 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1108a 22; 1127a 22.

38 Theophrastus, Characters, §1.

39 Cf. H. Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik, Munich 1960, §§582; 902,
with abundant references. One of the finest examples of the rhetorical use of
irony is the praise of slavery in Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Lois, 15, 5.

40 Cicero, Lucullus, 15; Brutus, 292-300.

41 Plato, Symposium, 221e.

42 Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, §175, vol. 2, p. 627 Colli/Montinari = (Texts
in German Philosophy), trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge 1986 (hereafter
Hollingdale), p. 352.

43 Epictetus, Manual, §46. Cf. F. Schweingruber, “Sokrates und Epiktet,” Hermes
78 (1943), pp. 52-79.

44 Plato, Republic, 337a. Cf. Gorgias, 489e; Theaetetus, 150c.

45 Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, 183b8.

46 G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen tiber die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2, p. 65 =
Hegel's Lectures 3 vols, London 1892, repr. London 1955 (hereafter Haldane), vol.
1, p. 203. The pages Hegel devoted to Socrates in this work are of great
profundity, permeated as they are by the great problem of romantic irony.

47 Cf. P. Moraux, “La joute dialectique d’aprés le huitiéme livre des Topiques,” in
G.E.L. Owends, ed., Aristotle on Dialectic (= Proceedings of the Third
Symposium Aristotelicum), Oxford 1968. On the philosophical significance of
such dialectical jousts, cf. E. Weil, “La place de la logique dans la pensée
aristotélicienne,” Revue de la Métaphysique et de Morale 56 (1951), pp. 283-315.

48 O. Apelt, Platonische Aufsdtze, Berlin 1912, pp. 96-108. On Socratic irony, the
reader may consult the important work of M. Landmann, Elenktik und Maieutuk,
Bonn 1950, and the excellent article by René Schaerer, “Le mécanisme de l’ironie
dans ses rapports avec la dialectique,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 49
(1941), pp. 181ff. On irony in general, see Vladimir Jankélévitch, L'Jronie, Paris
1964.

49 [“Splitting” and “doubling” — Trans.]

50 The logos common to Socrates and to his interlocutors is personified in Plato,
Protagoras, 361a.

51 Plato, Theaetetus, 149aff.

52 Kierkegaard, Point of View, §2, GW 33, II, 1, A, p. 40 = pp. 29-30 Lowrie.

53 Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, GW 10, pp. 58, 21.

54 Plato, Apology, 21d5. ‘

55 Plato, Symposium, 175d.

56 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4, 4, 10.

57 Plato, Laches, 187e.

58 Plato, Apology, 36b.

59 Plato, Alcibiades, 120d4; Apology, 36c.

60 Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 3, 4, vol. 1, p. 374 Colli/Montinars= trans. R.J.
Hollingdale, intro. J.P. Stern, Cambridge 1983, repr. 1990 (hereafter Hollingdale
and Stern), pp. 154-5.

61 Ibid, p. 373 Colli/Montinari = p. 154 Hollingdale and Stern.

02 Ibid, 3, 5, p. 379 Colli/Montinari = p. 158 Hollingdale and Stern.

174 Figures

63 Plato, Symposium, 216a.

64 Hegel insists strongly on this point; cf. History of Philosophy, 1, 2B, 36, = vol. 1,
p. 442 Haldane: “no people, and least of all a free people like the Athenians, has
by this freedom to recognize a tribunal of conscience.”

65 Socrates’ will to die posed a grave problem for Nietzsche; we shall return to this
point later.

66 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 82ff Lowrie.

67 Kierkegaard, Point of View, Part II, ch. 2, B p. 61 Lowrie.

68 Cf. Wahl, Brudes Kierkegaardiennes, pp. 281ff; and especially the author's remarks
on the relationship between the divine incognito and the incognito of the writer,
p. 285, n. 1.

69 Nietsche, Posthumous Fragments, April-June 1885, 34 (148), vol. 11, p. 470
Colli/Montinari.

70 Cf. Plato, Apology, 23b: “The wisest [sophotatos] of you men is he who has
realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom [sophia] he is really worthless.”

71 Cf. Wahl, Etudes kierkegaardiennes, pp. 387, 409 n. 1 (on Kierkegaard’s negative
theology).

72 Seren Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick (The Instant), 10, GW 34, pp. 330-1.

73 Friedlander, Plato, p. 153.

74 Werner Jaeger, Paideia, vol. 2, Berlin 1954, p. 64.

75 Kierkegaard, Point of View, GW 33, p. 64 = p. 61 Lowrie.

76 Plato, Symposium, 215a; Phaedrus, 229-30; Alcibiades, 106a.

77 Plato, Theaetetus, 149a.

78 Plato, Symposium, 221c-d.

79 Kierkegaard, Point of View, GW 33, p. 113 = p. 102 Lowrie.

80 On Socrates and Eros, see J. Hillman, “On psychological creativity,” Eranos-
Jahrbuch 35 (1966), pp. 370-98. The author emphasizes the demonic aspect of
Socratic Eros, and I believe our investigations are mutually complementary.

81 Cf. H.-I. Marrou, Histoire de l'éducation dans l’Antiquité, 6th edn, Paris 1971,
ch. 3: “De la pédérastie comme éducation” [“On pederasty as education” —
Trans.].

82 Plato, Symposium, 217-18.

83 Ibid, 218a, 215e, 222b.

84 Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, ch. 2, GW 31, p. 194 = p. 213 Capel.

85 Plato, Symposium, 200-1.

86 See, above all, Leon Robin, “Introduction,” in Platon, Le Banquet (Bude), Paris
1951, pp. CI-CIX; Robin, La théorie platonicienne de l'amour, Paris 1933, p. 195;
Friedlander, Plato, ch. 2: “Demon and Eros.”

87 [“Every lover is a soldier.” - Trans.]

88 On the genealogy of Eros, see M. Détienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les ruses
de I'intelligence. La métis des Grecs, Paris 1974, p. 140; A. Spies, Militar
omnis amans. Ein Beitrag zur Bildersprache der antiken Erotik, Tubingen 1930. On
Eros as a good-for-nothing, see the Anthologia Palatina, Book 5, Epigrams
176-80.

89 Plato, Symposium, 203c—d, 220b. On Socrates and Eros, see Jankeélévitch,
L'Tronie, pp. 122-5; ‘T. Gould, Platonic Love, London 1963, p, 57.

The Figure of Socrates 175

90 Plato, Symposium, 174a.

91 See the passages quoted by Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 2, 27-8.

92 On the life-style of Diogenes the Cynic, see Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 6, 20
ff. The passage containing the definition of Diogenes as a “furious Socrates”
(6, 54) is poorly attested textually, but is nevertheless not lacking in psychologi-
cal verisimilitude.

93 Friedlander, Plato, p. 368, n. 6.

94 The Greek words chosen by Plato are intentionally ambiguous: Eros lusts after
phronesis, that is, wisdom; he is “resourceful” (porimos); and he “philosophizes”
(philosophon) all through his life.

95 Plato, Symposium, 203d.

96 Aristophanes, Clouds, 445fF.

97 Plato, Symposium, 221e.

98 [“Insolent, outrageous” — Trans.] Ibid, 175e.

99 Ibid, 215c; cf. Meno, 80a3; Charmides, 155e; Phaedo, 77e.

100 Ibid, 218a-b.

101 Ibid, 220a—d.

102 Aristophanes, Clouds, 362-3. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 221b.

103 Cf. Plato, Symposium, 203-4. On the philosophical significance of these simulta-
neous negations, cf. H.-J. Kramer, Platonismus und hellenistische Philosophie,
Berlin/New York 1971, pp. 174-5, 229-30.

104 Plato, Symposium, 215b.

105 Ibid, 218e.

106 At Symposium, 217-21, Alcibiades insists on Socrates’ temperance and strength.

107 Cf. Soren Kierkegaard, Christliche Reden (Christian Speeches), 1848, GW 20,
p. 260: “When, in the course of my readings, I ran across Socrates, my heart
began to pound like that of the young men who held discussions with him. The
thought of Socrates inspired my entire youth, and filled my soul to overflowing.”
See also Goethe’s comment, below.

108 Gregory Thaumaturgus, Speech in Praise of Origen, 6, 83; 7, 97.

109 E. Bertram, Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie, Berlin 1918, repr. Bonn, 8th edn,
1965, pp. 318ff. Friedlander, Plato, p. 50, also alludes to this section of Bertram’s
work.

110 Nietzsche, “Introduction to the Study of Classical Philology,” in Nietzches Werke,
vol. 17: Philologica, Leipzig 1910, p. 333.

111 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann, trans. John Oxen-
ford, 2 vols, 1850, May 12, 1825.

112 Friedrich Hélderlin, The Death of Empedocles, First Version, Act 2, Scene 4.

113 Hillman, “Psychological creativity,” p. 380.

114 Hamann, Sokratische Denkwurdigkeiten, pp. 149ff Hamann’s Socratic Memorabilia,
A Translation and Commentary, trans. James C. O'Flaherty, Baltimore 1967
(hereafter O’Flaherty), pp. 169ff.

115 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, letter to Herder, July 1772: “War’ ich einen Tag
und cine Nacht Alzibiades und dann wollt’ich sterben.”

116 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Poetry and Truth, Hamburger Ausgabe (hereafter
FLA), vol. 10, p. 175,

176 Figures

117 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Urworte, Orphisch. The Demon,” HA, vol. 1,
p. 359, lines 5-8: “So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entflichen. . ./und
keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickelt/Gepragte Form die lebend sich
entwickelt.”

118 On Mignon’s aspirations, cf. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s
Apprenticeship and Travels, From the German of Goethe, trans. Thomas Carlyle, 2
vols, 2nd edn, 1839, vol. 2, p. 89:

Such let me seem, till such I be;

Take not my snow-white dress away! Soon from this dusk
of earth I flee

Up to the glittering lands of day.

There first a little space I rest,

Then wake so glad, to scencs so kind

In earthly robes no longer drest,

This band, this girdle left behind.

And those calm shining sons of morn,

They ask not who is maid or boy;

No robes, no garments there are worn,

Our body pure from sin’s alloy.

[So lasst mich scheinen, bis ich werde,

Zieht mir das weisse Kleid nicht aus!

Ich cile von der schénen Erde

Hinab in jenes feste Haus.

Dort ruh’ ich, cine kleine Stille,

Dann offnet sich der frische Blick;

Ich lasse dann dic reine Hille,

Den Giirtel und den Kranz zuriick.

Und jene himmlische Gestalten

Sic fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib

Und keine Kleider, keine Falten

Umgeben den verklarten Leib.

Cf. M. Delcourt, “Ultrumque-ncutrum,” in Meélanges H.-Ch. Puech, Paris 1974,
p. 122: “A stolen child, unhappy, dressed as a boy and hiding her sex, Mignon is
depicted as a zmitterhaftes Wesen (“hybrid being” — Trans.]. Finally reconciled with
herself, she plays the role of an angel in a children’s celebration and sings a Lied in
which she forctells her imminent death: /ch eile von der schénen Erde .. . “I am leaving
the lovely earth in haste / for that solid home ... and the heavenly Forms who live
there / do not ask if one is man or woman / and no clothing, no veils / surround
one’s transfigured body.” On the figure of Mignon, cf. also W. Emrich, Die Symbolik
von Faust £1, Frankfurt 1957, pp. 172, 459, with further bibliography.
119 On Ottilia and the Demonic, in relation to the concept of the Ungehcures
|“monstrous” - Trans.|, cf. Emrich, Die Symbolik, p. 217. On hermaphroditism
in general, see ibid, pp. 171 6.

The Figure of Socrates 177

120 Bertram, Nietzsche, ch. 20 (“Sokrates”). This is not the place to enter into a
lengthy discussion of this point, but it scems to me that Bertram’s position on
the relationship between Nietzsche and Socrates has not been surpassed by the
more recent work on the subject.

121 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §340, vol. 3, p. 569 Colli/Montinari =
trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York 1974 (hereafter Kaufmann 1974), p. 272.

122 Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, §8, vol. 6, p. 71
Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 477.

123 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §13, vol. 1, p. 91 Colli/Montinari = p. 89
Kaufmann.

124 Plato, Symposium, 223c.

125 C.F. Meyer, Das Ende des Festes, in Gedichte, vol. 4:

Da mit Sokrates die Freunde tranken

Und die Haupter auf die Polster sanken
Kam ein Jiingling, kann ich mich entsinnen,
Mit zwei schlanken Fléterbliserinnen.

Aus dem Kelchen schiitten wir die Neigen,
Die gesprachsmiiden Lippen schweigen,
Um die welken Kranze zicht cin Singen...
Still! Des Todes Sclummerfléten klingen!

[Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-98) was one of Switzerland’s greatest poets and
novelists. - Trans.]
126 Friedrich Hélderlin, Der Rhein:

Nur hat ein jeder sein Mass.

Denn schwer ist zu tragen /Das Ungliik, aber schwcrer das Gliik
Ein Weiser aber vermocht cs/Vom Mittag bis in dic Mitternacht,
Und bis der Morgen erglinzte,

Beim Gastmahl helle zu bleiben.

=Friedrich Hélderlin, Poems and Fragments, trans. M. Hamburger, London 1966, p. 421.

127 “The most attractive book in Greek literature,” said Nietzsche in his Posthumous
Fragments, July 1879, 41, 2, vol. 8, p. 584 Colli/Montinari.

128 Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human, A Book for Free Spirits,
§86, vol. 2, pp. 591-2 Colli/Montinari = p. 332 Hollingdale.

129 Xenophon, Symposium, 2, 16.

130 “Warum huldigest du, heiliger Sokrates,
Diesem Jiinglinge stets? kennest du Gréssers nicht?
Warum sichct mit Liebe,
Wie auf Gotter, dein Aug’ auf ihn?”
“Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste
Hohe Jugend versteht, wer in die Welt geblikt
Und ea neigen dic Weisen
Ott am Ende zu Schtinem sich.”

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131 wahrend dem Menschen nichts Fréhlicheres und Besseres zu Theil
werden kann, als einem jener Siegreichen nahe zu sein, die, weil sie das
Tiefste gedacht, gerade das Lebendigste lieben miissen und als Weise am Ende
zum Schénen neigen ... Sie bewegen sich und leben wirklich . . . weshalb
es uns in ihrer Nahe wirklich einmal menschlich und natiirlich zu Muthe
ist and wir wie Goethe ausrufen méchten: “Was ist doch ein Lebendiges
fiir ein herrliches késtliches Ding! wie abgemessen zu seinem Zustande,
wie wahr, wie seiend!”

Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 3, Schopenhauer as Educator, 2, vol. 1, p. 349
Colli/Montinari = p. 136 Hollingdale and Stern. [The quotation is taken from
Goethe’s I[talienische Reise, October 9, 1786. - Trans.].

132 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, §14-15, vol. 1, pp. 96; 102 Colli/Montinari =
pp. 93-8 Kaufmann. Socrates’ dream, in which the gods order him to devote
himself to music, is recounted in Plato’s Phaedo, 60-1.

133 Plato, Phaedo, 118a.

134 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §340, vol. 3, pp. 569-70 Colli/Montinari = p. 272
Kaufmann 1974.

135 Bertram, Mietzsche, p. 341.

136 Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The Problem of Socrates, §12, vol. 6, p. 73,
Colli/Montinari = PN, p. 479.

137 Cf. Helen FI. Bacon, “Socrates Crowned,” The Virginia Quarterly Review 35
(1959), pp. 415-30.

138 Plato, Symposium, 175e.

139 Ibid, 212e. Cf. Gould, Platonic Love, p. 40.

140 Ibid, 213e.

141 Ibid, 222d.

142 Ibid, 223d.

143 Ibid, 196¢.

144 Ibid, 176c, 220a, 223d.

145 Ibid, 223d.

146 Ibid, 174d, 220c.

147 Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, §6, vol. 6, pp. 307-8 Colli/Montinari = pp. 268-9
Kaufmann and Hollingdale. :

148 [“Come, Holy Spirit.” Otherwise known as the “Golden Sequence,”
this Whitsun sequence is now commonly considered the work of Stephen
Langton (ca. 1150-1228), Archbishop of Canterbury and opponent of King John.
- Trans.]

149 Hamann, Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten, pp. 149ff = pp. 141 ff O'Flaherty.

150 (“Bend what is stubborn, warm what is cold, straighten what is crooked.” -
Trans.]

151 Bertram, Nietzsche, pp. 345-6.

152 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §295, vol. 5, p. 237 Colli/ Montinari =
pp. 218-19 Kaufmann.

6

Marcus Aurelius

1 The Meditations as a Spiritual Exercise

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius — a better translation of the Greek
title would be Exhortations to Himself — were first published in the West by
the Zurich humanist Andreas Gesner, in 1558-9. Since their first appearance,
the Meditations have continued to fascinate readers. Not all of these
readers, however — and this includes many historians as well — have
always understood what Marcus Aurelius intended to accomplish by writ-
ing this book. The seventeenth-century English editors and translators
Meric Casaubon and Thomas Gataker still had an intimate sense for ancient
realities, and were well aware of the nature of the work with which they were
dealing. The Meditations, they realized, were a collection of Aypomnemata
(commentaria in Latin): notes written on a daily basis for the author’s personal
use.

Many authors allude to the existence of this literary genre in antiquity.
Since they were not intended for publication, however, such writings were
destined to disappear. We owe the preservation of Marcus’ Meditations to
some happy set of circumstances, quite possibly to the piety of one of the
members of the emperor’s immediate entourage.

Most historians, however, have anachronistically projected the literary
prejudices of their own epoch back upon the Meditations. In the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, when systematic treatises were considered the
perfect form of philosophical production, it was generally thought that the
Meditations should be brought into relation with the composition of some
such treatise. Scholars consequently imagined that the Meditations were the
extracts or disjecta membra of such a hypothetical opus, or perhaps a series of
notes written with a view to its publication.

In the nineteenth century, characterized as it was by romanticism, it was
widely recognized that the Meditations were a collection of Aypomnemata or
personal notes. Mrequently, however, as in Renan’s great study Marcus

180 Figures

Aurelius or the End of the Ancient World,' it was maintained that Marcus had
written “a personal diary of his inner states.”

In the twentieth century, the age of psychology, psychoanalysis, and
suspicion, the very fact of having written this personal diary has been
interpreted as the symptom of a psychological malaise. It has become a cliché
to speak of the “pessimism” of Marcus Aurelius. E.R. Dodds,’ for example,
insisted on the perpetual self-criticism which Marcus carried out upon
himself, and related this tendency to a dream of Marcus’, which is preserved
for us by Dio Cassius.’ On the night of his adoption, says Dio, the emperor
dreamed that his shoulders were made of ivory. According to Dodds,’ this
suggests that Marcus suffered from an acute identity crisis.

In a collaborative study, H. van Effenterre and the psychosomatist R. Dailly
undertook to diagnose the pathological aspects — both psychic and physiolo-
gical — of what they termed “the case of Marcus Aurelius.”*> Basing
themselves on the testimony of Dio Cassius," they supposed that Marcus
suffered from a gastric ulcer, and that the emperor’s personality corresponded
to the psychological correlates of this illness:

The ulcer-sufferer is someone closed in on himself, worried, and uneasy
...akind of hypertrophy of the self renders him unable to see his fellow
men ...in the last analysis, it is himself that he is looking for in others
... He is conscientious to the point of punctiliousness, and is more
interested in the technical perfection of administration than in human
relationships, although the former should be only the sum total of the
latter. If he is a thinking man, the ulcer-sufferer will be inclined to
search for justifications, to fabricate superior personalities, and to adopt
Stoic or Pharisaic attitudes.’

For these authors, Marcus’ Meditations are a response to his need for
“self-persuasion” and “justification in his own eyes.” *

The acme of this kind of interpretation is no doubt the article by Thomas
W. Africa, entitled “The opium addiction of Marcus Aurelius.”? Basing
himself on passages in Galen and Dio Cassius, the author tries to detect a
genuine addiction to opium on the part of Marcus Aurclius, and he believes
he can discover its symptoms in the Meditations. In fact, however, the texts
he cites do not constitute conclusive proof of Marcus’ drug addiction. As for
the texts from the Meditations themselves cited as symptoms of intoxication,
Africa’s interpretation of them is pure nonsense.

Dio Cassius does not mention opium at all; he only mentions that, during
the Danubian campaign, Marcus did not eat at night, and during the day
consumed only a bit of theriac to ease his chest and stomach." Galen does
indeed mention opium,'' but in such a way that it is impossible to deduce
from his words a genuine addiction to opium, He merely says that, during

Marcus Aurelius 181

the Danubian campaign, Marcus took a little bit of theriac every day — “in
the quantity of an Egyptian bean” — for reasons of security. This was a
frequent custom among Roman emperors, since theriac was considered an
excellent antidote against poisons. Because theriac contained poppy-juice —
that is, opium — Marcus experienced chronic fatigue during the day when he
took it. He therefore had the poppy-juice removed from the mixture, but then
began to suffer from insomnia. He again returned to taking theriac with
poppy-juice, but this time the theriac was aged and much less strong. After
the death of Marcus’ official doctor Demetrius, Galen himself was charged
with the composition of the emperor’s theriac, and Marcus was entirely
satisfied with his services. Galen explained to him that his theriac was the
best, precisely because it was composed according to traditional proportions.

Marcus’ problems with fatigue and insomnia were, as we can see, merely
temporary. Marcus never sought out opium for its own sake, but for its
medicinal effects, and thanks to Galen he seems to have found the proper
balance in his dosage.

In the last note to his article, Africa himself admits that, even if one
consumed as much theriac as Marcus did, the quantity of opium it contained
was, in all probability, insufficient to produce an opium addiction. But, he
adds, we must suppose that the prescribed doses were not always respected,
because we must find some way of explaining the strangeness of the emperor’s
Meditations and the bizarre nature of the visions he describes.

Here the weakness of Africa’s reasoning leaps to the eyes. We are not at all
certain, he argues, that Marcus Aurelius was an opium addict, but we have
to presume that he was, since we have somehow to explain the strangeness of
the Meditations. This is a double sophism: first, even if Marcus’ visions in the
Meditations are bizarre, nothing obliges us to explain them by means of
opium; after all, Dailly and van Effenterre were content to explain them by a
gastric ulcer!

Africa thinks he can detect analogies between the Meditations and Thomas
De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-eater. But is such a comparison
really possible?

We shall let Africa speak for himself:!?

Marcus’ vision of time as a raging river carrying all before it into the
abyss of the future was no school doctrine of life viewed from the Porch
but an attempt to express the extended perspectives of time and space
which opium had opened up to him. Temporal and spatial dimensions
were accelerated until Europe was but a speck and the present a point
and men insccts crawling on a clod. History was no longer a reference
but an actual pageant of the past and Marcus shared the exacerbated
sensations of his fellow-addict, De Quincey: “The sense of space, and
in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings,

182 Figures

landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is
not fitted to receive. Space swelled and was amplified to the extent of
unutterable and self-repeating infinity. This disturbed me very much less
than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I seemed to have lived for
seventy or a hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings
representative of a duration far beyond the limits of human experience.”

The passages from Marcus Aurelius to which Africa refers are the following:

Eternity is a kind of river of events, and a violent torrent; no sooner has
each thing been seen, than it has been carried away; another is being
carried along, and it too will be swept away."

Think often of the speed with which all that is and comes to be passes
away and vanishes; for Being is like a river in perpetual flux, its activities
are in constant transformation, and its causes in myriad varieties.
Scarcely anything is stable, even that which is close at hand. Dwell, too,
on the infinite gulf of the past and the future, in which all things vanish
away.!

Pace Mr Africa, this theme is abundantly attested in Stoicism. Take, for
example, the following passages from Seneca:

Place before your mind’s eye the vast spread of time’s abyss and
embrace the universe; and then compare what we call human life with
infinity . . .'¢

Everything falls into the same abyss. . . time passes infinitely quickly . . .
Our existence is a point; nay, even less; but nature, by dividing this
puny thing, has given it the appearance of a longer duration."”

This image is‘a venerable one; we find it in the following fine verses of
Leonidas of Tarentum: “O man, infinite was the time before you came to the
dawn, and infinite will be the time awaiting you in Hades. What portion of
life remains for you, but that of a point, or if there is anything tinier than a
point?”'® To be sure, Marcus’ river is none other than the Stoic river of
being, which “flows without ceasing,” '? but in the last analysis, it is also the
river of Heraclitus, who, Plato tells us, compared all beings to a river’s flow.”
It is also, moreover, the river of the Platonists as mentioned by Plutarch: “All
things simultaneously come to be and perish: actions, words, and feelings -
for Time like a river carries everything away.” 2! The same river is mentioned
by Ovid: “Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river... wave
is pushed on by wave.” 2

Marcus Aureltus 183

When, in the passage quoted above, Seneca uses the expression propone —
“place before your mind’s eye”, that is, “represent to yourself the abyss of
time” — he makes it clear that he is talking about an exercise of the
imagination which the Stoic must practice. It is an instance of the same kind
of exercise when, in his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius tries to embrace the
dimensions of the universe in his imagination, and to look at things from on
high,2 in order to reduce them to their true value.

Think of the whole of being, in which you participate to only a tiny
degree; think of the whole of eternity, of which a brief, tiny portion has
been assigned to you; think about fate, of which you are such an
insignificant part.”4

If you were to find yourself suddenly raised up into the air, and
observed from on high the busy hodgepodge of human affairs, you
would despise them, as you saw at the same time how vast is the domain
of the beings inhabiting the air and the ether.

You have the power to strip off many superfluous things that are
obstacles to you, and that depend entirely upon your value-judgements;
you will open up for yoursclf a vast space by embracing the whole
universe in your thoughts, by considering unending eternity, and by
reflecting on the rapid changes of each particular thing; think of how
short is the span between birth and dissolution, and how vast the chasm
of time before your birth, and how the span after your dissolution will
likewise be infinite.

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.?’

Asia and Europe arc little corners of the world; every sea is a droplet in
the world; each present instant of time is a point in eternity; everything
is puny, unstable, and vanishing.”

How puny a portion of infinite, gaping eternity has been assigned to each
man; it vanishes with all speed into the Unending. How puny a portion
of the substance of the All; how puny a portion of the soul of the All. Of
the whole of the earth, how puny is the lump you are crawling on!??

The difference between these texts and the passage quoted above from De
Quinecy leaps to the cye. For the latter, the distortion of time and space is,
as it were, imposed upon him from outside; the addict is the passive victim

184 Figures

of his impressions. For Marcus, by contrast, the consideration of the infinity
of time and space is an active process; this is made quite clear by his repeated
admonitions to “represent to himself” and “think of” the totality of things.
We have to do here with a traditional spiritual exercise which utilizes the
faculties of the imagination. De Quincey speaks of a distortion of the instant,
which takes on monstrous proportions. Marcus, by contrast, speaks of an
effort to imagine the infinite and the all, in order that all instants and places
may be seen reduced to infinitesimal proportions. In Marcus’ case, this
voluntary exercise of the imagination presupposes a belief in the classical Stoic
cosmological scheme: the universe is situated within an infinite void, and its
duration is comprised within an infinite time, in which periodic rebirths of
the cosmos are infinitely repeated. Marcus’ exercise is intended to provide
him with a vision of human affairs capable of replacing them within the
perspective of universal nature.

Such a procedure is the very essence of philosophy. We find it repeated —
in identical form, beneath superficial differences of vocabulary — in all the
philosophical schools of antiquity. Plato, for instance, defines the philosoph-
ical nature by its ability to contemplate the totality of time and being, and
consequently to hold human affairs in contempt.’! We encounter this same
theme” among Platonists like Philo of Alexandria® and Maximus of Tyre;
in Neopythagoreanism* among the Stoics,** and even among the Epicureans,
as we have seen in the passage from Metrodorus quoted above.*”

In Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, the grandson of Scipio Africanus contemplates
the earth from on top of the Milky Way. The earth appears so small to him
that the Roman empire seems imperceptible, the inhabited world resembles a
tiny island in the midst of the ocean, and life itself seems less substantial than
a point.*® This theme was kept alive throughout Western tradition. One thinks
of Pascal’s “two infinitics”: “Let the earth seem like a point... compared to
the vast orbit described by this star ...”2”

Marcus Aurelius’ notes to himself give us very little information about his
personal experiences. To be sure, in some chapters of the Meditations we can
discern some minimal autobiographical data, but these are few and far
between (only 35-40 chapters, out of 473, contain such information). Often,
these details consist in no more than a name, such as Pantheia, mistress of
Lucius Verus, who sat next to her lover’s tomb, or the mimes Philistion,
Phoibos, and Origanion. Marcus tells us practically nothing about himself.

But what about those numerous statements by Marcus which seem steeped
in pessimism? Don’t they tell us anything about his psychological states? If
one gathers them together, they certainly give the impression of a complete
disdain for human affairs. We scem to find in them the expression of
bitterness, disgust, and even “nausea” “in the face of human existence: “Just
like your bath-water appears to you — oil, sweat, filth, dirty water, all kinds
of loathsome stuff - such is cach portion of life, and every substance." "' In

Marcus Aurelius 185

the first instance, this kind of contemptuous expression is reserved for the
flesh and the body, which Marcus calls “mud,” “dirt,” and “impure blood.”
Yet the same treatment is reserved for things mankind usually considers as
important values:

These foods and dishes... are only dead fish, birds and pigs; this
Falernian wine is a bit of grape-juice; this purple-edged toga is some
sheep’s hairs dipped in the blood of shellfish; as for sex, it is the rubbing
together of pieces of gut, followed by the spasmodic secretion of a little
bit of slime.#

Marcus takes a similarly illusion-free view of human activities: “Everything
highly prized in life is empty, petty, and putrid; a pack of little dogs biting
each other; little children who fight, then laugh, then burst out crying.” 4 The
war in which Marcus defended the borders of the empire was, for him, like
a hunt for Sarmatian slaves, not unlike a spider’s hunt for flies.’ Marcus cast
a pitiless glance on the chaotic agitation of human marionettes: “Think about
what they’re like when they’re eating, sleeping, copulating, defecating. Then
think of what they’re like when they’re acting proud and important, when
they get angry and upbraid their inferiors.”** Human agitation is all the more
ridiculous because it lasts only an instant, and ends up as very little indeed:
“Yesterday, a little bit of slime, tomorrow ashes or a mummy.” *”

Two words suffice to sum up the human comedy: all is banal, and all is
ephemeral. Banal, because nothing is new under the sun:

Always bear in mind that everything is exactly the way it comes to pass
right now; it has happened that way before, and it will happen that way
again. Make them come alive before your mind’s eye, these monotonous
dramas and scenes, which you know through your own experience or
through ancient history; picture the whole court of Hadrian, of Antoni-
nus, of Philip, Alexander, and Croesus. All these spectacles were
identical; the only thing that changed were the actors.**

Banality and boredom reach the point of being sickening:

Just as you get sick of the games in the arena and such places, because
they are always the same, and their monotony makes the spectacle
tedious, so feel the same way about life as a whole. From top to bottom,
everything is the same, and comes from the same causes. How long will
this go on?”

