CHAPTER 1.

HOW CAN USELESS CONTEMPLATION BE CENTRAL TO THE HUMAN GOOD?

1.1 An introduction to the Utility question.
Características de la
1. Contemplation is the ultimate end for human beings.
contemplación
2. It has a special position to the human soul: an integrated system of life-functions.
3. Contemplation is the authoritative, or dominant, function for the sake of which the human soul
´s subordinate functions (nutrition, perception, and practical reasoning) exist.
4. As the telos of our rational actions and of our other life-functions, contemplation is, for Aristotle,
the main organizing principle in our kind-specific good as human beings.
5. It is thoroughly useless.
6. Choice worthy for its own sake, and lacking subservience to any higher functions,
contemplation is free and leisured.
7. Its proper objects are eternal and divine.
8. Does not concern itself with pressing issues in the contingent realm of human affairs.
9. It seems contemplation makes no contribution to human self-maintenance.
Standard readings of Aristotle´s remarks on contemplation´s uselessness is partly correct.
But consider some of Aristotle´s view: Insists repeatedly, does nothing in vain. Perishable living
organisms possess only useful part and functions, which benefit their lives as whole.
Plants and nonhuman animals live by these functions. In doing so, such perishable organisms maintain
and activate themselves as the kind of organisms they are. Such organisms thereby approximate the
Las treseternal
preguntas sobre laand activity of Aristotle´s god, the Prime Mover.
persistence
inutilidad de la contemplación.
 If contemplation offers no benefits for maintaining the whole system of psychic functions
constitutive of the human soul, then why, on Aristotle’s view, should human beings ever possess
the power to contemplate in the first place?
 Does nature not operate in vain by providing human beings with useless contemplative count
instead as psychic appendages tat waste resources, and interfere with functions, necessary for our
self-Maintenance?
 If contemplation does not guide or direct our other life-functions, how -if at all-is it authoritative
within the human soul?
 If contemplation is useless, how can it be central to the human good?
On my reading, human beings live by contemplation in a rich and robust sense.
1.2 SOME MATTER OF METHOD
My account of Aristotle on the uses of contemplation departs from two main approaches:
Condiciones indispensables por la
contemplación como
 Any respuesta.
account of the human good that gives pride of place to contemplation could cohere well with
Aristotle´s biological and psychological commitments. Aristotle´s allows some goods to be both
ends and instrumentally useful for the sake of higher goods.
 Aristotle´s account of the human good precisely within its biological and psychological context.
Aristotle´s claims about contemplation and its object either would have to be swept the rug or explained
away.
 1. Aristotle himself invites a holistic approach by explicitly introducing key metaphysical, psychological,
Características de una lectura
and biological principles in the Nichomachean ethics itself. P/e: Function argument.
holística de la contemplación.
2. Aristotle does not present his works as parts of a wholly worked-out system. But Aristotle´s occasional
cross-references to his other works.
3. As a practical matter, the holistic approach enables us to make sense of Aristotle´s most puzzling
remarks on contemplation an its place in the human good.
At a local level, I also read the Nichomachean Ethics itself holistically. I examine the Nichomachean
Ethics as a unified work with a unified argument. Those who approach the NE as a unified argument.
Those who approach the NE as a patchwork treatise might view my approach as a worrisome and naïve.
I often attend to how Aristotle engages with Platonic views, especially on key issues in moral
psychology and ethics. When we do so attend, we will typically see Aristotle developing Platonic views,
though sometimes in surprising new directions.
1.3. A QUICK STROLL DOWN THE PERIPATOS.
As Aristoxenus, a late fourth-century Peripatetic, wrote, “[a] foreknowledge of the road we must travel
will enable us to recognize each stage as we reach it, and so lighten the toil of the journey.
(CHAPTER 2) USELESS CONTEMPLATION AS AN ULTIMATE END.
2.1 Rereading the Nicomachean Ethics Opening chapters.

El tema de lasWhat is contemplation’s

formas de vida y el place in the human good? Indeed, what is contemplation in the first place? In
this chapter, I argue
por qué la contemplación es el that, for Aristotle, contemplation is, in some sense, an ultimate end.
último findiscussion in EE 1.4 and EN 1.5. Aristotle also rules out a certain base model of the political life:
Parallel
its apparent goal -honor- is “too superficial” (ἐπιπολαιότερον: 1095b24). Honor is all-too dependent on
those others who confer it; yet happiness should be a stable good, one that is proper to, and dependent on,
the person who possess it. Moreover, honor´s choice worthiness implied the existence of goods higher
than it. After all, we meek to be honored because honor confirms our sense of our own virtue.
Does, Aristotle, then, identify the exercise of virtue as the highest end of the happiest life? Aristotle never
explicitly rejects virtuous activity as such an end. But Aristotle does not conclude his discussion here, and
he expresses his wish to be more precise about what sort of virtuous activity serves as this end.
Aristotle apparently assumes a dominant-end view of happiness and happy lives, according to which
some monistic good (to be determined) constitutes the happiest life´s paramount aim.
To understand Aristotle´s point, consider the following simple hierarchy of ends: A is choice worthy for
the sake of B, B is choice worthy for the sake of c, and c is choice worthy for the sake of any higher end.
EN 1.5´s feature is its reference to contemplation as a potential dominant end within the happiest life. In
EN 1.5, Aristotle does not criticize the contemplative life. Indeed, he says that he will examine it in the
following (ἐν τοῖς ἑπομένοις). Aristotle could be alluding to EN x. 7-8 discussion of contemplation.
Aristotle´s reference to the following, however, appears at the very beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle´s reference to “the following. However, appears at the very beginning of the Nicomachean
Ethics. Therefore, may also construe “the following” (at 1096a4–5) as the rest of the work to come. On
this reading, Aristotle leaves open th e possibility that the Nichomachean Ethics will investigate the
 happiest life construed as the contemplative life. The Nicomachean Ethics ‘text underdetermines which
reading to follow. Yet this neglected alternative offers a sensible reading of the text. If Aristotle intends
this reading, then he is signaling, if subtly, that the contemplative life as whole will be the NE focus. If
not, he at least signals that contemplation remains a contender for the happiest life´s dominant end. In
either case, EN 1.5 introduces the contemplative life as a viable contender for the happiest life. This,
Aristotle also suggest that he could accept an intellectualist account of the happiest life, one that identifies
a certain intellectual activity, contemplation, as that life´s dominant end.
2.2 Life-activity According to the best and most complete Virtue.
The
Ergón y la NE openingdechapters
identificación la rule out certain proposals for the nature of the happiest life. Appeals to the
human function (ἔργον) to specify happiness further (1097b23–25). Aristotle identifies an organism´s
razón.
function as the sort of life-activity ζωή it exercises.
Through elimination, Aristotle identifies the human function as a certain practical life (ζωή) of that
having reason πρακτική τις τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος: 1098a3–4.
Aristotle initially distinguishes two aspects of the human soul´s rational element.

 The first aspect is rational qua “obedient to reason” (ἐπιπειθὲς λόγῳ)

 The other aspect is rational qua “thinking” (διανοούμενον) (1098a4–5).
In EN 1.13 Aristotle compares the former reason responsive aspect to a youth “listening to his father”
(ὥσπερ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκουστικόν).
EN 1.7´s initial remarks on the human function are broadly continuous with 1.5 remarks on the happiest
life. EN 1.5 suggest that a bios, or way of life, organized around contemplation could be happiest. In EN
1.7, Aristotle explicitly identifies a zôê, or mode of life-activity, organized around thinking as the human
function.
Aristotle identifies the human good as “activity of the soul according to virtue (κατ’ ἀρετήν), and if there
Lectura
areinclusivista de lathen according to the best and most complete (κατὰ τὴν ἀρίστην καὶ τελειοτάτην)”
many virtue,
eudaimonia.
(1098a16–18)
Inclusivist readers:

 Virtue is a second-order compound containing the complete ser of first-order intellectual and
ethical virtues.
 The dispute passage refers to the best kind of virtue.
If Aristotle can identify a highest virtue of the rational element of the soul- a best and most complete
virtue among the class of rational virtues- then Aristotle should identify happiness as activity of soul
according to this very best virtue- But Aristotle eventually suggest ((EN X.7, 1177a24) that this best
virtue is a singular kind of virtue, viz, sophia (contemplative wisdom). And so, Aristotle´s remarks in
Book X imply that Aristotle intends to identify “the best and most complete” virtue of book 1 as the
highest of all the (rational) virtues.
Like 1098a7-8 which identified the human function as “activity of soul according to (kata) reason or not
without reason, the function argument`s conclusion at 1098a17-18 presents and ambiguous kata
(according to) + accusative construction, which is open to both:
  Restrictive: some activity of soul A is Kata some virtue V only if A constitutes the exercise of V
Interpretación restrictiva y
or if A is directed by the exercise of V.
directiva del KATA
 Directive. Aristotle uses kata directively in related contexts concerning how nonrational parts can
accord with reason.
In EN III.12, 1119b 13–15, for instance, he insist that just as a child should “live according to the order of
(his tutor ” (κατὰ τὸ πρόστιγμα τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ ζῆν) the appetitive element should live “according to
reason ” (το ἐπιθυμητικὸν κατὰ τὸν λόγον). Likewise at EE II 2, 1220b5–7, Aristotle insists that character
ἦθος is an aspect of soul according to ordering reason, capable of following reason ( κατὰ ἐπιτακτικὸν
λόγον δυναμένου δ’ ἀκολουθεῖν τῳ λόγῳ ποιότης)
A directive reading of kata allows that while the exercise of “the best and most complete” virtue, activity
of soul kata this virtue can also include the exercise of other virtues as well. Such activity can include the
exercise of the other virtues to the extent that such exercise is directed by the exercise of the best and
most complete virtue, a virtue with a certain authoritativeness.
Relación entre
ForlaEN
phronesis
VI.13, yAristotle
la virtudapparently agrees with those who maintain that virtue is a state according to
correct
perfecta reason
posibilita (κατὰ τὸν ὀρθὸν λόγον), and so, by extension, “according to phronesis (κατὰ τὴν
la lectura
φρόνησιν:
inclusivista1144b23–25) Hence, all the ethical virtues accord with phronêsis (1144b28–30). If so,
however, temperate appetition also accords with phronesis, even if it is not itself an exercise of phronesis.
Thus, when Aristotle maintains that virtue is a state not only according to correct reason, but with correct
reason, I take Aristotle to say that virtue not only accords with correct reason but accords fully.
For the record, I think that this inclusive reading of the function argument´s conclusion is correct:
Aristotle ultimately does identify happiness as activity of soul that accords -broadly and directively- with
sophia.
By a “dominant end” might be a monolithic end, an end consisting of just one valued activity or good, or
there might be meant that element in an end combining two or more independently valued goods which
has a dominant or preponderating or paramount importance. While many readers of Aristotle have opted
for the former option, one must not forget the latter.
Inclusivism:
1. Broad nonordered inclusivism: the ultimate end consists in ethically and intellectually virtuous of the
rational soul along with other goods choiceworthy for themselves, with non-teleological ordering among
these goods.
2. Broad ordered inclusivism: the ultimate end consists in ethically and intellectually virtuous, as well as
other goods choiceworthy for themselves, and these goods are teleologically ordered.
3. Narrow, nonordered inclusivism (a.k.a. broad virtue-inclusivism): the ultimate end consists solely in all
ethically and intellectually virtuous activities of the rational soul, teleologically unordered.
4. Narrow, ordered inclusivism (a.k.a. narrow virtue-inclusivism): the ultimate end consists solely in all
ethically and intellectually virtuous activities of the rational soul, teleologically ordered.
5. Exclusivism (a.k.a. strict intellectualism): the ultimate end consists solely in the highest intellectually
virtuous activity of the rational soul, viz, contemplation.
 Aristotle implicitly identifies sophia as either “the best and most complete” virtue, or -if one persists
upholding the composite virtue or rational virtue reading.
2.4 The Nature and objects of SOPHIA and contemplation.
Características de la sabiduría.
NE introduces the virtue of sophia as “scientific understanding and comprehension of the things most
honorable by nature” ” (ἐπιστήμη καὶ νοῦς τῶν τιμιωτάτων τῇ φύσει: EN VI.7, 1141b2–3). Such things,
he says are much more divine by nature than the human being (1141a34–1141b1).Aristotle also appeals
to popular beliefs about wise person (or the Sophos) to characterize such sophia.
On this sketch, sophia combines

 Scientific understanding (ἐπιστήμη)

 Comprehension ( νοῦς in the aretaic sense)
Sophia is a kind of complete scientific understanding.
Metaphysics AI fills in this sketch. Aristotle begins the metaphysics account of sophia by distinguishing
between experience (ἐμπειρία) and art τέχνη. Since Aristotle thinks that we believe artisans are wiser -
more Sophos. Then the merely experienced, we think what is called sophia to be about the first causes
and principles. 981b27–29; 982a1–2; cf. EN VI.7, 1141a17–19).
The most universal science will possess just these features of the wise man.
Características del hombre
 The most universal science in some way knows the whole: “it is necessary for the understanding
sabio of all things πάντα ἐπίστασθαι to belong to the one most having the understanding of the
universal τὴν καθόλου ἐπιστήμην; for this one knows (οἶδέ), somehow, all the things underlying
it (982a21–22).
 What is universal is not to be known through simple sense perception. Indeed, what is universal
seems most difficult things (982a23–25).
 The most universal science is most exact since it deals most with first principles s (982a25–26; cf.
EN VI.7, 1141a16–17). Since this science has fewer principles with which to contend, it has
correspondingly less room for error. Hence, it is most able to explain (982a26–29).
 This science, which treats of what is most knowable, is most choiceworthy for its own sake. It
constitutes knowledge that we seek for no other end than for putting our epistemic powers to
work (982a30–b4)
 The most universal science is most sovereign: it knows “that for the sake of which each thing is
to be done” (τίνος ἕνεκέν ἐστι πρακτέον ἕκαστον: 982b4–6).
Nevertheless, sophia has its eye on the good (cf. Metaphysics B.2, 996b12–14). More specifically, sophia
considers the good that serves as a final cause for all things, i.e., the good for the sake of which the whole
of nature exists.
An obscure passage, Metaphysics Λ.10, 1075a11–19 considers just how the whole cosmos is ordered for
El bien del sabio y sus
the sake of the Good. On Aristotle’s view, the Good of the cosmos is both immanent to the order of the
características en la
cosmos and “something separate and itself in itself” (κεχωρισμένον τι καὶ αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό: a12–13).
metafísica.
Aristotle has in mind two kinds of good.

