NOTES
Philo Judaeus, On the Special Laws, 2, #-8.
2 Cf. above.
3 Quintillian, Oratori,al Institutions, bk I, Preface, 19-20.
4 Xenocrates, fr. 4 Heinze.
5 Epicurus, Letter to Pythodes, §85.
6 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9, 3 1 .
7 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Py"ho11ism, I , 28.
8 Xenophon, Memorabilia, I, 2, 14.
9 Aristotle, Ni,omad1ean Ethi,s, 1 0, 7, 1 1 78b3.
10 Epicurus, Gnomologicum Vati,anum, §77.
1 1 Epictetus, Dis,ourses, 3, 13, 7.
12 Cf. above.
13 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 1 1 , 1 .
14 E.g. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, 7, 39.
15 Ibid, 4, 1 8.
16 Epictetus, Dis,ourses, 3, 2 1 , 4--6.
1 7 Cf. below.
18 On the concept of pro,heiron, see above.
19 Seneca, Letters lo L1uilius, I, 1 .
20 Plato, Apology, 29e 1 ff.
21 Plato, Republic, 486a.
22 Aristotle, Ni,oma,hean Ethi(S, 1 0, 7, 1 1 78aff.
23 Cf. below.
24 Justin, Apology, I, 46, 1-4.
25 J. Leclerq, "Pour l'histoire de l'exprcssion 'philosophic chri:tienne'," Melanges de S,ience Religieuse 9 ( 1 952), p. 22 1 .
26 Cf. below.
27 A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representatio11, trans. E.F.J.
Payne, 2 vols, Indian Hills CO 1958, London/Toronto 1909, ch. 1 7, vol. 2, pp.
1 63-4.
28 Spinozn, fl't/1ir1, Pnrt 5, Prop. 42, p. 270 Elwcs.
276
Themes
29 Cicero, On Oratory, I, 229ff.
30 Rene Descartes, Principii philosophiae, Foreword to Picot.
31 See the references from Kant, Goethe, and Jaspers cited above.
32 "Plunging oneself into the totality of the world." Seneca, Lellers lo Lucilius, 66, 6.
33 E. Husserl, "Grundlegende Untersuchungcn zum phiinomenologiscen Urspung der Riiumlichkeit der Natur" (= Umsturz der Kopernikanischen Lehre), in Marvin Faber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memo')' of E. Husserl, Cambridge MA 1 940, p. 1 32.
34 M. Merleau-Ponty, Eloge de la pliilosoplzie et autres essais, Paris 1 953, p. 285.
35 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, 6272ff.
36 Spinoza, Ethics, pp. 270-1 .
Postscript: An Interview with Pierre
Hadot
M. C. Pierre Hadot, you were born in Reims, France, in 1922. What were the earliest and strongest influences on your spiritual and intellectual development?
P.H. I received a very intense Catholic religious education. I gradually became detached from it, but it played a considerable role in my formation, both because of the first impressions it made upon me, and because of the problems it raised for me.
The first philosophy I came across was Thomism, which I encountered especially in the books of Jacques Maritain; thus it was a kind of Aristotelianism tinged with Neoplatonism. I think it was a good thing for me to have begun my philosophical studies with a highly systematic, structured philosophy, which was based on a long ancient and medieval tradition. It gave me a lasting distaste for philosophies which don't clearly define the vocabulary they use. Besides, it was thanks to Thomism, and especially to Etienne Gilson,! that I discovered very early on the fundamental distinction between essence and existence, which is dear to existentialism.
At the time, I was very much influenced by Newman's Grammar of Assent.
Newman shows in this work that it's not the same thing to give one's assent to an affirmation which one understands in a purely abstract way, and to give one's assent while engaging one's entire being, and "realizing" - in the English sense of the word - with one's heart and one's imagination, just what this affirmation means for us. This distinction between real and notional assent underlies my research on spiritual exercises.
My religious education also made me come face to face with the phenomenon of mysticism, which I probably didn't understand at the time, but which has continued to fascinate me all my life.
We would need a very long discussion if we were seriously to approach the problem posed by the survival of Christianity in the modern world. From the point of view of my uwn personal experience, I can say that one of the great
278
Postscript
difficulties of Christianity - I'm thinking here of the textual criticism of the Bible - was what revealed to me a more general problem, which could be formulated in the following terms: is modem man still able to understand the texts of antiquity, and live according to them? Has there been a definitive break between the contemporary world and ancient tradition?
While studying at the Sorbonne in 1946 and 1947, I discovered Bergson, Marxism, and existentialism, three models which have had a strong influence on my conception of philosophy. Bergsonism was not an abstract, conceptual philosophy, but rather took the form of a new way of seeing the world, and of transforming one's perception. Existentialism - Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau
Ponty, Albert Camus; but also Gabriel Marcel - made me become aware of my simultaneous engagement in the world of experience, in perception, in the experience of my body, and in social and political life. Marxism, finally, proposed a theory of philosophy in which theory and praxis were intimately linked, and where daily life was never separated from theoretical reflection. I found this aspect of Marxism very seductive, but economic materialism was profoundly alien to me. I also had other influences: Montaigne, whom I have been reading since my adolescence, and the poet Rilke; for a while, I thought about writing my thesis on "The Relationship between Rilke and Heidegger."
M. C. Your career has always taken place more or less on the outskirts of the French intellectual "establishment." You took your diploma from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 196 1 , and you then became director of studies at the same institution, where you remained from 1964 on. In 1 982, you were elected to the chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought at the College de France. Now, in France, this is the most prestigious position which a historian of philosophy can obtain, and arrived there without
passing through the almost obligatory stage of the
Normale Superieure,
or any other of the so-called "great schools."
Did these somewhat unusual circumstances contribute anything to your conception of philosophy? I'm thinking in particular of your remarks on the negative influence which the university has exerted on philosophy.
P.H. My remarks on the negative influence which the university has exerted on philosophy have nothing to do with the fact that my career has taken place outside the university. Generally speaking, I admired the professors who taught me philosophy at the Sorbonne, from either an intellectual or a human point of view - or both. They devoted themselves to the task of teaching with exemplary dedication, and they had a highly-developed moral conscience. I'm thinking here of men like Emile Brehier,2 R. Bayer, jean Wahl,3 Paul Ricoeur, Maurice de Gandillac,• Jean Hyppolite,5 R. Le Senne, Louis Lavelle, Maurice Merlcau-Ponty, and j. Vuillemin.
The idea of a conflict between philosophy and the teaching of philosophy goes back to my youth . I think I came across it in C:h11rlcs Pc((uy, who said :