Hadotian Considerations on Buddhist Spiritual Practices

Preview: /Review: David Fiordalis ed., Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path (Berkeley, CA: Mangalam Press, 2018), 333 pages./ David Fiordalis’ collection Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy and the Path (hereafter BSP) represents an invaluable contribution in what promises to be a fruitful emerging research field. BSP was conceived by David Fiordalis and the late Luis Gómez, the then Academic Director at Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages, following a dedicated conference on Hadot and the study of Buddhism in 2015 (BSP, ix). The volume builds upon groundbreaking work by scholars such as Matthew Kapstein, Georges Dreyfus, Patrick Ussher and Vincent Eltschinger (as well as several of its contributors) in exploring the implications the revolutionary metaphilosophical work of French philologist and philosopher Pierre Hadot for comparative philosophical approaches to Buddhist thought, and indeed for engagements with other nonwestern philosophical traditions.