 The immanent good for the sake of which the whole exists is internal to the good ordering of
the whole, just as the good1 of an army (i.e., its fighting ability) is internal to the army (i.e., as the
smooth and effective functional organization of its platoons and divisions). Supreme good.
  The separate good, by contrast, is somehow independent of the whole, just as the general of an
army is somehow independent of those whom he orders
According to Aristotle, God, the unmoved Prime Mover, is the cosmos’ supreme good: “On such a
principle, then, depends on the heaven and nature” (Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072b13–14). Nature depends on
Contemplación objetiva y subjetiva de la sabiduría
such a supreme good insofar as the Prime Mover is an object of love and imitation for beings within the
cosmos. The Prime Mover thereby sustains motion in the cosmos.
Hence, sophia, as a science of the supreme good that orders the cosmos (and that is responsible for the
cosmos’ good), is a theology
Sophia is the most divine science both subjectively and objectively. Subjectively, sophia is the sort of
science that God as a knower would possess. Objectively, sophia’s proper object of study is god, the final
cause of the whole.
As Aristotle describes it, contemplation consists not in pursuing knowledge, or becoming wise, but in
beholding what one has come to know (cf. DA II.5, 417a21–b2; EN X.7, 1177a26–27).
Moreover, what Aristotle calls “the philosophy of human affairs” (ἡ περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπεια φιλοσοφία: EN
X.9, 1181b15) contemplates the nature and workings of the good city. But Aristotle restricts the
paradigmatic objects of the most perfect contemplation. Thus, the objects of “the most honorable” sort of
philosophical activity, the objects that we understand in exercising sophia, are divine objects
(Metaphysics E.1, 1026a17–22).
So, according to Aristotle, the best sort of contemplation in which human beings can engage, the exercise
of contemplative nous according to sophia, consists in actively understanding the cosmos by reference to
the cosmos’ unmoved Prime Mover, the eternally self-thinking god. Such contemplation, in turn,
approximates the Prime Mover’s own eternally active self-contemplation.
2.5 Contemplation, Uselessness, and leisureliness.
In what sense, however, is contemplation our “complete happiness”? Aristotle could mean.
(1) that our happiness consists exclusively in such contemplation, since of all the human functions
Aristotle considers, contemplation most completely fulfills the criteria that happiness as such should
meet. Or he could mean.
(2) that contemplation is the most complete of the many virtuous activities that compose our happiness
(1), happiness includes other activities. Yet contemplation, as the exercise of “the best and most
complete”
Interpretación virtue,
inclusivista would stilldebe the most choiceworthy element of our happiness.44 On reading (2),
y exclusivista
Aristotle
la contemplación highlights
entendida contemplation’s
como forma ultimacy relative to other singular goods or kinds of virtuous activity
– evendeif vida.
contemplation lacks ultimacy without qualification.
For exclusivists, the exercise of sophia is a most complete end absolutely speaking or without
qualification, so that happiness just is the exercise of sophia. For inclusivists, the exercise of sophia is at
best “most complete” in a more modest relative and qualified sense. Something is “most complete” in this
latter sense when it is simply more complete than any other activity within the system of virtuous
activities constituting happiness.46 The whole system itself, however, would stand to be most complete
absolutely and without qualification.
 Some points of clarification about the contemplative life (the theôrêtikos bios): where X is the dominant
end of a bios, an X-ikos bios need not consist just in X. Nor should one think that when Aristotle
compares an X-ikos bios and a Y-ikos bios, he is comparing that part of someone’s life spent in X with
that part of someone’s life spent in Y. Rather, an X-ikos bios would be a whole form of life organized
around X, just as a Y-ikos bios would be a whole form of life organized around Y. Thus, a theôrêtikos
bios would not be the part of, say, Anaxagoras’ life that Anaxagoras spent contemplating. Instead, a
theôrêtikos bios would be the whole kind of life that Anaxagoras led, namely, one organized around
contemplation.47 Further, in identifying contemplation as, in some sense, the happiest life’s ultimate end,
Aristotle need not accept any crude conception of practical reasoning that construes contemplation as a
maximand. On the contrary, Aristotle can identify contemplation qua end in other ways, e.g., as an object
of approximation, or as an organizing, regulative, delimiting aim
However, one parses “the other virtue,” Aristotle’s point is straightforward enough: a life led according to
La finalidad de la vida política es la
this other virtue would count as happy, yet only in some secondary sense (1178a9–13).
vita contemplativa.
Even political action aims at separate ends. In its more debased forms, politics aims at providing others
with favors. In its finer forms, politics aims at the happiness of the politician and of his fellow citizens, a
goal that Aristotle thinks is “different from politics” itself (1177b14–15). Indeed, leisured contemplation
is itself the nonpolitical goal at which politics aims.
Elsewhere, Aristotle holds that practical action exists for the sake of philosophical leisure (e.g., Politics
VII.2, 1325a5–7; VII.3, 1325b16–21; VII.14, 1333a16–b5; VII.15, 1334a22–25).
For Aristotle, contemplation neither serves nor slaves for any ends above it. Instead, contemplation enjoys
true freedom. Aristotle, then, is unsurprised that philosophy first arose in societies where people had free
time to devote to leisure (Metaphysics A.2, 982b22–24; cf. A.1, 981b20–25). In such passages, Aristotle
speaks with what Andrea Wilson Nightingale calls a “rhetoric of disinterest.” Andrea Wilson Nifgtingale

 (1) According to EN VI.7, theôria will seek to understand not human affairs, but rather, cosmic
first principles and final causes: it would be “out of place if someone believed political science or
La diferencia de teoría con phronesis
phronêsis y important (σπουδαιοτάτην), if [the] human being is not the best of the things
to be most
la defensa aristocrática de la (1141a20–22)
in the cosmos”
contemplación
 (2) In distinguishing between phronêsis and sophia, EN VI.7 appeals to popular impressions
about Anaxagoras and Thales, both of whom seem to possess sophia, but lack phronesis.
 (3) According to EN VI.12, sophia, unlike phronêsis, does not identify the means to particular
human goods: “For sophia will not behold the things from which [the] human being will attain
happiness (for it is [wisdom] of nothing coming into being)” (1143b19–20).
In his initial response to Isocrates, Aristotle offers an aristocratic defense of contemplation.
Aristotle does not say that uselessness is sufficient for being a highest end. Countless useless activities,
after all, are weird and pointless. Thus, Aristotle can agree that, in ordinary contexts, hoarding expired
coupons or counting the number of times the letter “k” appears in the works of Anthony Trollope are
simply not worth one’s time. Still, even if these useless activities are not worth pursuing, other useless
activities – ultimate ends – might be.
for contemplation is not an instrumental good choiceworthy for the sake of bringing about other results.
Instead – like the contemplation of excellent Olympic athletes and the contemplation of dramatic
performances at the Dionysia – philosophical contemplation is a complete good choiceworthy for its own
 sake. To identify goods such as wealth as higher than contemplation is to reveal mistaken priorities.
Instrumental goods are choiceworthy for the sake of contemplation, not the reverse.
CHAPTER 3. THE THREPTIC BASIS OF LIVING.
3.1. Why Examine the Nutritive Basis of life?
how well
La dependencia do these claims about the human good cohere with Aristotle’s views about how living
de la
organisms, as such, live well and attain their good? To answer this question, I explore Aristotle’s views
contemplación con la parte
on the various powers of soul, how they are hierarchically nested, what it means for a life-function to be
nutritiva y reproductiva.
authoritative within a given kind of soul, and how authoritative life-functions contribute to an organism’s
wellbeing.
Nevertheless, for Aristotle, the human good consists in a certain kind of excellent living. And living, for
the perishable organisms that human beings are, requires a living body to exercise a whole range of life-
functions – a body that the threptikon preserves.
As we will see, all life-activities, including contemplation, depend on the nutritive power.
For even if an organism possesses powers higher than nutrition and reproduction, the exercise of these
higher powers should not impede or oppose the exercise of the nutritive power.
3.2 Aristotle on the Parts of Soul.
First,
Características delthe soul
alma is that in virtue
y condicione de la of which natural bodies possess life (412a14–15). Second, the soul is “the
substance qua form of a natural body potentially having life” (412a19–21; b10–11). The soul, in other
vida
words, is that by virtue of which a natural living body is alive.
(1) being an actual knower of X by virtue of possessing the developed power to know X and (2) being an
actual knower of X by actively exercising that developed power in knowing X. Given this distinction, the
soul is the actuality of the body in the first sense. That is, “the soul is the first actuality of a natural body
potentially having life”
Yet “living” (ζῆν), Aristotle holds, “is said in many ways” (DA II.2, 413a22). There are various kinds of
living, and so various kinds of soul. For Aristotle, something is living if it possesses at least one of the
following four “kinds,” or powers, of soul: (1) “motion according to food and wasting away as well as
growth” (κίνησις ἡ κατὰ τροφὴν καὶ φθίσις τε καὶ αὔξησις); (2) perception (αἴσθησις); (3) locomotion
(κίνησις καὶ στάσις ἡ κατὰ τόπον); and (4) intellect (νοῦς) (413a23–25).
But while the threptikon can exist separately from other life-functions, the others cannot exist separately
from the threptikon – at least in mortal beings (DA II.2, 413a31–32). Thus, Aristotle leaves open the
possibility that immortal beings – gods – can possess at least some powers or “portions of soul” ( μόρια
τῆς ψ υχῆς: DA II.2, 413b27–28) without possessing the threptikon.
Distinción entre nous
Aristotle initially seems to construe calculation, discursive thought, and nous as roughly identical (see DA
y logos.
II.2, 413a23–25, 413b12–13; II.3, 414a31–32)
For instance, DA II.3 differentiates calculation and discursive thought (λογισμὸν καὶ διάνοιαν: 415a8)
from the contemplative intellect (τοῦ θεωρητικοῦ νοῦ), which has a distinct logos (DA II.3, 415a11–12).
Further, concerning “the intellect and the contemplative power” (τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τῆς θεωρητικῆς δυνάμεως),
The contemplative intellect seems to be a “different kind of soul” (ψυχῆς γένος ἕτερον), one which admits
of separation from the other life-functions “as the everlasting [admits of separation] from the perishable”
 (DA II.2, 413b26–27). Perhaps a god, which DA I.1, 402b7 identifies as a living being, can instantiate the
contemplative intellect without coinstantiating the threptic, perceptive, and locomotive Powers.
3.3 Understanding the threptikon: The Metaphysics of Mortal Beings.
As the functionality of the functional organism, the soul is the organism’s form, the organized body, its
matter. The soul – the organism’s form – may be analytically distinct from the body. Yet the soul is
existentially inseparable from its body, just as an impression in wax is analytically distinct from the wax,
but existentially inseparable from it (DA II.1, 412b6–9).
WhatContexto
does Aristotle mean? explicado
del Threptikon For Aristotle,
desdethe matterhilemórfica.
la teoría of some substance, S, is that from which S
proximately comes to be or is generated. Consider, for example, a simple artifact, such as a brazen sphere.
According to Aristotle, the brass capable of taking on the sphere’s form is generated from the elements,
and the sphere is generated from the brass. Yet the sphere itself is not generated from elements. For
Aristotle, the elements are not, strictly speaking, matter for the substance: “Earth is not yet potentially a
statue, for [only if] undergoing a change will it be brass” (Metaphysics Θ.7, 1049a16–18).
The proximate matter is preserved as the substance’s material properties. 8 Thus, the sphere generated
from brass is not brass; yet the brass persists potentially in the sphere’s brazen features. Similarly, candles
are not wax (κηρὸν), but waxen (κήρινον); and boxes are not wood (ξύλον), but wooden (ξύλινον)
(Physics VII.3, 245b9–246a1; Metaphysics Z.7, 1033a16–22).
To generalize: where some substance S is generated from some matter M, there comes to be an M-en (or,
in Greek, an M-ινον) S (Metaphysics Θ.7, 1049a18–21). So, in the sphere’s case, the brass fully discloses
its power to constitute a sphere by persisting in the sphere’s brazen properties.
Yet no region of the sublunary world offers a sanctuary where living organisms can insulate themselves
from the prospect of destruction.
On Empedocles’ account, a plant would root itself downward because “downward” would be the plant’s
earthy matter’s natural place. The plant would simultaneously grow upward because “upward” would be
its fiery matter’s natural place (cf. Theophrastus, On the Causes of Plants I.25). Empedocles’ view,
however, cannot explain the plant’s unity. If the plant’s earthy matter moved downward, and its fiery
matter moved upward, then the plant would tear apart.
So, what maintains the plant’s unity? Aristotle’s answer: the plant’s soul, the cause of the plant’s growth
and nourishment (416a8–9). But plants possess only the threptic power. Thus, the power that organizes
the plant’s matter is just the threptikon.
to persist through time, a living organism must maintain itself. Such self-maintenance counteracts (1) the
tendency of its matter’s elemental constituents to gravitate toward their contrary proper places, and so (2)
the tendency of its matter to disintegrate. For there to be a living organism of such-and-such a kind, then,
an organism requires the power to preserve itself as an organism of a certain kind. Therefore, all
organisms require a power for self-maintenance, the threptikon
3.4 The Threptikon as Nutritive
Explicación del Threptikon
Consider the threptikon in its energeia, its activity or being-at-work. The threptikon reproduces and uses
en tantofood
nutrición
(γεννῆσαι καὶ τροφῇ χρῆσθαι: DA II.4, 415a26).
 Reproducing and using food are both activities of the threptikon as a single “nutritive and generative”
life-function. Therefore, Aristotle suggests that we should first clarify the nature of food (DA II.4,
416a19–20).
three components of nutritive activity:

