| 18231 | Anaxagoras said a person would choose to be born to contemplate the ordered heavens [Anaxagoras] |
| 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. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], 1216), quoted by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 8 'Finality' | |
| A reaction: [Anaxagoras, quoted by Aristotle, quoted by Korsgaard, quoted by me, and then quoted by you, perhaps] |
| 18229 | Only contemplation is sought for its own sake; practical activity always offers some gain [Aristotle] |
| 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. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1177b), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Finality' | |
| A reaction: Not true. Gardening, walking, travelling, chatting with friends, reading. I'm shocked that he should say this. |
| 104 | Contemplation (with the means to achieve it) is the perfect happiness for man [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Contemplation (with enough self-sufficiency, leisure and energy) is the perfect happiness for man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1177b17) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is successful and elevating contemplation, rather than sinking into depression as one contemplates human folly and wickedness. Stick to anodyne contemplations? |
| 5272 | The intellectual life is divine in comparison with ordinary human life [Aristotle] |
| 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. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1177b31) | |
| 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? |
| 105 | We should aspire to immortality, and live by what is highest in us [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We ought, so far as in us lies, to put on immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is in us. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1177b33) | |
| A reaction: This high/low picture should be treated with caution. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal self', says a D.H. Lawrence character. Why aspire to what is unattainable? |
| 18232 | The gods live, but action is unworthy of them, so that only leaves contemplation? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The circumstances of action would be found trivial and unworthy of gods. ...Still, everyone supposes that they live and are therefore active. ...Now if you take away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but contemplation? | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1178b), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Finality' | |
| A reaction: Is the ideal life for a human being to be paralysed by injury, and hence capable of nothing except godlike contemplation? |
| 110 | Lower animals cannot be happy, because they cannot contemplate [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The lower animals have no share in happiness, being completely incapable of contemplation. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1178b25) | |
| A reaction: I've heard it suggested that the recipe for human happiness is to be good looking and rather dim. Very few people can be seriously good at contemplation. |
| 111 | The more people contemplate, the happier they are [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The more people contemplate, the happier they are. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1178b29) | |
| A reaction: On the other hand he regularly says that virtues concern actions, not thoughts. He sees slavery as essential to allow others to contemplate, but feeling guilty about that would ruin it. |
| 621 | Contemplation is a supreme pleasure and excellence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Contemplation is a supreme pleasure and excellence. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072b22) |
| 4012 | The Stoics rejected entirely the high value that had been placed on contemplation [Stoic school, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics broke with both Plato and Aristotle by rejecting altogether the value of contemplation. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §6.3 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This affects the status of philosophy, and rejects the aspiration of humans to become like gods. |
| 7071 | Life and rationality are pointless if we can only contemplate the freedom of our own ego [Jacobi] |
| Full Idea: If the highest upon which I can reflect, what I can contemplate, is my empty and pure, naked and mere ego, with its autonomy and freedom: then rational self-contemplation, then rationality is for me a curse - I deplore my existence. | |
| From: Friedrich Jacobi (Letters to Fichte [1799], Ch.2), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro | |
| A reaction: This is a rebellion against Fichte's interpretation of Kant. It is a lovely cry from the heart on behalf of everyone who resents lines of philosophical thinking that seem to imprison the mind and cut us off from the ordinary world and real life. |
| 18233 | Contemplation is final because it is an activity which is not a process [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: It is because contemplation is an activity that is not also a process that Aristotle identifies it as the most final good. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Activity') | |
| A reaction: Quite a helpful way of labelling what Aristotle has in mind. So should we not aspire to be involved in processes, except reluctantly? I take the mind itself to be a process, so that may be difficult! |
| 18226 | For Aristotle, contemplation consists purely of understanding [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Contemplation, as Aristotle understand it, is not research or inquiry, but an activity that ensues on these: an activity that consists in understanding. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Aristotle') | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, when you read the last part of 'Ethics', but helpful in grasping Aristotle, because understanding is the objective of 'Posterior Analytics' and 'Metaphysics', so he tells you how to achieve the ideal moral state. |