What Is Ancient Philosophy?
Pierre Hadot
Harvard, 2002

"Seldom do we reflect upon what philosophy is in itself. Indeed, it is extremely difficult to define it. What philosophy students are introduced to is above all *philosophies*.... In itself, there is nothing wrong with all this. It certainly seems that the way one can come to have an idea of *philosophy* is by studying *philosophies*. Yet the history of "philosophy" is not the same as the history of philosophies, if what we understand by "philosophies" are theoretical discourses and philosophers' systems. In addition to this history, however, there is room for the study of philosophical modes of life." (HADOT, p. 1)

"In this book I intend to show that a profound difference exists between the representations which the ancients made of philosophia and the representation which is usually made of philosophy today - at least in the case of the image of it which is presented to students, because of the exigencies of university teaching. They get the impression that all the philosophers they study strove in turn to invent, each in an original way, a new construction, systematic and abstract, intended somehow or other to explain the universe... These theories - which one could call "general philosophy" - give rise, in almost all systems, to doctrines or criticisms of morality which, as it were, draw the consequences, both for individuals and for society, of the general principles of the system, and thus invite people to carry out a specific choice of life and adopt a certain mode of behavior. The problem of knowing whether this choice of life will be efficacious is utterly secondary and accessory; it doesn't enter into the perspective of philosophical discourse." (HADOT, p. 2)

"In the first place, at least since the time of Socrates, the choice of a way of life has not been located at the end of the process of philosophical activity, like a kind of accessory or appendix. On the contrary, it stands at the beginning, in a complex interrelation with critical reaction to other existential attitudes, with global vision of a certain way of living and of seeing the world, and with voluntary decision itself. Philosophical discourse, then, originates in a choice of life and an existential option - not vice versa. Second, this choice and decision are never made in solitude. There can never be a philosophy or philosophers outside a group, a community - in a word, a philosophical "school." The philosophical school thus corresponds, above all, to the choice of a certain way of life and existential option which demands from the individual a total chance of lifestyle, a conversion of one's entire being, and ultimately a certain desire to be and to live in a certain way. This existential option, in turn, implies a certain vision of the world, and the task of philosophical discourse will therefore be to reveal and rationally justify this existential option, and it leads back to it, insofar as - by means of its logical and persuasive force, and the action it tries to exert upon the interlocutor - it incites both masters and disciples to live in genuine conformity with their initial choice. In other words, it is, in a way, the application of a certain ideal of life." (HADOT, p. 3)

"One of the fundamental themes of this book will be the distance which separates philosophy from wisdom. Philosophy is merely a preparatory exercise for wisdom." (HADOT, p. 4)

"Beginning with Plato's Symposium, ancient philosophy admits, in one way or another, that the philosopher is no sage. Yet it does not consider itself a pure discourse which stops when wisdom appears. Rather, it is, at the same time and indissolubly, a discourse *and* a way of life which tend toward wisdom without ever achieving it." (HADOT, p. 4)

"Nor should we oppose discourse and way of life, as though they corresponded to theory and practice, respectively. Discourse can have a practical aspect, to the extent that it tends to produce an effect on the listener or reader." (HADOT, p. 4)

"[W]e wish to show that philosophical discourse is a *part* of this way of life. It must be admitted, however, that the philosopher's choice of life determines his discourse. This is to say that philosophical discourses cannot be considered realities which exist and for themselves, so that their structure could be studied independently of the philosopher who developed them. Can Socrates' discourse be separated from the life and death of Socrates?" (HADOT, pp. 5-6)

"Was the person who was *sophos* one who knew and had seen many things, traveled a great deal, and was broadly cultured, or was he rather the person who knew how to conduct himself in life and who lived in happiness? As we shall see often in the course of this work, these two notions are not at all mutually exclusive. In the last analysis, real knowledge is know-how, and true know-how is knowing how to do good." (HADOT, p. 18)

"[W]e may reasonably wonder whether, in the case of the shipbuilder and the musician, the word *sophia* might not designate, above all, activities or practices which are subject to measures and rules. They presuppose instruction and apprenticeship, but they also demand the help of a god or divine grace which reveals the secrets of fabrication to the artisan and artist and helps them in the exercise of their art." (HADOT, p. 18)

"The epitaph of Thrasymachus read: 'My career is sophia.'" (HADOT, p. 21)

"For Socrates, knowledge was not an ensemble of propositions and formulas which could be written, communicated, or sold ready-made.... This means that knowledge is not a prefabricated object, or a finished content which can be directly transmitted by writing or by just any discourse." (HADOT, pp. 26-27) [PSA: see Kosman and Burnyeat on episteme as understanding.]

