History of philosophy
Pierre Hadot
1922 – 2010
Ancient philosophy read as spiritual exercise — something done daily rather than concluded. The clearest precedent for treating leadership as maintenance, not acquisition.
Read alongside: Stay
- Start with
- Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995)
- Where they resist the book
- Hadot's exercises presume a school and a teacher. Most readers have neither, and the book has to answer what replaces them.
Works worth the time
Philosophy as a Way of Life · 1995
Ancient philosophy as daily exercise rather than doctrine — the precedent for treating this as a practice.
Read further
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Pierre Hadot ↗
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Wikipedia: Pierre Hadot ↗
Wikipedia
Where Hadot appears
A practice is sustained by its internal standards.
Hadot reads ancient philosophy as spiritual exercise — something done daily, not concluded. MacIntyre distinguishes goods internal to a practice from external rewards, and warns how reliably institutions corrode the first in pursuit of the second. Kierkegaard supplies the honesty: understanding backwards, living forwards.