 : (1) that which is fed (τὸ τρεφόμενον), i.e., the body possessing a soul;
El threptikon en tanto
; (2) that with which it is fed (ᾧ τρέφεται)
capacidad
 (3) that
reproductiva y la aproximaciónwhich
a feeds (τὸ τρέφον), viz., the threptikon (DA II.4, 416b20–22)
la inmortalidad
3.5 The Threptikon as Reproductive.
Living organisms reproduce because they cannot preserve themselves forever as numerically identical
substances. By reproducing – by preserving their forms in their offspring – organisms approximate the
immortal.
The threptikon as nutritive preserves an organism by regenerating the organism. Qua nutritive, the
threptikon constantly sculpts an organism’s food into a form “like” the organism. The threptikon as
reproductive, meanwhile, preserves an organism by generating a numerically distinct organism generates
an organism “like” the original. Explicación del threptikon.
AUTHORITATIVE FUCNTIONS, ULTIMATE ENDS, AND THE GOOD FOR LIVING
ORGANISMS.
4.1 Threptic Subservience to the Aisthetickon.
Why are the powers of soul nested the way they are? Why does the perceptive power, the aisthêtikon,
follow the threptikon in serial order?
Relación entre el threptikon y el Aisthetikon y su diferencia analítica.
just as the threptikon is a power for reproduction and growth as well, so too the aisthêtikon is a power for
desire, imagination, and locomotion.
Aristotle provides fuller reason to think that these functions are all aspects of the aisthêtikon. The powers
for desire and avoidance – the orektikon and the pheutikon – are “not different” (οὐχ ἕτερον) from the
aisthêtikon (DA III.7, 431a8–14). Just as reproduction is an analytically distinct, but existentially
inseparable, aspect of the nutritive soul, the same holds for phantasia in relation to the aisthêtikon: “the
imaginative power (τὸ φανταστικόν) is identical with that of the perceptive (τῷ αἰσθητικῷ), but the being
of the imaginative [power is] different from that of the perceptive [power]” (τὸ δ’ εἶναι φανταστικῷ καὶ
αἰσθητικῷ ἕτερον: Isom. 1, 459a15–17). Therefore, the aisthêtikon is one life-function, albeit one with
varied aspects.
The aisthêtikon assimilates perceptual form without assimilating matter (DA II.12, 424a17–21; III.2,
425b23–24). The threptikon less perfectly becomes one with its object: whereas perception unites with its
objects while preserving them, nutrition destroys its objects through ingesting them.3
Second, the threptikon is also instrumental for the aisthêtikon. As Aristotle notes multiple times,
perception requires a suitably enformed body (De Sensu 1, 436b6–8; DA I.1, 403a5–8; III.4, 429b4; PA
II.5, 651b3–5; Protrepticus 7, 43.13–17/B75).
Within perceptive organisms, nutrition is akin to a productive art that makes things, not for their own
sakes, but for use by other things. Remaking and regenerating the perceptive body and its component
 organs is the task of the threptikon, which Aristotle analogizes to a productive artisan that exercises its
craft for the sake of the aisthêtikon (GA II.4, 740b25–34; cf. DA II.4, 416b1–3).
Thus, one must appreciate the force of Aristotle’s claim that while “to separate [the threptikon] from the
other [powers] is possible, [to separate] the others from this is impossible in mortal beings” (DA II.2,
413a31–32; cf. Resp. 8, 474b10–11). The higher powers of soul presuppose, indeed require, the
threptikon’s self-replenishing activity. Qua nutritive, the threptikon regenerates the body, the medium
through which perception and locomotion take place. Qua reproductive, the threptikon preserves an
organism with perceptive and locomotive powers in a state of quasi-immortality so that the organism in
some way can keep at work forever perceiving and moving.
4.2 Perceptive Guidance and the “Nature does nothing in vain”.
The teleological relationship between the threptikon and the aisthêtikon has another dimension. The
aisthêtikon also follows the threptikon because this teleological arrangement makes possible, in
perceptive organisms, certain perceptive benefits for threptic activity.
To explain why animals, possess perception, Aristotle appeals to the principle that “nature does nothing in
vain” (μηθὲν μάτην ποιεῖ ἡ φύσις: DA III.12, 434a31).6 According to this principle, where X is a living
organism, nature always works for the best for X qua X. In turn, the principle identifies the best for X qua
X as what contributes to X’s maintenance and full active functioning qua X.
The principle thus precludes organisms from having useless or unnecessary parts: “nature makes nothing
superfluous” (οὐδὲν ἡ φύσις ποιεῖ περίεργον: PA IV.12, 694a15).
4.3 Puzzle About Nutrition and perception.
To make sense of DA III.12, then, one must account simultaneously for both the reciprocity and the
hierarchy that holds between the threptic and perceptive powers. Given what Aristotle says, the best way
to do this is to view perception’s role in threptic activity as ultimately ordered toward perception itself. In
other words, for Aristotle, the perceptive power is useful for threptic activity, but the perceptive power
does not subserve threptic activity.
The threptic and the perceptive powers are reciprocal beneficiaries, but this reciprocity is asymmetrically
ordered for perception’s sake.
1. Living Organisms. The body exists for the sake of the soul and its functions. The soul, in turn, uses
Entender las relaciones interpersonales desde el principio: the nature does
the body and properly exercises a kind of despotic, yet beneficial, rule over it (Topics V.1, 128b18; DA
nothing in vain
II.1; Politics I.5, 1254a34–36; b4–5; b7–8; Protrepticus 6, 38.14/B34; 7, 41.15–20/B59). (…) however,
the soul nevertheless guides the body by actively directing the body’s material replenishment (DA II.4).
By doing so, the soul ultimately maintains and extends its own functioning. For the body is a tool for the
soul’s activities (DA I.3, 407b24–26; cf. DA II.1, 412b10–413a10; PA I.1, 642a9–13).
2. (2) The Household. Aristotle believes that natural teleological relationships serve as models for other
ruler/ruled relationships. Art imitates nature (Physics II.2, 194a21–22; II.8, 199a15–17). Thus, the soul’s
despotic relationship to the body serves as a model for the relationship between master and slave (Politics
I.5, 1254b4–5). According to Aristotle, the natural slave subserves, and counts as “part” of, the master
(EN V.6, 1134b9–12). The slave labors for the master’s sake and promotes the master’s various projects
and ends. Yet the master does not just passively receive the slave’s service. After all, the master is a
useful figure in the life of the slave. The master advantageously guides his slave in various ways (Politics
I.6, 1255b4–9). The master, for instance, cultivates a certain virtue in the slave (Politics I.13, 1260b2–4).
 3. (3) The Environment. A similar relationship holds, Aristotle suggests, between nonhuman animals
and human beings. Nonhuman animals (in some way) exist for the sake of human beings (Politics I.8,
1256b15–22). Yet the latter’s rule over the former – made possible by the human possession of reason –
benefits the former by taming and preserving them (Politics I.5, 1254b10–13)
4. Political Communities. In the human soul, Aristotle insists, reason naturally rules nonrational desire
with a kind of political and kingly rule (Politics I.5, 1254b5–6). This natural teleological relationship
within the human soul serves, in turn, as a model for various interpersonal relationships. In a monarchy,
for instance, a king’s subjects are teleologically subordinate to the King
5.The Family. In EE VIII.3, Aristotle initially denies that a father and son are related as a ruler and
subject, at least not strictly speaking. Yet he later describes this relationship as, somehow, a ruler/subject
and benefactor/beneficiary relationship (EE VII.10, 1242a32). The father exercises a kind of kingly rule
over the son (EN VIII.10, 1160b24–25; Politics I.12, 1259b10–11). So, the son subserves – is
teleologically subordinate to – the father: the son is “part” of the father (EN V.6, 1134b9–12). As an
immature human being, he exists for the sake of attaining his father’s mature adult form (Metaphysics
Θ.8, 1050a5–10.
The bottom-up perspective emphasizes the subject’s subservience to the end. The top-down perspective,
by contrast, highlights the authoritative end’s guidance for its subject. These two perspectives, however,
are consistent and mutually entailing
Dios y su relación con el cosmos
By doing so in accordance with the “nature does nothing in vain” principle, the authoritative function
prevents itself from becoming a useless appendage to, or needless obstruction for, the organism that
possesses it. On the contrary, by providing active guidance, the authoritative function both (1) secures the
conditions that maintain and extend its exercise as fully as possible, and (2) ensures the persistence and
good functioning of the whole system to which it belongs.
Once more, Aristotle’s political analogies are useful. A deviant political regime’s authoritative element
seeks its own private advantage at the expense of its subordinate elements, which subserve the
authoritative element, but receive no reciprocal benefits.
To conclude this section, I note one apparent exception to the thought that a compound’s authoritative
element actively guides the system’s lower elements. This is god’s relation to the rest of the cosmos.
According to Metaphysics Λ.10, 1075a11–19 (see Section 2.4), god’s status in the cosmos is roughly
analogous to the general’s status in an army. Yet while God is authoritative in the cosmos, and in some
way a telos, god does not provide any obvious authoritative guidance to other beings in the cosmos. God
is only a nonordering ruler (οὐ ... ἐπιτακτικῶς ἄρχων ὁ θεός: EE VIII.3, 1249b13–14).
4.4 Living by and Authoritative function and living well.
For Aristotle, an organism’s authoritative function has a special place in that organism’s life. An
organism is especially identifiable by reference to its authoritative function, which specially characterizes
that organism’s way of life.
An organism’s authoritative function is, in other words, the function by which that organism lives – and
in two senses. Date palms, ivy sprigs, and roses live by the threptikon – the sole and authoritative power
within plant life. Such plants display their form of life by nourishing and reproducing themselves. Such
activity, however, is also the means by which such plants maintain themselves as living. Nonhuman
animals, in turn, live by the aisthêtikon. Crocodiles, elephants, and orangutans display their distinctively
animal form of life by perceiving. At the same time, by actively guiding such animals in satisfying their
basic threptic needs, perception is also a useful means for their self-maintenance.
Recall EN I.7’s remarks on how living organisms live well: an organism attains its good in living by its
authoritative function. An organism’s exercising its authoritative function well enables that organism, in
some way, to approximate the divine, which Aristotle (somehow) takes as a standard, or a sign, of living
well.
“Share in the eternal and divine as far as they can” (τοῦ ἀεὶ καὶ τοῦ θείου μετέχωσιν ᾗ δύνανται: DA II.4,
415a29–415b1; cf. GA II.1, 731b24ff). So, what does it mean for something to share in the divine? How
does exercising an authoritative function conduce to an organism’s wellbeing?
4.5 Divine approximation, Persistence and Activity, and the good.
To understand Aristotle’s views on approximating divinity, consider Aristotle’s account of god. In
Section 2.4, I briefly discussed this divinity and its noetic activity (as Metaphysics Λ.9 describes it). Here,
Dios aristotélico.
I note, for Aristotle, god is a living being (DA I.1, 402b7). As that being “whose being ( οὐσία) [is]
activity (ἐνέργεια)” (Metaphysics Λ.6, 1071b20; Λ.7, 1072a26), however, god lacks the passivity to be
affected, changed, or injured (DC I.9, 279a20ff; Topics II.2, 109b33–35). Instead, god belongs to the
class of immortal living beings (Topics IV.2, 122b12–14; V.1, 128b19–20). And unlike mortal beings,
god necessarily exists (Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072b10–14). Thus, “[L]ife and duration continuous and eternal
(ζωὴ καὶ αἰὼν συνεχὴς καὶ ἀΐδιος) belong to god, for this [is] god” (Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072b29–30; cf.
DC II.3, 286a9). In sum, the divine is marked by its eternal, ungenerated, indestructible, self-sufficient,
and secure mode of being (cf. PA I.5, 644b22–26; Metaphysics N.4, 1091b16–21)
Therefore, for something (mortal) to approximate the divine is for that entity to take on aspects of this
eternally active, stable, indestructible way of being, so far as possible within the constraints of that
entity’s nature.
For something to approximate divinity, then, is not necessarily for something to copy the divine. In the
case of the first heaven’s circular motion, the first heaven does not do exactly what god does. Instead, the
first heaven does something like what god does – viz., engage in a self-sufficient, enclosed, quasi-eternal
activity.
My account of divine approximation has highlighted stable, indestructible persistence and eternal activity
as central features of divine being. Yet Aristotle also highlights cognition as essential to god. God’s life,
after all, is thinking thinking thinking – and it is the best kind of life. As Allan Gotthelf notes, however,
we can ask a question about god: “Is his life best because it involves (is constituted by) the exercise of
reason – or is the exercise of reason best because it embodies certain features more definitive of
bestness?” Following Gotthelf, I take it that Aristotle holds the latter view. God’s thinking, in other
words, is the best kind of activity because god’s thinking is, of all activities, most securely self-persisting
and fully eternally active. God’s thinking is uniquely free from materiality, and thus free from the
prospect of disintegration. Free from any passivity, it is always actively at work, always alive.
To approximate the divine is to display something of the quality of god’s way of life, to show something
of god’s special degree of activity. Yet qua immortal, god is active, not for a fleeting moment, or a short
time, but always. Hence, to approximate the divine is simultaneously to show something of god’s self-
sufficient persistence and unified indestructibility. To approximate the divine as far as possible, then, is
for the mortal to be active as fully as possible, and over the widest temporal span mortal nature permits,
maintaining stable unity in the face of ever-present threats of internal and external disintegration.
. In sum, Aristotle’s general account of the good for living organisms holds that living organisms attain
their good by approximating the divine as what they are, a task that they accomplish by fully maintaining
themselves and actively living as what they are.
Living organisms all have the power to nourish and reproduce themselves. Accordingly, all natural beings
have a share of the divine (EN VII.13, 1153b32)
THE UTILITY QUESTION RESTATED- AND HOW NOT TO ADREDESS IT.
5.1 From perception to Contemplative Nous- and the utility question.
First, the human soul’s lower functions approximate contemplation in activity (viz., to assimilate forms).
Again, the threptikon approximates the aisthêtikon in its range of ability to assimilate its objects qua what
those objects are (see Section 4.1). So too, the aisthêtikon similarly approximates nous, both practical and
contemplative. Our pleasure in using our senses, Aristotle holds, is a sign of our higher, more
comprehensive desire to understand (Metaphysics A.1, 980a21–27). Whereas the aisthêtikon assimilates
the perceptual form of sensible particulars, nous assimilates universals from what is perceived, and is
thereby capable of cognizing all things (DA III.4, 429a13–b9). Further, nous grasps universals through a
process of repeated perception, memory, and experience (An. Post. II.19)
Practical nous
Intelecto is a kind of intellect, and like contemplative nous, its function is to grasp the truth –
Práctico
specifically, the truth about what should be desired and pursued in one’s circumstances (EN VI.2,
1139a26–31). Yet practical nous, whose proper objects are subject to change, grasps truth less completely
and less precisely than contemplative nous, whose objects are enduring and more knowable.1 Further,
practical nous maintains a close tie to perception: practical nous is, or involves, a kind of situational
perception, an ability to discern correct choices within one’s circumstances (EN II.9, 1109b18–23; IV.5,
1126b2–4). Thus, contemplative nous can more completely assimilate universals than practical nous can
´t. Practical Nous thereby approximates contemplative nous.
In these ways, the human soul’s various powers are for the sake of contemplation. Aristotle also thinks
that contemplation is the ultimate end of rational action. And contemplation’s ultimacy as a power within
the soul provides part of the basis for contemplation’s ultimacy as an end of rational action.
why should the way in which one biological lifefunction, or part of soul, is for the sake of another have
anything to do with how one rational action is for the sake of another?
(1) Aristotle portrays reason-responsive desire, practical intellect, and theoretical intellect as constituting
an ascending hierarchy of lifefunctions (1333a16–30).
(2) He compares the teleology of rational actions to the teleology of these three life-functions: “we claim
an analogy to hold for actions, and those [actions] of what is by nature better must be more choiceworthy
for those able to achieve either of all of them or two of them; for this is always most choiceworthy for
each: attaining the highest” (1333a27–30).
(3) He accordingly divides life into unleisure and leisure, and war and peace; he divides actions into the
necessary and useful and the fine or noble (1333a30–33).
(4) He insists that the former unleisured and war-like actions and parts of life, which pertain to the soul’s
lower parts, are for the sake of the latter leisured actions and parts of life, which pertain to the soul’s
higher parts (1333a33–36).
 Unleisured action and war exercise various modes of nonrational desire (such as fear and daring) and
are regulated by practical nous. But just as unleisured action and war are for the sake of leisure,
nonrational desire and practical nous are for the sake of contemplative nous. Ultimately, contemplation,
the most leisured activity, consists in the exercise of contemplative nous.
For the threptikon and the aisthêtikon play useful roles in the lives of plants and animals. These powers
provide useful guidance beneficial for self-maintenance. By contrast, theôria, the exercise of
contemplative nous according to sophia, is a useless and – at first sight – strangely inert function.
Contemplation apparently offers no active guidance for lower human life-functions. Indeed, one struggles
to imagine how actively understanding the cosmos’ divine and unchanging first principles and causes
even could authoritatively guide such life-functions.
Thus, de
La inutilidad Kathleen V. Wilkes describes contemplation as a function “subserved by all but generating no
la contemplación
feedback” – or reciprocal benefits – for subordinate functions.5 According to Thomas Nagel,
contemplation offers no such guidance “because the best and purest employment of reason has nothing to
do with daily life.” 6 As Sarah Broadie writes, contemplation “can make no practical contribution to
anything at all, not even its own maintenance. This impracticality is, in a way, theôria’s own worst enemy
in the context of human existence.” 7 In Jonathan Lear’s view, contemplation, portrayed by Aristotle as
“an escape from the pressures of ordinary practical life,” appears to be the most “deathlike form of life.”
Yet Aristotle accepts the “nature does nothing in vain” principle. If we take this principle seriously, we
can reasonably wonder why human beings, on Aristotle’s view, should possess contemplative nous at all.
For the “nature does nothing in vain” principle precludes such organisms from having useless parts and
powers, which risk impeding an organism’s self-maintaining activity, thereby harming the organism.
In this way, the authoritative function enables its possessor to approximate the divine. Prima facie,
however, contemplation lacks any authoritative guidingness. As John M. Cooper contends, “The pure
intellect is not ‘authoritative’ in the sense of exercising control over anything.” 11 Broadie is right:
contemplation’s impracticality indeed threatens to be its own worst enemy in the context of mortal human
existence.
5.2 Two Initial Responses to the utility question.
A preliminary response to the utility question grants that contemplation, unlike perception or nutrition, is
indeed useless. It also admits that an organism’s possessing useless functions stands in tension with the
“nature does nothing in vain” principle.
this response cannot explain why or how living organisms should come to be burdened with a useless life-
function – at least if nature does nothing in vain.
Perhaps contemplation could be useful in roughly this way – by serving as an end for the soul’s lower
powers. As an object of subservience, perhaps contemplation usefully gives point to the human soul’s
lower functions and to the subordinate ends that we pursue for contemplation’s sake.
Aristotle does think that ultimate ends impose a certain structure on our choices, and they prevent desire
from being futile and vain (EN I.2, 1094a18–21). To be useful in the relevant way, then, contemplative
nous should do more than serve as an object of subservience.
None of the above, however, stops Aristotle from insisting that the highest nonhuman animal capacities,
Dios y el intelecto de la sustancia
qua authoritative, must conduce to animal self-maintenance in accordance with the “nature does nothing
sublunar.
in vain” principle. Perception provides nonhuman animals access to a (relatively) wonderful existence
 inaccessible to plants. Yet animals are such as to have perceptive capacities in the first place only on the
condition that these capacities help sustain the whole system. By analogy, then, the highest human
capacities may provide human beings access to incomparably greater wellbeing than other mortal,
sublunary organisms enjoy.
The Prime Mover is an authoritative principle and final cause. But the Prime Mover does not behave the