Not only are human affairs tedious: they are also transitory. Marcus tries to
make the humun swarms of past ages come alive in his imagination,” picturing

186 Figures

the days of Trajan or Vespasian, with their weddings, illnesses, wars, feasts,
trading, agriculture, ambition, and intrigues. All these human masses have
disappeared without a trace, observes Marcus, along with their activities.
Marcus also tries to imagine this incessant process of destruction at work
upon those around him.*!

Marcus has no patience for those who would try to console themselves for
the brevity of existence by the hope that they will survive in the name they
leave to posterity. “What’s in a namc?” he asks: “A mere noise, or a faint
echo.” At best, this miserable, fleeting thing will be transmitted to a few
generations, each of which will last as long as a lightming-flash in the infinity
of time.*? We ought not to be fooled by such an illusion: “How many do not
even know your name, and how many will very soon forget it.” 54 “Soon you
will have forgotten everything; soon, too, everything will have forgotten
you.” 5

Such an accumulation of pessimistic utterances is indeed impressive. We
should be careful, however, of deducing from them over-hasty conclusions
about Marcus’ own psychology. It is too facile for us to imagine that, like
many modern authors, ancient writers wrote in order directly to communicate
information, or the emotions they happened to be feeling. We assume, for
instance, that Marcus’ Meditations were intended to transmit his everyday
feelings to us; that Lucretius was himself an anxious person, and used his
poem On the Nature of Things to try to combat his anxiousness; that
Augustine was really confessing himself in his Confessions. In fact, however,
it is not enough to consider the obvious, surface meaning of the phrases in an
ancient text in order fully to understand it. Rather, we must try to understand
why these phrases were written or spoken; we must discover their finality.

Generally speaking, we can say that Marcus’ seemingly pessimistic declara-
tions are not expressions of his disgust or disillusion at the spectacle of life;
rather, they are a means he employs in order to change his way of evaluating
the events and objects which go to make up human existence. He does this
by defining these events and objects as they really are — “physically,” one
might say — separating them from the conventional representations people
habitually form of them. Marcus’ definitions of food, wine, purple togas, or
sexual union arc intended to be “natural.” They are technical, almost medical
definitions of objects which, when considered in a purely “human” way,
provoke the most violent passions, and we are to use them to free ourselves
from the fascination they exercise upon us. Such definitions do not express
Marcus’ impressions; on the contrary, they correspond to a point of vicw
intended to be objective, and which is by no means Marcus’ invention. Already
in antiquity, for instance, Hippocrates and Democritus were said to have
defined sexual union as “a little epilepsy.”

When Marcus pitilessly imagines the intimate life of the arrogant “cating,
sleeping, copulating, defecating,” he is trying to give a p/tysical vision of

Marcus Aurelius 187

human reality. We find a similar reflection in Epictetus, concerning people
who are content just to discourse about philosophy: “I'd like to stand over
one of these philosophers when he’s having sex, so as to see how he sweats
and strains, what kind of grunts and groans he utters; whether he can even
remember his own name, much less the philosophical discourses he has heard,
declaimed, or read!” * Marcus applies the same method to our idea of death:
“consider what it is to die; and that, if one looks at death in and of itself,
dissolving the images associated with death by taking apart our common
conception of it, he will not suspect it to be anything other than a product of
Nature.” *?

As we have seen, Marcus’ effort to confront existence in all its naked reality
leads him to glimpse processes of decay and dissolution already at work in the
people and things around him, or to make the court of Augustus come alive
beforc his eyes for an instant, so as to realize that all these people, so alive in
his imagination, are in fact long dead. Yet we have no more right to interpret
this as obsession with death or morbid complacency than when, in the film
Dead Poets’ Society, Robin Williams makes his students study a picture of the
school’s old boys. Williams’ character is trying to make his charges under-
stand the meaning of carpe diem (“seize the day”), the irreplaceable value of
each instant of life, and it is with this goal in mind that he emphasizes that
all the faces in the class photograph, so young and alive, are now long dead.

Moreover, when Marcus speaks of the monotony of human existence, it is
not in order to express his own boredom, but in order to persuade himself
that death will not deprive us of anything essential. In Lucretius, the same
argument is used by nature herself, to console man for the misfortune of
death: “There is no new invention I can think up to please you; everything
is always the same... what lies in store for you is always the samc. . . even
if you were never to die.” **

In the case of Marcus Aurelius, all these declarations are the conscious,
voluntary application of a method which he formulates in the following terms:

always make a definition or description of the object that occurs in your
representation, so as to be able to sce it as it is iri 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.*?

This method is quintessentially Stoic: it consists in refusing to add subjective
value-judgments — such as “this object is unpleasant,” “that one is good,”
“this one is bad,” “that one is beautiful,” “this is ugly” — to the “objective”
representation of things which do not depend on us, and therefore have no
moral value. ‘he Stoics’ notorious phantasia kataleptike — which we have
translated ax “objective representation” - takes place preciscly when we

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refrain from adding any judgment value to naked reality.” In the words of
Epictetus: “we shall never give our assent to anything but that of which we
have an objective representation,” ® and he adds the following illustration:

So-and-so’s son is dead.
What happened?

His son is dead.
Nothing else?

Not a thing.

So-and so’s ship sank.
What happened?
His ship sank.

So-and-so was carted off to prison.
What happened?
He was carted off to prison.
— But if we now add to this “He has had bad luck,” then each of us is
adding this observation on his own account.”

In these objective/realistic definitions, some historians believe they can
discover the traces of an attitude of repugnance in the face of matter and the
objects of the physical world. Thus, according to this view, Marcus Aurelius
renounced the Stoic doctrine of the immanence of divine reason in the world
and in matter, and there is no longer any trace in him of the admiration felt
by Chrysippus for the phenomenal world. We can therefore, it is alleged, find
traces in Marcus of a tendency to affirm the transcendence of a divinity
existing apart from the phenomenal world.

Some passages in Marcus do indeed seem provocative in this regard, but
they require the most painstaking interpretation. When, for instance, Marcus
evokes “the putridity of the matter underlying all things... liquid, dust,
bones, stench,”™ he does not mean to say that matter itself is putrefaction;
rather, he wants to emphasize that the transformations of matter, qua natural
processes, are necessarily accompanied by phenomena which seem fo us to be
repugnant, although in reality they too are natural.

The passage we have cited above’ may seem even more provocative: “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.” This
concise text can be interpreted in several different ways. In the first place, we
could say that Marcus is here applying his method of objective definitions.
What he means to say would be this: “when I observe physical and
physiological phenomena as they truly are, | have to admit that there are
many aspects of them which scem to me to be disgusting or trivial: they

Marcus Aurelius 189

consist of dust, the filth which covers abandoned objects, bad smells, and
stenches. Our objective representation must recognize all these aspects of
reality, without seeking to conceal any of them.” Yet this realist vision has a
threefold function. In the first place, it is intended to prepare us to confront
life such as it is. As Seneca remarks,

To be offended by these things is just as ridiculous as to complain that
you got splashed in the bath, or that you got pushed around in a crowd,
or that you got dirty in a mud-puddle. The same things happen in life
as in the baths, in a crowd, or on the road... Life is not a delicate
thing.

Secondly, the realistic outlook is not intended to deny the immanence of
reason in the world, but to persuade us to search for reason where it can be
found in its purest state: in the daimon or inner genius, that guiding principle
within man, source of freedom and principle of the moral life.

Finally, by reinforcing the sombre tones of disgust and repulsion, such
definitions are intended to provide a contrast with the splendid illumination
which transfigures all things when we consider them from the perspective of
universal reason. Elsewhere, Marcus does not hesitate to declare:

Everything comes from above, whether it has originated directly in that
common directing principle, or whether it is a necessary consequence
thercof. Thus, the gaping jaws of a lion, poison, and all kinds of
unpleasant things, like thorns and mud, are by-products of those
venerable, beautiful things on high. Don’t imagine, therefore, that these
unpleasant things are alien to that principle you venerate, but rather
consider that source of all things.*’

Here it is quite clear that filth, dust, and other such apparently repulsive
aspects of reality are the necessary consequence of a natural process which, in
the last analysis, goes back to universal reason. It is thus not matter itself
which seems repulsive to us, but the accessory phenomena which accompany
its transformations. Here Marcus® is in complete accord with Stoic ortho-
doxy, according to which matter is docile and subservient to reason, which
molds and governs it. The function of Marcus’ physico/objective definitions
is precisely to make us realize that the feelings of repulsion we feel in the
presence of some phenomena which accompany natural processes are nothing
but an anthropocentric prejudice. In the following charming passage, Marcus
expresses his belief that nature is beautiful in a// its aspects:

There ix something pleasant and attractive about even the incidental
by-products of natural phenomena. For instance, when bread is being

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baked, some parts of it split open, and it is precisely those parts which
split apart in this way, and which, in a sense, have nothing to do with
bread-making itself, which are somehow quite appropriate, and excite
our appetite in a most particular way. The same is true of figs: it is when
they are at their ripest that they burst open. In the case of very ripe
Olives, it is precisely their proximity to decay which adds to them a
certain beauty. The same is true with ripe ears of corn which bend
towards the ground; with the lion’s wrinkled forehead; with the foam
spuming forth from the mouths of wild pigs, and many other such
things: if we look at them in isolation, they are far from being beautiful.
Nevertheless, because they are incidental by-products of natural pro-
cesses, they add to the beauty of these processes and have an attractive
effect on us. Thus, as long as one has a feeling for, and a deep
understanding of Nature’s processes, there is scarcely any of the things
that occur as incidental by-products which will not present itself to one
as pleasant, at least in some of its aspects. Such a person . . . 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 offer us. With
his wise vision, he will be able to discern the rich maturity of old men
and women, as well as the lovely charm in young children; and there
are many such things, which do not appeal to everyone; only to that
person who has truly familiarized himself with nature and its workings.”

It is instructive to compare this text with the passage from Aristotle quoted
above.”?

Already in Aristotle, but especially in Marcus Aurelius, we can see a
revolution taking place. In the place of an idealistic aesthetics, which considers
as beautiful only that which is rational and functional, manifesting beautiful
proportions and an idcal form, there appears a realistic aesthetics which finds
beauty in things just the way they are, in everything that lives and exists. We
know from Aulus Gellius,”’ moreover, that Marcus’ distinction between
nature’s original plan and the unforeseen consequences resulting from this
plan goes back to Chrysippus. Thus, in this case as well, Marcus stands firmly
within orthodox Stoic tradition.

To return to the “provocative” passage with which we began:”2 it appears
that Marcus’ meaning is as follows. When dealing with what the Stoics
termed indi/Jerentia® — that is, things which depend not upon us, but upon
universal nature— we must not make any distinction between what is repulsive
and what is pleasant; any more than does nature itself.” Dirt, mud, and
thorns, after all, come from the same source as the rose and the springtime.
Thus, from the point of view of nature, and therefore also of whoever is
familiar with nature, there is no distinction to be made between bath-water
and the rest of creation: everything is equally “natural.”

Marcus Aurelius 191

We can hardly hope to deduce Marcus’ psychological states from any of
the preceding. Was he an optimist or a pessimist? Did he suffer from a
stomach ulcer? The Meditations do not allow us to respond to these questions.
All we can learn from them is about spiritual exercises, as they were
traditionally practiced by the Stoics.

2 Epictetus

In Marcus Aurelius’ day, the greatest authority in questions of Stoicism was
Epictetus. As the slave of Epaphroditus, one of Nero’s freedmen, Epictetus
had attended the classes of the Stoic Musonius Rufus. When Epictetus in turn
was subsequently freed by Epaphroditus, he opened a philosophy school at
Rome. In AD 93-4, Epictetus fell victim to the edict by which the emperor
Domitian banished philosophers from Rome and Italy, and he set himself up
in Nicopolis in Epirus. There he opened another school, whcre one of his
regular students was the future civil servant and historian Arrian of Nicom-
edia. It was Arrian who was responsible for transmitting what we know about
Epictetus’ teaching; for Epictetus, like many philosophers in antiquity, never
wrote anything down.

What Arrian thus preserved for us was not the technical part of Epictetus’
philosophical instruction — his commentaries on Stoic authors such as
Chrysippus, for example, or his more general explanations of doctrine.
Rather, what Arrian copied down was the discussions which, as was usual in
ancient philosophical schools, took place after the technical part of the class.
In these discussions, the master would reply to questions from his audience,
or enlarge upon particular points which were of importance for leading a
philosophical life.”* It is important to emphasize this point, for it means that
we must not expect to find technical, systematic expositions of every aspect
of Stoic doctrines in Epictetus’ Discourses. Instead, they deal with a rather
limited number of problems, for the most part restricted to ethical matters.
This does not prove, of course, that Epictetus did not take up the whole of
the Stoic system in the course of his theoretical teaching. Besides, only the
first four books of Arrian’s work have survived. We know from a passage in
Aulus Gellius,”” who cites an extract from the fifth book of Epictetus’
Discourses, that a part of the work has been lost. For these two reasons, then,
we must be wary of concluding, on the basis of these collections of Arrian’s
notes, that theoretical philosophical teaching gradually became impoverished
in the course of later Stoicism.

What we can say is that Epictetus did insist very strongly upon a concept
that was traditional in Stoicism:” the difference between discourse about
philosophy and the practice of philosophy itself.

It is sometimes claimed that the Stoics recognized two parts of philosophy:
on the one hand, they distinguished a theorctical-discursive part, comprising

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physics and logic; that is, the study of nature and of the rules of discourse.
On the other, there was the practical part of philosophy, corresponding to
ethics. This is incorrect. Rather, both theoretical philosophical discourse and
philosophy itself as it was lived and experienced were made up of three
constituent parts.

In theoretical philosophical discourse, the three parts of philosophy were
necessarily distinguished. They were made the object of separate explanations,
developed according to a logical principle of succession, and they laid the
foundations for and developed the basic principles of Stoic doctrine. On the
level of theoretical discourse, then, the parts of philosophy were in a sense
external to one another, in accordance with the requirements of didactic
exposition. Philosophy itself, however, is the exercise of wisdom; it is a unique
act, renewed at each instant, and it may be just as well described as the
exercise of logic, physics, or ethics, according to the subject-matter on which
it is exercised, without its unity being in any way diminished. On this level,
we are no longer concerned with theoretical logical — that is, the theory of
correct reasoning — rather, we are concerned not to let ourselves be deceived
in our everyday lives by false representations. We are no longer concerned
with theoretical physics — the theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos
— we are concerned with being aware at every instant that we are parts of the
cosmos, and that we must make our desires conform to this situation. We no
longer do ethical theory — the definition and classification of virtues and
duties — we simply act in an ethical way.

Concrete philosophical praxis requires that we always bear in mind
the Stoics’ fundamental dogmas. These dogmas were intended to con-
stitute the basis for our rectitude of judgment, our attitude toward the
cosmos, and the conduct we should adopt towards our fellow citizens within
the city. Philosophy as it was lived and experienced thus implied continuous
exercises of meditation and constant vigilance, in order to keep alive in one’s
mind the principles taught by theoretical discourse.

If we want to understand why Epictetus attaches so much importance to
what he terms “the three areas of exercises,” we shall have to bear in mind
this distinction between theoretical philosophical discourse and concrete
philosophy as it is lived and experienced. In the Discourses as reported by
Arrian, these three areas are presented with such systematic rigor that we are
justified in suspecting that this doctrine had an important role to play in
Epictetus’ theoretical teaching.

Epictetus bases his doctrine on the traditional Stoic distinction between
things which depend on us and things which do not: “What depends on us
is value-judgments, inclinations to act, desires, aversions, and, in a word,
everything that is our doing. What does not depend on us is the body, wealth,
glory, high political positions, and, in a word, everything that is not our own
doing.” * What depends upon us is the acts of our own soul, because we are

Marcus Aurelius 193

able freely to choose them. What does not depend on us is those things that
depend on the general course of nature and of fate. Among the acts of the
soul which do depend on us, some correspond to the area of judgment and
assent, others to the area of desire, and, finally, still others correspond to the
area of inclinations to action.

For Epictetus, then, it is these three areas, acts of the soul, or aspects of
“that which depends on us” which define the three forms of philosophical
exercises. By comparing the relevant passages in Epictetus’ Discourses,’? we
can present the theory of the three forms or areas of philosophical exercises
as follows.

The first area is that of desire and aversion. People are unhappy because
they desire things they may either lose or fail to obtain, and because they try
to avoid misfortunes which are often inevitable. This happens because such
desiderata as wealth and health, for example, do not depend on us. The
discipline of desire consequently consists in accustoming ourselves to the
gradual renunciation of such desires and aversions, so that, in the end, we
shall desire only that which does depend on us — moral virtue — and shall also
avoid only that which depends on us — moral evil. We are to regard everything
which does not depend on us as indifferent; that is to say, we must not make
any difference between such things. Rather, we must accept them all, willed as
they are by universal nature. The discipline of desire concerns the passions
or emotions (pathe) which we feel as a result of what happens to us.

The second area of exercises is that of motivating inclinations, or action.
For Epictetus, this area is related first and foremost to human relationships
within the city. It corresponds to what the Stoics traditionally called “the
duties” (ta kathekonta): those actions which are appropriate to the inclinations
of our nature. Duties are actions — they thus fall under the category of things
which depend on us — bearing upon objects which do not depend on us — such
as other people, politics, health, art, etc. As we have seen, such objects ought
to be matters of indifference; yet, by dint of a reasonable justification, they
can be considered as corresponding to that deeply-embedded instinct which
impels rational human nature to act for its own conservation. Duties are thus
actions “appropriate” to our rational nature, and they consist in placing
ourselves in the service of the human community, in the form of the city/state
and of the family.

The third area of exercises is that of assent (sunkatathesis). Epictetus urges
us to criticize each representation (phantasia) as it presents itself to us, and
give our assent only to that which is “objective.” In other words, we are to
set aside all subjective value-judgments. Epictetus formulates the principle
guiding this exercise as follows: “People are not troubled by things, but by
their judgements about things.”

For Epictetus, these three areas (fopot) of exercise correspond to the
three axspects of philosophy as it is lived and experienced, as opposed to

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the three parts of philosophical discourse. This becomes clear from a passage
in the Discourses in which he criticizes pseudo-philosophers, who are content
just to read theoretical discourses about philosophy. Here we can clearly see
that the second and third areas correspond respectively to ethics and to
dialectics. The connection between logic and the third of our topos is
particularly evident:

It is as if, in the arca of the exercise of assent, we were surrounded by
representations, some of them “objective” and others not, and we did not
want to distinguish between them, but preferred to read treatises with
titles like On Comprehension! How does this come about? The reason is
that we have never carried out our reading or our writing in such a way
that, when it comes to action, we could use the representations we receive
in a way consonant with nature; instead, we are content when we have
learned what is said to us, and can explain it to others; when we can
analyze syllogisms and examine hypothetical arguments."!

In this passage, Epictetus underlines the opposition between, on the one hand,
theoretical logic, as it was set forth in treatises with titles like On Comprehen-
sion; and, on the other, what we might term “lived logic,” or logic as applied
to life, which consists in the discipline of assent, and the critique of those
representations which actually do present themselves to us. In the rest of this
passage, we find the same opposition between theoretical discourse and
practical, “lived” exercises, this time with regard to the second area. Epictetus
shows that the only justification for reading theoretical treatises like On
Inclination or On Duties is so that, in concrete situations, we can act in
conformity with mankind’s rational nature.

In the tripartite division of philosophy,” the areas of logic and ethics are
followed by that of physics. Can physics, then, be made to correspond to the
discipline of desire? It would seem as though the passage we have just quoted
prohibits such an identification. When, in the context of the discipline of
desire, Epictetus speaks of treatises entitled On Desire and Aversion, we have
every reason to believe these were treatises relating to ethics. However, even
though the abstract theory of “desire” as such, insofar as it is an act of the
soul, pertains to the areas of ethics and psychology, the lived attitude which
corresponds to the discipline of desire does indeed seem to be a kind of
applied physics, which one lives and expcriences in the manner of a spiritual
exercise. On several occasions, Epictetus insists that the discipline of desire
consists in “learning to desire that everything happen just the way it does
happen.”® We are to “keep our will in harmony with what happens,”™ and
to “be well-pleased with the divine government of things.”* “If a good man
could foresee the future, he would cooperate with sickness, death, and
mutilation; for he would be aware that this had been ordained by the universal

Marcus Aurelius 195

order of things, and that the whole is more important than its parts.”® We
have here a true case of physics lived and experienced as a spiritual exercise.
Since, in order to discipline their desires, people need to be intensely
conscious of the fact that they are a part of the cosmos, they must replace
each event within the perspective of universal nature.

Such, for Epictetus, is the practice and exercise of philosophy, and we find
this fundamental scheme repeated throughout the Discourses. Epictetus’
disciple Arrian, who was responsible for the redaction of both the Discourses
and the Manual, made no mistake in this regard, when he chose to group the
sayings which make up the Manual according to the three disciplines or areas
we have just distinguished.®”

3 Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus

It is fair to say that the essential substance of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations comes
from Epictetus. In the first place, it is probably from Epictetus that Marcus got
the very idea of the literary genre of meditation by means of writing: “These are
the kinds of things on which lovers of wisdom ought to meditate; they ought to
write them down every day, and use them to train themselves.”* “Let these
thoughts be ‘at hand’ for you, day and night. Write them down and re-read them;
talk about them, both to yourself and with others.” ”

The idea of dialogue with oneself had existed for a long time; one thinks
of Homer’s depiction of Odysseus admonishing himself: “Bear up, my
heart.” The custom of writing down, for one’s personal use, either one’s
own thoughts or the sayings one has read is also no doubt extremely old.
Nevertheless, we have every reason to believe that it was from Epictetus that
Marcus derived the idea of this particular form of self-exhortation and
conversation with oneself, bearing as it docs upon the same rules of life and
principles of action upon which Epictetus had advised his readers to meditate.

The object of Marcus’ meditations and exercises was none other than
Epictetus’ three fundamental themes: the discipline of desire, the discipline
of inclinations, and the discipline of judgment. This conceptual structure is
peculiar to Epictetus, and is found nowhere else in the philosophical literature
of antiquity.” Moreover, in the course of a series of quotations from
Epictetus, Marcus cites a fragment which clearly sets forth the three themes
we have been examining:

What must be found is a method with regard to assent [to sugkatatithes-
thai]. In the area [topos] of the inclinations [hormai], we must keep
vigilant our attentive faculty, so that these inclinations may operate with
reserve, in the service of the community, and in a way corresponding to
the value of their objects. Finally, when it comes to things that do not

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depend on us, we must abstain totally from desire [orekseos apekhesthai ]
and feel no aversion towards any of them.”

Additionally, Marcus repeatedly formulates the triple rule of life himself. We
can easily recognize it in the following passages:

What is enough for you?

— Your present value-judgement, so long as it is objective;

— The action you are accomplishing at the present moment, so long as it
is done for the benefit of the human community;

— Your present inner disposition, as long as it rejoices in every event
brought about by causes outside yoursclf.”

A rational nature is proceeding as it should if it fulfills the following
conditions:

— If, in its representations [ phantasiai], it does not give its assent
[sugkatatithemene] either to what is false, or to what is unclear;

— If it guides its inclinations [hormas] only towards those actions which
serve the human community;

— If it has desire [orekseis] or aversion only for things that depend on us,
while joyfully greeting everything allotted to it by universal nature.”

Wipe out your representations [ phantasian).

Check your inclinations [hormai].

Extinguish your desire [oreksin].

Keep your directing principle [hegemonikon] under your control.”

On what, then, should we exert our efforts? Only this:

— correct intentions;

— actions [ prakseis] carried out in the service of the community;

— speech [/ogos] which could never be used to deceive;

— an inner disposition [diathesis] which joyfully greets each event like
something necessary and familiar, since it flows from so grand a
principle, and so great a source.”

The reader will perhaps have noticed that, although it is quite obvious that
Marcus Aurelius took over his tripartite structure from Epictetus, there is
nevertheless a difference in tone and emphasis in Marcus’ presentation of it.
When, for instance, Marcus speaks of the discipline of desire, he docs not, as
Epictetus had done, insist on the necessity of desiring only those things which
depend on us — that is, moral good - so that our desires may not be frustrated.
Rather, Marcus, in a much more explicit way than Epictetus, conceives of this
exercise as putting our desires in harmony with the will of fate and of

Marcus Aurelius 197

universal reason. Its goal is to bring about within us an attitude of indifference
to indifferent things; that is, whatever does not depend on us. For Marcus,
much more than for Epictetus, the discipline of desire takes on the form of
applied “physics,” or physics transformed into a spiritual exercise.

The discipline of desire culminates in a joyful, loving satisfaction” in
the events willed by nature. But in order to achieve this state, we must
totally change our way of looking at things. We must consider them from the
point of view of universal nature, and this implies learning to recognize the
chain of causes which produce each event. We are to consider each event as
woven by destiny, and as flowing forth by natural necessity from the first
causes. The discipline of desire thus obliges us to relocate the totality of
human life within a cosmic perspective, and become aware of the fact that we
are a part of the world: “He who doesn’t know what the world is doesn’t
know where he himself is, either. He who doesn’t know for what purpose the
world exists, doesn’t know who he is himself. Whoever doesn’t know the
answer to one of these questions is unable to say for what purposc he himself
exists.”

In order to practice this kind of “physics,” Marcus, as we have seen, tries
to follow a rigorous method of definition,” which consists in relocating all
objects within the totality of the universe, and all events within the nexus of
causes and effects. They are to be defined in and for themselves, and
separated from the conventional, anthropomorphic representations mankind
habitually makes of them.

Here we can perhaps glimpse in what way the three disciplines, like the
three parts of philosophy, imply one another within the single act of
philosophizing. The method of “physical” definition discussed by Marcus
corresponds to the discipline of assent, which prescribes that we must give
our assent only to those representations which are objective and freed from
all subjective value-judgments.

Once prolonged expcrience has allowed us to come to know nature’s ways
and laws, “physics,” when practiced as a spiritual exercise, leads us to
“familiarity” with nature." Thanks to this familiarity, we can perceive the
links between all phenomena which seem strange Or repugnant to us, and
between these phenomena and universal reason, the source from which they
flow. From such a perspective, every event will seem to us beautiful and
worthy of our affectionate assent. To be indifferent to indifferent things means
to make no difference between them; in other words, to love them equally, just
as nature does: “ ‘The earth loves the rain; she also loves the venerable
Ether.”'' And the Universe, too, loves to produce all that must be produced.
Thus, I say to the Universe: ‘I love along with you!’ Isn’t this, after all, the
meaning of of the phrase, ‘Such-and-such an event “loves” to happen?’” '!@
When, in ancient Greck, one wished to say that something “usually occurs,”
or “is accustomed to occur,” a common idiom made it possible to say the

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event “loves” to occur ( philei ginesthat). Here, Marcus gives us to understand
that events /iterally “love” to happen. We are to “love” to see them happen,
because universal nature “loves” to produce them.

In the last analysis, such an attitude of joyful consent to the world
corresponds to an attitude of obedience to the divine will. This is why Marcus
sometimes describes the discipline of desire as an invitation to “follow the
gods” or “God,” as in the following presentation of the three disciplines:
“Keep the daimon within you in a state of serenity; so that it may follom God
in an appropriate way, neither saying anything contrary to the truth, nor doing
anything contrary to justice.”'® In the formulation of the second theme,
Epictetus placed more emphasis on the fact that our inclinations and actions
must be related to our duties (kathekonta) toward our fellow-men. Marcus, by
contrast, speaks more often about just actions, done in the service of the
human community. As was the case with the first theme, the second theme
takes on a strongly emotional tonality for Marcus: we must love other people
with all our hearts, he writes,'™ for rational beings are not only parts of the
same whole, but the limbs of the same body. Moreover, we are to extend our
love even toward those who commit injustices against us, bearing in mind that
they belong to the same human race as we do, and that, if they sin, they do
so involuntarily, and out of ignorance.'%

Marcus differs the least from Epictetus in his presentation of the third
theme, the discipline of assent. The discipline Marcus imposes on himself
relates, however, not only to the inner logos — that is, to the assent we give
to our representations (phantasiar) — but also to the outer logos; that is, our
manner of expressing ourselves." Here, the fundamental virtue is that of
truth, understood as rectitude of thought and speech. Lies, even when
involuntary, are the result of the deformation of our faculty of judgment.'”

When formulating the triple rule of life, Marcus also likes to insist on the fact
that we must concentrate on the present moment: the present representation, the
present action, and the present inner disposition (whether of desire or of aversion).
We find nothing of the sort in Epictetus, yet Marcus’ attitude here is in complete
accord with the fundamental Stoic attitude of attention (prosoche) as directed
toward the present moment.'™ Nothing must escape the vigilance of conscious-
ness: neither our relationship to destiny and the way of the world — this is the
discipline of desire — nor our relationship with our fellow men (discipline of the
active will), nor, finally, our relationship to ourselves (discipline of assent).

