1  

Pierre Hadot on Ancient Philosophy:

Can we still identify with the cosmos?

Part I.
1. Pierre Hadot on philosophy as a way of life

We owe to the late French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot

(1922-2010) the idea of “philosophy as a way of life”1. What he meant by
this was that philosophy, in Greco-Roman Antiquity, was not mere
discourse, an intellectual pastime akin to solving a crossword puzzle; nor
was it the construction of elaborate metaphysical systems and the writing
of treatises in which such systems were set forth. Instead, it had to do, at
least primarily, with the way people live their lives. In Hadot's words, the
goal of the philosophical act is to “raise the individual from an
inauthentic condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and harassed
by worry, to an authentic state of life, in which she attains self-awareness,
an exact vision of the world, inner peace, and freedom”2.

Pierre Hadot showed that this conception of philosophy as a way of

life was closely linked to the historical, political and socio-economic
circumstances of Antiquity, in which philosophical training was handed
down from master to disciple by means of dialogue. Ancient
philosophical writings are therefore “echoes, direct or indirect, of oral

                                                                                                               
1 See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates

to Foucault, edited with an Introduction by Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Michael

Chase, Oxford/Cambridge, Mass. 1995.
2 Hadot, Philosophy, 83.
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instruction”3; and if they sometimes seem to us to be confusing or badly

written, this is because “they are series of exercises, intended to make
[students] practice a method, rather than doctrinal expositions”4. When
the Athenian headquarters of the four main Greek philosophical schools –
Platonists, Aristotelians, Epicureans and Stoics – were more or less
completely destroyed in the course of the first century B.C, however,
philosophical teaching, henceforth dispersed throughout the Empire,
could no longer be carried out only by oral transmission from master to
disciple, and philosophy gradually assumed the form of commentary on
texts by the founding figures of each school5. This is the main form in
which philosophy continued to be practiced for almost a thousand years.
From the Middle Ages until today, the academic study of
philosophy gradually became discourse on or about philosophy, rather
than the practice thereof. This is the way the history of philosophy is still
taught today in most philosophy departments: as a series of arguments
that can be broken down, analysed, and evaluated, often without much
attention being paid to the historical and literary context in which they are
embedded.
Pierre Hadot's approach to the study of the history of philosophy
was quite different. On the basis of a close philological study of ancient

                                                                                                               
3 Pierre Hadot, “La philosophie: une éthique ou une pratique?”, in P. Demont, ed.,

Problèmes de la Morale Antique, sept études, Amiens, Faculté des Lettres, 1993, p.
11. Cf. Hadot, Philosophy, 62
4 It was this attempt to explain the apparent incoherence of ancient philosophical

texts that led him to his research on spiritual exercises; cf. Hadot, The Present alone is
our happiness. Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold Davidson, Second
Edition, translated by Marc Djaballah and Michael Chase, Stanford: Stanfrod
University Press, 2011, p. 59.
5 Cf. Arnold Davidson, “Introduction” to Hadot, Philosophy, p. 5, with references

to works by Hadot.
   3  

texts, taking account of their historical, social and literary context6, Hadot
wished, among other things, to discover in what sense ancient philosophy
might be relevant to the way we live today: not so much in the sense of
providing solutions to philosophical problems, or of discovering the
ultimately correct nature of reality, as in the sense that it can provide
guidelines for how to transform ourselves. By learning to see the world in
a different way, Hadot believed we can make ourselves better.

Sounds good, I hear you say, but how does one go about achieving
such a lofty goal?

I.2. Spiritual exercises

According to Hadot, philosophy throughout Antiquity consisted

above all in a set of techniques for carrying out a transformation of the
human personality, by means of what Hadot named “spiritual exercises”.
These are not the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, but were
transformative practices, almost two thousand years older than Ignatius,
which Hadot called “spiritual” because they engaged not only the human
intellectual faculty, but the entire person, including desire and the
imagination. They were intended to change the way we perceive the
world, and hence our very mode of being. Ideally, the practice of such
exercises can lead us to perceive the world as if we were seeing it for the
very first time, tamquam spectator novus, as Seneca said7.

                                                                                                               
6 On this point, see I. Hadot, “L'idéalisme allemand a-t-il, chez Pierre Hadot,

perverti la compréhension de la philosophie antique?” REG 129 (2016/1), 195-210.

