Book Review #5 of 2023: Philosophy as a Way of Life by Pierre Hadot
“Such is the lesson of ancient philosophy: an invitation to each human being to transform himself. Philosophy is a conversion, a transformation of one’s way of being and living, and a quest for wisdom. This is not an easy matter”. (PaWoL, pg . 275).
I’ve always been interested in practical applications of things, even if my path in life has led me away from practical pursuits towards basic science and theory (perhaps this is why I often find myself unsatisfied at my job). For this reason, up until my 22nd year of life, philosophy did not hold much appeal to me: I found there to be too much of a focus on theory and abstraction. Philosophers spent too much time building a self-consistent logical system for how the world worked and should work. I found these ideas to be fun to discuss or listen to podcasts about but was unwilling to engage with them on a deeper level. Self-consistent moral frameworks are all well and good, but if they’re being generated by people who I don’t consider to be particularly good at living their own lives, or even help me to live my own better, then what did I care? To me, the road to a good life seemed to be through materialism, and then in the early years of college, through Eastern insight meditation.
