Aquileo | What Is Ancient Philosophy? : Hadot, Pierre, Chase, Michael: Amazon.es: Libros

A magisterial mappa mundi of the terrain that Pierre Hadot has so productively worked for decades, this ambitious work revises our view of ancient philosophy―and in doing so, proposes that we change the way we see philosophy itself. Hadot takes ancient philosophy out of its customary realm of names, dates, and arid abstractions and plants it squarely in the thick of life. Through a meticulous historical reading, he shows how the various schools, trends, and ideas of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy all tended toward one goal: to provide a means for achieving happiness in this life, by transforming the individual’s mode of perceiving and being in the world.

Most pressing for Hadot is the question of how the ancients conceived of philosophy. He argues in great detail, systematically covering the ideas of the earliest Greek thinkers, Hellenistic philosophy, and late antiquity, that ancient philosophers were concerned not just to develop philosophical theories, but to practice philosophy as a way of life―a way of life to be suggested, illuminated, and justified by their philosophical “discourse.” For the ancients, philosophical theory and the philosophical way of life were inseparably linked.

What Is Ancient Philosophy? also explains why this connection broke down, most conspicuously in the case of academic, professional philosophers, especially under the influence of Christianity. Finally, Hadot turns to the question of whether and how this connection might be reestablished. Even as it brings ancient thoughts and thinkers to life, this invigorating work provides direction for those who wish to improve their lives by means of genuine philosophical thought.

Informar de un problema con este producto

Longitud de impresión

362 páginas
Idioma

Inglés
Editorial

Harvard University Press
Fecha de publicación

1 marzo 2004
Dimensiones

13.97 x 2.54 x 20.96 cm
ISBN-10

9780674013735
ISBN-13

978-0674013735

Ver todos los detalles

Descripción del producto

Críticas

First published in France in 1995, Hadot's overview of ancient philosophy…is quite possibly one of the best one-volume works on the subject to have appeared in English in a very long time, not only for the clarity with which it is written…but also for the point of view Hadot takes. In keeping with Socrates' dictum that the unexamined life is not worth living, Hadot places each philosopher or movement discussed firmly within its cultural and intellectual context and shows that philosophy was not simply a process for creating theories but, more importantly, a way of life for many. -- Terry Skeats ― Library Journal

Pierre Hadot is determined to change our view of ancient philosophy, and by extension, of philosophy as a discipline… Like Hadot's hero Socrates, What is Ancient Philosphy? is a triumph of irony: a meticulous historical survey that ends by inspiring the reader to actually do philosophy. Handsomely designed, with useful bibliography and chronology, it's a compact text for the 'never-ending quest.' -- Thomas D'Evelyn ― Christian Science Monitor

Hadot's account moves gracefully from the beginning of philosophy among the Greeks, though its transformation under the Romans, and the encounter with Christianity, also touching on the relation between Eastern and Western philosophy. Profound learning stylishly worn makes the whole book, and the whole sweep of philosophy's first 1,000 years, accessible to any reader interested in what philosophy was like before it was taken over by the professors. -- Barry Allen ― Globe & Mail

Pierre Hadot deserves to be better known to English-language readers―and not just because he was a favorite of Michel Foucault's and is the man largely responsible for introducing Wittgenstein to the French. Hadot is a historian of ancient philosophy, a professor emeritus at the prestigious Collège de France. But it is more accurate to say that he is a philosopher who makes use of the ancients for his own ideas… In What is Ancient Philosophy? Hadot brings all his concerns together in a small volume of extraordinary erudition and surprising…clarity of prose… It is the summa of a distinguished career. -- Barry Gewen ― New York Times Book Review

This is a stimulating book. Thinking comparatively about what philosophy was and is will surely enrich the field. -- R. Kamtekar ― Choice

In its sweep and clarity of presentation, I would compare this book with some of the great syntheses of an earlier generation―for instance, Werner Jaeger's Paideia. At the center of the study is the strikingly original notion of the spiritual exercise, which Professor Hadot here and elsewhere shows to lie at the heart of Greek Hellenistic thinking about man, morality, and the universe. -- Brian Stock, University of Toronto

Hadot's What Is Ancient Philosophy? is a wonderful book. It strives to persuade us to revise our view of philosophy―to think of philosophy, as the ancients did, as crucially involving a philosophical way of life. -- Michael Frede, Oxford University

This book is a masterpiece of erudition and insight―it combines Pierre Hadot's extraordinary textual knowledge, his profound and original philosophical vision, and his famously lucid prose to give us a new way of approaching ancient philosophy. Beyond this, it proposes a conception of the tasks of philosophy that will be of abiding interest to philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. -- Arnold Davidson, University of Chicago

Biografía del autor

Pierre Hadot was Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France. His books include Philosophy as a Way of Life and Plotinus.

