When we are forced to learn, sometimes the process can be backbreaking. However, when we are truly interested in what we are learning, then the process is much more enjoyable. In fact, it can almost be a sort of past-time, something we do to relax.

I wrote an article about Pierre Hadot a little bit ago that, though pretty reliable, did lack something on a very fundamental part of Hadot's program. And so, now that I have the chance (finals are over with!), I think it'd be a good idea if I correct it.

In this previous article (located here), I described Pierre Hadot's philosophy of life and philosophy of discourse. That is, all of philosophy (ontology, epistemology, ethics, ect) were viewed by Ancient Philosophers first of all as a way of life, and then, to supplement this way of life, also as a dialogue, a discourse.

However, I think my explanation would have benefited from a description of what Pierre Hadot considered to be "Spiritual Exercises" and "forms of discourse," so in this article I would like to correct this mistake. Therefore, I'm going to elaborate below on the forms of life and discourse, and illustrate my elaborations with examples from the Stoics and Plotinian Neoplatonists.

When one hopes to understand Hadot, one must meet him on his own terms.[1] And there is no better way to do this than to examine what he means when he uses the words “philosophy,” “form of discourse,” and “form of life.”

For Hadot, the definition of “philosophy” should be rooted in the word’s etymology. It is, above everything else, a “love of wisdom.”[2] One who “philosophizes” engages in the action of loving wisdom (instead of loving what is not wisdom). [3] It implies a form of life, actions which conform to the reality that wisdom awakens us to, and a form of discourse, oral and written defenses of our chosen mode of life.

This means that each school in ancient antiquity represented a different form of life and form of discourse as defined by their conception of ideal wisdom. On the one hand, different forms of life were characterized by different inner attitudes and spiritual exercises particular to the philosophical school.[4] The forms of discourse were characterized by different oral instruction, exegesis, and systematic treatises that attempted to describe, defend, and preserve this way of life.[5] The following will attempt to elaborate on each of these qualities accordingly.

The first characteristic Hadot proposes is that when one begins a philosophical life, he will live in accordance with some type of inner attitude. For example, the basic attitude that characterized the life of the stoic was one of tension and disinterest.[6] This life of the stoic was characterized by an inner “consent to events.”[7] They must not desire this thing or that thing, because actions do not rely on our own will alone.[8] A stoic must act “under reserve” at all times: he is, in all of his actions, subject to the whims of fate.[9]

Plotinus, for his part, does not have the same apathetic inner attitude as the stoic. Rather, the inner attitude of the Plotinian Neoplatonist is characterized by self-consciousness- that is, the very beginning of the process of “the self” becoming “Intellect.”[10] This is achieved, Hadot informs us, by the mind “experiencing its concentration, inwardness, and profundity,”[11] which results in a metamorphosis of our inner perception.[12]

Forms of life were also characterized by different spiritual exercises. This is very important. Because philosophy was a love of wisdom (and, it might be said, a participation in wisdom), it was always assumed that such an interaction would not leave the participant unchanged. Rather, wisdom would leave the philosopher spiritually transformed. However, this inherently religious, or spiritual metamorphosis happened primarily though certain, school-specific spiritual exercises, or “exercises to ensure spiritual progress towards the ideal state of wisdom,” in Pierre Hadot’s own words.[13] Most times, there were two kinds of spiritual exercises: exercises in self-control and exercises in meditation.[14]

Though they never owned a monopoly on the term, the philosophical school that comes to mind when one thinks about exercises towards the end of self-control is first and foremost Stoicism. For the stoics, the inner, apathetic attitude is most concerned with the restriction of passions by means of premeditation. If one premeditated all of the things that might go wrong during the day before they happen, they would not be a cue for alarm or surprise. Rather, you could approach them not according to your passions, but rather, according to the reality spoken to you by divine wisdom.[15]

However, this spiritual exercise was also a kind of meditation, or “exercise of reason.”[16] Not only would the stoics pre-meditate on the events which might happen during the day- they likewise attempted to “steep themselves thoroughly in the truths of Stoicism and restore their inner tranquility and peace of mind.”[17] They were called to meditate constantly on what other people considered to be evil, in order to remind themselves the truth they had gleaned from wisdom: evil is not really evil.[18] This also extended to the stoic contemplation of death- one must constantly meditate on death in order to understand the inestimable value of every moment of life has.[19]

The Neoplatonists were the philosophers par excellence of meditative spiritual exercises. Plotinus’ whole program could be seen as the transformation of self by means of the contemplation of the One who is beyond being. Incited with Love by the One, the interior experience and knowledge of soul brings us to higher and higher levels of spiritual contemplation, until we are ready to be graced by the presence of the One.[20] Ultimately, it is “the invasion of the soul by a presence which leaves no room for anything but itself” finally coming to an end at the “terminus of the good.”[21] This spiritual exercise of contemplation, then, is the actual thing that transforms the soul into the pattern of the divine, the “image of God,” himself.[22]

However, such a form of philosophical life required ancient philosophers to speak and to write defenses, explanation, and elaborations of such activities, known to Hadot as different “forms of discourses.” These forms of discourse were divided into four different groups: dialogues, exhortations, exegeses of authoritative texts, and philosophical correspondences.

