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What Is Ancient Philosophy?
by Pierre Hadot
translated by Michael Chase
Harvard Univ. Press, 2002
362 pp.; $29.95
I think there is no one who has rendered worse service to the human race than those who have learned philosophy as a mercenary trade." With this quotation from Seneca, Pierre Hadot begins his indictment of academic philosophy. When put in such stark terms, it is hard not to be sympathetic with his project.
Hadot is a prominent French scholar of ancient philosophy, in particular of Stoicism, and his work is receiving more attention in American scholarly circles as it is translated into English.1 Much of his life has been devoted to criticizing the sort of academic culture that prevails in most philosophy departments of Western—especially Anglo-American—universities. By his account, the professionalization of philosophy has reduced it to a frivolous and self-important play of theories and arguments, divorced from, and even subversive of, a more holistic concept of education. Hadot accuses the academy of severing living from thinking, and therefore virtue from metaphysics and epistemology. In his view, "philosophical discourse … originates in a choice of life and an existential option—not vice versa. The task of philosophical discourse will therefore be to reveal and rationally justify this existential option."
Hadot's diagnosis of a problematic trend is surely right on the mark. But we will have to ask whether he succeeds in laying out a remedy, or whether he merely replaces one limited view of the philosophical project with another.
In What is Ancient Philosophy?, newly translated for Harvard University Press, Hadot tries to resurrect an ancient conception of philosophy that does not divorce theory from practice. While most of the book focuses on the ancient schools, this is in fact a foundation for Hadot's attempt to locate this concept in early modern continental thinkers. He is not trying to find a uniform understanding of the nature of philosophy throughout history, but instead he extracts emphases and texts that best support his thesis that philosophy has always been, in some sense, most appropriately conceived of as a "way of life."
On an epistemological level, Hadot is simply pointing out that knowledge includes the will, and is therefore not abstract, disembodied or free from the obligations of place, community and affection. Unfortunately, he never actually says in what relation the will and the intellect stand one to another. The greater part of his discussion of ancient philosophical method centers on Socrates as a literary figure, whom Hadot devolops mainly with reference to the action of the Symposium.
Socrates, he argues, is trying to bring his interlocutors to a moment of personal crisis, in which the issue is no longer of "knowing this or that, but of being this or that way." This is the demand of the examined life. Socrates is committed to the dialogic method because it is the nature of dialogue to be unfinished, says Hadot. Wisdom is never truly possessed, nor can it be communicated in a series of propositions. Instead, Socrates, by his way of living and comporting himself, is an example of the lover of wisdom. He humbly accepts the unattainable nature of wisdom, and in his philosophical "exercises," he shames those who would think otherwise. Socrates is foremost an example of a way of living. He is not a man with a doctrine, according to Hadot, but rather one with a mission.
A substantial portion of the book is devoted to the Hellenistic period—the three centuries preceding the birth of Christ, roughly—and the early Roman Imperial period. Hadot is clearly in his element here. It is customary for scholars to see this as a time in which philosophical stagnation is linked to the rise of imperialism, cosmopolitan decadence, and the demise of democracy. Hadot takes a more positive view, and this is certainly refreshing. He points out the paucity of sources documenting intellectual activity during this period. He also wryly observes that the democratic regime of the Greek city-state was hardly more favorable to philosophical instruction: hence the condemnation of Socrates for civic impiety. Hadot also argues that philosophical figures did in fact continue to play an active role in political life.
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