Detalles del producto

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0674013735
Editorial ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press
Fecha de publicación ‏ : ‎ 1 marzo 2004
Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglés
Longitud de impresión ‏ : ‎ 362 páginas
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780674013735
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674013735
Peso del producto ‏ : ‎ 294 g
Dimensiones ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 2.54 x 20.96 cm
Clasificación en los más vendidos de Amazon: nº577.576 en Libros (Ver el Top 100 en Libros)
- nº1.069 en Filosofía occidental
- nº6.620 en Filosofía (Libros)
- nº35.038 en Libros en inglés
Opiniones de los clientes:
(129)

Acerca del autor

Sigue a autores para recibir actualizaciones de nuevas publicaciones, además de recomendaciones mejoradas.

Pierre Hadot

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Descubre más libros del autor, mira autores similares, lee recomendaciones de libros y más.

Recursos de seguridad y productos

Imágenes y contactos

Imágenes y contactos de seguridad

Opiniones de clientes

129 calificaciones globales

Cómo funcionan las opiniones y las valoraciones de los clientes

Los clientes dicen

Los clientes consideran que este libro es una lectura imprescindible para principiantes en filosofía y uno de los más importantes. Destacan que está escrito de manera maravillosa y con honestidad directa. Los lectores lo describen como fascinante y consideran que debe ser leído.

Generado por IA a partir del texto de las opiniones de los clientes

Selecciona para obtener más información

23 clientes mencionan contenido, 22 de forma positiva, 1 de forma negativa

Los clientes consideran que este libro es una lectura imprescindible para principiantes en filosofía y uno de los más importantes. Destacan que ofrece vasto aprendizaje y representa una síntesis de toda una vida de investigación y práctica en filosofía. Los lectores reconocen al autor como un maestro de su tema y mencionan que tienen mucho que ganar con esta obra.

Five StarsLeer más

This is one of the most important books I've read, I'm glad it was recommended to me....Leer más

...fair length of time since I have read any philosophy, and am so glad I bought this book....Leer más

...is it a great read, and a work of the highest scholarship, it's life changing.Leer más

10 clientes mencionan escritura, 9 de forma positiva, 1 de forma negativa

Los clientes destacan que el libro está escrito de manera maravillosa y con honestidad directa. Mencionan que no presenta opacidad en la escritura y que resulta conciso.

concise and brief without wasted contentLeer más

...The book is very well written, showing none of the opacity of writing encountered in writers like Derrida or Heidegger....Leer más

...It is written so wonderfully since it is one of the few philosophy books that a non-academic can understand....Leer más

...Hadot writes in plain language and the result is very readable....Leer más

8 clientes mencionan lectura, 7 de forma positiva, 1 de forma negativa

Los clientes consideran que es un libro fascinante y destacan que nunca han leído un mejor libro sobre filosofía antigua.

Fascinating book! Enjoyed reading it more than once!Leer más

...theory—philosophy as a practice for living well—this book is an essential read. Highly recommended for scholars and seekers alike.Leer más

...The book is easy and enjoyable to read compared to some in this genre. I find it an excellent start for people new to philosophy.Leer más

...the same ground, but complement each other very well, so both are worth reading. "What is Ancient Philosophy?"...Leer más

Ha surgido un problema al filtrar las opiniones. Recarga la página.

