2

I'm currently reading Pierre Hadot book What is "Ancient Philosophy?" (Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique?) and as I reach the third part of the book i can't stop thinking about, how exactly is ancient philosophy, understood by Hadot as a way of life, attached to a discourse, consecrated to the spirit, any different than religion in general? Specially given that many, if not all, of the philosophical schools discussed in the book, such as Platonism, Epicureanism or even Stoicism, do have some regard for assumed truths that rely on faith, specially in when it comes to the models of physics (not understood as a science but in the original greek sense of the word physis) it proposes.. Also, are they really different?

Note: I've seen a roughly "similar" question in the forum before however, as I contextualized my doubts in the body of the post, I expect a deeper answer than those given in the "similar" question I saw, preferentially given by someone familiar with the book I mentioned.

ArielK
  • 43
  • 3
  • 1
    In the ancient world nearly everyone was religious in some way. But then, Socrates was sentenced to death for atheism, even though in dialogues such as Phaedo he expounds a philosophical argument for the soul which was later appropriated by Christian theology. To the Athenians, he was atheist because he questioned the Greek Gods, but to modern eyes, he's religious because he believes in the soul. The kinds of distinctions the modern world recognise between faith, reason, science and religion are very much part of modernity itself. That's one of the things you'll get from Hadot, I think. – Wayfarer Dec 22 '22 at 06:21
  • 1
    In fact, I think what we would now call the 'cultural appropriation' of Greek philosophy by Christian theology is a very deep and not-very-well explored question in the history of ideas. Many of the Platonists were hostile to Christianity, and the old Academy was closed down by Christians, yet Christianity more or less adopted Plato and Socrates as 'Christians before Christ', without them having any say in the matter. There's actually a lot of very deep questions bound up with those cultural dynamics. – Wayfarer Dec 22 '22 at 06:26
  • Religion is Religion while Ancient Philosophy is the philosophy of ancient Greece, India, China. There is no philosophy into e.g. the Bible and there is no religion into Aristotle's Metaphysics. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 22 '22 at 06:39
  • Hadot's view is partial... we may find topics in Ancient philosophy that are about "way of life" (but is it religion? why?) but there are many others that are not. See e.g. Ancient Stoic Logic – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 22 '22 at 06:54
  • Sorry, Aristotle's Metaphysics means Aristotle's Metaphysics. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 22 '22 at 09:16
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA why do you say his view is partial? – ArielK Dec 22 '22 at 14:37
  • For this I recommend Paganism in the Roman Empire by Ramsay MacMullen, but the short treatment is that pagan religion was not philosophical. It did not deal with " truths that rely on faith" but in strict transactions between humans and divine beings, performing the rites that your fathers had done. – Mary Dec 23 '22 at 02:45
  • Does this answer your question? Is there a demarcation problem for religions? –  Feb 16 '23 at 10:12

0 Answers0