Elsewhere, Marcus links the three philosophical exercises to their corres-
ponding virtues. We thus have the following schema:

Discipline Corresponding virtue
Of desire Temperance (sophrosyme); absence of worries (ataraxia)
Of inclinations Justice (dikatosyne)

Of assent Truth (aletheia); absence of hurry (aproptosia),

Marcus Aurelius 199

Marcus enumerates the three virtues corresponding to the three disciplines in
the following terms: “Absence of hurry, love of our fellow-men, obedience to
the gods.” '®

This vocabulary is totally absent from Epictetus’ Discourses. How are we to
explain these differences in the way Marcus and Epictetus present the three
fundamental exercises of philosophy?

In the first place, it seems certain that Marcus possessed more information
about Epictetus’ teachings than we do today. In the first book of his
Meditations," Marcus tells us that he came to know the writings of Epictetus
thanks to Quintus Iunius Rusticus, a statesman who had taught Marcus the
fundamentals of Stoic doctrine before going on to become one of his
counsellors. Marcus states that Rusticus loaned him his personal copy of
Epictetus’ Aypomnemata; that is, a book of notes taken down at his classes.
This statement can be interpreted in two ways:

1 The book in question could be a copy of the work by Arrian. In the
prefatory letter he placed at the beginning of his edition of Epictetus’
Discourses, Arrian himself describes his work as a collection of hypomnemata:

Whatever I heard him say, I tried to write down, using his very words
as far as possible, so that I should have in the future some “notes
intended to help me remember” [hypomnemata] of his thought and his
frankness. As was to be expected, these notes often have the appearance
of an improvised, spontaneous conversation between two men, not such
as one would write if he was expecting them to be read one day."!'

Now, Arrian had come to attend the classes of Epictetus sometime between
AD 107 and 109. His prefatory letter to Lucius Gellius was probably
written after Epictetus’ death, some time between 125 and 130, and the
Discourses themselves were published ca. AD 130. Aulus Gellius recounts!”
that, in the year he spent studying at Athens — around AD 140 — he had
been present at a discussion in the course of which the famous millionaire
Herod Atticus had brought to him from a library a copy of what Gellius
refers to as the dissertationes of Epictetus, arranged (digestae) by Arrian. He
also tells how, on the way from Cassiopeia to Brindisium, he came across
a philosopher who had a copy of the same work in his baggage. This shows
that is was at least possible that Marcus read a copy of this book, which
had been loaned to him by Rusticus.

2 We might also consider another suggestion, which has already been
proposed by Farquharson. What Rusticus loaned to Marcus, on this
hypothesis, would have been Rusticus’ own notes, which he himself had
taken during Epictetus’ lectures. From the chronological point of view, if
we grant that Epictetus died between AD 125 and 130, and if Rusticus was

200 Figures

born at the beginning of the second century, as we are entitled to deduce
from his official cursus, it would then be entirely possible for Rusticus to
have been Epictetus’ student. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that there
was no copy of Epictetus’ Discourses available in Rome around AD 145-6,
even though the work had been widely diffused in Greece by 140. Besides,
Marcus represents Rusticus’ gift as something exceptional; we are thus
entitled to wonder if the gift may not, after all, have been Rusticus’ own
notes. It is, moreover, more or less certain that Marcus had read Arrian’s
work, since the Meditations are full of literal citations taken from it.

Whether Marcus had read only the Discourses as arranged by Arrian, or
whether he had read Rusticus’ notes as well, one thing is beyond doubt:
Marcus was familiar with more texts concerning Epictetus’ teaching than we
are today. We possess only a part of Arrian’s work; and if Rusticus’ notes did
in fact exist, they may well have revealed to Marcus some aspects of
Epictetus’ teachings which had not been noted down by Arrian.

It is thanks to Marcus that we know some otherwise unknown fragments
of Epictetus, such as the following: “You are a little soul, bearing the weight
of a dead body.”' This fragment also goes to show that “pessimistic”
features are not exclusively characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, as has often
been claimed. Thus, we may suppose that the differences in presentation of
the three exercises which we find in Marcus and in the extant works of
Epictetus can be explained by the influence of passages of Epictetus which
were known to Marcus, but subsequently were lost.

Finally, we must not forget that there is a profound difference between the
literary genre of Epictetus’ Discourses and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
Arrian’s work, even if it was more extensively rearranged than its author is
willing to admit in his preface, is quite literally a series of Discourses given
before an audience. Their subject-matter was inspired by specific circum-
stances: questions directed to the master, or visits of people from outside the
school. The argumentation was adapted to the capacities of the audience, and
its goal was to persuade them.

By contrast, Marcus was alone with himself. For my part, I cannot discern
in the Meditations the hesitations, contradictions, and strugglings of a man
abandoned to his solitude, which some scholars have thought to detect in
them.''* On the contrary, one is rather astounded by the firmness of thought
and technical nature of the philosophical vocabulary one encounters from
beginning to end of the Meditations. Everything points to the conclusion that
either Marcus had perfectly assimilated the teachings of Rusticus and
Epictetus, or else that he always had Epictetus’ own texts at hand, for the
practice of his meditation exercises. Onc is also astonished, moreover, by the
extraordinary literary quality of the majority of the Meditations. Marcus’
former teacher of rhetoric, Pronto, had tught him how to finely chisel his

Marcus Aurelius 201

sentences, and Marcus always sought to give to his thoughts the clarity, rigor,
and striking formulations necessary to give them the sought-after therapeut-
ical and psychagogic effect. After all, it is not enough merely to repeat some
rational principle to oneself, in order to be persuaded of it;!’ everything
depends on how you formulate it. The Meditations have the appearance of
variations, sometimes executed with supreme virtuosity, on a small number of
fundamental themes; indeed, they are variations almost exclusively on the three
themes first taken up by Epictctus. In some passages, such as those we have seen
cited above, the triple schema, enunciating the three philosophical exercises we
must practice at each instant, is presented in its entirety, with only some slight
variations. Elsewhere, only two of the themes, or even a single one, are presented.
As for the variations: sometimes they develop one or another of the three themes,
at other times they set forth motifs associated with these principal themes. For
instance, under the heading of the discipline of desire, we are presented with the
theme of destiny weaving for us in advance all that is going to happen to us;!!¢
or a discussion of the “physical” definition of objects;!"? the natural character of
the accessory phenomena which accompany natural phenomena;'* or the theme
of death.!"° Under the heading of the second discipline, that of inclinations, we
find the associated themes of love for others,'” or of rational action.'?!

Thus Marcus, in the course of his solitary meditations, was led to
orchestrate and make explicit everything that was implied by the doctrine of
the three disciplines as proposed by Epictetus. Often, Marcus does little more
than expand upon brief notes which were already sketched in the Discourses
arranged by Arrian: this is the case for the theme of joyous satisfaction with
the events willed by universal reason, for example, or with the theme of
obedience to the gods. '#?

To conclude: each time Marcus wrote down one of his Meditations, he knew
exactly what he was doing: he was exhorting himself to practice one of the
disciplines: either that of desire, of action, or of assent. At the same time, he
was exhorting himself to practice philosophy itself, in its divisions of physics,
ethics, and logic.'#

Perhaps now we are in a better position to understand what it is that gives
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations the fascinating power: they have exerted over
generations of readcrs. It is precisely the fact that we have the feeling of
witnessing the practice of spiritual exercises — captured live, so to speak.
There have been a great many preachers, theoreticians, spiritual directors, and
censors in the history of world literature. Yet it is extremely rare to have the
chance to see someone in the process of training himself to be a human being:
“When you have trouble getting up in the morning, let this thought be in
your mind: I’m waking up in order to do a man’s work.” !#4

We have already stressed that Marcus seldom seems to hesitate, stumble,
or feel his way as he practices exercises which follow the directions Epictetus
had sketched in advance so precisely. Nonetheless, we feel a quite particular

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emotion as we catch a person in the process of doing what we are all trying
to do: to give a meaning to our life, to strive to live in a state of perfect
awareness and to give each of life’s instants its full value. To be sure, Marcus
is talking to himself, but we still get the impression that he is talking to each
one of us as well.

NOTES

1 [Ernest Renan (1823-92) dominated French religious studies in the nineteenth
century, not without provoking occasional scandalous controversies. His Marc
Auréle was published in 1882. - Trans.]

2 E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge 1965, p. 29,
n. 1, with reference to Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8, 1, 1; 10, 8, 1-2; 11, 18,
5; 5, 10, 1.

3 Dio Cassius, 71, 36, 1.

4 Dodds, Pagan and Christian, p. 29, n. 1.

5 R. Dailly and H. van Effenterre, “Le cas Marc Auréle. Essai de psychosomatique
historique,” Revue des Etudes Anciennes 56 (1954), pp. 347-65.

6 Dio Cassius, 71, 6, 4.

7 Dailly and Effenterre, “Le cas Marc Auréle,” p. 354.

8 Ibid, p. 355.

9 T.W. Africa, “The opium addiction of Marcus Aurelius,” Journal of the History
of Ideas ( Jan.—Mar. 1961), pp. 97-102.

10 Dio Cassius, Roman Histortes, 71, 6, 4.

1] Galen, Works, vol. 14, p. 3 Kithn.

12 Africa, “Opium addiction,” p. 101.

13 Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-eater, \st edn in London
Magazine, Sept./Oct. 1821—Dec. 1822, repr. New York 1950, p. 60.

14 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4, 43.

15 Ibid, 5, 23.

16 Seneca, Letter, 99.

17 Seneca, Letter, 49, 3.

18 Leonidas of Tarentum, in The Greek Anthology, 7, 472, vol. 2 Paton.

19 SVF vol. 2, §762 (= Plutarch, On Common Conceptions, 1083 D): “substance...
always in flux and in motion.”

20 Plato, Cratylus, 402a; cf. A.A. Long, “Heracleitus and Stoicism,” in Philosophia
(Academy of Athens) 5-6 (1975-6).

21 Plutarch, On the Obsolescence of Oracles, 432a.

22 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15, 179.

23 On the view from on high, see below.

24 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5, 24.

25 Ibid, 12, 24.

26 Ibid, 9, 32.

27 Ibid, 11, 1, 3.

28 Ibid, 6, 36, 1.

Marcus Aurelius 203

29 Ibid, 12, 32.

30 See above.

31 Plato, Republic, 486a.

32 Scc below.

33 Philo Judaeus, On the Special Laws, 3, 1-2.

34 Maximus of Tyre, 22, 6, p. 91 Dibner.

35 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15, 147.

36 For instance, Seneca, Natural Questions, “Preface,” 7-13, quoted above.

37 See above.

38 Cicero, Scipio’s Dream, 3, 16ff. Cf. the remarks on this passage by A.-J.
Festugiére, La révélation d’Hermés Trismégiste, vol. 2, Paris 1949, pp. 441 ff.

39 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section 2, §72, p. 347 Brunschvicg. Cf. the quotation from
Ernest Renan, below.

40 [The word “nausea” is here used in the Sartrean sense of sudden, almost physical
disgust before the absurd meaninglessness of life; cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée,
Paris 1938. - Trans.]

41 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8, 24.

42 Ibid, 2, 2.

43 Ibid, 6, 13.

44 Ibid, 5, 33, 2.

45 Ibid, 10, 10.

46 Ibid, 10, 19.

47 Ibid, 4, 48, 3.

48 Ibid, 10, 27.

49 Ibid, 6, 46.

50 Ibid, 4, 32.

51 Ibid, 10, 18; 31.

52 Ibid, 5, 33.

53 Ibid, 3, 10.

54 Ibid, 9, 30.

55° Ibid, 7, 21.

56 Epictetus, Discourses, 4, 1, 143.

57 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12, 2, 3.

58 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 3, 944-9.

59 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4, 11, 1-2.

60 [In Stoic epistemology, a phantasia kataleptike was a sense-presentation so clear
and irrefutable that it entailed immediate assent. Since the correspondence
between representations and objects could not otherwise be verified, it was thus
the Stoics’ only criterion of judgment between truth and falsehood. — Trans.]

61 Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 8, 4.

62 Ibid.

63 Eg. R.B. Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study, Oxford 1989,
p. 243.

64 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 36.

65 Ibid, 8, 24, cited above., n. 41.

G6 Sencea, Letters to Lucilius, 107, 2.

204 Figures

67 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6, 36, 2.

68 Ibid, 6, 1; 6, 5.

69 Ibid, 3, 2.

70 Cf. above.

71 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 12, 1.

72 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8, 24.

73 Cf. above.

74 Ibid, 9, 1, 9.

75 Cf. I. Hadot, Seneca und die griectisch-rimische Tradition der Seelenleitung, Berlin
1969, pp. 56-7.

76 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 19, 1, 14.

77 Cf. below.

78 Epictetus, Manual, I, 1.

79 Cf. esp. Epictetus, Discourses, 1,4, 11; 3,2, 1; 3, 12, 1.

80 Epictetus, Manual, 5.

81 Epictetus, Discourses, 4,3, 13ff.

82 [On the tripartite division of philosophy in antiquity, cf. P. Hadot, “La
métaphysique du Porphyre,” in Porphyre (= Entretiens Hardt sur |’Antiquité
Classique 12), Vandoeuvres/Geneva 1966; Hadot, “La division des parties de la
philosophie dans l’Antiquité,” Museum Heleveticum 36 (1979), pp. 201-23.
- Trans.]

83 Epictetus, Discourses, I, 12, 15.

84 Ibid, I, 12, 17.

85 Ibid, I, 12, 8.

86 Ibid, 2, 10, 5.

87 This was already noticed by M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen
Bewegung, 1948-9; 5th edn, 2 vols, Gottingen 1978-80, vol. 2, p. 162.

88 Epictetus, Discourses, I, 1, 25.

89 Ibid, 3, 24, 103. On the importance of having memorable sayings ‘at hand”
(procheiron), see above.

90 Homer, Odyssey, 20, 18-23.

91 The resemblances which have been proposed between Epictetus and Panaitios,
Eudorus, and Seneca (cf. Pohlenz, Die Stoa, vol. 2, p. 162) are not very convincing.

92 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11, 37.

93 Ibid, 9, 36; cf. above. Cf. also ibid, 7, 54, quoted above.

94 Ibid, 8, 7.

95 Ibid, 9, 7.

96 Ibid, 4, 33.

97 Euarestein. The same term is used by Epictetus; cf. Discourses, 1, 12, 8.

98 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8, 52.

99 Ibid, 3, 11.

100 Cf. ibid, 4, 33; 3, 2, 6; 4, 44.

101 [An adaptation of Euripides, fr. 898 Nauck, 2nd edn. The same quotation had
already been used by Aristotle in his discussion of friendship at Nicomachean
Ethics, 8, 2, 1155a32ff. - Trans.]

102 Ibid, 10, 21.

Marcus Aurelius 205

103 Ibid, 3, 16, 2.

104 Ibid, 7, 13.

105 Ibid, 7, 22.

106 [For the Stoics, there was a fundamental identity between the “inner [endiathetos]
logos,” or thought, and the “outer [ prophorikos) logos,” or speech. — Trans.]

107 Ibid, 9, 1, 2-4.

108 On the concept of prosoche, cf. above.

109 Meditations, 3, 9.

110 Ibid., I, 7, 3.

111 Arrian, Letter to Lucius Gellius, in Epictetus, Discourses, vol. I, p. 4, 2—4 Oldfather.

112 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, I, 2.

113 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4, 41 = Epictetus fr. 26, vol. 2, p. 471 Oldfather.

114 Cf., for example, Rutherford, Meditations, p. 229.

115 Cf. M. Alexandre, “Le travail de la sentence chez Marc Auréle: philosophie et
rhétorique,” in Formes bréves (= Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des
Langues de l’Université de Poitiers 3), Poitiers 1979.

116 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3, 4, 5; 3, 11, 4; 3, 16, 3; 4, 26, 4. In this and in the
following notes, I have given only the minimum number of examples, so as not
to strain the reader’s patience with an excess of tedious references.

117 Ibid, 3, 11; 8, 6; 11, 2.

118 Ibid, 3, 2; 4, 36, 2.

119 Ibid, 2, 12, 3; 2, 14; 2, 17, 4-5; 3, 3.

120 Ibid, 7, 13, 3; 7, 22.

121 Ibid, 2, 16, 6; 12, 20.

122 Cf. ibid, 1, 12, 8.

123 Cf. ibid, 8, 13.

124 Ibid, 5, 1.

7

Reflections on the Idea of the
“Cultivation of the Self”

In his preface to The Use of Pleasure, as well as in a chapter of The Care of
the Self,| Michel Foucault made mention of-my article ‘Exercices spiritucls’,
the first version of which dates back to 1976.2 Foucault seems to have been
particularly interested by the following points, which I developed in this
article: the description of ancient philosophy as an art, style, or way of lifc;
the attempt I made to explain how modern philosophy had forgotten this
tradition, and had become an almost entirely theoretical discourse; and the
idea I sketched out in the article, and have developed more fully above, that
Christianity had taken over as its own certain techniques of spiritual exercises,
as they had already been practiced in antiquity.

Here, I should like to offer a few remarks with a view to delineating the
differences of interpretation, and in the last analysis of philosophical choice,
which separate us, above and beyond our points of agreement. These
differences could have provided the substance for a dialogue between us,
which, unfortunately, was interrupted all too soon by Foucault’s premature
death.

In The Care of the Self, Foucault meticulously describes what he terms the
“practices of the self” (pratigues de sor), recommendcd in antiquity by Stoic
philosophers. These include the care of one’s self, which can only be carried
out under the direction of a spiritual guide; the attention paid to the body
and the soul which the “care of the self” implies; exercises of abstinence;
examination of the conscience; the filtering of representations; and, finally,
the conversion toward and possession of the self. M. Foucault conceives of
these practices as “arts of existence” and “techniques of the self.”

It is quite true that, in this conncction, the ancients did speak of an “art of
living.” It seems to me, however, that the description M. Foucault gives of
what IT had termed “spiritual exercises,” and) which he prefers to. call

Reflections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self” 207

“techniques of the self,” is precisely focused far too much on the “self,” or at
least on a specific conception of the self.

In particular, Foucault presents Greco-Roman ethics as an ethics of the
pleasure one takes in oneself: “Access to the self is liable to replace this kind
of violent, uncertain, and temporary pleasures with a form of pleasure one
takes in oneself, serenely and forever.” 3 To illustrate his point, Foucault cites
Seneca’s twenty-third Letter, where he speaks of the joy one can find within
oneself, and specifically within the best portion of oneself. In fact, however,
I must say that there is a great deal of inexactitude in this way of
presenting the matter. In Letter 23, Seneca explicitly opposes voluptas
and gaudium — pleasure and joy — and one cannot, therefore, speak of
“another form of pleasure,” as does Foucault (Care of the Self; p. 83)
when talking about joy. This is not just a quibble over words, although
the Stoics did attach a great deal of importance to words, and care-
fully distinguished between Aedone — “pleasure” — and eupatheia — “joy”. No,
this is no mere question of vocabulary. If the Stoics insist on the word
gaudium/“joy,” it is precisely because they refuse to introduce the principle
of pleasure into moral life. For them, happiness does not consist in pleasure,
but in virtue itself, which is its own reward. Long before Kant, the
Stoics strove jealously to preserve the purity of intention of the moral
consciousness.

Secondly and most importantly, it is not the case that the Stoic finds his
joy in his “self;” rather, as Seneca says, he finds it “in the best portion of the
self,” in “the true good.”> Joy is to be found “in the conscience turned
towards the good; in intentions which have no other object than virtue; in just
actions.” * Joy can be found in what Seneca calls “perfect reason” ’ (that is to
say, in divine reason)® since for him, human reason is nothing other than
reason capable of being made perfect. The “best portion of oneself,” then, is,
in the last analysis, a transcendent self. Seneca does not find his joy in
“Seneca,” but by transcending “Seneca”; by discovering that there is within
him — within all human beings, that is, and within the cosmos itself — a reason
which is a part of universal reason.

In fact, the goal of Stoic exercises is to go beyond the self, and think and
act in unison with universal reason. The three exercises described by Marcus
Aurelius,’ following Epictetus, are highly significant in this regard. As we saw
above, they are as follows:

1 to judge objectively, in accordance with inner reason;

2 to act in accordance with the reason which all human beings have in
common; and

3 to accept the destiny imposed upon us by cosmic reason. For the Stoics,
there is only one single reason at work here, and this reason is man’s truc
self,

208 Figures

I can well understand Foucault’s motives for giving short shrift to these
aspects, of which he was perfectly aware. His description of the practices of
the self — like, moreover, my description of spiritual exercises — is not merely
an historical study, but rather a tacit attempt to offer contemporary mankind
a model of life, which Foucault calls “an aesthetics of existence.” Now,
according to a more or less universal tendency of modern thought, which is
perhaps more instinctive than reflective, the ideas of “universal reason” and
“universal nature” do not have much meaning any more. It was therefore
convenient to “bracket” them.

For the moment, then, let us say that, from an historical point of view, it
seems difficult to accept that the philosophical practice of the Stoics and
Platonists was nothing but a relationship to one’s self, a culture of the self, or
a pleasure taken in oneself. The psychic content of these exercises seems to
me to be something else entirely. In my view, the feeling of belonging to a
whole is an essential element: belonging, that is, both to the whole constituted
by the human community, and to that constituted by the cosmic whole.
Seneca sums it up in four words: Joti se inserens mundo," “Plunging oneself
into the totality of the world.” In his admirable Anthropologie philoso phique,"'
Groethuysen pointed out the importance of this fundamental point. Such a
cosmic perspective radically transforms the feeling one has of oneself.

Oddly, Foucault does not have much to say about the Epicureans. This is
all the more surprising in that Epicurean ethics is, in a sense, an ethics
without norms. It is an autonomous ethics, for it cannot found itself upon
nature, which according to its views is the product of chance. It would seem,
therefore, to be an ethics perfectly suited to the modern mentality. Perhaps
the reason for this silence is to be found in the fact that it is rather difficult
to integrate Epicurean hedonism into the overall schema of the use of
pleasures proposed by M. Foucault. Be this as it may, the Epicureans did
make use of spiritual exercises, for instance the examination of conscience. As
we have said, however, these practices are not based on the norms of nature
or universal reason, because for the Epicureans the formation of the world is
the result of mere chance. Nevertheless, here again, this spiritual exercise
cannot be defined simply as culture of the self, a relationship of the self to
the self, or pleasure that can be found in one’s own self. The Epicurean was
not afraid to admit that he needed other things besides himself in order to
satisfy his desires and to experience pleasure. He needed bodily nourishment
and the pleasures of love, but he also required a physical theory of the
universe, in order to eliminate the fear of the gods and of death. He needed
the company of the other members of the Epicurean school, so that he could
find happiness in mutual affection. Finally, he needed the imaginative
contemplation of an infinite number of universes in the infinite void, in order
to experience what Lucretius calls divina voluptas et horror, Metrodorus, a
disciple of Epicurus, gives a good account of the Epicurean sage's immersion

Reflections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self” 209

in the cosmos: “Remember that, although born mortal with a limited
life-span, you have risen in thought as far as the eternity and infinity of
things, and that you have seen everything that has been, and everything that
shall be.” * In Epicureanism, there is an extraordinary reversal of perspective.
Precisely because existence seems to the Epicurean to be pure chance,
inexorably unique, he greets life like a kind of miracle, a gratuitous,
unexpected gift of nature, and existence for him is a wonderful celebration.

Let us consider another example to illustrate the differences between our
interpretations of the “care of the self.” In an interesting article entitled
“Ecriture de soi,” > M. Foucault took as his point of departure a remarkable
text concerning the therapeutic value of writing, which I had studied in
Exercices spirituels.* According to this text, St Antony used to advise his
disciples to write down their actions and the emotions of their souls, as if they
were going to make them known to others. “Let writing take the place of the
eyes of other people,” Antony used to say. This anecdote leads M. Foucault
to reflect on the various forms adopted in antiquity by what he calls the
“writing of the self.” In particular, he examines the literary genre of
hypomnemata, which one could translate as “spiritual notebooks,” in which
one writes down other people’s thoughts, which may serve for the edification
of the person writing them down. Foucault's describes the goal of this exercise
in the following terms: the point is to “capture what-has-already-been-said
[capter le déja-dit],” and to “collect what one may have heard or read, with a
view to nothing less than the constitution of the self.” He then asks himself,
“How can we be placed in the presence of our selves with the help of ageless
discourses, picked up from any old place?” And he replies as follows: “this
exercise was supposed to allow one to turn back towards the past. The
contribution of the Aypomnemata is one of the means by which one detaches
the soul from worries about the future, in order to inflect it toward meditation
on the past.” Both in Epicurean and in Stoic ethics, Foucault thinks he
perceives the refusal of a mental attitude directed toward the future, and the
tendency to accord a positive value to the possession of a past which one can
enjoy autonomously and without worries.

It seems to me that this is a mistaken interpretation. It is true that the
Epicureans — and on/y the Epicureans — did consider the memory of pleasant
moments in the past as one of the principal sources of pleasure, but this has
nothing to do with the meditation on “what-has-already-been-said” practiced
in hypomnemata. Rather, as we saw above,'® Stoics and Epicureans had in
common an attitude which consisted in liberating oneself not only from
worries about the future, but also from the burden of the past, in order to
concentrate on the present moment; in order either to enjoy it, or to act
within it. From this point of view, neither the Stoics nor even the Epicureans
accorded a positive value to the past. The fundamental philosophic attitude
consisted in /itimg inthe present, and in possessing not the past, but the

210 Figures

present. That the Epicureans also attached a great deal of importance to the
thoughts formulated by their predecessors is a wholly different matter. But
although Aypomnemata deal with what has already been said, they do not deal
with just anything “already said,” the only merit of which would be that it is
a part of the past. Rather, it is because one recognizes in this “thing already
said” — which usually consisted in the dogmas of the school’s founding
members — that which reason itself has to say to the present. It is because one
recognizes, in the dogmas of Epicurus or Chrysippus, an ever-present value,
precisely because they are the very expression of reason. In other words, when
one writes or notes something down, it is not an alien thought one is making
one’s own. Rather, one is utilizing formulae considered as apt to actualize
what is already present within the reason of the person writing, and bring it
to life.

According to M. Foucault, this method made a deliberate attempt to be
eclectic, and therefore implied a personal choice; this then explains the
“constitution of the self.”

Writing as a personal exercise, done by oneself and for oneself, is an art
of disparate truth; more precisely, it is a way of combining the
traditional authority of what has already been said, with the singularity
of the truth which asserts itself in it, and the particularity of the
circumstances which determine its utilization.

In fact, however, personal choice is not to be found in eclecticism, at least for
the Stoics and Epicureans. Eclecticism is only used for converting beginners.
At that stage, anything goes. For instance, Foucault finds an example of
eclecticism in the Letters to Lucilius, in which the Stoic Seneca quotes sayings
of Epicurus. The goal of these letters, however, is to convert Lucilius, and to
cause him to begin to lead a moral life. The utilization of Epicurus appears
only in the first Letters, and soon disappears.” On the contrary, personal
choice in fact intervenes only when one adheres exclusively to a precise form
of life, be it Stoicism or Epicureanism, considered as in conformity with
reason. It is only in the New Academy — in the person of Cicero, for instance
— that a personal choice is made according to what reason considers as most
likely at a given moment.

It is thus not the case, as Foucault maintains,'* that the individual forges a
spiritual identity for himself by writing down and re-reading disparate
thoughts. In the first place, as we have seen, these thoughts are not disparate,
but chosen because of their coherence. Secondly, and most importantly, the
point is not to forge oneself a spiritual identity by writing, but rather to
liberate oneself from one’s individuality, in order to raise oneself up to
universality. It is thus incorrect to speak of “writing of the self”: not only is
it not the case that one “writes oneself,” but what is more, it ik not the case

Reflections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self” 211

that writing constitutes the self. Writing, like the other spiritual exercises,
changes the level of the self, and universalizes it. The miracle of this exercise,
carried out in solitude, is that it allows its practitioner to accede to the
universality of reason within the confines of space and time.

For the monk Antony, the therapeutic value of writing consisted precisely
in its universalizing power. Writing, says Antony, takes the place of other
people’s eyes. A person writing feels he is being watched; he is no longer
alone, but is a part of the silently present human community. When one
formulates one’s personal acts in writing, one is taken up by the machinery
of reason, logic, and universality. What was confused and subjective becomes
thereby objective.

To summarize: what Foucault calls “practices of the self’ do indeed
correspond, for the Platonists as well as for the Stoics, to a movement of
conversion toward the self. One frees oneself from exteriority, from personal
attachment to exterior objects, and from the pleasures they may provide. One
observes oneself, to determine whether one has made progress in this exercise.
One seeks to be one’s own master, to possess oneself, and find one’s happiness
in freedom and inner independence. I concur on all these points. I do think,
however, that this movement of interiorization is inseparably linked to another
movement, whereby one rises to a higher psychic level, at which one
encounters another kind of exteriorization, another relationship with “the
exterior.” This is a new way of being-in-the-world, which consists in
becoming aware of onesclf as a part of nature, and a portion of universal
reason. At this point, one no longer lives in the usual, conventional human
world, but in the world of nature. As we have seen above,'? one is then
practicing “physics” as a spiritual exercise.

In this way, one identifies oneself with an “Other”: nature, or universal
reason, as it is present within each individual. This implies a radical
transformation of perspective, and contains a universalist, cosmic dimension,
upon which, it seems to me, M. Foucault did not sufficiently insist.
Interiorization is a going beyond oneself; it is universalization.

The preceding remarks arc not intended to be relevant only to an historical
analysis of ancient philosophy. They are also an attempt at defining an ethical
model which modern man can discover in antiquity. What I am afraid of is
that, by focusing his interpretation too exclusively on the culture of the self,
the care of the self, and conversion toward the sclf — more generally, by
defining his ethical model as an aesthetics of existence - M. Foucault is
propounding a culture of the self which is too aesthetic. In other words, this
may be a new form of Dandyism, late twentieth-century style. This, however,
deserves a more attentive study than I am able to devote to it here. Personally,
I belicve firmly - albeit perhaps naively — that it is possible for modern man
to live, not as a sage (sophos) — most of the ancients did not hold this to be
possible but asa practitioner of the ever-fragile exercise of wisdom. This can

212 Figures

be attempted, starting out from the lived experience of the concrete, living,
and perceiving subject, under the triple form defined, as we saw above, by
Marcus Aurelius:

1 as an effort to practice objectivity of judgment;

2 as an effort to live according to justice, in the service of the human
community; and

3 as an effort to become aware of our situation as a part of the universe. Such
an exercise of wisdom will thus be an attempt to render oneself open to the
universal.

