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Pierre Hadot, Albert Camus and the orphic view of nature

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“THE STORY of Orpheus, which though so well known has not yet been in all points perfectly well interpreted, seems meant for a representation of universal Philosophy. For Orpheus himself,—a man admirable and truly divine, who being master of all harmony subdued and drew all things after him by sweet and gentle measures,—may pass by an easy metaphor for philosophy personified. For as the works of wisdom surpass in dignity and power the works of strength, so the labours of Orpheus surpass the labours of Hercules.”

Francis Bacon, “Orpheus”, Wisdom of the Ancients

Abstract

Albert Camus repeatedly denied the label “existentialist,” and pointed to his formative experiences of natural beauty and his early introduction to classical Greek thought and culture as determinative of his philosophy. Pierre Hadot, famous for his post-1970 work on philosophy as a way of life in classical antiquity, continued throughout his life to work on the history of Western conceptions of nature. In Le voile d’Isis, Hadot excavated a second strain of Western attitudes towards nature, alongside the instrumental or “Promethean” approach dominant in modernity: this is that of the contemplative Orphic perspective, closely tied in antiquity to philosophical regimens of spiritual exercises to transform philosophers’ ways of seeing. This paper will argue that Camus and Hadot should be read as two twentieth century “Orphic” figures in this sense, in a way that at once singles them out against almost all other European contemporaries, as well as speaking to our ecological concerns today. Yet the only comparative piece on the two thinkers to date, by Matthew Lamb, misses this shared contemplative, Orphic core to their positions. This paper aims to redress this shortcoming in the reception of the two figures.

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Notes

  1. Hadot (2001).

  2. Hadot (2001, p. 42).

  3. Hadot (2001, p. 48).

  4. See Jeanson (2004, 79–06); Sartre (2004, pp. 107–130).

  5. Camus (1951, pp. 343–379).

  6. On the midday thought of Camus, and its neoclassical bearings, see Ward (1990).

  7. Camus (1987).

  8. Ibid.

  9. Camus (1951, p. 373).

  10. Hadot (2008a, b, p. 96).

  11. Hadot (2008a, b, p. 95).

  12. Hadot (2008a, b, p. 96).

  13. Camus (1987, p. 68 [Nuptials at Tipasa]). Again, in the culminating essay of the collection (“The Desert”), which Camus frames as akin to the higher ancient mysteries (1987, p. 97), Camus’ meditations culminate in what he terms a “song of hopeless love born in contemplation” (1987, p. 104 [our italics]). On Eleusinian motifs in Camus’s “Nuptials,” see Sharpe (2016).

  14. Lamb (2011a, b).

  15. See Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, pp. 259–261).

  16. Hadot (2005, pp. 229–237).

  17. Eg: Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, pp. 172–233); Hadot (1995, pp. 79–125 [“Spiritual Exercises”]). For exploration and advocacy, see Sharpe (2014); Grimm and Cohoe (2020).

  18. Camus (2006, p. 659).

  19. Camus (2006, p. 659).

  20. Camus (1942 [2008]).

  21. Camus (1942 [2008]), p. 92. See Lamb (2011a, b, p. 576). These are the last words of Lamb’s article.

  22. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 564). See esp. Hadot (1995, pp. 64–65) on the oral dimensions of ancient thought, for Hadot, and its relation to the genres of ancient philosophical writing.

  23. Camus (1966, p. 44).

  24. Hadot, at Davidson (1995, p. 20).

  25. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 565). Compare on these notebooks Blanchard (1997) and Sharpe (2013).

  26. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 564).

  27. See Hadot (1995, pp. 79–125).

  28. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 564).

  29. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 562).

  30. Camus (1966, p. 44).

  31. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 564–567).

  32. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 564).

  33. Hadot (1995, pp. 71–75).

  34. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, pp. 149–157).

  35. See Hadot (2010, pp. 27–59).

  36. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 565–567).