7 Seneca, Epistle 64.
   4  

According to Greek philosophy since the time of Plato, we are

constantly carrying out a dialogue with ourselves. One main goal of
philosophy was to discipline this inner discourse, just as rhetoric was the
art of disciplining or setting in order our external discourse. Instead of
allowing ourselves to be buffetted by chaotic waves of incoming thoughts
over which we have no control, we are to train and discipline them. As
the Stoics taught, it is not so much things themselves that harm us, as our
attitude towards things, an attitude that we can modify by systematically
practicing certain exercises. This entailed orienting our thoughts and
emotions around a few central philosophical dogmas: for instance, in the
Stoic school, the basic division between things that do and do not depend
on us. What does not depend on us are things like health, wealth and
good looks: while we can contribute to some extent to the acquisition of
these things, they are largely outside our control, and the Stoics therefore
held that we should not be concerned about them. What does depend on
us is the purity of our moral intentions: no one can stop us from intending
to do what's right, and therefore, for the Stoics, such moral intentions are
all that matters8.

Yet the ancients were well aware – perhaps more so than we are –
that it is not enough merely to have read or heard about a philosophical
doctrine -– for instance, the Stoic doctrine that the only evil is moral evil
– and accepted it as true. If one wants to be able to have such a doctrine
immediately available, so that one can quickly and reliably apply it to the
sudden challenges with which life confronts us, one needs to meditate on
it, assimilate it, digest it, make it a part of oneself. This exercise of

                                                                                                               
8 This is the viewpoint modern English-language philosophy refers to as

deontological thought.
   5  

meditation on a kanôn, or rule of life, was one of what Hadot calls

“spiritual exercises”.

Hadot given detailed descriptions of these spiritual exercizes,

which he defined as “voluntary, personal practices intended to bring
about a transformation ... of the self”9. They could be physical, like some
dietary regimes, discursive, like dialogue and meditation, or intuitive, like
contemplation10. Some examples listed by Philo of Alexandria in the first
century BCE include research, listening, attention, self-mastery,
indifference to indifferent things, reading, meditation, therapies of the
passions, inner detachment from persons and things, remembrance of
good things, accomplishing duties, and the examination of one's
conscience 11 . A specifically Stoic technique was that of physical
definition, in which one breaks down a thing or event into its component
parts, circumscribing them and giving each a name: we'll see Marcus
Aurelius using this technique just a bit later12. Closely linked to this
practice was the exercise of living in the present, concentrating intensely
on each moment in the knowledge that unlike the past or the future,
which are out of our control, the present is the only thing that really
depends on us. An Epicurean would therefore concentrate on the infinite
pleasure and happiness that can be derived from each instant, a pleasure
                                                                                                               
9 Pierre Hadot, The Present alone is our happiness. Conversations with Jeannie

Carlier and Arnold Davidson, Second Edition, translated by Marc Djaballah and
Michael Chase, Stanford: Stanfrod University Press, 2011, p. 87
10 Hadot, What is ancient philosophy?, transl. Michael Chase, Cambridge Mass.:

HUP, 2002, p. 6.
11 For parallels to these exercises in Indian thought, see Jonardon Ganeri, “A

Return to the Self: Indians and Greeks on Life as Art and Philosophical Therapy”, in
C. Carlisle & J. Ganeri, eds., Philosophy as Therapeia, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010, 119-136, p. 124.
12 As recent studies have shown, this technique can be effective at reducing

anxiety.
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that cannot be increased by duration, while a Stoic would scrutinize her

moral intentions at each instant, making sure that she is giving her assent
only to objective representations, that she is acting in the service of the
human community, and that she is consenting to the will of the rational
cosmos, situating herself within the perspective of the Whole 13 . By
concentrating on the present, as Hadot wrote in his last published work,
“consciousness, far from shrinking, raises itself to a higher viewpoint,
from which one sees, in a way, the past and the future in the present, and
it opens up to the infinity and eternity of being”14. It was thus an ideal
method for achieving cosmic consciousness, which Hadot defined as “the
consciousness that we are a part of the cosmos, and the consequent
dilation of the self throughout the infinity of universal nature”15. This
feeling is akin to a mystical experience of fusion with the whole,
something called “the oceanic feeling”, which Hadot himself experienced
several times throughout his life. The French Author Michel Hulin has
defined it as “the feeling of an essential co-belonging between myself and
the ambient universe”16.
Another of the spiritual exercises Pierre Hadot describes is what he
calls the View from above17. In it, one imagines oneself flying high above
one's environment – let's say, one's room or office – then one's house,
then one's block, then one's city, one's region, province, country,
                                                                                                               
13 Hadot, Philosophy, 84, citing Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 54. This is an

example of the Stoic triple discipline, to which we shall return.

