Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Traditionally, Aristotle is held to believe that philosophical contemplation is valuable for its own sake, but ultimately useless. In this volume, Matthew D. Walker offers a fresh, systematic account of Aristotle’s views on contemplation’s place in the human good.The book situates Aristotle’s views against the background of his wider philosophy and examines the complete range of available textual evidence (including neglected passages from Aristotle’s Protrepticus). On this basis, Walker argues that contemplation also benefits humans as living organisms by authoritatively guiding human life-activity, including human self-maintenance. Aristotle’s views on contemplation’s place in the human good thus cohere with his broader thinking about how perishable organisms live well. A novel exploration of Aristotle’s views on theory and practice, this volume will interest scholars and students of both ancient Greek ethics and natural philosophy. It will also appeal to those working in other disciplines including classics, contemporary ethics, and political theory.

www.cambridge.org/9781108421102

"This is an important book. It represents a key challenge to the view that Aristotle's ethics can adequately be understood apart from its biological and wider metaphysical background. In particular, it challenges the widespread view – widespread at least in the Anglophone world – that Aristotle is not a theist, or (more modestly) that his theism does not significantly inform his ethical theory.... [T]his rigorous, highly detailed and elegantly written monograph...constitutes a major contribution to the scholarly literature -- not least in its deployment of the Protrepticus -- and deserves to reshape fundamentally our approach to Aristotle's ethics."

--Tom Angier, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/aristotle-on-the-uses-of-contemplation/ )

"[Walker's] discussion of contemplation differs substantially from most approaches to the subject and thus represents a noteworthy contribution to the literature....[T]hroughout the monograph he shows himself to be a careful reader of Aristotle and a philosophically nuanced writer. Most importantly, he has offered a novel way of considering the value and the role of contemplation in Aristotle, which will surely spur a new and productive discussion on the subject."

--R. Kathleen Harbin, The Classical Review

"[W]ide-ranging and provocative....Walker’s discussion is rich and illuminating, and leaves almost no corner of Aristotle’s corpus untouched. His book is an important contribution to the growing body of literature attempting to bring Aristotle’s ethical theory into conversation with his natural science and metaphysics. In this context, his discussion of passages from the Protrepticus is particularly rewarding....Walker’s book offers an immensely rewarding discussion for anyone interested in Aristotle’s ethics, his teleology, or the intersection of the two."

--Sukaina Hirji, The Philosophical Review

"Walker illuminates tricky and neglected texts such as the Protrepticus, and draws surprising parallels to various Platonic dialogs. These parts of the book are intrinsically interesting, yet as they forward the book’s main argument, they are also useful. This book is clear and straightforward enough to be painlessly perusable, yet deep enough to repay long study. It is both a quick read (as scholarly commentaries go), and a must-read.”

--Howard J. Curzer, Polis: The Journal of Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought

"[A] careful, persuasive, and often beautiful account of Aristotle's view of human nature and the human good....[T]hough the argument of the book is primarily geared toward shedding new light on Aristotle's ethical philosophy, this book holds significant value for many scholars of ancient philosophy with a variety of research interests....Not only is Walker's argument carefully constructed and textually sound, it is also clearly written and engaging."

--Eve Rabinoff, Ancient Philosophy

"[I]nteresting and refreshing....Overall, the book is original because, by referring to the Aristotelian corpus as a whole, it helps in understanding the main problems of the Nicomachean Ethics, from a naturalistic perspective. It is also chiefly noteworthy that the utility question allows to drift the debate on the Nicomachean Ethics toward new possibilities of development."

--Chiara Cecconi and Rebecca Zeilstra, Elenchos: Journal of Studies on Ancient Thought

"Walker’s book is surely deserving of careful consideration. It is well structured, and it addresses an interesting issue. Attempting to avoid the usual debates, Walker opts for a different approach taking special care to show that the question of utility is a problem for all interpreters of Aristotle. His interesting holistic approach brings together a wide variety of texts including the Protrepticus. This holistic approach, coupled with the focus on psychology and the soul, allows the reader to identify problems more clearly, while providing valuable insight."

