Must We Do What We Say? Truth, Responsibility and the Ordinary in Ancient and Modern Perfectionism

• Published in: European journal of pragmatism and American philosophy Vol. 2; no. 2; pp. 16 - 34
• Main Author: Daniele, Lorenzini
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Associazione Culturale Pragma 31-12-2010
• Subjects: Humanities and Social Sciences; Philosophy; Socrate; Perfectionnisme moral; Hadot; Vérité; Thoreau; Mill; Exercices spirituels; Foucault; Emerson; Cavell
• ISSN: 2036-4091; 2036-4091

The central argument of this paper is that moral perfectionism cannot be under-stood in its radical philosophical, ethical and political dimensions unless we trace its tradi-tion back to the ancient Greek conception of philosophy as a way of life. Indeed, in an-cient Greece, to be a philosopher meant to give importance to everyday life and to pay at-tention to the details of common language and behaviour, in order to actively transformoneself and one's relationship to others and to the world. Truth itself was conceived as anevent emerging from the agreement among the logoi of different people, or from the har-mony established by an individual between his words and his deeds (e.g. Socrates, theCynics). But this way of conceiving truth and practicing philosophy has been somehow put aside in modern times, and it has been renewed only during the last two centuries, primarily thanks to the transcendental American philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau.Therefore, the aim of this paper is to show how modern perfectionism re-invented ancient perfectionism, through the re-activation of the imperative to pay attention to our ordinarywords and everyday life (and to their harmonic relation), linked to a truth always meant asa practice. My conclusion will be that moral perfectionism can be conceived and still practiced, today, as an ethics and politics of responsibility, i.e. of attention to and care for the ordinary.