More specifically, I think modern man can practice the spiritual exercises of
antiquity, at the same time separating them from the philosophical or mythic
discourse which came along with them. The same spiritual exercise can, in fact,
be justified by extremely diverse philosophical discourses. These latter are
nothing but clumsy attempts, coming after the fact, to describe and justify inner
experiences whose existential density is not, in the last analysis, susceptible of any
attempt at theorization or systematization. Stoics and Epicureans, for example —
for completely different reasons — urged their disciples to concentrate their
attention on the present moment, and free themselves from worries about the
future as well as the burden of the past. Whoever concretely practices this
exercise, however, sees the universe with new eyes, as if he were seeing it for the
first time. In the enjoyment of the pure present, he discovers the mystery and
splendor of existence. At such moments, as Nietzsche said,” we say yes “not only
to ourselves, but to all existence.” It is therefore not necessary, in order to practice
these exercises, to believe in the Stoics’ nature or universal reason. Rather, as one
practices them, one lives concretely according to reason. In the words of Marcus
Aurelius:?' “Although everything happens at random, don’t you, too, act
at random.” In this way, we can accede concretely to the universality of
the cosmic perspective, and the wonderful mystery of the presence of the
universe.

NOTES

1 M. Foucault, The Care of the Self (= History of Sexuality, vol. 3), trans. Robert
Hurley, New York 1986. [References are to the French edition, Le Souci de soi,
Paris 1984 - Trans.]

2 Annuaire de la 5 Section de l’Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, 1975-6.

3 Foucault, Souci, pp. 83-4.

4 We find this distinction again in Plotinus and in Bergson, the latter linking
together joy and creation; cf. Henri Bergson, L.'Energie spirituelle, \4th edn, Paris
1930, p. 24.

5 Sencca, Letter, 23, 6.

Reflections on the Idea of the ‘‘Cultivation of the Self” 213

6 Ibid, 23, 7.

7 Seneca, Letter, 124, 23.

8 Seneca, Letter, 92, 27.

9 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 54; 9, 6; 8, 7.

10 Seneca, Letter, 46, 6.

11 B. Groethuysen, Anthropologie philosophique, Paris 1952, repr. 1980, p. 80.

12 Cf. above.

13 (“Writing of the self”; M. Foucault, “L’écriture de soi,” Corps écrit 5 (1983), pp.
3—23 — Trans.]

14 Cf. above.

15 Art. cit., p. 8.

16 Above.
17 Cf. 1. Hadot, “Epicure et l’enseignement philosophique héllenique et romain,”

in Actes du VIIIe Congrés Bude, Paris 1969, p. 351.
18 Loc. cit., pp. 11-13.
19 Cf. above.
20 Reference [?]
21 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10, 28, 3.

Part IV
Themes

8

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

“Then the spirit looks neither ahead nor behind. Only the present is our
happiness.”' In this verse from Goethe’s Second Faust, we find an expression of
the art of concentrating on and recognizing the value of the present instant. It
corresponds to an expericnce of time which was lived with particular intensity in
such ancient philosophies as Epicureanism and Stoicism, and in what follows we
shall be especially concerned with this type of experience. We ought not,
however, to forget the literary context in which these lines are spoken, the
meaning they take on within the context of the Second Faust, and, more gencrally,
within the work of Goethe. In the process, we will find that Gocthe himself is a
remarkable witness for the type of experience we have mentioned.

The verses quoted mark one of the climaxes of the Second Faust, a moment when
Faust seems to reach the culminating point of his “quest for the highest existence.” ?
Beside him, on the throne which he has had built for her, sits Helen, whom he had
evoked in the first act, after a terrifying journcy to the.realm of the Mothers, in
order to amuse the empcror; but had since fallen hopelessly in love with her:

Has the Source of Beauty, overflowing its banks,
Flowed into the deepest recesses of my being?...
To you I dedicate the stirring of all strength,
The essence too of passion;

To you, affection, love, worship, and madness.}

It is Helen for whom he has searched throughout the second act, throughout
all the mythiew! formy of classical Greece. He has spoken of her with the

218 Themes

centaur Chiron, and with Manto the Sibyl, and finally, it is she who, in
the third act, has come to take refuge in the medieval fortress —
perhaps Mistra in the Peloponnese — of which he appears as the lord and
master.

It is then that the extraordinary encounter takes place between Faust
and Helen; Faust, who, although he appears in the guise of a medieval
knight, is really the personification of modern man, and Helen, who, although
she is evoked in the form of the heroine of the Trojan War, is, in fact, the
figure of beauty itself, and in the last analysis of the beauty of nature.
With consummate mastery, Goethe has succeeded in bringing these figures
and symbols to life, in such a way that the encounter between Faust
and Helen is as highly-charged with emotion as the meeting between two
lovers, as laden with historical significance as the meeting between
two epochs, and as full of meaning as the encounter of a human being with
his destiny.

The choice of poetic form is used very skillfully to represent both the
dialogue of the two lovers and the encounter between two historical epochs.
Since the beginning of the third act, Helen had been speaking in the
manner of ancient tragedy, and her words were set to the rhythm of iambic
trimeters, while the chorus of captive Trojan women responded to her in
strophe and antistrophe. Now, however, at the moment when Helen meets
Faust and hears the watchman Lynceus speak in rhymed distichs, she is
astonished and charmed by this unknown poetic form:

No sooner has one word struck the car
Than another comes to caress its predecessor.’

The birth of Helen’s love for Faust will, moreover, express itself in the
same rhymed distichs, which Faust begins and Helen finishes, inventing the
rhyme each time. As she learns this new poetic form, Helen learns, as
Phorkyas says, to spell out the alphabet of love.’ Helen begins:

Tell me, then, how can I, too, speak so prettily?

“That’s easy enough,” replies Faust;

It must come from the heart,
And when one’s breast with longing overflows,
Onc looks around, and asks —

Helen: who shall enjoy it with us,

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 219

Faust begins again:

Now the spirit looks not forward, nor behind
Only the present —

Helen: is our happiness.

Faust: Itis our treasure, our highest prize, our possession
and our pledge.
But who confirms it?

Helen: My hand.°®

The love duet ends, for the moment, with this sign of Helen’s yielding, and
the rhyme-play thus ends in a “confirmatio” which is now no longer the echo
of a rhyme, but the gift of a hand. Faust and Helen then fall silent, and
embrace each other without a word, while the chorus, adopting the tone of an
epithalamion, describes their embrace. Then the dialogue of love — and also of
rhyming verses — starts up again betwcen Faust and Helen, and causes us to
live a moment of such intensity and pregnancy that both time and the drama
scem to stop. Helen says:

I feel myself so far away and yet so close;
And I say only too gladly: Here Am I! Here!

Faust: 1 can scarcely breathe; my words tremble and falter;
This is a dream, and time and place have disappeared.

Helen: It seems to me that I am broken down with age,
and yet I am so new;
Mingled with you, I am faithful to the Unknown.

Faust: Don’t rack your brains about your destiny, so unique!
Existence is a duty, be it only for an instant.’

Here the drama seems to stop. We think that Helen and Faust have nothing
left to desire, fulfilled as they are by each other’s presence. But Mephistopheles,
who, in order to adapt himself to the Greek world, has taken on the monstrous
mask of Phorkyas, breaks off this perfect moment by announcing the menacing
approach of the troops of Menelaus, and Faust reproaches him for his ill-timed
interruption. The marvelous instant has now disappcared, but the dispositions of
Faust and of Helen will still be reflected in the description of the ideal Arcadia
in which Muust and Helen are to engender Euphorion, the genius of poetry.

220 Themes

The dialogue we have quoted may be understood at several levels. First and
foremost, it is the dialogue between two lovers, who, as such, resemble all lovers
everywhere. Faust and Helen are two lovers absorbed by the living presence of
the beloved: they forget everything — both past and future — which is other than
this presence. Their excess of happiness gives them an impression of dreamlike
unreality: time and space disappear. We are entering the unknown, and it is the
moment of love fulfilled.

On a second level of interpretation, however, the dialogue takes place
between Faust and Helen as symbolic figures, representing, on the one hand,
modern man in his ceaseless striving, and on the other, ancient beauty in its
soothing presence; both are miraculously reunited by the magic of poetry,
which abolishes the centuries. In this dialogue, Faust as modern man tries to
make Helen forget her past, so that she may be wholly in the present instant,
which she is incapable of understanding. She feels herself to be so distant and
yet so close, abandoned by life and yet in the process of rebirth, living in
Faust, mingled with him, and trusting in the unknown. Faust asks her not to
reflect upon her strange destiny, but to accept the new existence which is
being offered to her. In this dialogue between two symbolic figures, Helen
becomes “modernized,” if one may say so; as she adopts rhyme, the symbol
of modern interiority, she has doubts, and reflects upon her destiny. At the
same time, Faust becomes “antiquated”: he speaks as a man of antiquity,
when he urges Helen to concentrate on the present moment, and not to lose
it in hesitant reflection on the past and the future. As Goethe said in a letter
to Zelter, this was the characteristic feature of ancient life and art: to know
how to live in the present, and to know what he called “the healthiness of the
moment.” In antiquity, says Goethe, the instant was “pregnant;” in other
words, filled with meaning, but it was also lived in all its reality and the
fullness of its richness, sufficient unto itself. We no longer know how to live
in the present, continues Gocthe. For us, the ideal is in the future, and can
only be the object of a sort of nostalgic desire, while the present is considered
trivial and banal. We no longer know how to profit from the present; we no
longer know — as the Greeks did — how to act in the present, and upon the
present.’ Indeed, if Faust spcaks to Helen as a man of the ancient world, it is
precisely because the presence of Helen — that is, the presence of ancient
beauty — reveals to him what presence itself is: the presence of the world,
“That splendid feeling of the present” (Herrliches Geftihl der Gegenwart) as
Goethe wrote in the East-West Divan.‘

This, finally, is the reason why the dialogue can be understood at a third
level. Here, it is no longer the dialogue of two lovers, nor of two historical
figures, but rather the dialogue of man with himself. The encounter with
Helen is not only the encounter with ancient beauty emanating from nature;
it is also the encounter with a living wisdom and art of living: that
“healthiness of the moment” which we mentioned above. The nihilist Faust

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 221

had wagered with Mephistopheles that he would never say to an instant:
“Stay, you are so beautifull” But now, following after humble Gretchen, it is
ancient, noble Helen who reveals to him the splendor of being — that is, of
the present instant — and teaches him to say yes to the world and to himself.

We must now define the ancient experience of time which we saw expressed
in the above-quoted verses from Faust. Basing ourselves on the letter from
Goethe to Zeller we cited above, we might think that we have to do with a
generalized, common experience of ancient man, and that it was natural for
ancient man to be familiar with what Goethe calls the “healthiness of the
moment.” Moreover, following Goethe, many historians and philosophers,
from Oswald Spengler" to the logician Hintikka," have alluded to the fact
that the Greeks “lived in the present moment” more than did the repre-
sentatives of other cultures. In his book Die Zauberfléte," Siegfried Morenz
gives a good summary of this conception: “No one has better characterized
the particular nature of Greece than Goethe...in the dialogue between
Faust and Helen: ‘. . . then the spirit looks neither backwards nor ahead. Only
the present is our happiness.’ ”

We must certainly agree that the Greeks in general gave particular attention
to the present moment, and this attention could take on several different
ethical and artistic meanings. Popular wisdom advised people both to be
content with the present, and to know how to utilize it. Being content with
the present meant, on the one hand, being content with earthly existence.
This is what Goethe admired in ancient art, particularly in funerary art,
where the deceased was represented not with his eyes raised toward the
heavens, but in the act of living his daily life. On the other hand, knowing
how to utilize the present meant knowing how to recognize and seize the
favorable and decisive instant (kairos). Kairos designated all the possibilities
contained within a given moment: a good general, for example, knows how to
strike at the opportune &airos, and sculptors fix in marble the most significant
kairos of the scene which they wish to bring to life.

It does seem, then, that the Greeks paid particular attention to the present
moment. This, however, does not justify us in imagining — as did Winckel-
mann, Goethe, and Hdlderlin — the existence of an idealized Greece, the
citizens of which, because they lived in the present moment, were perpetually
bathed in beauty and serenity. As a matter of fact, people in antiquity were
just as filled with anguish as we are today, and ancient poetry often preserves
the echo of this anguish, which sometimes goes as far as despair. Like us, the
ancients bore the burden of the past, the uncertainty of the future, and the
fear of death. Indeed, it was for this human anguish that ancient philosophies
- particularly Epicureanism and Stoicism — sought to provide a remedy.
These philosophies were therapies, intended to provide a cure for anguish,
and to bring freedom and self-mastery, and their goal was to allow people to

222 Themes

free themselves from the past and the future, so that they could live within
the present. Here we have to do with an experience of time wholly different
from the common, general experience we have been describing. As we shall
see, this experience corresponds precisely to that expressed in the verses from
Faust. “Only the present is our happiness . . . don’t think about your destiny.
Existence is a duty.” We are dealing with a philosophical conversion,
implying a voluntary, radical transformation of one’s way of living and
looking at the world. This is the true “healthiness of the moment,” which
leads to serenity.

Despite the profound differences between Epicurean and Stoic doctrine, we
find an extraordinary structural analogy between the experiences of time as it was
lived in both schools. This analogy will perhaps allow us to glimpse a certain
common experience of the present underlying their doctrinal divergences. We
can define this analogy as follows: both Epicureanism and Stoicism privilege the
present, to the detriment of the past and above all of the future. They posit as
an axiom that happiness can only be found in the present, that one instant of
happiness is equivalent to an eternity of happiness, and that happiness can and
must be found immediately, here and now. Both Epicureanism and Stoicism
invite us to resituate the present instant within the perspective of the cosmos, and
to accord infinite value to the slightest moment of existence.

To begin with Epicureanism: it is a therapy of anguish, and a philosophy
which seeks, above all, to procure peace of mind. Its goal is consequently to
liberate mankind from everything that is a cause of anguish for the soul: the
belief that the gods are concerned with mankind; the fear of post-mortem
punishment; the worries and pain brought about by unsatisfied desires; and
the moral uneasiness caused by the concern to act out of perfect purity of
intention.

Epicureanism does away with all this. With regard to the gods, it affirms
that they themselves live in perfect tranquillity. They are not troubled by the
worry of producing or governing the universe, since the latter is the result of
a fortuitous coming together of eternally existent atoms. With regard to death,
Epicureanism asserts that the soul docs not survive the body, and that death
is not an event within life. With regard to desires, it affirms that they trouble
us to the extent that they are artificial and useless. We must reject all those
desires which are neither natural nor necessary, and satisfy — with prudence
— those of our desires which are natural but not necessary. Above all, we are
to satisfy those desires which are indispensable for the continuation of our
existence. As for moral worries, they will be completely appeased once we
realize that man, like all other living beings, is always motivated by pleasure.
If we seek for wisdom, this is simply because it brings peace of mind: in other
words, a pleasurable state.

What Epicureanism proposes is a form of wisdom, which teaches us how
to relax and to suppress our worrics. ‘This only appears to be casy, moreover;

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 223

for we must renounce a great deal, in order that we may desire only that
which we are certain of obtaining, and submit our desires to the judgment of
reason. What is required, in fact, is a total transformation of our lives, and
one of the principal aspects of this transformation is the change of our attitude
toward time. According to Epicureanism, senseless people — that is, the
majority of mankind — are tormented by vast, hollow desires which have to
do with wealth, glory, power, and the unbridled pleasures of the flesh. What
is characteristic of all these desires is that they cannot be satisfied in the
present. This is why, for the Epicureans,

senseless people live in hope for the future, and since this cannot be
certain, they are consumed by fear and anxiety. Their torment is the
most intense when they realize too late that they have striven in vain
after moncy or power or glory, for they do not derive any pleasure from
the things which, inflamed with hope, they had undertaken such great
labors to procure."

According to an Epicurean saying, “The life of a foolish man is fearful and
unpleasant; it is swept totally away into the future.”'® Thus, Epicurean
wisdom proposes a radical transformation, which must be active at each
instant of life, of mankind’s attitude toward time. We must, it teaches, learn
how to enjoy the pleasure of the present, without letting ourselves be
distracted from it. If the past is unpleasant to us, we are to avoid thinking
about it, and we must not think about the future, insofar as the idea of it
provokes in us fears or unbridled expectations. Only thoughts about what is
pleasant — of pleasure, whether past or future — arc to be allowed into the
present moment, especially when we are trying to compensate for current
suffering. This transformation presupposes a specific conception of pleasure,
peculiar to Epicureanism, according to which the quality of pleasure depends
neither on the quantity of desires it satisfies, nor on the length of time it lasts.

The quality of pleasure does not depend on the quantity of desires it
satisfies. The best and most intense pleasure is that which is mixed to the
least extent with worry, and which is the most certain to ensure peace of
mind. It can therefore be procured by the satisfaction of natural and necessary
desires; that is, those desircs which are essential and necessary for the
preservation of existence. Now, such desires can easily be satisfied, without
our having to rely on the future for them, and without our being exposed to
the worry and uncertainty of lengthy pursuit. “Thanks be to blessed nature,
who made nccessary things easy to obtain, and things which are hard to obtain
unnecessary.” '

What causes us to think about the past or the future are such illnesses of
the soul as the human passions, desires for wealth, power, or depravity; but
the purest, mont intense pleasure can casily be obtained within the present.

224 Themes

Not only does pleasure not depend upon the quantity of satisfied desires, but —
above all — it does not depend upon duration. It has no need to be long-lasting
in order to be perfect: “An infinite period of time could not cause us more
pleasure than can be derived from this one, which we can see is finite.” ”
“Finite time and infinite time bring us the same pleasure, if we measure its
limits by reason.” This may seem paradoxical, but it is founded on a
theoretical conception. As the Stoics were to repeat, a tiny circle is no more
of a circle than a large one." The Epicureans thought of pleasure as a reality
in and for itself, not situated within the category of time. Aristotle had said
that pleasure is total and complete at each moment of its duration, and that
its prolongation does not change its essence.”" For the Epicureans, a practical
attitude is joined to this theoretical representation: if pleasure limits itself to
that which procures perfect peace of mind, it attains a summit which cannot
be surpassed, and it is impossible for it to by increased by duration. In the
words of Guyau: “In enjoyment, there is a kind of inner plenitude and
over-abundance which makes it independent of time, as well as of everything
else. True pleasure bears its infinity within itself.” ?!

Thus, pleasure is wholly within the present moment, and we need not wait
for anything from the future to increase it. Everything we have been saying
so far could be summed up in the following verses from Horace: “Let the soul
which is happy with the present learn to hate to worry about what lies
ahead.” 22 The happy mind does not look towards the future. If we limit our
desires in a reasonable way, we can be happy right now. Not only can we be
happy, but we must: happiness must be found immediatcly, here and now,
and in the present. Instead of reflecting about our lives as a whole, calculating
our hopes and worries, we must seize happiness within the present moment.
The matter is urgent; in the words of an Epicurean saying:

We are only born once — twice is not allowed — and it is necessary
that we shall be no more, for all eternity; and yet you, who are not
master of tomorrow, you keep on putting off your joy? Yet life is vainly
consumed in these delays, and each of us dies without ever having
known peace.”

Once again, we find the echo of this idea in Horace: “While we are talking,
jealous time has fled. So seize the day [carpe diem], and put no trust
in tomorrow.”24 Horace’s carpe diem is by no means, as is often believed,
the advice of a sensualist playboy; on the contrary, it is an invitation
to conversion. We are invited to become aware of the vanity of our immensc-
ly vain desires, at the same time as of the imminence of death, the
uniqueness of life, and the uniqueness of the present instant. From this
perspective, cach instant appears as a marvelous gift which fills its recipient
with gratitude:

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 225

Believe that each new day that dawns will be the last for you:
Then each unexpected hour shall come to you as a delightful gift.

There is perhaps an echo here of the Epicurean Philodemus: “Receive each
additional moment of time in a manner appropriate to its value; as if one were
having an incredible stroke of luck.” ¢

We have already encountered the Epicureans’ feelings of gratitude and
astonishment, in the context of the miraculous coincidence between the needs
of living beings and the facilities provided for them by nature. The secret of
Epicurean joy and serenity is to live each instant as if it were the last, but also
as if it were the first. We experience the same grateful astonishment when we
accept the instant as though it were unexpected, or by greeting it as entirely
new: “If the whole world were appear to mortals now, for the first time; if it
was suddenly and unexpectedly exposed to their view; what could one think
of more marvelous than these things, and which mankind would less have
dared to believe?”?’ In the last analysis, the secret of Epicurean joy and
serenity is the experience of infinite pleasure provided by the consciousness
of existence, even if it be only for a moment. In the words of an Epicurean
saying: “The cry of the flesh is: Not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to
be cold. Whoever has these things, and hopes to kecp on having them, can
rival in happiness with Zeus himself.” #* The lack of hunger and thirst is thus
the condition for being able to continue to exist, being conscious of existing,
and enjoying this consciousness of existing. God has nothing more than this.
It could be objected that God’s pleasure consists in his knowledge that he has
the happiness of existing forever. Not so, replies Epicurus; for the pleasure of
one instant of existence is just as total and complete as a pleasure of infinite
duration, and man is just as immortal as God, because death is not a part of
life.”

In order to show that one single instant of happiness is enough to give such
infinite pleasure, the Epicureans practiced telling themselves each day: “I
have had all the pleasure I could have expected.” In the words of Horace: “He
will be master of himself and live joyfully who can say, every day: ‘I have
lived.’ ”*° Seneca also takes up this Epicurean theme:

When we are about to go to sleep, let us say in joyous cheerfulness: “I
have lived; I have travelled the route that fortune had assigned to me.”
If God should grant us tomorrow as well, let us accept it joyfully. That
person is most happy and in tranquil possession of himself who awaits
tomorrow without worries.*'! Whoever says: “I have lived”, gets up every
day to receive unexpected riches.”

We can also see here the role played in Epicureanism by the thought of
death, ‘To svy, every evening: “I have lived,” is to say “my life is over.” It is

226 Themes

to practice the same exercise as that which consists in saying: “Today will be
the last day of my life.” Yet it is precisely this exercise of becoming aware of
life’s finitude which reveals the infinite value of the pleasure of existing within
the present instant. From the point of view of death, the mere fact of existing
— even if only for a moment — seems to be of infinite value, and gives us
pleasure of infinite intensity. Only once we have become aware of the fact that
we have already — in one instant of existence — had everything there was to
be had, can we say with equanimity: “my life is over.”

It is here, moreover, that the cosmic perspective comes into play. The
Epicureans had their own particular vision of the universe. As Lucretius
put it: thanks to the doctrine of Epicurus, which explained the origin of
the universe by the fall of atoms in a void, the walls of the world burst
open for the Epicurean: he saw all things come into being within the
immense void,* and traversed the immensity of the all. Alternatively, he
exclaims, in the words of Metrodorus: “Remember that, born a mortal,
with a limited life-span, you have risen up in soul to eternity and the
infinity of things, and that you have seen all that has been and all that shall
be.” * Here again, we encounter the contrast between finite and infinite time.
Within finite time, the sage grasps all that takes place within infinite time, or
as Léon Robin puts it in his commentary on Lucretius: “The sage places
himself within the immutability of eternal Nature, which is independent of
time.”

Thus, the sage perceives the totality of the cosmos within his consciousness
of the fact of existing. Nature gives him everything within an instant, and
since she has already given him everything, she has nothing left to give him,
as she says in Lucretius’ poem: “You must always expect the same things,
even though the span of your life should triumph over all the ages; nay, even
were you never to die.” *

The fundamental attitude that the Stoic must maintain at each instant of his
life is one of attention, vigilance, and continuous tension, concentrated
upon cach and every moment, in order not to miss anything which is contrary
to reason. We find an excellent description of this attitude in Marcus
Aurelius:

Here is what is enough for you:

1. the judgment you are bringing to bear at this moment upon reality,
as long as it is objective;

2. the action you are carrying out at this moment, as long as it is
accomplished in the service of the human community; and

3. the inner disposition in which you find yoursclf at this moment, as
long as it is a disposition of joy in the face of the conjunction of events
caused by extraneous causality.”

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 227

Thus, Marcus used to train himself to concentrate upon the present moment;
that is, upon what he was thinking, doing, and feeling within the present
instant. “This is enough for you,” he tells himself, and the expression has a
double meaning:

1 It is enough to keep you busy; you have no need to think about anything
else; and
2 It is enough to make you happy; there is no need to seek for anything else.

This is the spiritual exercise Marcus himself calls “delimiting the present.” **
Delimiting the present means turning one’s attention away from the past and
the future, in order to concentrate it upon what one is in the process of doing.

The present of which Marcus speaks is a present delimited by human
consciousness. The Stoics distinguished two ways of defining the present.” The
first consisted in understanding the present as the limit between the past and the
future: from this point of view, no present time ever actually exists, since time is
infinitely divisible. ‘This, however, is an abstract, quasi-mathematical division,
with the present being reduced to an infinitesimal instant.

The second way consisted in defining the present with reference to human
consciousness. In this case, the present represented a certain “thickness” of
time, corresponding to the attention-span of lived consciousness. When
Marcus advises us to “delimit the present,” he is talking about this lived
present, relative to consciousness. This is an important point: the present is
defined by its reference to man’s thoughts and actions.

The present suffices for our happiness, because it is the only thing which
belongs to us, and depends upon us. For the Stoics, it was essential to
distinguish between what does and does not depend upon us. The past does
not belong to us, since it is definitively fixated, and the future does not
depend on us, because it does not yet exist. Only the present depends on us,
and it is therefore the only thing which can be either good or bad, since it is
the only thing which depends upon our will. Since the past and the future do
not depend on us, they do not come under the category of moral good or evil,
and must therefore be indifferent to us.*° It is a waste of time to worry about
what is long gone, or what will perhaps never occur; we must therefore
“delimit the present.” “All the happiness you are trying to achieve by long,
roundabout ways: you can have it all right now....that is, if you leave
everything past behind you, entrust the future to providence, and if you
arrange the present in accordance with piety and justice.” *!

Elsewhere, Marcus describes the exercise of delimiting the present in the
following terms:

if you separate from yourself, that is, from your thought . . . everything
you have said or done in the past, everything that disturbs you about

228 Themes

the future; all that... attaches itself to you against your will .. . if you
separate from yourself the future and the past, and apply yourself
exclusively to living the life that you are living — that is to say, the
present — you can live all the time that remains to you until your death,
in calm, benevolence, and serenity.”

Seneca describes the same exercise as follows:

Two things must be cut short:* the fear of the future and the memory
of past discomfort; the one does not concern me any more, and the other
does not concern me yet.4

The sage enjoys the present without depending on the future....
Liberated from the burden of worries which torture the mind, he does
not hope for or desire anything. He does not plunge forward into the
unknown, for he is happy with what he has [i.e. the present, which is
all that belongs to us]. And don’t believe that he is content with not very
much, for what he has is everything.*®

Here we witness the same transformation of the present that we encountered
in Epicureanism. In the present, say the Stoics, we have everything, and only
the present is our happiness. There are two reasons why the present is
sufficient for our happiness: in the first place, Stoic happiness — like
Epicurean pleasure — is complete at every instant and does not increase over
time. The second reason is that we already possess the whole of reality within
the present instant, and even infinite duration could not give us more than
what we have right now.

Happiness, then — that is, for the Stoics, moral action or virtue — is always
total and complete, at each moment of its duration. Like pleasure for the
Epicurean sage, the happiness of the Stoic sage is perfect. It lacks nothing,
just as a circle, whether it is large or small, still remains a circle. The same is
true of a propitious or opportune moment or favorable opportunity: it is an
instant, the perfection of which depends not on its duration, but rather on its
quality, and the harmony which exists between one’s exterior situation and
the possibilities that one has.* Happiness is nothing more nor less than that
instant in which man is wholly in accord with nature.

Just as was the case for the Epicureans, one instant of happiness is,
according to the Stoics, equivalent to an eternity. In the words of Chrysippus:
“If a person has wisdom for one instant, he is no less happy than he who
possesses it for an eternity.” *” Similarly, as for the Epicureans, so for the
Stoics: we will never be happy if we are not so right now. It’s now or never,
The matter is urgent: we must hurry, for death is imminent, and all we
require in order to be happy is to want to be xo. The past and the future are

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 229

of no use. What is needed is the immediate transformation of our way of
thinking, of acting, and of accepting events. We must think in accordance with
truth, act in accordance with justice, and lovingly accept what comes to pass. In
the words of Marcus Aurelius: “How easy it is to find oneself, right away, in a
state of perfect peace of mind.” * In other words, it is enough just to want it.

For the Stoics, as for the Epicureans, it is the imminence of death which
gives the present instant its value. “We must carry out each action of our lives
as if it were the last.”*? This is the secret of concentration on the present
moment: we are to give it all its seriousness, value, and splendor, in order to
show up the vanity of all that we pursue with so much worry: all of which,
in the end, will be taken away from us by death. We must live each day with
a consciousness so acute, and an attention so intense, that we can say to
ourselves each evening: “I have lived; I have actualized my life, and have had
all that I could expect from life.” In the words of Seneca: “He has peace of
mind who has lived his entire life every day.” °

We have just seen the first reason why the present alone is sufficient for
our happiness: namely, that one instant of happiness is equivalent to a whole
eternity of happiness. The second reason is that, within one instant, we
possess the totality of the universe. The present instant is fleeting — Marcus
insists strongly on this point*! — but even within this flash, as Seneca says,
“we can proclaim, along with God: ‘all this belongs to me.’ ’?? The instant is
our only point of contact with reality, yet it offers us the whole of reality;
precisely because it is a passage and a metamorphosis, it allows us to
participate in the overall movement of the event of the world, and the reality
of the world’s coming-to-be.

