Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns - Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot / Edition 1

by Michael Chase, Stephen R. L. Clark, Michael McGhee

Overview

Philosophy as a Way of Life

This unique collection of essays on the late Pierre Hadot’s revolutionary methodological approach to studying and practicing philosophy explores Hadot’s primary conviction that philosophy itself goes beyond solving puzzles and analyzing abstract arguments. Hadot believed that philosophy is a key part of humanity’s search for happiness, that it can transform our perception of the world, and thus can alter our very mode of being. His argument that the goal of philosophy is to shift our focus away from our habitual obsession with individuality, and to embrace universality and objectivity, has resonated with thinkers across the Academy – and outside it.

Offering genuinely interdisciplinary analysis of Hadot’s work and philosophical practice, this volume includes papers written from a gamut of philosophical, historical, and geographical perspectives. Articles address issues in the history of philosophy from Pythagoras to Descartes, by way of Islamic thought, thus corresponding to Hadot’s view of the importance of philologically based analysis of ancient texts and historical contexts. Others study the presence of ideas related to, or influenced by, Hadot in contemporary thought, from Wittgenstein to Leonard Nelson, analytic philosophy, and French postmodernism. The result is a wide-ranging publication pointing to an additional “third way” alongside the traditional approaches of Continental and analytic philosophy, one that expands our horizons with secular spiritual exercises designed to enable us to be in a fuller, more authentic way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405161619
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	09/10/2013
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Chase is a Researcher at the Jean Pépin Centre of the National Centre of Scientific Research, Paris. A former student of Pierre Hadot himself, he has completed numerous translations of Hadot’s works, and has also published on Late Greek and Latin Neoplatonism, Patristics, and Islamic and Medieval thought.

Stephen R. L. Clark is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK. His books include Aristotle’s Man (1975), From Athens to Jerusalem (1984), Civil Peace and Sacred Order (1989), Biology and Christian Ethics (2000), Understanding Faith (2009), and Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy (2013).

Michael McGhee is Honorary Senior Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool. He is the author of Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual Practice (2000), as well as of a number of articles on moral philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion.

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Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors vii

Foreword by John H. Spencer xiii

1 Introduction 1

Michael Chase

2 Ancient Philosophers: A First Statistical Survey 10

Richard Goulet

(Color plate section is between page 32 and 33)

3 Philosophy as a Way of Life: As Textual and More Than Textual Practice 40

Richard Shusterman

4 Charismatic Authority, Spiritual Guidance, and Way of Life in the Pythagorean Tradition 57

Constantinos Macris

5 Alcibiades’ Love 84

Jan Zwicky

6 Stoics and Bodhisattvas: Spiritual Exercise and Faith in Two Philosophical Traditions 99

Matthew T. Kapstein

7 Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from the Buddha to Tagore 116

Jonardon Ganeri

8 Approaching Islamic Philosophical Texts: Reading Mulla¯ Sadra¯ Sırazı (d. 1635) with Pierre Hadot 132

Sajjad H. Rizvi

9 Philosophy and Self-improvement: Continuity and Change in Philosophy’s Self-conception from the Classical to the Early-modern Era 148

John Cottingham

10 Descartes’ Meditations: Practical Metaphysics: The Father of Rationalism in the Tradition of Spiritual Exercises 167

Theodor Kobusch

11 Leading a Philosophical Life in Dark Times: The Case of Leonard Nelson and His Followers 184

Fernando Leal

12 Philosophy as a Way of Life and Anti-philosophy 210

Gwenaelle Aubry ¨

13 Philosophy and Gestalt Psychotherapy 223

Paul O’Grady

14 Wittgenstein’s Temple: Or How Cool is Philosophy? 241

Michael McGhee

15 Observations on Pierre Hadot’s Conception of Philosophy as a Way of Life 262

Michael Chase

Bibliography 287

Index 311

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This is a most valuable collection of essays, stimulated as it is by the thought of Pierre Hadot, which will help to bring the concept of philosophy as a way of life to an English-speaking audience. Chase, Clark, and McGhee put us all in their debt for assembling this fine and varied collection.”

— John Dillon, Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus), Trinity College Dublin

"By comparing Hindus, Buddhists, Stoics, Pythagoreans and Descartes, and interpreting Hadot, this important book reveals, as never before, the diversities in the practice of philosophy as a way of life."

—Richard Sorabji, Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford