However, only the spiritual exercises of purification, of the practice of the virtues, of putting ourselves in order, allow us to touch the Good, to experience it. 171 Plotinus' philosophy does not wish only
to be a discourse about objects, be they even the highest, but it wishes actually to lead the soul to a living, concrete union with the Intellect and the Good . . . Reason, by theolop;ical methods, can raise itself tu the
Introduction
29
notion of the Good but only life according to Intellect can lead to the reality of the Good.112
Furthermore, as Hadot writes, "it is mystical experience that founds negative theology, and not the reverse." 173 This mystical experience, like the mysteries of Eleusis, does not consist in learning something, but in "living another life"
where the self "becomes the absolutely Other." 174
It is perhaps Aristotle whom we are most tempted to think of as a pure theoretician. Although it is true that Aristotle's philosophy is a philosophy of theoria, "this Aristotelian theoria is nevertheless not purely theoretical in the modern sense of the word." 175 For Aristotle, to dedicate oneself to philosophy is to chose a bios, a way of life, that is the best realization of those capacities that are essential to being human. The bios theoretikos, the life of contemplation, is a way of life that is also the realization of our supreme happiness, an activity that contains the purest pleasures. 176 Even scientific research on the entities of nature is not proposed by Aristotle as an end in itself, but as "a particular way of carrying out 'the philosophical life', one of the possible practical realizations of the aristotelian prescription for happiness, the life devoted to the activity of the intellect." 177 Moreover, the life of the intellect is a participation in the divine way of life, it is the actualization of the divine in the human, and it requires inner transformation and personal askesis. 118 And it is a way of life that is, in one sense of the term, practical, since Aristotle says that those thoughts arc practical not only that calculate the results of action, but which are "contemplation and reasoning, that have their end in themselves and take themselves as object." 179 This life of theoria is thus not opposed to the practical, since it is a life of philosophy lived and practiced; it 180
is precisely the "exercise of a life."
Hadot has distinguished two senses of the tenn "theoretical,'' for which he has employed the tcnns theorique and theoretique. The first meaning of "theoretical" is opposed to "practical," since it designates theoretical discourse as opposed to lived philosophy. But the adjective theorhique which characterizes the life of contemplation, the life according to the intellect, is not opposed by Aristotle to philosophy as practiced and lived. In Aristotle this "theoretical life
[vie theoretique] is not a pure abstraction, but a life of the intellect, which, no doubt, can use a theoretical discourse [discours theorique], but nonetheless remains a life and a praxis, and which can even make room for a nondiscursivc activity of thought, when it is a question of perceiving indivisible obj<..'Cts and God himself by noetic intuition."181 Thus to think of Aristotle as a pure theoretician is to focus exclusively on his theoretical discourse without hearing in mind that it is a way of life, however intellectualized, that he is recommending, and which is the ultimate basis of his philosophy.
The idc11 of philosophy as 11 way of life, and not just as philosophical lliscourHe, WilH also exhihiled in nntiquity by the designation of individuals as
30
Introduction
philosophers who were neither scholars, professors, nor authors, but who were honored as philosophers because of their way of life. As Hadot says, the extension of the concept of philosopher was quite different from that of our modern concept. In antiquity, the philosopher was not necessarily "a professor or a writer. He was first of all a person having a certain style of life, which he willingly chose, even if he had neither taught nor written." 182 Thus we find philosophical figures not only such as Diogenes the Cynic and Pyrrho, but also women who did not write, and celebrated statesmen who were considered true philosophers by their contemporaries.18l It was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who were considered philosophers, because they had developed a philosophical discourse, but also every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus. 131
True philosophers lived in society with their fellow citizens, and yet they lived in a different way from other people. They distinguished themselves from others by "their moral conduct, by speaking their mind [leur franc par/er], by their way of nourishing themselves or dressing themselves, by their attitude with respect to wealth and to conventional values." 185 Although they did not live a cloistered life, as in Christian monasticism, philosophy was nevertheless analogous to the monastic movement in requiring that one convert oneself so as to fervently adhere to a philosophical schooclass="underline" the philosopher had to "make a choice that obliged him to transform his whole way of living in the world." "'"
Hence the felt rupture of the philosophical life with the conduct and perceptions of everyday life.187 The significance of philosophy as a way of life can also be seen in the importance given to biographies in ancient philosophical work. As Giuseppe Cambiano has emphasized, a philosophical biography was not predominantly a narrative intended to allow one to understand an author and his doctrines; it was not just a report of what the author said and believed.
Rather, "it was, in the first place, a tool of philosophical battle," since one could defend or condemn a philosophy by way of the characteristics of the mode of life of those who supported it.11'8
The philosopher was a philosopher because of his existential atlitude, an attitude that was the foundation of his philosophy and that required that he undergo a real conversion, in the strongest sense of the word, that he radically change the direction of his lifc.189 All six schools of philosophy in the Hellenistic period present themselves
as choices of life, they demand an existential choice, and whoever adheres to one of these schools must accept this choice and this option.
One too often represents Stoicism or Epicureanism as a set of abstract theories about the world invented by Zeno or Chrysippus or Epicurus.
From these theories would spring, as if by accident one could say, a morality. But it is the reverse that is true. It is the abstract theories th111
arc intended to justify the existential nttitudc. One could 1my, tu cxpn·N11
Introduction
3 1
it otherwise, that every existential attitude implies a representation of the world that must necessarily be expressed in a discour,e. But this discourse alone is not the philosophy, it is only an element of it, for the philosophy is first of all the existential attitude itself, accompanied by inner and outer discourses: the latter have as their role to express the representation of the world that is implied in such and such an existential attitude, and these discourses allow one at the same time to rationally justify the attitude and to communicate it to others.190