14 P. Hadot, N'oublie pas de vivre. Goethe et la tradition des exercices spirituels,

Paris: Albin Michel, 2008, p. 79.

15 Hadot, Philosophy, 266.

16 Michel Hulin, La mystique sauvage, Paris 1993, 56-57. I have discussed this

work in “Existe-t-il une mystique néoplatonicienne ?”, in D. Cohen-Levinas, G.

Roux, M. Sebti, eds., Mystique et philosophie dans les trois monothéismes, Paris:
Hermann, 2015 (Rue de la Sorbonne).
17 Hadot, Philosophy, 238-250. Cf. Hadot, The Inner Citadel. The Meditations of

Maruc Aurelius, translated by Michael Chase, Cambridge, Mass., 1998, 172 ff.
   7  

continent, hemisphere, and the planet earth – in order to gain a new

perspective on one's daily concerns and problems. Seen from far above,
many of the problems that seem overwhelming to us can reveal
themselves to be fairly minor. As Seneca remarked18, from a perspective
high above the earth, human beings going about their business look like
ants scurrying to and fro, and the territories over which wars are fought
seem ridicuously tiny and insignifcant. Compared to the vastness of space
and time, our problems really don't add up to much. As Plato wrote in the
Republic19,

“...that soul to which pertain greatness of thought and the

contemplation of the totality of time and being, do you think it can
consider human life to be a matter of great importance? Hence, such a
person will not suppose death to be terrible”.

This exercise of practical physics, in which we soar above the earth

in our imagination, could contribute to achieving what the ancients called
“greatness of soul” 20 (Greek megalopsukhia, Latin magnanimitas), an
important aspect of which consists in downplaying the importance of our
individual self in the overall economy of the universe21. Hadot quotes the
emperor Marcus Aurelius22:

                                                                                                               
18 Seneca, Natural Questions, Preface, 7-11.

19 Plato, Republic, 406a, cited by Hadot Philosophy, 97.

20 Hadot Philosophy, 243.

21 Hadot, Philosophy 97.

22 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 47-48

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Watch and see the courses of the stars as if you were running
alongside them ... when you are reasoning about mankind, look upon
earthly things below as if from some vantage point above them.

According to Hadot, through the transformation brought about by

spiritual exercises, the philosopher could hope to leave behind the
isolation of her individuality, rising to the level of the Logos, or universal
Reason, and achieving a state of peace of mind, freedom, and
intensification of her being. In all ancient philosophical schools, he
writes, “philosophy was held to be an exercise consisting in learning to
regard both society and the individuals who comprise it from the point of
view of universality”23.

I.3. Identifying with the Logos

Hadot's notion of the Logos was taken over from Stoic philosophy.
For this philosophical school, the entire universe was infused by a
principle of reason or rationality, which could equally well be referred to
as Logos, Fate, Nature, or Zeus. This Logos was equivalent to the series
of causes and effects that determined everything that happens in the
world, but it was also consubstantial with our own faculty of reason.
Rising to the level of the Logos thus means realizing that one is part of
the cosmos, in the sense that one's rational faculty is of the same nature as
the principle that animates the cosmos.

When Pierre Hadot discusses the goal of the spiritual exercises of

ancient philosophy, he describes it in a variety of ways, most of which

                                                                                                               
23 Hadot, Philosophy 242.
   9  

involve raising ourself up and identifying with, or seeing things from the
perspective of, some kind of a higher principle. We have seen him
speaking of seeing things from the perspective of the Whole or the All,
but he also speaks of identifying with, or consenting to, nature or
universal reason (Logos), as when he writes that doing philosophy, for the
Stoics, meant “training to live, that is, to live consciously and freely:
freely, by going beyond the limits of individuality to recognize oneself as
part of a cosmos animated by reason”24. Finally, the global perspective
we are to strive for can also be described as universality, where
universality is equated with objectivity, as when he writes that “Within
each school, philosophy signified the attempt to raise up mankind from
individuality and particularity to universality and objectivity25.” All these
manners of speaking seem to be practically synonymous with what Hadot
calls “cosmic consciousness”, which, as we have seen, means the
awareness that we are a part of a universe conceived as infused and
governed by a Logos or reason that is consubstantial with our own
rational faculty.

The question we want to focus on today is whether such

identification with the cosmos, which Hadot considered to be a crucial
part of philosophy as a way of life, is still possible in the twenty-first
century.

