2013 Fall Proseminar Class Notes A
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September 11, 2013
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add text. Alfino (talk) 19:58, 4 September 2013 (PDT)
First Post By: Alynna Nemes
When I read Hadot's "Spiritual Exercises," I rediscovered the origin of my passion for philosophy in one simple phrase, "Know thyself" (90). Throughout the reading, the phrase takes on multiple meanings that are encompassed by the need for spiritual exercises with the goals of "self realization and improvement" (102). To me, philosophy is a journey to discover the best way to live life, while opening my mind to new perspectives that could help me improve myself. Also, it delves into other fields of study that involve contemplating, understanding, and changing human nature (history, psychology, sociology, etc.). I agree with the definition that philosophy is "a method for training people to live and to look at the world in a new way" (107).
However, this contradicts Deleuze’s "What is Philosophy,” when "philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts" (2). Present day philosophy strays from spiritual exercises and improvement of human nature by becoming more cynical of philosophy itself, becoming lost in all the complexities of self-realization. Current philosophy has lost its own ability to enrich human nature because its modern principles are unable to correspond with humanity’s new set of ideals and beliefs, rendering the ideas of the past irrelevant or ineffective. As Deleuze notes, "Those who criticize without creating, those who are content to defend the vanished concept without being able to give it the forces it needs to return to life are the plague of philosophy" (28). There is no dialogue and truth being fought out; philosophy has become a petty subject of arguments with no real world impact. The ancient followers of Stoicism and Epicureanism developed and answered that philosophy is meant to be lived and experienced because "there are some truths whose meaning will never be exhausted by the generations of man" (Hadot 108). Concepts within philosophy don't always have to be new; they can be practical and simple to evoke self realization. Philosophy has strayed from its roots and I hope that we can one day return philosophy back to its original spiritual exercises.
