David Breeden is speaking all week about Eupraxsophy.

Transcription:

Hello, I’m David Breeden, I’m the Senior Minister at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, a Humanist congregation. And this is Coffee and Wisdom. This week we’ve been looking at eupraxsophy. What the heck is that? Well, it’s a shot at a secular way of living, of living a life. And what would that mean? The term was coined by Paul Kurtz and it means good practical wisdom. But he is going back into ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and using the language of Greek philosophy to try to talk about how do we live a non-religious life, a secular life, and live that fully and ethically and exuberantly, as Paul Kurtz put it. Because where he’s really getting this idea is the concept of eudaimonia, which was the goal of ancient Greek and Roman philosophies. It’s usually translated as happiness. That is a mistranslation, really. It means human flourishing, how to live that good life of meaning and purpose. There were what were known as you Eudaimonic Schools in ancient Greece and Rome. There are four main ones: Cynics, Epicureans, Stoics and Skeptics. As I pointed out yesterday, these words still exist in the English language today, so they were very important as concepts. The Epicureans and the Stoics are the main ones who have a program developed around living that flourishing life. The cardinal virtues of both Epicureanism and Stoicism go like this: Wisdom, Temperance, Justice and Courage. Those are the the attributes of a person who will be having this meaning-filled, purposeful life, according to these ancient philosophies. or example, Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, said, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from bad. But I have seen the beauty of the good and the ugliness of the bad. And I have realized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own…not the same family and class, but the same mind…and possessing a share of all that is sacred.” (That’s a) very stoic way of looking at it. Yeah, I know what’s going to happen today. I’m going to meet all kinds of problems and people, but I will not contribute to the ugliness of the world. I choose not to do that. So, spiritual exercises to lead to that kind of purpose-filled, calm and tranquil life. As I mentioned yesterday, Pierre Hadot, who was a classical philosopher and historian in France, 1922-2010, became a Roman Catholic priest, but quit in disillusionment. And he began to think about how we can construct a spiritual practice around ancient philosophy (rather than that which is in the Roman Catholic tradition) which is much more available or was at that time. His central thesis is that ancient philosophy was a bios (where we get the term biography), a bios or a way of life, a way of living a good life. He got this idea because the most famous spiritual exercises in the Western world is The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Every Catholic priest will have studied that. They are spiritual practices that are memorized according to the fingers on the hand, and they break down into four parts that are usually seen as a retreat, a month long retreat. But they also can be four parts of a day or the exercises that you go through. If you’re interested in this, IgnatianSpirituality.com is right there from Loyola Press. I won’t go through them too much. But what Hadot realized is that these practices, which are very taken very seriously by the Roman Catholic tradition and in Christianity itself, actually are, if you take the content out,