Pierre Hadot Quotes on Life
Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995) and What Is Ancient Philosophy? (1995) reorganized late twentieth-century scholarship on ancient philosophy around the recovery of philosophy as a lived spiritual practice rather than the production of theoretical doctrine. The central thesis is that the schools of Hellenistic philosophy — Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the descendants of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum — were communities of spiritual exercise whose theoretical doctrines served the practical project of philosophical self-formation, with the modern academic reception of these schools as systems of theoretical philosophy systematically misrepresenting their original purpose. The framework, drawing on Hadot’s earlier work on Plotinus and Marcus Aurelius, shaped the contemporary virtue-ethics revival and Foucault’s late lectures on the care of the self.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Pierre Hadot:
“Philosophy in antiquity was a way of life.”
-
Attributed to Pierre Hadot:
“We must learn to live the present, but the present is everything.”
-
“Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living.”
trans. Michael Chase, p. 272 -
Attributed to Pierre Hadot:
“To philosophize is to learn how to die.”
-
“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.”
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. -
“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”
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. -
“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.”
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre(2001) | trans. Michael Chase, p. 157 -
“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.”
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre(2001) | trans. Michael Chase, p. 272 -
“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 -
“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.”
La Philosophie comme manière de vivre(2001) | trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 156