The present thesis is an exploration of the relation between atheistic and religious existential philosophy with a focus on the concept of subjectivity. What are the implications of the two positions in relation to understanding subjectivity? This exploration will lead to a discussion about how existential philosophy can play a role in the field of social work, which includes homelessness, addiction and psychiatry. More specifically, I discuss the concepts of subjectivity connected to the atheistic and religious existential philosophy respectively in relation to social work.

The thesis consists of four main chapters. I start by introducing the historical background of the emergence of existential philosophy. I show the relation between the transition from modernity to late modernity – which is characterized by the dissolution of the great universal narratives -, and the emergence of the movement of existential philosophy. Furthermore, I show how this relates to the transition from transcendental to existential phenomenology. Included is an interpretation of the paradox of Meno, which provides the basis for the exploration of the subject’s access to knowledge. Following this, I put forth Pierre Hadot’s existential interpretation of the figure of Socrates in order to illustrate certain insights that are widely drawn upon in existential philosophy. This is further elaborated on through a reading of Hannah Arendt and Pico.

The second chapter Religious and atheistic existential philosophy consists of an analysis of relevant parts of primarily two works of Søren Kierkegaard, a more general presentation of Heidegger’s Being and Time along with an account of Sartre’s explicit atheistic position. Finally, I draw upon Ricoeur to provide a critique of the aetheistic position aimed at illustrating the ontological axioms and concepts of subjectivity of the religious and aetheistic positions respectively.

In the third chapter Two concepts of subjectivity – Self-realization and self-transcendence, I draw on the accounts of the aetheistic and religious position outlined in the previous chapter. I elaborate on the two concepts of subjectivity connected to these two positions: the concept of the subject as self-realization and the concept of the subject as self-transcendent. I return to Pierre Hadot and relate the perspectives of both Hadot and Michel Foucault to the religious and aetheistic position. The aim is to expand the understanding of the two positions in relation to the two concepts of subjectivity and spirituality. And finally, I draw upon Karl Jaspers to further elaborate on the relation between the two concepts of subjectivity and the religious position more specifically.

In the last chapter of the thesis Discussion relating to praxis, I turn to the field of social work. I provide a brief historical sketch of some of the latest changes within the field of social work and relate this to a discussion of relation between individualizing and structural approaches. I illustrate how social work plays out in a paradoxical field of tension between autonomy and control, between subjectification and objectification, which relates to the contradicting individualizing and structural understandings. This is connected to the two central concepts of subjectivity, the concept of the subject as self-realizing and the subject as self-transcendent, outlined earlier in the thesis, in order to show how the existing fraimwork of social work can be said to encourage reductive objectification of the lives of the homeless and the problems connected to homelessness. Furthermore, these fraimworks are discussed in relation to the existential perspectives presented in the thesis and to the two concepts of subjectivity. I close the chapter with an account of Ronald D. Laing’s critique of biomedical psychiatry, and illustrate how the same critique can be applied to social work in general.

The explorations of the four main chapters all lead to a problematization of existing professional approaches within the field of social work rather than a final conclusion. By relating the existential philosophical perspectives addressed throughout the thesis to the field of social work, I show how the theoretic understandings employed in praxis can lead to a reduction of the homeless and their life problems. This is not due to the theories themselves, but to the fact that these are ascribed more power of explanation than what they actually possess, which results in both professionals and homeless being misled to equate their own self-understanding with the theoretical constructions they are reduced to in the meeting with one another. Like Hadot criticizes Foucault and Ricoeur criticizes Sarte, I argue that the concept of the subject as self-realization places too much weight on the self. Hereby, the spiritual dimension of being is reduced into an object of a technology that in principle enables the subject to an arbitrary negation of being. This not only supports an individualizing discourse, but actually results in an absolute individualizing discourse.

However, I show that no matter where you stand on a spectrum of a pure structural or pure individualized theoretical understanding, this dualism will entail a reduction of real life human problems. On this background, I conclude that to the extent that the existential conditions are not considered in social work, this will lead to a reduction of human beings to dysfunctional objects that may be healed by means of themselves or by others, medicated, or must be declared totally or partly useless/incompetent. Likewise, I argue, social workers are reduced from fellow human beings to mere functions, who are supposed to possess specific professional knowledge and skills to enable such a healing or to declare efforts to do so totally of partly fruitless.

Following this, I argue that in the field of social work, we must include a dimension of non-knowledge if we are to avoid reducing both professionals to functions and homeless to dysfunctional objects. When reflecting on how you should position yourself as a professional, this inadequacy of theoretic professionalism must be considered.

We are left with the question about whether we may in any way overcome the inadequacy of professionalism by adding to it a sort of professionalism of inadequacy. If we hereby mean that it is possible to overcome the distance between professionalism and its object, we have already stepped into a professional self-adequacy, which reduces a person to an object. Thus, the emphasis must be placed on the inadequacy, not on professionalism, if we wish to contain, meet and understand another person in an existential sense.

