Matthew Sharpe

This paper reassesses the Cooper-Hadot debate surrounding how students are converted to philosophy as a way of life (section 1) through engagement with philosophical protreptics. In section 2, the paper identifies the core “argument from finality” in philosophical protreptics seeking to convert non-philosophers to philosophy, starting from the universal human interest in securing eudaimonia. In line with Cooper, this argument seeks to persuade prospective students on rational grounds, so that their choice to philosophise would be rationally motivated. In section 3.1, the paper illustrates how in Plato's Euthydemus (a) the choice to undertake philosophy is rationally justified by Socrates, using the eudaimonistic argument from finality. In section 3.2, by recourse to Aristotle's Protrepticus, the paper shows how the protreptic texts also compared philosophy to other intellectual pursuits, notably rhetoric, so as to recommend philosophy specifically for delivering a directive wisdom concerning how to live.

The idea of philosophy as a 'way of life' is not a new one. From the first recorded philosophy by Plato, there has been a tradition of thinking about philosophy as pointing us towards the good life, happiness and an ethical existence. But where does this notion that philosophy has anything to offer in terms of guiding us in how to live and live well come from? In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life, Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure take us us through the history of the idea from Plato and the Buddha to Foucault, Hadot and Zizek. They examine the kinds of practical exercises each thinker recommended and practiced to transform their philosophy into manners of living and acting. Philosophy as a Way of Life also examines the recent resurgence of thinking about philosophy as a practical, lived reality and why this ancient tradition still has so much relevance and power in the contemporary world.

Preview: 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic spread globally, marked the twenty-fifth year since the publication of Pierre Hadot’s work Philosophy as a Way of Life. In that time, what began as the research specialization of just a few scholars has become a growing area of philosophical and metaphilosophical inquiry, bringing together researchers from around the globe. Hadot’s key ideas of spiritual exercises, and the very idea of PWL, have been applied to a host of individual thinkers from across the history of philosophy: from the Hellenistic and Roman-era philosophers of direct concern to Hadot, through renaissance thinkers like Petrarch, Lipsius, Montaigne, Descartes, or Bacon, into nineteenth-century thinkers led by Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.In more recent years, more global reflections on the “very idea” of PWL have begun to emerge, as well as dedicated journal editions. In these more recent PWL studies, some of the manifold research questions have begun to be explored, which were opened up by the studies of Pierre and Ilsetraut Hadot, as well as its reception in Michel Foucault’s later work. What implications, after all, does understanding the history of PWL, and the predominance of this metaphilosophical conception in the history of Western thought, have for how we understand the practice of philosophy today? Does recovering the alternative understandings of philosophy as a practice in history necessarily lead to a criticism of contemporary, solely academic or theoretical modes of philosophizing, or is the idea of PWL one which has only historiographical force?

Sharpe, Matthew Let me begin with words from a different, more optimistic time: 'For it may be truly affirmed to the honour of these times, and in a virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the world had never throughlights made in it, till the age of us and our fathers. For although they had knowledge of the antipodes,... yet that might be by demonstration, and not in fact; and if by travel, it requireth the voyage but of half the globe. But to circle the earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done nor enterprised till these later times: and therefore these times may justly bear in their word, not only plus ultra, in precedence of the ancient non ultra,... but likewise imitabile c lum ; in respect of the many memorable voyages after the manner of heaven about the globe of the earth. And this proficience in navigation and discoveries may plant also an expectation of the further proficience and augmentation of all [the] sciences; because it may seem they are ordained by God to be coevals, that is, to meet in one age. For so the prophet Daniel speaking of the latter times foretelleth, 'Many shall pass over, and knowledge shall be increased': as if the openness and circumnavigation of the world and the increase of knowledge were appointed to be in the same ages; as we see it is already performed in great part: the learning of these later times not much giving place to the former two periods or returns of learning, the one of the Greeks, the other of the Romans...'

