AN ETHICAL SUBJECT FOR A TRUE LIFE

This essay analyzes the thread that runs from Pierre Hadot to Francois Jullien, passing through Michel Foucault, and which is based on the role of philosophy as a transformer of the self in order to achieve a true life. Hadot and Foucault look for referents in the ancient Greco-Roman schools, while François Jullien does so in traditional Chinese wisdom. But in all cases it is a search for the past in order to return to the present and thus update this dialogue with the ancients. Pierre Hadot will speak of philosophy as a spiritual exercise, Michel Foucault as the care of oneself and François Jullien as the apprenticeship of living while existing. The continuity lies in this desire to make philosophy an instrument for constructing oneself as an ethical subject, the result of which is another way of life, a true life.