Between too intellectualist and not intellectualist enough : Hadot’s spiritual exercises and Annas’ virtues as skills

This paper brings Julia Annas’ work on virtues as skills to the interpretation of Pierre Hadot’s metaphilosophical claims concerning the philosophies of antiquity. We will argue that Annas’ account of virtues as skills, especially as she develops it in Intelligent Virtue (2011), can help us to understand the contested role of what Hadot terms spiritual exercises within the ancient philosophies. Seeing the spiritual exercises, via Annas, as exercises in the habituation to, and constant reanimation of skill-like virtues allows us to combat repeated charges that Hadot’s claims concerning these exercises imply a vision of the ancient philosophies that is not intellectualist enough, undervaluing the place of rational argumentation.

The paper has three main parts, followed by concluding considerations. Part 1 introduces Hadot’s claims about the spiritual exercises in ancient philosophical texts, and the key criticism these claims have faced: namely, that Hadot’s spiritual exercises are not intellectualist enough to be considered seriously as components of ancient philosophies. Part 2 examines Julia Annas’s evolving ideas of the virtue as skills in light of the opposing kind of criticism her work has faced: namely, that Annas’ account of skills (and thus the virtues) is too intellectualist, undervaluing the place of experience, habituation, and other non-rational features. Part 3, the heart of the argument, then shows that Annas’ virtues-as-skills idea, as developed in Intelligent Virtue of 2011, provides exactly the right kind of framework—neither too intellectualist nor not intellectualist enough—to demystify what Hadot calls, with explicit qualifications, “spiritual exercises” as exercises of philosophically-informed ethical habituation.