ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the Francophone interpretation of the Hellenistic exercises of self-cultivation, and explores how the exercises explicated by Foucault and Hadot offer a sophisticated method that can be applied to the cultivation of our passionate attachments. In 6.1 I argue that this fulfils the respective promises that both Foucault and Hadot make regarding the importance of the Hellenistic exercises of self-cultivation for our own era, albeit not in a way that they would have anticipated. Nevertheless, since my project does not aim to reconstruct their views on the contemporary relevance of Hellenism, the primary concern of this chapter is to show how each of Foucault’s Pratiques de Soi and Hadot’s Exercices Spirituels can be used to facilitate the cultivation of our passionate character. To do this, I discuss each of Foucault’s exercises in 6.2, discussing those that Hadot elaborates in 6.3. As I note in 6.4, although these exercises only offer one of many possible methods of cultivating our passionate character, it is significant that many of the exercises which Foucault and Hadot discuss in the context of the wholesale cultivation of character appear in methods of passionate self-cultivation in different traditions.
