Philosophical Exercises

In April 2026, I turned to Mengzi for wisdom. He was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who believed that human nature is fundamentally good. Like all Confucians, he believed that the observance of ritual was necessary to develop virtues, but he distinguished himself by stating explicitly and encouragingly that the cultivation of virtue was the realization of our kind-hearted human nature. For this monthly experiment, I tried to find Ritual in my own life, and when it proved extremely difficult, I listened to the kind encouragement of Mengzi. Mengzi ; illustration found in Myths and Legends of China , by E. T. C. Werner  Hungry for a taste of a completely new philosophical culture (after trying christian mysticism last time) I went to read the Bryan W. Van Norden translation of Mengzi : the eponymous collection of sayings and dialogues of the second sage of Confucianism (second only to Confucius himself). I also discovered BryanW. Van Norden’s Youtube Channel , an amazing and ...

 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...