Bridge Pretense

In the light of my previous discussion of philosophy as a spiritual practice, I argue that spiritual pretenses are our bridge pretenses. What they do, is precisely to allow us to train into becoming more and more integrated individuals, bringing together our Pretense. Hence, the area of existence where we cultivate integration is that of our spirituality, as it can be pursued in our time and society. To put ourselves forward in this area of life is to develop a spiritual pretense and to perfect this pretense is to nurture our spirituality. In defining what spirituality is, I follow Arnold I. Davidson in his comment on Hadot’s work. In his introduction to Philosophy as a Way of Life, Davidson writes that the spiritual exercises of the ancients …show more content…
In this respect, it seems to me that according to Lear irony must shake us out of our illusion of having achieved humanity as such. However, this means that irony affects the ideal of our Pretense. But, if our Pretense as such is not a materially given area of our life, and if we assume that irony can be exercised only in one of these areas, then irony cannot be applied directly to our Pretense. This means that the only way irony can do its job, it is by “hitting” us on a spiritual level: that is, by disconnecting us from our spiritual ideal, irony shows us how our parallel process of achieving humanity is not yet accomplished. Accordingly, the whole of our identity suffers from our disconnection on the spiritual level. We can also imagine of being ironized by being hit first in a non-spiritual area of life, but only if from there the effect of irony moves on to the level where we integrate our personality – wether attacked directly or indirectly, our spirituality remains the gateway to our sense of being human. Of course, nothing of this makes Lear’s account wrong, but it shows that it needs to be need