way that, say, political rulers behave. Instead of offering guidance, the Prime Mover is useful simply by
eliciting motion. Likewise, the thought goes, contemplative nous could be authoritative within the human
soul even if it does not guide anything.
the human contemplative nous, unlike God, is the power of a perishable, sublunary substance. Human
contemplative nous, moreover, depends on lower life-functions. Hence, its possession by human beings is
subject to the “nature does nothing in vain” principle.
5.3 A Deeper Response to the Utility question: Nous and Nonnaturalism.
Another response to the utility question, then, denies that contemplative nous in human beings is, for
El intelectoAristotle,
y su separación debiological
a natural las ciencias de la i.e., part of the form of a living human body.
function,
naturaleza.
As PA I.1 suggests (641b5–11), nous is not the proper object of the science of nature. Instead, nous is a
proper object for some other science, perhaps first philosophy or theology.
First, Aristotle thinks that to understand a life-function, one must understand that function’s correlative
objects (DA II.4, 415a20–23). To understand nous, then, one would have to understand its objects.
Suppose that a natural scientist, as such, investigates nous’ objects.
Second, Aristotle thinks that natural science as such considers the realm of nature. What is natural is, by
itself, a source of change and motion. But nous, whether practical or theoretical, is not such a source (cf.
DA III.9, 432b25–433a6). So, nous is not natural or “a nature.” Hence, nous lies outside the scope of the
science of nature (641b4–10)
Aristotle holds apparently similar views in the De Anima. Nous, Aristotle says, lacks a bodily organ (DA
III.4, 429a25–27). Whereas the aisthêtikon is “not without body” (οὐκ ἄνευ σώματος), nous is somehow
“separable” (χωριστός: 429b5) from the body, perhaps existentially. To cognize all that it does – Aristotle
insists, refining a view of Anaxagoras – nous must be “unmixed” with the body (429a18).
5.4. Nous and Nature in on the part of Animals.
I first consider the Parts of Animals passages. Aristotle’s remarks in PA I.1 are brief and programmatic,
and they leavedébil
Sentido unclear exactlyfuerte
y sentido what del
typeNous.
of nous Aristotle has in mind. Perhaps Aristotle denies only that
divine thinking, Aristotle’s god, is a fitting object of natural-scientific investigation. For such thinking
presumably lies outside the realm of change and motion. But it is unclear that all nous does so. If so,
Aristotle need not think that natural scientists should ignore all nous.
For if PA I.1 forbids the natural scientist from referring to nous at all in natural-scientific explanations,
then Aristotle himself apparently violates his own strictures.21 First, the human being stands upright
because this organism in a special way “shares in the divine” (μετέχει τοῦ θείου). Here, such sharing
involves contemplating the celestial bodies above us (PA II.10, 656a6–13). Second, the human body has
an upright posture and hands, rather than four-footedness, because “its nature and being (τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ
καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν) are divine; but [the] function of the most divine [is] to think and to be wise” ( ἔργον δὲ
τοῦ θειοτάτου τὸ νοεῖν καὶ φρονεῖν: PA IV.10, 686a28–29).
Therefore, even if nous is not to be studied in some unqualified way by natural scientists, some nous
could still be part of nature – in particular, part of the living human body’s form.
When Aristotle insists that the biologist will not “contemplate” (θεωρῆσαι) nous and its objects (PA I.1.,
641b2), then, he may have a strong sense of “contemplate” in mind. Aristotle may well deny only that
natural science can provide a complete account of nous and its objects.
As Aristotle’s scientific practice suggests, Aristotle could still permit natural scientists to investigate nous
and its objects in some weaker sense. Scientists may well refer to nous and its objects incidentally, when
a natural-scientific account of (e.g.) human physiology requires it. So, while the investigation of nous in
stricter senses would perhaps fall under the purview of first philosophy –
If Aristotle does not distinguish between stronger and weaker ways of investigating nous and its objects,
it is hard to see how Aristotle justifies his own reference to nous and its objects in PA II.10 and IV.10.
For charity, then, I assume that Aristotle distinguishes between stronger and weaker ways of investigating
nous.
5.5 Nous and Nature in the Anima and Problems.
I turn to the De Anima’s views on nous’ separability. To begin, I note, for clarity, that Aristotle’s remarks
at DA III.4, 429a25–27 concern nous as such. Hence, these remarks must pertain both to practical and
contemplative nous. If so, then even practical nous must also be separable.23 Prima facie, this would be a
puzzling consequence.
Further,Características
Aristotle provides general
del Nous reasons for thinking that nous – whether contemplative or practical,
pasivo-humano.
and at least in human souls – depends on perception, nutrition, and the body. In the relevant De Anima
passages, then, it is hard to see how contemplative nous in human beings could be existentially separable
from a complex system of functions that includes nutrition and perception. Moreover, Aristotle explicitly
identifies at least some nous – passive nous – as perishable (φθαρτός: DA III.5, 430a22–25). Such nous
differs from the imperishable, divine thinking of Aristotle’s god, the “agent intellect,” which Aristotle
discusses in DA III.5. 25 At least some nous, like other items in the natural world, is subject to
corruption. To that extent, passive nous would stand to be part of the natural sublunary world –
presumably, as part of the living human body’s form.
(1) human nous, whether contemplative or practical, is passive nous
(2) human nous qua passive nous is both perishable and part of the natural world in virtue of its
dependence on nutrition and perception.
(3) human nous, unlike nutrition and perception, is separable from the body only analytically or in
account, not existentially (options that DA III.4, 429a10–12 explicitly countenances). True, unlike
digestion, which requires the stomach, and unlike sight, which requires the eyes, human nous lacks a
special material bodily organ for its exercise.
Aristotle strongly suggests that this power is part of that soul: it is “the portion of the soul by which the
soul both knows and cognizes” (τοῦ μορίου τοῦ τῆς ψ υχῆς ᾧ γινώσκει τε ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ φρονεῖ: DA III.4,
429a10–11).
Finally, it is odd for yet another reason to read the De Anima as committed to contemplative nous’
existential separability from the human body.
 These points find support from another Aristotelian work, the Problems. The precise authorship of the
Problems is a matter of controversy, though today, most scholars identify it as a later compilation that at
least contains some authentically Aristotelian material and that nevertheless articulates Peripatetic
views.32 According to Problems XXX.5, “nous is also among the things belonging in us by nature as an
instrument” (ἔστι γὰρ καὶ ὁ νοῦς τῶν φύσει ἐν ἡμῖν ὥσπερ ὄργανον ὑπάρχων: 955b25–26), viz., for using
other tools.
5.6 Nichomachean Ethics X. 7-8: The separability and divinity of Nous.
Here, Aristotle appears to think that contemplative nous is either wholly free from the requirements of the
“nature does nothing in vain” principle, or else can meet these requirements in some novel way. I argue,
however, that we have stronger reasons to resist attributing a nonnaturalist position to Aristotle even here.
When Aristotle advises contemplators to immortalize themselves “as far as possible,” we should read this
qualifier in relation to the similar qualifiers that Aristotle uses in DA II.4 and GA II.1 when he discusses
the ways that plants and animals approximate the divine. Plants and animals, however, approximate the
divine not by radically transcending their vegetative and perceptive modes of life (i.e., by living as
something
Acercarnos a laother than plants
inmortalidad or animals)
tanto como sea posible.
2. Aristotle thinks that, for any living being, a divine existence is better than a mortal existence. Aristotle
also thinks that gods benefit from contemplation. Yet Aristotle need not think that we benefit from the
activities that gods enjoy just because these activities intrinsically benefit gods. To say all existing things,
aim at some one good [is] not true,” Aristotle claims, “for each is desirous of [its] own peculiar good,
[the] eye of vision, [the] body of health, and so on” (EE I.8, 1218a30–33). What is good for human beings
need not be so for fish (EN VI.7, 1141a22–23)
3. Thus, when Aristotle says that one leads the happiest life only “insofar as something divine” pertains to
one’s nature (EN X.7, 1177b27–28), we should read Aristotle as saying that we will not attain our human
good insofar as we exercise capacities (such as practical nous) that only human beings possess.
(3) Confirming these points, Aristotle takes a dim view of the alleged benefits of transcending humanity
in any strong way. Aristotle identifies “the good we seek” (τὸ ζητούμενον ἀγαθόν) not as the divine good,
but as the human good (τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθὸν) (cf. EN I.7, 1097a15 and 1098a16; I.13, 1102a12–17).40
Thus, we benefit only as human beings, not as gods
Unless theôria does guide lower-level functions, however, Aristotle’s effort to establish the supreme value
of theôria appears dependent on a different view about the goodness of divine activity, one that Aristotle
evidently rejects elsewhere and that is hard to defend on its own. This “external” reading of Aristotle on
theôria’s divinity, moreover, would unhappily trichotomize his biology, ethics, and theology.
Approximating divinity through reproduction and perception (which conduce to selfmaintenance) would
be utterly different from approximating divinity though contemplation (which would not)
5.7 Three problems to consider.
EN VI (=EE V) later refines Aristotle’s picture of the human soul by suggesting that practical nous plays
some immediate role in ordering nonrational desire. Nevertheless, EN I.7 and I.13, like EE II.1, leave
Relación entre intelecto contemplativo y la
open the possibility that contemplative nous also plays some role in actively guiding nonrational desire –
parte irracional.
namely, as an aspect of the soul’s authoritative thinking element
[A]t all events he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and best, and gratifies the most
authoritative element in himself and in all things obeys this (χαρίζεται ἑαυτοῦ τῷ κυριωτάτῳ, καὶ πάντα
τούτῳ πείθεται); and just as a city or any other systematic whole is most properly identified with the most
authoritative element (τὸ κυριώτατον) in it, so is a man; and therefore the man who loves this and
gratifies it is most of all a lover of self. Besides, a man is said to have or not to have self-control
according as his intellect has or has not the control (καὶ ἐγκρατὴς δὲ καὶ ἀκρατὴς λέγεται τῷ κρατεῖν τὸν
νοῦν ἢ μή), on the assumption that this is the man himself; and the things men have done from reason are
thought most properly their own acts and voluntary acts. That this is the man himself, then, or is so more
than anything else, is plain, and also that the good man loves most this part of him (1168b29–1169a3;
ROT).m
Given its power to guide human action, Aristotle identifies nous as a general power for reason as the
human soul’s most authoritative power. In this way, Aristotle says, the human soul is like a city, which is
“most of all” identifiable with its ruling element. When Aristotle speaks about nous here, he might seem
to refer to practical nous alone.
Chapter 6. THE FIRST WAVE REASON, DESIRE, AND THREPTIC GUIDANCE IN THE
HARMONIZED SOUL.
6.1 Epithumia. Epithumia o concupiscencia
Aristotle also identifies epithumia as, paradigmatically, desire for the bodily pleasures associated with
eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse (cf. Republic IV.437e and 439d with DA II.3, 414b5–15; PA
II.17, 661a6–8; EN III.10, 1118a31–32; Rhetoric I.11, 1370a17–27). Aristotle calls such bodily pleasures
“necessary” (EN VII.4, 1147b24), for they conduce to our meeting our basic threptic needs.
Similarly, Aristotle observes that human beings have epithumia for objects that are unnecessary but
choiceworthy in themselves (καθ’ αὑτά: EN VII.4, 1147b29). These objects include such “fine and
serious things” as honor, gain, wealth, and victory (EN VII.4, 1147b30; 1148a23–26; cf. Rhetoric I.10,
1369a12–13; I.11, 1370b32–34). Unlike food, drink, and sex, such items are not necessary for self-
maintenance in any immediate and unqualified way.
Consider wealth, whose possession Aristotle identifies as “a tool.
with respect to life” (ὄργανον πρὸς ζωήν: Politics I.4, 1253b31). Money serves “the needs of life” (τὴν
χρείαν ... πρὸς τὸ ζῆν: Politics I.9, 1257a36–37), and secures the items one needs for living (Politics I.4,
1253b24–25). Indeed, one “lives through these things” (ὡς τοῦ ζῆν διὰ τούτων ὄντος: EN IV.1, 1120a3).
The origin of the desire to accumulate unlimited money, then, is a desire for “living, but not living well”
(περὶ τὸ ζῆν, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸ εὖ ζῆν). Insofar as our desires for living extend “into infinity” (εἰς ἄπειρον), we
similarly desire the things productive of living (τῶν ποιητικῶν: Politics 1.9, 1257b40–1258b2).
Instead, such epithumia arises because we come, through our ethical education, to associate our
possessing wealth with our meeting our threptic needs.
Thus, people delight in honor from the powerful because they hope thereby to obtain what they need (του
δέωνται): “therefore, as a sign of comfort they delight in honor” (ὡς δὴ σημείῳ τῆς εὐπαθείας χαίρουσι τῇ
τιμῇ: EN VIII.8, 1159a17–24). Human beings associate the possession of honor and victory with the
bodily comfort that they obtain in securely fulfilling their threptic needs.7 Similar accounts pertain, I
suggest, to epithumia for other external goods.
On this account, and in its starkest form, thumos is a kind of “fighting spirit” that flares when an animal
(whether nonrational or rational) is directly or indirectly blocked or opposed in satisfying bodily
 thumos
epithumiai (e.g., thirst). Once aroused, thumos stirs the animal to overcome or eliminate the opposing
force. Thus, anger, for instance, includes a desire for revenge (Rhetoric II.2, 1378a31).
– Aristotle also explicitly identifies thumos as “the power of the soul by which we feel friendly” ( ἡ τῆς ψ
υχῆς δύναμις ᾗ φιλοῦμεν: Politics VII.7, 1327b40–1328a1). And it is unclear how anger can be the source
of friendly feeling. Hence, I contend, thumos is not identical to anger, though anger is a kind of thumos.
– remarks on thumos, one must explain why Aristotle links passions such as anger, fear, and friendly
feeling. The rough answer, I take it, is that all of these passions manifest rousing concern about “oneself
or one’s own” (αὑτὸν ἢ τῶν αὑτοῦ) in the face of potential offenses, obstacles, or difficulties (cf. Rhetoric
II.2, 1378a32–b2; II.8, 1385b16–18)
Anger is an especially clear kind of response to offense or difficulty: it aims to retaliate against the
offending obstacle (Rhetoric II.4, 1382a5–15). Fear arises when one faces destructive future threats that
loom near (Rhetoric II.5, 1382a21–22; a27–32): fear rouses one to avoid the threat.14 As for friendly
feeling, Aristotle seems to have in mind a sense of friendly or communal solidarity and self-assertion
against potential outside obstacles or threats. Thus, when those who count as one’s own – one’s friends
and family members – betray that solidarity, Aristotle notes, one is angriest (Politics VII.7, 1328a1–5).1
If Aristotle and Socrates disagree, they do so on a point I have already noted: Socrates, in practice at least,
identifies honor and victory as the well-defined intentional objects of thumos alone. Aristotle, by contrast,
allows these particular goods as such also to be epithumia’s objects.18 Yet Aristotle agrees, I contend,
that great honor is an object of thumos.
6.3 Reason, Ethical Virtue, and the Regulation of Nonrational Desire.
How, then, does reason as a general power guide (though not subserve) nonrational desire? To answer
La enkrateia y el dominio
this question, de laEN
consider razón sobre
I.13, la appeals to the phenomena of enkrateia (self-control) and akrasia
which
concupiscencia y el enojo.
(incontinence) to infer the existence of a nonrational “part” of the human soul distinct from reason
The nonrational desires of both akratic and vicious agents fail to obey reason’s prescriptions. The
nonrational desires of self-controlled and virtuous agents, by contrast, listen to reason and follow its
advice. Yet whereas the self-controlled agent’s nonrational desire follows reason begrudgingly, resisting
its call, the virtuous agent’s nonrational desire follows reason without a struggle.
Aristotle agrees. Nonrational desire demands satisfaction now, regardless of whether such fulfillment
conduces to one’s meeting one’s long-term needs. Reason, by contrast, is future-oriented, and it considers
one’s overall, long-term good (DA III.10, 433b7–10).
In the human soul, then, nonrational desire functions well only when reason exercises authority over it
(EN III.12, 1119b13–19). Epithumia and thumos can dominate judgment, and – uncontrolled – induce
states akin to madness (EN II.9, 1109b7–11; VII.3, 1147a15–17; Rhetoric II.1, 1378a19–22; cf. Politics
VIII.7). Thus, reason prevents nonrational desire from running rampant and seeking unmeasured
satisfaction at the cost of the human being’s overall good, i.e., the human being’s persistence and active
functioning as a rational animal.
(1) to move human beings toward pleasant objects that fulfill a human being’s various needs
(2) to rise up against obstacles to such fulfillment. Hence, reason does not simply repress nonrational
desires. Instead, when perfected, it allows their fulfillment within a measured limit.
 The virtuous person will respond well, in particular, to pleasures and pains attendant to epithumia and
thumos. For we experience epithumia as a pain at the lack of some object whose possession and
consumption brings pleasure (EN III.11, 1119a4–5). We experience thumos as a pain at some offensive
Regulación del thumos y la epithumia
obstacle to the fulfillment of epithumia, the thought of whose retaliatory overcoming or elimination also
brings pleasure (Rhetoric II.2, 1378b1–2).
The mean relative to us, then, is rooted in our needs as human beings – including our threptic needs.
Excessive and deficient epithumia and thumos impair one’s threptic activity, or put it at risk. By contrast,
well-calibrated epithumia and thumos satisfy, or secure one’s satisfying, one’s threptic needs:
1) Epithumia. Excessive epithumia moves one to pursue one item that would fulfill threptic needs (e.g.,
drink), though at the cost of attaining other items that would fulfill other threptic needs (e.g., food and
sex).
(2) Thumos. Excessive thumos leads one into needless danger, undermines one’s social relations, and
diverts one’s energies into pursuing objects beyond one’s attainment. Such outcomes threaten either one’s
threptic activity (directly) or impair one’s threptic prospects (e.g., by needlessly wasting one’s resources.
For Aristotle, then, being ethically virtuous is a necessary condition for benefiting without qualification
from external goods. According to EE VIII.3, “the things about which people compete and seeming to be
the greatest goods – honor and wealth and bodily virtues and good fortune and powers – are good by
nature, but they can be harmful to some people on account of [character] states” (1248b27–30; cf. Politics
VII.13, 1332a23–25).
Thus, virtue and virtuous action manifest proper order, symmetry, and boundedness – what Aristotle calls
the kalon, i.e., the fine, the noble, or the beautiful.
6.4 Psychic Harmony, the human good and Self-Maintenance.
El hombre bueno y la armonía de la razón.
According to Aristotle, then, reason as a general power regulates epithumia and thumos by guiding them
and exhorting them aright. Such desire, in turn, guides the threptikon in nourishing and reproducing a
body capable of both lower and higher life-functions.
For his part, Aristotle also holds that the good man is related to his friend as he is related toward himself
(EN IX.4, 1166a29–31). The good man, on Aristotle’s view, wishes and does what is good for himself
(1166a3–4).
For this person is of the same mind with himself (ὁμογνωμονεῖ ἑαυτῷ), and he is desirous of the same
things with his whole soul (κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ψυχήν); and indeed he wishes for himself good things and
apparent [good things] and he acts (for it is typical for the good person to labor for the good) and he acts
for the sake of himself (for he acts for the sake of the thinking aspect ( διανοητικοῦ), the very thing each
person seems to be); and he wishes himself also to live and to be preserved (καὶ ζῆνδὲ βούλεται ἑαυτὸν
καὶ σῴζεσθαι), and most of all that by which he thinks (μάλιστα τοῦτο ᾧ φρονεῖ; 1166a13–19)
Aristotle describes the thinking element, or that “by which” a human being thinks, as only “most of all”
or primarily what the good person wishes to preserve and to exercise. “Most of all” or primarily,
however, does not mean “exclusively.
For the virtuous person whose life-activity harmonizes with this element, “living in itself is good and
sweet” (αὐτὸ τὸ ζῆν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἡδύ: EN IX.9, 1170a26). Like Socrates, then, Aristotle thinks it necessary
for nonrational desire “to harmonize with reason” (συμφωνεῖν τῷ λόγῳ) in the virtuous agent (EN III.12,
1119b15–16). (“For reason and desire do not always harmonize” [συμφωνεῖ: EE II.8, 1224a24–25].)
 Aristotle echoes Socrates’ denial that the soul is literally a harmony (cf. Phaedo 91ff with DA I.4 and
Eudemus, fr. 45 [Rose, 3rd edn.]). Yet Aristotle grants that we can make good metaphorical sense of
harmony talk, including talk of virtue as a kind of harmony (συμφωνία: Topics IV.3, 123a33–37; VI.2,
139b32–140a2; cf. Phaedo 93cff). Thus, while Aristotle rejects the harmony theory of the soul, he accepts
that the soul functions harmoniously under reason’s guidance.

