Thomas Aquinas and Philosophy as a Way of Life

Abstract

Pierre Hadot, inventor of ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’ (PWL), would have considered this title an oxymoron. For him, scholasticism, of which Aquinas is usually seen as the arch-representative, was not only the opposite of PWL but the very agent of its destruction (Sections 1 and 2). In part, Hadot’s view of Aquinas is the result of confusing ‘philosophy’ in the broad sense, which is how it needs to be understood in relation to PWL, with ‘philosophy’ in the narrower sense that it had for Aquinas himself (Section 3). When Aquinas’s life and work is examined with this distinction in mind, he is seen to be as much an exponent of PWL as the medieval and modern thinkers (Boethius of Dacia, Dante, Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche) usually cited by Hadot and his followers (Section 4). This conclusion puts into doubt the historical narrative proposed by exponents of PWL. But some of Hadot’s remarks leave room for a restricted version of PWL, stripped of its historical narrative and suggestions about the content of a philosophical life. This pure methodological Philosophy as a Way of Life, MPWL, does not make the unsustainable claims of PWL and helps to show how analytical, historical and more broadly philosophical approaches to Aquinas can be brought together (Section 5).