Spiritual Exercises

The term ‘Spiritual Exercises’ occupies a generative node in the depth-psychology corpus, drawing together strands from Ignatian devotion, Hadotian philosophy-as-way-of-life, Foucauldian technologies of the self, and the hesychast traditions preserved in the Philokalia. Pierre Hadot’s rehabilitation of ancient philosophical practice furnishes the dominant theoretical scaffold: spiritual exercises are understood not as optional supplements to philosophical argument but as the very medium through which philosophy was enacted, transforming the practitioner’s mode of being rather than merely augmenting propositional knowledge. Sharpe and Ure’s systematic reading of Hadot extends this claim across Socratic, Stoic, Neoplatonic, and early Christian registers, holding that all such exercises are ‘fundamentally a return to the self’ in which egoistic individuality yields to moral universality. Jung provides the most psychologically charged instance: his 1939 seminar on Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises generated the famous vision of the greenish-gold Christ, which he read as an alchemical revelation pointing to the anima mundi. Foucault’s parallel reconstruction, foregrounding ‘spirituality’ as the subject’s necessary self-transformation in pursuit of truth, supplies a genealogical counterpoint to Hadot’s more contemplative account. The corpus thus holds in tension the ancient-philosophical, the Christian-mystical, and the depth-psychological valences of the term, making it indispensable to any account of self-cultivation, conversion, and the therapeutic ambitions of philosophically informed practice.

In the library

In 1939 I gave a seminar on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. At the same time I was occupied on the studies for Psychology and Alchemy. One night I awoke and saw, bathed in bright light at the foot of my bed, the figure of Christ on the Cross.

Jung recounts that sustained engagement with the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises produced a visionary breakthrough that he interpreted as an alchemical revelation of the anima mundi, directly linking the exercises to depth-psychological transformation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis

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‘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, as presented by Sharpe and Ure, is that all spiritual exercises share the same deep structure: a liberating return to the authentic self that opens out onto moral universality.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis

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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.

Sharpe and Ure establish that spiritual exercises are the shared instrument across all Hellenistic schools for achieving philosophical conversion, understood as a rupture with habitual consciousness.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis

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technology of the self or spiritual exercise recast fundamental aspects of archaic, pre-philosophical culture… ‘there can be no truth without a conversion or transformation of the subject’

Foucault’s analysis, as read by Ure, positions the spiritual exercise as a ‘technology of the self’ that transforms the very subjectivity required for access to truth, binding exercise irrevocably to epistemology.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis

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technology of the self or spiritual exercise recast fundamental aspects of archaic, pre-philosophical culture… ‘there can be no truth without a conversion or transformation of the subject’

Sharpe presents Foucault’s argument that spiritual exercises encode a pre-philosophical ‘spirituality’ in which truth is inseparable from the self-transformation of the one who seeks it.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis

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the author attempts to transform himself by following a staged reflection, a self-reform through self-examin

Ure situates Descartes’s meditative practice within the Christian tradition of written spiritual exercises, demonstrating continuity between ancient philosophical and early-modern religious forms of self-cultivation.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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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 acknowledge the heuristic and contested character of any taxonomy of spiritual and intellectual exercises while affirming their analytical utility for comparing philosophical schools.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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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.

Ure signals methodological humility regarding the enumeration of spiritual exercises while maintaining their classificatory value within the philosophy-as-way-of-life framework.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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large parts of some texts (for instance, the Enneads), and the entirety of some others (for instance, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations) make no sense if we hold our own metaphilosophical assumptions constant

Sharpe and Ure present Hadot’s hermeneutic argument that canonical ancient texts are unintelligible unless read as records of spiritual exercises rather than theoretical arguments.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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large parts of some texts (for instance, the Enneads), and the entirety of some others (for instance, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations) make no sense if we hold our own metaphilosophical assumptions constant

Ure rehearses Hadot’s hermeneutic claim that ancient philosophical texts reveal their meaning only when understood as documents embedded in lived practices of spiritual exercise.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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