Abstract

As a contribution to thinking about the possibility of spiritual education, I examine Pierre Hadot's important distinction between ‘philosophy as theory’, a detached investigation into ‘the natures of things’, and ‘philosophy as a way of life’, practical exercises which Socrates introduced as a means of ‘learning to die’. While most philosophy today amounts to ‘philosophy as theory’, ‘philosophy as a way of life’ remains a respectable and viable tradition and a most exacting education of the spirit. I illustrate it here through an examination of some of its practitioners such as St Bernard of Clairvaux, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Etty Hillesum.