Pierre Hadot Quotes

It is not things that trouble us,” as Epictetus said, “but our judgment about things,

For us, nature’s final accomplishment is contemplation, becoming aware, and a way of living in harmony with nature.

...the only thing each of us lives and loses is the present.

Do what you must, let happen what may

All Hellenistic schools seem to define [wisdom] in approximately the same terms: first and foremost, as a state of perfect peace of mind. From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries, anguish, and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures; for the Stoics, by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest; and for the Skeptics, by false opinions. Whether or not they laid claim to the Socratic heritage, all Hellenistic philosophers agreed with Socrates that human beings are plunged in misery, anguish, and evil because they exist in ignorance. Evil is to be found not within things, but in the value judgments with people bring to bear upon things. People can therefore be cured of their ills only if they are persuaded to change their value judgments, and in this sense all these philosophies wanted to be therapeutic.

In the first place, sensation (aisthesis) is a corporeal process which we have in common with animals, and in which the impression of an exterior object is transmitted to the soul. By means of this process, an image (phantasia) of the object is produced in the soul, or more precisely in the guiding part (hegemonikon) of the soul

...breathe the intellect which embraces all things as if it were the surrounding air....

In Plato's time, dialectics was a debating technique subject to precise rules. A "thesis" was proposed-an interrogative proposition such as: Can virtue be taught? One of the two interlocutors attacked the thesis; the other defended it. The former attacked by interrogating-that is, he asked the defender skillfully chosen questions with the aim of forcing him to admit the contradictory of the thesis he wanted to defend. The interrogator had no thesis, and this was why Socrates was in the habit of playing that role.

Attention (prosochê) is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude,” explains author Pierre Hadot.

The Epicurean message, as the noted French scholar of late antique philosophy Pierre Hadot succinctly explains, is that we must ‘learn to be content with what satisfies fundamental needs, while renouncing what is superfluous.

Being a better dialectician meant not only being skillful at invention or at denouncing tricks in reasoning. Before anything else, it meant knowing how to dialogue, together with all the demands that this entails: recognizing the presence and the rights of one's interlocutor, basing one's replies on what the interlocutor admits he knows, and therefore agreeing with him at each stage of the discussion. Above all, it meant submitting oneself to the demands and norms of reason and the search for truth; finally, it meant recognizing the absolute value of the Good. It therefore meant leaving behind one's individual point of view, in order to rise to a universal viewpoint; and it meant trying to see things within the perspective of the All and the deity, thereby transforming one's vision of the world and one's own inner attitude.

Philosophical discourse does not want to sculpt statues ‘immobile on the pedestals’ [the beautiful statues which philosophical systems are, we can perhaps add, PH]. It rather aims at making everything it touches active, efficacious and alive; it wants to inspire the desire to act, judgements which generate useful acts … [and] engender greatness of soul.48

Manual para una vida feliz

All things Near and far Are linked to each other In a hidden way By an immortal power So that you cannot pick a flower Without disturbing a star.19

From the point of view of the imminence of death, one thing counts, and one alone: to strive always to have the essential rules of life present in one’s mind, and to keep placing oneself in the fundamental disposition of the philosopher, which consists essentially in controlling one’s inner discourse, in doing only that which is of benefit to the human community, and in accepting the events brought to us by the course of the Nature of the All.

We feel the life and motion about us, and the universal beauty: the tides marching back and forth with weariless industry, laving the beautiful shores, and swaying the purple dulse of the broad meadows of the sea where the fishes are fed, the wild streams in rows white with waterfalls, ever in bloom and ever in song, spreading their branches over a thousand mountains; the vast forests feeding on the drenching sunbeams, every cell in a whirl of enjoyment; misty flocks of insects stirring all the air, the wild sheep and goats on the grassy ridges above the woods, bears in the berry-tangles, mink and beaver and otter far back on many a river and lake; Indians and adventurers pursuing their lonely ways; birds tending to their young—everywhere, everywhere, beauty and life, and glad, rejoicing action. In this moment, he was experiencing what the Stoics would call sympatheia—a connectedness with the cosmos. The French philosopher Pierre Hadot has referred to it as the “oceanic feeling.” A sense of belonging to something larger, of realizing that “human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity.

It is probable that many educated people—and especially philosophers—were in the habit of making such collections of all kinds of notes for their personal use: both in order to inform themselves, and also in order to form themselves; that is, to ensure their spiritual progress. It was no doubt with this goal in mind that Plutarch had put together his collection on the tranquillity of the soul.

Leave your books alone. Don’t let yourself be distracted any longer; you can’t allow yourself that any more (II, 2, 2). Throw away your thirst for reading, so that when you die, you will not be grumbling, but will be in true serenity, thanking the gods from the bottom of your heart (II, 3, 3). Marcus is no longer to disperse himself by gathering extracts from authors in the course of his readings, for he no longer has time to read. He is no longer, out of intellectual curiosity or speculative interest, to write great quantities of “note-cards,” as we would call them nowadays: rather, he is to write only in order to influence himself, and concentrate on the essential principles (II, 3, 3): Let these thoughts be enough, if they are life-principles (dogmata) for you. Marcus, then, is to keep on writing. From now on, however, he will write only efficacious thoughts: that is, those which totally transform his way of living. As he wrote these texts, which were to become our Meditations, Marcus no doubt used these “note-cards” which he was afraid he would no longer have the time to reread; just as he no doubt had recourse to his collections of extracts in order to take from them the quotations from authors which he reproduced in several books of the Meditations. Formally, then, Marcus’ literary activity did not change. He continued to write down for himself all kinds of notes and reflections (hypomnēmata); but the finality of these intellectual exercises had become completely modified. From the point of view of the imminence of death, one thing counts, and one alone: to strive always to have the essential rules of life present in one’s mind, and to keep placing oneself in the fundamental disposition of the philosopher, which consists essentially in controlling one’s inner discourse, in doing only that which is of benefit to the human community, and in accepting the events brought to us by the course of the Nature of the All. Thus, the Meditations belong to that type of writing called hypomnēmata in antiquity, which we could define as “personal notes taken on a day-to-day basis.

