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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.
List of contents
Introduction
Part 1: The Ancients Ch. 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
Ch. 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' revaluation of happiness, pleasure and the good
2.5 the gods and the figure of the sage
2.6 the four-fold cure, and physics as spiritual exercise
2.7 spiritual exercises in the garden
2.7` Criticisms
Ch. 3. Stoicism: Philosophy as the 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' Paranetic Discourses, and his Handbook
3.5 Marcus Aurelius'
Meditations (
Ta Eis Heauton)
Ch. 4. Platonisms as Ways of Life
4.1 Introduction: Platonism
s 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' philosophical mysticism
4.5 Boethius and the end of ancient philosophy
Part 2: medievals and early modernsCh. 5. Philosophy as a way of life in the middle ages
5.1 On Christianity as "philosophy"
5.2 Monastic
philosophia, and the Christianisation of spiritual exercises
5.3 Scholasticism, the theoreticisation of
philosophia, & the ascendancy of dialectic
5.4 Counter-strains: from Abelard to Dante's
Il ConvivioCh. 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' Neostoicism
Ch. 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
Ch. 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 3: the modernsInterlude: The Nineteenth Century Conflict between PWL and University Philosophy
Ch. 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
Ch. 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
Ch. 11. Foucault'sReinvention of Philosophy as a Way of Life
11.1 Philosophical heroism: Foucault's Cynics
11.2 Foucault's reinvention of Philosophy as a Way of Life
11.3 Genealogy as spiritual exercise
11.4 Conclusion
Conclusion
1. PWL, today
2. History, declines and rebirths
3. Criticisms
4. PWL of the future?
About the author
Matthew Sharpe is is Associate Professor of
Philosophy at Deakin University, Australia.
Summary
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.
Foreword
The first introduction to philosophy as a way of life from antiquity to the present.
Additional text
Philosophy as a Way of Life is a milestone in the contemporary re-appraisal of this ancient concept. For anyone interested in the history of philosophy or the topic of metaphilosophy, this surely fills an important gap in the literature. It will provide an invaluable foundation for future research in this area.