A brief observation should be made, however, concerning all of these “forms of discourse”: they all had some inherently oral quality to them.[23] Many times, when one wanted to examine the discourse behind a particular philosophical way of life, one would simply approach the philosopher, himself.[24] And then, if one were to join the school, the instruction one received would be oral: either through rhetorical or dialectical methodological teaching. Furthermore, even if the written word was made use of, it, too, was under the constraint of the oral word. It was always dictated by scribes, and almost always read aloud by or to the receiver.[25] And so, the form of discourse in Ancient philosophy was forced to remain, even in its written form, characteristically oral.

The form of dialogue for the Stoics was primarily, as mentioned above, was a method comprised of logical, physical, and ethical theoretical propositions (just as their philosophical life was made up of logical, physical, and ethical actions).[26] All of this theory was compounded into propositions, which were useful for explaining the stoic life to outsiders,[27] since the discourse was always to be lived out in the philosophical life.[28] It is important to keep in mind that all of these propositions were written down for a specific audience, not for the general public, which meant that those reading them would always have already some interaction with the stoic way of life.[29]

For the Plotinian Neoplatonist, the primary method of discourse was through commentary and discursive teaching, towards the end of Contemplation. On the one hand, the Neoplatonists as a whole linked their tradition all the way back to Plato and his dialogues.[30] Hadot calls this a “mode of exegetical thinking”: that is, a “scholasticism which, relying on argument from authority, builds up gigantic doctrinal edifices by means of an extraordinary rational reflection on the fundamental dogmas” of Plato.[31]

And so, one will see Plotinus reflecting on certain passages from Plato, and yet attributing new meaning to them.[32] “What matters most,” says Hadot, “first of all is the prestige of the ancient and traditional formula” rather than “the exact meaning it originally had.”[33] This is expressly seen in the Neoplatonic reinterpretation of the maxim “Know thyself,” which Hadot conveniently traces all the way from Plato to Husserl.[34]

Another form used by Plotinus was discursive teaching. This can be seen in his Enneads, which, though compiled and edited by his disciple Porphyry, were originally written down as teaching discourses concerning Plotinus’ philosophy.[35] By this means, one found the reason for the Neoplatonic way of life, and likewise received, above all other things, and exhortation towards contemplation.[36] However, it is important to understand the inherent skeptical opinion Neoplatonists took towards discourse: all discourse concerning The One is revealed to us by Him; likewise, all human discourse cannot communicate the transcendental experience of Him.[37]

This should constitute a brief elaboration on Hadot's "Philosophy of Life" and "Philosophy of Discourse." It is very important for us to understand what Hadot means by these terms, and how they affect us. Because, you see, if this is really how ancient philosophy should be understood, this has giant ramifications for our understanding of the Early Church, and Christianity in general. However, those observations are for another day.

[1] Pun intended.

[2] (philos = love, sophia= wisdom).

[3] Hadot defines wisdom as “a vision of things as they are, […] of the cosmos as it is in the light of reason, [and] the mode of being and living that should correspond to this vision.”Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1985), 58.

[4] These characteristics are found in Hadot, Philosophy, 59.

[5] Ibid, pp. 62-65.

[6] Ibid, 59 and Hadot, Ancient Philosophy, 135. “Disinterest” for the stoic is rendered into English by the transliteration apatheia.

[7] Hadot, Ancient Philosophy, 137.

[8] Ibid, 134.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid, 165.

[11] Ibid, 166.

[12] Pierre Hadot, Plotinus or The Simplicity of Vision, trans. Michael Chase, ed. Arnold L. Davidson, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 35.

[13] Hadot, Philosophy, 59.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid, 137.

[16] Ibid, 59.

[17] Ibid, 137.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Hadot, Plotinus, pp. 26-27 and 55.

[21] Ibid, 55.

[22] As later neo-platonist Christians would speculate. See Evagrius of Pontus, Sentences on Prayer in The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Trans. John Eudes Bamberger (Tappist: Cistercian Publications, 1972).

[23] See Hadot’s discussion of this in Hadot, Philosophy, 62 ff.

[24] Hadot, Ancient Philosophy, 174. See also John 1:19-28, where John the Baptist is obviously being fashioned to be the mythic Philosophical Sage.

[25] Hadot, Philosophy, 61-62.

[26] Hadot, Ancient Philosophy, 138.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid, 139.

[29] Hadot, Philosophy, 64.

[30] Ibid, 63.

[31] Ibid, 63-64.

[32] Hadot: “Plotinus used Plato like Christian mystics used the Song of Songs. Like the latter, Plato’s Symposium became the subject of allegorical interpretation, in which the vocabulary of carnal love was used to express a mystical experience. Indeed, the character of the “spouse” in the Song would fit the Plotinian soul much better than the Socrates of the Symposium” (Hadot, Plotinus, 55).

[33] Hadot, Philosophy, 65.

[34] Ibid, 66.

[35] See the introduction to Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna (London: Penguin Books, 1991).

[36] Hadot, Ancient Philosophy, 170-172.

[37] Ibid, 172.