el libro de las Meditaciones no envejecerá jamás; pues no afirma ningún dogma. El Evangelio ha envejecido en algunas partes; la ciencia ya no permite admitir la ingenua concepción de lo sobrenatural que está en su base. Lo sobrenatural no es en las Meditaciones más que una pequeña mancha insignificante que no alcanza la maravillosa belleza del fondo. Aunque la ciencia pudiese destruir a Dios y al alma^ el libro de las Meditaciones seguiría permaneciendo joven en su vida y en su verdad. La religión de Marco Aurelio, como lo fuera en algunos momentos la de Jesús, es la religión absoluta, la que resulta del simple hecho de una elevada conciencia moral situada frente al universo. No es ni de una raza ni de un país* ninguna revolución, ningún progreso, ningún descubrimiento podrá cambiarla

Todos los estoicos pues, y no solamente Marco Aurelio, se habrían podido suscribir a las dos formulaciones kantianas del imperativo categórico: «Actúa únicamente según la máxima que hace que puedas querer, al mismo tiempo, que se convierta en ley universal.» «Actúa como si la máxima de tu acción tuviese que erigirse, por medio de tu voluntad, en ley universal de la Naturaleza,»6 No hay que decir: Marco Aurelio escribe corno si hubiera leído la Crítica de la razón practica sino más bien: Kant emplea estas fórmulas porque, entre otros, ha leído a los estoicos.

Podríamos decir, además, que hay en la humanidad un estoicismo universal, quiero decir con ello que la actitud que llamamos «estoica» es una de las posibilidades permanentes y fundamentales del ser humano, cuando busca la sabiduría.

Wie Kierkegaard nur Christ ist durch das Bewusstsein, es nicht zu sein, ist Sokrates nur durch das Bewusstsein weise, dass er es nicht ist.

Alte Wahrheiten ..., denn es gibt Wahrheiten, deren Sinn alle Generationen der Menschheit nicht auszuschöpfen vermögen; nicht, dass sie schwer zu verstehen wären - sie sind im Gegenteil äußerst einfach, erwecken sogar oft den Anschein der Banalität -, um aber ihren Sinn genau zu verstehen, muss man sie leben, muss man sie immer wieder neu erfahren.

With respect to Stoicism, Hadot has described four features that constitute the universal Stoic attitude. They are, first, the Stoic consciousness of "the fact that no being is alone, but that we make up part of a Whole, constituted by the totality of human beings as well as by the totality of the cosmos"; second, the Stoic "feels absolutely serene, free, and invulnerable to the extent that he has become aware that there is no other evil but moral evil and that the only thing that counts is the purity of moral consciousness"; third, the Stoic "believes in the absolute value of the human person," a belief that is "at the origin of the modern notion of the 'rights of man'"; finally, the Stoic exercises his concentration "on the present instant, which consists, on the one hand, in living as if we were seeing the world for the first and for the last time, and, on the other hand, in being conscious that, in this lived presence of the instant, we have access to the totality of time and of the world." 17 Thus, for Hadot, cosmic consciousness, the purity of moral consciousness, the recognition of the equality and absolute value of human beings, and the concentration on the present instant represent the universal Stoic attitude. The universal Epicurean attitude essentially consists, by way of "a certain discipline and reduction of desires, in returning from pleasures mixed with pain and suffering to the simple and pure pleasure of existing.

Die Sorge, welche uns im Hinblick auf die Zukunft zerreißt, verbirgt uns den unvergleichlichen Wert der einfachen Tatsache unserer Existenz.

Se habla a sí mismo, pero tenemos la impresión de que se dirige a cada uno de entre nosotros.

Entre el estoicismo y Nietzsche se abre un abismo. Mientras que el «sí» estoico es consentimiento a la racionalidad del mundo, la afirmación dionisíaca de la existencia de la que habla Nietzsche es un «sí» dado a la irracionalidad, a la crueldad ciega de la vida, a la voluntad de poder más allá del bien y del mal

estaba experimentando en ese momento es lo que los estoicos llamaron sympatheia, la conexión con el cosmos. El filósofo francés Pierre Hadot la llama la “sensación oceánica”, un sentido de pertenencia a algo más grande, un darse cuenta de que “las cosas humanas son un punto infinitesimal en la inmensidad”. Esos son los momentos en que somos libres y nos sentimos atraídos hacia las preguntas importantes: ¿quién soy? ¿Qué estoy haciendo? ¿Cuál es mi papel en el mundo?

...politics cannot be separated from the great human and cosmic perspectives That are opened up for us by our recognition of a transcendent universality - Reason or Nature - which, by means of its harmony with itself, founds both people’s love for one another and their love for that Whole of which they are the part.

Rien n’est plus naturel que d’être saisi de vertige à l’aspect d’un immense paysage qui se découvre brusquement devant vous et vous fait éprouver votre petitesse et votre grandeur60

le second lui rappelle « l’amour de son aurore » et, s’élevant dans l’éther, « emporte avec lui le meilleur de lui-même ».

the best description of the entries is that suggested by the French scholar Pierre Hadot. They are “spiritual exercises” composed to provide a momentary stay against the stress and confusion of everyday life: a self-help book in the most literal sense.

...když jednou kdosi tvrdil, že neexistuje pohyb, Diogenés vstal a začal se procházet.