This paper stages a consideration of Slavoj Zizek’s recent texts discussing the Christian ethics of agape. Iread Zizek’s ‘turn’ to Christian ethics as not a violation of his earlier Kantianism, but as an attempt toovercome two related problems which haunt Kantian deontological moral philosophy. The first is theproblem that Kant severs morality too totally from the realm of ‘pathological’ inclination, and does notoffer us a realistic depiction of moral psychology. The second is that the formal emptiness of thecategorical imperative, especially as this had hitherto been read by Zizek, seems incapable of leading toany concrete ethicopolitical prescriptions. The key move, which is mapped in Part I, is Zizek’s adaptationof a Freudian moral psychology, which he reads as already anticipated in Saint Paul. The key notion is that human desire is generated 'from the ground up' as a perverse desire to transgress what is legislated by law. In Part II, I then look at Zizek’s reading of the JudaeoChristian heritage as one which addresses its ethical call to subjects, independently of their social stations or personal inclinations. Part III then stages Zizek’s recent reading of agape as an affirmative drive to do the good, which is premised on individuals ‘dying tothe law’, and therefore liberating their ‘pathology’ from the perverse dialectic of law and its transgression. When one has attained to this subjective position, Zizek suggests, the need to follow the moral law is no longer experienced as a humiliation of our ‘natural’ self-conceit, but as an affirmative act of bestowal to the Other[s]

This paper stages a consideration of Slavoj Zizek’s recent texts discussing the Christian ethics of agape. I read Zizek’s ‘turn’ to Christian ethics as not a violation of his earlier Kantianism, but as an attempt to overcome two related problems which haunt Kantian deontological moral philosophy. The first is the problem that Kant severs morality too totally from the realm of ‘pathological’ inclination, and does not offer us a realistic depiction of moral psychology. The second is that the formal emptiness of the categorical imperative, especially as this had hitherto been read by Zizek, seems incapable of leading to any concrete ethicopolitical prescriptions. The key move, which is mapped in Part I, is Zizek’s adaptation of a Freudian moral psychology, which he reads as already anticipated in Saint Paul. The key notion is that human desire is generated 'from the ground up' as a perverse desire to transgress what is legislated by law. In Part II, I then look at Zizek’s reading of the JudaeoChristian heritage as one which addresses its ethical call to subjects, independently of their social stations or personal inclinations. Part III then stages Zizek’s recent reading of agape as an affirmative drive to do the good, which is premised on individuals ‘dying to the law’, and therefore liberating their ‘pathology’ from the perverse dialectic of law and its transgression. When one has attained to this subjective position, Zizek suggests, the need to follow the moral law is no longer experienced as a humiliation of our ‘natural’ self-conceit, but as an affirmative act of bestowal to the Other[s].

This paper stages an argument in five premises:1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakableparticularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon itinto a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime.2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the secondof which involves a reflexive move which the post-structuralists are unwilling to sanction in theontological and/or ethical realm, even if they are performatively committed to doing it.3. That, drawing on the parallel established in 1, it could be argued that the same reflexive move asKant describes in the second 'moment' of the sublime is also at the heart of our moral experience,wherein we are faced by the Otherness of concrete Others. This amounts to the argument that askingOthers to follow an impersonal or 'dumb' law which fails to do justice to their noumenal Otherness is atthe same time the only possible way to respect this Otherness.4. That what game theory shows us is that, at thelimits of our ability to calculatively predict the conduct of other subjects, the only 'rational' thing to dois precisely to presume the pre-existence of impersonal social norms regulating our own conduct andthat of others.5. That, accordingly, to borrow a formulation from Slavoj Zizek, respect for theOther is always respect for their ‘castration’—that is, respect for their capacity to follow norms that do not directly do justice to their concrete particularity but which, in this very 'dumbness', let this Otherness indirectly show itself.In the conclusion, I reflect on what this argument does, and upon its limits—that is, what it does not

This paper stages an argument in five premises: 1. That the insight to which post-structuralist ethics responds—which is that there is an 'unmistakable particularity of concrete persons or social groups'—leads theorists who base their moral theory upon it into a problematic parallel to that charted by Kant in his analysis of the sublime. 2. That Kant's analysis of the sublime divides its experience into what I call two 'moments', the second of which involves a reflexive move which the post-structuralists are unwilling to sanction in the ontological and/or ethical realm, even if they are performatively committed to doing it. 3. That, drawing on the parallel established in 1, it could be argued that the same reflexive move as Kant describes in the second 'moment' of the sublime is also at the heart of our moral experience, wherein we are faced by the Otherness of concrete Others. This amounts to the argument that asking Others to follow an impersonal or 'dumb' law which fails to do justice to their noumenal Otherness is at the same time the only possible way to respect this Otherness. 4. That what game theory shows us is that, at the limits of our ability to calculatively predict the conduct of other subjects, the only 'rational' thing to do is precisely to presume the pre-existence of impersonal social norms regulating our own conduct and that of others. 5. That, accordingly, to borrow a formulation from Slavoj Zizek, respect for the Other is always respect for their 'castration'- that is, respect for their capacity to follow norms that do not directly do justice to their concrete particularity but which, in this very 'dumbness', let this Otherness indirectly show itself. In the conclusion, I reflect on what this argument does, and upon its limits—that is, what it does not.

