Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation PDF Author: Matthew D. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421105
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Provides an original, up-to-date, and systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good.

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation PDF Author: Matthew D. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421105
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides an original, up-to-date, and systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good.

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness PDF Author: C. D. C. Reeve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065476
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality. That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation PDF Author: Matthew D. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108369200
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
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 living 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 living 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.

Aristotle on Religion

Aristotle on Religion PDF Author: Mor Segev
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108415253
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Provides a comprehensive account of the socio-political role Aristotle attributes to traditional religion, despite rejecting its content.

Protrepticus

Protrepticus PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description


Nicomachean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics PDF Author: Aristotle
Publisher: SDE Classics
ISBN: 9781951570279
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description


Happy Lives and the Highest Good

Happy Lives and the Highest Good PDF Author: Gabriel Richardson Lear
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140082608X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Gabriel Richardson Lear presents a bold new approach to one of the enduring debates about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: the controversy about whether it coherently argues that the best life for humans is one devoted to a single activity, namely philosophical contemplation. Many scholars oppose this reading because the bulk of the Ethics is devoted to various moral virtues--courage and generosity, for example--that are not in any obvious way either manifestations of philosophical contemplation or subordinated to it. They argue that Aristotle was inconsistent, and that we should not try to read the entire Ethics as an attempt to flesh out the notion that the best life aims at the "monistic good" of contemplation. In defending the unity and coherence of the Ethics, Lear argues that, in Aristotle's view, we may act for the sake of an end not just by instrumentally bringing it about but also by approximating it. She then argues that, for Aristotle, the excellent rational activity of moral virtue is an approximation of theoretical contemplation. Thus, the happiest person chooses moral virtue as an approximation of contemplation in practical life. Richardson Lear bolsters this interpretation by examining three moral virtues--courage, temperance, and greatness of soul--and the way they are fine. Elegantly written and rigorously argued, this is a major contribution to our understanding of a central issue in Aristotle's moral philosophy.

Aristotle and the Virtues

Aristotle and the Virtues PDF Author: Howard J. Curzer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199693722
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.

The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists

The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists PDF Author: James Warren
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107025443
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
How did ancient philosophers understand the relationship between human capacities for thinking and our experiences of pleasure and pain?

Pursuits of Wisdom

Pursuits of Wisdom PDF Author: John M. Cooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069115970X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity. The book describes the shared assumptions that allowed these thinkers to conceive of their philosophies as ways of life, as well as the distinctive ideas that led them to widely different conclusions about the best human life. Clearing up many common misperceptions and simplifications, Cooper explains in detail the Socratic devotion to philosophical discussion about human nature, human life, and human good; the Aristotelian focus on the true place of humans within the total system of the natural world; the Stoic commitment to dutifully accepting Zeus's plans; the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure through tranquil activities that exercise perception, thought, and feeling; the Skeptical eschewal of all critical reasoning in forming their beliefs; and, finally, the late Platonist emphasis on spiritual concerns and the eternal realm of Being. Pursuits of Wisdom is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what the great philosophers of antiquity thought was the true purpose of philosophy--and of life.