Las mejores reseñas de España

Hay 0 reseñas de España

Las reseñas más importantes de otros países

Traducido por Amazon

Ver original

Mal Smith
Life changing
Reseñado en el Reino Unido el 31 de julio de 2010
Formato: Tapa blanda
Compra verificada
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
What is Ancient Philosophy? The answer Hadot gives is the title of another of his books: Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Both books cover the same ground, but complement each other very well, so both are worth reading. "What is Ancient Philosophy?" is a broad overview of the area, while "Philosophy as a Way of Life" focuses on specific topics in greater depth.
Hadot stresses the importance of philosophy ("the devoted pursuit of wisdom") as a way of life, not just as an abstract system of thought. His book starts with Plato's Symposium, with Socrates pursuing a discourse and way of life that tends towards wisdom without ever achieving it. For the ancients, the wise person was someone who knew how to live in happiness, and applied that knowledge.
The author goes on to consider the schools that followed Socrates in viewing philosophy as a way of life. These include the schools of Antisthenes the Cynic, Epicurus, Plato, Aristotle and Zeno the Stoic. He considers in some depth the spiritual exercises that each school adopted to bring positive changes to the lives of their followers.
The adoption, and perversion, of the practices of the Ancient schools by Christianity is briefly considered before Hadot takes on the more fruitful theme of seeing how these practices were taken up by modern philosophers like Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Finally, Hadot gives the reader some level-headed advice on how he or she can adopt and adapt the exercises to the conditions of modern life.
The book is very well written, showing none of the opacity of writing encountered in writers like Derrida or Heidegger. Hadot has been widely acclaimed by leaders in the field, and most of his works can be recommended to the general reader as well as the student of philosophy. I've never read a better book on ancient philosophy, or on philosophy in general. Not only is it a great read, and a work of the highest scholarship, it's life changing.
Leer másLeer menos
Denuncia
Enviando comentarios...
Gracias, lo investigaremos en los próximos días.
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido informar de esta reseña. Inténtalo de nuevo
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido traducir la reseña
Traducir reseña al español
Traducido del inglés por Amazon
Ver original
Dawn
A Transformative Perspective on Ancient Philosophy
Reseñado en Estados Unidos el 12 de febrero de 2025
Formato: Tapa blanda
Compra verificada
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Pierre Hadot’s What Is Ancient Philosophy? is a brilliant and thought-provoking exploration of philosophy as a way of life. Unlike modern academic philosophy, Hadot reveals how ancient philosophers—Socrates, Epicurus, the Stoics, and others—lived their teachings, using philosophy as a guide to self-improvement and wisdom. His writing is dense yet rewarding, offering fresh insights into the practical and spiritual dimensions of classical thought. If you’re interested in philosophy beyond theory—philosophy as a practice for living well—this book is an essential read. Highly recommended for scholars and seekers alike.
Leer másLeer menos
Denuncia
Enviando comentarios...
Gracias, lo investigaremos en los próximos días.
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido informar de esta reseña. Inténtalo de nuevo
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido traducir la reseña
Traducir reseña al español
Traducido del inglés por Amazon
Ver original
Customer Review
I agree entirely...
Reseñado en el Reino Unido el 8 de marzo de 2017
Formato: Tapa blanda
Compra verificada
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
...with the other assessments here. I had picked this up having previously read Hadot's The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and also having seen this other work of his recommended. To be honest at first, on reading the first section, I thought that this was going to be fairly shallow and not offering much new (especially given my other previous reading on ancient philosophy), but it does begin to pick up. The main theme is about how the ancient schools' philosophies were to be lived out at all times and not merely theorised about or only spoken about in the lecture hall. Modern studies of these schools tend to rather forget this.
Hadot writes in plain language and the result is very readable. It's the kind of book I wish I had read long ago, and it should be first item on the reading list for anyone embarking on a study of ancient philosophy or the history of philosophy.
Leer másLeer menos
Denuncia
Enviando comentarios...
Gracias, lo investigaremos en los próximos días.
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido informar de esta reseña. Inténtalo de nuevo
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido traducir la reseña
Traducir reseña al español
Traducido del inglés por Amazon
Ver original
Martin Bidney
Philosophy and Life Values
Reseñado en Estados Unidos el 25 de marzo de 2025
Formato: Tapa blanda
Compra verificada
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Written with forthright honesty, wisdom, elegance, and vast learning. We see Plato and Aristotle in a context that will not slight Seneca, Epicurus, and many other Greek and Roman philosophers who sought to relate cosmic awareness to exploratory thought about what a fully human life can be.
Leer másLeer menos
Denuncia
Enviando comentarios...
Gracias, lo investigaremos en los próximos días.
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido informar de esta reseña. Inténtalo de nuevo
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido traducir la reseña
Traducir reseña al español
Traducido del inglés por Amazon
Ver original
Greg Taylor
From the sage to the professor.
Reseñado en Estados Unidos el 27 de mayo de 2009
Formato: Tapa blanda
Compra verificada
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Hadot's What is Ancient Philosophy is the summation of a lifetime of research and practice in philosophy.
