On Philosophy As a Spiritual Exercise ― A Symposium

What if modern reason empowers us only at the cost of impoverishing thought? What if an ancient practice of philosophy could be rediscovered as a way of living? What if self-questioning could provoke an extreme attentiveness to a rich inner life alongside attentiveness to others?

In pursuit of these questions, a mixed group of highly fallible thinkers gather together in the north of England. Will they be able to respond to the actual events of their lives? Will they be able to reinvent philosophy as a collective spiritual exercise? And who has been sending them such outrageously personal and provocative messages?

As spokesman for this group, Philip Goodchild offers his readers a symposium, a veritable feast of thinking. Eschewing all conventions and pretentiousness, his associates compete to offer profound meditations on the meaning of life, reason, inwardness, virtue, love and God. Echoing Plato, Kierkegaard and Weil, this bold yet imperfect struggle for authenticity performs philosophy as a spiritual exercise, effects a new critique of pure reason, and changes what it means to think today. Like Socrates himself, this book offers a challenge to all.

Philip Goodchild is Professor of Religion and Philosophy in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of Gilles Deleuze and the Question of Philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety, and Theology of Money. He is also currently a Senior Fellow of the Rethinking Capitalism Initiative, University of California Santa Cruz, USA.