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Spiritual exercises and the question of religion in the work of Pierre Hadot
Sharpe, Matthew
Sharpe, Matthew
Author
Abstract
This paper addresses John M. Cooper’s critique, and related critiques, of Pierre Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life for collapsing the distinction between philosophy and religion, via the category of “spiritual exercises”. The paper has two parts. Part 1, a pars destruens, will show how Hadot presents three cogent rebuttals of these charges, with which he was familiar as early as the 1980s, following the publication of the first edition of his 1981 collection, Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique. In part 2, a pars construens, putting aside the vexed category of “religion”, we will examine how Hadot reconsiders the place of the sacred in ancient philosophy, positioning the latter as not the attempt to rationally dispel any sense of the sacred in the world, but to relocate it from within the sanctioned cultic places and temples of traditional Greco-Roman religion to within the inner life of the godlike sage.
Keywords
Pierre Hadot, philosophy as a way of life, spiritual exercises, religion
Date
2023
Type
Journal article
Journal
Religions
Book
Volume
14
Issue
8
Page Range
1-13
Article Number
Article 998
ACU Department
School of Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
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Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open