What Is Ancient Philosophy?

This book by Pierre Hadot was genuinely recommended once in the episodes we index, on Tim Ferriss. The people who vouched for it on air: John Vervaeke. It comes up in conversations about brain health, consciousness, meditation & mindfulness, productivity & performance. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

"A magisterial mappa mundi of the terrain that Pierre Hadot has so productively worked for decades, this ambitious work revises our view of ancient philosophy, and in doing so, proposes that we change the way we see philosophy itself. Hadot takes ancient philosophy out of its customary realm of names, dates, and arid abstractions and plants it squarely in the thick of life.

• “the book that changed my life. I picked What Is Ancient Philosophy? by Pierre Hadot. That book, and philosophy as a way of life”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “the book that changed my life. I picked What Is Ancient Philosophy? by Pierre Hadot”
  John Vervaeke · The Tim Ferriss Show · Feb 202300:33:33

  Said during "John Vervaeke, How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation | The Tim Ferriss Show". The episode features John Vervaeke: Professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto, director of its Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory, and creator of the YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and After Socrates. Cognitive scientist John Vervaeke unpacks four ways of knowing, flow, wisdom, and how an ecology of practices addresses the meaning crisis.