Bare-bones just for commentaries
- Aristotle returns to happiness at the end of Book X, after discussing pleasure.
- He rejects the idea that happiness is found in amusement/play, even though they might seem to be chosen for their own sake.
- We pursue relaxation only to prepare for activity. The happy life involves serious actions, not amusement.
- He rejects the idea that happiness is found in amusement/play, even though they might seem to be chosen for their own sake.
- Aristotle thinks that the best activity simpliciter is study/contemplation (theoria) about things which are necessary, eternal, and unchanging.
- Recall that he thinks the rational soul has two faculties: a scientific part concerned with necessary truths, and a calculative part concerned with contingent truths.
- There are different states of each faculty; all together we have five intellectual virtues.
- So sophia is a virtue (which combines the virtues of nous/understanding and episteme/scientific knowledge), while its exercise is the activity of theoria.
- Theoria is concerned with the most honourable necessary, eternal things – i.e., divine things, first causes, the structure of the cosmos.
- He has various arguments for this:
- It accords with the supreme virtue (sophia/theoretical wisdom), which is exercised by our highest faculty (nous/understanding), about the supreme objects of knowledge.
- It’s the most continuous activity, more so than e.g. fighting courageously in battle.
- It has the greatest pleasures of any other virtuous activity; they’re “remarkably pure and firm”.
- It’s more self-sufficient than any other activity; it doesn’t require recipients of your actions in the way that e.g. justice, generosity, etc does. (Although, it seems like temperance can be equally internal.)
- It’s valued for its own sake alone, whereas virtuous action is also valued for its consequences.
- Since Aristotle thinks that contemplation is divine, insofar as a human life contains it, there will be a divine element to that life.
- Aristotle thinks we should be “pro-immortal”, and go as far as we can to realise the divine element within ourselves, not merely stop at the human.
- But one problem: surely any intellectual activity (e.g. chess, mathematics, etc) would satisfy these qualities too. What distinguishes theoria?
- Aristotle would say that its objects are the highest kinds of knowledge, about the divine / necessary / eternal.
- But that requires a metaphysical hierarchy that he doesn’t supply in NE.
- Recall that he thinks the rational soul has two faculties: a scientific part concerned with necessary truths, and a calculative part concerned with contingent truths.
- This also raises the question of the place of ethical virtue.
- Aristotle says the life of ethical virtue is eudaimon but only “in a secondary way”, because it’s exclusively human, rather than involving any of the divine.
- However, he’s not necessarily committed to the view that the best life exclusively involves contemplation.
- From the fact that X is the best activity, it doesn’t follow that the best life for a human exclusively involves X.
- And moreover, Aristotle insists throughout NE that virtuous activity is intrinsically valuable.
- Also, how does it fit with the function argument
- There, Aristotle argues the human ergon is rational activity.
- So it’s unclear why we should privilege theoretical rationality in particular, especially when it’s not unique to humans (shared with gods).
- There are dominant vs inclusivist readings: does happiness consist in theoria alone, or theoria and practical virtue.