The present alone is our happiness : conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The present alone is our happiness : conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson
（Cultural memory in the present）
Stanford University Press, 2009
- : cloth : alk. paper
- : pbk. : alk. paper
- Other Title
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La philosophie comme manière de vivre : entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold I. Davidson
Available at 1 libraries
Note
Originally published in French under the title: La philosophie comme manière de vivre
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In this book of brilliantly erudite and precise discussions, Pierre Hadot explains that for the Ancients philosophy was not reducible to the building of a theoretical system: it was above all a choice about how to live one's life.
One of the most influential historians of ancient philosophy in the world today, Hadot is adept at using ancient philosophers to illuminate the relevance of their ideas to contemporary life. In this book, which is an ideal introduction to Hadot's more scholarly What is Ancient Philosophy?, we learn that to be an Epicurean is not merely to think like one; it is to adopt a way of living where limiting desires is the condition for happiness. Being an Aristotelian, similarly, is to choose a life that involves contemplation, and being a Cynic is to follow Diogenes in his refusal of quotidian convention and the mentality of ordinary people. If so many Ancient philosophers founded schools, Hadot explains, it was precisely because they were proposing how to live life on a daily basis. We learn here that the history of philosophy has been something more than just that of a discourse. The founding texts of Greek philosophy, after all, were notes taken from oral exercises undertaken in concrete circumstances and contexts, most often a dialogue between students and specific interlocutors who meant to shed light on their students' real existence. The immense contribution of this book, which also traces Hadot's own personal itinerary in a touching manner, is to remind us, through direct language and numerous examples, what the theoretical aspect of philosophy often masks: its vital and existential dimensions.
Table of Contents
@fmct:Contents @toc4:Introduction iii @toc2:1 Tied to the Apron Strings of the Church 000 2 Researcher, Teacher, Philosopher 000 3 Philosophical Discourse 000 4 Interpretation, Objectivity and Nonsense 000 5 Unitary Experience and Philosophical Life 000 6 Philosophical Discourse as Spiritual Exercise 000 7 Philosophy as Life and as a Quest for Wisdom 000 8 From Socrates to Foucault. A Long Tradition 000 9 Inacceptable? 000 10 The Present Alone is Our Happiness 000 @toc4:Postface 000 Notes 000 Index 000
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