Summary
Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as a way of life
Conversation with Jeanne Carlije and Arnold Davidson
Philosophy is one of the few activities that cannot simply be a job: we philosophize from 9 to 5, and then we do something else. Philosophy is a continuous confrontation with oneself. Therefore, it is a condition of philosophy that the philosopher questions himself in every gesture. If the stake of philosophizing is not the life of the philosopher himself, then it is not philosophizing. Philosophy is always a way of living.
Pierre Hadot, a great connoisseur of ancient philosophy, devoted most of his long life and fruitful pursuit of philosophy precisely to show that philosophy, in order to be worthy of that name, must never be separated from life. The greatest philosophers, after all, bear witness to exactly this: there is no philosophy that does not penetrate deeply into the fabric of life.
The long conversation conducted with Pierre Hadot by Jeannine Carliere and Arnold Davidson, through the life story of Hadot himself, from childhood and growing up under the tutelage of the church, through his youth and encounters with philosophy, to his career as a professor and association with some of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, show that philosophy is a wonderful, continuous, complex spiritual exercise.
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