Philosophical Exercises

 This is a small tribute I wrote on Bluesky and copied here. If it reads like a "thread" that's why; but I wanted to save it somewhere. Ilsetraut Hadot died recently. She was a key, yet often-forgotten, figure in Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWL) studies. Her PhD thesis on Seneca and Spiritual Guidance anticipated the work of her husband Pierre Hadot, whom she greatly influenced. It seems that the relationship between Ilsetraut and Pierre Hadot was what Helen de Cruz dubbed " philosophical friendship ". Philosophical friends can talk together, form ideas together, and write together (they co-authored a book on learning philosophy in Antiquity) Pierre Hadot said "My wife's book [Her PhD thesis] and the conversations we had together revealed to me new aspects of the phenomenon I was trying to understand. This ultimately led, in 1977, to the [article] entitled 'Spiritual Exercises'" Another example: Ilsetraut Hadot said of Pierre Hadot: "...

In March 2026, I practiced a form of contemplative meditation called “the Cloud of Unknowing”, described in a work of the same name, which was penned by an anonymous author in the 14 th century. The book and the meditation is an exercise in Christian mysticism. The strong Christian flavour of this activity made it challenging for me to get into it. At the same time, I think I should credit this specific Christian philosophy for giving me a new appreciation and a vocabulary for things I overlooked in the past: namely, the sense of the divine, the issue of spiritual dryness , and the notion of God being present even in his absence. The Pierced Cloud of Unknowing by Pierrick Simon (me!) The Cloud of Unknowing is part of the v ia negativa (negative way) or apophatic theology: a form of thinking that considers that the best way to approach the Divine is to talk about what it isn’t, as opposed to what it is. Only then can you move away from inadequate conceptions and start t...

By nature, I am a very anxious person. By training, I am pretty chill. I credit mindfulness meditation for giving me the option to live a different life. A life that is not completely consumed by my fears. I write this blog post with the same urgency I felt when I wrote “Fighting anxiety like my life depends on it” or my mindfulness-related 2025 New Year’s resolutions : the sense that I ought to convey, as explicitly and plainly as possible, how vital it is for some of us to rely on mindfulness in order to not waste our lives on fear. And I write with the hope that even those who do not struggle with a full-blown anxiety disorder might find it useful to reflect on their “sad passions” (as Spinoza would say). Ruth McEnery Stuart and Albert Bigelow Paine,  Gobolinks, or Shadow Pictures for Young and Old  (New York: The Century Co., 1896). A bottle of ink falls to the ground and spills out ink patterns, in which one can see goblin-monsters. As far as I can remember,...