writing/righting philosophy …

“In antiquity, the philosopher was not necessarily “a professor or a writer. He was first of all a person having a certain style of life, which he willingly chose, even if he had neither taught nor written.” Thus we find philosophical figures not only such as Diogenes the Cynic and Pyrrho, but also women who did not write, and celebrated statesmen who were considered true philosophers by their contemporaries. It was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who were considered philosophers, because they had developed a philosophical discourse, but also every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus.” True philosophers lived in society with their fellow citizens, and yet they lived in a different way from other people. They distinguished themselves from others by “their moral conduct, by speaking their mind, by their way of nourishing themselves or dressing themselves, by their attitude with respect to wealth and to conventional values.” Although they did not live a cloistered life, as in Christian monasticism, philosophy was nevertheless analogous to the monastic movement in requiring that one convert oneself so as to fervently adhere to a philosophical school: the philosopher had to “make a choice that obliged him to transform his whole way of living in the world.” Hence the felt rupture of the philosophical life with the conduct and perceptions of everyday life!” The significance of philosophy as a way of life can also be seen in the importance given to biographies in ancient philosophical work. As Giuseppe Cambiano has emphasized, a philosophical biography was not predominantly a narrative intended to allow one to understand an author and his doctrines; it was not just a report of what the author said and believed. Rather, “it was, in the first place, a tool of philosophical battle,” since one could defend or condemn a philosophy by way of the characteristics of the mode of life of those who supported it. The philosopher was a philosopher because of his existential attitude, an attitude that was the foundation of his philosophy and that required that he undergo a real conversion, in the strongest sense of the word, that he radically change the direction of his life.”