(Ebook) Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation by Matthew D. Walker ISBN 9781108421102, 1108421105

(Ebook) Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation by Matthew D. Walker ISBN 9781108421102, 1108421105

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 perishable biological organisms by actively 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 bio-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, ethics, and political theory.--------------------"How Can Useless Contemplation Be Centralto the Human Good?1.1 An Introduction to the Utility QuestionFor Aristotle, philosophical contemplation, or theôria, is, in some sense,the ultimate end for human beings. Contemplation is that for the sakeof which our rational actions aim. The power to contemplate also hasa special position in the human soul – for Aristotle, an integrated systemof life-functions. Contemplation is the authoritative, or dominant,function for the sake of which the human soul’s subordinate functions(e.g., nutrition, perception, and practical reasoning) exist. As the telos ofour rational actions and of our other life-functions, contemplation is, forAristotle, the main organizing principle in our kind-specific good ashuman beings.On standard readings of Aristotle, contemplation has another, strikingfeature: it is thoroughly useless. Choiceworthy for its own sake, and lackingsubservience to any higher functions, contemplation is free and leisured. Itsproper objects eternal and divine, contemplation does not concern itselfwith pressing issues in the contingent realm of human affairs. Unlike otherlife-functions, it seems, contemplation makes no contribution to humanself-maintenance.1Standard readings of Aristotle’s remarks on contemplation’s uselessnessare partly correct. On Aristotle’s account, contemplation’s objects areeternal and divine. Contemplation is not directly concerned with practicalaffairs. Nor does contemplation subserve any functions higher than itself.No higher functions exist in the human soul, after all, for contemplationusefully to subserve. So, Aristotle provides good reason to think thatcontemplation is, somehow, a useless activity.But consider some of Aristotle’s other views. Nature, Aristotle insistsrepeatedly, does nothing in vain. Perishable living organisms possess onlyuseful parts and functions, which benefit their lives as whole. In particular,the authoritative functions of plants and nonhuman animals both characterizethe lives of these organisms and constitute a useful means by whichthese organisms maintain themselves. Such functions are authoritative byguiding and directing the lives – and self-maintenance – of such organisms.Plants and nonhuman animals live by these functions. In doing so, suchperishable organisms maintain and activate themselves as the kinds oforganisms they are. Such organisms thereby approximate the eternalpersistence and activity of Aristotle’s god, the Prime Mover.By construing contemplation as altogether useless for human selfmaintenance,then, standard readings have unattractive implications.Contemplation, on such readings, proves both troublingly inert anddetached from the rest of human life. On such readings, Aristotle’sremarks on contemplation stand in worrisome tension with the corecommitments of his natural teleology. Aristotle’s defense of the contemplativelife, such readings imply, conflicts with his view that naturesupplies organisms only with useful parts and functions – parts andfunctions that conduce to an organism’s self-maintenance and enablethe organism, as far as possible, to approximate god’s imperishable,active way of being. Standard readings, in short, render Aristotle’saccount of the human good strangely discontinuous with his generalaccount of the good for living organisms.And standard readings leave us with questions. If contemplation offersno benefits for maintaining the whole system of psychic functions constitutiveof the human soul, then why, on Aristotle’s view, should humanbeings ever possess the power to contemplate in the first place? Does naturenot operate in vain by providing human beings with useless contemplativecapacities? Instead of benefitting human beings, might not such capacitiescount instead as psychic appendages that waste resources, and interferewith functions, necessary for our self-maintenance? If contemplationdoes not guide or direct our other life-functions, how – if at all – is itauthoritative within the human soul?One might hold, of course, that contemplation is simply the best activityin which we can engage. Hence, one might infer, when nature suppliesus with contemplative powers, nature does not work in vain. And thatinference could well turn out to be sound. But on Aristotle’s view,I contend, that will be so only on the condition that contemplation fullyenables us to approximate the divine – a task that includes contemplation’sfacilitating the stable persistence of our all-too-mortal lives.Aristotle’s remarks on contemplation generate the utility question: ifcontemplation is useless, how can it be central to the human good?In what follows, I explore and answer this question. In the first half ofthe book, I make a fuller case that the puzzle that I have just sketchedindeed poses a real problem for Aristotle. In the second half, I offer asystematic response to the utility question, and I articulate a revisionary,broadly naturalistic reading of contemplation’s place in the human good.Against standard readings, I argue, contemplation of the eternal and divineactually is useful in the lives of rational animals. Contemplation is anintegral function within the economy of human life-activities. Most controversially,I argue that, for Aristotle, contemplation actively guides andbenefits the basic nutritive-reproductive (or threptic) functions requiredfor self-maintenance. Aristotle’s defense of contemplation is consistentwith his general account of the good for living organisms, and continuouswith his account of the good for plants and nonhuman animals.His defense coheres, rather than conflicts, with his core teleologicalcommitments.Some, perhaps, may resist the thought that Aristotle faces the puzzle thatI have just articulated. Yet even these readers can accept the account ofcontemplation’s usefulness that I develop. Even if such readers deny thatcontemplation must be useful in the way I argue, they can still accept thatcontemplation can be useful. For these readers, I offer a textually groundedaccount of how contemplation can play a more active role in human affairsthan standard readings have proposed.