…the house I live in…

“A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.”

I was recently talking with a dear friend, a person on a deep spiritual journey with whom I have shared many books and ideas. We see one another only a couple times a year, but one of our standard catch-up questions is, “How is your practice?” It is a boiler-plate type question, shorthand for How goes progress on your (spiritual) path? or, if we’re in a lighthearted mood, Have you attained enlightenment yet? 

My philosophical quest has been (almost) singular in effort. Since my youth I have oriented my life around the question, How to live? It is an age-old question, and one in which the ancients were deeply interested. But somewhere in the evolution of philosophy’s ancestral tree the question got dropped. Philosophy took a turn, becoming more academic and esoteric. ^1. It branched out to explore topics such as the philosophy of science, Semiotics, and Logical positivism. These are fascinating topics and I have spent time exploring them. However, the only branch of philosophy to fully capture and sustain my curiosity is the ethical branch that includes the question, How to live? Interestingly, there is not much interest in this question in modern philosophical circles. 

It is of interest that Sarah Bakewell chose for her fabulous 2010 biography of Montaigne the title, How to Live. (I kicked off this series by posting my 2012 review of Bakewell’s book.) For, among the concerns of practical philosophy, the question takes center stage. No one has tackled it with more brio and insight that our French friend, Michel de Montaigne. 

The question has a spiritual element.^2. Hence it came to be that my friend and I discuss the question, How is your practice? While her path is more obviously a practice (Zen Buddhism), mine is more ambiguous. Philosophy is not generally recognized as a spiritual path, though there are exceptions. For instance, consider the title of Pierre Hadot’s 1981 book, Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. (The English translation, 1995.) Hadot writes, 

“…the philosophical life will be an effort to live and think according to the norm of wisdom, it will be a movement, a progression, though a never-ending one, toward this transcendent state.” ^3. 

To turn to the ancient philosophers is to likely find a path that qualifies as a practice. It is fitting and understandable that Montaigne, deeply steeped in classical thought, evolved a way of living that suggests a spiritual path. Interestingly for our purposes, in his introduction to Hadot’s book, Arnold I. Davidson writes: 

“Hadot has repeatedly pointed to Montaigne’s Essays, especially “That to Philosophize is to Learn How to Die,” as embodying the ancient exercise of philosophy, referring to the Essays as ‘the breviary of ancient philosophy, the manual of the art of living.’” ^4. 

As my friend and I talked I realized that a spiritual practice in Montaigne is, well, let’s say, not obvious, if there at all. The idea of considering Montaigne as a spiritual thinker is not one I’ve encountered to date. So, I’m going to dig a little deeper into this theme with the next post to two. To that end, I will pick up where I left off in the last post, with the discipline of attention.

Thanks for reading.

1. “Academic philosophy focuses upon questions of reality, knowledge, truth, reason, and the principles (not so much of practice) of ethics […] the philosophy of life, of living, of being human in a complicated world–has in the past century and more vanished from what came to be called ‘Analytic’ philosophy (the technical academic philosophy of most universities in the English-speaking world….” A.C. Grayling, Philosophy and Life, 2023, Penguin Random House UK, p. x
2. To be frank, the word “spiritual” has always confounded me. It’s a word I’m not entirely comfortable with. My daughter recently confided that she wished to be on a “spiritual path” but found, as does her humanist father, the word spiritual to be problematic. She asked how I got around it. “Do you want to be a better person?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, to which I responded, “Then you’re on a spiritual path.” That worked for her and it works for me, and it is the definition I’m working with in this series. The goal to improve as a human being is a spiritual goal, whatever the means.
3. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 1995, Blackwell Publishing, p. 59 
4. above, p. 33