Today’s podcast is an introduction to the concept of Stoic spiritual exercises. Over the next few episodes, I will be covering three Stoic spiritual exercises: the discipline of assent, the discipline of desire, and the discipline of action. These three exercises or disciplines are the core of what I call the path of the prokopton. In episode 5, I covered the concepts of attention (prosoche). In episode 6, I covered what is and is not “up to us,” which is commonly called the dichotomy of control. As I noted in that episode, Pierre Hadot refers to these as the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude and the fundamental rule of life respectively. Together, they constitute what Hadot calls the Stoic moral attitude, which is the attitude a prokopton takes toward all the events that occur in life. The Stoic spiritual exercises are the practices that develop that moral attitude and lead us farther along the Stoic path toward an excellent character and well-being.
Those who are familiar with the writing of the French philosopher Pierre Hadot will recognize the concept of spiritual exercises. It is a constant theme in his books. He did not invent it; however, he applied the term to ancient philosophical practices and thereby illuminated the meaning and significance of these exercises. Before Hadot, the idea of philosophy as a way of life had largely been lost. Modern academic philosophy deviated so far from the concept of philosophy as a way of life that a 2016 critique was able to highlight the “pathologies” of contemporary academic philosophy and point out its complete abandonment of the philosophical practices of Socrates. The authors of that critique write:
Universally venerated by contemporary philosophers, the actual philosophic practice of Socrates is rejected or ignored. Socrates could never get a position today in a philosophy (or any other) department.[1]
This divergence from the philosophical practices of Socrates is important to twenty-first-century practitioners of Stoicism for two reasons. First, Socrates in the grandfather of Stoicism, and his way of life served as a model for the Stoics. As I noted in episode 4, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was inspired to follow the philosophical way of life after reading about the life of Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia. That portrait of Socrates inspired Zeno to ask, “Where can I find men such as these? ”Second, because the path of the Stoic prokopton is a spiritual practice—it relies on the transformational power of these spiritual exercises that are largely, if not wholly, ignored by modern academic philosophers. Even where Stoicism is taught in academic environments, it is unlikely that any attention will be paid to these practices. Modern academia has little if any tolerance for anything considered spiritual. That is why it was necessary for Pierre Hadot to reintroduce the modern world to the spiritual nature of the ancient philosophical way of life. Philosophy as a way of life is so radically different from the mind-numbing, logic-chopping positivism that turns many people away from philosophy, we can argue it belongs in a different category. As Michael Chase wrote in the introduction of a published set of essays honoring Hadot:
Hadot’s work, written in a plain, clear style that lacks the rhetorical flourishes of a Derrida or a Foucault, represents a call for a radical democratization of philosophy. It talks about subjects that matter to people today from all walks of life, which is why it has appealed, arguably, less to professional philosophers than to ordinary working people, and to professionals working in disciplines other than philosophy.[2]
If you doubt the difference between Hadot’s approach to the ancient Stoics and that of modern academia, here is an experiment. Read and compare two books, both published in English in 1998 and both dealing with the application of Stoicism in the life of practitioners. The first book, written from the perspective of modern academia, is Lawrence Becker’s A New Stoicism. The second book is Pierre Hadot’s The Inner Citadel. The contrast between these views of Stoicism highlight the problem with modern academic philosophers attempting to apply Stoicism to daily life. Becker abandons the worldview of the Stoics because from his academic perspective, “a credible work of ethics” cannot include the Stoic teleological (providential) worldview.[3]In contrast, Hadot writes,
What defined a Stoic above all else was the choice of a life in which every thought, every desire, and every action would be guided by no other law than that of universal Reason. Whether the world is ordered or chaotic, it depends only on us to be rationally coherent with ourselves. In fact, all the dogmas of Stoicism derive from this existential choice. It is impossible that the universe could produce human rationality, unless the latter were already in some way present within the former.[4]
The idea that universal Reason exists and provides us with human rationality and the laws that serve as a guide for our ethics is anathema to a modern academic like Becker. Therefore, instead of approaching Stoicism and its practice as the ancients intended, he demands that Stoicism conforms to the worldview that holds sway over modern academic philosophy and makes it irrelevant to most moderns. The philosophical way of life is not primarily aimed at knowing, although that is certainly an essential aspect of it. Instead, the philosophical way of life is aimed at a mode of being; its goal is the transformation of the Self into the best possible human beings we are capable of becoming. The Greeks called this state of human excellence arete. We translate that word as virtue in English; however, virtue does not fully express the concept of arete, which encompasses the whole human being rather than just ethical behavior.
