Pierre Hadot

Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his
conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). His work
has been widely influential in classical studies and on thinkers, including Michel
Foucault. According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic
philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices
that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical
contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical
discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed
primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of
the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude
toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity
and its place in the cosmos. This cultivation required, specifically, that students learn
to combat their passions and the illusory evaluative beliefs instilled by their passions,
habits, and upbringing. To cultivate philosophical discourse or writing without
connection to such a transformed ethical comportment was, for the ancients, to be
as a rhetorician or a sophist, not a philosopher. However, according to Hadot, with
the advent of the Christian era and the eventual outlawing, in 529 C.E., of the ancient
philosophical schools, philosophy conceived of as a bios largely disappeared from the
West. Its spiritual practices were integrated into, and adapted by, forms of Christian
monasticism. The philosophers’ dialectical techniques and metaphysical views were
integrated into, and subordinated, first to revealed theology and then, later, to the
modern natural sciences. However, Hadot maintained that the conception of
philosophy as a bios has never completely disappeared from the West, resurfacing in
Montaigne, Rousseau, Goethe, Thoreau, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, and even in
the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger.
Hadot’s conception of ancient philosophy and his historical narrative of its
disappearance in the West have provoked both praise and criticism. Hadot received
a host of letters from students around the world telling him that his works had
changed their lives, perhaps the most fitting tribute given the nature of Hadot’s
meta-philosophical claims. Unlike many of his European contemporaries, Hadot’s
work is characterized by lucid, restrained prose; clarity of argument; the near-
complete absence of recondite jargon; and a gentle, if sometimes self-depreciating,
humor. While Hadot was an admirer of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and committed to
a kind of philosophical recasting of the history of Western ideas, Hadot’s work lacks
any eschatological sense of the end of philosophy, humanism, or the West. Late in
life, Hadot would report that this was because he was animated by the sense that
philosophy, as conceived and practiced in the ancient schools, remains possible for
men and women of his era: “from 1970 on, I have felt very strongly that it was
Epicureanism and Stoicism which could nourish the spiritual life of men and women
of our times, as well as my own” (PWL 280).

Pierre Hadot was born in Paris in 1922. Educated as a Catholic, at age 22 Hadot
began training for the priesthood. However, following Pope Pius XII’s
encyclical, Humani Generis, of 1950, Hadot left the priesthood, marrying for a first
time in 1953. Between 1953 and 1962, Hadot studied the Latin patristics and was
trained in philology. At this time, Hadot was also greatly interested in mysticism.
In 1963, he published Plotinus: or The Simplicity of Vision, on the great
Neoplatonic philosopher. During this period he also produced two of the first
studies about Wittgenstein written in the French-language. Hadot was elected
director of studies at the fifth section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in
1964, and he married his is second wife, the historian of philosophy Ilsetraut
Hadot, in 1966. From the mid-1960s, Hadot’s attention turned to wider studies in
ancient thought, culminating in two key works: Exercices spirituels et philosophie
antique, written in 1981 (translated into English in 1995 as Philosophy as a Way of
Life [PWL] ) and Qu’est-ce que la philosophie antique?, written in 1995 (translated
into English in 2002 as What is Ancient Philosophy? [WAP] ). Hadot was named
professor at the Collège de France in 1982, where he held the chair for the History
of Greek and Roman Thought (chaire d’histoire de la pensée hellénistique et
romaine). Hadot retired from this position to become professeur honoraire at the
Collège in 1991. He continued to translate, write, give interviews, and publish until
shortly before his death in April 2010.