In order to understand the preceding, we must bear in mind what moral
action, virtue, and wisdom meant for the Stoics. Moral good — for the Stoics,
the only kind of good there is — has a cosmic dimension: it is the
harmonization of the reason within us with the reason which guides the
cosmos, and produces the chain of causes and effect which makes up fate. At
each moment, we must harmonize our judgment, action, and desires with
universal reason. In particular, we must joyfully accept the conjunction of
events which results from the course of nature. At each instant, we must
therefore resituate ourselves within the perspective of universal reason, so
that, at each instant, our consciousness may become a cosmic consciousness.
Thus, if one lives in accord with universal reason, at each instant his
consciousness expands into the infinity of the cosmos, and the entire universe
is present to him. For the Stoics, this is possible because there is a total
mixture and mutual implication of everything with everything else: Chrysip-
pus, for example, spoke of a drop of wine being mixed with the whole of the
sea, and spreading to the entire world.* “He who sees the present moment
sees all that has happened from all eternity, and all that will happen
throughout infinite time.” 4 This explains the attention given to each current

230 Themes

event, and to what is happening to us at each instant. Each event implies the
entire world: “Whatever happens to you has been prepared for you from all
eternity, and the mutual linkage of cause and effect has, from all eternity,
woven together your existence and the occurrence of this event.” ©

One could speak here of a mystical dimension of Stoicism. At each moment
and every instant, we must say “yes” to the universe; that is, to the will of
universal reason. We must want that which universal reason wants: that is,
the present instant, exactly as it is. Some Christian mystics have also
described their state as a continuous consent to the will of God. Marcus, for
his part, cries out: “I say to the universe: ‘I love along with you.’ ” * We have
here a profound feeling of participation and identification; of belonging to a
whole which transcends our individual limits, and gives us a feeling of
intimacy with the universe. For Seneca, the sage plunges himself into the
whole of the universe (toti se inserens mundo)"

Because the sage lives within his consciousness of the world, the world is
constantly present to him. In Stoicism, even more than in Epicureanism, the
present moment takes on an infinite value: it contains within it the entire
cosmos, and all the value and wealth of being.

It is quite remarkable that the two schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism,
in other respects so opposed, should both placc the concentration of
consciousness upon the present moment at the very center of their way of life.
The difference between the two attitudes consists only in the fact that the
Epicurean enjoys the present moment, whereas the Stoic wills it intensely; for
the one, it is a pleasure; for the other, a duty.

Our scene from Faust echoes this double motif in two key phrases: “Only the
present is our happiness,” and “Existence is a duty.” **

In his conversations with Falk, Goethe had spoken of certain beings who, by
virtue of their innate tendencies, arc half Stoic and half Epicurean. He found
nothing surprising, he said, in the fact that they accepted the fundamental
principles of the two systems at the same time, and even that they tried to unite
them as far as was possible. One might say that Goethe himself, in his way of
living the present moment, was also “half Stoic and half Epicurean.” He enjoyed
the present moment like an Epicurean, and willed it intensely like a Stoic.

In Goethe, we re-encounter most of the themes we have enumerated above;
in particular, the delimitation of the present followed by expansion into the
totality of the cosmos, which we observed in Epicureanism and in Stoicism.
In this regard, Goethe could have mentioned an opposition that was dear to
him: that between “systole” and “diastole.”

First of all, let us consider concentration on and delimitation of the present.
In moments of happiness, these processes take place spontaneously: “Then
the spirit looks neither forward nor behind.” This verse from aust is echoed
by a poem dedicated to Count Paar:

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 231

Happiness looks neither forward nor backwards;
And thus the instant becomes eternal.

The present instant is perceived as a grace which is accorded us, or an
opportunity we are offered.

The mind may also, however, turn voluntarily away from the past and the
future, in order to more fully enjoy the present state of reality. Such is the
attitude of Goethe’s Egmont:*!

Do I live only in order to think about life? Must I prevent myself from
enjoying the present moment, that I may be sure of the one that follows,
and then wastc that one, too, in cares and useless worries? . . . Does the
sun illuminate me today, that I may ponder what happened yesterday?
That I may guess at and arrange that which cannot be guessed nor
arranged: the fate of the oncoming day?

This is the same secret of happiness which Goethe formulated in the “Rule
of Life”:

Would you model for yourself a pleasant life?
Worry not about the past

Let not anger get the upper hand

Rejoice in the present without ceasing

Hate no man....

And the future? Abandon it to God.

This is the height of wisdom; the wisdom of the child in the Marienbad
Elegy:

Hour by hour, life is kindly offered us

We have learned but little from yesterday

Of tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,

And if I ever feared the coming evening, -
The setting sun still saw what brought me joy.
Do like me, then: with joyful wisdom

Look the instant in the eye! Do not delay!
Hurry! Run to greet it, lively and benevolent,
Be it for action, for joy or for love!

Wherever you may be, be like a child, wholly and always;
Then you will be the All; and invincible.

The “rule of life” — that “high wisdom” — consists in looking neither
forward vor behind, but in becoming aware of the uniquencss and

232 Themes

incomparable value of the present. In Goethe, then, we find the same exercise
of delimitation of the present that we had encountered in ancient philosophy.
This exercise is, however, inseparable from another exercise, which
consists in becoming aware of the inner richness of the present, and of the
totality contained within the instant. By delimiting the present, consciousness,
far from shrinking, swells to fill the dimensions of the world; for that
vision which “looks the instant in the eye” is the disinterested vision of
the artist, the poet, and the sage, which is interested in reality for its own
sake.

Enjoying the present, without thinking about the past or the future,
does not mean living in total instantaneousness. Thoughts about the past and
the future are to be avoided only insofar as rehashing past defeats,
and cowering in fear of future difficultics, can cause distractions,
worries, hopes, or despair, which turn our attention away from the present,
where it ought to be concentrated. When we do concentrate our attention on
the future, however, we discover that the present itself contains both the past
and the future, insofar as it is the genuine passage within which the action
and movement of reality are carried out. It is this past and this future which
are seized by the artist’s vision, in the instant which he chooses to describe
or to reproduce. The artists of antiquity, says Goethe, knew how to
choose the “pregnant” instant, heavy with meaning, “which marks
a decisive turning-point between time and eternity.” To use one of
Goethe’s favorite terms, such instants “symbolize” an entire past, and an
entire future.

Likewise, when an artist seizes an instant of the movement of a dancer,
it allows us to glimpse both the “before” and the “after”: “The
marvelous suppleness with which a dancer moves from one figure to
another, and provokes our admiration in the face of such artistry: it is
fixated for a moment, so that we can sce, simultaneously, the past, the
present and the future, and we are thus transported into a supraterrestrial
state.” 6

Whoever practices the art of living must also recognize that each instant
is pregnant: heavy with meaning, it contains both the past and the future;
not only of the individual, but also of the cosmos in which he is
plunged. This is what Goethe gives us to understand in his poem “The
Testament:”

Let reason be present everywhere
Where life rejoices in life.

This point at which life rejoices in life is nothing other than the present
instant. “Then,” continues Goethe,

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 233

the past has gained steadfastness
The present is alive beforehand,
The Instant is eternity.

Goethe is even more explicit on this point in one of his conversations with
Eckermann:* “Hold fast to the present. Every circumstance, every instant is
of infinite value, for it is the representative of an entire eternity.”

Some commentators have believed they could explain Goethe’s conception
of the instant as eternity by Neoplatonic or Pietistic influence.® It is true that
we do find within these traditions the representation of God as eternal
present; but such a conception is not to be found in Goethe’s writings. When
Goethe speaks of the eternal in his poem entitled “Testament,” for example,
he is talking about the eternity of the cosmic process of becoming:

Throughout all things, the Eternal pursues its course. .. .
Being is cternal, for laws

Protect the living treasures
With which the All adorns itself.

In order to explain the Goethean notion of the instant as representative of
eternity, we must rather think of the Epicurean and Stoic tradition of
which I have spoken above. This tradition affirmed, in the first place, that
one instant of happiness is equivalent to an eternity; and, secondly, that one
instant of existence contains the whole eternity of the cosmos. In Goethean
terms, this second idca could be expressed by saying that the instant is the
symbol of eternity. Goethe defined the symbol as “the living, instantaneous
revelation of the unexplorable,”“ but we could just as well define the
instant as “the living symbol of the unexplorable.” The idea of the
“unexplorable” corresponds to what, for Goethe, is the incxpressible mystery
at the basis of nature and of all reality, It is its very fleetingness and perishable
nature that make the instant the symbol of eternity, because its ephemeral
nature reveals the eternal movement and metamorphosis which is, simulta-
neously, the eternal presence of being: “All that- is perishable is only a
symbol.”

It is here that the thought of death comes into play, for life itself is
perpetual metamorphosis, and, inseparably, the death of every instant.
Sometimes, for Goethe, this theme takes on a mystical tone:

In order to find himself in the Infinite
The individual willingly accepts to disappear.

It is a pleasure to abandon oneself.”!

I would praise the living creature who aspires to death in the flame.”

234 Themes

In the last analysis, then, it is eternity — that is, the totality of being — which
gives the present moment its value, meaning, and pregnancy. “If the eternal
remains present to us at each instant, we do not suffer from the fleetingness
of time.” ? The ultimate meaning of Goethe’s attitude toward the present is
thus, as it was for ancient philosophy, the happiness and the duty of existing
in the cosmos. It is a profound feeling of participation in and identification
with a reality which transcends the limits of the individual. “Great is the joy
of existence, and greater yet the joy we feel in the presence of the world.” ”
“Throughout all things, the Eternal pursues its course. Hold on to Being with
delight!” 5

We ought here to cite the entire song of the watchman Lynceus near the
end of the Second Faust:

In all things, I see

The eternal adornment,
And since it pleases me,

I please myself as well.
You, my happy eyes: *
Whatever you have seen,
Be it what it may,

It certainly was beautiful.”

In his work on Winckelmann, Goethe presents this wonderstruck consent
to being — to the being of the entire cosmos — as characteristic of the ancient
soul.

If man feels at home in the world as within an All, an All which is great,
beautiful, noble and precious; if the pleasure of living in harmony with
this All gives him a pure, free delight, then the universe — if it could be
conscious of itself — would exult with joy; it would have attained its goal,
and would be amazed at this summit of its becoming and its being. After
all, what good is all this profligate abundance of suns, planets, moons,
stars, Milky Ways, comets, nebula, worlds in the process of becoming
and which have come to be, if, when all is said and done, one happy
man does not rejoice, unconsciously, in his own existence?”

When Goethe says “unconsciously,” he means that the reasons why people
may be happy, and may be in harmony with the universe, are unknown and
completely incomprehensible to them. Here we come across another case of
the “unexplorable,” * to use one of Goethe’s favorite expressions. Yet the
innocent joy of existing, and the spontaneous, unreflecting pleasure which
living beings take in existence, are an original phenomenon which reveals the
presence of un unexplorable mystery: “Nhe child ix pleased by the cake,

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 235

without knowing anything about the pastry-cook; and starlings like cherries,
without them stopping to think about where they came from.” ”

We again find this “yes” to the world and consent to being in the following
passage from Nietzsche, whatever reservations about it he himself may have had:

Let us assume we say “Yes!” to one single, unique moment: we have
thus said yes, not only to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For
nothing is isolated, neither in ourselves nor in things. And if, even once,
our soul has vibrated and resounded like a string with happiness, all
eternity was necessary to create the conditions for this one event; and
all eternity has been approved, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.”

Not long ago, Georges Friedmann courageously denounced the tragic lack of
balance which has come about in the modern world between “power” and
“wisdom.” ®! If we have chosen here to present some aspects of one of the
fundamental themes of the European spiritual tradition, it was not in order
to satisfy some historical or literary curiosity, but to describe a spiritual
attitude: an attitude which, for ourselves and for modern man in general,
hypnotized as we arc by language, images, information, and the myth of the
future, seemed to us to provide one of the best means of access to this
wisdom, so misunderstood and yct so necessary. The call of Socrates speaks
to us more now than ever before: “Take care for yourself.” * This call is
echoed by Nietzsche’s remark: “Is it not the case that all human institutions”
— to which we might add: “as well as the whole of modern life” — are intended
to prevent mankind from feeling their life, by means of the constant
dispersion of their thoughts?” *

NOTES

1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, 9381.

2 Ibid, 4685.

3 Ibid, 6487-500.

4 Ibid, 9370.

5 Ibid, 9419.

6 Ibid, 9377-84.

7 Ibid, 9411-18.

8 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Zelter of October 19, 1829, in Goethes
Briefe, ed. K.R. Mandelkow, Munich 1967, vol. 4, p. 346.

9 “Book of the Cup-Bearer” (“Das Schenkenbuch”), in Goethes Werke, Hamburger
Ausgabe (hereafter HA), vol. 2, p. 94.

10 O. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Munich 1923, vol. I, p. 11.

WJ. Mintikka, Zime and Necessity, Oxford, 1973, p. 86.

12. S. Morenz, Die Zauberflote, Minster, 1952, p. 89.

236 Themes

13 Cicero, De finibus, I, 18, 59.

14 Ibid, I, 18, 60.

15 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 15, 9.

16 Epicurus, fr. 240, p. 567 Arrighetti = Stobaeus vol. III, 17, 22 Hense.

17 Cicero, De finibus, I, 19, 63.

18 Epicurus, Ratae Sententiae, 19, p. 127 Arrighetti.

19 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 74, 27.

20 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 10, 3, 1174al7ff, cf. H.-J. Krimer, Platonismus
und hellenistische Philosophie, Berlin/New York 1971, pp. 188ff.

21 J.M. Guyau, La morale d’Epicure, Paris 1927, pp. 112ff.

22 Horace, Odes, 2, 16, 25f.

23 Epicurus, Gnomologicum Vaticanum §14, p. 143 Arrighetti.

24 Horace, Odes, I, 11, 7.

25 Horace, Letter, I, 4, 13.

26 Cf. M. Gigante, Richerche Filodemee, Naples 1983, pp. 181, 215-16.

27 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 1033-6.

28 Epicurus, Gnomologicum Vaticanum, §33, p. 146 Arrighetti.

29 Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 124-5, p. 108 Arrighetti.

30 Horace, Odes, 3, 29, 42. :

31 Without worries (sine sollicitudine), because he knows that on that day he has
received all that it was possible to have, and that there is nothing left to be
desired.

32 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 12, 9.

33 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 3, 16-17.

34 The most accessible text of this saying has been preserved by Clement of
Alexandria, Stromata, V, 14, 138, 2. Cf. the commentary of A. Le Boulluec in
Clément d'Alexandrie, Stromates, V, Paris 1981, p. 369.

35 L. Robin, Lucréce, De la Nature, Commentaire des livres III-IV, Paris 1926,
repr. 1962, p. 151.

36 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, IU, 947-9.

37 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 6.

38 Ibid, 7, 29, 3; 3, 12, 1.

39 The principal text may be found in SVF 2, 509 [= Arius Didymus fr. 26 Dicls,
in Stobaeus vol. I, p. 105, 5ff. Wachsmuth]; for a commentary cf. P. Hadot, “Zur
Vorgeschichte des Begriffs Existenz,” Archiv fiir Begriffsgeschichte 13 (1969), pp.
118-19.

40 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6, 32, 3.

41 Ibid, 12, 1, 1-2.

42 Ibid, 12, 3, 3-4.

43 [Circumcidenda. Literally, to cut a circle off the bark of a tree, thereby pruning
or even killing it. - Trans.]

44 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 78, 14.

45 Seneca, On Benefits, 7, 2, 4-5.

46 Cicero, De finibus, 3, 14, 45.

47 Plutarch, On Common Conceptions, 8, 1062a.

48 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5, 2.

49 Ibid, 2, 5, 2; 7, 69.

“Only the Present is our Happiness” 237

50 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 101, 10.

51 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2, 14, 3.

52 Seneca, On Benefits, 7, 3, 3.

53 Plutarch, On Common Conceptions, 37, 1078e.

54 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6, 37.

55 Ibid, 10, 5.

56 Ibid, 10, 21.

57 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 66, 6.

58 Goethe, Faust, 9382, 9418.

59 Conversation with J.D. Falk, in F. von Biedermann, ed., Goethes Gesprache,
Leipzig 1910, vol. 4, p. 469.

60 “An Grafen Paar,” in Goethes Sdmtliche Werke (Cottasche Jubilaumsausgabe),
Stuttgart 1902, vol. 3, p. 13.

61 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Egmont, Act 2.

62 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Lebensregel,” in Spriiche, 97ff, in Goethes Werke,
HA, vol. I, p. 319.

63 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elegie, v. 91ff, in Goethes Werke, HA, vol. I,
p. 384.

64 Gocthe, Letter to Zelter of October 19, 1829, in Goethes Briefe, vol. 4, p. 347.

65 Goethe, Letter to Sickler of April 28, 1812, in ibid, vol. 3, p. 184.

66 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Vermachtnis, in Goethes Werke, HA, vol. I, p. 370.

67 J.P. Eckermann, Gespréche mit Goethe, Wiesbaden 1955 (conversation of
November 3, 1823), p. 61.

68 Neoplatonism: H. Schmitz, Goethes Altesdenken, Bonn 1959, pp. 152ff. Pictism:
W. Schadewelt, Goethestudien, Zurich 1963, p. 445.

69 Maximen und Reflexionen, 314 Hecker = Goethes Werke, HA, 752.

70 Goethe, Faust, 12104.

71 “Eins und Alles,” in Goethes Werke, HA, vol. 1, p. 368,

72 “Sclige Schnsucht,” in Diwan, in Gocthes Werke, HA, vol. 2, p. 18.

73 Letter to August von Bernstorff of April 17, 1823, in Goethes Briefe, vol. 4, p. 63.

74 Book of Suleika, in the East-West Divan, in Goethes Werke, HA, vol. 2, p. 70.

75 “Testament,” Joc. cit.

76 Faust, 11296-303.

77 “Winckelmann,” in Goethes Werke, HA, vol. 12, p. 98.

78 Cf. Maximen und Reflexionen 1207 Hecker = Goethes Werke, HA vol. 12, 718.

79 Eckermann, Gesprache (conversation of February 28, 1831), p. 438.

80 Friedrich Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragments, Ende 1886-Frijahr 1887, 7(38], in
Friedrich Nietzsche, Sdmtliche Werke, eds G. Colli and M. Montinari, 15 vols,
Berlin 1980 (hereafter Colli/Montinari), vol. 12, pp. 307-8.

81 G. Friedmann, La Puissance et la Sagesse, Paris 1970.

82 Plato, Alcibiades, 120d4; Apology, 36c.

83 Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 3, 4: Schopenhauer as Educator, 3, 4,
vol. I, p. 373 Colli/ Montinari.

9
The View from Above

No one has better expressed our longing for a view from above and flight of
the soul than Goethe’s Faust, as he went for his Easter promenade with
Wagner and glimpsed the evening sunset:!

O why does no wing lift me from the ground

To strive after the sun for ever?

In an endless evening dusk, I'd see

The silent earth beneath my fect.

Each hill would be ablaze, each vale bestilled,

And silver brooks would flow in golden streams . . .

Before me day, behind the night

Heaven above and underneath the waves:

A lovely dream, until it disappears! .. .

Alas! To the Spirit’s wings

No mortal wing can join so easily.

And yet, when high above us, lost in vast blue spaces
The skylark sings her warbling tune,

It is inborn in every man,

That his mind surges onwards and upwards.

To the casual reader, this text seems to be nothing morc than a dream about
flying: the banal desire, innate in every human being, to be able to fly. A mere
topos, in other words, as historians are often only too quick to categorize it.
In fact, however, the theme of the flight of the soul plays a role of
extraordinary importance in Goethe, as we can already glimpse from the
following lines of his letter to Schiller of May 12, 1798: “Your letter found
me...in the //iad, to which I always return with delight. It is always as if
one were in a balloon, far above everything earthly; as if one were truly in
that intermediate zone where the gods Moat hither and thither." ? In fact, man

The View from Above 239

had succeeded in freeing himself from the weight of the earth only a few years
previously. The Montgolfier brothers had carried out their first flight on
November 21, 1783. Goethe had been deeply impressed by this event, and in
an entirely unexpected way, this experience helped him to understand
Homeric poetry.

Besides the events they narrate, the Homeric epics show us the whole world
from the point of view of the gods, who look down upon mankind’s battles
and passions from the heights of the heavens or the mountaintops, without,
however, being able to resist the temptation of intervening from time to time
on behalf of one or the other contending parties. For example, in the fifth
book of the //iad, we speed through the space between heaven and earth
together with the steeds of Hera:

The horses winged their way unreluctant

through the space between the earth and the starry heaven.
As far as into the hazing distance a man can see with

his eyes, who sits in his eyrie gazing on the wine-blue water,
as far as this is the stride of the gods’ proud neighing horses.?

At the beginning of book 13, we adopt the point of view of Zeus, and observe
along with him the lands of the Thracians, the Mysians, and other such
peoples, while elsewhere, sitting with Poseidon high on the loftiest peak of
the grcen-wooded island of Samothrace, we gaze at the battle and the clamor
of arms before the walls of Troy.

For Goethe, the reason Homeric poetry can raise us above all earthly things,
and allow us to observe them from the point of view of the gods, is because
it represents the paradigm of true poetry. As Goethe puts it in Poetry and
Truth:

True poetry can be recognized by the fact that, like a secular Gospel,
through the inner cheerfulness and outward pleasure it procures us, it
can free us from the mundane burdens which weigh upon us. Like a
hot-air balloon, it lifts us up into higher regions, along with the ballast
that clings to us, and lets us see, from a bird’s-eye view, the mad
labyrinths of the world spread out before us.‘

In the last sentence, Goethe has in mind not only the view from above of the
Homeric gods, but also the wings which Daedalus fashioned, in order to free
himself from the Labyrinth in which Minos had imprisoned him. We shall
later see in morc detail why it is that, in Goethe’s view, poetry has such an
astonishing power.

The intimately connected themes of the bird’s-eye view and flight of the
soul have a long, complex history. Before we go on to examine the moral and

240 Themes

existential meaning attributed to them, first by ancient philosophy, and then
by Goethe, it may be useful to attempt to classify the various forms in which
they appear. Since our discussion will be concerned only with philosophical
and literary texts, we can leave aside the question of the real or ostensible
Shamanic origin of these themes.°

First of all, we should emphasize that ancient philosophy and literature do
not seem to have linked the theme of the flight of the soul with the ability to
fly; that is, with the mere sensory experience of flight. Rather, it went hand
in hand with a specific conception of the power of thought and the divine
nature of the soul, which is able to raise itself above the categories of space
and time. We cannot consider this power as a natural capacity of the human
soul qua inhabitant of the terrestrial regions, nor it is a supernatural
phenomenon. With regard to the first point, it is only natural that thought or
the thinking soul can transport itself rapidly, even instantaneously, to
wherever the object of thought happens to be. Already in the seventh book of
the Odyssey,® the swiftness of ships is compared with that of wings and of
thought, while Xenophon, in his Memorabilia, remarks that the thought of the
soul, just like the divine thought, can instantaneously transport itself to Egypt
or to Sicily.” This idea was frequently taken up by Philo of Alexandria, who
used it to illustrate the themes of the immortality of the soul, the greatness
of man, and his likeness to God.’

According to another conception, however, the flight of the soul did not
consist in the mere experience of thinking, which is in a sense a banal,
everyday phenomenon. Rather, it was somcthing that could only be experi-
enced under extraordinary circumstances: in particular, it came about as a
consequence of the separation of the soul from the body.

Here we recognize the doctrine of Plato: according to the myth of the
Phaedrus,’ the soul is provided with wings by nature. Prior to its incarnation
in a terrestrial body, the soul is thus able to rise up to the outermost limits
of the heavens, and follow the procession of the winged chariots of the gods.
If, however, the soul proves itself to be too weak for celestial existence, it loses
its wings and falls into a body. The soul can only win back its wings when it
separates itself from the body; in other words, after death. When Cicero in
the Tusculan Disputations," or Seneca in his Consolation to Marcia," speak of
the soul’s post-mortem existence, they describe how souls discover the secrets
of nature and look down on the earth from above. Plato, however, would
above all have underlined the fact that, during its celestial journeys, the soul
can contemplate the supracelestial world of eternal forms, as it did in its
previous life, before its fall into the corporeal world.

Shortly before death, the soul already begins to feel the effects of its
imminent separation from the body; hence it is able to journey into the
beyond. In the tenth book of the Republic, Plato tells the story of Br the
Pamphylian, who was left for dead on the battlefield, and whose soul was

The View from Above 241

temporarily separated from his body. When Proclus discusses this passage in
his Commentary on Plato's Republic,!* he reports a number of similar stories,
about Aristeas of Proconnesus, Hermodorus of Clazomenae, and Epimenides
of Crete. Democritus also seems to have made a collection of such stories,!? and
Clearchus of Soloi, a pupil of Aristotle, told the tale of the psychic flight of a
certain Cleonymus of Athens, whose soul had risen high up above the earth,
and from there had had glimpses of completely unknown regions of the earth."
Plutarch, in his essay On the Delays of Divine Vengeance, recounts the
experiences of a certain Thespesius of Soloi, who had also been left for dead:

He saw nothing like what he had seen before: the stars were enormously
large, and immeasurably far from one another, and they shone forth
with a light of great force and marvelous colours, so that the soul, gently
and lightly transported by this light like a ship on a calm sea, could
quickly move to wherever it wished.'*

In the view of the ancients, even the most insignificant dream was a separation
of soul from body, in the course of which the soul could rise up to celestial
heights. We need only think of the example of Ciccro’s Dream of Scipio."

The separation of soul from body can also occur by purely spiritual means.
This spiritual “death to the body” was carried out by means of philosophy,
for according to Plato, philosophy is nothing but training for death:

Shall we not say that purification occurs... when man separates the
soul as much as possible from the body, and accustoms it to gather itself
together from every part of the body and concentrate itself until it is
completely independent, and to have its dwelling, so far as it can, both
now and in the future, alone and by itself, freed from the shackles of
the body?!”

We shall have occasion later on to return to the precise meaning of this
philosophical exercise. For the moment, suffice it to say that when Plato
wants to describe the philosophical life, he does so by means of the image of
the soul’s gathering itself together, and its subsequent flight into the infinity
of the heavens. This flight allows the soul to look down from above at human
affairs, in the truest sense of the phrase.

As for the philosopher himself, Plato describes him as follows in the
Theaetetus:

In fact, it is only his body that lives and has its residence in the state;
his soul, however, holds all this to be puny and meaningless, and
contemptuously wanders all over the place, “under the earth,” as Pindar
nilys, anal measuring whatever is on its surface, and “above the heavens,”

242 Themes

observing the stars, and in general thoroughly investigating the nature
of everything that is, but without lowering itself to the level of any of
the objects in its vicinity.!®

In the Republic, Plato expresses the view that greatness of soul consists in
precisely such an attitude: “For smallness is particularly contrary to the soul
which always strives after the complete and perfect, both divine and
human.” Such a soul, capable of observing the totality of space and time,
has no fear even of death.

Here it might not be inappropriate to try to formulate more precisely two
concepts with which we have been dealing: on the one hand, the concept of
philosophy as a means of achieving spiritual death, and, on the other, the idea
of philosophy as the ascent of the soul into the celestial heights. Plato
developed these ideas and concepts in a specifically Platonic direction, but in
and of themselves they arc not specifically Platonic. Rather, they are to be
found in all the ancient philosophical schools, be they Epicurean, Stoic, or
Cynic.

In other words, in all schools — with the exception of Skepticism —
philosophy was held to be an exercise consisting in learning to regard both
society and the individuals who comprise it from the point of view of
universality. This was accomplished partly with the help of a philosophical
theory of nature, but above all through moral and existential exercises. The
goal of such exercises was to help people free themselves from the desires and
passions which troubled and harassed them. These needs and desires, it was
thought, were imposed on the individual by social conventions and the needs
of the body. The goal of philosophy was to eliminate them, so that the
individual might come to see things as nature herself sees them, and
consequently desire nothing other than that which is natural. If we leave aside
for the moment terminological and conceptual differences, we can say that,
within each school, philosophy signified the attempt to raise up mankind from
individuality and particularity to universality and objectivity. For example,
philosophical death for the Platonists consisted in getting rid of one’s
passions, in order to attain to the autonomy of thought. For the Stoics,
philosophical death consisted in putting oneself in accord with universal
reason, the all-embracing Logos, both interior and exterior.

Thus, in each philosophical school we encounter one and the same
conception of philosophy. Similarly, in each philosophical school we find the
same conception of the the cosmic flight and the view from above as the
philosophical way par excellence of looking at things. In particular, Platonists,
Stoics, and Epicureans all discovered, in addition to their theoretical physics,
a practical physics, which was conceived of as an exercise in which the
imagination speeds through the infinite vastnesses of the universe. Expecially
for the Platonists and the Stoics, the goal of this lived physics of the universe

The View from Above 243

was to attain to greatness of soul, and in all schools its function was to teach
people to despise human affairs and to achieve inner peace.

The exercise of practical physics is already hinted at in Plato’s Timaeus,?
where the soul is urged to bring its inner movements into accord with the
movements and harmony of the all. Again, we find the same theme in the area
of meteorologia: that is, speech which — according to the Hippocratic method,
as Plato says in the Phaedrus* — places the soul and human affairs within the
perspective of the all. Such a method, Plato adds, leads to nobility of thought.

Epicurean physics also opens up a wide field for mental flight, in the
infinity of space and the infinite number of worlds. Thus Lucretius: “Since
space stretches far beyond the boundaries of our world, into the infinite, our
mind seeks to sound out what lies within this infinity, in which the mind can
plunge its gaze at will, and to which the mind’s thoughts can soar in free
flight.” 22 Elsewhere, Lucretius says that Epicurus has “boldly broken down
the tightly shut gates of nature,” and “Advanced far beyond the the flaming
walls of our world.” In mind and thought, claims Lucretius, Epicurus has
sped through the whole of infinity, thence to return victoriously and teach us
what can and cannot come into being.”*

This spiritual conquest of space kindled the enthusiasm of the eighteenth
century, which dreamed of producing a new Lucretius. André Chénier*
sought to give new life to this ideal in his unfinished poem “Hermes”:

Equipped with the wings of Buffon

And lit by the torch of Newton, my flight

Often soars, with Lucretius, beyond the azure girdle
That stretches around the globe.