Hadot not only reintroduced the modern world to philosophy as a way of life, he also revived the practice of spiritual exercises, which predate the Christian conception of those practices attributed to Ignatius of Loyola. Interestingly, Hadot argues the spiritual exercises of Ignatius are “a Christian version of a Greco-Roman tradition”[5] that emphasized askesis(philosophical practice or exercise). So, what does Hadot mean by the term spiritual exercise? Why did he choose to call them spiritual exercises instead of philosophical exercises or something else? In defense of his use of the adjective “spiritual,” Hadot writes,
The expression is a bit disconcerting for the contemporary reader. In the first place, it is no longer quite fashionable these days to use the word "spiritual." It is nevertheless necessary to use this term, I believe, because none of the other adjectives we could use –"psychic," "moral," "ethical," "intellectual," "of thought," "of the soul''–covers all the aspects of reality we want to describe.[6]
In the passage that follows the one above, Hadot addresses three reasonable alternatives that might come to mind and explains why they are inadequate to fully describe the scope of these exercises.
Thought Exercises
Hadot argues, ‘the word "thought" “does not indicate clearly enough that imagination and sensibility play a very important role in these exercises.’
Intellectual Exercises
He claims ‘we cannot be satisfied with "intellectual exercises," although such intellectual factors as definition, division, ratiocination, reading, investigation, and rhetorical amplification play a large role in them.’
Ethical Exercises
Hadot concedes that ‘“ethical exercises”is a rather tempting expression, since, as we shall see, the exercises in question contribute in a powerful way to the therapeutics of the passions, and have to do with the conduct of life. Yet, here again, this would be too limited a view of things.
All of these are inadequate because these exercises “correspond to a transformation of our vision of the world, and to a metamorphosis of our personality.” They address more than the practitioner’s mere thoughts, they entail “the individual's entire psychism.” Therefore, according to Hadot, the word "spiritual" “reveals the true dimensions of these exercises” because by means of them, “the individual raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit; that is to say, he re-places himself within the perspective of the Whole ("Become eternal by transcending yourself")."[emphasis added][7]
Our Place Within the Whole
This concept of replacing our own personal perspective with that of the Whole is a primary goal of Stoic practice. This theme if repeated frequently within the pages of Marcus Aurelius’Meditations.
Providence permeates the works of the gods; and the works of fortune are not dissociated from nature, but intertwined and interwoven by all that is ordered by providence. Everything flows from there; but necessity is implicated too, and the benefit of the whole universe of which you are a part. Now for every part of nature, the good is that which universal nature brings, and which serves to sustain that nature; and the universe is sustained not merely by the changes of the elements, but also by the changes of the bodies compounded from them. Let these doctrines, if that is what they are, be enough for you. As for your thirst for books, be done with it, so that you may not die with complaints on your lips, but with a truly cheerful mind and grateful to the gods with all your heart. (Meditations 2.3)
Everything suits me that suits your designs, O my universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me that is in your own good time. All is fruit for me that your seasons bring, O nature. All proceeds from you, all subsists in you, and to you all things return. (Meditations 4.23)
All things are interwoven, and the bond that unites them is sacred, and hardly anything is alien to any other thing, for they have been ranged together and are jointly ordered to form a common universe.
