Philosophy as a way of life

All these techniques can be useful in crisis situations. Yet we must not allow them to make us forget that what is most important is the profound orientation of our lives, the fundamental choice of a life, which engages us passionately. The problem is not so much to repress such-and-such a passion, as it is to learn to see things "from above," in the grandiose perspective of universal nature and of humanity, compared to which many passions may appear ridiculously insignificant. It is then that rational knowledge may become force and will, and thereby become extremely efficacious.

M. C. On May 22, 1 99 1 , you gave your last lecture at the College de France.

After some three decades of teaching, the last words you pronounced in public were: "In the last analysis, we can scarcely talk about what is most important."

This seems paradoxical . After a lifetime devoted to humanistic studies, have you finally come to the conclusion of the Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius,13 who wrote "What will be the limit of our discourse, if it is nut an impotent silence, and the admission of our absolute lack of knowledge concerning those things about which we mny never gnin knowlcdl(c, Hince they ore inncce1111iblc11?

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P.H. You're alluding to the last words of my last class: "In the final analysis, we can scarcely talk about what is most important." I was saying that about Plotinus, for whom the most important thing was not his teaching, but the unutterable experience of union with the One. For Plotinus, abstract teaching could allude to this experience, but could not lead to it. Only asceticism and a moral life could truly prepare the soul for such a union (and here again, we find the same opposition between philosophical discourse and the philosophical life).

Obviously, however, when I used this phrase, I was hinting at my own experience as a teacher and my experience of life. I wasn't only talking about the experience of the ineffable among the Neoplatonists, but about a more general experience.

Everything which is "technical" in the broad sense of the term, whether we arc talking about the exact sciences or the humanistic sciences, is perfectly able to be communicated by teaching or conversation. But everything that touches the domain of the existential - which is what is most important for human beings - for instance, our feeling of existence, our impressions when faced by death, our perception of nature, our sensations, and a fortiori the mystical experience, is not directly communicable. The phrases we use to describe them are conventional and banal; we realize this when we try to console someone over the loss of a loved one. That's why it often happens that a poem or a biography are more philosophical than a philosophical treatise, simply because they allow us to glimpse this unsayable in an indirect way. Here again, we find the kind of mysticism evoked in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: "There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical."

NOTES

[In April-May 1992, M. Hadot was kind enough to respond to some questions I had asked him during the course of the preparation of this translation. What follows is a translation of our exchange. All notes arc my own. - Trans.]

1 [Etienne Gilson, author of many highly influential works on Medieval thought; cf. History of Cliristian Philosophy in tile Middle Ages, New York 1955.]

2 [Emile Brehier, the first modem editor and translator of Plotinus, also wrote important works on Stoicism, and a three-volume History of Pliilosophy which was, for many decades, the standard reference work on the subject in France.]

3 Uean Wahl, expert on Existentialism, was the author of such works as Etudes kierkegaardiem1es ("Studies on Kierkegaard"), 3rd edn, Paris 1967.]

4 [Maurice de Gandillac, a specialist on Neoplatonism, was author of important works on Plotinus (la s11gesse de Plotin, Paris 1966), and Nicolas of Cusa, among others.]

5 LJean Hyppolite was the translator and exegete of Hegel (Genest et Structure de la Pl1e110111bwl0Kit• tie /'esprit tie Hegel, Paris 1946), who exercised a great influence un French Marxi11m. I

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Postscript

6 [3rd edn, Paris 1 989. An English translation is in preparation.]

7 [2 vols, Paris 1 968.]

8 [P. Henry, Plolin ti /'Ocrident. Firmicus Maltrnus, Marius Virtorinus, Saini Augustin ti Marrobe (= Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense, Etudes et Documents 1 5), Louvain 1934.]