"From the preceding examples, we may get some idea of the change in perspective that may occur in our reading and interpretation of the philosophical works of antiquity when we consider them from the point of view of the practice of spiritual exercises. Philosophy then appears in its original aspect: not as a theoretical construct, but as a method for training people to live and to look at the world in a new way. It is an attempt to transform mankind. Contemporary historians of philosophy are today scarcely inclined to pay attention to this aspect, although it is an essential one. The reason for this is that, in conformity with a tradition inherited from the Middle Ages … they consider philosophy to be purely abstract-theoretical activity."
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trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre_Hadot
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Pierre Hadot
Pierre Hadot (21 February 1922 – April 24, 2010) was honorary professor at the Collège de France (Chaire d'Histoire de la pensée hellénistique et romaine), perhaps the world's leading historian of ancient philosophy, and a philosopher of note in his own right (among other accomplishments, one of the first to introduce Wittgenstein to France).
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