outside of the Western tradition, or of the Arabic tradition, insofar as the latter is the inheritor of Greek philosophy.
Now, an historical phenomenon is in constant evolution. Contemporary
"philosophy" is obviously very different from the "philosophy" of Socrates and Plato, just as contemporary Christianity is very different from the Evangelistic message. Is this evolution a good thing? Is it an evil? I won't go into that. I do think, however, that it is always legitimate to go back to the origins, in order better to understand the meaning of a phenomenon, and that is what I try to do.
I have tried to define what philosophy was for a person in antiquity. In my view, the essential characteristic of the phenomenon "philosophy" in antiquity was that at that time a philosopher was, above all, someone who lived in a philosophical way. In other words, the philosopher was someone whose life was guided by his or her reason, and who was a practitioner of the moral virtues. This is obvious, for example, from the portrait Alcibiades gives of Socrates at the end of Plato's Symposium. We can also observe it in Xenophon, where Hippias asks Socrates for a definition of justice. Socrates replies:
"Instead of talking about it, I make it appear through my actions." Originally, then, philosophy is above all the choice of a form of life, to which philosophical discourse then gives justifications and theoretical foundations.
Philosophical discourse is not the same thing as philosophy: the Stoics said so explicitly, and the other schools admitted it implicitly. True, there can be no philosophy without some discourse - either inner or outward - on the part
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of the philosopher. This can take the fonn of pedagogical activity carried out on others, of inner meditation, or of the discursive explanation of intuitive contemplation. But this discourse is not the essential part of philosophy, and it will have value only if it has a relationship with philosophical life. As an Epicurean sentence puts it: "The discourse of philosophers is in vain, unless it heals some passion of the soul."
M. C. Are spiritual exercises still possible today? They were thought up in the very distant past, as responses to specific social structures and material conditions, but our current living conditions bear very little resemblance to those of antiquity. The spiritual exercises of the Stoics and the Epicureans, for example, are the consequences of the basic hypotheses of each schooclass="underline" on the one hand, faith in the providential Logos; on the other, atomism, belief in chance, and denial of post-mortem existence. Nowadays, however, we may no longer believe in these hypotheses. Is it still possible to practice the spiritual exercises of antiquity, separating them from the systems of which they were a part, and substituting our own basic hypotheses for the outmoded ones of antiquity?
Let's take the example of injustice. One of the greatest sources of pain for modern man is, I would think, the suffering of innocent people. Every day, the media overwhelm us with images of this suffering, and we witness it every day in the streets of our cities. How can we avoid giving in to despair if we no longer believe, like Marcus Aurelius, in a divine providence, consubstantial with ourselves, which arranges everything for the best, and ensures that injustices are only apparent?
P. H. To reply to your question, I refer you to the beginning of the chapter entitled "Spiritual exercises," where I quote the passage from the diary of Georges Friedmann which he quotes in his book La Puissance et la Sagesse:11
"A 'spiritual exercise' every day - either alone or else in the company of someone who also wants to improve himself. . . . Step out of duration . . . try to get rid of your own passions." I think this testimony suffices to prove that spiritual exercises arc still being practiced in our day and age.
Spiritual exercises do not correspond to specific social structures or material conditions. They have been, and continue to be, practiced in every age, in the most widely diverse milieus, and in widely different latitudes: China, Japan, India; among the Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
If one admits, as I do, that the various philosophical schools of antiquity were characterized above all by their choice of a form of life, which is then justified after the fact by a given systematic construction (for instance, Stoicism is the choice of an attitude of coherence with oneself, which is later justified by a general theory of the coherence of the universe with itself) -
then it is easy to understand how one can can remain faithful to one's choice of a form of life without being obliged to adhere to the systemat ic construction which claims to found it. As Ruyer haH w1·inen112 "Excel'' for s1,cc:iali111s,
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no one is very interested in the motives of Stoicism, taken over for the most part from Heraclitus, or in those of Epicurean ethics or Democritean atomism. Nevertheless, as attitudes, Stoicism and Epicureanism are still very much alive." As a matter of fact, ethics - that is to say, choosing the good -
is not the consequence of metaphysics, but metaphysics is the consequence of ethics.
You give the example of injustice and the suffering of innocent people. For Marcus Aurelius, the fact that there is a providence (that is, simply, that there is coherence in the world), does not mean that injustice is only an appearance.
It is quite real, and in his Meditations Marcus often expresses his anger against liars and the unjust. For him, the discipline of action consists precisely in acting in the service of the human community; in other words, in practicing justice oneself and in correcting injustices. Such an attitude is independent of any theory of providence. Besides, Marcus himself says: "Whether or not the world is ruled by reason (and thus by providence), don't you act unreasonably. " He then goes on to add that if we do act according to reason, that proves that there is also reason in the world. This is proof that it is one's choice of life which precedes metaphysical theories, and that we can make our choice of life, whether or not we justify it by improved or entirely new arguments.
M. C. You often speak of "nature" or "universal nature" in the context of the triple discipline of the Stoics. For example, according to Marcus Aurelius we must learn "the ways and laws of . nature." What is meant here by
"nature"? Is it the "nature" in which we stroll and have picnics? The "nature"
which "makes no leaps"?
P. H. For the Stoics, nature is at the same time the program in conformity with which the events which constitute the universe are necessarily linked to one another, and the programmed sequence which results from them. Thus, it is the rational order which presides over the evolution of the visible world.
It is this programming and this rationality which give the world its coherence.
To act according to nature is therefore to act in a programmed, rational manner, in full awareness of the fact that one is a part of the cosmic whole, as well as a part of the whole formed by the city of class="underline" hose beings which share in reason. On the one hand, then, it is to act in the service of the human community, and, on the other, to consent to the general movement of the universe. The Stoics were saying exactly the same thing as Einstein, when he denounced the optical illusion of a person who imagines himself to be a separate entity, while he is really a part of that whole which we call the universe. Einstein also declared that it is our duty to open our hearts to all living beings, and to all of nature in her magnificence.