Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Philosophy as Way of Life’ (PWL) names a countervailing tradition to the modern academic reduction of philosophy to systematic, purely theoretical inquiry. Its primary scholarly architect in this literature is Pierre Hadot, whose influence pervades the magisterial study by Sharpe and Ure (2021), which traces PWL from its Socratic origins through Hellenistic schools, Christian appropriation, Renaissance humanism, the Enlightenment philosophes, and into modernity via Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Foucault. The central claim—that philosophy’s ancient vocation was the transformation of the self through spiritual exercises, care of the soul, and the exemplary conduct of the philosophical life—stands in productive tension with critiques that such a paradigm collapses philosophy into rhetoric or self-help, fosters narcissistic withdrawal from civic engagement, or is rendered obsolete by the Humboldtian research university. Zimmer’s complementary Indian materials and Nussbaum’s therapeutic reading of Hellenistic ethics extend the problematic beyond the Western canon. Key tensions animate the entire archive: theory versus practice, individual self-cultivation versus socio-political transformation, the ancient versus the modern, and the perennial risk that the philosophical physician’s cure may be worse than the disease diagnosed. The contemporary Stoicism revival and experimental PWL pedagogy signal that the tradition retains urgent, unresolved purchase.
Philosophy, Seneca famously stated, teaches us doing, not saying. It aims to transform how we live. This ancient ideal has continually been reinvented from the Renaissance through to late modernity.
This passage establishes the foundational thesis that philosophy as a way of life is an ancient and persistently reinvented ideal centred on existential transformation rather than theoretical knowledge.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
academic philosophy is considered a purely theoretical discipline that aims at systematic knowledge; contemporary philosophers do not, as a rule, think that they or their audience will lead better lives by doing philosophy.
This passage frames the modern crisis of philosophy by contrasting the dominant theoretical paradigm with the ancient PWL ideal, motivating the entire project of recovery.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
Does any conception of philosophy as PWL require that the specifically rational, argumentative dimensions of philosophy be devalued, collapsing any distinction between philosophy and rhetoric or religion?
This passage enumerates the central critical objections to PWL—relativism, narcissism, political withdrawal—constituting the principal contested questions the tradition must answer.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
Is the project of philosophical self-transformation intrinsically narcissistic or egotistical, nothing more intellectually reputable than glorified ‘self-help’?
This passage crystallises the most pointed internal critique of PWL, questioning whether philosophical self-cultivation can sustain any distinction from mere therapeutic self-improvement.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
in the ancient context, in short, philosophy is a way of transforming one’s life, and so the measure of the value of philosophy is how one lives and dies.
This passage articulates the ancient criterion of philosophical value—conduct and mortality rather than doctrinal correctness—central to understanding PWL as Nietzsche revives it.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
philosophy is a way of transforming one’s life, and so the measure of the value of philosophy is how one lives and dies.
This passage reaffirms, through Nietzsche’s medical-philosophical lens, that PWL’s ultimate standard is existential and biographical rather than merely propositional.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche reclaimed elements of the ancient idea that philosophy is a transformation of our way of inhabiting and perceiving the world.
This passage identifies Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as critical modern inheritors of PWL who revive philosophy’s therapeutic and transformative vocation against its institutionalised academicisation.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
they addressed the meta-philosophical question through their polemic against the nineteenth-century institutionalization and professionalization of philosophy, explicit accounts of philosophy’s therapeutic ends.
This passage shows how both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche mount their PWL revival explicitly against the professionalisation that reduced philosophy to academic specialism.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
Schopenhauer retained a philosophical significance as an exemplar of a philosophical way of life. Nietzsche’s ‘biography’ represents Schopenhauer as a heroic exemplar of the struggle great individuals must wage against their own epoch.
This passage illustrates how Nietzsche operationalises the ancient PWL model of the exemplary philosopher-biography to diagnose and treat the pathologies of modern culture.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Schopenhauer’s philosophical life offers an education in how to overcome the main pathology of modern culture: namely its creation of weakened personalities who fail to cultivate themselves because they cannot integrate knowledge and action.
This passage argues that the PWL tradition diagnoses modernity’s core failure as the dissociation of knowledge from lived practice, which exemplary philosophical lives are meant to remedy.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Foucault unexpectedly changed his research focus from the history of modern sexual discourses to ancient Graeco-Roman sexuality and, in turn, to the techniques of the self or spiritual exercises that were central to ancient philosophy.
This passage marks Foucault’s late turn to antiquity as a pivotal reinvention of PWL through the concept of techniques of the self, inserting depth-psychological themes into the tradition.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Nietzsche recommends that the cure for pessimism lies not in the denial of life or the realization of equanimity, but in creating ourselves as singular artworks worthy of eternity.