--Austin VanderBurgt, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments page viii

Note on Texts, Translations, and Abbreviations x

1 How Can Useless Contemplation Be Central to the Human Good? 1

1.1 An Introduction to the Utility Question 1

1.2 Some Matters of Method 4

1.3 A Quick Stroll down the Peripatos 9

2 Useless Contemplation as an Ultimate End 13

2.1 Rereading the Nicomachean Ethics’ Opening Chapters 13

2.2 Life-Activity “According to the Best and Most Complete” Virtue 16

2.3 Sophia as the Highest Virtue in Nicomachean Ethics VI 24

2.4 The Nature and Objects of Sophia and Contemplation 27

2.5 Contemplation, Uselessness, and Leisureliness 33

3 The Threptic Basis of Living 42

3.1 Why Examine the Nutritive Basis of Life? 42

3.2 Aristotle on the Parts of Soul 43

3.3 Understanding the Threptikon: The Metaphysics of Mortal Beings 46

3.4 The Threptikon as Nutritive 51

3.5 The Threptikon as Reproductive 53

4 Authoritative Functions, Ultimate Ends, and the Good for Living Organisms 56

4.1 Threptic Subservience to the Aisthêtikon 56

4.2 Perceptive Guidance and the “Nature Does Nothing in Vain” Principle 58

4.3 A Puzzle about Nutrition and Perception 63

4.4 “Living by” an Authoritative Function and Living Well 71

4.5 Divine Approximation, Persistence and Activity, and the Good 73

5 The Utility Question Restated – and How Not to Address It 78

5.1 From Perception to Contemplative Nous – and the Utility Question 78

5.2 Two Initial Responses to the Utility Question 83

5.3 A Deeper Response to the Utility Question: Nous and Nonnaturalism? 87

5.4 Nous and Nature in On the Parts of Animals 88

5.5 Nous and Nature in De Anima and Problems 90

5.6 Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8: The Separability and Divinity of Nous 93

5.7 Three Problems to Consider 99

6 The First Wave: Reason, Desire, and Threptic Guidance in the Harmonized Soul 103

6.1 Epithumia 103

6.2 Thumos 106

6.3 Reason, Ethical Virtue, and the Regulation of Nonrational Desire 110

6.4 Psychic Harmony, the Human Good, and Self-Maintenance 114

6.5 Ethical Vice and Impaired Threptic Prospects 116

6.6 Reason – Or Practical Reason? 118

7 The Second Wave: Complete Virtue and the Utility of Contemplation 123

7.1 Does Sophia Possess More than Formal Utility? 123

7.2 Aristotle on Ethical Development: From the “That” to the “Why” 129

7.3 Theoretical Understanding as a Condition for Complete Virtue 132

7.4 Theoretical Understanding and Horoi for Practical Reasoning 135

7.5 Some Hortatory Remarks on the Protrepticus 139

7.6 Protrepticus 10: The Utility Argument 145

7.7 Is Aristotle’s Protreptic Strategy Consistent? 151

8 The Third Wave: From Contemplating the Divine to Understanding the Human Good 154

8.1 Obstacles for Deriving Boundary Markers of the Human Good 154

8.2 The Protrepticus on Deriving Boundary Markers of the Human Good 157

8.3 Self-Awareness and Friendship’s Limitations in the Nicomachean Ethics 163

8.4 Reflections of the Alcibiades in Aristotle 170

8.5 Contemplation and Awareness of the Good in Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8 177

9 The Anatomy of Aristotelian Virtue 183

9.1 Desiring Well between Beast and God 183

9.2 Temperance 184

9.3 Courage 189

9.4 Liberality and Proper Ambition 193

9.5 The Grand-Scale Virtues: Magnificence and Magnanimity 195

9.6 The Social Virtues: Good Temper, Friendliness, Truthfulness, Wittiness 198

9.7 Justice 200

9.8 Beastliness and Heroic Virtue 201

9.9 Is This Account Overly Systematized? 203

10 Some Concluding Reflections 206

10.1 Contemplating the Terrain from Above 206

10.2 The Necessity of Contemplation? 208

10.3 Aristotle on the Uselessness of a Platonic Idea of the Good 210

10.4 Aristotle’s Remarks on the Sophoi 212

10.5 Sophia without a Prime Mover? 214

Bibliography 217

Index Locorum 237

Index 254