I.4. Happiness and self-involvement

                                                                                                               
24 Hadot, Philosophy 86.

25 Elsewhere (Philosophy 242), Hadot speaks of the individual as “coming to see

things as nature herself sees them”.

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A recurrent theme in Pierre Hadot's works is the insight, deriving

from his study of ancient philosophy, that the reason many of us are
unhappy much of the time is that we are too wrapped up in ourselves.
Each of us thinks she is the center of the universe, and that her problems,
whether minor or major – and even our minor problems have a way of
becoming major very quickly, especially when we are alone – are the
most important things in the world. For Hadot, following what he takes to
have been the view of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, happiness
is concomitant upon or identical with the realization that this view of
ourselves as isolated individuals is the result, and the symptom, of a
mistaken way of looking at the world.
Hadot felt that ancient philosophy, properly updated, could help to
remedy this mistaken viewpoint. From the isolated, individualistic
viewpoint we usually have on reality, according to which the world
revolves around us, we can, he thought, bring about a shift in perspective
that makes us realize we are parts of a concentric series of larger wholes:
reason, the human race, and the universe as a whole. When Plato speaks
in the Phaedo of philosophy as a “training for death” (meletê thanatou),
says Hadot, what he means is that its practitioner should “die to her
individuality and passions, in order to look at things from the perspective
of universality and objectivity”. In other words, we are to leave behind all
that is merely particular and individual: all our prejudices, preconceived
ideas, fears, worries and regrets, in order to look at the world in its true
grandeur, toti se inserens mundo26, as Seneca said, inserting ourselves
within the totality of the world. This change of perspective will allow us
to relativize our problems, leave behind our mistaken belief that we are

                                                                                                               
26 Seneca, Epistle 66, 6.
   11  

isolated and alone, and realize that we are integral parts of the world. This
last feature corresponds to the feeling of cosmic consciousness.

I.5. Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic triple discipline27

Traditionally, Stoic philosophy was divided into three parts: logic,

physics, and ethics. The study of these fields as theoretical disciplines
was essential, and the Stoics devoted many technical treatises to them.
Yet this was not all there was to philosophy: the three theoretical
disciplines of logic, physics and ethics also had a practical side, which
represented the application, concretization, or actualization of the
theoretical aspects. Whereas the theoretical aspect of these three
disciplines corresponds to discourse about philosophy, their practical
aspect corresponds to actually doing or living philosophy: thus, Hadot can
speak of a lived logic, a lived physics and a lived ethics28, and it is within
these lived aspects of philosophy that spiritual exercises have their place.
As an example of the way Hadot conceived of the function of
discourse in ancient philosophy, let's look briefly at the practical, lived
side of the Stoic triple discipline.
Whereas discourse about logic corresponds to the study of the laws
of thought, in the discipline of thought, or lived logic, we make sure,
insofar as is possible, that we see things objectively, withholding our
consent from what is false or dubious. For instance, if we see something
that initially seems to us to be frightening, disgusting or even excessively
attractive, we are to try to separate out what our passions contribute to
these impressions. We can thus hope to achieve a view of things that is
                                                                                                               
27 For what follows, cf. Hadot, Inner Citadel.

28 Only discourse about philosophy is divided into three, while philosophy itself,

for the Stoics, is a unique act; cf. Hadot, La Philosophie, 26.

   12  

more objective: at the ideal limit, the Stoic sage could look at the tusks of
a charging boar and feel the same aesthetic pleasure as if he were seeing
them in a painting, because he has freed his perception from the distorting
effects of fear or desire. In other words, we must refuse to add value-
judgements to our perceptions or representations.
There are many passages in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations which
scholars continue to interpret as signs of his extreme pessimism or
asceticism, such as the following29:

How useful when roasted meats and other foods are before you to
see them in your mind as here the dead body of a fish, there the dead
body of a bird or pig. Or again to think of Falernian wine as the juice of a
cluster of grapes, of a purple robe as sheep's wool dyed with the blood of
a shellfish and of sexual intercourse as internal rubbing accompanied by a
spasmodic ejection of mucus ... You must do this throughout life; when
things appear too enticing, strip them naked, destroy the myth which
makes them proud.