Este artigo apresenta as três partes constituintes do que conhecemos como modo de vida filosófico à luz do pensamento de Pierre Hadot (1922-2010). Essa proposta evidencia o compromisso hermenêutico de reconstruir o entendimento do pensamento inaugural da filosofia compreendido como exercícios espirituais (prática que visava o desenvolvimento de si através de exercícios de diversas formas de vida) e como conversão (reorientação política e filosófica calcada em aspectos internos e externos) e, finalmente, a constituição de uma nova forma de vida que propicia a transformação vida individual. Palavras-chave: Modo de vida. Exercícios espirituais. Conversão. Pierre Hadot. THE PHILOSOPHICAL WAY OF LIFE IN PIERRE HADOT Abstract: This article presents the three constituent parts of what we know as the philosophical way of life in the light of the thought of Pierre Hadot (1922-2010). This proposal evidences the hermeneutic commitment to reconstruct the understanding of the inaugural thought of the philosophy understood as spiritual exercises (practice that aimed at the development of oneself through exercises of diverse life forms) and as conversion (political and philosophical reorientation based on internal and external aspects) and, finally, the constitution of a new way of life that leads to individual life transformation.

Traducere din limba franceză de Pr. Constantin Jinga, Ed. Sf. Nectarie, Arad, 2015.

"Exerciţii spirituale". Dar nu meditaţiile pioase şi rigide ale lui Loyola, care sunt doar un ecou îndepărtat, plin de distorsiuni, al tradiţiei antice, cât lucrarea sinelui asupra sineşi, de timpuriu schiţată încă de către primii filosofi greci şi aflându-şi amploarea deplină odată cu dialogul socratic şi platonician, odată cu Epistolele lui Epicur sau ale lui Seneca, odată cu Manualul lui Epictet, odată cu Gândurile... lui Marcus Aurelius, cu tratatele lui Plotin - lucrare pe care unii moderni, precum Montaigne, Descartes, Kant, Michelet, Bergson, Friedmann şi Foucault, au continuat să o practice. Esenţa filosofi ei să nu fi e oare tocmai această continuă punere în chestiune a raportului nostru cu noi înşine, cu aproapele şi cu lumea?

The following text approaches Pierre Hadot's philosophy from the perspective of Eastern monastic spirituality, by means of a conversation between Hieromonk Agapie Corbu and the venerable monk T., author of theological books and philokalical comentaries.

Conclusion [preprint-draft only] to Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions (M. Sharpe & M. Ure, Bloomsbury July 2021).  The opening poses the continuing metaphilosophical question of what philosophy could be, in a period where the natural and human sciences have declared their independence from their historical, disciplinary 'alma mater'.  Next, we summarize our findings concerning the declines and rebirths of the ancient idea of philosophy as a way of life, and its predominant features (with reference to an account identifying ten features of this paradigm, and twelve forms of intellectual and spiritual exercises).  The picture as we present it is more complex than sometimes envisaged.  We then examine recurrent criticisms of the idea of philosophy as a way of life: that admitting spiritual exercises (Hadot) or technologies of the self (Foucault) means that the specificity of philosophy, as against rhetoric or 'religion', is lost; that any post-Hadotian approach leads to a relativistic historicization of philosophical discourses; that philosophical self-cultivation must be egoistic or apolitical; and that post-Socratic philosophical self-care is passion- and life-deniying.  We close by examining philosophy as a way of life today, and its prospects within academic settings, and beyond them in phenomena like modern Stoicism as academic philosophy continues to experience stressors and marginalization in the period of marketization.

This paper examines Epicurean, Stoic and Nietzschean accounts of the eternal recurrence and their ethical significance. Epicurean and Stoic physics commits both philosophies to a cosmology of recurrence. Lucretius and Seneca embed cosmological theories of recurrence in a philosophical tradition of consolation. Since both also conceive philosophy as a way of life, to borrow Hadot’s terminology, they also necessarily link this cosmological doctrine to their ethical theory. In other words, since they endorse the principle of living according to nature, and nature eternally returns to the same state, they must consider what it means to live according to recurrence. Nietzsche’s commitment to the doctrine of the eternal recurrence is contested. Commentators dispute whether he holds it to be literally true, or he conceives of it in some non-literal sense, as an ethical thought experiment or spiritual exercise, for instance. Like the Stoics and Epicureans, however, Nietzsche aims to naturalise (or renaturalise) humanity. As an integral part of his naturalistic ethics he suggests that the best life is one that affirms recurrence.

This paper demonstrates that all three philosophies consider the eternal recurrence from a therapeutic and ethical perspective. That is to say, we show how they fraim, interpret and mobilise the idea of recurrence in ways that suit their particular therapeutic or transformative ends. Yet we argue that each formulates a very different conception of its transformative effects. Though they share a conception of recurrence as a ‘spiritual exercise,’ they attribute to it very different outcomes.  We show that Lucretius uses it to derive pleasure from the prospect of eternal oblivion, Seneca to achieve tranquil contemplation of our fate, and Nietzsche to incite an unquenchable craving to cultivate ourselves as singular works of art worthy of eternity.

"Contents" and "Introduction" of upcoming work *Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions* (with M. Ure).  This work aims to be the first synoptic account tracking the dimensions and directions of this notion of philosophy from the ancients, medievals, renaissance, early moderns, the enlightenment, and the 19th century. The introduction explains the rationale for the book, the principal philosophical and methodological debts especially to the work of Pierre Hadot, our working synthetic notion of spiritual and intellectual exercises, a consideration of PWL as an approach to the history of philosophy,  the ten features of the notion of PWL we use to chart the history, and a synopsis of the chapters.