Pierre Hadot

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Pierre Hadot (1997)

Pierre Hadot (born February 21, 1922 in Paris , † April 25, 2010 in Orsay , Essonne , France) was a French philosopher and historian.

biography

Hadot, son of a strictly Catholic family, grew up in Reims and attended a Catholic secondary school (Petit Séminaire) from 1932 . He then studied Catholic theology and philosophy . After completing his studies, he was ordained a priest in 1944 . In 1949 he became an employee of the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). In 1952 he resigned from the Catholic Church.

In 1964 he was appointed director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE) in Paris, where he initially held the chair for Latin patristicism, which in 1971 was given the title "Theologies et mystiques de la Grèce hellénistique et de la fin de l 'Antiquité "(Theology and Mysticism of Hellenistic Greece and the End of Antiquity). He taught there until 1986. During this time he came into contact with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Louis Dumont, among others . In 1966 he married the German classical philologist Ilsetraut Hadot (née Ludolff) in West Berlin , who was then a research assistant at the Aristotle Archive at the Free University of Berlin. Encouraged by Michel Foucault , he applied to the Collège de France , the highest scientific teaching and research institution in France, and was appointed to the chair of "Histoire de la pensée hellénistique et romaine" (History of Hellenistic and Roman Thought) in 1982 worked there until 1991.

As a philosopher, he initially dealt with the late antique rhetor and Christian scholar Marius Victorinus , who in the 4th century a. a. Translated works of the Greek Neo-Platonists Plotinus and Porphyrios . In addition, Pierre Hadot dealt directly with Plotinus and Porphyry and has been the editor of a number of French annotated translations of the works of Plotinus (Éditions du Cerf) since 1987. One of his main concerns was to bring an important goal of ancient philosophy back to modern man's consciousness, which consists in not only offering any desired philosophical system, but also conveying a form of life with the help of spiritual exercises. To date, his relevant books have been translated into 17 languages, including: a. into Chinese and Japanese.

He wrote an important standard work on the self-reflections of the Roman emperor and last important representative of the Stoa Marcus Aurelius , which was also translated into Japanese by Makoto Ozaki .

Unlike Bertrand Russell , he saw human freedom not being deprived of all space by the Stoics. Through his ability to speak, man can enter “another universe, which is not of the same kind as the universe of causality, namely the universe of meaning and value.” In this, according to the stoic view, man has the possibility of the events caused by fate himself to evaluate and classify as good or bad. “The value of things therefore depends on the moral attitude we take towards them. So philosophy consists precisely in choosing to imagine things in a certain way ”.

In the 1950s he became one of the first translators and commentators on the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein into French.

His other main areas of activity included questions of the art of living .

Fonts

His major publications include:

  • Plotinus ou la simplicity du regard. Editions Gallimard 1963. (English translation. The University of Chicago Press 1993)
  • Porphyre et Victorinus. Vol. I and II, Paris 1968 (Etudes Augustiniennes).
  • Marius Victorinus. Paris 1971 (Etudes Augustiniennes).
  • Marius Victorinus - Christian Platonism. Artemis-Verlag, Zurich / Stuttgart 1967.
  • Ambroise de Milan, Apologie de David. (Sources Chrétiennes n ° 239). Paris 1977.
  • One (that), unit . In: Joachim Ritter u. a. (Ed.): Historical dictionary of philosophy. Volume 2. Schwabe, Basel 1972, Col. 361 ff. (Contributions by Pierre Hadot, Kurt Flasch and Erich Heintel ).
  • Plotinus ou la simplicity du regard. Études Augustiniennes, Paris 1973 (new edition).
  • Plotinus, Traité 50. Les Editions du Cerf, 1990.
  • Plotinus, Traité 9. Les Editions du Cerf, 1994.
  • Life . In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy . Vol. 5, 1980, pp. 52-103 (contributions by Pierre Hadot / H. Hübner / J. Vennebusch / R. Piepmeier / U. Dierse / K. Rothe / Richard Toellner ).
  • Louis Robert (February 15, 1904 - May 31, 1985). (PDF; 22 kB) (Obituary for the epigraphist Louis Robert ).
  • Philosophy as a way of life. Spiritual exercises in antiquity. Gatza, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-928262-02-5 .
  • Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique? Editions Gallimard, 1995.
  • La philosophy comme manière de vivre. Entretiens avec J. Carlier et AI Davidson. (Livre de Poche) Paris 2001.
  • Foucault and His Interlocutors. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1997. Arnold Davidson (Ed.) With contributions by Noam Chomsky , Georges Canguilhem , Gilles Deleuze , Jacques Derrida , Pierre Hadot, Michel Serres , Paul Veyne .
  • La Citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle. Fayard, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-213-02984-9 . (Standard work)
    • German: The inner castle. Instructions for reading Marcus Aurelius. translated by Makoto Ozaki and Beate von der Osten. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-8218-0642-7 .
  • Plotinus, Porphyries: études néoplatoniciennes. Belles Lettres, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-251-42010-X .
  • Etudes de philosophie ancienne. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2010.
  • Etudes de patristique et d'histoire des concepts. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2011.
  • Ways to Wisdom - or What Does Ancient Philosophy Teach Us? Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-8218-0655-9 .
  • La philosophy comme manière de vivre. Editions Albin Michel 2001.
  • La Voile d' Isis . Editions Gallimard 2004.
  • Wittgenstein et les limits you langage. Suivi d'une lettre de GEM Anscombe et de Logique et littérature Réflexions sur la signification de la forme littéraire chez Wittgenstein. with a text by Gottfried Gabriel, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7116-1704-1 .
  • N'oublie pas de vivre. Goethe et la tradition des exercices spirituels. Editions Michel 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pierre Hadot: Mark Aurel. In: Friedo Ricken (ed.): Philosophers of antiquity. Volume II, Stuttgart 1996, p. 203.
personal data
SURNAME Hadot, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 2010
Place of death Orsay , Essonne department , France