born: 1922 city: Riems, France philosophy: Epicureanism, Stoicism nationality: French occupation: Philosopher, Historian died: 2010 city: Orsay, France age: 88
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What is finally most benefical to the human being as a human being? Is it to disourse on language, or on being and non-being? Or is it not rather to learn how to live a human life?
We can perhaps get a better idea [of this spiritual exercise] if we understand it as an attempt to liberate ourselves from a partial, passionate point of view - linked to the senses and the body - so as to rise to the universal, normative viewpoint of thought, submitting ourselves to the demands of the Logos and the norm of the Good. Training for death is training to die to one's *individuality and passions*, in order to look at things from the perspective of universality and objectivity.
The purification of the soul, its separation as far as possible from the body and its gathering itself together within itself, is the true practice of philosophy. Hence philosophy consists of a lived concrete exercise and not of a theory or conceptual edifice: The theoretical philosophical discourse is completely different from the lived exercises by which the soul purifies itself of its passions and spiritually separates itself from the body
Only he who is capable of a genuine encounter with the other is capable of an authentic encounter with himself, and the converse is equally true...From this perspective, every spiritual exercise is a dialogue, insofar as it is an exercise of authentic presence, to oneself and to others.
To have learned theoretically that death is not an evil does not suffice to no longer fear it. In order for this truth to be able to penetrate to the depths of one's being, so that it is not believed only for a brief moment, but becomes an unshakable conviction, so that it is always "ready," "at hand," "present to mind," so that it is a "habitus of the soul" as the Ancients said, one must exercise oneself constantly and without respite - "night and day," as Cicero said.
