Abstract

Recently it has been argued that the rise of Christianity is discontinuous with the ancient tradition of philosophy: philosophy ceased to be seen as a way of life but became instead a theoretical discipline. However, as the present article shows, the ideal of philosophy as 'wisdom' directing life was never absent in the Middle Ages. In fact, medieval discussions about philosophy as wisdom reflect a tension already present in Antiquity between an existential and an epistemic understanding of philosophy. While the latter model became immensely influential with the entrance of Aristotle in the Latin West, an entrance that stimulated a deeper reflection on the status of philosophy as a 'science', there was also a reaction against the loss of the existential dimension of philosophy. This appears from the various attempts (Bonaventure, Eckhart, Cusanus) to understand Christian wisdom as encompassing both the practical and theoretical functions ofphilosophy