1 Is an Art of Living Possible Today? Foucault and Canguilhem on the Norms of Life Federico Testa To think about the notion of philosophy as a way of life today presupposes an investigation on the historical and philosophical status of the notion of way of life and on the notion of life that it implies. For it is from within life, as defined by the modern experience in which we are situated, that is possible for us to think and perhaps accomplish the ethical task of creating new forms and norms of life. In “What is Enlightenment?”, 1 Foucault referred to his theoretical efforts under the rubric of what he called “critical and historical ontology of the present”, that is, a “reflection on ‘today’ as difference in history and as motive for a particular philosophical task”, 2 which consists in interrogating the structure and limits of our historical being. He explains: [I]t seems to me that the critical question today has to be turned back into a positive one: in what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints? 3 For Foucault, critique “is no longer to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value”, but rather as a “historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognise ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying”. 4 Understanding what we are today also means to realise that things could be completely different. Nevertheless, this exercise of imagination and critique that aims at giving