La relación6.5 Ethical
entre Vice and
la armonía delImpaired
alma Theptic Prospects.
conAristotle
la de la naturaleza.
should accept that a correspondingly close relationship holds between an agent’s degree of
psychic harmony and that agent’s overall stability as a living organism.
Such vices are not innate: one develops virtue and vice through practice (EN II.1). Yet like natural
defects, ethical vices prevent rational animals from functioning optimally. For such vices prevent
nonrational desire’s functioning well.
Aristotle does not claim that any degree of ethical vice suffices to destroy a human being’s enmattered
form. A sufficiently bad failure of reason to regulate nonrational desire, however, will have repercussions
beyond the vicious agent’s suffering. Some illnesses, for instance, strike out of the blue.
I examine the whole range of ethical virtues in Chapter 9. For now, notice how various ethically vicious
dispositions impair one’s threptic prospects. Excessive epithumia for food, drink, and sex will require one
to waste one’s wealth (EN IV.1, 1121b7–10), thereby wasting material resources conducive to satisfying
one’s threptic needs over time.
6.6 Reason- or Practical Reason?
(3) The Aristotelian author of Problems XXX.12 observes that while nonhuman animals live by orexis,
La tesis dethumos,
Walkerand epithumia,
y la relación “humanintelecto
phronesis being usually lives by nous” (τῷ νῷ: 956b35–36). As already noted,
práctico.
Problems XXX.5, in turn, explicitly emphasizes the way in which nous is, like our other natural
endowments, an instrument (ὄργανον: 955b26).
(1) reason guides nonrational desire within virtuous boundaries and
(2) nonrational desire, so regulated, guides threptic activity, reason indirectly guides threptic activity.
Yet Aristotle does not yet answer the utility question. For when Aristotle elsewhere specifies what sort of
reason proximately regulates nonrational desire, he apparently refers to practical nous, not to
contemplative nous.
When lacking phronêsis, however, their natural virtues remain underdeveloped. For undiscerning children
and nonhuman animals also show the proto-temperance and courage that constitute natural virtue (EN
VI.13, 1144b8–9; cf. HA I.1, 488b13ff). And without direction by practical nous in accord with
phronêsis, such tendencies will prove harmful (1144b9)
On this basis, interpreters sometimes describe practical nous as the power that Aristotle does, or should,
identify as authoritative in the human soul.
That Aristotle might, or should, have identified practical reason as authoritative in the human soul makes
a certain sense. After all, excellent practical reasoning proximately guides our actions. As matters stand,
however, Aristotle does not identify practical reason as the most authoritative human function. Instead, in
EN X.7, he ultimately assigns this role to contemplative nous (or at least nous qua contemplative) Thus
emerges the utility question. Still, even if Aristotle does not make things easy for himself, we can see how
 Aristotle could respond to the utility question. If contemplative nous authoritatively guided practical nous,
then contemplative nous could (1) guide nonrational desire and so could (2) guide both the aisthêtikon
and the threptikon. Contemplative nous could guide indirectly, via practical nous’ mediation.
THE SECOND WAVE. COMPLETE VIRTUE AND THE UTILITY CONTEMPLATION.
7.1por
Sophia y el Does
quéSophia Possess
es valiosa por síMore than Formal Utility?
misma.
To see how contemplation could be useful as authoritatively guiding the soul’s lower functions, I begin
by considering EN VI.12, which addresses worries about contemplation’s apparent uselessness. Facing a
potential objector, whose voice recalls Isocrates’, Aristotle considers “what use” (τί χρήσιμοί) both
phronêsis and sophia might possess (1143b18). Sophia, after all, is concerned only with unchanging
objects, and with none of the contingent sources of benefit from which we might profit (1143b19–20).
Aristotle admits that sophia does not contemplate those goods about which we deliberate. Nevertheless,
he thinks that sophia must benefit human life somehow. Sophia’s apparent uselessness raises a real
question, and one with which he must deal – especially if he is ultimately to identify contemplation as
complete happiness, and if he is to respond to familiar Isocratean worries in a Nicomachean context.
Sophia, then, is choiceworthy in two ways. (1) Even if sophia were not productive, sophia would be
choiceworthy for its own sake as the proper virtue of contemplative nous (1144a1–2). (2) Sophia,
however, is productive in at least one sense. Virtues like sophia, qua “part of the whole of virtue,”
produce (ποιοῦσι) happiness when exercised (1144a3–6; cf. MM I.34, 1197b28–36). Sophia is useful in
that its exercise is beneficial.
Sarah Broadie puts some of these points well: If theôria really is the fine thing that its devotees affirm,
then of course it is not useless inLathe sense ofde
autoridad being a waste of time ... The problem is to see how, if the
la sophia.
summit of human excellence is located in such qualities, any privileged position can be justified for an
activity essentially impractical. That is why we cannot take it for granted that theoretical activity is
“noble,” once it is freed from its historical association with practical virtue.
(1) EN X.7 describes contemplative nous as “the authoritative and better” part of us (τὸ κύριον καὶ
ἄμεινον: 1178a3). For such nous “seems to rule and to lead the way and have in mind the fine and divine”
(δοκεῖ ἄρχειν καὶ ἡγεῖσθαι καὶ ἔννοιαν ἔχειν περὶ καλῶν καὶ θείων: 1177a14–15) On a minimal reading,
contemplative nous rules as an honorary figurehead: other human life-functions subserve it, even if
contemplative nous does nothing itself 2 Broadie (1991: 396). 124 Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation
actively to direct or guide those lower Powers. Yet this reading of 1177a14–15 encounters difficulty. The
verb archein often signifies the power to direct and guide; and the appearance of hêgeisthai confirms this
sense. Liddell and Scott ([1889] 2001) cite some of hêgeisthai’s following definitions: to go before; to
lead the way for; to guide; to conduct; to lead an army or fleet; to be the leader or commander of.
(2) Metaphysics A.2 holds that the sophos’ authoritativeness signals his wisdom. The theoretically wise
person qua wise is capable of ordering; he properly rules, not obeys (982a17–19).5 By analogy, sophia is
the most sovereign kind of understanding (ἀρχικωτάτη δὲ τῶν ἐπιστημῶν), for it grasps to what end each
thing should be done (γνωρίζουσα τίνος ἕνεκέν ἐστι πρακτέον ἕκαστον: 982b5–6).
(a) On the contrary, Aristotle’s account of sophia in these chapters accounts for these endoxa.
b) Aristotle retains this point about sophia’s authoritativeness later in Metaphysics B.2, 996b12–14.
(c) The point about sophia’s sovereignty coheres with Aristotle’s more general view that practical and
productive sciences are subordinate to theoretical sciences (see, e.g., Metaphysics E.1, 1026a22–23).
 (d) Finally, we can reject the assumption that generates Ross’ worry. Aristotle’s argument need not prove
only ethics or politics to be the highest wisdom: not, at any rate, if Aristotle thinks that sophia qua
metaphysics is necessary for possessing practical wisdom – say, by informing practical wisdom.
(3) In this context, EE VIII.3 raises its own puzzles. Here, Aristotle divides human nature into ruling and
ruled elements, and he holds that human nature’s ruling element rules in two ways – first, as medicine
rules, second, as health does. Medicine, an ordering ruler, rules for the sake of health, a nonordering ruler.
Similar subordination holds, Aristotle says, in the case of “the contemplative” part (τὸ θεωρητικόν): “for
god is not an ordering ruler, but that for the sake of which practical wisdom issues orders” ( οὐ γὰρ
ἐπιτακτικῶς ἄρχων ὁ θεός, ἀλλ᾽ οὗ ἕνεκα ἡ φρόνησις ἐπιτάττει: 1249b13–15).
1) as identifying “the contemplative” part as contemplative nous; (2) as holding that, qua divine,
contemplative nous is something like god in the human soul; and (3) as insisting that practical wisdom
issues orders for contemplative nous’ sake.9 On this reading, Aristotle describes contemplative nous very
differently in EE VIII.3 from how he describes it in the other passages I have just examined. For on this
reading of EE VIII.3, contemplative nous is in no way an order-issuing ruler, and so, seemingly lacking
any powers of authoritative guidance.
I recognize that, in identifying sophia as more authoritative than phronêsis, EE V.13 (=EN VI.13),
A favor1145a6–11
de la autoridad del highlight
does not intelecto any active guidance that sophia offers. Instead, this passage portrays sophia
contemplativo.
as authoritative over phronêsis qua end, not qua ruler.
4) I turn to MM I.34’s steward/master analogy (1198b13–20), which parallels EE V.13 (=EN VI.13). In
comparing phronêsis to a steward and sophia to a master, the analogy might seem to militate against any
possibility that contemplative nous actively guides anything. The master does not involve himself with
the nitty-gritty details of managing household affairs – as we should expect – but nothing in the analogy
suggests that the master offers no guidance to the steward. Indeed, it would be strange to deny that the
master offers any such guidance.
(5) Politics I.5 describes the relative fitness of certain parts of the human soul to rule other parts. It is
natural, Aristotle says, “for the passionate portion (τῷ παθητικῷ μορίῳ) [to be ruled] by the intellect and
the portion having reason” (ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τοῦ μορίου τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος: 1254b8–9).
One, of course, may simply assume that Aristotle means practical nous by “the intellect and the part of
the soul having reason” – but only if one already assumes that contemplative nous is utterly inert and
incapable of offering guidance.
7.2 Aristotle on Ethical Development: From the “that” to the “why”
How, then, might contemplative nous authoritatively guide practical reasoning? Consider Aristotle’s
account of how one becomes a virtuous agent.13 Although Aristotle denies that virtue is, strictly
speaking,
La analogíaan
deart or craft
la praxis (τέχνη),
con he nevertheless compares learning to be good to learning an art. Both
la techné.
require practice (EN II.1, 1103a31–b2).
The well-reared agent sees that certain actions and a certain character are good, even if he does not know
why they are good: “For [the] starting point [is] the ‘that’ (τὸ ὅτι), and if this [is] sufficiently apparent,
there will be no need besides of the ‘why’ (τοῦ διότι); and such [a well-reared agent] has [the starting
point] or would acquire [the] starting point easily” (EN I.4, 1095b6–8).
To see why, note again the similarities between art and virtue. Certain makers (viz., manual workers) can
attain good results through guiding their work by practical experience and through a kind of habituation
 (Metaphysics A.1, 981b4–5). Aristotle allows that agents who lack technê, yet who are guided solely by
practical experience, not only can perform well in particular situations, but can perform better than those
who lack practical experience.
Thus, if “someone has the account without experience (ἄνευ τῆς ἐμπειρίας ἔχῃ τις τὸν λόγον), and knows
(γνωρίζῃ) the universal, but is ignorant of the particular in this, he will often go astray” (Metaphysics A.1,
981a20–23).
Hence, master artisans – whose work is truly excellent – will know the “why” as well and will be wiser,
“more sophos” (σοφωτέρους) than other artisans (Metaphysics A.1, 981b5).
On Aristotle’s art analogy, the same points apply to ethical virtue. Ethical excellence – excellence in
passion and action – also requires a grasp of the “why,” an understanding of why certain actions and
character traits are good, fine, and choiceworthy for themselves.
(1) Aristotle writes that “with respect to the virtues, knowing (εἰδέναι) is of little or no power,” whereas
(a) choosing actions for their own sake and (b) acting from a steady state of character are crucial (EN II.4,
1105a34–b5). On Aristotle’s view, understanding is of little or no importance to virtuous agency
relatively speaking. Understanding alone does not suffice for virtuous agency; but understanding still
La necesidad del por qué
plays a necessary role
(2) Aristotle insists that “virtue makes the end correct, phronêsis the things in relation to the end” (EN
VI.12, 1144a7–9). Perhaps, then, the virtuous need not explicitly understand proper ends to act well.
Instead, perhaps the tendencies of well-reared virtuous agents to seek out such ends suffice.
While correct belief about the end is indispensable, Aristotle thinks, we can and should attain fuller
understanding of these ends. Such understanding enables us to attend to such ends with a clear view of
their good-making features. So informed, we can choose and enjoy such ends, most of all, for themselves.
7.3 Theoretical Understanding as a Condition for complete Virtue.
Aristotle, then, adopts an understanding requirement for complete (or perfect) virtue: one must grasp the
“why” to possess complete virtue – phronêsis and authoritative ethical virtue – as opposed to mere
cleverness and either natural virtue or decency. To grasp the “why” fully, however, one requires
theoretical understanding of human nature and the human good. Such an understanding makes possible
the fullest grasp of why certain actions and traits of character are choiceworthy. Aristotle develops this
thought throughout the Nicomachean Ethics.
To understand the human good, Aristotle suggests, we require a certain theoretical understanding of
human nature, (i.e., a grasp of its universal and unchanging features: cf. EN VI.1, 1139a6–8).
The “best educated” doctors benefit from a scientific understanding of health, the virtue of the body. Such
doctors, who have some broader understanding of nature, differ from (1) uneducated doctors, who follow
the instructions of educated doctors as do medical orderlies, and from (2) doctors with some restricted
education in medicine (see Politics III.11, 1282a3–4).16 By “doctor,” then, Aristotle refers broadly to
those who aim to cure. But he reserves “doctor” in the strict, or authoritative, sense for the best-educated
doctors with theoretical understanding. Such cultivated doctors proceed “more philosophically”
(φιλοσοφωτέρως) than the others (De Sensu 1, 436a18–b2; Resp. 21, 480b26–28).
The phronimos grasps the whole human soul, just as the doctor who heals eyes grasps the whole body
(πᾶν σῶμα: EN I.13, 1102a20).
Phronsesis y la ciencia política, su
equiparación.
EN I.13 and X.9 address only the understanding required by legislators, who exercise practical nous
according to phronêsis on behalf of the city’s wellbeing.
Phronêsis and political science differ in being: the former concerns the happiness of individuals, while the
later concerns the happiness of cities. Yet as perfections of practical nous, phronêsis and political science
are the same state (EN VI.8, 1141b23–24). Insofar as the legislator’s practical nous is perfected through
the legislator’s theoretical understanding of the human good, individual agents, and not only legislators,
would benefit from such understanding.
How much theoretical understanding does the phronimos require, however? At first glance, EN I.13
would seem to suggest that the phronimos requires only a basic theoretical understanding of the human
soul
Recognizing their limitations, Aristotle seeks to encourage these audience members to pursue some
theoretical understanding of the soul, without making the contemplation requirement seem too
demanding. By modeling the practically wise legislator on the well-educated doctor (EN I.13, 1102a21–
23), however, Aristotle suggests that fuller understanding is necessary if one is to be a complete
phronimos. One who really understood natural causes and principles would stand to be a phronimos most
of all.
7.4 Theoretical Understanding and Horoi for practical reasoning.
La necesidad del Horoi.
The Aristotelian phronimos grasps not only the ethical “that,” but also the ethical “why.” But grasping the
“why” requires theoretical understanding of human nature and the human good.
The Eudemian Ethics is most explicit on these points. Thus, according to EE I.2, it is a sign “of great
folly” (ἀφροσύνης πολλῆς) not to organize one’s life around a certain end, viz., whatever constitutes
living well (1214b10–14). Therefore, “it is necessary first to define in oneself” (δεῖ πρῶτον ἐν αὑτῷ
διορίσασθαι) what pertains to living well. EE V.1 (=EN VI.1).
To understand Aristotle’s worry, consider the medical analogy that he introduces. The doctor has a target,
viz., the health of the body. In seeking this target, the good doctor aims to attain the mean between excess
and deficiency. What constitutes this medical mean, in turn, is determined by correct medical reasoning.
Yet we require some substantive understanding of the boundary marker that defines correct medical
reasoning (beyond, say, whatever accords with the art of medicine). Likewise, in living well, we require a
substantive grasp of the boundary marker that defines correct reason (1138b29–34). Thus, Aristotle says,
we must perform two tasks: (1) We must articulate what correct reason is. (2) We must also articulate the
horos – the boundary marker, standard, or definition – that defines correct reason (καὶ διωρισμένον τίς
ἐστιν ὁ ὀρθὸς λόγος καὶ τούτου τίς ὅρος: 1138b34; cf. EE II.5, 1222b7–8).
(1) by identifying correct reason as either phronêsis or reason according to phronêsis (1144b24–25; b27–
28). Yet Aristotle must also attempt task (2), lest he keep us in the dark about what boundary marker or
standard defines correct reason.
EE VIII.3 explicitly highlights this problem and reiterates the need to articulate the horos that defines the
practically wise person’s judgment.
Here, one’s theoretical understanding becomes useful. Through contemplation, I suggest, phronimoi grasp
certain standards or boundary markers of the human good, which then inform such agents’ practical
reasoning. But is this suggestion anachronistic? Perhaps the demand for a theoretically grasped
Intelecto contemplativo
“standard” tojuega unaction
guide rol necesario, peroto modern Western moral philosophy, and simply missing from
is peculiar
ancient Greek ethics.
no importante por lo tanto su rol es limitado
In response, voluminous textual evidence from Aristotle’s ethical works – which I have already provided
– shows that Aristotle is concerned to identify standards of the human good, which define the phronimos’
judgment.
In holding that the phronimos must understand the human good theoretically, Aristotle need not accept a
crude, deductivist model of practical reasoning. In indicating that phronêsis requires theoretical
understanding of the human good, that is, Aristotle need not think that phronimoi require a kind of rule-
book or decision procedure for practical reasoning, or a blueprint from which they can read off the right
actions to perform.24 Such a crude picture of practical reasoning is as false for good individual practical
judgment as it is for the good medical judgment of doctors. Instead, theoretical understanding informs or
shapes the phronimos’ way of perceiving particular situation.
The phronimos’ theoretical understanding of the human good, and the standards of the human good that
he derives from such understanding, then, need not interfere with the phronimos’ practical reasoning or
restrict the role of practical experience in decision making. On the contrary, such understanding sharpens
the phronimos’ perspective, enabling him to attend to salient features of situations.
in accepting that the phronimos first requires a fund of practical experience, Aristotle does not expect an
articulate grasp of the human good, by itself, to yield exact prescriptions for how to act in varying
circumstances. Again, for Aristotle, grasping boundary markers of the human good is, at best, a
necessary, but not a sufficient, condition, for practical wisdom. Theoretically understanding the human
good plays an important, but limited, background role in practically wise choice.
7.5 Some Hortatory remarks on the Protrepticus.
If contemplation can provide an agent cognitive access to such a horos, which delimits virtuous practical
reasoning, contemplation can show itself useful in a robust, action-guiding sense. Contemplation,
although distinct from practical reasoning, would complete practical reasoning. Contemplative nous, by
extension, would authoritatively guide lower human functions.
does Aristotle himself ever explicitly identify contemplation as defined in Chapter 1 as useful in this
way?
Relación entre la contemplación con la política desde el Protréptico y sus preocupaciones
I take it, is that useless contemplation lacks choiceworthiness because it has no functional role in the life
hermenéuticas.
of a mortal human being. Thus, Isocrates takes a dim view of rival Platonic and Aristotelian philosophers
