“Accede Concretely to the Cosmic Perspective”

Pierre Hadot

The title is a quote from Pierre Hadot in Philosophy as a Way of Life. It comes at the end of a paragraph encouraging the practice of spiritual exercises utilized by ancient Greek philosophers (e.g., Platonists, Stoics, Epicureans) to align themselves with reason and truth, and thereby live in wisdom (most acknowledge that the perfect and wise sage, however, is unachievable on earth).

One of the most important lessons of the book comes in the chapter entitled, “Reflections on the Idea of ‘The Cultivation of the Self’,” where Hadot writes:

I think modern man can practice the spiritual exercises of antiquity, at the same time separating them from the philosophical or mythic discourse which came along with them. The same spiritual exercise can, in fact, be justified by extremely diverse philosophical discourses. [...] it is therefore not necessary, in order to practice these exercises, to believe in the Stoics’ nature or universal reason. Rather, as one practices them,one lives concretelyr according to reason. […] In this way, we can accede concretely to the universality of the cosmic perspective, and the wonderful mystery of the presence of the universe” (212). 

The ancient philosophers with which Hadot concerns himself began with beliefs about how best to live in concrete reality — that is, daily habits, acts of virtue, and experience of how best to orient oneself with respect to others and the world on a regular basis. From there they sought to justify those beliefs with rational arguments, and thereby ground them in and make explicit their relationship to the cosmic, universal truth. Today, insofar as we think of ethics at all, it is more common to first learn about ethical theories, the “clumsy attempts to justify inner experience,” and from there relate them back to action.

The Greeks had it right: If one is to get one thing correct, let it be the concrete; that is, the act of life. Better to focus first on improving one’s habits — wake up early, exercise, stop drinking, stop wasting time, read hard books, practice kindness, practice patience, remain in the present, see perceived harms for what they are — make these the priority, so as to at least live “concretely in the cosmic perspective,” even if, in the last analysis, attempts to justify those actions rationally in relation to a grand theory of the universe fail.