I see Being, Life, and their unknown Source;

And all the worlds tumbling through the Ether.

I follow the comet with its fiery tail

And the stars, with their weight, form and distance;
I voyage with them in their immense orbits . . .
Before my avid gaze, the diverse Elements unfold,
With their Strife and their Love, the Causes and the Infinite.”

To return to Epicurean cosmic flights: the Epicurean sage’s gaze upon
infinity probably corresponds to that of the Epicurean gods. Unconcerned by
mundane affairs in their bright, eternal tranquillity, they spend their time
contemplating the infinity of space, time, and the multiple worlds.

We encounter this same tranquillity in the Stoic tradition, especially in the
text from Philo of Alexandria cited more fully below, which describes
philosophers in the following terms:

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,

244 Themes

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.”’

For Marcus Aurelius, only the “physical” viewpoint on things is capable of
giving us greatness of soul; thus we have often found him practicing those
spiritual exercises which have to do with the “physical” viewpoint on things.
As he says in book 9 of the Meditations: “You have the power to strip off
many superfluous things that are obstacles to you, and that depend entirely
upon your value-judgments; you will open up for yourself a vast space by
embracing the whole universe in your thoughts, by considering unending
eternity.” * In book 7, he admonishes himself as follows:

Watch and see the courses of the stars as if you were running alongside
them, and continually dwell in your mind upon the changes of the
elements into one another; for these imaginations wash away the foulness
of life on the earth. When you are reasoning about mankind, look upon
earthly things below as if from some vantage point above them.”

We shall return later to the final phrase. Elsewhere, Marcus describes the way
in which the soul plunges itself into the totality of space and the infinity of
time: “it traverses the whole Universe and the surrounding void, and surveys
its shape, reaches out into the boundless extent of time, embracing and
pondering the periodic rebirth of the all.” °° The goal of physics as a spiritual
exercise was to relocate human existence within the infinity of time and space,
and the perspective of the great laws of nature. This is what Marcus means
by the all-embracing metamorphosis he mentions,:' but he also has in mind
the correspondence of all things, and the mutual implication of each thing in
everything else.

Here, I believe, we have the reason why Goethe, in the passage quoted
above, considered true poetry as an exercise consisting in spiritually elevating
oneself high above the earth. For Goethe, poetry in the truest sense is a kind
of physics, in the sense we have defined above: it is a spiritual exercise, which
consists in looking down at things from above, from the point of view of the
nature or the all, and the great laws of nature. By “laws of nature” we are to
understand not only the all-embracing metamorphosis and unity of all things,
but also the two universal principles Gocthe refers to as “polarity” and
“increase,” and which he loved to observe both in nature and in individual
human life.” We can detect the inspiration of these ideas not only in Goethe's
youthful poetic cyele “God and the World,” but also in the more modest and

The View from Above 245

unassuming poems of the older Goethe. Like the physics of antiquity, poetry
thus conceived is intended to bring about in its readers or listeners greatness
of soul and inner peace.

We now move on to another aspect of this spiritual exercise. The view
from above can also be directed pitilessly upon mankind’s weaknesses and
shortcomings. All the philosophical schools dealt with this theme at length,
but, as we shall see, it was treated with particular relish by the Cynic
tradition. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we find a Neo-Pythagorean version of the
theme: “It is a delight to travel along the starry firmament and, leaving the
earth and its dull regions behind, to ride on the clouds, to stand upon stout
Atlas’ shoulders and see, far below, men wandering aimlessly, devoid of
reason, anxious and in fear of the hereafter, thus to exhort them and unroll
the book of fate!” 3 We encounter an Epicurean version of it at the beginning
of book 2 of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things: “nothing is more delightful
than to possess well-fortified sanctuaries serene, built up by the teachings of
the wise, whence you may look down from on high upon others and behold
them all astray, wandering abroad and seeking the paths of life.”

The theme takes on a Stoic coloration in Seneca’s Natural Questions.» Here
the soul of the philosopher, looking down from the heights of the heavens,
becomes aware of the puniness of the earth, and the ridiculousness of the wars
fought by human armies — which resemble swarms of ants — over minuscule
stretches of territory. In Marcus Aurelius, the theme appears in a particularly
realistic form: “look upon earthly things below as if from some place above
them — herds, armies, farms, weddings, divorces, births, deaths, the noise of
law courts, lonely places, various foreign nations, festivals, mournings, market
places: a mixture of everything and an order composed of contraries.”*
Elsewhere, Marcus enjoins us to: “ ‘Look from above’ at the spectacle of
myriad herds, myriad rites, and manifold journeyings in storm and calm;
diversities of creatures who are being born, coming together, passing away.” 7”
The view from above thus leads us to consider the whole of human reality,
in all its social, geographical, and emotional aspects, as an anonymous,
swarming mass, and it teaches us to relocate human existence within the
immeasurable dimensions of the cosmos. Everything that does not depend on
us, which the Stoics called indifferent (indifferentia) — such as health, fame,
wealth, and even death — is reduced to its true dimensions when considered
from the point of view of the nature of the all.

When the view from above takes on this specific form of observing human
beings on earth, it seems more than ever to belong to the Cynic tradition. We
find it being used with particular effectiveness by Lucian, a contemporary of
Marcus Aurelius who was strongly influenced by Cynic doctrines. In Lucian’s
dialogue entitled Jcaromenippus, or the Sky-man, the Cynic Menippus confides
to a friend that he was so disillusioned by the contradictory teachings of the
philosophers concerning the ultimate principles and the universe that he

246 Themes

resolved to fly up heaven to see for himself how things were.** He fitted himself
out with a pair of wings — on the left side a vulture’s wing and on the right
side that of an eagle — and soared upwards towards the moon. Once there, he
reported, “I rested myself, looking down on the earth from on high and like
Homer’s Zeus, now observing the land of the horse-loving Thracians, now
the land of the Mysians, and presently, if I liked, Greece, Persia and India;
and from all this I got my fill of kaleidoscopic pleasure.” 3° Once his eyes had
become accustomed to the tiny dimensions of human beings, however,
Menippus began to observe mankind. He could see “not only the nations and
cities but the people themselves as clear as could be, the traders, the soldiers,
the farmers, the litigants, the women, the animals, and, in a word, all the life
that the good green earth supports.” ” Not only could Menippus see what
people were doing in the open air, but also what they were about inside their
own homes, when thcy thought no one was observing them.“

After Menippus has recited a long list of the crimes and adulteries he had
seen committed inside people’s homes, he sums up his overall impression:
what he saw was a cacophonous, ridiculous hodge-podge of a play. What he
found most ridiculous of all were those people who fought over the borders
of their cities and private land-holdings, since the earth itself appeared to him
so absurdly tiny and insignificant. Rich people, says Menippus, are proud of
completely unimportant things. Their domains are no bigger than one of
Epicurus’ atoms, and the sight of man’s cities reminded him of an anthill,
with all its inhabitants scurrying about aimlessly.

Once he leaves the moon, Menippus travels among the stars until he arrives
at the dwelling-place of Zeus. There, he has a good laugh over the
ridiculously contradictory nature of the prayers mankind address to Zeus.

In another of Lucian’s dialogucs, entitled Charon, or the Inspectors,”
Charon, ferryman of the dead, asks for a day off, so that he can go up to the
surface of the earth and see just what this earthly existence is which people
miss so much once they arrive in the underworld. With the help of Hermes,
he piles up several mountains on top of onc another, so as to be able to
observe mankind better from on high. There follows the same kind of
description we have already seen in Marcus Aurelius and in the /caromenip pus:
Charon sees sea-travellers, trials, farmers — in a word, every kind of human
activity, but all with one thing in common: an existence full of pain. Charon
remarks: “If only humans could get it straight from the beginning: that
they’re going to die; that, after a brief stay in life, they have to depart from
this life like a dream and leave everything on earth behind, then they'd live
more wisely and dic with fewer regrets.” But man is thoughtless; he resembles
the bubbles thrown up by a waterfall, which burst as soon as they come into
existence.

As we have said, this kind of view from above, directed toward mankind’s
earthly existence, is a typical manifestation of Cynicism. We can see this by

The View from Above 247

the fact that the dialogue Charon bears the Greek subtitle Episkopountes, “The
Observers,” or rather “The Overseers.” The Cynic philosopher saw it as his
duty to supervise the actions of his fellow men, like a kind of spy, lying in
wait for their mistakes, so as to denounce them.* The Cynic had the task of
watching over his fellow men like their censor, surveying their behavior from
the heights of a watchtower. The words episkopos or kataskopos — “overseer”
or “spy” — were used in antiquity as nicknames for the Cynics.“ For them,
the view from above was intended to denounce the absurdity of human life.
It is no accident if, in one of Lucian’s dialogues, it is precisely Charon,
ferryman of the dead, who plays the role of observing human affairs from
above; he is, after all, peculiarly well placed to observe them from the
perspective of death.

To observe human affairs from above means, at the same time, to sec them
from the point of view of death. It is only this perspective which brings about
the necessary elevation and loosening of the spirit, which can provide the
distance we nced in order to see things as they really are. The Cynic never
ceases denouncing mankind’s delusions: forgetful of death, people passionate-
ly attach their hearts to some object — luxury or power, for example — which,
in the course of time, they will inevitably be forced to give up. This is why
the Cynics called upon mankind to rid themselves of superfluous desires, and
to reject social conventions, and the whole of artificial civilization, as being
nothing but a source of worries, care, and suffering. The Cynics would have
us return to a simple, purely natural way of life.

To return to Lucian: we learn from his short essay How One Should Write
History that the view from above is appropriate not only to the philosopher
but also to the historian. More precisely, the historian’s gaze must be the same
as the philosopher’s: courageous, free of party affiliations, not bound to any
nation, but equally well disposed towards all, making no concessions either to
friendship or to hate. This attitude must be expressed in the historian’s
presentation of his materials. The historian, says Lucian, must be like
Homer’s Zeus: gazing now at the land of the Thracians, now at the land of
the Mysians.**

For the third time now, we encounter the Homeric topos of a god casting
his gaze down at the earth. This time, however, the Homeric source is quoted
SO as to serve as a model of that impartiality which must characterize historical
reporting, thanks to the elevated viewpoint the historian has elected as his
own. This is what a modern writer might refer to as “the viewpoint of Sirius.”
Thus we find Ernest Renan writing in 1880: “Viewed from the solar system,
our revolutions have scarcely the extent of the movements of atoms.
Considered from Sirius, they are even smaller still.” ** To adopt the viewpoint
of Sirius means, here again, to undertake the spiritual exercise of letting go
and using reserve, so as to achieve impartiality, objectivity, and critical
judgment.

248 Themes

I have only been able to bring up here a few aspects of an extraordinarily
rich tradition. If — as I hope to do one day — one were to write the complete
history of the theme of the view from above, many other texts would have to
be taken into consideration. Here, by way of conclusion, I shall restrict myself
to citing Baudelaire’s poem “Elévation,” in which the great Symbolist describes
the experience of the poet. For him, the poet was a being not meant for this
world (as he put it in “The Albatross,” “His huge wings prevent him from
walking”). Yet, thanks to his poetic gifts, which allow him to observe things
from above, the poet is also a being capable of seizing the hidden correspond-
ences in things. We thus return to the theme of Goethe’s “true poetry,” which
is really a kind of physics in the sense in which we have defined this term
above: an intensive attempt to plunge into the secrets of nature.

[Elevation]

Above the ponds, above the valleys,

The mountains, woods, the clouds, and seas,
Beyond the sun, beyond the ether,

Beyond the limits of the starry spheres,

My spirit, you move with swift agility.

Like a good swimmer at home in the sea,

You slice gay furrows through the measureless depths,
With ineffable, masculine joy.

Fly far away from these pestilent fumes,
Go cleanse yourself in the upper air.

Go drink, like a pure, celestial liquor,
The bright fire that fills transparent space.

Left behind, all cares and endless sorrow
That weigh upon our foggy life like stones!
Oh happy man, who soars on sturdy wings
To calm and luminous fields!

In the morning, his thoughts, in their freedom,
soar up to the heavens like larks.

— He sails over life, understanding with case
The language of flowers and voiceless things.”

The View from Above 249
NOTES

1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, I, 1074-9, 1088-95.

2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Schiller, in Goethes Briefen, in Goethes

Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe (hereafter HA), vol. 2, p. 344.

Homer, /liad, bk 5, 767-73.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, bk 13, HA, vol. 9, p. 580.

See above.

Homer, Odyssey, 7, 36.

Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1, 4, 17.

Philo Judaeus, Legum Allegoriae, 1, 62; Quod deterius, 86, De mutatione nominum,

178-80; De opificio mundi, 69-71.

Plato, Phaedrus, 246c-8c.

10 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1, 19, 43-5.

11 Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam, 25, 2.

12 Proclus, /n Rempublicam, vol. 2, p. 113, 20ff Kroll; French trans. A.-J. Festugiére
1970, vol. 3, p. 58.

13 Cf. Proclus, Jn Rempublicam, p. 113, 6 Kroll.

14 Ibid, p. 114, 1 Kroll. Cf. F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, vol. 3, Basel 1948,
fragment 8, pp. 11, 47-9.

15 Plutarch, De sera numinis vindicta, 22, 563b—8a.

16 Cf. above, Meditations.

17 Plato, Phaedo, 67c.

18 Plato, Theaetetus, 173c.

19 Plato, Republic, 486a.

20 Plato, Timaeus, 90c. It is instructive to compare this text with the description of
Makarie in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship and Travels (3, 15, in Goethes
Werke, HA, vol. 8, p. 449): “Makarie’s relationship to our solar system can
scarcely be described. Not only does she preserve and observe it in her mind, her
spirit and imagination, but she makes herself as it were a part of it. She pictures
herself swept away into the celestial spheres, but in a highly peculiar way: since
her childhood, she has been wandering around the sun... in a spiral, getting
farther and farther away from the middle point and circling ever closer to the
outermost regions.”

21 Plato, Phaedrus, 270a-c.

22 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 2, 1044.

23 Ibid, 2, 72-7.

24 Ibid, 2, 74-5.

25 [The French Romantic poet André Chénier, born 1762 in Constantinople, was
guillotined during the French Revolution on July 25, 1794. — Trans.]}

26 André Chénier, “Hermés,” in A. Chénier, Zuvres completes, Paris 1966, p. 392.

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

28 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 32.

29 Ibid, 7, 47-8.

30 Ibid, 11, 1 2.

31 Loe. cit. 2.17.

ONAN SW

ve)

250 Themes

32 Cf. C.F. von Weizsacker, “Einige Begriffe aus Goethes Naturwissenschaft,” in
Goethes Werke, HA, vol. 13, p. 548.

33 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15, 147 ff.

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

35 Seneca, Natural Questions, Preface, 7-11.

36 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 48.

37 Ibid, 9, 30.

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

39 Ibid, 11, p. 287.

40 Ibid, 12, p. 289.

41 This is also the theme of Lesage’s eighteenth-century novel, Le diable boiteux
(“The Limping Devil” — Trans.]. The idea of a trip to the moon or to the stars
was the inspiration for many a seventecnth- 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, “Beitrége zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie,”
Jahrbiicher fiir classische Philologie, supplementary vol. 19, Leipzig 1893; Epicte-
tus, Discourses, 3, 22, 24.

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

46 Ernest Renan, Guvres completes, vol. 2, Paris, 1948, p. 1037.

47 Charles Baudelaire, “Elévation.”

10
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.!

This is particularly true of the Stoic sage, whose fundamental attitude
consisted in a joyful “Yes!” accorded at cach 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, O universe,
is in tune with me.” ? 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 appcar to him, at least 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 offer 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
workings. !

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: foti
se inserens mundo.’

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,’ 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 contempla-
tion, 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
...Mature is made so clear and manifest, laid bare to sight on every

side.®

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 does indeed, by means of
its multiple technical applications, radically transform some aspects 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 conceptions. 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 reflec-
tions 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 /e monde vécu], 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.’

For lived, existential experience, the earth is nothing other than the immobile
ground’ 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
aware of it. This awareness, in turn, 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 unity 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.”®

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 habitual 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 find a similar distinction between habitual and philosophical perception
in the writings of Bergson. He describes this difference as follows:'#

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 it for itself; and no longer for them. 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:!'! 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 transfor-
mation 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 perception. In
fact, as J. Ritter has pointed out,'? it is only with the flourishing of modern
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 1750, Baumgarten," in his Aesthetica, had
opposed veritas logica to veritas aesthetica'’: veritas logica 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, as he describes it to his beloved. In his Critique of Judgement of

The Sage and the World 255

1790, 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.” * When, between
1815 and 1830, C.G. Carus wrote his Lettres sur la peinture de paysage,'* he
characterized landscape-painting as the “art of the representation of the life
of the earth [Erdlebenbildkunst].” For Carus, it is thanks to aesthetic percep-
tion 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,'’ “remains for
the artist the condition sine gua 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 /ee/s 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 natura naturata.”

We re-encounter this cosmic consciousness in Cézanne.'? “Have you seen
that gigantic ‘Tintoretto 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, fecls himself to be a
“piece of nature, within the domain of nature.” We find the same theme
in Roger Caillois’ Generalized Aesthetics» apropos of the experience of
beauty:

Natural structures constitute both the initial and the final reference
point of all imaginable beauty, although beauty is Auman 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 charac-
teristic of rendering things visible, causing them to appear. Merleau-Ponty
laid great stress on this idea:?! “Art no longer imitates visible things; it makes
things visible.” It is the blueprint of the genesis of things. Paintings show how
things become things and how the world becomes a world... . how moun-
tains become, in our view, mountains.” Painting makes us fecl the presence
of things: the fact that “things are here.” “When Cézanne strives af ter depth,”
continucs Merleau-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 are astonished
by it. We break off “our familiarity with the world, and this break can teach
us nothing other than the unmotivated surging-forth of the world.” At such
moments, it is as if we were secing the world appear before our eyes for the
first time.

The Sage and the World 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 Cézanne about painting are not to
be confused with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Be that as it may,
Merleau-Ponty was deeply conscious of the sense in which, above and beyond
differences of discourse, the experiences of Klee or Cézanne 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 cxample, let us consider this passage from one of Sencca’s Letters to
Lucilius: “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 secing for the first time [/amquam spectator novus].”* 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 Nature 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 onc 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 made the novelty surprising and paradoxical subsequently makes it

258 Themes

seem banal, and our admiration gradually diminishes. Lucretius then de-
scribes 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!?5

These texts are extremely important for our purpose. They show that,
alrcady 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 /ives 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 /ook 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 valucs. 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 must separate ourselves from the
“everyday” world in order to rediscover the world qua world,

The Sage and the World 259

5 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
Réveries du promeneur solitaire.” 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.” 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.””? Here
Rousscau 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 con-
centrating one’s mind on the present instant.” In Stoicism as well as in
Epicureanism, such exercises consisted in “separating oneself from the
future and past,” in order to “delimit the present instant.” 2! Such a tech-
nique gives the mind, freed from the burden and prejudices of the past, as
well as from worry about the future, that inner detachment, freedom, and
peace which arc 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 in-
finite value and unheard-of miracle of our presence in the world. Concentra-
tion 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 /ast moment, and that we live each day and each hour as if
it were our last. For the Epicureans, this exercise reveals the incredible
stroke of luck thanks to which cach moment we live in the world is made
possible,

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.*?

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

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

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.**

To see the world for the last time is the same thing as to see it for the first
time, /amquam spectator novus.© 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 themselves.*7 We experience
ourselves as a moment or instant of this movement; this immense cvent which
reaches beyond us, is always already there before us, and is always beyond us.
We are born along with® the world. The feeling of existence of which
Rousseau spoke is precisely this feeling of identity between universal being
and our own existence.

The Sage and the World 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.*? 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” 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
unity mith 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 consciousness 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

1 B. Groethuysen, Anthropologie philosophique, Paris 1952, repr. 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, Wiesbaden 1925, p. 223.

6 Taucretiun, On the Nature of Things, 3, 16 17, 28-30.

262 Themes

7 M. Merleau-Ponty, La Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris 1945, pp. ii-iii.

8 M. Merleau-Ponty, Eloge de la philosophie et autres essais, Paris 1953, pp. 285-6.
Cf. E. Husserl, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phainomenologiscen Ur-
sprung der Raumlichkeit der Natur” (= Umsturz der Kopeinkanischen Lehre),
in Marvin Faber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memory of E. Husserl, Cambridge
MA 1940, pp. 309-25.

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

10 H. Bergson, La Pensée et le mouvant, Paris 1946, pp. 152f.

11 (Cf. P. Hadot’s important article “Conversion” in Encyclopaedia Universalis,
pp. 979-81. - Trans.]

12 J. Ritter, Subjectivitat. Sechs Aufsdtze, Frankfurt 1974.

13 Cited in Ritter, Subjektivitat, p. 155.

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 /a peinture de paysage, Paris 1988. — Trans.]}

17 P. Klee, Théorie de l'art moderne, Paris 1964, repr. 1985, pp. 42-6.

18 [“La nature naturante importe advantage au peintre que la nature naturée.” I have
translated nature naturante 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 Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie (Paris
1988, 16th edn, p. 673), natura naturans traditionally designates God, insofar as
he is creator and principle of all action; while natura 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, Cézanne, Paris 1988, p. 154.

20 R. Caillois, Esthétique généralisée, Paris 1962, p. 8.

21 M. Merleau-Ponty, “L’oeil et Pesprit,” Les Temps Modernes 27 (1961), pp. 217,
219.

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

23 Merlcau-Ponty, La Phénoménologie, p. viii.

24 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 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, 1; Augustine, On the Usefulness of Belief, 16, 34.

26 Rainer Maina Rilke, Duino Elegies, Eighth Elegy.

27 [Musings of a Solitary Stroller,” written between 1776 and Rousseau’s death in
1778. - Trans.]

28 J.-J. Rousseau 1964, 7th Promenade, p. 126.

29 Ibid, 5th Promenade, p. 102.

30 See above.

31 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12, 3, 3-4; 7, 29, 3; 3, 12, 1.

32 Horace, Epistle, 1, 4, 13.

33 M. Gigante, Richerche Filodemee, Naples 1983, pp. 181, 215-16.

34 Horace, Odes, 2, 16, 25.

The Sage and the World 263

35 William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence” in Complete Writings with Variant
Readings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, London 1972, p. 435, 1-5.

36 [“Like a new spectator.” - Trans.]

37 [Cf. P. Hadot, “Remarques sur la notion de <physis> et de nature,” in
Herméneutique et ontologie: Hommage a Pierre-Aubenque, Paris 1990, pp. 1-15. -
Trans.)

38 “Nous co-naissons au monde.” The phrase is that of Paul Claudel, Art Poétique,
Paris 1946, pp. 54ff.

39 Cf. above.

40 Cf. Ritter, Subjektivitdt, p. 151.

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 mecting 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 carth, 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 common-
wealth. 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 are
like embers of wisdom kept smouldering in our cities, so that virtue may
not be altogether snuffed out and disappear from our race. But if only

Philosophy as a Way of Life 265

people everywhere felt the same way as this small number, and became
as nature meant for them to be: blameless, irreproachable, and /overs 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.!

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.? 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 does 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
Quintillian: “We must... strive after that which is highest, as many of the
ancients did. Even though they believed that no sage had ever yet been found,
they nevertheless continued to teach the precepts of wisdom.”? 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 (ataravxia),
inner freedom (autarkeia), and a cosmic consciousness. First and foremost,
philosophy presented itself as a therapeutic, intended to cure mankind’s

266 Themes

anguish. This concept is stated explicitly in Xenocrates,* and in Epicurus:'
“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 Stoics® and for the
Skeptics, apropos of whom Sextus Empiricus’ 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,* among the Cynics, in Aristotle
— for whom only the contemplative life is independent’ — in Epicurus,'® and
among the Stoics.'' 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 con-
sciousness 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.”'2 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.”'? 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 distinction proposed
by the Stoics,"* between discourse about philosophy and philosophy itself) Kor
the Stoics, the parts of philosophy — physics, ethics, and logic — were not, 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 /iving 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 about 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 specula-
tions, 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.'5

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.'*

We can immediately foresee the consequences of this distinction, formu-
lated 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.” '? Philosophical theories are in the service of the philosoph-
ical 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 ( procheiron).'* 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
such systematization. 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 philo-
sophy, 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, cxamination of one’s con-
science, 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 now. 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.”'? 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 infinitely
precious.

Thus, as we have seen, philosophy in the Hellenistic and Greek period took
on the form of a way of life, an art of living, and a way of being. This,
however, was nothing new; ancient philosophy had had this character at least

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.” 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.?!

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.”

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 clichés would
have us believe, that the Greek city-state dicd 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 modern 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 life.2? 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.” In order to present itself as a philosophy,
Christianity was obliged to integrate elements borrowed from ancient philo-
sophy. 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 Chris-
tian life. The phenomenon of integration appears very clearly in Clement of
Alexandria, and was intensely developed in the monastic movement, where
we find the Stoico/Platonic 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.”* 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 philo-
sophia, 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. 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. Edu-
cation 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, Male-
branche, and Leibniz. Philosophy thus reconquered its autonomy. vis-d-vis

Philosophy as a Way of Life 271

theology, but this movement — born as a reaction against medieval Scholasti-
cism — 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 atmo-
sphere and environment from that of ancient philosophy. In modern univer-
sity 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.”’

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, but, being 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.” > The philosophies of Nietzsche and of Schopen-
hauer 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 Quintus 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 explicitly” 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 was “the practice of wisdom.” " If, following
their cxample, we believe that it is exsential for mankind to try to accede to

Philosophy as a Way of Life 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.?!

Philosophy in antiquity was an exercise practiced at each instant. It invites
us to concentrate on cach instant of life, to become aware of the infinite value
of cach 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
gocs beyond the limits of his individuality. In antiquity, this cosmic con-
sciousness 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 mathe-
matical, 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, tots
Se inserens mundo, in the words of Seneca.? 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 Husserl*} between the rotation of the
earth, affirmed and proved scientifically, and the earth’s immobility, postu-
lated 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.” In the same way, nature and the cosmos are,
for our living perception, the infinite horizon of our lives, the enigma of our

274 Themes

existence which, as Lucretius said, inspires us with horror 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.**

Ancient philosophical traditions can provide guidance in our relationship to
ourselves, to the cosmos, and to other human beings. In the mentality of
modern historians, there is no cliché 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 case 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 thcir
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 casily 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 be
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 an equilibrium, and inner peace
is indispensable for efficacious action.

Philosophy as a Way of Life 275

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.**

NOTES

1 Philo Judaeus, On the Special Laws, 2, 44-8.

2 Cf. above.

3 Quintillian, Oratorical Institutions, bk 1, Preface, 19-20.

4 Xenocrates, fr. 4 Heinze.

5 Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, §85.

6 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 31.

7 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1, 28.

8 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1, 2, 14.

9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10, 7, 1178b3.

10 Epicurus, Gnomologicum Vaticanum, §77.

11 Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 13, 7.

12 Cf. above.

13. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11, 1.

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

15 Ibid, 4, 18.

16 Epictetus, Discourses, 3, 21, 4-6.

17 Cf. below.

18 On the concept of procheiron, see above.

19 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 1, 1.

20 Plato, Apology, 29e1 ff.

21 Plato, Republic, 486a.

22 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10, 7, 1178aff.

23 Cf. below.

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

25 J. Leclerq, “Pour l’histoire de l’expression ‘philosophie chrétienne’,” Mélanges de
Science Religieuse 9 (1952), p. 221.

26 Cf. below.

27 A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J.
Payne, 2 vols, Indian Hills CO 1958, London/Toronto 1909, ch. 17, vol. 2, pp.
163-4.

28 Spinoza, Kthics, Part 5, Prop. 42, p. 270 Elwes.

276 Themes

29 Cicero, On Oratory, I, 229ff.

30 René Descartes, Principti 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, Letters to Lucilius, 66,

33 E. Husserl, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phanomenologiscen Urspung
der Raumlichkeit der Natur” (= Umsturz der Kopernikanischen Lehre), in
Marvin Faber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memory of E. Husserl, Cambridge MA
1940, p. 132.

34 M. Merleau-Ponty, Eloge de la philosophie et autres essais, Paris 1953, 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 devel-
opment?

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
espccially in the books of Jacques Maritain; thus it was a kind of Aristotelian-
ism tinged with Neoplatonism. I think it was a good thing for me to have
begun my philosophical studies with a highly systematic, structured philo-
sophy, 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 facc to face with the phenome-
non 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 own personal experience, I can say that one of the great

278 Postscript

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 modern 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 1961, and you then became director of studies
at the same institution, where you remained from 1964 on. In 1982, you were
elected to the chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought at the
Collége de France. Now, in France, this is the most prestigious position
which a historian of philosophy can obtain, and you arrived there without
passing through the almost obligatory stage of the cole Normale Supérieure,
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 Bréhier,? R. Bayer, Jean Wahl,’ Paul Ricoeur,
Maurice de Gandillac,‘ Jean Hyppolite,> R. Le Senne, Louis Lavelle, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, and J. Vuillemin.

The idea of a conflict between philosophy and the teaching of philosophy
gocs back to my youth. I think I came across it in Charles Péguy, who said:
“Philosophy doesn’t go to philosophy clayses,” and certainly in Jacques

Postscript 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 Plotinus. In 1957, you presented a remarkable paper at the meeting of the
Fondation Hardt devoted to Plotinus; this was followed, in 1963 by your first
book, Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision.’ In 1961, in collaboration with Paul
Henry, you had translated and given a copious commentary on the theological
treatises of the Latin church Father Marius Victorinus. The year 1968 saw
the publication of your monumental work Porphyre et Victorinus,’ 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 Collége 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. Yd be inclined to look at my intellectual and spiritual itinerary
somewhat differently. From 1942 to 1946, I was only interested in meta-
physics 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 1946, 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 |'Occident.* Ele advised me to study Marius Victorinus, in the belief that I

280 Postscript

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 Victorinus 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 Victorinus. My book
Por phyre et Victorinus was the result of this exegetical work, and in it I showed
that Victorinus was the disciple of Porphyry rather than of Plotinus.

