As we were discussing last time, there is a movement in philosophy at the moment to go beyond postmodernism’s emphasis on semiotics and ethical relativism, to return to an idea of philosophy as the practice of the ‘Good Life’.

One can see this shift take place in the thought of Michel Foucault, who by the late 1970s was both the leading postmodernist philosopher, and arguably the most famous intellectual, in the world.

Foucault’s earlier works, such as Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization, were postmodernist in so far as they analysed Enlightenment definitions of truth, reason, and human nature, and tried to show how these definitions were manufactured by power relations. All discourse, Foucault suggested, is rooted in the attempt by one group or individual to exert power over other groups or individuals.

In the 1980s, however, during the last stage of his career, Foucault moved beyond these considerations, and abruptly became very interested in Hellenistic philosophy, and its idea of philosophy as the practice of ‘care of the self’.

He declared, in a lecture given in 1982: “Perhaps I’ve insisted too much on the technology of domination and power. I am more and more interested…in the mode of action that an individual exercises upon himself by means of the technologies of the self.”

Foucault spent the last years of his life studying the cognitive techniques found in Hellenistic philosophy, particularly Stoicism, which individuals used in order to care for the psyche and cure it of emotional suffering. This, as he notes, was the original role of philosophy, as therapeia for the psyche. As the Greek philosopher Epicurus said: “There is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul.”

The aspiring philosopher used certain well-known and defined cognitive and ascetic exercises, or ‘technologies’, in order to gain ataraxia (or tranquillity) and autarkia (or self-mastery). The sage became ‘master of himself’, by mastering his wandering thoughts and passions, learning mental attentiveness, and making himself perfectly in harmony with the ups and downs of fortune, and the creating and destructing of ever-changing nature.

Foucault, who’d spent most of his career analysing the way one group dominates and oppresses another, was fascinated by the idea of an individual learning to dominate himself or herself, and thereby gaining moral freedom. And this freedom, this ethical distance from one’s own passions and thoughts, could he believed be the foundation for a new ethics of liberation.

He was particularly attracted by Stoicism because it seemed to offer our era a way forward beyond the (declared) death of God and the postmodernist loss of faith in universals like ‘absolute truth’, ‘human nature’ or ‘universal values’. Stoic philosophy, it seemed to Foucault, didn’t care that much about such dogma or claims to absolute truth. Philosophy in the Stoic view was not a discourse. It was a set of practices, an askesis, a way of life.

The goal of that way of life, he believed, didn’t really depend on transcendental notions like nature or God. Instead, the aim was simply to lead a beautiful life, to create a beautiful self. And the way to do that, it appeared, was through these philosophical ascetic exercises. So Stoicism provided modern man with something like an aesthetics of existence, in Foucault’s view.

As it happens, Foucault was quite wide of the mark in his historical interpretation of Hellenistic philosophy. This much was said by Pierre Hadot, a great French academic specialist on the Stoics, whose 1976 book, Spiritual Exercises, was the main influence on Foucault’s later thought.

After Foucault’s death in 1984, Hadot edited a new edition of his book, which criticised Foucault’s interpretation of Stoic thought. He was right, Hadot said, that the Stoics saw philosophy more as a way of life than as a discourse. He was also right that this way of life consisted of a set of philosophical exercises which one practiced on oneself.

But it was quite wrong to call this an ‘aesthetics of existence’ as Foucault did. Hadot writes that the Stoics weren’t trying to make the self beautiful, like some nineteenth century Dandy. “In fact, the goal of Stoic exercises is to go beyond the self, and think and act in unison with universal reason…The philosopher changes the level of the self, and universalizes it.”

In aesthetics, one looks for beauty, and originality, and the ability to make a brilliant impression on spectators. Stoicism, by contrast, seeks to go beyond a morality based on appearances and impressions. Philosophy involves becoming mature to the point where one prefers to follow one’s own principles, even if they look ugly or foolish to others, even if the crowd labels you a fool for doing so.

And Stoicism is deeply infused with transcendental notions like God, human nature and universal reason. Epicureanism, a similar philosophy, uses similar cognitive techniques but without these transcendental notions. But Foucault for some reason pays less attention to this philosophy.

Still, if Foucault was inaccurate in his historical analysis of Stoicism, he at least paid us the service of drawing our attention to Pierre Hadot, an academic who is barely known in the UK, Russia, or anywhere beyond his native France. Indeed, one leading Foucault scholar, Arnold Davidson of the University of Chicago, was so struck by Hadot’s work that he edited a new edition of it for English speaking audiences, and more or less converted from postmodernism to become a devotee of Hadot.

Hadot, in his book Spiritual Exercises, brilliantly examines how our idea of philosophy has become excessively narrowed and specialized. As he shows, it originally meant a practical set of cognitive exercises that the individual used to cure their soul of emotional suffering, to attain emotional equilibrium and moral autonomy, and to move to an understanding of their mind and its place in the universe.

Early Christianity then took up these exercises, and incorporated many of them directly into the monastic way of life.

However, in the Middle Ages, philosophy became secondary to theology, or the definition and defence of religious dogma. Philosophy as the practice of spiritual exercises was marginalized, and became the province of mysticism or of a few sects like the Jesuits or Thomas A Kempis’ Brotherhood of Christ.

Secular philosophy then re-asserted its independence from theology in the early Renaissance, but it retained the form of theology – as a scholastic exploration of dogma and truth discourses, rather than a practical set of exercises on the self. Only a few philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Montaigne or Bergson, retained the original sense of philosophy not as an academic career, but as a way of life, which all humans should aspire to.

I hope we are now moving back towards this conception of philosophy. We are seeing, for example, how cognitive behavioural psychology (CBT), which is now the dominant form of therapy in western societies, has taken just these philosophical and cognitive techniques from Stoic philosophy, and used them to treat modern emotional disorders like depression and social anxiety. CBT has been shown in a number of tests to be more successful at treating emotional disorders than both psychoanalysis and pharmaceutical remedies. Why? Because philosophy works.

So we’re seeing a very interesting meeting up of philosophy with psychology, and a very interesting empirical verification of the insights of philosophy.

What we need to return to is the idea that philosophy is not the province of a handful of specialists. It is all of our birthright. It is a basic human activity that wakes us up to the natural riches of our minds.

Links:

1. Michel Foucault. Technologies of the Self. http://www.thefoucauldian.co.uk/tself.htm

2. Pierre Hadot. Philosophy as a way of life.

Jules Evans, a columnist of Eurasian Home website, London

August 15, 2007