Spiritual exercises and early modern philosophy: Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza.

The article discusses the concept of spiritual exercises in early modern philosophy, challenging the prevailing narrative that the early modern period marked a decline in the ancient tradition of philosophy as a way of life. The author argues that thinkers like Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza incorporated spiritual exercises into their works, aligning with the insights of scholars like Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault. The article analyzes specific works by these philosophers and highlights the transformative nature of philosophy as a threefold process of attaining knowledge, living a certain way, and self-transformation. The author suggests that this perspective calls into question the dichotomy between ancient and modern philosophy and urges scholars to reconsider the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in the history of philosophy. [Extracted from the article]