In 529 AD the Christian Emperor, Justinian, closed the Athenian Academy, a neo-Platonic school, and brought to an end the teaching of classical philosophy in the West. (It should be noted that Hadot’s picture of ancient philosophy is more accurately a description of philosophy as practiced by Socrates and the Hellenistic schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism rather than the schools of Plato and Aristotle.) The Loss of Spiritual Exercises exercises in self-control, therapies to calm the passions, self-examination, meditation, and memorization of the principles of the school. But they also employed exercises that we identify with religious or spiritual organizations, e.g. The exercises the students practiced were those that we still associate with academic study i.e., reading, writing, research, and dialogue. Each school had their own set of spiritual exercises that corresponded to their respective ideals of wisdom. “The philosophical school …demands from the individual a total change of lifestyle, a conversion of one’s entire being, and…a…desire to be and live in a certain way.” 3. It involved what today would be called a religious conversion. For the Greeks and Romans, doing philosophy meant choosing a school and adopting their way of life.

Two steps from hell am i not human live