  37. Camus (2007).

  38. Lamb (2011a, pp. 564–566).

  39. See Camus (1964, p. 116): “Les Grecs n’auraient rien compris à l’existentialisme—alors que, malgré le scandale, ils ont pu entrer dans le Christianisme. C’est que l’existentialisme ne suppose pas de conduite.”

  40. See Richardson (2012). Camus is far from alone in adducing these binaries at this time.

  41. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 567).

  42. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 571–576).

  43. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 573–575). Cf. Lamb (2011b).

  44. Lamb (2011b).

  45. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 575–576).

  46. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 571). See Hadot (2010, pp. 223–229).

  47. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 571).

  48. See Lamb (2011b, p. 98), where he aligns ascesis with polytheism, mimesis and physis, and “ethical” exercises, as against the “spiritual exercises” associated with “asceticism,” and shaped by monotheism, logos and nomos. We evidently can do no more than indicate that each of these alignments would bear historical scrutiny. When the Stoics define philosophy as a practice (askêsis) of wisdom, for one instance, it is exactly with the Logos in view, etc. See Brouwer (2013, pp. 7–50).

  49. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 571).

  50. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 573), citing Hadot (1995, p. 128).

  51. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 575).

  52. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 565).

  53. Lamb (2011b, p. 98) makes the same claim.

  54. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 574–575).

  55. Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 571–574).

  56. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 575).

  57. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 572). Readers can note here the interesting proximity between Lamb’s reading of Hadot in the final Parts of his essay, then, and those of John M. Cooper and, differently, the Foucaultian critique of Hadot made by Orazio Irrera. If this is a misreading of Hadot, it is a symptomatic misreading which continues to be repeated. See Cooper (2012, pp. 17–22, 402–403, notes 4–5); Irrera (2010).

  58. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 572).

  59. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 574). Compare Arendt (1993, pp. 91–141 [“What is Authority?”]).

  60. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 574).

  61. On the vita mixta as Stoic ideal, see I. Hadot (2015, pp. 237–241); Graver (2012, pp. 75–100). For the Epicureans, the sage needs a very good reason to get involved in politics; for the Stoics, s/he needs a very good excuse for not concerning himself with political affairs.

  62. See esp. Hadot (1972, 1992). On the Stoics’ as admirers of Socrates, see Long (2004).

  63. See Bénatouïl and Bonazzi (2012).

  64. See Hadot (2008a, b, pp. 155–232).

  65. See here Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 563–564).

  66. Camus (1987, pp. 65–66).

  67. See Camus (1987, pp. 154–161 [“Enigma”], pp. 162–171 [“Return to Tipasa”]).

  68. Weyembergh (1998); cf. Sharpe (2015).

  69. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, pp. 23–24).

  70. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, p. 24).

  71. Viz. “… a philosopher who takes his personal experience as his point of departure. This experience becomes the focus of his thinking, and Camus explicates it through philosophy.” Sagi (2002, p. 26).

  72. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, p. 25).

  73. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, p. 24).

  74. Hadot (1998).

  75. Cooper (2012, pp. 17–22, 402–403, notes 4–5).

  76. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, p. 137). See Chase (2010).

  77. Hadot (1995, p. 280).

  78. Hadot (1998, p. 27).

  79. Hadot (1998, pp. 30–31).

  80. Hadot (1998, pp. 65–86).

  81. Hadot (1998, pp. 19, 27).

  82. See Hadot (1998, pp. 82–86).

  83. Plotinus, Enneads, I, 6, 9.

  84. See Walker (1982, pp. 829–839), and Jones (1987). For Hadot’s use of Bréhier, see (1998, pp. 76–80, 125). For a critique of Camus for over-reliance on Bréhier’s La philosophie de Plotin, see Archambault (1972, pp. 50–52).

  85. On which, see Walker, “Camus, Plotinus,” pp. 830–832. Camus’ admiration for music as the most ideal form of art, Walker sees as a direct reflection of his reading at this time of the Enneads.