What attracted me in Wittgenstein — whom I first read around 1960 — was
the problem of mysticism, which he mentions in the last pages of the
Tractatus. 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 Angéle
de Radkowski asked me to write the little book entitled Plotin ou la simplicité
du regard.

When, in 1964, I was elected to the Fifth Section of the Ecole Pratique des
Hautes Etudes,’ my colleagues viewed me above all as the translator of
Victorinus, and it was natural for me to have been elected to the chair of Latin
Patristics. Among other factors, this explains how I came to publish an edition
and translation of the Apologia David of Bishop Ambrose of Milan.'° I must
confess, however, that Latin Patristics didn’t really interest me. Fortunately,
my colleagues agreed to change the title of my chair, which became
“Theologies and Mysticisms of Hellenistic Greece and of the End of
Antiquity.” Thus I was able to return to the mystical passages of Plotinus, on
which I commented before my auditors for many years.

However, it was also at this time that my relationship with Plotinus began
to become more complex, and that I arrived at my present position. On the
one hand, I believe that this great author has yet to be explained in the
detailed way he deserves, and that’s why I have undertaken the translation
with commentary of the totality of his works. Moreover, the phenomenon of
mysticism, which is so striking in Plotinus, continues to intrigue me. Yet, as
I grow older, Plotinus speaks to me less and less, if | may say so. I have
become considerably detached from him. From 1970 on, I have felt very
strongly that it was Epicureanism and Stoicism which could nourish the
spiritual life of men and women of our times, as well as my own, ‘That was

Postscript 281

how I came to write my book on spiritual exercises. Indeed, here at the end
of the century — and no one is more surprised at this than myself — we are
witnessing an increasing interest in these two philosophies on the part of the
reading public. This is a remarkable phenomenon, hard to explain.

To sum up my inner evolution, I would say the following: in 1946, I naively

believed that I, too, could relive the Plotinian mystical experience. But I later
realized that this was an illusion. The conclusion of my book Plotinus already
hinted that the idea of the “purely spiritual” is untenable. It is true that there
is something ineffable in human existence, but this ineffable is within our very
perception of the world, in the mystery of our existence and that of the
cosmos. Still, it can lead to an experience which could be qualified as mystical.
M.C. What do the expressions “philosophy” and “living a philosophical
life” signify for you?
P.H. For me, the word “philosophy” corresponds first of all to an historical
phenomenon. In was the Greeks who created the word, probably in the sixth
or fifth century BC, and it was Plato who gave it its strongest meaning:
philo-sophia, “love of wisdom,” the wisdom which one lacks. Since that time
there has been an intellectual, spiritual, and social phenomenon, which has
taken on a variety of forms, and which has been called philosophy. From this
point of view, it is legitimate to ask whether there exists a “philosophy”
outside of the Western tradition, or of the Arabic tradition, insofar as the
latter is the inheritor of Greek philosophy.

Now, an historical phenomenon is in constant evolution. Contemporary
“philosophy” is obviously very different from the “philosophy” of Socrates
and Plato, just as contemporary Christianity is very different from the
Evangelistic message. Is this evolution a good thing? Is it an evil? I won’t go
into that. I do think, however, that it is always legitimate to go back to the
origins, in order better to understand the meaning of a phenomenon, and that
is what I try to do.

I have tried to define what philosophy was for a person in antiquity. In my
view, the essential characteristic of the phenomenon “philosophy” in antiquity
was that at that time a philosopher was, above all, someone who lived in a
philosophical way. In other words, the philosopher was someone whose life
was guided by his or her reason, and who was a practitioner of the moral
virtues. This is obvious, for example, from the portrait Alcibiades gives of
Socrates at the end of Plato’s Symposium. We can also observe it in Xenophon,
where Hippias asks Socrates for a definition of justice. Socrates replies:
“Instead of talking about it, I make it appear through my actions.” Originally,
then, philosophy is above all the choice of a form of life, to which
philosophical discourse then gives justifications and theoretical foundations.
Philosophical discourse is not the same thing as philosophy: the Stoics said
so explicitly, and the other schools admitted it implicitly. True, there can be
no philosophy without some discourse — either inner or outward - on the part

282 Postscript

of the philosopher. This can take the form of pedagogical activity carried out
on others, of inner meditation, or of the discursive explanation of intuitive
contemplation. But this discourse is not the essential part of philosophy, and
it will have value only if it has a relationship with philosophical life. As an
Epicurean sentence puts it: “The discourse of philosophers is in vain, unless
it heals some passion of the soul.”

M.C. Are spiritual exercises still possible today? They were thought up in
the very distant past, as responses to specific social structures and material
conditions, but our current living conditions bear very little resemblance to
those of antiquity. The spiritual exercises of the Stoics and the Epicureans,
for example, are the consequences of the basic hypotheses of each school: on
the one hand, faith in the providential Logos; on the other, atomism, belief
in chance, and denial of post-mortem existence. Nowadays, however, we may
no longer belicve in these hypotheses. Is it still possible to practice the
spiritual exercises of antiquity, separating them from the systems of which
they were a part, and substituting our own basic hypotheses for the outmoded
ones of antiquity?

Let’s take the example of injustice. One of the greatest sources of pain for

modern man is, I would think, the suffering of innocent people. Every day,
the media overwhelm us with images of this suffering, and we witness it every
day in the streets of our cities. How can we avoid giving in to despair if we
no longer believe, like Marcus Aurelius, in a divine providence, consubstantial
with ourselves, which arranges everything for the best, and ensures that
injustices are only apparent?
P.H. To reply to your question, I refer you to the beginning of the chapter
entitled “Spiritual exercises,” where I quote the passage from the diary of
Georges Friedmann which he quotes in his book La Puissance et la Sagesse:"
“A ‘spiritual exercise’ every day — either alone or else in the company of
somcone who also wants to improve himself. .. . Step out of duration .. . try
to get rid of your own passions.” I think this testimony suffices to prove that
spiritual exercises are still being practiced in our day and age.

Spiritual exercises do not correspond to specific social structures or material
conditions. They have been, and continue to be, practiced in every age, in the
most widely diverse milieus, and in widely different latitudes: China, Japan,
India; among the Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

If one admits, as I do, that the various philosophical schools of antiquity
were characterizcd above all by their choice of a form of life, which is then
justified after the fact by a given systematic construction (for instance,
Stoicism is the choice of an attitude of coherence with oneself, which is later
justified by a general theory of the coherence of the universe with itself) —
then it is easy to understand how one can can remain faithful to one’s choice
of a form of life without being obliged to adhere to the systematic construc-
tion which claims to found it. As Ruyer has written,? “Except for specialists,

Postscript 283

no one is very interested in the motives of Stoicism, taken over for the most
part from Heraclitus, or in those of Epicurean ethics or Democritean
atomism. Nevertheless, as attitudes, Stoicism and Epicureanism are still very
much alive.” As a matter of fact, ethics — that is to say, choosing the good —
is not the consequence of metaphysics, but metaphysics is the consequence of
ethics.

You give the example of injustice and the suffering of innocent people. For
Marcus Aurelius, the fact that there is a providence (that is, simply, that there
is coherence in the world), does not mean that injustice is only an appearance.
It is quite real, and in his Meditations Marcus often expresses his anger against
liars and the unjust. For him, the discipline of action consists precisely in
acting in the service of the human community; in other words, in practicing
justice oneself and in correcting injustices. Such an attitude is independent of
any theory of providence. Besides, Marcus himself says: “Whether or not the
world is ruled by reason (and thus by providence), don’t you act unreason-
ably.” He then gocs on to add that if we do act according to reason, that
proves that there is also reason in the world. This is proof that it is one’s
choice of life which precedes metaphysical theories, and that we can make our
choice of life, whether or not we justify it by improved or entirely new
arguments.

M.C. You often speak of “nature” or “universal nature” in the context of
the triple discipline of the Stoics. For example, according to Marcus Aurelius
we must learn “the ways and laws of .nature.” What is meant here by
“nature”? Is it the “nature” in which we stroll and have picnics? The “nature”
which “makes no leaps”?

P.H. For the Stoics, nature is at the same time the program in conformity
with which the events which constitute the universe are necessarily linked to
one another, and the programmed sequence which results from them. Thus,
it is the rational order which presides over the evolution of the visible world.
It is this programming and this rationality which give the world its coherence.
To act according to nature is therefore to act in a programmed, rational
manner, in full awareness of the fact that one is a part of the cosmic whole,
as well as a part of the whole formed by the city of those beings which share
in reason. On the one hand, then, it is to act in the service of the human
community, and, on the other, to consent to the general movement of the
universe. The Stoics were saying exactly the same thing as Einstein, when he
denounced the optical illusion of a person who imagines himself to be a
separate entity, while he is really a part of that whole which we call the
universe. Einstein also declared that it is our duty to open our hearts to all
living beings, and to all of nature in her magnificence.

M.C. The triple discipline of spiritual exercises is intended to lead me
towards the inner transformation of my way of seeing, and eventually, to
restore me as an integral and integrated part of the cosmos. According to this

284 Postscript

theory, my task is to discipline my desires, my inclinations, and my assent.
The last two domains correspond respectively to ethics — I must observe my
duties toward my fellow citizens — and to logic or epistemology: I must accept
as true only that which is freed from my subjective prejudices.

All this seems feasible enough. But as far as the discipline of desire is
concerned: it is surely true that the majority of our unhappiness comes from
our unsatisfied desires; this was taught by the Buddha, among others. But is
it really possible for me to discipline my desires; that is, to persuade myself
by means of rational considerations no longer to desire a particular object?
Let’s take sexual desire as an example. If I feel desire for a woman, it is
perfectly possible for me to tell myself that J will not act according to my desire;
in other words, that I will not attempt to satisfy my desire. But can I really
go further than that, and, in the presence of the desired object, command
myself not to desire it any longer? 1 have difficulties with this point.

P.H. Can purely rational considerations be effective against passion or
sexual desire? Here we return to the very idea of spiritual exercises.

What’s interesting about the idca of spiritual exercises is precisely that it is not
a matter of a purely rational consideration, but the putting in action of all kinds
of means, intended to act upon one’s self. Imagination and affectivity play a
capital role here: we must represent to ourselves in vivid colors the dangers of
such-and-such a passion, and use striking formulations of ideas in order to exhort
ourselves. We must also create habits, and fortify ourselves by preparing
ourselves against hardships in advance. In Epicurean communities, people help
one another, admit their weaknesses to cach other, and warn others of such-and-
such a dangerous tendency which is beginning to manifest itself in them.

All these techniques can be useful in crisis situations. Yet we must not allow

them to make us forget that what is most important is the profound
orientation of our lives, the fundamental choice of a life, which engages us
passionately. The problem is not so much to repress such-and-such a passion,
as it is to learn to see things “from above,” in the grandiose perspective of
universal nature and of humanity, compared to which many passions may
appear ridiculously insignificant. It is then that rational knowledge may
become force and will, and thereby become extremely efficacious.
M.C. On May 22, 1991, you gave your last lecture at the Collége de France.
After some three decades of teaching, the last words you pronounced in
public were: ‘In the last analysis, we can scarcely talk about what is most
important.”

This seems paradoxical. After a lifetime devoted to humanistic studies, have
you finally come to the conclusion of the Neoplatonist philosopher Damas-
cius,!3 who wrote “What will be the limit of our discourse, if it is not an
impotent silence, and the admission of our absolute lack of knowledge
concerning those things about which we may never gain knowledge, since
they are inaccessible”?

Postscript 285

P.H. You're alluding to the last words of my last class: “In the final analysis,
we can scarcely talk about what is most important.” I was saying that about
Plotinus, for whom the most important thing was not his teaching, but the
unttterable experience of union with the One. For Plotinus, abstract teaching
could allude to this experience, but could not lead to it. Only asceticism and
a moral life could truly prepare the soul for such a union (and here again, we
find the same opposition between philosophical discourse and the philosop-
hical life).

Obviously, however, when I used this phrase, I was hinting at my own
experience as a teacher and my experience of life. I wasn’t only talking about
the experience of the ineffable among the Neoplatonists, but about a more
general experience.

Everything which is “technical” in the broad sense of the term, whether we
are talking about the exact sciences or the humanistic sciences, is perfectly able
to be communicated by teaching or conversation. But everything that touches
the domain of the existential — which is what is most important for human
beings — for instance, our feeling of existence, our impressions when faced by
death, our perception of nature, our sensations, and a fortiori the mystical
experience, is not directly communicable. The phrases we use to describe them
are conventional and banal; we realize this when we try to console someone
over the loss of a loved one. That’s why it often happens that a poem or a
biography are more philosophical than a philosophical treatise, simply because
they allow us to glimpse this unsayable in an indirect way. Here again, we find
the kind of mysticism evoked in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “There is indeed the
inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.”

NOTES

(In April-May 1992, M. Hadot was kind enough to respond to some questions I had
asked him during the course of the preparation of this translation. What follows is a
translation of our exchange. All notes are my own. — Trans.]}

1 [Etienne Gilson, author of many highly influential works on Medieval thought;
cf. History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, New York 1955.]

2 [Emile Bréhier, the first modern editor and translator of Plotinus, also wrote
important works on Stoicism, and a three-volume History of Philosophy which
was, for many decades, the standard reference work on the subject in France.]

3 [UJean Wahl, expert on Existentialism, was the author of such works as Etudes
kierke gaardiennes (“Studies on Kierkegaard”), 3rd edn, Paris 1967.]

4+ [Maurice de Gandillac, a specialist on Neoplatonism, was author of important works
on Plotinus (La sagesse de Plotin, Paris 1966), and Nicolas of Cusa, among others.]

5 [Jean Hyppolite was the translator and exegete of Hegel (Genése et Structure de
la Phénoménotogie de Vesprit de Hegel, Paris 1946), who exercised a great influence
on French Marxism. |

286 Postscript

6 [3rd edn, Paris 1989. An English translation is in preparation.]

7 (2 vols, Paris 1968.]

8 [P. Henry, Plotin et l’Occident. Firmicus Maternus, Marius Victorinus, Saint
Augustin et Macrobe (= Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense, Etudes et Documents
15), Louvain 1934.]

9 [The Practical School of Higher Studies, of which the fifth section is the Section
of Religious Sciences. Hadot had as his colleagues at this institution such
eminent scholars as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Henry Corbin,
Henri-Charles Puech, and the great Hellenist André-Jean Festugiére, to name
but a few.]

10 [Ambroise de Milan, Apologte de David, intro. Latin text, notes and index Pierre
Hadot, trans. Marius Cordier (= Sources Chrétiennes 239), Paris 1977.]

1] (“Power and Wisdom,” Paris 1970.]

12 [R. Ruyer, The Gnosis of Princeton, p. 220.]

13 [On the First Principles, 1, 7, p. 15, 22-5 Ruelle.]

Select Bibliography

ANTHOLOGIES

Von Arnim, H., ed., Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 4 vols, Leipzig 1903 (abbreviated
SVF).

Diels, H., and W. Kranz, eds, Die Fragmente der Vorsokatiker, 3 vols, Dublin/Zurich
1956, 8th edn, repr. 1974,

Long, A.A. and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1: Translations of the
Principal Sources, with Philosophical Commentary, vol. 2: Greek and Latin Texts with
Notes and Bibliography, Cambridge 1987, repr. 1988.

Nauck, A., ed., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Leipzig 1889, 2nd edn,
repr. Hildesheim 1964.

ANCIENT AUTHORS

Apophthegmata Patrum (The Sayings of the Fathers), PG 65.

——English trans.: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward,
Mowbray 1975.

Aristophanes, Nubes (Clouds), ed. K.J. Dover, Aristophanes' Clouds, Oxford 1968, repr.
1970.

—— English trans.: Aristophanes: The Acharnians, The Clouds, Lysistrata, trans. and
intro. Alan H. Sommerstein, Harmondsworth 1973, repr. 1985.

Aristotle, Opera, ed. I. Bekker, Aristotelis opera, 5 vols, Berlin 1831, repr. 1960.

— English trans.: The Complete Works of Aristotle, Revised Oxford Translation,
ed. Jonathan Barnes (= Bollingen Series 71.2), Princeton NJ 1984.

Aristotle, Sophistici Elenchi (On Sophistical Refutations), trans. W.A. Pickard-
Cambridge.

Aristotle, De partibus animalium (Parts of Animals), trans. W. Ogle.

288 Select Bibliography

Aristotle, Protre pticus, ed. W.D. Ross, Aristotelis Fragmenta Selecta, Oxford 1955.

— English trans.: J. Barnes and G. Lawrence in J. Barnes, ed., 1984, vol. 2.

—— German trans.: Der Protreptikos des Aristoteles, trans., intro. and commentary
Ingemar Diiring, Frankfurt 1969.

Athanasius, Vita Antonis (Life of Antony), PG 26, 835-976B.

— English trans.: Athanasius. The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans.
and intro. Robert C. Gregg, preface William A. Clebsch (Classics of Western
Spirituality), New York/Ramsey NY/Toronto 1980.

Augustine, De Trinitate (On the Trinity), PL 42, 819-1098.

Basil of Caesarea, Jn Ilud Attende tibi ipsi (Homily on the Words, “Give Heed to Thyself’’)

— L'homélie de Basile de Césarée sur le mot ‘‘observe-toi toi-méme’’, ed. S.Y. Rudberg
(= Acta Universitatis Stockholmensis, Studia Graeca Stockholmensta 2), Stockholm 1962.

— English trans.: Saint Basil: Ascetical Works, trans. Sister M. Monica Wagner,
CSC (= FC 9), Washington DC 1950, repr. 1970.

Basil of Caesarea, Regulae fusius tractatae (The Long Rules, otherwise known as
Asceticon magnum or Quaestiones), PG 31, 901-1052.

— English trans.: Saint Basil: Ascetical Works, tans. Sister M. Monica Wagner,
CSC (= FC 9), Washington DC 1950, repr. 1970.

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, eds O. Staihlin, L. Friichtel and U. Treu, in
Clemens Alexandrinus [= GCS 52 (15), 17], vol. 2, 3rd edn, Berlin 1960; vol. 3, 2nd
edn, 1970.

— English trans.: in ANF 2, trans. W.A. Wilson, Buffalo 1885, repr. Grand Rapids
1977.

Damascius, Vita Isidori, ed. C. Zinzten, Life of Isidorus: Damascii vitae [sidori reliquiae
(= Bibliotheca graeca et Latina suppletoria 1), Hildesheim 1967.

Diadochus of Photice, Kephalaia Gnostica (Gnostic chapters), Capita centum de
perfectione spirituali (One Hundred Chapters on Spiritual Perfection), ed. Edouard des
Places, SJ, in Diadoque de Photicé, Oeuvres spirituelles (= SC 5Sbis), Paris 1955, repr.
with suppl. 1966.

Diogenes Laertius, Vitae plilosophorum (Lives of the Philosophers), ed. R.D. Hicks,
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, with English trans. R.D.H. (LCL),
2 vols, London/Cambridge MA 1925, repr. 1950.

Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliat (Instructions), ed. with French trans., in Oeuvres
spirituelles, eds L. Regnault and J. de Préville (= SC 92), Paris 1963.

— English trans.: Dorotheus of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings, trans. E.P. Wheeler
(= Cistercian Studies 33), Kalamazoo 1977.

Epictetus, Opera, ed. W.A. Oldfather, Epictetus, The Discourses as reported by Arrian,
the Manual, and the Fragments, with English trans. W.A.O. (LCL), 2 vols,
London/Cambridge MA 1928, repr. 1959.

Epicurus, Opera, ed. H. Usener, Epicurea (Sammlung Wissenschaftlicher Comment-
aren), Stuttgart 1887, repr. 1966.

—ed. with English trans.: Epicurus, The Extant Remains, short critical
apparatus, trans. and notes Cyril Bailey, Oxford 1926, repr. Hildeshcim/New
York, 1970.

— ed. with Italian trans.: Epicuro, Opere, trans. Graziano Arrighetti (= Bibliotheca
di cultura filosofica 41), Turin 1960; 2nd edn, 1973,

Select Bibliography 289

Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History), ed. with French trans. G. Bardy,
Eusébe de Césarée. Histoire ecclésiastique, 3 vols (= SC 31, 45, 55), Paris 1952-8.
Evagrius of Pontus, Praktikos, ed. with French trans. A. and C. Guillaumont, Evagre

le Pontique: Traité pratique ou le moine, vol. 2 (= SC 171), Paris 1971.

— English trans.: Evagrius Ponticus. The Praktikos. Chapters on Prayer, trans., intro.
and notes John Eudes Bamberger (= Cistercian Studies 4), Kalamazoo 1978.

Galen, De cognoscendis curandisque animi morbis (On Diagnosing and Curing the Illnesses
of the Soul), ed. Iloann. Marquardt (= Claudii Galeni Pergameni scripta minora,
vol. I), Leipzig 1884.

English trans: Galen On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, trans. P.W. Harkins,
Columbus OH 1963.

Gregory Nazianzen, Apologeticus de fuga (In Defense for his Flight to Pontus), PG 35,
408-513.

Gregory Nazianzen, Epistula 3], trans. P. Gallay, in Grégoire de Nazianze, Lettres
théologiques (= SC 208), Paris 1974. @BIB PLUS = Gregory Thaumaturgus, Jn
Origenem oratio panegyrica (Speech in Praise of Origen), ed. H. Crouzel, Grégoire le
Thaumaturge. Remerciement a Origéne suivi de la lettre d’Origéne a Grégoire (= SC
148), Paris 1969.

— English wans.: in ANF 6, trans. S.D.F. Salmond.

Homer, //iad, English trans.: The Iliad of Homer, trans. and intro. Richmond
Lattimore, London 1951, repr. 1961.

Homer, Odyssey, English trans.: The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore,
New York 1965, repr. 1975.

Horace, Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, with English trans. H. Rushton
Fairclough (LCL), London/Cambridge MA 1926, repr. 1947.

Horace, Horace, the Odes and Epodes, with English trans. C.E. Bennett (LCL),
London/Cambridge MA 1914; 2nd edn, 1947.

Horace, Odes, English trans.: Horace: The Complete Odes and Epodes with the Centennial
Hymn, trans. with notes W.G. Shepherd, Harmondsworth 1983.

John Cassian, Collationes Sanctorum Patrum (Conferences of the Holy Fathers).

— Jean Cassien, Conférences, ed. and French trans. E. Pichery, Paris, vol. 1 (= SC
42) 1966, vol. 2 (= SC 54) 1958, vol. 3 (= SC 64) 1959.

— English trans.: John Cassian, Conferences, trans. and preface Colin Luibheid,
intro. Owen Chadwick (CWS), New York/Mahwah NJ/Toronto 1985.

John Chrysostom, Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae (Against the Opponents of the
Monastic Life), PG 47, 319-86.

John Chrysostom, Non esse ad gratiam concionandum (That One should not make
Speeches intended to Please the Public), PG 50, 653-62.

John of Salisbury, Polycraticus, ed. C.C.J. Webb, Oxford 1909, repr. 1965.

—— partial English trans.: John Dickinson, The Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury,
New York 1927,

— Joseph B. Pike, Frivolities of Courtiers and Footsteps of Philosophers, Oxford, 1938.

Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Iudaeorum (Antiquities of the Jews), ed. B. Niese, Flavii
Tosephi opera, 4 vols, Berlin 1887-90.

Justin, Dialogus cum Tryphone (Dialogue with Trypho), ed. E.J. Goodspeed, Die dltesten
Apologeten, Gottingen 1915,

290 Select Bibliography
Justin, Apologia (Apology), ed. E.J. Goodspeed, Die ailtesten Apologeten, Gottingen
1915

Justin, Apologia secunda (Second Apology), ed. E.J. Goodspeed, Die altesten Apologeten,
Gottingen 1915.

Lactantius, Divinae institutiones (Divine Institutes), ed. and French trans. Pierre Monat
[= SC 204 (1973); 205 (1973); 326 (1986); 337 (1987), etc.].

— English trans.: in Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Books I-V II, trans. Sister
Mary Francis McDonald (= FC 49), Washington DC 1964.

Leonidas of Tarentum, Opera, ed. W.R. Paton, in The Greek Anthology, with English
trans. W.R.P. (LCL), 5 vols, London/Cambridge MA 1953.

Lucian, Opera, eds A.M. Harmon, K. Kilburn, et al., Lucian with an English
Translation (LCL), 8 vols, London/Cambridge MA 1913ff.

Lucian, Jcaromennipus, in Opera, eds Hamon et al., vol. 2, ed. Harmon, 1915,
repr. 1960.

Lucian, Charon sive contemplantes (Charon or the Overseers), in Opera, eds Harmon et
al., vol. 2, ed. Harmon, 1915, repr. 1960.

Lucian, Dialogt mortuorum (Dialogues of the Dead), in Opera, eds Harmon et al.,
vol. 7, ed. MacLeod, 1961.

Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit (How One Should Write History), in Opera,
eds Harmon et al., vol. 6, ed. K. Kilburn, 1959, repr. 1968.

Lucretius, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), ed. W.H.D. Rouse, Lucretius,
De rerum natura, revised with new text, introduction, notes, and index M.F. Smith
(LCL), 2nd edn, London/Cambridge MA 1982.

Marcus Aurelius, Opera, ed. A.S.L. Farquharson, The Meditations of the Emperor
Marcus Aurelius, ed., trans. and commentary A.S.L.F., vol. 1: Text and Transla-
tion; vol. 2: Greek Commentary, Oxford, 1944, repr. 1968.

Marcus Aurclius, Marci Aurelii Antonini ad se ipsum libri XII, ed. Joachim Dalfen,
Leipzig 1979.

Maximus Confessor, Various writings, in PG 4; 19; 90-1.

Maximus Confessor, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings, trans. and notes George C.
Berthold, intro. Jaroslav Pelikan, preface Irénée-Henri Dalmais, O.P. (CWS), New
York/Mahwah NJ/Toronto 1985.

Metrodorus, ed. A. Korte, “Metrodori epicurei fragmenta,” Jahrbiicher fiir Classische
Philologie, Suppl. XVII (1890), pp. 529fF.

Olympiodorus, Jn Alcibiadem, ed. L.G. Westerink, Commentary on the First Alcibiades
of Plato, critical text and indices L.G.W., Amsterdam 1956.

Origen, Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), ed. M. Borret, Origéne, Contre Celse, 4 vols (=
SC 132; 136; 147; 150), Paris 1967-9.

— English trans.: H.E. Chadwick, Cambridge 1965.

Origen, Jn Canticum Canticorum (Commentary on the Song of Songs), ed. W.A.
Baehrens, GCS 33, Berlin 1925.

—— English trans.: Origen, The Song of Songs, Commentary and Homilies, trans, and
annotated R.P. Lawson (= ACW 26), Loondon/ Westminster MI) 1957,

Ovid, Metamorphoses, with English trans. Frank Justus Miller (1-CI.), 2 vols, London
1916,

Philo Judacus, Opera, eds 1. Cohn and P, Wenidland, 6 vols, Berlin 1896 1915,

Select Bibliography 291

Philo Judaeus, De Specialibus legibus (On the Special Laws), in Opera, eds Cohn and
Wendland, vol. 5, ed. Cohn, 1906, repr. 1962.

—— Text and English trans.: F.H. Colson (LCL), vol. 7, London/Cambridge MA
1937, repr. 1958.

Philo Judaeus, Vita Mosis (Life of Moses), in Opera, eds Cohn and Wendland, vol. 4,
Cohn, 1902, repr. 1962.

Philo Judaeus, Legatio ad Gaium (The Legation to Gaius), in Opera, eds Cohn and
Wendland, vol. 6, eds Cohn and S. Reiter, 1915, repr. 1962.

Philo Judaeus, De vita contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life), in Opera, eds Cohn
and Wendland, vol. 6, eds Cohn and S. Reiter, 1915, repr. 1962.Plato, Opera, ed.
J. Burnett, Oxford 1900-7.

—— English trans.: The Collected Dialogues of Plato, including the Letters, eds Edith
Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (= Bollingen Series 71), Princeton, NJ 1961; 2nd
edn 1963.

Plato, Apologia Socratis (Apology), trans. H. Tredennick, in Collected Dialogues, eds
Hamilton and Cairns.

Plato, Laches, trans. B. Jowett, in Collected Dialogues, eds Hamilton and Cairns.

Plato, Phaedo, trans. H. Tredennick, in Collected Dialogues, eds Hamilton and Cairns.

Plato, Phaedrus, trans. R. Hackforth, in Collected Dialogues, eds Hamilton and Cairns.

Plato, Republic, trans. P. Shorey, in Collected Dialogues, eds Hamilton and Cairns.

Plato, Seventh Letter, trans. A.L. Post, in Collected Dialogues, eds Hamilton and
Cairns.

Plato, Politicus (The Statesman), trans, J.B. Skemp, in Collected Dialogues, eds
Hamilton and Cairns.

Plato, Symposium, trans. M. Joyce, in Collected Dialogues, eds Hamilton and Cairns.

Plotinus, Enneades, eds P. Henry and H.-R. Schwyzer, Plotini opera, 3 vols, Leiden
1951-73.

— English trans.: Plotinus, trans. Arthur Hilary Armstrong (LCL), 7 vols, Cam-
bridge MA 1966-88.

Plutarch, Moralia, ed. and trans. F.C. Babbitt, Plutarch’s Moralia, with English trans.
(LCL), London/Cambridge MA.

Plutarch, De communibus notitiis contra Stoicos (On Common Conceptions), in Moralia,
ed. Babbitt, vol. 13, pt. 2, ed. H. Cherniss, 1976.

Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum (On the Obsolescence of Oracles), in Moralia,
ed. Babbitt, vol. 5, ed. F.C. Babbitt, 1957.

Plutarch, De tranquillitate animi (On Peace of Mind), in Moralia, ed. Babbitt, vol. 6,
ed. W.C. Helmbold.

Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales (Table-talk), in Moralia, ed. Babbitt, vol. 4, ed.
C. Hubert, 1938, repr. 1971.

