Spiritual exercises”... This is a person’s work on himself, which begins with the first Greek philosophers and, reaching its apogee in the dialogue between the Socratics and Platonists, the works of Epicurus, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the treatises of Plotinus, and continues with later philosophers such like Montaigne, Descartes, Kant, Michelet, Bergson, Friedman and Foucault. And isn’t the essence of philosophy in this eternal doubt in our relationship to ourselves, to others and to the world? A new edition of the works of the prominent classical scholar Pierre Hadot, honorary doctor of the Collège de France, is supplemented by studies that have been published since the first publication of this work in 1981. For a wide range of readers. Published in Russian for the first time.