Within the depth-psychology and philosophical corpus indexed by Seba, 'Spiritual Exercises' operates along two distinguishable but intersecting axes. The first, classically articulated by Pierre Hadot and developed by Sharpe, Ure, and Foucault, designates the ancient philosophical practice of deliberate, repeated self-transformation: exercises through which the practitioner converts habitual modes of perception and desire toward wisdom, dispassion, and a recovered universality of self. On this reading, spiritual exercises are not merely techniques but the constitutive medium of philosophy-as-way-of-life, practiced across Socratic, Stoic, Epicurean, and Neoplatonic schools alike. The second axis, represented by Jung's direct engagement with Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises and the hesychast literature of the Philokalia, situates such practices within Christian contemplative traditions—practices of interior watchfulness, prayer, and imaginal meditation whose psychological dynamics Jung explicitly connected to alchemical symbolism and depth-psychological transformation. A productive tension runs through the corpus: Hadot treats spiritual exercises as philosophical self-liberation from egoistic alienation, whereas Jung and the Philokalic authors accent the encounter with transcendent or divine realities that such exercises mediate. Foucault bridges these by locating both within the broader category of 'technologies of the self.' The term thus concentrates debates about self-transformation, the epistemology of interiority, the relationship between practice and truth, and the boundaries between philosophy, asceticism, and psychology.
In the library
14 substantive passages
In 1939 I gave a seminar on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola… I had been thinking a great deal about the Anima Christi, one of the meditations from the Spiritual Exercises. The vision came to me as if to point out that I had overlooked something in my reflections: the analogy of Christ with the aurum non vulgi and the viriditas of the alchemists.
Jung situates Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises as a direct catalyst for depth-psychological insight, reading their meditative content as structurally homologous with alchemical symbolism and the individuation process.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis
all these schools practise spiritual exercises to attain a philosophical conversion: namely a state of self-realization or perfection which involves a break from ordinary ways of thinking and of living… 'All spiritual exercises', Hadot claims: are fundamentally a return to the self, in which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been plunged by worries, passions, and desires.
Hadot's foundational thesis is here articulated: spiritual exercises across all ancient schools function as the vehicle of philosophical conversion, liberating the self from alienation toward a universal moral personhood.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
all these schools practise spiritual exercises to attain a philosophical conversion: namely a state of self-realization or perfection which involves a break from ordinary ways of thinking and of living… 'All spiritual exercises', Hadot claims: are fundamentally a return to the self, in which the self is liberated from the state of alienation into which it has been plunged by worries, passions, and desires.
Hadot's foundational thesis is here articulated: spiritual exercises across all ancient schools function as the vehicle of philosophical conversion, liberating the self from alienation toward a universal moral personhood.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
technology of the self or spiritual exercise recast fundamental aspects of archaic, pre-philosophical culture… he defines spirituality as 'the search, practice and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth'… 'there can be no truth without a conversion or transformation of the subject'
Foucault's analysis recasts spiritual exercises as technologies of the self through which subject-formation and access to truth are made inseparable, drawing ancient philosophy and pre-philosophical 'spirituality' into a single genealogy.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
technology of the self or spiritual exercise recast fundamental aspects of archaic, pre-philosophical culture… he defines spirituality as 'the search, practice and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth'… 'there can be no truth without a conversion or transformation of the subject'
Foucault's analysis recasts spiritual exercises as technologies of the self through which subject-formation and access to truth are made inseparable, drawing ancient philosophy and pre-philosophical 'spirituality' into a single genealogy.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
we have encountered practices of meditation in the Stoics… and in monastic meditative exercises upon scripture and sacred texts, so as 'to possess these sayings at the opportune moment'… these authors situate Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy within a Christian genre of written meditations in which 'the author attempts to transform himself by following a staged reflection, a self-reform through self-examination'
The passage traces the historical continuity of spiritual exercises from Stoic practice through monastic scripture-meditation to Descartes's Meditations, arguing that the written exercise genre enacts staged self-transformation.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
we have encountered practices of meditation in the Stoics… and in monastic meditative exercises upon scripture and sacred texts, so as 'to possess these sayings at the opportune moment'… these authors situate Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy within a Christian genre of written meditations in which 'the author attempts to transform himself by following a staged reflection, a self-reform through self-examination'
The passage traces the historical continuity of spiritual exercises from Stoic practice through monastic scripture-meditation to Descartes's Meditations, arguing that the written exercise genre enacts staged self-transformation.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Here as in our listing of the spiritual and intellectual exercises above, we acknowledge that this division is contestable, and that other tabulations are possible.
Sharpe and Ure explicitly distinguish spiritual from intellectual exercises within their analytical framework for philosophy-as-way-of-life, while acknowledging the contestability of such taxonomic distinctions.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
Here as in our listing of the spiritual and intellectual exercises above, we acknowledge that this division is contestable, and that other tabulations are possible.
Sharpe and Ure explicitly distinguish spiritual from intellectual exercises within their analytical framework for philosophy-as-way-of-life, while acknowledging the contestability of such taxonomic distinctions.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
the entirety of some others (for instance, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations) make no sense if we hold our own metaphilosophical assumptions constant, and try to read these philosophers as only interested in what we do today as scholars: making arguments, discovering new knowledges or attracting external funding.
Hadot's hermeneutic argument establishes that ancient philosophical texts only become legible when read as records or instruments of spiritual exercise rather than as purely theoretical discourse.
Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
the entirety of some others (for instance, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations) make no sense if we hold our own metaphilosophical assumptions constant, and try to read these philosophers as only interested in what we do today as scholars: making arguments, discovering new knowledges or attracting external funding.
Hadot's hermeneutic argument establishes that ancient philosophical texts only become legible when read as records or instruments of spiritual exercise rather than as purely theoretical discourse.
Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
the term μελέτη which I have, following tradition, translated as 'practice,' meant something else to Christian ascetics… it had developed a rather specific meaning… 'the vocal and continuous enunciation of the Word of God'
Sinkewicz's philological analysis of the ascetic term μελέτη reveals how the Greek practice tradition transformed Platonic 'practice of death' into a distinctive Christian vocal-meditative exercise, complicating direct equivalences between philosophical and ascetic spiritual exercise.
Sinkewicz, Robert E., Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003supporting
Close the door, and withdraw your intellect from everything worthless and transient… search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of the heart, where all the powers of the soul reside.
The hesychast method of interior descent described here represents the Philokalic tradition's distinctive form of spiritual exercise: a psychosomatic technique for concentrating cognitive and volitional powers in the heart as a precondition for divine encounter.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside
The fifth form of discipline consists in spiritual prayer, prayer that is offered by the intellect and free from all thoughts… the contemplative there are yet higher forms of prayer. The sixth form of discipline consists in reading the writings and lives of the fathers.
The Philokalia enumerates a graduated taxonomy of spiritual disciplines—including formless intellective prayer and patristic reading—that constitute its own systematic curriculum of spiritual exercises ordered toward contemplation.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside