Journal of David Patten

March 4, 2003

I've been reading a book titled "Philosophy as a Way of Life" by Pierre Hadot, a French classicalist of Greek and Roman intellectual history. A very interesting read, and one that resurrects Socrates for me while at the same time lets me contemplate the setting of the works of the Greeks. He claims that fundamentally philosophy was, (before it was subsequently perverted by Christian theorists) a series of spiritual exercises, exercises that are rarely revealed in the writings.

Hadot suggests that there are three aspects of a deepening social relationship or organization and that each must be respected. The first is very eclectic in that it is the short introductions that are made between people, introductions that are context bound and needing language that is appropriate to the task of getting people to linger just a little. Maybe called advertising, this first phase is like the little acknowledgments newly introduced people give to each other when they first meet, without knowing very much of each other. A sort of acknowledgment of the surface, the skin, and its necessity to acknowledge the "I exist" interest of all of us.

The second phase he calls the aphorisms. These are the dogmas each of us uses to help ourselves and others through the rough spots. A 'guru' teaches his students these little sayings that, if practiced, help the community grow together and helps people stay focused. This is the social institution phase, which Nietzsche would argue tends toward diverting people from the present by giving them standards from the past and glimpses of the future. Without the third phase I think he was right. Today, however, people are so dead set against exegesis or dogma that they have made an overwhelming dogma against dogma, so much so that people in transition have no guidelines to sustain them one moment to another other than the dogma of nothingness. In times like ours these guidelines seem so bankrupt that even language seems doomed and corrupt, and information seems diabolical. Hadot claims that much of the works that we have now from that earlier period were short guidelines or dogmas given by teachers to their students and that they were never intended to be complete systems of thought. (Hadot believes that the very effort to give a complete system means that one is writing to unknown people or the masses and thus require the Lie and Deception.)

So the Works are either meant as an eclectic teaser of introduction, meant for the initial task of attracting students, or, the secondary suggestion of dogmas that are meant to guide specific students along. All of Plato's works are exegesis for the school's specific students (never for a wide audience.)

Still not philosophy.

How school philosophy has failed is revealed when we take up with the third phase of social relation. And this is where Socrates comes in, and Christianity . Hadot calls this phase 'dialogue'. And it requires a true sense of seeking. It is as if the tables are turned in this phase, and the teacher/student relationship is turned around in an intense way. Rather than continue to spew dogma, the teacher presses the student, now intimate, to confront unknowing, both the teacher's and the student's. Together they make room, for something emergent, which is the living wisdom. If they do not mutually 'make room for', (or as Merleau-Ponty says, 'hollow out'), and one reverts to mere dogma, then the existential Present is again lost. If the 'hollowing out' is maintained, this is truly a dangerous exercise, from the viewpoint of those entrusted with guarding the dogmas!

In the beginning Christian mystics found an alliance with Philosophy as a way of life but soon the new dogmas, or the second phase, began to obliterate the third phase, and when philosophy and theology became interchangeable, we saw the end of philosophy, especially in state and religious schools who are paid to promote various dogmas (which by now are not so different from one another when it comes to a so-called description of 'reality'). The very agreement as to what reality is (read Present) is an argument against dialogue and for the current trivialization of the present.

It seems to me that each of the three phases are necessary, first to establish a respect for the surface, the masks we all need to just meet the world, secondly to find guidance in the world, especially for times in which we don't have time for dialogue, and thirdly dialogue, by which we finally, consciously, find the Present, our only reality. If we went directly to the third phase without the courtship of the first and second, it would be like a rape. Each of these phases are spiritual exercises, with "spiritual" meaning vastly different things at each level.