Ilsetraut Hadot’s Seneca : Spiritual Direction and the Transformation of the Other

Book chapter

Sharpe, Matthew. (2018). Ilsetraut Hadot’s Seneca : Spiritual Direction and the Transformation of the Other. In Ethics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives pp. 104-123 Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315102269
AuthorsSharpe, Matthew
Abstract

The aim of Ethics and Self-Cultivation is to establish and explore a new ‘cultivation of the self’ strand within contemporary moral philosophy. Although the revival of virtue ethics has helped reintroduce the eudaimonic tradition into mainstream philosophical debates, it has by and large been a revival of Aristotelian ethics combined with a modern preoccupation with standards for the moral rightness of actions. The essays comprising this volume offer a fresh approach to the eudaimonic tradition: instead of conditions for rightness of actions, it focuses on conceptions of human life that are best for the one living it. The first section of essays looks at the Hellenistic schools and the way they influenced modern thinkers like Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Hadot, and Foucault in their thinking about self-cultivation. The second section offers contemporary perspectives on ethical self-cultivation by drawing on work in moral psychology, epistemology of self-knowledge, philosophy of mind, and meta-ethics.
The chapter follows the structure of Hadot's book on Seneca, examining in turn: firstly, her account of what she terms the "paraenetic" dimension to Seneca's self-conception as a philosophical "spiritual director"; secondly, her account of the antecedents of this philosophical persona and practice in preclassical and classical culture; and then thirdly her remarkable account of the diagnostic and prescriptive details of Seneca's spiritual direction, including in the Letters to Lucilius.

KeywordsIlsetraut Hadot; Seneca; Letters to Lucilius
Page range104-123
Year01 Jan 2018
Book titleEthics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
PublisherRoutledge
Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
Edition1st
ISBN978-1-315-10226-9
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315102269
Open accessPublished as non-open access
Research or scholarlyScholarly
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All rights reserved
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Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Print30 Sep 2020
Publication process dates
Deposited17 Jan 2024
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