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Full Idea
This activity [contemplation] alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the activity.
Gist of Idea
Only contemplation is sought for its own sake; practical activity always offers some gain
Source
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1177b), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Finality'
Book Ref
Korsgaard,Christine M.: 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' [CUP 1996], p.231
A Reaction
Not true. Gardening, walking, travelling, chatting with friends, reading. I'm shocked that he should say this.
Related Idea
Idea 18228 An end can't be an ultimate value just because it is useless! [Korsgaard]
| 18231 | Anaxagoras said a person would choose to be born to contemplate the ordered heavens [Anaxagoras] |
| 18229 | Only contemplation is sought for its own sake; practical activity always offers some gain [Aristotle] |
| 104 | Contemplation (with the means to achieve it) is the perfect happiness for man [Aristotle] |
| 5272 | The intellectual life is divine in comparison with ordinary human life [Aristotle] |
| 105 | We should aspire to immortality, and live by what is highest in us [Aristotle] |
| 18232 | The gods live, but action is unworthy of them, so that only leaves contemplation? [Aristotle] |
| 110 | Lower animals cannot be happy, because they cannot contemplate [Aristotle] |
| 111 | The more people contemplate, the happier they are [Aristotle] |
| 621 | Contemplation is a supreme pleasure and excellence [Aristotle] |
| 4012 | The Stoics rejected entirely the high value that had been placed on contemplation [Stoic school, by Taylor,C] |
| 7071 | Life and rationality are pointless if we can only contemplate the freedom of our own ego [Jacobi] |
| 18233 | Contemplation is final because it is an activity which is not a process [Korsgaard] |
| 18226 | For Aristotle, contemplation consists purely of understanding [Korsgaard] |