Ancient Greek Philosophy as a Founding Model of Western Philosophy: Pierre Hadot’s Vision of the History of Philosophy

Abstract

This paper discusses well-known French thinker Pierre Hadot’s understanding of ancient Greek philosophy as a foundational model for Western philosophy. As the classical Platonic concept of Philosophia, philosophy in Greek antiquity was the love of wisdom, or a way of life aimed at cultivating oneself through spiritual exercises in search of wisdom, that is, the authenticity of human existence. Ancient Greek philosophers, therefore, functioned as mediators between wisdom and humans. From there, Hadot, as a true philosopher and a philosophical doxographer, opened a new perspective on studying the history of Western philosophy as the transformations of foundational models of ancient Greek philosophy and philosophers. Though interrupted for centuries, this long tradition has continued its influence across the Roman period, the Middle Ages, and modern times.