who pursue “astronomy and geometry and studies of that sort” (Antidosis 261), and who thereby
“promise to make their disciples all but immortal” (Against the Sophists 4).
Thus, in a transitional passage linking text borrowed from the original Protrepticus, Iamblichus expresses
a concern that seems implicit in Aristotle’s text: “But since we converse with human beings and not with
those who have the divine portion of life ready-to-hand, it is necessary to mix in with such exhortations
some protreptics with a view to the political and practical life” (Protrepticus 6, 36. 27–37.2/B7).
Protrepticus 7 argues not only that “wisdom and cognition” (τὸ φρονεῖν καὶ τὸ γιγνώσκειν) are
choiceworthy for their own sakes, as constitutive of human life, but that they are “also useful toward life
(χρήσιμόν τε εἰς τὸν βίον), for nothing good comes about for us unless it is completed after we have
reasoned and acted according to wisdom” (κατὰ φρόνησιν: 41.7–11/B41). This claim is most likely an
Iamblichean paraphrase of Aristotle’s text.27 Yet it still reveals Aristotle’s concerns.
In Protrepticus 10, Aristotle spells out how contemplation is useful. Contemplation, Aristotle argues,
possesses such functional utility by providing cognitive access to horoi for practical reasoning.
Against this unacceptably hardline position, the recent work of Hutchinson and Johnson provides a
detailed defense of the authentically Aristotelian status of the relevant passages in Iamblichus. We should
show care when using the Protrepticus. Yet we should nevertheless use it – especially when the
Protrepticus provides helpful resources for addressing the utility question, a question that cuts deep.
Grant, then, that we possess authentic fragments from the Protrepticus. Even so, a second worry goes, the
Protrepticus promises to have limited value for elucidating Aristotle’s own views. The problem is a
generic one. Philosophical protreptics aim to turn non-philosophers toward philosophy. To do so, they
must appeal to the concerns of non-philosophers – concerns that true philosophers may reject. Thus, even
if the Protrepticus argues for contemplation’s utility, Aristotle himself need not believe that
contemplation is useful. Perhaps Aristotle offers such an argument merely tactically, to reach audiences
where they stand.
In response, I grant that some philosophers might use merely tactical protreptic arguments. Further,
Aristotle insists that protreptics, in urging audiences either to do or not to do something (Rhetoric I.3,
1358b8–10), should demonstrate that a certain pursuit is advantageous or better for the audience
(1358b21–24; cf. Rhetoric I.6). So, he thinks that protreptics should reach audiences where they stand.
“True arguments seem, then, most useful, not only with a view to knowledge, but with a view to life also;
for Intelecto
since theypráctico
harmonize with the facts en
they
el are believed, and so they exhort (προτρέπονται) those who
e intelecto teórico Protréptico
understand them to live according to them” (EN X.1, 1172b3–7). Protreptic arguments, Aristotle thinks,
will meet their hortatory aims most effectively to the extent that.
According to a third worry, the Protrepticus represents the work of a young Aristotle still in the grip of a
Platonic influence later outgrown.32 Hence, any use of the Protrepticus should recognize its limited
usefulness as a remnant from Aristotle’s early intellectual development.
Weighing against the claim that the Protrepticus represents a superseded youthful Platonism in Aristotle’s
development is the evidence – compiled and discussed in Chapter 6 – that the Nicomachean Ethics’ views
on virtue, moral psychology, and happiness show the pervasive influence of Plato’s Republic. The
Nicomachean Ethics makes little sense if one denies this influence.
The Protrepticus, after all, appears not to distinguish between contemplative and practical nous. So, the
worry goes, the Protrepticus promises to be unhelpful for addressing philosophical issues the
Nicomachean Ethics puts in one’s way – especially if these questions concern the relationship between
contemplative and practical nous.
The Protrepticus and the Nicomachean Ethics might not always refer to the same phenomena. But aside
from the fair amount of terminological consistency between the two works, these works show a strong
degree of argumentative and thematic consistency. Most notably, both works hold that the happiest life is
organized around contemplation, which both works identify as possessing a kind of aristocratic
leisureliness. Hutchinson and Johnson offer a full catalog of other parallels between the Protrepticus and
the Nicomachean Ethics. 35 True, the Nicomachean Ethics presents a more refined cartography of the
soul than the Protrepticus. The former work, but not the latter, distinguishes sharply between
contemplative and practical nous. Yet these points hardly demonstrate any substantial underlying
disagreement between the Protrepticus and the Nicomachean Ethics.
(1) phronêsis and sophia
 (2) practical and contemplative nous. But nothing interesting need follow. In the Protrepticus, Aristotle
Isocrates.
faces Isocrates’ challenges. Aristotle’s speaking interchangeably between sophia and phronêsis, however,
matches Isocrates’ own seamless switching between terms. For instance, at Antidosis 270–271, Isocrates
says that he will talk “about wisdom and philosophy” (περὶ δὲ σοφίας καὶ φιλοσοφίας). Isocrates goes on
to describe wise men (σοφοὺς) and philosophers (φιλοσόφους) by the sort of wisdom (τοιαύτην
φρόνησιν) they possess. Perfectly good contextual reasons explain why Aristotle speaks the way he does.
He aims to respond to Isocrates, using Isocratean vocabulary.
Aristotle’s conception of wisdom in the Protrepticus, regardless of whatever term Aristotle uses for it,
remains continuous with that of Metaphysics A.1–2. Moreover, one can translate the Protrepticus’ general
claims about contemplation into the Nicomachean Ethics’ vocabulary.
Moreover, as in the Protrepticus, so also in both the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle
occasionally refers to phronêsis when one might expect him to refer to sophia, and vice versa.
The Protrepticus apparently avoids the Nicomachean Ethics’ sharp distinctions between contemplative
and practical nous and between sophia and phronêsis. The work shows strong signs, however, of making
these distinctions implicitly. For example, Protrepticus 8, 46. 22–47.4/B103 distinguishes between the
phronêsis that we need to live (ζῆν) versus the kind that we need to live finely (ζῆν καλῶς)
As Düring observes, this passage invites comparison with the popularizing restatement of Book VI’s
distinction between practical and contemplative wisdom that appears in MM I.34, 1198b12–20.
7.6 Protrepticus 10: the utility Argument.
Aristotle holds that although contemplation is not productive in any narrow sense, it offers a background
perspective that guides the best practical reasoning.
Aristotle contrasts contemplative knowledge with practical, productive knowledge. Yet Protrepticus 10
stands out for arguing explicitly that contemplative knowledge is useful. Contemplation is not itself
“creative and productive.” It does not provide explicit decision procedures for action. Nevertheless,
Aristotle holds, it can guide practical reasoning at a dispositional level. While “contemplative indeed,”
such thinking provides agents with insights by reference to which they can create well-wrought actions.
A point of clarification: Protrepticus 10 begins by saying that lawmakers and statesmen will need
philosophy.
Contemplation,
El phronimos then, provides
y el filosophos, cognitive access to exact measures of the human good. By “looking toward
una equiparación
nature and toward the divine” (πρὸς τὴν φύσιν βλέπων ζῇ καὶ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον: 55.26–27/B50),
contemplators can derive “certain boundary markers (τινὰς ὅρους).
Gradually, the word horos came to mean “norm,” “standard,” “benchmark,” or “delimitation,” and – as
we have seen – it began to show up in medical contexts.
Yet throughout its history, horos retains rich resonances of delimiting borders.5
I see no evidence for Jaeger’s proposal that Aristotle thinks that contemplators derive such boundary-
markers from Platonic Forms.
At 55.1, Aristotle says that contemplation enables practical agents to obtain horoi (in the plural), which
guide these agents in practical reasoning and action. By contrast, both the Nicomachean and Eudemian
passages that I considered earlier claimed that phronimoi grasp the horos (in the singular) that defines
correct reason. Although the Protrepticus speaks in the plural, and the other ethical works speak in the
singular, they need not conflict.
On this basis, Aristotle identifies the philosopher as the most exact and reliable practical reasoner. In a
passage that recalls Republic X.599a–e, Aristotle maintains that only philosophers take their lead not
from imitations, but “from the exact things themselves” (55.12–14).
The philosopher, then, is the true phronimos. Ultimately, for the philosopher “alone among producers
(δημιουργῶν) are there both stable laws and correct and fine actions” (55.24–25/B49). Philosophers need
not be productive when contemplating. The insights they obtain through contemplation, however, guide
their crafting fine laws and actions in their practical, noncontemplative moments. Thus, contemplation is
actively guiding and useful after all.
7.7 Is Aristotle´s Protreptic Strategy Consistent?
Are these views mutually consistent? If Aristotle presses the utility argument, does Aristotle undercut his
aristocratic defense of contemplation? While Aristotle could offer either argument on its own to exhort
his audience, the two arguments together might seem to cancel each other out.
To elaborate: when Aristotle offers the aristocratic defense against the charge that contemplation is
useless, he responds to the worry that contemplation is worthless because it does not subserve a higher
end
Aristotle denies that we should always expect some “other benefit beside the thing itself” ( ὠφέλειαν
ἑτέραν παρ’ αὐτὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα).
Likewise, Aristotle can say, contemplation is “useless” for human beings insofar as it subserves no higher
human functions.
Aristotle, then, can grant that contemplation guides lower life-functions. Nevertheless, he can insist that
contemplation possesses freedom and leisure. Contemplation is free and leisured because it is not
necessary or useful for any higher ends. No higher activities, after all, co-opt contemplation for their ends.
Instead, contemplation co-opts all lower activities for its ends. Hence, the Protrepticus’ utility argument
coheres with the aristocratic defense, and vice versa.
Chapter 8. THE THIRD WAVE FROM CONTEMPLATING THE DIVINE TO UNDERSTANDING
THE HUMAN HOOD.
8.1 Obstacles for deriving boundary markers of the human good.
Contemplation thus seems capable of authoritative guidingness in the human soul: it enables one to serve
as a good steersman (κυβερνήτης) on the ship of life (Protrepticus 10, 55.26–56.2/B50; cf. Plato,
Republic VI.488a–489a).
Here is one proposal. As I have argued, EN I.13 holds that the phronimos requires a theoretical
understanding of the human soul. On this view, just as the doctor understands the whole body, the
phronimos should understand our whole system of life-functions. As it turns out, Protrepticus 10 also
accepts this doctor analogy (54.12–22/B46). Thus, when Aristotle says that philosophers acquire
boundary markers from “nature itself and truth” and from “first principles,” perhaps Aristotle thinks that
philosophers obtain those standards from a direct contemplative understanding of the wellfunctioning
human soul.
 DA I.1, for instance, insists that the study of soul, which presumably includes the study of the human
soul, del
La exactitud contains twosobre
estudio features shared by the highest kinds of knowledge:
el alma
(1) it possesses exactness.
(2) it has “better and more wonderful” (βελτιόνων τε καὶ θαυμασιωτέρων) objects than other sciences. On
this basis, the study of soul belongs among the primary studies (ἐν πρώτοις: DA I.1, 402a1–4).
Accordingly, the study of soul (as part of the science of nature) is part of one of the three major
“contemplative philosophies” (φιλοσοφίαι θεωρητικαί), along with theology and mathematics
(Metaphysics E.1, 1026a18–19).
Aristotle pointedly denies human nature and the human soul to be contemplation’s paradigmatic objects.
As discussed in Section 2.4, the Protrepticus is clear enough about contemplation’s divine objects, and the
Nicomachean Ethics offers the same clarity. Since sophia is the highest sort of wisdom, sophia must have
for its objects the highest kinds of being in the cosmos. Since humanity “is not the best of the things in the
cosmos” (EN VI.7, 1141a20–22), however, sophia’s objects must be “far more divine in nature” than
human beings (1141b1–2; cf. EN VIII.7, 1158b36). Indeed, sophia “is [contemplative] of nothing coming
into being” (EN VI.12, 1143b19–20).
Like a beautifully organized animal body of the sort the biologist studies, humanity is a sublunary,
relatively accessible object of contemplation (cf. PA I.5, 644b22–645a4). Therefore, contemplating
humanity – including the structure and organization of a well-ordered human soul – should offer the
contemplator compensating benefits of cognitive accessibility. As an object of contemplation, however,
the fine order of a harmonious human soul – an object of the science of nature (PA I.1, 641a17–b10) –
would ultimately pale in comparison with the eternally self-thinking Prime Mover.
Yet Aristotle must still explain how contemplation in its “most honorable,” or theological form – as the
contemplation of God – could authoritatively guide lower human life-functions. Aristotle would need to
accomplish this task especially if he claims, as he does in EN X. 7–8, that a highly rarefied form of
contemplation, the exercise of sophia, constitutes our complete happiness.
Therefore, Protrepticus 10’s remarks on “the divine” presumably refer to some such divine thinking. In
Protrepticus 10, 55.26–56.2/B50, then, Aristotle suggests that contemplating the universe as ordered by
such divine thinking does guide agents in their navigating the swirling, choppy waters of practice. Still, he
leaves us wondering exactly how.
8.2 The Protrepticus on deriving Boundary Markers of the human good.
So, how can contemplating the divine possibly be useful in the way that the Protrepticus proposes?
Aristotle has a problem if he believes that contemplatively deriving boundary markers of the human good
requires one to behold the human essence or soul as the most perfect sort of contemplation’s proximate or
La contemplación de la divinidd y la conciencia de nuestra pequeñez
direct object. Aristotle’s problem dissolves, however, if the most perfect sort of contemplation indirectly
elucidates the human good’s structure and boundaries.
Here, Aristotle’s point – expressed in a somewhat exaggerated, rhetorically charged way – is that human
beings and human goods show up as relatively incomplete when compared against the standard of
divinity.
According to Hutchinson and Johnson (unpublished work A), this part of Protrepticus 8 expresses a
characteristically Pythagorean voice. Aristotle, however, need not disagree with this voice. On the
contrary, sections of the Protrepticus featuring a characteristically Aristotelian voice accept other claims
from Protrepticus 8’s Pythagorean voice. Consider the Pythagorean voice on the ways that lower-level
cognitive activities approximate higher-level ones (Protrepticus 8, 45.18–46.18/B99–102).
For Aristotle allows that we can obtain a certain awareness about ourselves i.e., about our mortality and
our relative weakness and shortness of life (47.19–20/B105). We can obtain this awareness by “beholding
eternal things” (καθορῶντι τῶν ἀιδίων: 47.17–18/B105), i.e., by contemplating what is immortal and
divine.
Gazing upon the divine, we recognize that human life is comparatively “miserable by nature and
difficult” (ἄθλιος φύσει καὶ χαλεπός: 48.14/B109). We recognize our basic dependence upon both our
satisfying our threptic needs and our acquiring external goods that promise some measure of threptic
security.
A sharp grasp of human finitude and mortality, however, is not the only insight that contemplation
provides. For Aristotle suggests that by “beholding eternal things,” we would also discover the lower
limits of the human good. In contemplating god, the divine thinking that orders the cosmos, one would
contemplate intellectual activity in an eternal, paradigmatic form.
As I argued in Chapter 5, such remarks do not show that Aristotle identifies nous as a literally
superhuman, separable component of the human soul. Instead, they simply highlight Aristotle’s view that
nous is a power of a general sort that human beings, unlike other mortal creatures, share with god. Hence,
in contemplating the divine, Aristotle’s philosophers would be in a position to recognize not only their
finitude in relation to the divine, but also their relative kinship with the divine.
On my proposal, Aristotle
En medio acceptsy Dios.
de la bestia the view, pervasive in Greek thinking, that human nature and the
human good lie between the bestial and the divine.12 In contemplating the divine, contemplators thereby
grasp their intermediate place in the cosmos between beasts and gods.
In contemplating the divine, contemplators thereby grasp their intermediate place in the cosmos between
beasts and gods. In doing so, contemplators come to understand how their good as human beings is
demarcated and delimited from the good of other kinds of living beings. Consequently, contemplation of
the divine would be useful for deriving boundary markers of the human good – the target we seek – in a
quite literal sense.
Aristotle thinks, we would realize most perspicuously that the kind of activity proper to us is neither
superhuman nor subhuman (EN VII.1, 1145a23–27). We would recognize that while there might be a
kind of life and eudaimonia superior to human life and eudaimonia – viz., god’s – human beings find their
good in a way of life that is itself superior to that of horses, birds, and fish (EE I.7, 1217a20–29). For only
the human being “partakes of the divine among the animals known to us, or [the human being] most of
all” (PA II.10, 656a7–8)
“Deprived, then, of perception and intellect, a human being becomes like a plant; and deprived of intellect
alone, he is turned into a beast; but deprived of irrationality and abiding by intellect, he becomes like
god.” This passage might seem to suggest, however, that human beings should transcend humanity
directly by eliminating and overcoming their animal nature. I read this passage as saying only that we
cannot fully approximate the divine when we live by nonrational desire and accept its authority. Instead,
to approximate the divine fully, we should abide by (i.e., live by) contemplative nous and the insights it
provides. Only then will we be in the best position to maintain ourselves and activate our powers; only
then can we approximate the divine as far as possible as human beings.
8.3 Self-Awareness and Friendship´s Limitation in the Nicomachean Ethics.
 As Aristotle’s remarks on Lynceus and his keen powers of perception suggest, contemplating the divine
provides theôroi
El autonocimiento, la with a certain
amistad selfknowledge, an understanding of their nature, limits, and proper good
y la contemplación
as human beings.
So, does Aristotle commit himself a similar view in the Nicomachean Ethics? Does he suggest there that
the best kind of contemplation is useful for providing agents a similar kind of clarity about themselves?
indicates that the phronimos possesses a kind of selfknowledge: “the one knowing about himself, and
spending time on himself, seems to be phronimos” (δοκεῖ ὁ τὰ περὶ αὑτὸν εἰδὼς καὶ διατρίβων φρόνιμος
εἶναι: EN VI.8, 1142a1–2). In what follows, I argue that the Nicomachean Ethics has resources for
explaining how agents attain selfknowledge through contemplation. I base my proposal on EN VIII–IX’s
account of how agents attain self-awareness through contemplating friends – a self-awareness, however,
which EE VII.12 and MM II.15’s parallel discussions of friendship describe as a sort of self-knowledge.
The mirror imagery of MM II.15, 1213a20–26 portrays viewing oneself in a mirror as an analogue of
knowing oneself in contemplating a friend.17 Given Aristotle’s other ocular metaphors for knowledge
(e.g., the use of εἰδέναι at Metaphysics A.1, 980a22), such assimilation should not be surprising.
In EN IX.9, as elsewhere, Aristotle suggests a sophisticated account of how one attains self-awareness
indirectly. As I argue, however, Aristotle’s account of how one attains self-awareness does not end with
EN IX.9’s account of how one comes to understand oneself by contemplating a human friend. On the
contrary, I suggest, Aristotle believes that one completes one’s self-awareness ultimately by
contemplating the divine.
EN IX.9 offers various reasons for why the blessedly happy agent will need (δεήσεται) friends. Consider
