Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions (Re-inventing Philosophy as a Way of Life)

"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."-- Provided by publisher Cover Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The ancients 1 Socrates and the inception of philosophy as a way of life 1.1 The atopia of Socrates 1.2 A founding exception 1.3 Socrates contra the Sophists 1.4 The elenchus as spiritual exercise 1.5 Care of the psyche 1.6 The sage and the Socratic paradoxes 1.7 The Socratic legacy 2 Epicureanism: Philosophy as a divine way of life 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Epicureanism as way of life, therapy and of writing 2.3 The turn inwards: against empty opinions, unnatural and unnecessary desires 2.4 Epicurus’s revaluation of happiness, pleasure and the good 2.5 The gods and the figure of the sage 2.6 The fourfold cure, and physics as spiritual exercise 2.7 Spiritual exercises within the garden 2.8 Criticisms 3 The Stoic art of living 3.1 Wisdom, knowledge of things human and divine, and an art of living 3.2 The Socratic lineage: dialectic, the emotions and the sufficiency of virtue 3.3 From Musonius Rufus to Seneca 3.4 Epictetus’s paranetic discourses, and his handbook 3.5 Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (Ta Eis Heauton) 4 Platonisms as ways of life 4.1 Introduction: Platonisms 4.2 From Arcesilaus to Pyrrhonism: scepticism as a way life 4.3 Cicero: the philosopher as rhetorician and physician of the soul 4.4 Plotinus’s philosophical mysticism 4.5 Boethius and the end of ancient philosophy Part II: Medievals and early moderns 5 Philosophy as a way of life in the Middle Ages 5.1 On Christianity as ‘philosophy’ 5.2 Monastic philosophia, and the Christianization of spiritual exercises 5.3 Scholasticism, the theoreticization of philosophia, and the ascendancy of dialectic 5.4 Counter-strains: from Abelard to Dante’s il convito 6 The renaissance of philosophy as a way of life 6.1 Philosophy, the humanisti and the ascendancy of rhetoric 6.2 Petrarch’s Christian-Stoic medicines of the mind 6.3 Montaigne: the essayist as philosopher 6.4 Justus Lipsius’s Neostoicism 7 Cultura animi in early modern philosophy 7.1 The end of PWL (again)? 7.2 Francis Bacon: the Idols and the Georgics of the mind 7.3 On Descartes, method and meditations 7.4 Conclusion: from experimental philosophy to the enlightenment 8 Figures of the philosophe in the French enlightenment 8.1 ‘The philosophe’ 8.2 Voltaire and the view from Sirius 8.3 Diderot and his Seneca Part III: The moderns Interlude: The nineteenth-century conflict between PWL and university philosophy 9 Schopenhauer: Philosophy as the way out of life 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Philosophy against sophistry (again) 9.3 Two cheers for Stoicism 9.4 The saint versus the sage 9.5 Schopenhauerian salvation 10 Nietzsche: Philosophy as the return to life 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Nietzsche’s metaphilosophical meditations 10.3 Nietzsche’s philosophy as a spiritual exercise 10.4 Nietzsche’s spiritual exercise: Eternal recurrence 10.5 Conclusion 11 Foucault’s reinvention of philosophy as a way of life 11.1 Philosophical Heroism: Foucault’s Cynics 11.2 Foucault’s reinvention of PWL 11.3 Genealogy as a spiritual exercise 11.4 Conclusion Conclusion: Philosophy as a way of life today and in the future 1 PWL today 2 History, declines and rebirths 3 Criticisms 4 PWL of the future? Appendix Notes Bibliography Index of Proper names of primary sources Index of concepts Philosophy as a way of life-a new, ancient paradigm -- Part 1. The ancients. 1. Socrates ; 2. Epicureanism ; 3. Stoicism and the art of living. 3.1 Introduction ; 3.2 The Socratic lineage ; 3.3 From Musonius Rufus to Seneca ; 3.4 Epictetus' discourses and handbook ; 3.5 Marcus Aurelius' meditations ; 4. Platonisms as ways of life. 4.1. Platonisms ; 4.2. Scepticisms, from academic to Pyrrhonian ; 4.3. Cicero, philosophy as medicina animi ; 4.4. Plotinus: mysticism as a way of life ; 4.5. Boethius and the end of antiquity ; 5. Philosophy as a way of life in the Middle Ages. 5.1. Christian philosophia? ; 5.2. Monasticism and the spiritual exercises ; 5.3. Scholasticism and the theoreticisation of philosophy ; 5.4. Averroeism and philosophy for the laity -- Part 2. The moderns. 6. The Renaissances of philosophy as a way of life ; 6.1. Humanism, philosophy and rhetoric ; 6.2. Petrarch's Christianised stoicism ; 6.3. Montaigne, the essayist as philosopher ; 6.4. Justus Lipsius' Neostoicism ; 7. The early moderns. 7.1. Francis Bacon, the novum organum and the Georgics of the mind ; 7.2. Spinoza ; 7.3. The Royal Society virtuosi and Shaftesbury's exercises ; 8. Figures of the philosophe in the French Enlightenment. 8.1 "The philosophe" of Du Marsais, and of the enlightenment ; 8.2. The patriarch, Voltaire: philosophy between Sirius and Earth ; 8.3. "The" philosophe, Diderot, and his Seneca ; 9. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche -- Part 3. 20th century reinventions. 10. Camus and existentialism ; 11. Slavoj Zizek and the idea of the real ; 12. Philosophy as therapy -- Conclusion: An apology for philosophy as a way of life In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life in the Western tradition, Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure take us through the history of the idea from Socrates and Plato, via the medievals, Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Foucault and Hadot. They examine the kinds of practical exercises each thinker recommended to transform their philosophy into manners of living. 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.