"It is Socrates' questions and interrogations which help his interlocutors to give birth to 'their' truth.... [I]t is *because* the interlocutor discovers the vanity of his knowledge that he will at the same time discover his truth. In other words, by passing from knowledge to himself, he will begin to place himself in question." By bringing a person 'to the point of having to give an account [logos] of himself' [Laches 187c] "Socrates brought his interlocutors to examine and become aware of themselves.... The point was thus not so much to question the apparent knowledge we think we have, as to question *ourselves* and the values which guide our lives." (HADOT, pp. 27-28)

"The real problem is therefore not the problem of knowing this or that, but of *being* in this way or that.... Socrates practiced this call to being not only by means of his interrogations and irony, but above all by means of his way of being, by his way of life, and by his very being." (HADOT, p. 29)

"Doing philosophy no longer meant, as the Sophists had it, acquiring knowledge, know-how, or sophia; it meant questioning ourselves, because we have the feeling that we are not what we ought to be. This was the defining role of the *philosopher* - the person who desires wisdom - in Plato's Symposium." (HADOT, p. 29)

"In order for a dialogue to be established which, as Nicias says, can lead the individual to give an account of himself and of his life, the person who talks with Socrates must submit, along with Socrates, to the demands of rational discourse - that is, to the demands of reason. In other words, caring for ourselves and questioning ourselves occur only when our individuality is transcended and we rise to the level of universality, which is represented by what the two interlocutors have in common." (HADOT, p. 32)

"[K]nowledge is not a series of propositions or an abstract theory, but the certainty of choice, decision, and initiative. Knowledge is not just plain knowing, but knowing-what-ought-to-be-preferred, and hence knowing how to life." (HADOT, p. 33) [PSA: understanding what is haireta or agathos means understanding why these make life worth living.]

"For Diotima, Eros is therefore a philo-sopher, since he is halfway between sophia and ignorance. Here, Plato does not define what he means by wisdom. He merely hints that it is a transcendent state, since, in his view, only the gods are 'wise' in the proper sense of the term. We may suppose that wisdom represents the perfection of knowledge, which is identified with virtue; yet as we have seen, knowledge or sophia in the Greek tradition is less a purely theoretical wisdom than know-how, or knowing-how-to-live. We can recognize traces of this know-how not in the theoretical knowledge of Socrates the philosopher, but in his way of life, which is precisely what Plato evokes in the Symposium." (HADOT, p. 44)

"Apparently, nothing could be simply and more natural than the philosopher's intermediate position. He is midway between wisdom and ignorance. We might think that it is enough for him to practice his philosophical activity in order to transcend ignorance and attain wisdom once and for all; but matters are much more complex than this. In the background of this opposition between sages, philosophers, and senseless people, we can glimpse a logical schema of conceptual division which is highly rigorous and does not allow such an optimistic perspective.... [Hadot then discusses how the concept or "Form" of the sage is just as absolute for Plato as the concept of the good, so that unless a being is a perfect sage or perfectly good then it must be not a sage or not good.] "Such logical schemes, which were extremely important in Plato's school, were used to distinguish things which have no 'more' or 'less' from those which exhibit degrees of intensity. Since the sage and that which is good are absolute, they admit of no variation; they cannot be more or less wise or more or less good. By contrast, what is intermediate - the 'neither good nor bad' and the 'philosopher' - *do* display the degrees of more and less. Thus, the philosopher will never attain wisdom, but he can make progress in its direction. According to the Symposium, then, philosophy is not wisdom, but a way of life and discourse determined by the *idea* of wisdom. With the Symposium, the etymology of the word philosophia - 'the love or desire for wisdom' - thus becomes the very program of philosophy. " (HADOT, pp. 45-46) [PSA: by contrast, for Aristotle sophia is an achievable balance-point between ignorance and sophistry, brought about by truly understanding the human good.]

"This is why the Socrates of the Symposium appears simultaneously as someone who claims to have no wisdom and as someone whose way of living is admired; for the philosopher is not only an intermediate being [daimon], but, like Eros, is also a mediator. He reveals to mankind something of the world of the gods, or the world of wisdom." (HADOT, p. 47)

"Eros is not the only figure which is devalued and demystified in this way in the Symposium, passing from the rank of god to that of demon. The situation is similar with the philosopher, who ceases to be the recipient of ready-made knowledge from the Sophists. Instead, he becomes someone who is aware both of his deficiency and of the desire within him which attracts him to the beautiful and the good." (HADOT, p. 48)

"The other philosophical schools did not have such a precise doctrine on the difference between philosophy and wisdom. In general, however, wisdom appeared as an ideal which guided and attracted the philosopher. Above all, philosophy was viewed as an exercise of wisdom, and therefore as the practice of a way of life." (HADOT, p. 49)

"When Aristotle's disciple Dicearchus came to describe life in Plato's Academy, he emphasized the fact that its members lived as a community of free, equal people, insofar as their aspiration toward virtue equaled their desire to pursue shared research. Plato did not require tuition fees from his students, in line with his principle that equal things ought to be given to equal people. In accordance with Platonic principles, moreover, there was a geometric equality which gave to each person according to his merits and needs. Plato, as we can see here, was convinced that human beings could live as human beings only within a perfect city. While he waited for the latter to be realized, however, he wanted to make his disciples live in the conditions of an ideal city; and if they could not govern a city, he wanted them at least to be able to govern their own selves in accordance with the norms of the ideal city." (HADOT, pp. 59-60)

