He who studies a text or microbes or stars must have nothing to do with his subjectivity... that is an ideal that one must try to find by a certain p… - Pierre Hadot

À mes yeux, c’est seulement l’ascèse de la rigueur scientifique, ce détachement de soi qu’exige un jugement objectif et impartial, qui pourra nous donner le droit de nous impliquer nous-mêmes dans l’histoire, de lui donner un sens existentiel.

To my eyes, only the ascesis of scientific rigor, this detachment from oneself which requires an objective and impartial judgment, can give us the right to implicate ourselves in history, to give it an existential sense.

“If these experiences [of union with the Absolute] are rare, nonetheless they lend their fundamental tonality to the Plotinian way of life, for that way of life appears to us now as a waiting for the unforseeable surging-forth of these privileged moments which give their full sense to life