Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault - Hardcover

"Hadot's essays exhibit impressive scholarship and a habit ofprofound reflection. This is not a book for the casual reader butit is an important publication and should be a required text forevery student of philosophy, classics and the history of ideas, andfor any serious teacher of these subjects." The Tablet "Hadot's work is very engaging, knowledgeable, well written and insightful. I highly recommend this book for bothgeneral and professional readers." Richard S. Findler, Phildept, Slippery Rock University for the History of EuropeanIdeas "Recommended for upper-division undergraduates, graduatestudents, and faculty." H. L. Shapiro, University of Missourifor Choice

Pierre Hadot is a significant and wide-ranging historian of ancient philosophy writing today. His work exhibits the combination of historical scholarship and philosophical argumentation that upsets any preconceived distinction between the history of philosophy and philosophy proper. Hadot's most important general philosophical work is entitled "Spiritual Exercises and Ancient Philosophy", which presents a history of spiritual exercises from Socrates to early Christianity, an account of their decline in modern philosophy, and a discussion of the different conceptions of philosophy that have accompanied the trajectory and fate of the theory and practice of spiritual exercises.