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Full Idea
If the intellect is divine compared with man, the life of the intellect must be divine compared with the life of a human being.
Gist of Idea
The intellectual life is divine in comparison with ordinary human life
Source
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1177b31)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Ethics (Nicomachean)', ed/tr. ThomsonJ A K/TredennickH [Penguin 1976], p.330
A Reaction
This raises an interesting question: what, for Aristotle, was the value of a human life? This raises a meta-question for virtue theory, because the latter only concerns itself with excellence for humans? What is the value of a slug?
| 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] |