The Side View: Hadot and Sloterdijk on the Practice of Philosophy

Just as the history of science usually presumes that the scientists who do their disciplines already exist, the history of art has assumed since time immemorial that artists are the natural protagonists of the business that produces works of art, and that these players have always existed as well. What would happen if we rotated the conceptual stage ninety degrees in both cases? What would happen if we observed artists in their efforts to become artists in the first place? We could then see every phenomenon on this field more or less from a side view and, alongside the familiar history of art as a history of completed works, we could obtain a history of the training that made it possible to do art and the ascetism that shaped artists. --Peter Sloterdijk, The Art of Philosophy The French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) is best known for his reading of philosophy as a way of life. "Philosophical discourse," writes Hadot, "originates in a choice of life and an existential option." (1) In linking life and philosophy, Hadot demonstrates that the choice of how to live does not lie at the end of philosophical investigation but at its beginning, that philosophy from the outset is the application of a certain ideal of life, exercised in community. Hadot continues, "I mean, then, that philosophical discourse must be understood from the perspective of the way of life of which it is both the expression and the means. Consequently, philosophy is above all a way of life, but one which is intimately linked to philosophical discourse." (2) Both the expression and the means. This is the key to entering Hadot's reading of philosophy, and perhaps to entering the philosophical life for one's own self. Linking expression and means through practice also brings us into the orbit of what the contemporary German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (b. 1947) calls a "side view" of philosophy, a history of the training that made it possible to do philosophy and the ascetism that shaped philosophers. The side view of philosophy does not describe philosophical knowledge, systems, concepts, disputes, or figures as ready-made objects of investigation. Instead, it traces the history of practices and techniques that enabled those who engage in philosophy to perform their work. In this way, the Greek aphorism "know thyself' (gnothi seauton), inscribed onto the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, is joined in Sloterdijk's work with an equally forceful injunction, drawn from the last line of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo." The line reads simply, "You must change your life." In taking up the side view, Sloterdijk resembles the Socrates of Plato's Apology. Philosophy, says Socrates, is not so much about knowing this or that as it is about being this or that way (29d-e). As a matter of being, philosophical activity is closely tied to the actions of the person, and specifically to the person's ability to apply the mind to itself. "We must not avoid constantly and rigorously examining the way we live," Hadot writes of the Socratic approach. (3) This approach is what makes Socrates's interlocutors place themselves in question as Socrates reveals their internal contradictions through his dialectical interrogations. (4) This task of questioning, given to Socrates by the Oracle at Delphi (in yet another reference to the god Apollo), is what drives those around Socrates to examine truth and knowledge from within their own souls. (5) This does not mean that philosophy is not interested in knowledge or truth, quite the opposite. It means that knowledge and truth are not the kinds of things that can be directly received or transmitted. Humans are not data retrieval centers or simple information processing computers of any kind. As Hadot notes, neither knowledge nor truth "can be received ready-made, but must be engendered by the individual." (6) Philosophy on Hadot's account is thus a kind of askesis, a discipline of self-transformation, oriented around a set of practices unique to each school of philosophy. …