Aristotle’s first argument (1169b28–1170a4), which begins with the thought that virtuous people’s
actions are good and pleasant in themselves (1169b28–32). Thus, virtuous people would also find
contemplating their “own proper” (οἰκεῖον) actions good and pleasant in itself (1169b33). Although
virtuous people face impediments in contemplating their own proper activity, virtuous people can behold
their virtuous friends. “We can contemplate (θεωρεῖν) our neighbors more than ourselves and their
actions [more] than our own proper” actions (1169b33–35).
(1) If A is virtuous, then A’s friend B, qua virtuous, is similar to A, and B’s actions are the sort A himself
performs. That is, B’s virtuous actions are A’s own sort of actions. (2) The friend’s actions are οἰκεῖον ,
normatively, as being proper for one. (2) The friend’s actions are οἰκεῖον , normatively, as being proper
for one. So, qua virtuous, B performs the actions that are proper for A to perform as a human being – i.e.,
virtuous actions. At the same time, Aristotle appeals to certain impediments that virtuous people face in
contemplating their own proper actions and character. In acting for the sake of ends, we cannot make
ourselves the focal objects of awareness, lest we interrupt the smooth flow of our action.19 In light of our
limitations, Aristotle thinks that friends help to meet our needs for self-awareness. They enable us to
contemplate our “own
El autoconocimiento comoproper” activity.
base del
autoconocimiento como consecuencia.
But the friend is “another self” (ἕτερος αὐτός) to the virtuous person: the virtuous person is related to his
friend as he is related toward himself (1170b5–7).
for I do not see only myself in my friend. Instead, I recognize the friend as διαιρετός, ἄλλος, and ἕτερος –
again, as a separate source of virtuous agency in the world. Aristotle says that children are “other selves
by being separated” (ἕτεροι αὐτοὶ τῷ κεχωρίσθαι: EN VIII.12, 1161b28–29) from their parents, initially
perhaps by simply constituting distinct, embodied human forms. MM I.33, however, suggests that we are
“separate” in a fuller sense insofar as we develop our powers for rational self-direction: a son “is
separated” (χωρισθῇ) from his father upon attaining mature adulthood, a time at which the son no longer
remains under the father’s rational direction and authority (1194b15–17).
How beneficial are friends as sources of self-awareness? Here is one worry. Perhaps either (1) I am aware
that my friend is like me because I am aware of myself, or else (2) I am unaware that my friend is like me
because I lack self-awareness. If (1) obtains, then I apparently do not need a friend to be aware of myself.
Yet if (2) obtains, I apparently will not know whom to contemplate if I wish to be aware of myself.
Aristotle allows that we possess some degree of selfawareness without friends and that this low-grade
self-awareness enables us to identify other selves when we encounter them.
He emphasizes that a kind of self-awareness pertains to all of our action, so that not all selfawareness
requires friends (EN IX.9, 1170a29–31; cf. DA III.2, 425b12; EN III.1, 1111a7–8). A basic level of self-
awareness may suffice for recognizing friends: it provides one enough awareness of one’s agency and
character to recognize the agency and character of certain others as relevantly akin to one’s own. Yet such
basic self-awareness is insufficient either for adequate self-awareness or for happiness. Given its
limitations, such basic selfawareness proves too incomplete to be satisfying in itself.
Hence, in contemplating the friend, I am bound to have a less-than-perspicuous view of the life-function
that I am “most of all” (EN X.7, 1178a7).
Aristotle hints how hazy our grasp of contemplative nous in the friend is apt to be. EN IX.12 mentions
drinking, playing dice, practicing athletics, hunting, and philosophizing as the sorts of activities that
friends share together (1172a3–5). Only in the last activity, philosophizing together, would contemplative
nous come fully to light.24 Further, one faces the practical issue of finding friends in one’s community
able to exercise sophia. Given the requirements of becoming wise, finding a sophos friend may well
prove arduous.
The second limitation of friends is an in-principle one. Suppose that one could somehow overcome the
practical obstacles to cognizing contemplative nous in friends. Even then, Aristotle thinks, one’s grasp of
contemplative nous will remain obscure if one observes only the contemplative nous of other human
beings.
Suppose, then, that some other kind of contemplative nous shows more completeness or perfection (or
more continuity and activity) than human contemplative nous. If so, then contemplators would best
understand human nous by studying this other, divine kind of contemplative nous.
I argue that Aristotle thinks that we do have a better resource for self-awareness, one whose role is both
Amistad different from, that of friends. Hence, I contend, Aristotle denies that we are
analogous to, yet importantly
limited to the sort of self-awareness that we attain through contemplating friends.
Aristotle introduces Book VIII by holding that “friendship is a certain virtue, or with virtue; and further,
most necessary to life” (1155a3–5). And Aristotle identifies friends as the greatest of external goods (EN
IX.9, 1169b8–10)
Further, as multiple commentators have observed, the placement of Books VIII–IX before Book X makes
good structural sense. For EN VIII–IX’s account of friendship (and of contemplation’s role in friendship)
prefigures Aristotle’s remarks on theoretical contemplation in EN X.7–8.
The theoretical contemplation that Aristotle identifies as complete happiness in Book X differs from the
sort of contemplation (of friends) that he discusses in Book IX (at least) by virtue of its respective objects.
The former kind of contemplation approximates the latter. (1) Just as Aristotle calls attention to the
pleasantness of contemplating the friends with whom we engage in virtuous action (e.g., at EN VIII.5,
1157b25–28; IX.9, 1169b30–1170a4; 1170b1–12), Aristotle describes theoretical contemplation in EN
X.7 as the most pleasant (ἡδίστη) of activities according to virtue (1177a22–27). (EN X.1–6 provide a
natural transitional discussion of pleasure, completeness, and activity.) (2) Aristotle argues in EN IX.9
that the contemplation of friends is required for the happy person’s self-sufficiency (1169b8–21). In EN
X.7, Aristotle argues that selfsufficiency exists “most of all” in theoretical contemplation (1177a27–b1).
(3) Aristotle argues in Books VIII–IX that we love and contemplate the (virtuous) friend for his own sake
(ἐκείνου ἕνεκα) and not primarily for instrumental reasons (EN VIII.2, 1155b31; VIII.3 1156a10–12,
1156b7–12; VIII.4, 1157a16–20; VIII.7, 1159a9–10; IX.4, 1166a2–5; IX.9, 1169b33, 1170a2). Aristotle
argues at EN X.7, 1177b1–4, however, that only theoretical contemplation seems to be loved (altogether)
for its own sake (δι’ αὑτὴν ἀγαπᾶσθαι). (4) Aristotle identifies the activities that friends enjoy together
(and in which they contemplate each other) as leisured activities (EN IX.12, 1172a1–8).
however, does not address whether friendships promote continuous activity in virtue of their
contemplative aspects.)
8.4 Reflections of the Alcibiades in Aristotle.
Does any independent evidence, however, support the thought that EN X.7–8 intentionally extends IX.9’s
account of contemplation as a source of self-awareness and calls attention to a source of selfawareness
free from the inherent limitations of friend.
Yes. In Aristotle’s broader context, an intellectual resource of the right sort – the Platonic Alcibiades –
suggests a way to overcome the limitations that friends possess in eliciting self-awareness. According to
the view developed in the Alcibiades, on e gains self-awareness through contemplating other human
souls. But one completes one’s self-awareness – which the Alcibiades, like some of Aristotle’s ethical
works, speaks of in terms of self-knowledge – in contemplating god.
(1) The Alcibiades’ thought that we know ourselves by contemplating ourselves in a reflective surface
shows probable influence on MM II.15, which argues that, given human limitations, we attain self-
knowledge by viewing others who mirror us. It is natural to find a similar view of friends as something
like mirrors in EN IX.9
(2) The sort of contemplation that EN X.7–8 identifies as complete happiness invites comparison with the
sort of contemplation that the Alcibiades thinks completes our self-knowledge: both types of
contemplation include god among their objects.
(3) Finally, multiple textual parallels between the Alcibiades and EN X.7–8 provide evidence that
Aristotle is engaging with Platonic views in passages of X.7–8 that mirror passages from the Alcibiades.
As the passage suggests, self-knowledge as knowledge of the human soul and the human good (i.e., as
knowledge of “the virtue of the soul”) requires knowledge of god. God serves as a more perspicuous
reflective surface for self-knowledge because god possesses those features that we ourselves possess, only
more completely.
Socrates goes on to suggest that the self-knowledge obtained through looking at god provides practical
guidance. By keeping the divine in view, Socrates tells Alcibiades and the city, “you will see and know
yourselves and the things that are good for you” (134d7–8).
 s. (1) EN X.7’s discussion begins, as I have suggested, against the background of Book IX’s discussion of
self-awareness through contemplating others. Alcibiades 133a–b accepts the main conceptual point that
this is how we know ourselves. (2) Like Alcibiades 132e–133c, EN X.7 identifies contemplative nous as
divine: Aristotle maintains that the noetic aspect of the human soul is either “divine or the most divine of
the things in us” (1177a15–16; b27–32). (3) Alcibiades 133b–c claims that human nous and sophia
resemble god’s. For his part, Aristotle says that contemplative nous and its activity in accord with sophia
are “most akin” (συγγενεστάτη: EN X.8, 1178b23; 1179a26) to the gods and their eternally active – and
superlatively happy – contemplation (see 1178b7–24). This point suggests that divine thinking is
paradigmatically noetic and that our exercise of contemplative nous approximates divine thought. (4)
Whereas Alcibiades 133b8 says that nous is “most of all” where one should look for oneself, Aristotle
says that contemplative nous is “most of all” (μάλιστα) oneself (EN X.7, 1178a7).
But if one attains awareness of oneself by contemplating a kindred “other self” in shared activity; if nous
is one’s “most divine” psychic power and the power that is “most of all” oneself; and if god exercises this
“most divine” power of nous in a paradigmatic way (so that god is structurally similar to “another self”),
then contemplating god would provide one a source of self-awareness free from the limitations of friends.
At Phaedrus 255d, for instance, Socrates says that, in spending time with a lover, a beloved “does not
realize that he is seeing himself in the lover as in a mirror.”
Why, then, is Aristotle not more explicit about this point in EN X.7–8? Should not Aristotle call attention
to this conclusion, given how striking it is?48 In response, Aristotle could have presentation reasons to
avoid foregrounding contemplation’s role in eliciting selfawareness. EN X.7–8’s remarks on theoretical
contemplation’s specific valuable features, I have argued, allude to ENIX.9’s earlier remarks on the
valuable features of contemplating friends. Yet Aristotle here never explicitly refers to EN IX.9. That is,
Aristotle never explicitly says in EN X.7–8 that he is picking up on his earlier remarks about the value of
contemplating friends – perhaps because that would complicate EN X.7–8’s discussion of complete
happiness. Nevertheless, he implicitly (and intentionally) performs just this task.
Nevertheless, given
La autoconciencia Aristotle’s views,
y la contemplación and given, more specifically, what EN X.7–8 says about theoretical
de Dios.
contemplation, the conclusion that contemplating god is a source of self-awareness is a natural one to
draw. Aristotle’s defense of contemplation as complete happiness identifies theoretical contemplation of
the divine as the most godlike activity (e.g., at 1177b26–1178a2). But in other works – e.g., Metaphysics
Λ.9 – Aristotle maintains that god’s eternally active, happy life consists in a kind of selfcontemplation. If
so, then theoretical contemplation would stand to be godlike insofar as it enabled theoretical
contemplators also to contemplate themselves. Theoretical contemplators, in other words, would
approximate god’s activity (in part) by contemplating god and by thus attaining full self-awareness.
8.5 Contemplation and Awareness of the Good in Nicomachean Ethics X. 7-8
Would it not be strange for Aristotle to think that contemplating god completes an agent’s self-
awareness? At first glance, perhaps yes. The Prime Mover may appear too impersonal an object of
contemplation. God, after all, is not a friend of the contemplator, and Aristotle explicitly denies that god
needs friends (EE VII.12; MM II.15). Further, gods and mortals are too unequal with respect to goods to
establish close friendships with each other (EN VIII.7, 1158b33–36; 1159a4; cf. MM II.11, 1208b27–32).
How could god, then, possibly count as anything like “another self”?
Hence, Aristotle can argue that one obtains self-awareness in contemplating god in a manner generally
analogous to the way one obtains self-awareness in contemplating a virtue-friend, even if god is, strictly
speaking, neither a friend nor “another self.”
These passages focus on definition, the task of elucidating boundary markers. They clarify Aristotle’s
views on (1) the general role that a grasp of likeness and difference across kinds plays in knowing things
and (2) the specific ways in which human beings are similar to, but distinct from, the gods.
One can now see how, for Aristotle, contemplating god elicits a certain kind of self-awareness. The
contemplator who exercises his “most divine” capacity in accord with the virtue of sophia would have
special kinship with god. He would, after all, be attending to that “most divine” of human activities and
would be engaged in an activity like god’s. The contemplator would also be exercising the capacity that
was “most of all” himself, a life function possessed by god in the most complete way – just as eternal
activity.
In contemplating god, however, the contemplator would be in a position to recognize his relative
weakness and limitation as compared with god. Hence, in contemplating, the contemplator would be
aware of the superiority of god’s contemplation to his own: “And the property of the better is better than
the [property] of the inferior, as that of god [is better] than that of the human being; for in respect of what
is common (τὰ κοινὰ) in both, there is no difference between them, but in properties the one is superior to
the other”.
it is correct to call both the human being and the god a “living being sharing in understanding” (ζῷον
ἐπιστήμης μετέχον: Topics V.4, 132b10–13).
On the one hand, in contemplating god and in discovering our similarity to the divine, we would
recognize that we are higher than plants and nonhuman animals. And we thereby become aware of our
lower limits as human beings. For “the life [pertaining] to human beings, as far as it shares in a certain
likeness (ὁμοίωμά τι) of [god’s contemplative] sort of activity, [is blessed]; but of the other animals, none
is happy, since in no way does it share in contemplation” (EN X.8, 1178b25–27; cf. EE I.7, 1217a20–29).
On the other hand, in contemplating god, we would become aware of our relative finitude and recognize
our upper limits as human beings
Hence,
¿Es elcontemplators recognizeútil?
that they “will be in need also of the external goods, being human; for
horos suficientemente
the nature [of the human being] is not self-sufficient with respect to contemplating, but it is necessary also
to be healthy in body and to possess food and the other services” (EN X.8, 1178b33–35)
CHAPTER 9. THE ANATOMY OF ARISTOTELIAN VIRTUE.
So far, I have argued that by regularly contemplating the divine, wellreared human beings attain a certain
self-awareness (or self-knowledge), a grasp of their nature and limitations as human beings. Such
selfawareness, in turn, provides theoretical contemplators with cognitive access to a horos for practical
reasoning. Such a standard demarcates the boundaries of excess and deficiency with respect to (1)
nonrational desire and (2) the possession and use of external goods. By grasping such a horos, which
defines correct reason, contemplators perfect their practical reasoning and are in a position to regulate
their nonrational desiderative powers well.
Is the horos that I have argued contemplators derive from contemplating 183 the divine sufficiently
useful? In this chapter, I spell out how this horos helpfully defines correct reason and demarcates the
boundaries of ethical excess and deficiency.
I explain how, for Aristotle, each sphere of ethically virtuous action is bounded by the powers and
limitations of human nature in relation to the divine and the bestial.
9.2 Temperance. σωφροσύνη
 According to Aristotle, temperance concerns bodily pleasures (EN II.7, 1107b4–6), and is an
intermediacy between excessive enjoyment of such pleasures (intemperance) and deficient abstinence
(insensibility)
Aristotle says, concerns bodily pleasures, but not all (III.10, 1118a1–3). In particular, temperance is
concerned with the pleasures of touch and taste (1118a26) Temperance, then, concerns epithumiai for the
largely tactile bodily pleasures of food, drink, and sex (1118a30–32).
Aristotle distinguishes between the common (or natural) (κοιναὶ) and the “special and added” (ἴδιοι καὶ
ἐπίθετοι) appetites of human beings (III.11, 1118b8–9). The former include the general desires for food
and sex tout court; the latter are desires for distinct varieties of food and sex (1118b9–15).
Qua intemperate, I misconstrue my function, the ergon that is my task to perform as a human being. In
acting, I reveal a kind of self-ignorance about my place relative to the divine and the bestial, and the
structure of my soul.
One who lives this unmixed life of nous – a life maximally given over to thought, but making no place for
pleasure of any sort – will be “living in total insensitivity” (ἀπαθὴς: 21e12). Yet at the same time,
Socrates thinks that this life would also be, in a certain peculiar sense, “the most godlike” (θειότατος:
33b7).7 In his account of insensibility, Aristotle again follows Socrates’ lead
The temperate agent, in contrast to both the intemperate and the insensible agents, knows himself. He
recognizes his similarities to the divine: he correctly understands his nature and the proper ordering of his
soul around contemplative nous. At the same time, he recognizes that he is not a god, but rather, a mortal
being whose contemplation requires threptic and perceptive activity. Hence, he recognizes that his
epithumiai, although shared with other animals, are “no less human” than his contemplative functions
(EN III.1, 1111b1). He is aware that completely exercising his contemplative powers requires him to
exercise his perceptive and threptic functions in a more-than-minimal fashion . Hence, the temperate
agent exercises these powers not only in meeting his basic subsistence needs, but in temperately
satisfying his special appetites as pleasant in themselves. Recognizing that he is not a beast, and
understanding that “enjoying [bodily pleasures] and loving them most of all [is] bestial” (θηριῶδες:
III.10, 1118b3–4; my emphasis), the temperate agent pursues such pleasures in a measured way.
9.3 Courage.
Temperance
La valentía a la luz demost clearly displays general patterns visible in other Aristotelian ethical virtues.
la contemplación.
(1) fear and (2) daring (1115a6–7), paradigmatically in the circumstances of battle, when we face death
(1115a30–35). So understood, courage is an intermediacy between (1) too much fear and too little fear
and (2) too much daring and too little daring.
Yet happiness consists in activity of soul – living – according to the best and most complete virtue.
Indeed, happiness consists in such activity in a complete life. Hence, when the courageous person takes
on such serious risks, how does he exercise phronêsis, choose well, and act for the sake of his happiness?
The courageous person’s choice seems to conflict with his happiness.
Perhaps courage, like murder and adultery, is always excessive; and perhaps being a “prudent coward”
would be the wisest choice of all.
The courageous person qua courageous confronts and withstands real, but not impossibly formidable,
threats to his agency. In standing up against such threats, he benefits, both in actualizing his agency well
and by preserving it.
The paradigmatic situations that require me to exercise courage are ones in which my city and way of life
are in peril, e.g., scenarios in which I face enslavement or death at the hands of an enemy.

