Plato's spiritual exercises

Pierre Hadot: What Is Ancient Philosophy?
Plato's writing: Seventh Letters, Timaeus, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Theatetus.

For Plato, the philosophical way of life requires a considerable effort, which must be renewed every day. It consists in setting more store by virtue than by pleasure, in renouncing the pleasures of senses, in observing a special diet, and in living every day in such of way as to become master of oneself as much as possible.

Preparation for sleep: If we wish to avoid bad dreams, we must prepare ourselves every evening by trying to awaken the rational part of the soul through inner discourses an research on elevated subjects.

Meditation: It will calm our desire and anger.

Exercise of how to maintain our calm in misfortune, without rebelling. We must tell ourselves that we do not know what is good and what is bad in such accidents; that it does no good to become upset; that no human matter is worth being considered very important; and that, as in a dice game, we must deal with things as they are, and act appropriately.

The practice of death: in Phaedo, Socrates declareds that a man who has spent his life in philosophy necessarily has the courage to die, since ophilosophy is nothing other than an exercise of death. Death is the separation of the soul and body, and the philosopher spends his time trying to detach his soul from his body. The body causes us no end of trouble, because of the passions which it engenders and the needs it imposes upon us. The practice is a divestment of passions in order to accede to the purity of th eintelligence.

From Phaedo, the "I" which must die transcends itself and becomes an "I" which is henceforth a stranger to death, since it has identified itself with the logos and with thought. "Corporeal individuality ceases to exist the moment it is externalized in the logos."

In Republic, the exercise of death appears as something like the soul's flight on high, or a look down upon reality from above: "Small-mindedness is what is most opposed to a soul which must always stretch itself toward the entire totality of the divine and the human." In embracing the whole of reality within one universal vision, the exercise allows us to defeat the fear of death.

This is way Plato describes him as an alien, lost in a world which is human, all too human; like Thales the sage, he runs the risk of falling down a well. He is ignorant of fights over magistracy, political debates, and parties with flute players. He does not know how to plead his case at court, or how to insult others, or how to flatter them. Even the most enormous estates seem insignificant to him, "since he is used to embracing the entire earth in his vision.

The sublimation of love: We learn only from people we love.

Whitehead: "Concepts are always dressed in emotions."