Welcome,

I founded the Stoic Practice group to provide a forum for those who
wish to develop a Stoic practice based upon the theories of Pierre
Hadot, especially upon his explanation of the Disciplines of Assent,
Desire, and Action in "The Inner Citadel." The appeal of Pierre Hadot
rests upon his total commitment to seeing philosophy as primarily an
art of living and way of life.

From Hadot's "The Inner Citadel" (35-36):

"For the ancients in general, but particularly for the Stoics and for
Marcus Aurelius, philosophy was, above all, a way of life...

"Ordinary people are content to think in any old way, to act
haphazardly, and to undergo grudgingly whatever befalls them. The good
man, however, will try, insofar as he is able, to act justly in the
service of other people, to accept serenely those events which do not
depend on him, and to think with rectitude and veracity
([Meditations,] VII, 54):

"Always and everywhere, it depends on you piously to be satisfied with
the present conjunction of events,

to conduct yourself justly toward whatever other people are present,
and

to apply the rules of discernment to the inner representation you are
having now, so that nothing which is not objective may infiltrate its
way into you."

The core of Hadot's approach to the practice of Stoicism is
represented by a spiritual exercise that he derives from Marcus
Aurelius' Meditation XII, 3, which he calls "the exercise to
circumscribe and delimit the self" (113) and translates as (112-13):

"There are three things of which you are composed: your body, your
vital breath, and your intellect (nous).
The first two are yours only insofar as you must take care of them.
Only the third is yours in the proper sense of the term.
This is why, if you separate yourself from yourself,
that is to say, from your thought (dianoia),
--everything that others may say or do;
--or again, everything that you yourself have said and done (in the
past), as well as the things which trouble you because they are still
to come;
--and everything that happens to you , independently of your will,
because of the body which surrounds you, or your innate vital breath;
--and everything which stirs the waves of the violent sea which bathes
you,
in order that
--raised above the interweavings of Fate,
--pure,
--free for itself,
the living intellectual power
--by doing what is right,
--by willing everything that happens,
--by telling the truth,
-----if, I say, you separate from this guiding principle (hegemonikon)
the things which have become attached to it, because it has become
attached to them,
and if you separate from time that which is beyond the present and
that which is past,
and if you make yourself like the Sphairos of Empedocles, "a pure orb,
proud of its joyful uniqueness,"
and if you strive to live only what you live--that is to say, the
present,
-----then you will be able to live the time that is left to you, up
until your death, untroubled, benevolently and serenely with regard to
your inner daimon."

See pages 113-125 for Hadot's explanation of this exercise.

This exercise places the practitioner in the position of constant
attention (Discourses, IV, 12) and readiness to "make proper use of
impressions":

"This delimitation of the self, as a potential for liberty which
transcends Destiny, is equivalent to the delimitation of the faculty I
possess to judge, and either to give or to withhold my assent from my
value-judgments" (121).

I think that an adoption of Stoic practice can be initiated by
entering into this spiritual exercise and never leaving it, or, as is
more likely, re-entering it whenever you realize that you have left
it.


Dave Kelly