Plutarch, Quomodo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus (Huw One may Know One is Making
Progress in Virtue), in Moralia, ed. Babbitt, vol. 1, ed. F.C. Babbitt, 1927, repr. 1969.
Porphyry, Ad Marcellam, ed. W. Pétscher, Porphyrios. mpoo Mapxeap, Leiden

1969.

—-English trans.: Porphyry the Philosopher, To Marcella, text, trans. intro. and notes
by K. O’Brien Wicker (= Society of Biblical Literature, Texts and Translations 28,
Graeco-Roman Religion Series 10), Atlanta 1987.

292 Select Bibliography

Porphyry, De abstinentia (On Abstinence), text and French trans., Porphyre: De
L'abstinence, Livre 1, vol. \, text and trans. Jean Bouffartigue, Paris 1977.

—— Livres 2 et 3, vol. 2, text Jean Bouffartigue, trans. Jean Bouffartigue and Michel
Patillon, Paris 1979.

— English trans.: Select Works of Porphyry... Translated from the Greek, trans.
Thomas Taylor, London 1823, repr. Ann Arbor 1965.

Porphyry, Sententiae (Sentences), ed. E. Lamberz: Porphyrius, Sententiae ad Intelligibi-
lia Ducentes, Leipzig 1975.

— English trans.: Select Works of Porphyry... Translated from the Greek, trans.
Thomas Taylor, London 1823, repr. Ann Arbor 1965.

Proclus, In Alcibiadem (Commentary on Plato's First Alcibiades), text and French trans.,
Proclus: Sur le Premier Alcibiade de Platon, text and trans. A. Ph. Segonds, 2 vols,
Paris 1985-6.

Quintillian, /nstitiutio Oratorica (Oratorical Institutions), text and English trans.
ed. H.E. Butler (LCL), 2 vols, 1921-2,

Rufinus, Historia Monachorum (History of the Monks), PL 21.

Sallustius, De diis et mundo, text and English trans., Sallustius: Concerning the Gods
and the Universe, ed., prolegomena and trans. A.D. Nock, Cambridge 1926.

Seneca, Opera, ed. and English trans. Thomas H. Corcoran (LCL), 10 vols,
London/Cambridge MA.

Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Letters to Lucilius), ed. and English trans.
Richard C. Gummere, 3 vols, London/Cambridge MA, 1934.

Seneca, De benefictis (On Benefits) in Seneca: Moral Essays, with English trans. John.
W. Basore (LCL), 3 vols, London/Cambridge MA 1935, repr. 1958.

Seneca, Questiones naturales (Natural Questions), in Opera, ed. Corcoran, vol. 7,
London/Cambridge MA 1971.

Septuagint, ed. A. Rahlfs, Septuaginta, Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX
inter pretes, Stuttgart 1935.

Sextus Empiricus, Opera, ed. and English trans. R.G. Bury, Sextus Empiricus (LCL),
4 vols, London/Cambridge MA 1933-49.

Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos (Address to the Greeks), ed. E.J. Goodspeed, Die altesten
Apologeten, Gdttingen 1915.

Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Historia Religiosa (= Philotheus) (History of the Monks of Syria),
ed. and French trans. P. Canivet and A. Leroy-Molinghen, Théodoret de Cyr.
L'histoire des moines de Syrie, 2 vols (= SC 234; 257), Paris 1977-9.

Xenophon, Memorabilia, ed. E.C. Marchant, Xenophontis opera omnia, vol. 2, 2nd edn,
Oxford 1921, repr. 1971.

—— English trans.: H. Tredennick and R. Waterfield, in Xenophon: Conversations of
Socrates, Harmondsworth 1990.

MODERN AUTHORS

Adnés, P., “Garde du coeur,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 6, col. 108.
Africa, T.W., “The opium addiction of Marcus Aurelius,” Journal of the History of
Ideas (Jan.-Mar. 1961), pp. 97- 102.

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Alexandre, M., “Le travail de la sentence chez Marc Auréle: philosophie et rhé-
torique,” in Formes bréves (= Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Langues
de l'Université de Poitiers 3), Poitiers 1979.

Andresen, C., Logos und Nomos, Berlin 1955.

Apelt, O., Platonische Aufsdtze, Berlin 1912.

Association Guillaume Budé, Actes du VIII‘ Congres (Paris, 5-10 April 1968), Paris
1969.

Bacon, Helen H., “Socrates crowned,” The Virginia Quarterly Review 35 (1959), pp.
415-30.

Bergson, Henri, L’Energie spirituelle, 14th edn, Paris 1930.

— La Pensée et le mouvant, Paris 1946.

— English trans.: The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison, New York 1946.

Bertram, E., Nietzsche. Versuch einer Mythologie, Berlin 1918, repr. Bonn, 8th edn,
1965.

Blake, William, Complete Writings, with Variant Readings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes,
London 1972.

Blumenberg, Hans, Die Legitimitat der Neuzeit, Frankfurt 1966.

Blumenthal, Henry, “Soul, world-soul, and individual soul in Plotinus,” in Le
Neéoplatonisme, 1971.

Bohlin, T., S. Kierkegaards Leben und Werden, 1925.

Bohn, B., Sokrates im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Studien zum Werdegang des modernen
Persénlichkeitsbewusstseins, Leipzig 1929.

Bonitz, H., /ndex aristotelicus, Berlin 1870, repr. Graz 1955.

Borinski, K., Die Antike in Poetik und Kunsttheorie, vol. 1, Leipzig 1914.

Bruns, I., De schola Epicteti, Kiel 1897.

Caillois, R., Esthétique généralisée, Paris 1962.

Carus, C.G., Symbolik der menschlichen Gestalt, 1858, repr. Hildesheim/Darmstadt 1962.

Chadwick, H., The Sentences of Sextus, Cambridge 1959.

Chenu, M.-D., /ntroduction a l'étude de saint Thomas d'Aquin, Paris 1954.

Courcelle, Pierre, La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire, Paris 1967.

Courcelle, Pierre, Connais-toi toi-méme. De Socrate a saint Bernard, 3 vols, Paris
1974-5.

Dailly, R., and H. van Effenterre, “Le cas Marc Auréle. Essai de psychosomatique
historique,” Revue des Etudes Anciennes 56 (1954), pp. 347-65.

Delcourt, Marie, “Utrumque-neutrum,” in Mélanges H.-Ch. Puech, Paris 1974.

Delorme, J., Gymnasion, Paris 1960.

Descartes, R., Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for
the Truth in the Sciences, English trans. in Descartes: Selections, ed. Ralph M. Eaton,
New York 1927.

Détienne, M., De la pensée religieuse ala pensée philosophique. La notion de Daimon dans
le pythagorisme ancien, Paris 1963.

Déetienne, M., Les maitres de vérité dans la Gréce archaigque, Paris 1967.

Détienne, M., and J.-P. Vernant, Les nuses de lintelligence. La métis des Grecs, Paris 1974.

Dirlmeier, F., “Yom Monolog der Dichtung zum ‘inneren’ Logos bei Platon und
Aristoteles,” in Augemahlte Schriften zu Dichtung und Philosophie der Griechen,
Heidelberg 1970.

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Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (= Sather Classical Lectures 25), 3rd edn,
Berkeley/London 1963.

Dodds, E.R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge 1965.

Diiring, I., “Aristotle and the heritage from Plato,” Eranos 62 (1964), pp. 84-99.

Diiring, I., Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens, Heidelberg 1966.

Diiring, I., “Von Aristoteles bis Leibniz. Einige Hauptlinien in der Geschichte des
Aristotelismus,” in P. Moraux, ed., Aristoteles in der neueren Forschung (= Wege der
Forschung 61), Darmstadt 1968.

Eckermann, J.P., Gesprache mit Goethe, Wiesbaden 1955.

Emrich, W., Die Symbolik von Faust I], Frankfurt 1957.

Festugiére, A.-J., Epicure et ses dieux, Paris 1946.

Festugiére, A.-J., La révélation d'Hermés Trismégiste, vol. 2, Paris 1949.

Festugiére, A.-J., Contemplation et vie contemplative selon Platon, 2nd edn, Paris
1950.Foucault, M., “L’écriture de soi,” Corps écrit 5 (1983), pp. 3-23.

Foucault, M., Histoire de la sexualité, vol. 2: L’Usage des plaisirs, Paris 1984.

Foucault, M., Histoire de la sexualité, vol. 3: Le Souci de sot, Paris 1984.

English trans.: The Care of the Self (= History of Sexuality, vol. 2), trans. Robert
Hurley, New York 1986.

Frank, K.S., ed., Askese und Ménchtum in der alten Kirche (= Wege der Forschung
409), Darmstadt 1975.

Friedlander, P., Plato: An Introduction (= Bollingen Series 59.1), trans. H. Meyerhoff,
vol. 1, 2nd edn, Princeton NJ 1969.

Friedmann, G., La Puissance et la Sagesse, Paris 1970.

Friedmann, G., “Le Sage et notre siécle,” Revue de Synthése 99 (1978).

Friedrich, C.D., and C.G. Carus, De la peinture de paysage, Paris 1988.

Gaiser, K., Protreptik und Parénese bei Platon. Untersuchungen zur Form des platon-
ischen Dialogs, Stuttgart 1959.

Gaiser, K., Platons ungeschriebene Lehre. Studien zur systematischen und geschichtlichen
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Index

Abelard 33
abstraction, and oral tradition of
philosophy 20
Academicians 60
aesthetics
Aristotle 190
Marcus Aurelius 189-90, 251
perception 254-6
Africa, Thomas W. 180, 181-2
Agathon 166, 169
Alexander Severus 4
Ambrose
Philo’s text, use of 65
translation of Plotinus 3, 51
Andronicus of Rhodes 72
Antisthenes 91
Antoninus Pious 57
Antony, St
attention to oneself 131, 133, 139
conscience, examination of 135
conversion 131
writing, therapeutic value 135, 209,
211
Apelles 266
Apologists 128
Apophthegmata 133
Aristophanes 90-1, 166, 169
Aristotelianism
absorption into Platonism 56
exegetical phase 5
life, conduct of 58
physics 97
scholasticism 63
theory and practice, relationship
between 60
Aristotle
aesthetics 190

Boethius’ translation 51
dialogue 21, 22, 105-6
discourse 28
exegesis 71, 72, 75
philosophy as a way of life 266, 269
on Socrates 153
theory 29
Arrian of Nicomedia 191, 195, 199, 200
artists 254, 255, 256
asceticism 128
Asianism 67
assent see judgment
Athanasius 131, 135
attention to oneself
Christianity 130-6
displacement of 254
Marcus Aurelius 198
Stoic spiritual exercises 84-5, 130
Augustine
confessions in Confessions 186
Confessions, inspiration of 68
conversion 51-2
exegesis 16-17
Husserl’s adaptation 65
mistranslations 3, 66, 75
physics, logic, and ethics 26
rules of discourse 13
self, mystery of 15-17: original sin
16, 52
structure of work for spiritual
progress 64
Trinity 107
Aulus Gellius 190, 191, 199
authentic texts 73-4

Barth, Casper 10
Barthes, Roland 56

302

Basil of Caesarea
attention to oneself 130-1, 134, 139
watch of the heart 132
Baudelaire, Charles 248
Baumgarten 254
being
as infinitive 5-6, 75
negative theology of 6
as participle 5-6, 75

Bergson, Henri 253-4, 257, 258, 272, 278

Bernard, Paul 54
Bernard of Clairvaux 129
biographies of philosophers 30
Blake, William 260
Boethius
esse and id quod est, distinction
between 6, 76
translation of Aristotelian
commentator 51
brevity of existence 185-6

Caillois, Roger 256
Cambiano, Giuseppe 30
Carus, G. G. 255
Casaubon, Meric 179
Cato of Utico 272
Celsus 74
Cézanne, Paul 255-6, 257
Chastel, André 243
Chenu, M.-D. 73
Christianity
Hadot, influence on 277-8
historical evolution of philosophy 32,
107, 269-70
Kierkegaard’s views 157
and paganism 4 5, 74-5
as a philosophy 128-30
spiritual exercises 127-40
Chrysippus 123-4n
happiness and wisdom 228
lost works 53
and Marcus Aurelius 188, 190
philosopher, concept of 30, 272
Stoic dogmas 61
wine in the sea 229
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
flight of the soul 240
infinity 184
philosophers 272
self-mastery 135
on Socrates 152

Index

Clearchus of Soloi 241
Clement of Alexandria 74, 128
attention to oneself 130
integration 269
spiritual perfection 138
Cleonymus of Athens 74, 128, 241
attention to oneself 130
integration 269
spiritual perfection 138
conscience, examination of 131, 134-5,
139
consolations 22-3
contamination of paganism and
Christianity 4-5
Copernican revolution 253
cosmic consciousness 266, 273
Courcelle, Jeanne 52
Courcelle, Pierre 50-2
Crantor 72
creative misunderstandings 6—7
cryptography, mystical 10-11
Cynicism
flight of the soul 245-7
life, conduct of 58, 103-4
philosophy as a way of life 266, 269

Dailly, R. 180
Damascius 104, 284
Dead Poets’ Society 187
death :
awareness of: Antony 131; Epictetus
131; Marcus Aurelius 13]
Christianity 138, 139
Epicureanism 222, 225-6
and flight of the soul 240-1
Lucretius’ views 187
Marcus Aurelius’ views 187
philosophy as a training for 242
preparation for 68-9: consolations
22-3; Epicurus 68, 95; Heidegger
96; Maximus Confessor 138;
meditation 59; Plato 22, 28, 68,
95, 96-7, 241, 269; Socrates 94;
spiritual exercises 93-101;
Stoicism 68, 96, 229
Delphic oracle 65
Democritus 186, 241
demonic 164-5
Descartes, René
philosophy as way of life 272
spiritual exercives 3.3, 271

desire 11
Epictetus 193, 194
Hadot on 284
Marcus Aurelius 195-7, 198, 201
and physics 12, 194
tyranny of 95
Diadochus of Photice
attention to God and oneself 132-3
dreams 135
dialectic and persuasion 92-3
dialogue
learning to 20, 89-93
philosophical work as 105
diatribe 63
Dio Cassius 180
Diogenes Laertius 118n, 123n
Diogenes the Cynic 98, 161
discourse 26-8, 31-2
Dodds, E. R. 180
Domitian 191
Dorotheus of Gaza
attention to oneself 131
conscience, examination of 134-5
meditation 134
obedience 140
peace of mind 138
self-mastery 135
sin 139
spiritual perfection 136
dreams
Christianity 135
and flight of the soul 241
tyranny of desire revealed in 95
Zeno’s beliefs 113n
Diring, I. 105-6
duties 193

Eckhardt, Meister 270
eclecticism 210
Effenterre, H. van 180
Einstein, Albert 283
Eleusis 28
Epaphroditus 191
ephemerality of human life 185-6
Epictetus 191-5
death, awareness of 131
discourse 27, 267
exegesis 108
and Marcus Aurelius 195-202
objective representation 188
philosophical ropoi 12-13, 193-5

Index

303

philosophy as a way of life 267
physical vision of human reality 187
physics 97 ,
serenity 136
on Socrates 152
Socratic style 116n
Epicureanism
cosmic consciousness 266, 267, 268
ethics 208-9
exegetical phase 5
features 34, 35
flight of the soul 243, 245
Hadot’s interest in 280-1
library find 53-4
life, conduct of 57, 58
meditation 59
present, value of 69, 88, 209-10, 212,
222-6, 259-60, 268
sage 252
self-control 59
spiritual exercises 126: happiness
103; learning to die 95; learning to
live 87-9
Epicurus
death, philosophy as exercise for 68
discourse 27
dogmas, disagreements 61
flight of the soul 243
meditation, dogmas for 60
philosopher concept 30, 272
philosophy as a way of life 266
theory and practice, relationship
between 60
wisdom 57
Erasmus 33
Eros 160-5
wisdom 265
eroticirony 158-65
escapism, ancjent philosophy as 274
ethics 137
Epicurean 208-9
Foucault 24-5, 206-7
and inclinations 12
spiritual exercises 23-5, 126-7
Stoicism 25-6
Euclid 64, 68
Eusebius of Cacsarea 4
Evagrius Ponticus
dreams 135
self-mastery 135
spiritual exercises 133

304

Evagrius Ponticus (cont.)
spiritual perfection 136-7, 138
exegetical philosophy 5-7, 71-6
Augustine 16-17
scholasticism 63-4
existentialism 277, 278

Ficino, Marsilio 69
Flavius Josephus 129
flight of the soul 238-48
Foucault, Michel
care of the self 206-12
enthusiasm for Hadot 1, 206
ethics and spiritual exercises 24-5,
206-7
Friedmann, Georges 70, 81, 97, 108, 282
power and wisdom 235
spiritual exercises 82: learning to live
83, 86 .
friendship, Epicurean attitudes 88-9
Fronto 200

Galen 180-1
Gataker, Thomas 179
Gesner, Andreas 179
Gilson, Etienne 277
Glaucos 102-3
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
on demonic 164-5
dialogue 217-21
erotic pedagogy 164
eternity 233-4
existence, joy of 234-5
flight of the soul 238-9, 244-5
horror 115n, 274
poctry 239, 244-5
present, value of 69, 217, 220-1, 222,
230-4
on reading 109
and Socrates 164
gratitude, Epicurean piety 87
Greek literature 50-1
Gregory Nazianzen 138
Gregory Thaumaturgus 163-4
Groethuysen, Bernard 251
Guarducci, Margherita 8-9
Guyau, J. M. 224

176n

Hador, Ilsetraut 22-3
Hamann, J. G. 150
happiness

Index

spiritual exercises 102
Stoicism 227, 228
healing, Epicureanism 87
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 272
Heidegger, Martin 272
death, philosophy as training for 96
Henry, Paul 51, 279-80
Heraclitus 68
Herod Atticus 199
hierarchy, Christianity and paganism 5
Hippocrates 186
historical psychology
Augustine 16, 17
dangers 15
Holderlin, Friedrich
erotic pedagogy 164
and Socrates 167, 168
Holzmann, Wilhelm 10
Homer
dialogue 118-19, 195
flight of the soul 238-9, 240, 247
Horace
carpe diem 88, 224-5
dialogue 118n
present, value of 69, 224
Husserl, Edmund
Delphic oracle, adaptation of 65
“know thyself” tradition 66
perceptions of the world 272, 273
world of science and world of
perception 253
hypomnemata 11, 179, 209-10
Ignatius of Loyola 82, 126, 127, 270
inclinations 11
Epictetus 193
and ethics 12
Marcus Aurelius 195, 198, 201
indifference to indifferent things 86, 197

indirect communication 151, 156
infinity 184
Marcus Aurelius on 183, 184

investigation, as spiritual exercise 86
irony, Socratic

dialectical 149-58

erotic 158-65
Jesus Christ 10-11
John of Salisbury 129
judgment 11

Epictetus 193, 194

Index

and logic 12, 194

Marcus Aurelius 195, 198
Julian 4
jurists 57

Justin 74, 128

kairos 221
Kant, Immanuel
aesthetic perception 255
ancient representation of philosophy 33
virtue, practice of 124n
Kephalaia 173
Kierkegaard, Seren
Christianity 157
existence, seriousness of 156
pseudonymy 150-1
on Socrates 157, 158: erotic irony 159

Klee, Paul 255, 256, 257
“know thyself” maxim 20
Husserl 66
Socrates 20, 90

landscape-painting 255
Leclerq, Jean 129, 130, 270
Leonidas of Tarentum 182
listening, as spiritual exercise 86
live, learning to 82-9
logic

and judgment 12, 194

spiritual exercises 24-5

Stoicism 25-6
logoi sokratikoi 149
love, and Socrates
Lucian 57

flight of the soul
Lucretius

anxiety 186

on death 187

flight of the soul 243, 245

physics 97

Plato’s model 68

poetic meter 62

rules of discourse 13

sage 252

universalism 226

world 257-8, 274

158-64
245-6, 247

Marcus Aurelius
aesthetics 189-90, 251
banality of life 185
cosmic consciousness 266

305

cultivation of the self 207, 212
death, awareness of 131
divine providence 282, 283
and Epictetus 195-202
flight of the soul 244, 245
Meditations: as spiritual exercise
179-91; style 133; underlying
structure 10-11, 12-15
parensis 107
peace of mind 229
physics as spiritual exercise 98, 99
political ideas 274
present, attention to 132, 226-8
rhetoric 60
sage 25]
Maritain, Jacques 277, 278-9
Marius Victorinus 279-80
Marx, Karl 272
Marxism 278
Maximus Confessor 138
Maximus of Tyre 184
meditation 59-60
Christian spiritual exercises 133-4
Epicurean spiritual exercises 87, 88
Socrates’s disciples 91
Stoic spiritual exercises 85-6
by writing 195
memorization
monastic spiritual exercises 133
Stoic spiritual exercises 85-6
Merleau-Ponty, M. 253, 254, 256, 257, 273
meteorologia 243
Metrodorus 208-9, 226, 266
Meyer, C.F. 166
mistranslations 3, 66, 75
misunderstandings 6-7
monasticism 269-70
as a philosophy 129
spiritual exercises 131, 132, 133, 138,
140: passions 135
monotheism 5
Montaigne, Michel de 33
death, views on 96
Hadot, influence on 278
Montgolfier brothers 239
Morenz, Siegfried 221
Moses 74
Musonius Rufus 191

names, Marcus Aurelius’ views 186
nature

306

nature (cont.)
Marcus Aurelius on 189-90
Hadot on 283
see also physics
Neoplatonism
being as infinitive and being as
participle, distinction between 5-6
emergence 56
exegesis 75
new meanings of earlier works 66
spiritual exercises 99, 100
Stoic ethics, integration of 136
Newman 277
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
ancient philosophy tradition 272
crotic pedagogy 164
genius of the heart 170
indirect communication 151
present, focus on 212, 235

and Socrates 148, 151-2, 156, 167-70:

seductive powcrs 165-6; style
155-6

obedience 139-40
objective representation 187-9
opium, and Marcus Aurelius 180-1
oral tradition of philosophy 19-22, 23,
61-3
Origen
Ambrose’s translations 3
Christianity as a philosophy 129
on Chrysippus 123-4n
conscience, examination of 134
dogmas, disagreements 61
exegesis 72
Gregory Thaumaturgus’ praise 163-4
Ovid
flight of the soul 245
time asa river 182

paganism 4-5, 74-5
Parain, Brice 93
parenesis 106-7
Pascal, Blaise 184
Paul, St 66
peace of mind 138
Marcus Aurelius 229
Seneca 229
Péguy, Charles 278
penitence 139
perception

Index

aesthetic 2546
everyday 252-4
persuasion 92
Peter, St 8-9
Petrarch 33
Philo Judaeus
exegesis 72
Platonic formulae, use of 65
Philo of Alexandria
flight of the soul 240, 243-4
Judaism asa philosophy 129
philosophy as a way of life 265
set speeches 69
spiritual exercises 84, 86, 97-8
universalism 184
Philodemus 225
philosopher, concepts of 30-4, 272
physics 137-8
and desire 12, 194
flight of the soul 242-3
Marcus Aurelius 197
spiritual exercises 24-5
Stoicism 25-6
study, as spiritual exercise 87-8, 97-9
Plato
being as infinite and being as participle,
distinction between 5-6, 75
death, philosophy as training for 22,
28, 68, 95, 96-7, 241, 269
dialogue 20, 21, 62, 90, 91-3, 105:
methodology 106
discourse 28
exegesis 71, 72, 73, 75
flight of the soul 240-2, 243

and Moses 74
river of Heraclitus 182
on Socrates 148, 149-50, 153: erotic

irony 158, 160, 161, 163
Timaeus, as model 68
universalism 184
wisdom, nature of 57

Platonism
Academy 106
adaptations 65
exegetical phase 5
flight of the soul 242-3
Glaucos 102-3
life, conduct of 58-9
philosophical death 242
river 182
Scholasticinm 63-4

Index 307

Socrates’ death 94
spiritual exercises 99
spiritual progress 64
Staicism and Aristotelianism,
absorption of 56
theory and practice, relationship
between 60
pleasure, Epicurean attitudes 88-9,
222-6, 268
Plotinus
Ambrose’s translations 3, 51
dialogue 2, 22
discourse 28-9
exegesis 72, 73, 74
Hadot’s interest in 279, 280, 281, 285
methodology 106
Plato’s text, use of 65
spiritual exercises 99, 100, 101, 102, 107
structure of work for spiritual
progress 64
theory and practice, relationship
between 60
Plutarch
flight of the soul 241
spiritual exercises 59: curiosity, cure
for 136; learning to live 86;
physics 97-8
Polemon 267
Porphyry
attention to God and oneself 132
being as infinitive and being as
participle, distinction between 6, 75
excgesis 73
influence on late Christian thought 51
nature and soul 144n
on Plotinus 72, 106
spiritual progress 99-100, 137
style 133
theory and practice, distinction
between 60
present, value of 69, 221-2, 259-60
Christians 131-2
Epicureans 69, 88, 209-10, 212,
222-6, 259-60, 268
Gocthe 69, 217, 220-1, 222, 230-4
Marcus Aurelius 132, 226-8
Nietzsche 212, 235
Seneca 228, 229
Stoics 69, 84-5, 212, 222, 226-30, 260,

268
Priscianus 73-4

Proclus 61
Euclid’s model 64, 68
flight of the soul 241
treatises 64
Pythagoreans 9

Quincey, Thomas De
Quintillian 265
Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex 272

181-2, 183, 184

Rabbow, Paul 126
Ramus, Petrus 49, 52
reading, as spiritual exercise 86, 101-9
relaxation, Epicureans 88
Renan, Ernest 179-80, 247
research, as spiritual exercise 86
Revelations 72
rhetoric 21

and persuasion 92

and spiritual exercises 127
Rilke, Rainer Maria 258, 278
Ritter, J. 254
Robin, Léon 226
Rogatianus 57
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 259, 260
Rufus, Musonius 111n
Rusticus, Quintus Iunius
Rutilus Rufus 272
Ruyer, R. 282-3

199-200

sage

nature of 57-8, 147, 226

and the world 251-61

Sallustius 104

Scholasticism 72-3, 107, 270-1

Schopenhauer, Arthur 271, 272

science, world of 252-4

self-control 59

self-mastery, as spiritual exercise 86,
135g

Seneca
belonging to the whole 208
eclecticism 210
Epicureanism 124n
flight of the soul 240, 245
joy 207, 225
objective representation 189
peace of mind 229
present, value of 228, 229
river of being 182, 183
sage’s life 58

308

Seneca (contd)
spiritual exercises: learning to die
96; learning to live 86, 130;
physics as 98-9
universalism 230
wisdom 26]
world 257, 261, 273
serenity
Epictetus 136
Epicureans 88, 225
present, value of 221, 222
Sextus 26], 266
Sileni 148, 161, 162
Simplicius 27-8
Skepticism
life, conduct of 56-7, 104
philosophy as a way of life 266
theory and practice, relationship
between 60
Socrates
death 93-4, 166-7, 168-70
dialogue 20, 23, 89-91, 92-3, 149
figure of 147: daimon 164; dialectical
irony 149-58; Dionysos 169-70;
erotic irony 158-65; and Nietzsche
165-70;
physical appearance
powers 165-6
“know thyself” maxim 20, 90
Logos, faithfulness to 93
philosophy as a way of life 266, 269,
281
unclassifiability 57
wisdom 235, 265
soul
flight of 238-48
immateriality and immortality 100-1
Spinoza, Benedict de 271-2
Euclid’s model 68
philosophy as a way of life 272, 275
spiritual exercises 33
Stoicism
absorption into Platonism 56
cosmic consciousness 266
death, exercise for 68
dogmas, disagreements 61
Epictetus 191-2
exegetical phase 5
features 34, 35

147-8; seductive

Index

flight of the soul 242-3

Hadot’s interest in 280-1

life, conduct of 57, 58-9

and Marcus Aurelius: aesthetics
190; objective representation
187-8, 189; river of being 182,
183; spiritual exercises 13, 14

meditation 59

new meanings of earlier works

philosophical death 242

philosophical discourse 25-6

philosophy as a way of life 266-7,
268

pleasure and joy 207

political ideas 274

premeditation on future evils 23

present, valuc of 69, 84-5, 212,
222, 226-30, 260, 268

sage 251, 252

self-control 59

spiritual exercises 126: happiness
103; learning to die 96; learning
to live 82-7

Spiritual perfection

65-6

136

teaching, texts written for 63
theology 137-8
theoretical discourse 29
theoretical life 29
Therapeutae 129
theriac and Marcus Aurelius
theses 63
Thomism 27
Thoreau 33
Thurot, Charles 73-4
treatises 64
truth
authentic texts 73-4
pagan and Christian conceptions 4

180-1

Ulpian 57
universities, nature of 32, 270-1, 278-9

Veyne, Paul 25

view from above 238-48
Voltaire 250n
wisdom

Index 309

love of 265 Xenocrates 266

nature of 57, 58, 103, 228, 261 Xenophon 117n
Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann 17, flight of the soul 240

18, 280, 285 on Socrates 23, 155, 158, 167

worry, Epicureans’ attitudes 88 Xylander 10
writing, therapeutic values 209-11

Antony 135, 209, 211 Zeno 113n

Foucault 209-10 Zopyrus 148

Marcus Aurelius 195

Pierre Hadot is one of the most influential and wide-ranging historians of
ancient philosophy writing today. His work 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.

This book presents a history of spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault,
an account of the centrality, decline, and re-emergence of spiritual exercises in
the history of philosophy, and a discussion of the different conceptions of
philosophy that have accompanied the trajectory and fate of the theory and
practice of spiritual exercises. By focusing our attention on philosophy as a
way of life, Hadot provokes us to ask the question of what it means to
philosophize today.

Pierre Hadot

The author is Professor Emeritus of the History of Hellenistic and Roman
Thought at the Collége de France. He is the author of numerous landmark
books and essays on the major figures and themes of ancient philosophy, as well
as on medieval philosophy, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. His book
Plotinus and the Simplicity of Vision has also appeared in English.

Arnold I. Davidson

The editor is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and
executive editor of the journal Critical /nquiry.

Cover design by Richard Boxall Design Associates

ISBN 0-631-18033-84

BLACKWELL

Oxford UK & Cambridge USA

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9 730631 180333