His thesis is fairly simple. Ancient philosophy begins in an existential choice. That choice is based on a vision of the world and a way of life based on that vision. It results in both a philosophical practice and a philosophical discourse. The practice has become largely ignored in favor of focusing on the discourse and this has resulted in a fairly complete misunderstanding of ancient philosophy.
I am not claiming that Hadot's presentation of ancient philosophy is completely correct. I think there are some problems with his formulation but before I get into that, I want to broadly outline his thesis.
First, when Hadot say ancient philosophy he means Greek and Roman philosophy- in spite of some other reviewers he is very cautious about comparisons to other traditions, such as Buddhism, Judaism or Taoism.
He sees that tradition of philosophy as largely composed of the Platonic Academy, Aristotle's school, Epicureanism and Stoicism. He also talks about the Cynics and the Pythagoreans although not in as much detail.
At the end of the book (p.278) he suggest that these schools represent fundamental alternatives toward human existence. All cultures can probably be shown to exhibit some variant of these alternatives.
Each of these schools posits an ethics, a physics and a theology. These three components were mutually supportive and served to explain the role of humanity in the cosmos and the role of the individual in the city, with their family and in the development of their own soul. The expression of these three components made up the philosophers discourse.
But that discourse was just empty words without the philosophers practice.
This practice took many forms some of which were specific to one school but many of which were common to all the schools. There was frequently a social component which might be the dedication to philosophical dialogue (as exemplified in Plato and some of the writings of Cicero), or to living together as a group following rules and regulations (which likely heavily influenced the monastic orders that Christianity developed). There were spiritual exercises that served to distance the individual philosopher from her everyday point of view. For example, she might be encouraged to develope the "view from above" which tried to see all of her life as if from a great almost cosmic distance. From this perspective, all her hopes, disappointments, stivings as well of those of others seemed equally petty and small. All events and all things seemed of equal value. She became detached from her everyday human ties to these things.
Or she might be encouraged to be mindful of the omnipresence of the possibility of her death. From this perspective, each moment became incredibly precious, an unfolding experience that she must give herself over to with all her being.
I want to throw in a personal aside here. I studied philosophy at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, Quebec in the '70s. I do not want to diminish in any way what I learned there. I took a year long seminar in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from Prof. Vladimir Zeman that changed my life and taught me what little I know about being a scholar.
But the sort of exercises that Hadot describes as being the core of the daily life of the ancient philosopher were completely unheard of in what I was taught. Or, I suspect, in what most of our universities teach. Hadot dissects the meaning of the word philosophy as the lover of wisdom- not she who is wise but she who persues wisdom.
As Hadot points out, that lack of focus on philosophical practice distorts that history. By focusing on theoretical discourse and its most coherent expression, we lose sight of the possibility that these things were not what was most valued in ancient philosophy. Ancient philosophers were trying to work with their friends, their associates, their families and their communities to effect changes in their souls. Their written material was teaching material designed to be used by different types of students. Consistancy is not to be expected (p. 274) Aporiai happen.
So what are the flaws in this account? Let me suggest two. First, Hadot like many others, sees the ancients as too much of a piece for my taste.
Read Part Two of his book carefully. He had wonderful sections devoted to each school- to their fundamental outlook, their ethics, physics, theology and their spiritual exercises. Read the section on Aristotle and his school. They were a little different. They come across in Hadot's narrative almost like a research program a là Lakatos (I am showing my philosophical age). In other words, they do not come across as particularly spiritual. They read more like a bunch of secular humanist scientists out to destroy Christmas. More seriously, they don't sound interested in spiritual practices. Their practice was to accumulate knowledge. I think Hadot tries a little too hard to force them into his framework.
Which segues into my second issue with Hadot. He sees philosophy as necessarily a rational enterprise. It seems to me in my investigations into spiritual practice that at some point one is brought face to face with the ineffable. Not the irrational but the ineffable. One is brought into contact with that which cannot be spoken, let alone put into a propositional logic. To the extent that ancient philosophy is grounded in rationality is the extent to which it cannot deal with this.
But I think that some of the spiritual exercises Hadot discusses are designed to bring our friend the philsopher face to face with just that. If I am reading Hadot correctly, I believe that he gets this aspect of the history wrong.
These are minor complaints about what is a magnificent work. I have been strongly influenced by my readings in Strauss of late. There are many similarities (the insistence on philosophy as a way of life) and many differences to explore between these two. More universally, Hadot is a challenge to almost everyone's approach to ancient philosophy. His work simply has to be faced and learned from.
Anyone who reads the Greek and Roman philosophers and who tries to learn from them has much to gain from this book. It is one thing to read Cicero or Seneca or Plato. It is another to try to live one's life based on such reading. Hadot just might inspire you to try.
Leer másLeer menos
Denuncia
Enviando comentarios...
Gracias, lo investigaremos en los próximos días.
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido informar de esta reseña. Inténtalo de nuevo
Lo sentimos, no hemos podido traducir la reseña
Traducir reseña al español
Traducido del inglés por Amazon
Ver original

Ver más opiniones

Imagen no disponible

Sigue al autor

What Is Ancient Philosophy?