This was a legitimate reaction, but it could be that it<t result has been that philosophers have let themselves be hypnotized by philosophical discourse taken in and for itself. In the last analysis, philosophical discourse now tends to have as its object nothing but more philosophical discourse. In a sense, contemporary philosophical discourse has once again become exegetical, and, sad to say, it often interprets its texts with the same violence used by ancient practitioners of allegory.
�OTES
Even if, from a juridical point of view, the succession of Platonic diadochoi was interrupted in the first century BC, the successors of Plato nevertheless always considered themselves heirs of an unbroken spiritual tradition.
2 Porphyry, life of Plotinus, 1 4, 1 1 .
3 M.-D. Chenu, fntroductio11 a /'etude de saitl/ Tht1mas d 'Aquin, Paris 1 954.
4 Ibid, p. 55.
5 Ibid.
6 Plotinus, Enneads, I, 8, 6, 1 .
7 Plato, Thet1eletus, I 76a5-8.
8 Charles Thurot, class="underline" 'J.·traits tie
munusails lt1tim pour str11ir
. . .
11 I 'lmtmrr 1/t'J dortrinrs
R.r11111m11ti1·11/e1, PnriH I 869.
Philosophy, Exegesis, and Crealive Mislalees 77
9 Ibid, p. 103.
10 Plotinus, Enneatls, S I, 8, 1 1 -14.
1 1 Oement of Alexandria, Stromata, I, 1 7, 8 1 , 4.
12 Plato, LaJPs, 7 1 6a.
1 3 Plato, Second Letter, 3 1 2a.
14 For the texts from Celsus and Justin, cf. C. Andresen, Logos und Nomos, Berlin 1 955, pp. 1 46 ff. On the idea of the "ownership of the truth," cf. Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimiliil tkr Neuzeit, Frankfurt 1966, p. 47.
IS [The distinction alluded to here is that between the French words itre - 'to be'
or 'being' - and the participle ttant, 'a being' (the corresponding Greek terms are lo einai and to 011.) Porphyry conceived of the infinitive 'being' as pure activity; while 'being' as a noun was an emanation from, and substantification of, this being qua pure activity. - Trans.]
1 6 Pierre Hadot, Porplryre et Victorinus, 2 vols, Paris 1968, vol. I, pp. 1 29-32.
17 Plato, Parmenides, 142b.
18 Pierre Hadot, "La distinction de l'etre et l'ctant dans le 'De Hebdomadibus' de BoCa:," in Misce/lania Mediaevalia, vol. 2, Berlin 1963, pp. 147-53.
1 9 ["Being" I "to be," and "chat which is." - Trans.]
Part II
Spiritual Ex ercises
3
Spiritual Exercises
To take flight every day! At least for a moment, which may be brief, as long as it is intense. A "spiritual exercise" every day - either alone, or in the company of someone who also wishes to better himself. Spiritual exercises. Step out of duration . . . try to get rid of your own passions, vanities, and the itch for talk about your own name, which sometimes burns you like a chronic disease. A void backbiting. Get rid of pity and hatred. Love all free human beings. Become eternal by transcending yourself.
This work on yourself is necessary; this ambition justified. Lots of people let themselves be wholly absorbed by militant politics and the preparation for social revolution. Rare, much more rare, are they who, in order to prepare for the revolution, are willing to make themselves worthy of it.
With the exception of the last few lines, doesn't this text look like a pastiche of Marcus Aurelius? It is by Georges Friedmann, 1 and it is quite possible that, when he wrote it, the author was not aware of the resemblance. Moreover, in the rest of his book, in which he seeks a place "to re-source himself '',2 he comes to the conclusion that there is no tradition - be it Jewish, Christian, or Oriental - compatible with contemporary spiritual demands. Curiously, however, he does not ask himself about the value of the philosophical tradition of Greco-Roman antiquity, although the lines we have just quoted show to just what extent ancient tradition continues - albeit unconsciously - to live within him, as it does within each of us.
".Spiritual exercises. " The expression is a bit disconcerting for the contemporary reader. In the first place, it is no longer quite fashionable these days to use the word "spiritual." It is nevertheless necessary to use this term, I believe, because none of the other adjectives we could use - "psychic,"
"moral," "ethical," "intellectual," "of thought," "of the soul'' - covers all the 1111r>cct11 of the rcnlity we want to describe. Since, in these exercises, it is 1 h11uirh1 which, llK ii were, rnkcK itself nK it11 own subject-matter,·1 and seeks to
82
Spiritual Exercises
modify itself, it would be possible for us to speak in terms of "thought exercises." Yet the word "thought" does not indicate clearly enough that imagination and sensibility play a very important role in these exercises. For the same reason, we cannot be satisfied with "intellectual exercises," although such intellectual factors as definition, division, ratiocination, reading, investigation, and rhetorical amplification play a large role in them. "Ethical exercises" is a rather tempting expression, since, as we shall see, the exercises in question contribute in a powerful way to the therapeutics of the passions, and have to do with the conduct of life. Yet, here again, this would be too limited a view of things. As we can glimpse through Friedmann's text, these exercises in fact correspond to a transformation of our vision of the world, and to a metamorphosis of our personality. The word "spiritual" is quite apt to make us understand that these exercises are the result, not merely of thought, but of the individual's entire psychism. Above all, the word
"spiritual" reveals the true dimensions of these exercises. By means of them, the individual raises himself up to the life of the objective Spirit; that is to say, he re-places himself within the perspective of the Whole ("Become eternal by transcending yourself").
Here our reader may say, "All right, we'll accept the expression 'spiritual exercises'. But are we talking about Ignatius of Loyola's Exercitia spiritualia?4
What relationship is there between lgnatian meditations and Friedmann's program of "stepping out of duration . . . becoming eternal by transcending oneself?" Our reply, quite simply, is that Ignatius' Exercilia spiritualia arc nothing but a Christian version of a Greco-Roman tradition, the extent of which we hope to demonstrate in what follows. In the first place, both the idea and the terminology of e�:erdtium spirituale arc attested in early Latin Christianity, well before Ignatius of Loyola, and they correspond to the Greek Christian term askesis.5 In tum, askesis - which must be understood not as asceticism, but as the practice of spiritual exercises - already existed within the philosophical tradition of antiquity.6 In the final analysis, it is to antiquity that we must return in order to explain the origin and significance of this idea of spiritual exercises, which, as Friedmann's example shows, is still alive in contemporary consciousness.
The goal of the present chapter is not merely to draw attention to the existence of spiritual exercises in Greco-Latin antiquity, but above all to delimit the scope and importance of the phenomenon, and to show the consequences which it entails for the understanding not only of ancient thought, but of philosophy itself.7