Apart from setting the stage from my interpretation of Lear's work, I hope this section helped to show what is the rationale of this work, and why my choice of reading Lear alongside Kierkegaard and Nietzsche is justified. These three authors are united by the fact that they are philosophers in the way outlined by Hadot. Moreover, and in line with all the figures we have considered so far, they give great importance to the figure of Socrates. In this sense, they share him as one of their main influences. However, their reception of Socrates comes through the historical development that brought the remains of Greek thought in the stream of the Abrahamic faiths. As we shall see over the course of this work, their different relationships with