It is possible to argue that the first world is presently living through a period of radical global reaction against the social democratic consensus of the twentieth century. In this context, the use of Slavoj Zizek's Lacnaian theory of ideology to critique the traditions of thought which inform this reaction becomes a vital task. In this paper, I use Zizek's Lacanian theory of ideology to critically analyse de Maistre's remarkable work: particularly his 'Considerations on France'. Zizek's emphasis on the role of the Real in ideology, it is argued, allows us unique purchase on de Maistre's ideological position. It allows us to show, furthermore, how reactionary conservatism does not 'conserve' the symbolic Other of the discourse of the master, since it is animated by fear and trembling that the symbolic can no longer hold in conditions of secularisation. In this context, the proximity of de Maistre with de Sade emerges as something that goes beyond superficially similar celebrations of the role of violence in human affairs. What is minimally at stake in reactionary thought per se, this paper argues, is the attempt to reground lost authority in the unmediated Real, a procedure in which the laying down of the law verges into the need to divide and sacifice others for the Jouissance of the Other. In this way, Lacan's comment that right-wing intelectuals are knaves who, if pushed, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve power is vindicated and also elaborated. For De Maistre, the paper shows, was nothing if not a
collosally royal knave

This paper examines Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Immanuel Kant. Its undergirding argument is that Zizek’s work as a whole- up to and including his politically radical statements, which have become more and more prominent since 1997- is conceivable as a project in the rereading of the Kantian ‘Copernican Revolution’ via Lacanian psychoanalysis. Critics now agree that Zizek’s orienting aim is to write a philosophy of politics, as more recent texts, like The Ticklish Subject make clear. (Kay, 2003; Sharpe, 2004; Dean 2006) If Zizek’s philosophy is ultimately a philosophy of politics, however, Zizek’s political philosophy is grounded in a wider post or ‘neo’-Kantian philosophy of subjectivity.
The essay has three major parts. Part I gives Zizek’s reading of Kant on the subject of apperception. Part II recounts Zizek’s pivotal reading of Kant on the sublime, which he ties closely to the problematics of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ of the first Critique. Part III then examines Zizek’s conception of subjectivity in terms of the faculties (and especially the faculty of imagination) that Kant argues are involved in the transcendental constitution of objects in the first half of The Critique of Pure Reason.
In the Conclusion, the force of the paper’s subtitle—‘Politicising the Transcendental Turn’—will become manifest. I lay out three principles of Zizek’s ‘neoKantian/Hegelian’ ontology. These also make clear how his philosophy of political agency is grounded in this apparently suprapolitical or solely philosophical reading of Kant.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is central to John McDowell’s classic Mind and World. In Lectures IV and V of that work, McDowell makes three claims concerning Aristotle’s ethics: first, that Aristotle did not base his ethics on an externalist, naturalistic basis (including a theory of human nature); second, that attempts to read him as an ethical naturalist are a modern anachronism, generated by the supposed need to ground all viable philosophical claims on claims analogous to the natural sciences; and third, that a suitably construed Aristotelian conception of “second nature” can form the basis of a viable contemporary philosophy of mind, world, and normativity. This paper challenges each of these three claims. Aristotle’s ethics, we will claim alongside Terence Irwin, Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, and many premodern commentators, is based in the kind of physics, metaphysics, and metaphysical biology that McDowell says it cannot be. Historically, we will argue that McDowell’s argument that Aristotle’s ethical reasoning is “autonomous” or “self-standing” is distinctly modern, citing evidence from the leading medieval commentators on the Nicomachean Ethics. The felt need to which McDowell responds, of reading Aristotle’s ethical or political thought as wholly non-metaphysical, arises from out of the successes of the natural sciences in the modern world, which he agrees discredit the Aristotelian, teleological account of nature. In the final part of the paper, we propose that McDowell’s account of normativity, rooted in the non-metaphysical “second nature” he reads into Aristotle, we will contend, is as it stands inescapably relativistic. On a different note, we need also to recognize, as McDowell does not, that this is a new Aristotle, one shaped by our requirements and space of reasons, not the mind and world of the Greek Philosopher himself.