As Pierre Hadot has shown, however, what Marcus is in fact doing

in such passages is practicing the exercise of physical definition, in order
to train himself not to be overly attracted to material things, so as not to
value them excessively, and not to be overly devastated at their inevitable
loss.
The Stoic discipline of action corresponds to the practical aspect or
actualization of the theory of ethics. Instead of theorizing about virtue
and vice, classifying them into different kinds and analysing their

                                                                                                               
29 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6, 13.
   13  

relationships, we now accomplish our duties and act for the good of the
human community.
Finally, the discipline of desire corresponds to the lived practice of
physics. We are to remind ourselves that we are part of the universe,
which is ruled by a rational law that is consubstantial with our own
reason, and that we must discipline our will so that we not only accept but
lovingly desire what happens as a consequence of that rational law. The
discipline of desire thus consists in replacing each event within the
context of the whole30; in other words, in consists in achieving a state of
cosmic consciousness.
Taken together, the three exercises of lived logic, lived ethics and
lived physics constituted the single act of doing philosophy. As Marcus
Aurelius reminded himself,

Everywhere and at all times, its is up to you to rejoice piously at

what is occurring at the present moment [here we recognize the exercise
of lived physics], to conduct yourself with justice toward the people who
are present here and now [the exercise of lived ethics], and to apply the
rules of discernment to your present representations, so that nothing slips
in that is not objective [the exercise of lived logic]31.

For Marcus, identification with the cosmos, or cosmic

consciousness, entailed that we should grant our assent, lovingly and
willingly, to everything that happens to us, since it's been destined for us
by the Logos, which is consubstantial with our own rational principle.

                                                                                                               
30 Hadot, Inner Citadel, 142.

31 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 54, quoted by Hadot, Philosophy, 84.

   14  

The methods for achieving cosmic consciousness thus included

consent to the will of nature and the exercise of concentration on the
present32. In the words of Hadot,

For the Stoics, each instant and each present moment imply the
entire universe (...) By becoming conscious of one single instant of our
lives, one single beat of our heart, we can feel ourselves linked to the
entire immensity of the cosmos (...) the whole universe is present in each
part of reality33.

Such concentration on the present moment allows us to consider it

as if it were, at the same time, the first moment of life and the last. The
first, in that we can be as astonished at the beauty of the world as if we
were seeing it for the first time, tamquam spectator novus, as Seneca34 put
it. But we can also consider each moment as if it were our last, as Marcus
Aurlius recommended35.

Part II. Can we still identify with the universe?

1. Cosmic piety

It is hard for us today, living in an urban environment where the

stars are largely obscured by city lights, to realize just how omnipresent
and impressive the night sky was for people in the ancient world, and
how deeply it affected their awareness.

                                                                                                               
32 Hadot, Inner Citadel, 145.

33 Hadot, Philosophy, 260.

34 Seneca, Letters 64. 6-7.

35 Marcus, Meditations, II, 5, 2. Cf. Hadot, Inner Citadel, 135.

   15  

One main feature of Ancient Greek religion and philosophy, at

least as far back as the fourth century B.C., was what has been called
“cosmic piety”: the belief that the heavenly bodies are alive and divine,
and therefore deserve our worship and imitation.
In his Timaeus, a dialogue based on the analogy between
humankind and the world as microcosm and macrocosm respectively,
Plato exorted human beings to set the revolutions of their souls in order
by contemplating the motions of the heavenly bodies (Timaeus 90 a-d).
May other examples could be cited, from the lost dialogues of Aristotle to
the writings of Cicero, and the great Hymn to Zeus by the Stoic
Cleanthes. As the Dominican scholar André-Jean Festugière wrote:

The God of the Hellenistic sage is, essentially, a god of the world.
Mankind, for the Hellenistic sage, is essentially a part of the world, which
cannot be considered for an instant as detached from this totality ... when,
at the end of the fourth century, there is a shift from the earthly city [i.e.,
the religion of the polis] to the city of the Kosmos ... mankind is defined
essentially as part of a whole. And what counts above all is the Whole;
for unlike modern conceptions, this Whole itself is considered to be a
living being36.

