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Full Idea
When Anaxagoras was asked what it was for which a person would choose to be born rather than not, he said it would be to apprehend the heavens and the order in the whole universe.
Gist of Idea
Anaxagoras said a person would choose to be born to contemplate the ordered heavens
Source
Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], 1216), quoted by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 8 'Finality'
Book Ref
Korsgaard,Christine M.: 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' [CUP 1996], p.232
A Reaction
[Anaxagoras, quoted by Aristotle, quoted by Korsgaard, quoted by me, and then quoted by you, perhaps]
Related Idea
Idea 18239 What is contemplated must have a higher value than contemplation [Kant, by 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] |