The Philosophical Life of Ramon Llull: Periphery, Self-Learning and Multilingualism

This article proposes that Ramón Llull’s life can be understood as a philosophical life. This implies that his vital actions reflect the will to give a specific form to his existence so that it becomes an expression of the normative principles of his thought. To this end, the article will begin by defining what is meant by a philosophical life and where its conceptualization originates and will propose that a philosophical life is the combination of an effectively lived life, a set of normative principles it adheres to, and a narrative in which the life is presented as an example of those normative principles. It will then examine whether Llull's life possesses these elements to propose the following: understanding his life as a philosophical life allows it to be taken as a model to follow, sheds light on the impossibility of separating Llullian ethics from his vital actions, and enables us to assess the importance of three aspects of his philosophical life—its peripheral nature, his self-taught formation, and his multilingualism—for understanding the figure of Llull and his thought.