II.2 Ancient vs. modern cosmology

Since Antiquity, of course, we have learned a very great deal more

about the structure of the earth and its place within the universe. The
ancients lived in a world in which the earth remained motionless at the
center of a series of concentric spheres, each of which contained one of

                                                                                                               
36 A.-J. Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, Paris 1949, p. 328
   16  

the seven known planets - including the sun and the moon, of course –,
with the last sphere bearing the fixed stars. A lot has been written about
the Copernican revolution, in which the Polish astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus revived the theory of Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310-c. 230
BCE), according to which the earth, like the other planets, rotates around
the sun. According to many influential historians, it was supposed to be
highly traumatic for humankind to suddenly realize that they were not at
the center of the universe. In fact, however, for a world view according to
which the celestial bodies were perfect and immutable, the earth was not
so much at the center as at the bottom of the universe, as far away as
possible from the immutable perfection of the heavenly bodies. Indeed,
the region below the moon was commonly stigmatized as the realm of
generation and corruption. Galileo (1564-1642), who drove the final nails
into the coffin of Ptolemaic cosmology, was well aware of this. He
argued that the heliocentric view he supported makes the earth “movable
and surpassing the Moon in brightness, so that she is not the bilge of the
filth and dregs of the universe37”.

It is true, however, that modern cosmology no longer places the

earth at the center of the universe, but in a marginal position of a
marginal galaxy. We now know that our solar system orbits around a
fairly average star, the Sun, which in turn is one of approximately 100
billion stars contained in the milky way. The milky way, in turn, is a
normal spiral galaxy located in a group of galaxies known as the Local
group, which in turn is on the outskirts of the Virgo Supercluster, which
is part of the larger Laniakea supercluster. In all, the known universe is
                                                                                                               
37 “vagam enim illam ac Lunam splendore superantem, non autem sordium

mundanarumque fecum sentinam, esse demonstrabimus”; Galileo, Sidereal

Messenger 57, Opere, vol. II, pt. I, 75, quoted in L. Bezzlola Lambert, Imagining the
unimaginable: the poetics of early modern astronomy, Rodolpi 2002, p. 52.
   17  

estimated to contain about 100 billion galaxies. What is more, these

galaxies, already situated at unimaginable distances from us, are speeding
away from us at an ever-increasing speed. Current research seems to
indicate that this tendency will continue, perhaps eternally.
What may appear as disturbing to human awareness than the
Copernican revolution is that fact that these unimaginable cosmic
vastnesses are usually conceived as totally foreign and without relation to
us, and we, as well as all life, are a mere accident that happened to occur
in it. In the words of Sean Carroll, a leading cosmologist and exponent of
philosophical naturalism, “the universe doesn't care about us...”38; the
universe (...) doesn't care what we do” 39 ; it functions according “to
impersonal and uncaring laws of nature”40; it “doesn't provide guidance; it
doesn't know or care about what ought to happen”41.
How can we relate to, much less feel identical with, such a vast
impersonal structure, as the Stoics recommended? How can we achieve
the kind of cosmic consciousness Hadot spoke about, in which, as a result
of the practice of lived physics, we become aware that we are a part of
the universe? Can we, like the Stoics, still “live in the constant presence
of the universal Reason which is immanent within the cosmos” and “see
all things from the perspective of this Reason, and consent joyfully to its
will”?42

II. 3. An aesthetic solution?

                                                                                                               
38 Sean Carroll, The Big Picture, New York 2016 , p. 422

39 Ibid., p. 418

40 Ibid., p. 405

41 Ibid., p. 396

42 Hadot, What is Ancient philosophy?, translated by Michael Chase, Cambridge,

Mass., 2002, 138.

   18  

Hadot is well aware of this difficulty. As he wrote43, “according to

a more or less universal tendency of modern thought, which is perhaps
more instinctive than reflective, the ideas of “universal reason” and
“universal nature” do not have much meaning any more (...) Today,
nature is nothing more for us than man's “environment”; she has become
a purely human problem, a problem of industrial hygiene. The idea of
universal reason no longer makes much sense”. It therefore seems hard to
speak of identifying with universal reason in this day and age.

This is a very serious difficulty for Hadot's account, at least as far

as the applicability of his account of philosophy as a way of life to
modern life is concerned. There may well be no completely satisfactory
answer to this objection. Hadot himself has suggested that instead of
identifying with the providential nature of the Stoics, contemporary
mankind may choose to use aesthetic experience as a means to reach the
cosmic consciousness and objectivity to which ancient philosophy
aspired. Following Bergson, Hadot notes that artists are naturally
detached, seeing the world and the objects it contains not in the light of
the utility they may have for us, but for themselves. This disinterested
aesthetic perception, which, like cosmic consciousness, can be brought
about by concentration on the present moment44, can bring us a more
complete perception of reality. More precisely, it can help restore our
amazement at the very fact of the world's existence. In this context, Hadot
cites Paul Klee, who writes that for the artist, as he imitates the creative
work of God, natura naturans, or nature in its creative aspect, is more
important than natura naturata, nature as something already extant and

                                                                                                               
43 Hadot, Philosophy, 252.

44 Hadot, Philosophy, 259.

   19  

objective45. This is reminiscent of the remark by the late French physicist

Bernard d'Espagnat, who suggests that the notion of nature as natura
naturans as opposed to natura naturata – may be among the least
inadequate for designating ultimate reality46.

