Pierre Hadot Quotes on Knowledge
Pierre Hadot (1922–2010), the French historian of ancient philosophy whose Philosophy as a Way of Life (1981) and What Is Ancient Philosophy? (1995) reshaped the late-twentieth-century reception of the ancient schools, defended a distinctive epistemological reading of antiquity: ancient philosophy was not first of all a body of theoretical doctrines but a set of "spiritual exercises" through which the philosophical life was practised and transmitted. The framework recovers the practical intent of Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, and the other schools as comprehensive training programmes for the rational soul, and reframes the modern academic separation of philosophical knowledge from philosophical living as a late and unrepresentative development.
Quotes
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Attributed to Pierre Hadot:
“Philosophy in antiquity was a way of life.”
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Attributed to Pierre Hadot:
“Spiritual exercises are the practical heart of ancient philosophy.”
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“Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living.”
trans. Michael Chase, p. 272 -
Attributed to Pierre Hadot:
“The cosmos is for us a school of attention.”
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“À mes yeux, c’est seulement l’ascèse de la rigueur scientifique, ce détachement de soi qu’exige un jugement objectif et impartial, qui pourra nous donner le droit de nous impliquer nous-mêmes dans l’histoire, de lui donner un sens existentiel.”
To my eyes, only the ascesis of scientific rigor, this detachment from oneself which requires an objective and impartial judgment, can give us the right to implicate ourselves in history, to give it an existential sense. Preface to Nietzsche : Essai de mythologie (1990) by E. Bertram, p. 34 -
“Incommensurables donc, mais aussi inséparables. Pas de discours qui mérite d’être appelé philosophique, s’il est séparé de la vie philosophique, pas de vie philosophique, si elle n’est étroitement liée au discours philosophique. C’est là d’ailleurs que réside le danger inhérent à la vie philosophique: l’ambiguïté du discours philosophique.”
Incommensurable; but also inseparable. No discourse worthy of being called philosophical, that is separated from the philosophical life; no philosophical life, if it is not strictly linked to philosophical discourse. It is there that the danger inherent to a philosophical life resides: the ambiguity of philosophical discourse. -
“Si ces expériences sont rares, elles n’en donnent pas moins sa tonalité fondamentale au mode de vie plotinien, puisque celui-ci nous apparaît maintenant comme l’attente du surgissement imprévisible de ces moments privilégiés qui donnent tout leur sens à la vie.”
If these experiences [of union with the Absolute] are rare, nonetheless they lend their fundamental tonality to the Plotinian way of life, for that way of life appears to us now as a waiting for the unforseeable surging-forth of these privileged moments which give their full sense to life -
“Ce sont les contresens et les incompréhensions qui, très souvent, ont provoqué une évolution importante dans l’histoire de la philosophie, et qui, notamment, ont fait apparaître des notions nouvelles.”
It is misinterpretation and incomprehension which, very often, provoked an important evolution in the history of philosophy and which, notably, led to the appearance of new notions. -
“Celui qui étudie un texte ou des microbes ou les étoiles doit se défaire de sa subjectivité... c'est là un idéal qu'il faut essayer de rejoindre par une certaine pratique. Disons que l'objectivité est une vertu, d'ailleurs très diffice à pratiquer.”
He who studies a text or microbes or stars must have nothing to do with his subjectivity... that is an ideal that one must try to find by a certain practice. Let us say that objectivity is a virtue, and a very difficult one to practice. -
“To know oneself means, among other things, to know oneself qua non-sage: that is, not as a sophos , but as a philo-sophos , someone on the way toward wisdom.”
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre(2001) | trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 90 -
“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.”
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre(2001) | trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 269