This passage positions Nietzsche’s aesthetic self-creation as a distinctly modern reformulation of the PWL injunction to transform one’s existence through philosophical practice.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
we analyse the key parameters of Socrates’s revolutionary invention of the persona of the philosopher, and of PWL. This includes his signature dialogic practice of the elenchus, his foundational call for philosophers to ‘turn inwards’, his description of philosophy as a care of the soul.
This passage identifies the Socratic elenchus, inward turn, and care of the soul as the constitutive parameters from which the entire Western PWL tradition derives.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Socrates’s revolutionary invention of the persona of the philosopher, and of PWL. This includes his signature dialogic practice of the elenchus … his description of philosophy as a care of the soul.
This passage establishes Socrates as the originary figure of PWL, whose biographical strangeness and soul-care constitute the paradigm all subsequent practitioners inherit.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
the advent of the modern research university … has seen the end of PWL, except as an object of historical inquiry. The Humboldtian university gives philosophy a post-theological status as Queen of the Sciences. But this is a philosophy conceived as pre-eminently embodied in written, printed discourse, abstracted from any way of life.
This passage diagnoses the Humboldtian research university as the institutional cause of PWL’s eclipse, reducing philosophy to a professional discourse detached from any lived practice.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
PWL not as one ‘block’, which would either be wholly present and predominant or wholly absent or subordinate at any one time. Rather, it is a multidimensional philosophical paradigm, with different aspects or features.
This passage proposes a nuanced, multi-featured model of PWL’s historical transmission, arguing that the tradition endures unevenly across dimensions rather than appearing or disappearing wholesale.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
the modern Stoicism movement continues to go from strength to strength … bringing together psychologists, counsellors, academics, with members of the wider community devoted to reanimating PWL, including drawing inspiration from Hadot.
This passage documents the contemporary institutional revival of PWL, noting the convergence of psychology, academic philosophy, and popular culture around Hadot-inspired Stoic practice.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
many philosophers globally … are exploring the possibilities for teaching PWL, as more than a hermeneutic or historiographical approach to philosophy.
This passage signals the pedagogical frontier of PWL’s revival, insisting that it must be practised and taught rather than merely studied as a historical curiosity.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
In Petrarch’s work … we see a particularly pure rebirth of the Hellenistic and Roman sense of PWL. His philosophical oeuvre is founded on a stern critique both of scholastic dialectic and pedantry and the lives of non-philosophers.
This passage identifies Petrarch as the Renaissance pivot for PWL’s recovery, whose anti-scholastic critique and consolatory practices faithfully reproduce the Hellenistic and Roman paradigm.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Philosophy, a way of life, not of ‘prattling’ … It is in the light of the ancient conception of PWL that Petrarch’s frequently-resumed, acerbic critique of scholastic dialectic has to be understood.
This passage reads Petrarch’s hostility to scholastic argument as a principled recovery of the ancient PWL demand that philosophy transform life rather than produce mere verbal displays.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Christian philosophy, for him, implicates a discipline touching the whole of life in order to realize virtue and wisdom. Pagan philosophers’ conceptions of the virtues can even be used to critique and inspire Christians in their ethical efforts.
This passage shows how early Christian thinkers absorbed and transformed the PWL paradigm, using Stoic virtue ethics while insisting that full philosophical life requires divine grace.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Christ and the Saints have ‘come to teach us the life proper to philosophers’, which the philosophers themselves only glimpsed.
This passage captures the Christian theological appropriation of PWL, arguing that religious practice fulfils what pagan philosophy could only promise.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Philosophy’s aim, in pursuing wisdom, must ultimately be to cultivate the virtues … Philosophy should be ultimately a divinely sent ‘guide’ for living.
This passage, via Dante, argues that the practical cultivation of virtue rather than disembodied theoretical truth constitutes philosophy’s ultimate purpose within a medieval PWL framework.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
‘the habit of philosophy’ (II, 13), not faith or theology, allows us to … Philosophy should be ultimately a divinely sent ‘guide’ for living.
This passage reveals Dante’s oscillation between Aristotelian metaphysics and a practical PWL orientation in which philosophy guides life rather than culminates in pure theory.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Stoicism, as well as Epicureanism and Skepticism, served this goal by ‘rendering the soul absolutely indifferent to everything the real world had to offer’.
This passage presents the Hegelian counter-critique of Hellenistic PWL, which charges the ancient schools with offering illusory inner freedom as a substitute for genuine civic engagement.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
the Hellenistic schools’ ideal of sovereign, rational self-mastery offers nothing more than an illusory substitute for civic freedom.