II. 4. Some other possible solutions.

1: We are stardust

There are some other considerations, however, that may make us

think the rest of the universe may not be quite as foreign to us as is
sometimes claimed.

First, it is well know that the elements of which we are made were
forged in the center of stars. The atoms of carbon, oxygen, nitogren, iron
and sulfur of which we are all made were synthesized inside stars, and
then, when the stars – or rather those of them with a mass at least eight
times as large as our Sun – ran out of their hydrogen fuel, were blasted
out into space, with incredible violence, in an explosion known as a
supernova 47 . The cosmic dust thus formed, rich in heavy elements,
continues to fall to the earth at the rate of about 40,000 tons per year48. It
may be a mere coincidence that the pattern formed by the supernova
Nova Cygni 1992 bears a resemblance to the image of a stage in cell

                                                                                                               
45 Hadot, Philosophy, 255. Cf. Berhard Marx, Balancieren im Zwischen:

Zwischenreiche bei Paul Klee, Königshausen & Neumann, 2007, p. 35

46 B. D'Espagnat, Traité de physique et de philosophie, Paris 2002, 509-510.

47 See, for instance, Marcelo Gleiser, The dancing universe, Hanover, New

Hampshire 1997, 294-295

48 See Karel and Iris Schrijver, Living with the stars: how the human body is

connected to the life cycles of the earth, the planets and the stars, Oxford 2015.
   20  

duplication of the bacteria E. Coli49. At any rate, when Joni Mitchell sang
“we are stardust” half a century ago, she was right on the money.

II.4.2: Macrocosm and microcosm

Second, we have seen that according to the most recent

calculations, the known universe is thought to contain some 100 billion
galaxies, each containing some 100 billion stars. It may, as Sean Carroll
affirms, be a mere coincidence that “the number 100 billion is also a very
rough count of the number of neurons in the human brain”50. It may also
be a mere coincidence that the large-scale structure of the universe
features thick clusters of galaxies linked together by long, thin, filament-
like clusters of galaxies, and that, as the cosmologist J. Richard Gott
writes, “some have likened this picture to one of brain neurons
interconnected by synapses”51.

I repeat that these quantitative and formal analogies between the

brain and the universe may well be pure coincidence. But one suspects
that the ancients, if they possessed the advanced technology that has
recently allowed us to make the observations enabling us to make these
estimations, would not consider these findings to be coincidental at all.
Instead, they would probably take it to be a welcome confirmation –
perhaps the most striking one – in favor of their belief in the fundamental
connectedness of all reality, and of the similarities between the

                                                                                                               
49 Mario Livio, “The Microcosm and the Macrocosm”, Huffington Post Feb. 2,

2016, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-livio/the-microcosm-and-

the-mac_b_9139946.html?
50 Carroll, The Big Picture, 50.

51 J. R. Gott The cosmic web. The mysterious architecture of the universe,

Princeton 2016, p. 173

   21  

microcosm and the macrocosm. In the words of Plotinus, the founder of

Neoplatonism who taught at Rome in the second half of the 3rd century
CE,

We are each one of us an intelligible universe, making contact with

this lower world by the powers of soul below, but with the intelligible
world by the powers above (Ennead III.4 [15].3, 18-24]

The notion of a correspondence between microcosm and

macrocosm was widespread in Greco-Roman Antiquity. That man is a
mikros kosmos , or small world, is an idea that goes back at least to the
pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus52. By the first century BCE we find
it in Philo of Alexandria53:

Thus some men have felt confidence even to declare that the
smallest of animals, man, is equal to the whole world, considering that
each of them consists of a body and a rational soul, so that, varying their
expression, they have called man a little world, and the world a large
man.

About the same time, the Roman astronomer Manilius54 wrote:

                                                                                                               
52 Fragment B34 Diels-Kranz = fr. 10 Luria = Aristotle, Physics, VII 2, 252b24

53 Philo, Who is the heir of divine things, 31. 155-156.

54 Manilius, Astronomicon IV, 893-895: Quid mirum, noscere mundum

si possunt homines, quibus est et mundus in ipsis

exemplumque dei quisque est in imagine parva?
   22  

What wonder that human beings can understand the world, when
there is a world within them, and each of them is a copy of a god in a
smaller image?