Is the Stoic sage a possible or desirable ideal for contemporary men and women, as we enter into difficult times? Is he, as Seneca presents him, the very best person for a crisis? In order to examine these questions, Part 1 begins from what Irene Liu calls the “standard” modern conceptions of the sage as either a kind of epistemically perfect, omniscient agent, or else someone in possession of a specific arsenal of theoretical knowledge, especially concerning the physical world. We contest this contentious conception of the sage for being inconsistent with the Stoic conceptions of wisdom, the technai and knowledge which can be gleaned from the doxographic sources. In Part 2, we suggest that the wisdom of the Stoic sage reflects the Stoics’ “dispositional” conception of knowledge, their substantive conception of reason, and their sense of philosophy as above all an “exercise” or askêsis of a craft or technê for living. It is embodied in an ongoing exercise of examining one’s impressions for consistency with what one already knows, looking back to the natural prolêpseis with which all people are equipped. In Part 3, we show how only this account of the wisdom of the sage, at the epistemic level, enables us to understand how, in the non-doxographic texts led by Seneca’s De Constantia Sapientiae, the sage is celebrated above all for his ethical characteristics, and his ability to bear up in a crisis. Concluding reflections return to our framing concern, as to whether philosophy as a way of life, and the ancient ideal of the sage, can speak to us today not only as scholars, but as individuals called upon to live in difficult times. We suggest that they can and should remain sources of orientation, contestation, and inspiration.

Slavoj Zizek is one of the most provocative and important thinkers writing in contemporary philosophy. This book is an engaged debate with Zizek. It contains a series of specially commissioned critical essays from an impressive collection of contributors covering the full extent of his oeuvre. Essays examine Zizek on cultural theory, film studies, ethics, political theory, social theory, Kant and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In the spirit of Zizek‘s own interventions, these essays critically interrogate his ideas, challenging him to respond directly which he does in an extended polemical reply that concludes the collection. This volume represents an exciting and important contribution to contemporary theoretical debate and adds significantly to the growing literature on Zizek.

The idea of philosophy as a 'way of life' is not a new one. From the first recorded philosophy by Plato, there has been a tradition of thinking about philosophy as pointing us towards the good life, happiness and an ethical existence. But where does this notion that philosophy has anything to offer in terms of guiding us in how to live and live well come from? In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life, Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure take us us through the history of the idea from Plato and the Buddha to Foucault, Hadot and Zizek. They examine the kinds of practical exercises each thinker recommended and practiced to transform their philosophy into manners of living and acting. Philosophy as a Way of Life also examines the recent resurgence of thinking about philosophy as a practical, lived reality and why this ancient tradition still has so much relevance and power in the contemporary world.

"Understanding Psychoanalysis" presents a broad introduction to the key concepts and developments in psychoanalysis and its impact on modern thought. Charting pivotal moments in the theorization and reception of psychoanalysis, the book provides a comprehensive account of the concerns and development of Freud's work, as well as his most prominent successors, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan.The work of these leading psychoanalytic theorists has greatly influenced thinking across other disciplines, notably feminism, film studies, poststructuralism, social and cultural theory, the philosophy of science and the emerging discipline of neuropsychoanalysis. Analysing this engagement with other disciplines and their key theorists, "Understanding Psychoanalysis" argues for a reconsideration of psychoanalysis as a resource for philosophy, science, and cultural studies

What follows is a work of critical reconstruction of Camus' thought. It aims to answer to the wish Camus expressed in his later notebooks, that he at least be read closely. Specifically, I hope to do three things. In Part I, we will show how Camus' famous philosophy of the absurd represents a systematic scepticism whose closest philosophical predecessor is Descartes' method of doubt, and whose consequence, as in Descartes, is the discovery of a single, orienting certainty, on the basis of which Camus would proceed to pass beyond the 'nihilism' that conservative critics continued to level against him (MS 34). Part II will unfold the central tenets of Camus' mature thought of rebellion, and show how Camus' central political claims follow from his para-Cartesian claim to have found an irreducible or 'invincible' basis for a post-metaphysical ethics, consistent with the most thoroughgoing epistemic scepticism. Part III then undertakes to show that the neoclassical rhetoric and positioning Camus claimed for his postwar thought—as a thought of moderation or mesure, and a renewed Greek or Mediterranean naturalism—is more than a stylistic pretension. It represents, so I argue, a singular amalgam of modern and philosophical classical motifs which makes Camus' voice nearly unique in twentieth century ideas, and all the more worth reconsidering today. So let us proceed