Prophetic Philosophy as a Way of Life: On Imagination and Religious Law in Abrahamic Peripateticism

Abstract:This article examines medieval Abrahamic theories of prophecy in the light of the new approach to ancient philosophy championed by Pierre Hadot. Hadot contended that ancient philosophy was a way of life, and I argue that it continued to be so in the medieval Jewish and Islamic forms of Peripateticism. The latter contributed to the diversification of philosophical ways of life (advocated by the ancients) by adapting philosophy and Abrahamic prophecy. I also argue that the later European Peripatetics, led by Thomas Aquinas, destabilize their predecessors’ hard-won adaptation of philosophy and religion and contribute to the shaping of modern philosophy as an academic enterprise (along with the associated marginalization of philosophy as a way of life).