Hélder Telo

This article compares two different ways of construing philosophy as a way of life (PWL), examining how they influence our understanding of the philosophical tradition and of philosophy today. First, I demonstrate that scholars (including Hadot himself at many points) tend to view PWL as involving a set of philosophical “dogmas” (i.e., doctrines, arguments, or discourse) that are to be implemented in our lives through special practices or spiritual exercises. Next, I argue that PWL should instead be construed as primarily related to questions, particularly philosophical ones. According to this view, the philosophical discourse that transforms one’s life is primarily interrogative, and philosophical questioning itself can be a form of spiritual exercise, capable of altering our way of being and living. Finally, I briefly explore what a history of PWL based on this model might look like.

Preview: Philosophy as a way of life (PWL) is an emerging field of study which in the last decades has experienced a vibrant and multifaceted development. Particularly proliferous in the areas of metaphilosophy and the history of philosophy, PWL has also been applied to a wide variety of knowledge domains beyond the academic world. Ever more prominent in contemporary debates, PWL has become a banner under which a very diversified work is being developed by scholars with originally very different areas of research and expertise, who gather under PWL by their dissatisfaction with what has become of philosophy (an abstract and purely theoretical undertaking) and their hopes about what philosophy can be (a way of thinking about and transforming one’s life). Despite the dynamic development of PWL and the wealth of literature it has inspired in recent years – or precisely because of it – there is still no consensus on what it precisely means. What exactly does this expression contain? What does it entail? To what extent is it clear and univocal? And how clear and univocal should it be?

Over the past few decades, the idea of philosophy as a way of life (PWL) has gained undeniable prominence in contemporary debates about the nature and function of philosophy. Pierre Hadot forged the notion to denote the specific way in which ancient philosophers conceived of and practiced philosophy, stressing its performative character and its potential for self-transformation on the basis of what he called “spiritual exercises.” Referring primarily to the Hellenistic and Roman eras, Hadot claimed that “philosophy was a mode of existing-in-the-world, which had to be practiced at each instant, and the goal of which was to transform the whole of the individual’s life. Furthermore, he also implied that some modern and contemporary philosophers came close to this model of philosophical practice and described it as his own metaphilosophical ideal. As he comments in the same text: “Such is the lesson of ancient philosophy: an invitation to each human being to transform himself. Philosophy is a conversion, a transformation of one’s way of being and living, and a quest for wisdom.” This normative and pedagogic component is a crucial aspect of Hadot’s account of PWL. Indeed, Hadot is not just describing what philosophy was in the past, but also evaluating what it is in the present and considering what it could become beyond his (and our) time. This is one of the reasons that made his approach so popular and led to so many fruitful developments in the field of PWL. Inspired by Hadot’s account, which was complemented by the late Foucault’s own reflections on philosophy’s practical and performative potential, recent scholarship has characterized PWL as a metaphilosophical model that can be fruitfully used to criticize current academic practices and to develop innovative methodological approaches to the study, research, and teaching of philosophy, which in turn might enable a transformation of philosophical practices in the context of modern universities.

This article considers the simultaneously passive and active character of moods (Stimmungen) in Heidegger, focussing on two different periods of his thought: the end of the 1920s and the middle of the 1930s. Through the study of the language used by Heidegger, I show that the ideas of passivity and activity are expressed in three different levels of his description of moods: the more concrete level of one’s experience of a mood, the level of philosophical analysis insofar as it is based on moods and deals with moods, and the transcendental or constitutive level of experience. Moreover, I show that in each of these levels passivity and activity are constitutively intertwined and that Heidegger’s conception of moods both in the 1920s and the 1930s can only be understood if we take into consideration the three levels and the way each of them is characterized by both passivity and activity.

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations lends itself to be seen as an egoistic or self-centred exercise of self-care. I will argue against this view and show that caring for others also plays a central role in this work. In order to do so, I will first discuss what caring for someone else entails according to Marcus Aurelius. Second, I will show that this kind of care can be directed at all human beings without becoming too vague or abstract, for it implies a form of universal love that directly determines one’s relation to those closest to oneself. Third, I will argue that, despite emphasizing the self and one’s virtue, Marcus Aurelius adopts an objective and highly metaphysical standpoint that establishes the equal importance of the self and others. Finally, I will consider the possibility of separating Marcus Aurelius’ views on care from some of his main metaphysical claims.

This article studies an aspect of the relation between emotions and ethics that is usually neglected in the recent debate on moral emotions. By focusing on the contributions of common or everyday emotions to the development of moral behaviours and attitudes, the debate loses sight of the emotional side of the ethical attitude and the way it involves different, specifically ethical emotions. In contrast, such emotions play an important role in Aristotle’s and Heidegger’s thought. As will be shown, both authors identify emotions that are intrinsically tied to ethics in a broad sense and are structurally different from everyday emotions. Moreover, both characterize the two kinds of emotion in a similar fashion: whereas everyday emotions involve a limited form of activity and refer to a more immediate objective domain, the properly ethical emotions result from a superior form of activity and open up to a vaster domain or even to the entire reality, thus having a metaphysical character. The study of this distinction and what it involves will allow for a better understanding not only of emotions in general, but also of the emotional dimension of ethical life.