Neoplatonism as a Way of Life

The paradigm of ‘philosophy as a way of life,’ as Pierre Hadot himself stated, was the fruit of his disillusionment with Plotinus’ ‘mysticism’ and a desire to find a strand of Ancient philosophy compatible with what he considered to be real, ordinary, lived life. Hadot later, however, sought to show that even amongst the Neoplatonists, philosophy was considered to be a way of life. This paper will argue that Hadot’s initial sense of an opposition between Neoplatonism and our real, lived life, was correct and belies his later reading of this philosophical movement. Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus and their followers did indeed treat philosophy as a way of life and even took spiritual direction from such texts as Epictetus’ Manuel and the Golden Verses. Yet, the life to which these texts served as a guide, the life ‘here below (entautha),’ was held by the later Platonists to be anything but our real life. Our real, ordinary life was, for them, the life ‘there above (ekei),’ the noetic life of the soul after philosophy and beyond the material world. The Neoplatonists therefore offer an eloquent example of the limits of the paradigm of ‘philosophy as a way of life’.