"What characterized Socrates' pedagogy was the fact that it attributed capital importance to living contact between human beings; here Plato agreed. We find this Socratic conception of education by living contact and by love in the works of Plato; but as John Patrick Lynch has pointed out, Plato institutionalized it, so to speak, in his school. Education took place within a community, group, or circle of friends in which an atmosphere of sublimated love prevailed." (HADOT, p. 60)

"Platonic dialectics was not a purely logical exercise. Instead, it was a spiritual exercise which demanded that the interlocutors undergo an askesis, or self-transformation. It was not a matter of combat between two individuals, in which the more skillful person imposed his point of view, but a joint effort on the part of two interlocutors in accord with the rational demands of reasonable discourse, or the logos.... By dint of a sincere effort, the interlocutors discover by themselves, and within themselves, a truth which is independent of them, insofar as they submit to the superior authority of the logos." (HADOT, pp. 62-63)

"This ethics of the dialogue explains the freedom of thought which, as we have seen, reigned in the Academy. Speusippus, Xenocrates, Eudoxus, and Aristotle professed theories which were by no means in accord with those of Plato, especially on the subject of Ideas. They even disagreed about the definition of the good.... [W]e may conclude that the Academy was a place for free discussion, and that within it there was neither scholastic orthodoxy nor dogmatism." (HADOT, p. 64)

"Ultimately, to use the expression of Luc Brisson, what mattered was 'learning to live in a philosophical way,' with a common will to carry out distinterested research and in deliberate opposition to sophistic mercantilism. This was already a choice of life. To live in a philosophical way meant, above all, to turn toward intellectual and spiritual life, carrying out a conversion which involved 'the whole soul' - which is to say, the whole of moral life." (HADOT, p. 65)

"We can thus assume that the members of the Academy shared a certain conception of knowledge. They saw it as the training of human beings, as the slow and difficult education of the character, as the harmonious development of the entire human person, and finally as a way of life, intended to 'ensure ... a good life and thereby the "salvation" of the soul'." (HADOT, p. 65)

Citing passages in the Theaetetus, Hadot writes: "As [Paul] Rabbow has noted, Plato is not making a distinction between the contemplative and the active life, but establishing an opposition between two modes of life. There is the philosophical life, which consists in 'becoming just and holy with intelligence,' and is thus simultaneously knowledge and virtue; and there is the way of life of nonphilosophers, who are at ease within the perverted city only because they content themselves with false appearances of skillfulness and wisdom, which lead merely to brute force." (HADOT, p. 69)

"In oral discourse, there is the concrete presence of a living being. There is genuine dialogue, which links two souls together, and an exchange in which, as Plato says, discourse can response to the questions asked of it and defend itself. Thus, dialogue is personalized: it is addressed to a specific person, and corresponds to his needs and possibilities. Just as, in agriculture, it takes time for a seed to germinate and develop, many conversations are necessary for knowledge to be born in the soul - knowledge which, as we have seen, will be identical to virtue. Dialogue does not transmit ready-made knowledge or information; rather, the interlocutor conquers his knowledge by his own effort. He discovers it by himself, and thinks for himself." (HADOT, pp. 71-72)

"Victor Goldschmidt ... proposed the best explanation of the aforementioned facts by saying that the dialogues were written not to 'inform' people but to 'form' them. Such was the deepest intention of Plato's philosophy. He did not aim to construct a theoretical system of reality, and then 'inform' his readers of it by writing a series of dialogues which methodically set forth his system. Instead, his work consisted in 'forming' people - that is to say, in transforming individuals by making them experience, through the example of a dialogue which the reader has the illusion of overhearing, the demands of reason, and eventually the norm of the good. From this perspective of formation, the role of the written dialogue consists primarily of learning how to practice the methods of reason." (HADOT, p. 73)

"How should we conceive this life according to the mind? Should we follow Ingemar Düring, and define it as the life of a scholar? If we consider the activities which were honored in Aristotle's school, it is evident that philosophical life there had the features of what we would call a great scientific undertaking." (HADOT, pp. 81-82)

"To understand discourse, the auditor must first have had some experience with what the discourse is about, and some degree of familiarity with its object. Slow assimilation is then required, capable of creating within the soul a permanent disposition, or habitus: 'Those who have begun to learn link words together but do not yet know their meaning; for the words must be integral parts of our nature [word for word: they must grow with us]. But this takes time.' (EN VI 1147a21-22) Just as it had been for Plato, so for Aristotle true knowledge is born only from long familiarity with concepts and methods, and also with observed facts. We must have lengthy experience with things in order to know them, and to familiarize ourselves with the general laws of nature, as well as with the processes and rational necessities of the intellect. Without this personal effort, the auditor cannot assimilate discourse; it will remain useless to him." (HADOT, pp. 88-89) [PSA: applying insights from Kosman 1973 and Burnyeat 1981, replace 'know' with 'understand' here.]

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