Grown-up-ness and Spiritual Exercises: What Does ‘Being taught by’ the Ancients Mean?

In his latest reflection Gert Biesta has advanced an insightful view of teaching as related to the notion of "grown-up-ness". In his theoretical device he builds on and ingeniously resignifies some tenets of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas. In our contribution we would approach the same thematic constellation by another angle, namely that provided by the Greek (and Christian) tradition of the "spiritual exercises" (to use the phrase of Pierre Hadot). In particular, we would like to explore whether, to what extent and how this tradition can grant us a valuable theoretical framework as well as a panoply of methodological suggestions to deploy in order to cultivate grown-up-ness. We would finally raise and discuss two meta-level questions: what does it mean mobilizing ancient (mainly philosophical) notions within the context of empirical research on education? And how could the methodological suggestions drawn from the classical tradition be operationalized in contemporary educational settings?