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Between too Intellectualist and not Intellectualist Enough: Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises and Annas’ Virtues as Skills

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Notes

  1. See Pierre Hadot, The Present Alone is Our Happiness. Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Marc Djaballah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 30–74; “Mes livres et mes recherches”, Exercises Spirituels (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002), 367–368; “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?”, Ětudes de philosophie ancienne (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2010), 207–209.

  2. See especially Pierre Hadot, ““La Figure du Sage dans L’Antiquité Gréco-Latine,” in Études de Philosophie Antique, 233–258.

  3. For this three-fold division of the goal of philosophy, see Pierre Hadot, “La philosophie comme maniěre de vivre”, Exercises Spirituels,289–297; “Un dialogue interrompu avec Michel Foucault”, Exercises Spirituels, 305–312.

  4. See Pierre Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises” in Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. M. Chase (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 71–125; see also the systematic presentation in “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?”

  5. See John Sellars, The Art of Living: the Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy (London: Duckwell, 2009 (2nd edition)).

  6. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 84

  7. See André-Jean Voelke, Le Philosophie Comme Thérapie de l’Âme: Etudes de Philosophie Hellénistique Préface par Pierre Hadot (Fribourg: Academic Press, 1993), 73–89; also see Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations books III–IV. See also the works on this subject listed by Hadot at “Spiritual Exercises”, 86.

  8. See Pierre Hadot, “Jeux de langage et philosophie”, Wittgenstein et les limites du langage (Paris: Vrin, 2014), 83–104.

  9. See also Ilsetraut Hadot, Sénèque: direction spirituelle et pratique de la philosophie (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2014), 52–54.

  10. See Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 89–93; also “Philosophie, dialectique, rhétorique dans l’antiquité”, Ětudes de philosophie ancienne, 159–193.

  11. See Pierre Hadot, The Present Alone is Our Happiness, 30–74; “Mes livres et mes recherches”, Exercises Spirituels, 367–368; “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique”, Ětudes de philosophie ancienne, 207–209. On the importance of writing and then the printing press in reshaping philosophical culture, see Pierre Hadot, “Jeux de langage et philosophie”, in Wittgenstein et les limites du language, 101–102.

  12. Hadot,” Spiritual Exercises”, 81–82; see also, for Clement, 108, note 5.

  13. See Hadot, “The View from Above”, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, 238–250.

  14. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 82.

  15. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 83, 86, 94–95.

  16. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 95–101; on the greatness of soul or conscience cosmique, see also “Philosophie comme maniěre”.

  17. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 82.

  18. See Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 82.

  19. See for example Hadot “La Philosophie Antique”, 214–223; Michel Foucault, Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981–1982, edited by Frederic Gros, translated by Graham Burchell (New York: Picador, 2006), 425–426; Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 211–242).

  20. Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 81–82.

  21. John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012), 17–22, 402–403, notes 4–5.

  22. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom, 17; cf. Martha Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993), 5–6, 373.

  23. Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, 5–6. See Matthew Dennis, “On the Role of Philosophy in Self-Cultivation: Reassessing Nussbaum’s Critique of Foucault', Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy 28 (2017):136–155; and Matthew Sharpe, “What Place Discourse, What Role Argumentation? Against the Standard Image of Pierre Hadot’s Conception of Philosophy as a Way of Life”, Pli (2016): 25–54.

  24. Brad Inwood, “Review of John Sellars, The Art of Living: the Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy”, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004.04.04, online at www-site https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23760-the-art-of-living-the-stoics-on-the-nature-and-function-of-philosophy/, last accessed November 2015.

  25. See Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 110, note 16.

  26. Julia Annas, “Virtue as a Skill”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 3:2 (1995), 227–243.

  27. See Matthew Stichter, “The Skill of Virtue” (PhD Dissertation: Graduate College of Bowling Green State University, 2007); Matthew Stichter, “Virtues as Skills in Virtue Epistemology”, Journal of Philosophical Research 38 (2013): 333–348; Matthew Stichter, “Practical Skills and Practical Wisdom in Virtue,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 94:3 (2015), 435–448.

  28. See esp. Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993).

  29. Annas, “Virtue as a Skill”, 228–229.

  30. See Part 3 below.

  31. Annas, “Virtue as a skill”, 228.

  32. Annas, “Virtue as a skill”, 229.

  33. Annas, “Virtue as a Skill”, 231.

  34. Annas, “Virtue as a Skill”, 231.

  35. Annas, “Virtue as a Skill”, 231–232.

  36. Annas, “Virtue as a Skill”, 231.

  37. Matt Stichter, “Philosophical and Psychological Accounts of Expertise and Experts”, Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (2015), 106–111.

  38. Daniel K. Lapsley & Patrick L. Hill, “On Dual Processing and Heuristic Approaches to Moral Cognition”, Journal of Moral Education, 37: 3 (2008), 313–332. Cited at Stichter, “Philosophical and Psychological Accounts of Expertise and Experts”, 107, note 5.

  39. Annas, “Virtue as Skill”, 229–230, 232.

  40. D. S. Hutchinson, “Doctrines of the Mean and the Debate Concerning Skills in Fourth-Century Medicine, Rhetoric, and Ethics”, Apeiron 21 (1988), 21, 17–52.

  41. Hutchinson, “Doctrines of the Mean”, 33–34. See Plutarch, “On the Education of Children”, Moralia, Volume I: The Education of Children. How the Young Man Should Study Poetry. On Listening to Lectures. How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend. How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library 197 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).

  42. Hutchinson, “Doctrines of the Mean”, 33–34.

  43. See Sellars, Art of Living, 52–63. See Part 3 below.

  44. Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), 25–26, with 19 for qualification.

  45. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 26.

  46. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 24.

  47. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 12.

  48. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 12, 16–17, 21; see Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus, Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).

  49. See Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 16–25.

  50. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 16–25.

  51. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 4, 12–13.

  52. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 18 (italics ours).

  53. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 13.

  54. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 19.

  55. See, most notably, Pierre Hadot, La citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle (Paris: Fayard, 1991).

  56. See Brouwer, The Stoic Sage, “Two Definitions”, 13–55.

  57. Brouwer, The Stoic Sage, “Two Definitions”, 51–52.

  58. I here divide the quote into the separate premises Epictetus adduces.

  59. Pierre Hadot, “La physique comme exercise spirituel ou pessimisme et optimisme chez Marc Aurèle”, Exercises Spirituels, 155.

  60. Hadot, “La physique”, 154.

  61. Hadot, “La physique”, 154–156.

  62. Hadot, “La physique”, 153–154.

  63. See Part 2 and Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 12, 16–17, 21.

  64. Foucault, Hermeneutics of the Subject, 325.

  65. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 12, 16–17, 21, and see above.

  66. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 18, cited in Part 2above.

  67. See Brouwer, The Stoic Sage, 98–141.

  68. Annas, Intelligent Virtue, 19.

  69. See Hadot, “Spiritual Exercises”, 103–104.

  70. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom, 17–22, 402–403, n. 4–5.

  71. See for example on Neoplatonism and the exercises Hadot, “La philosophie ancienne”, 226–228; also “Le divisions des parties de la philosophie”, Ětudes de Philosophie Ancienne, 145–149.

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Sharpe, M. Between too Intellectualist and not Intellectualist Enough: Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises and Annas’ Virtues as Skills. J Value Inquiry 55, 269–287 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-021-09815-z

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