This passage conveys the Hegelian-Arendtian objection that PWL’s inward turn is a politically evasive substitute for real freedom, a critique that haunts modern PWL revivals.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Nietzsche’s so-called meditations are shaped by the ancient ideal of PWL, its conception of the philosophical or cultural physician and its emphasis on what, following Hadot, we have called ‘spiritual exercises’.
This passage establishes the Hadot-inflected reading of Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations as a conscious revival of ancient PWL, including its medical metaphor and spiritual exercise practices.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Nietzsche uses this term to identify himself as a critic of contemporary culture who looks upon what it considers one of its greatest achievements … and evaluates it from a specifically classical perspective.
This passage reads Nietzsche’s ‘untimeliness’ as a methodological stance derived from the PWL tradition, positioning the philosopher as cultural diagnostician against modernity’s historical complacency.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
What literary genres do philosophers write in? … How do these forms of writing relate to the intellectual exercises or spiritual exercises recommended by the philosopher or his doctrinal school?
This passage introduces the ten-parameter analytic grid for PWL, identifying literary genre as a key dimension through which philosophical self-transformation is enacted and transmitted.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
What different pedagogical and psychagogic effects can be intended by adopting different forms of literary method or presentation?
This passage foregrounds psychagogy—the art of leading the soul—as a distinct analytical category within PWL, connecting literary form to the psychology of philosophical education.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
As a result of the practice of these exercises, in conjunction with the education in the technical philosophical discourses of the schools, ancient philosophers were throughout antiquity a distinctly recognizable, somewhat ‘edgy’ cultural type.
This passage describes the social and biographical visibility of the ancient philosopher as PWL practitioner, whose identity was constituted by spiritual exercises rather than doctrinal allegiance alone.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Many ancient texts of philosophy, starting from Plato’s dialogues, have a strongly biographical component … The aim of these texts is to inspire emulation.
This passage identifies exemplary biography and emulation as the primary pedagogical mechanism of ancient PWL, distinguishing it from the purely argumentative texts of modern academic philosophy.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
The French essayer means to test, to exercise, to attempt, to experiment or examine … In one register, the Essais seem to embody a new form of philosophical hypomnêmata, like Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.
This passage situates Montaigne’s Essays within the PWL genre of philosophical self-writing, tracing their form to Hellenistic hypomnemata and the practice of reflective spiritual exercise.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
instead of the speculative philosophy which is taught in the schools we may find a practical philosophy by means of which … we can … render ourselves as the masters and possessors of nature.
This passage shows Descartes’ ambivalent relation to PWL, invoking a ‘practical philosophy’ oriented toward life but redirecting it toward technological mastery rather than ethical self-transformation.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
it is required that there should be an identity—an absolute, point-for-point correspondence—between his teachings and his way of life; the sort of identity that we should expect to find in the West only in a monk or priest.
This passage extends the PWL paradigm to the Indian guru tradition, establishing the demand for identity between teaching and lived conduct as a cross-cultural philosophical requirement.
, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting
the philosophes’ intended audiences … were not academics or clerics, but laypeople in civic society who might be capable of changing the secular world.
This passage distinguishes the Enlightenment philosophes’ PWL variant from both ancient and Christian predecessors by its explicitly civic, reformist, and anti-cloistered orientation.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
‘J’écris pour agir’, Voltaire famously wrote, but his thought, here as elsewhere, became representative.
This passage uses Voltaire’s aphorism to epitomise the Enlightenment PWL’s prioritisation of writing as socio-political action over contemplative self-cultivation.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
First and foremost amongst the giants is the French philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot, whose work we will introduce specifically in a moment.
This passage acknowledges Hadot as the foundational authority for the modern scholarly recovery of PWL, situating the entire project within his intellectual lineage.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Whatever success our endeavour can claim … comes from how we have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants. First and foremost amongst the giants is the French philosopher and historian of ideas, Pierre Hadot.
This passage positions Hadot’s scholarship as the indispensable precondition for any synoptic historical recovery of PWL as a philosophical paradigm.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
it is also possible that a more general reference therapeutic philosophical discourse is intended here.
This passage gestures toward the therapeutic dimension of Hellenistic philosophical discourse, tangentially relevant to PWL’s medical model of philosophy as cure for the soul.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994aside
Philosophy departments nevertheless continue to operate, and to lay claim to relatively well-defined disciplinary object domains … Academic philosophers continue to teach new generations of students specialized ways of thinking and speaking.
This passage sketches the contemporary academic institutional landscape as the foil against which the PWL revival defines itself, noting the persistence of disciplinary boundaries.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021aside