Under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the great physician Galen, not
usually given to mystical effusions, knows and approves of this
doctrine55:

men of old, well versed in the knowledge of nature, say that the
animal is like some small world (mikron kosmon), and you will find in
both the same wisdom of the Demiurge.

The same idea is extremely widespread in Late Antiquity, in the

Greek Neoplatonists Porphyry (late 3rd century) 56 and Proclus (5th
century)57, and in the Latin autors Macrobius (5th century)58, and Isidore
of Seville (6th-7th centuries)59.

Perhaps sometime in the fourth century, the Latin author

Chalcidius60 explains the view that man is a microcosm on the basis of
fact – that each human being is made of the same basis stuff as the
universe:

In our bodies there is a portion of water and likewise one of air, as

well as of fire and of earth. It was for this reason, I believe, that the
                                                                                                               
55 Galen, On the use of parts, 21, Vol. 3, p. 241, 13-16 Kühn

56 Porphyry, On the Know thyself, ap. Stobaeus, Anthologium, III, 21, 27.

57 Proclus, In Tim., I, 5, 11-13; 33, 25; I, 202, 26-28; III, 172, 9; 355, 9.

58 Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Cicero, II, 11.

59 Isidore of Seville, On the Nature of things, IX, 1-2.

60 Calcidius, Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Section 202

   23  

Ancients defined humankind as a small world (mundum brevem): rightly

so, because the entire universe and all of humankind consist of all the
same things: a body that has the same materials, and a soul of one and the
same nature.

We have seen that modern science agrees that we are made of the
same basic elements as the universe, although it identifies those elements
as carbon, oxygen, nitogren, iron and sulfur rather than earth, air, fire and
water. Of course, few scientists today would agree with Calcidius that our
soul is mad of the same stuff as the soul of the world.

In any case, the doctrine of humankind as a microcosm spread from

Calcidius, Macrobius and Isidorus, to the Latin Middle Ages, while it
also spread, by other channels to Medieval Islamic61 and Jewish62 thought.
Taken up again in the Renaissance, it inspired Leonardo Da Vinci's
famous drawing the Vitruvian Man ca. 1490, and then, a century later, in
Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi, maioris scilicet et minoris, historia
(1617-1621).

II.4.3: At Home in the Universe

Finally, the theoretical Biologist Stuart Kauffman has argued that

we human beings and all other life forms, far from originating in some
highly unlikely accident and evolving on the basis of random selection
                                                                                                               
61 For the idea of the microcosm-macrocosm in the Brethren of Purity, see Syyed

Hossein Nasr, An introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines, Boulder 1978, , 96-

104,
62 For the idea in Jewish thought, see for instance the passage from the ’Aboth de-

Rabbi Nathan, ch. 31, quoted by Gershom Scholem, Die jüdische Mystik in ihren
Hauptströmungen, Zürich 1957, p. 391: “All that God has created, He has also created
in man”.
   24  

alone, are “natural expressions of matter and energy coupled together in

nonequilibrium systems. If life in its abundance were bound to arise, not
as an incalculably improbable accident, but as an expected fulfillment of
the natural order, then we truly are at home in the universe”63.

In the early 21st century, scientific findings thus show that we are
made of materials produced by the stars themselves, that the universe on
a large scale features formal and structural analogies with the structure of
our brains, seat of our rational faculties, and that our very existence may
be the quasi-inevitable fulfillment of the natural order.
While we may no longer be able to espouse the Stoic view that the
entire universe is an animated organism ruled by a rational principle that
is identical with our own, these recent scientific findings seem to
reinforce the ancient idea that we are not totally unrelated to the cosmos,
and may legitimately attempt to re-situate ourselves within the context of
the universe and realize that we are akin to it and a part of it. The ancient
spiritual exercise of shifting attention away from our isolated nature as
individuals and our egocentric worries and fears, and realizing that we are
parts of a larger whole, may still maintain its therapeutic value. As Hadot
saw, the ancient spiritual exercises that constituted the backbone of
ancient philosophy as a way of life, suitably updated, may still help to
teach us to relativize our own problems and gaze in astonishment at the
world as if we were seeing in for the first time, tamquam spectator novus.

Michael Chase
CNRS Centre Jean Pépin
Paris-Villejuif, France

                                                                                                               
63 Stuart Kauffman, At home in the universe, Oxford 1995, p. 20.