  86. Camus (2007, p. 114).

  87. Camus (2007, p. 89).

  88. Camus (2007, p. 89 [with italics ours]). For Hadot, Plotinus invites us to a “conversion of attention,” at Hadot (1998, p. 90).

  89. Camus (2007, p. 89).

  90. Camus (2007, p. 90).

  91. Walker (1982, pp. 834–838).

  92. Camus (1987, p. 90); compare Walker (1982, p. 838).

  93. Lamb (2011a, b, p. 564 and part I above).

  94. In fact, and this bears stressing, the Stoics and Epicureans, to whom Hadot increasingly turned as his interest in philosophy as a way of life grew, are mentioned just once in Lamb’s text, in the context of relating Hadot’s account of the history of the devolution of ascesis, at Ibid.

  95. Despite Lamb’s presentation, Hadot was in fact highly critical of “supernaturalism” in Catholicism, and deeply hostile to the more or less openly “religious” developments of Neoplatonists after Plotinus. “This intrusion of religion into philosophy had always been rather enigmatic to me. I believe that it is an unfortunate attempt to compete with Christianity,” Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, p. 37). Compare Cooper (2012, pp. 384–387; Lamb (2011a, b, pp. 573–574).

  96. See Hadot (1995, pp. 238–250 [“The View from Above”].

  97. Hadot (1995, p. 241).

  98. Hadot (1995, p. 241–242).

  99. Hadot (1995, p. 245).

  100. Hadot (1995, pp. 244–245).

  101. Hadot (1995, pp. 241–242).

  102. Hadot (1995, p. 245).

  103. Stobaeus, Anthologion Ioannis Stobæi Florilegium 2, 59.4–62, 6 Cf. Diogenes Laertius’ “to despise the things that seem to cause trouble” at Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, VII, 128; cf. Hadot (2008a, b, p. 185).

  104. Hadot (1995, p. 245; cf. 1972, pp. 229–234).

  105. Camus (1942 [2008]), p. 85.

  106. See Treil (1971).

  107. Camus (1987, 9–10).

  108. See Hadot (1995, 217–237).

  109. Hadot (2008b).

  110. Hadot (2002a, b, c, d, pp. 231–237; 2008b, pp. 24–42).

  111. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 12.

  112. Camus (1963, p. 5).

  113. Camus (1942 [2008]), p. 90.

  114. Camus (1987, p. 77).

  115. Camus (1951, p. 376).

  116. Camus (1951, pp. 173–192, 265, 284–291).

  117. Camus (2007, p. 90).

  118. Camus (1966, p. 73).

  119. Camus (1987, pp. 150–151). We note that, here as elsewhere, Plato is mentioned positively by Camus.

  120. See Camus (1951, pp. 302–342); with Camus (1960).

  121. Hadot (2002b).

  122. Cf. Sharpe (2018).

  123. Hadot (2002b, p. 349).

  124. Hadot (2002b, p. 349, 352; c, d, pp. 232–233).

  125. Camus (1987, pp. 148–153).

  126. See again Hadot (2008a, b, pp. 155–232).

  127. Hadot (2010, pp. 310–314 [“L’Homme antique et la nature”]).

  128. Hadot (2010, p. 310 [italics ours]).

  129. Hadot (2002c, pp. 309–310; Hadot (1995, pp. 206–214 [“Reflections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self’”]).

  130. See especially Hadot (2002d).

  131. Hadot (2010, p. 330).

  132. Hadot (2010, p. 332).

  133. Hadot (2014, p. 193).

  134. Camus (1942 [2008], p. 30).

  135. Camus (1987, pp. 102, 101).

  136. Camus (1987, pp. 102–103).

  137. See for instance Duvall (1989, pp. 33–43).

  138. Camus (1987, p. 87).

  139. Camus (1960, p. 39).

  140. Hadot (2008a, b, pp. 181–186).

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Sharpe, M. Pierre Hadot, Albert Camus and the orphic view of nature. Cont Philos Rev 54, 17–39 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-020-09520-x

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