Take, for example, the repeated claims that the Meditations show us that Marcus was a pessimist. After all, he does write things such as the following:
Just like your bath-water appears to you - oil, sweat, filth, dirty water, all kinds of loathsome stuff - such is each portion of life, and every substance.6.1
These foods and disht>s . . . arc only dead fish, birds and pigs; this Falcrnian wine is a bit of grape-juice; this purple-edged toga is some sheep's luiirs dipped in the blood of shellfish; as for sex, it is the rubbing to[(cthcr of pieces of gut, followed by the spasmodic secretion of a little bit of slime. 111
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Introduction
What are these remarks, if not the expression of Marcus' characteristic pessimism? In each of these cases of supposed pessimism, Hadot has been able to show specifically that Marcus was not giving us his personal impressions, that he was not expressing a negative experience that he had lived, but was rather "exercising himself, spiritually and literarily." 65 Marcus is, first of all, practicing the Stoic discipline of giving physical definitions which, adhering to the objective representation of the phenomenon, are employed "to dispel the false conventional judgements of value that people express concerning objects." 66 Marcus writes:
always make a definition or description of the object that occurs in your representation, so as to be able to see it as it is in its essence, both as a whole and as divided into its constituent parts, and say to yourself its proper name and the names of those things out of which it is composed, and into which it will be dissolved.67
This kind of definition is intended to strip representations of "all subjective and anthropomorphic considerations, from all relations to the human point of view," thus defining objects, in a certain way, scientifically and physically.68
Such definitions belong both to the discipline of judgment, or logic, and to the discipline of desire, or physics. The critique of representations and the pursuit of the objective representation are, obviously enough, part of the domain of logic; but these definitions can only be realized if one places oneself in "the point of view of physics, by situating events and objects in the perspective of universal Nature." h9
Marcus is not giving us his personal perception of reality, from which we may then deduce conclusions about his sensibility or characteristic dispositions. He is rather employing various means to transform himself, to acquire a certain inner state of freedom and peace. To do so he must overcome
"solidly rooted prejudices, irrational terrors," employing all the means available to him.m Here is how Hadot describes the ultimate goal of these physical definitions:
This spiritual exercise of "physical" definition has exactly the effect of rendering us indifferent before indifferent things, that is, of making us renounce making differences among things that do not depend on us, but which depend on the will of universal Nature. No longer to make differences is therefore, first of all, to renounce attributing to certain things a false value, measured only according to human scale. This is the meaning of the apparently pessimistic declarations. But to no longer make differences is to discover that all things, even those which seem disgusting to us, have an equal value if one measures them according to the scale of universal Nature, that is, looks at things with the same vision
Introduction
1 5
that Nature looks at them . . . . This inner attitude by which the soul does not make differences, but remains indifferent �efore things, corresponds to magnanimity of the soul [grandeur J'time).11
Thus with respect to the issue of Marcus' pessimism, we see the importance of placing the Meditations in its literary and philosophical context. Abstracting from this context leads to an improper psychology, and to an uncreative misreading of the force of the Meditations, ignoring its basic philosophical aims and procedures. Hadot diagnoses, with great insight, the dangers of historical psychology:
We have here a fine example of the dangers of historical psychology applied to ancient texts. Before presenting the interpretation of a text, one should first begin by trying to distinguish between, on the one hand, the traditional elements, one could say prefabricated, that the author employs and, on the other hand, what he wants to do with them. Failing to make this distinction, one will consider as symptomatic formulas or attitudes which are not at all such, because they do not emanate from the personality of the author, but are imposed on him by tradition. One must search for what the author wishes to say, but also for what he can or cannot say, what he must or must not say, as a function of the traditions and the circumstances that are imposed on him.72
That the temptation to read ancient texts as expressions of their author's psychological states and character is extremely difficult to overcome is shown by the development of Hadot's own interpretation of Augustine's Confessions. In a widely cited paper, originally delivered in 1960, Hadot concludes his discussion of the development of the notion of the person with the claim that in Augustine's Co11fossions, "the modem self rises into view in history." 73 Citing various passages from Augustine on the mystery of the self, and following Groethuysen's interpretation, Hadot is led to conclude, on the basis of these passages, that "With Augustine the 'I' makes its entry into philosophical reasoning in a way that implies a radical change of inner perspective. " 7� Hadot came little by little to realize, however, that one must not be misled by Augustine's use of "I," that "the autobiographical part of the Confessions is not as important as one might believe." 75 The "I" of Augustine's Confessions continues the "I" of Job, David, or Paul, that is, Augustine "identifies himself with the self who speaks in the Scriptures. Ultimately the human sell who speaks in the Bible is Adam, a sinner without doubt, but converted by God and renewed in Christ." 76 Thus, following Pierre Courcelle, Hadot recognizes that the Confessions is essentially a theological work, in which each scene may assume a symbolic meaning. So "in this literary genre . . . il is extremely d ifficult to distinguish between a symbolic enactment nml 1111 11ccoun1 of 11 hiKloricnl event." 77
1 6
Introduction
Hadot therefore insists on the theological significance, in the first part of Book II of the Confessions, of the images used by Augustine in order to describe his inner state.78 And in the second part of Book II, when Augustine recounts at length his adolescent theft of pears, we are in fact confronted with a theological account concerning original sin. The "psychology of Augustine the sinner is reconstructed from the ideal psychology of Adam, disobedient to God in order to imitate, in a perverse way, the divine freedom . " 7'l Rather than using this scene to draw a psychological portrait of Augustine the individual, Hadot understands it as part of an anti-Manichean theological polemic. Here is his interpretation, which is a model of how to avoid the excesses of historical psychology when reading ancient texts: the psychological and theological problem of original sin is posed on the occasion of Augustine's theft, and we find ourselves once again in an anti-Manichean problematic: in stealing the pears, as Adam stealing the forbidden fruit, Augustine did not desire the fruit itself, that is, an existing reality; rather he desired evil itself, that is, something that doesn't have any substance. How is this possible? After having posed the problem at length (4, 9-6, 1 3), Augustine responds by showing that he had loved something "positive" in the eviclass="underline" to imitate the freedom of God, but in a perverse way. Every sin appt."llrs thus as an upside-down imitation of the divine reality.1111