The Present Alone is Our Happiness, Second Edition: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson / Edition 2

by Pierre Hadot, Marc Djaballah, Michael Chase

Overview

One of the most influential historians of ancient philosophy of the past half-century, Pierre Hadot was adept at using ancient philosophers to illuminate the relevance of their ideas to contemporary life. This new edition of The Present Alone is Our Happiness, which has been significantly revised and expanded to include two previously untranslated essays, is an ideal introduction to some of Hadot's more scholarly work. In it, we discover 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804775434
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	02/23/2011
Series:	Cultural Memory in the Present
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	693,950
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) was Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France, where he held the Chair of the History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Most of his major works have been translated into English, including Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995), What is Ancient Philosophy? (2004), and The Veil of Isis (2004). Arnold I. Davidson is Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Professor of the History of Political Philosophy at the University of Pisa. He has written widely on contemporary French philosophy, is the English language series editor of Michel Foucault's courses at the Collège de France, and is the author of The Emergence of Sexuality (2001). Jeannie Carlier is Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. She has published essays on philosophy and religious practices in late antiquity and is a specialist in Neoplatonism.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Tied to the Apron Strings of the Church 1

2 Researcher, Teacher, Philosopher 30

3 Philosophical Discourse 52

4 Interpretation, Objectivity, and Nonsense 61

5 Unitary Experience and Philosophical Life 75

6 Philosophical Discourse as Spiritual Exercise 87

7 Philosophy as Life and as Quest for Wisdom 98

8 From Socrates to Foucault. A Long Tradition 121

9 Unacceptable? 145

10 The Present Alone Is Our Happiness 162

Postface 177

Notes 183

Editorial Reviews

"Hadot's refreshing efforts to free philosophy and its history from the sterile constraints of abstract theorizing and academic specialization find a lively and productive outlet in the interviews collected here. Introduced by Jeannie Carlier, a French scholar of Neo-platonic religious thought and friend of Hadot, and conducted in turns by Carlier and Arnold Davidson, the American philosopher and intellectual historian most responsible for the introduction and dissemination of Hadot's work in English-speaking contexts, these conversations explore in depth and varied detail both the personal and the intellectual development of a scholar whose own work insists above all that the personal or existential cannot rightly or fruitfully be separated from the intellectual or philosophical. Enacting the kind of dialogue that Hadot believes essential to any philosophy that would constitute a living relation between persons rather than an abstract relation to ideas, these interviews could not find a more suitable subject."—Thomas A. Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara

From the Publisher

"Hadot's refreshing efforts to free philosophy and its history from the sterile constraints of abstract theorizing and academic specialization find a lively and productive outlet in the interviews collected here. Introduced by Jeannie Carlier, a French scholar of Neo-platonic religious thought and friend of Hadot, and conducted in turns by Carlier and Arnold Davidson, the American philosopher and intellectual historian most responsible for the introduction and dissemination of Hadot's work in English-speaking contexts, these conversations explore in depth and varied detail both the personal and the intellectual development of a scholar whose own work insists above all that the personal or existential cannot rightly or fruitfully be separated from the intellectual or philosophical. Enacting the kind of dialogue that Hadot believes essential to any philosophy that would constitute a living relation between persons rather than an abstract relation to ideas, these interviews could not find a more suitable subject."

Universityof California, Santa Barbara - Thomas A. Carlson

Hadot's (The Veil of Isis) early education for and experience in the Roman Catholic priesthood provided him with considerable exposure to philosophical traditions from ancient Greece through Thomas's systematic work and the moderns, including Kant and Kierkegaard. After leaving the priesthood, Hadot continued both his academic and his spiritual life, taking interest in Gabriel Marcel's Christian existentialism and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. His greatest affection continues to be for the ancients, especially Socrates and Plotinus. In the conversations collected here, Hadot reveals himself as having a thoughtful, good-humored intellect, still curious about cultural events as well as the philosophical world. Carlier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) pulls more personal thought and memories from him with her questions, while Davidson (The Emergence of Sexuality) acts more as a coacademic interested in exposing his own knowledge as well as Hadot's thoughts. The volume is highly appealing in tone and engaging in content, serving as a prism of 20th-century formal education in philosophy. Interested lay readers and undergraduates will enjoy, as well as find edification in, Hadot's latest.
—Francisca Goldsmith

Library Journal