9.4 Liberality and Proper Ambition

The virtue concerns different uses of wealth: (1) acquisition and (2) expenditure and giving. In
acquisition, the relevant vices include stinginess (excessiveness in taking) and wastefulness (deficiency in
taking).
Aristotle does not highlight the precise passions that liberality and proper ambition address. But as argued
in Section 6.1, Aristotle identifies wealth and honor (as such) as objects of epithumia. Therefore, one may
reasonably identify these passions as epithumiai for small-scale wealth and honor, respectively, i.e.,
epithumiai for wealth and honor in everyday, ordinary contexts
human beings best meet their basic threptic needs in political communities, where honor provides
advantages and security. (Unlike wealth, honor cannot be spent. Hence, proper ambition is akin to
liberality and temperance insofar as those latter virtues concern desires for acquiring certain items, viz.,
wealth, food, drink, and sex.)
9.5 The grand-scale Virtues: Magnificence and Magnanimity.
To defend this view, I consider Aristotle’s remarks on magnificence in special relation to his remarks on
courage, another virtue concerned with one’s thumotic desires and the common good. The smallscale
virtue of liberality is structurally analogous to temperance insofar as liberality concerns a kind of
epithumia. Similarly, the grand-scale virtue of magnificence is structurally analogous to courage insofar
as magnificence, like courage, concerns a kind of thumos.
figure takes on needless risks that lie beyond his powers. He acts not for the sake of the fine, but, rather,
simply to show off: he “seems to be both boasting and making a pretense to courage” (δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ
ἀλαζὼν εἶναι ὁ θρασὺς καὶ προσποιητικὸς ἀνδρείας: EN III.7, 1115b29–30).
To be sure, the magnificent person possesses phronêsis, the virtue of the logistikon. But Aristotle’s
explicit emphasis on the magnificent person’s epistêmê and theôria suggests that the magnificent person
has a deeper grasp of human nature and the human good. This deeper understanding serves as a salience
detector when the magnificent person considers his community’s needs.
9.6 The social Virtues: Good Temper, Friendliness truthfulness, Wittiness.
(1) Like courage, good temper (πραότης: EN IV.5) reveals an appropriate spirited response to a certain
class of obstacles and threats – viz., slights – that generate anger and desires for retaliation. As noted in
Section 6.2, Aristotle highlights anger as a kind of thumos. The good-tempered person, then, is neither
excessively nor deficiently responsive to such thumos.
he asserts himself, and his interests as a political animal within a community, in the face of slights.
(2) Friendliness (φιλία: EN IV.6; cf. II.7, 1108a28) is a disposition to enjoy the company of other people
Amabilidad
neither excessively nor deficiently.
For he enjoys the pleasures of social interaction even at the cost of his honor and good reputation
(1126b30–35), goods that provide security for mortals. Conversely, the surly person is deficiently
disposed toward such convivial desires. Disagreeable and cantankerous, he does not mind offensively
paining others (cf. 1126b28–30). He thereby shows an ignorance of the value of such pleasures in the life
of a political animal, a value that they lack for solitary, self-sufficient gods.
Hence, the truthful person recognizes the value of a good reputation for mortal, political animals. He
appropriately desires such a reputation (and the pleasures attendant on its possession). He thus differs
from the boaster excessively prone to nonrational desires for a good reputation.
For human beings, unlike gods, these pleasures are, in their way, “necessary” to life (EN IV.8, 1128b3–
4).
9.7 Justice.
The specially just person recognizes that such goods benefit him as a finite, mortal being suited to life in a
community. He avoids letting others commit injustice against him. At the same time, the specially just
person is free from pleonexia. He engages with, and obtains benefits from, other people through
conversation and peaceful exchange. Grasping his nature and good as bounded by the divine and the
bestial, the specially just person appropriately desires, and takes pleasure in, his deserved share of
external goods
9.8 Beastliness and Heroic Virtue.
EN VI.13, Aristotle makes a “new start” in Book VII by examining what he calls (1) beastliness
(θηριότης) 28 and (2) a “certain heroic and divine” (ἡρωικήν τινα καὶ θείαν) virtue.
As Aristotle describes it, beastliness at once differs in kind from ethical, or human, vice, yet intensifies its
key tendencies. Beastliness differs in kind because human vice is a state affecting an agent capable of
practical and theoretical reasoning. In human vice, these powers malfunction. Vices of excess preclude
reason from guiding action.
Among the bestial, by contrast, rational powers are either altogether destroyed or at least severely
impaired.
Bestialidad.
Unlike vice “according to humanity” (κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον: VII.5, 1149a16), beastliness is a diseased
condition (1148b25; b29–34; 1149a11–12; a18–19).
At the same time, beastliness shows, in a more extreme way, tendencies at play in ordinary, human vice
(1149a4– 6). The bestial, deprived of reason, “live only by perception” (μόνον τῇ αἰσθήσει ζῶντες:
1149a9–10). Indeed, beastliness displays an utter obliviousness to the human being’s political nature:
Aristotle’s ghastly examples of beastliness emphasize cannibalism and child-eating (1148b19–24; b25–
27; 1149a14–15).
The bestial – bereft of reason and governed wholly by a corrupted form of nonrational desire – occupy a
radically pre-familial and pre-political condition. They encounter other human beings, including their
own offspring, not as fellow members of families or communities, but simply as material resources to be
devoured and digested. While Aristotle’s examples of beastliness provoke disgust, they also disclose,
forcefully, the lower limits of human nature and the human good. For Aristotle, beastliness explicitly
defines the “boundary markers of vice” for human beings, at least where excess is concerned.
Aristotle, however, explicitly identifies beastliness’s contrary as heroic virtue, a divine kind of virtue
“above us” (ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς) (VII.1, 1145a18–20). Perhaps, then, divinity does not define the upper boundary
markers of the human good. So, does my account go wrong in suggesting that it does?
Aristotle says little about heroic virtue. Such virtue is rare (1145a27–28), and Aristotle posits such virtue
primarily on the grounds that beastliness requires a contrary state (1145a17–18).29 But what Aristotle
 Virtud heroica.
does say about such virtue coheres with what I have said so far. Given Aristotle’s examples – the sort of
virtue that Priam attributes to Hector and that the Spartans attribute to those they honor – Aristotle
apparently identifies heroic virtue as surpassingly excellent, or hyperbolic, ethical virtue (1145a24). In its
special degree of completeness as ethical virtue, such heroic virtue shows a degree of unimpeded activity
that approximates divine activity.
For Aristotle also explicitly denies that gods possess such virtue: “there is neither vice nor virtue of a
beast; thus neither [is there vice nor virtue] of a god; but [a divine state] is more honorable than virtue,
and [a bestial state] a certain kind different from vice” (γὰρ ὥσπερ οὐδὲ θηρίου ἐστὶ κακία οὐδ᾽ ἀρετή,
οὕτως οὐδὲ θεοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ἣ μὲν τιμιώτερον ἀρετῆς, ἣ δ᾽ ἕτερόν τι γένος κακίας: 1145a25–27).
9.9 Is this account overly Systematized?
To be sure, Aristotle holds that virtues concern passions and actions. But we need to get clear about the
force of the “and”: while it could be disjunctive, it is more plausibly connective. On the latter reading,
ethical virtues, as states in relation to epithumia and thumos, issue forth in action. Hence, virtues also
concern the actions in which these states manifest themselves. But to understand these actions, one must
refer to certain passions.
Aristotle’s discussions of the ethical virtues make little sense if they do not concern such passions.33 To
the extent these virtues do have this concern, however, they have implications for the selfmaintenance of
rational animals.
CHAPTER 10. SOME CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
10.1 Contemplating the terrain from above.
On the basis of Aristotle’s explicit remarks and given Aristotle’s evident concern to respond to Isocrates’
challenges to contemplation’s value, I take it that Aristotle was aware that he faced the utility question.
Human beings are such as to live by contemplation in the twofold sense I have discussed throughout this
book. Contemplation of the “most honorable” kind – the exercise of contemplative nous according to
sophia – provides agents with an awareness of their essential powers and limitations as human beings, a
form of self-awareness from which they can derive a horos that defines correct reason. This horos enables
contemplators to possess phronêsis; and their virtuous practical reasoning, in turn, perfects their character.
To forestall these concerns, I have highlighted the importance of thinking about higher life-functions
against the backdrop of the most fundamental. More specifically, I have carefully distinguished two
perspectives on the teleological relations that obtain between lower life-functions and contemplative nous,
viz., bottom-up subserving relations and topdown guiding relation.
In aiming to resolve the utility question, I have argued that the Protrepticus is a fruitful source of insight
on Aristotle’s mature views on happiness. In particular, the Protrepticus provides us a fuller
understanding of Aristotle’s views on theory’s relationship to practice. We can do real work by consulting
the Protrepticus.
10.2 The Necessity of Contemplation.
Contemplation’s role in human life and the human good is roughly parallel to the role of self-nutrition and
reproduction in the life (and good) of plants, and perception and locomotion in the life (and good) of
nonhuman animals.
contemplation actively guides threptic activity, but indirectly. But contemplation’s contribution does not
seem to be especially necessary for nutrition and reproduction.
Moreover, even if contemplation provides cognitive access to truths valuable for practically wise
reasoning, contemplation seems to fall short of actively guiding practical reason (and other human life-
functions) in anything like the way that the aisthêtikon guides the threptikon. Contemplative nous
produces no motion; it contemplates nothing practicable; it says nothing about what to pursue or to flee
(DA III.9, 432b26–29). Saying that contemplation “actively guides” perhaps seems rhetorically excessive
a teleological explanation of the strongest form shows how a given part or power is necessary for a
certain organism’s selfmaintenance. But a teleological explanation can also indicate how a part or power
is nevertheless good for an organism’s self-maintenance, i.e., how that part or power improves, enhances,
or optimizes that organism’s abilities to maintain itself.
Kidneys, on Aristotle’s view, are not strictly necessary for animal survival. Nevertheless, kidneys do
provide animals a useful benefit, viz., “that the bladder better performs its function” (PA III.7, 670b23–
27). In such cases, what is “better” for an organism need not be strictly necessary for its self-maintenance.
To that extent, such better parts (and their associated powers) are, in a certain sense, luxuries
Aristotle, I take it, could perhaps deny that human beings must possess and exercise contemplative
powers. Perhaps modest kinds of practical rationality are all that human beings strictly must exercise from
a threptic perspective. Nevertheless, Aristotle can say, contemplative nous is better for human beings to
possess. For contemplation of the divine, by providing human beings cognitive access to horoi that guide
practical reasoning, perfects practical reasoning.
To this extent, contemplation, on my account, does retain freedom from necessity. In attributing
authoritative guidance to contemplative nous in human beings, my account does attribute certain limits to
contemplation’s unqualified leisureliness. But that is only because mortal humanity, in the end, cannot
dwell on the Isles of the Blessed.
On my account, Aristotle denies that contemplation is, by itself, a source of change. It does not itself
deliberate about which ends to pursue or flee. But in providing cognitive access to boundary markers of
the human good, virtuous contemplative nous is the power in accord with which complete phronimoi
ultimately make decisions and act: “Contemplative indeed, then, is this knowledge, but it allows us to
produce, in accord with it, everything” (Protrepticus 10, 56.2–4/B51).
With its focus on the divine, contemplation provides a perspective that best equips the contemplator in
discerning how to travel well on the rough seas of mortal life.
10.3 Aristotle on the Uselessness of Platonic Idea of the good.
Although Aristotle ultimately denies that universal Ideas are useful for guiding action, he shows himself
open to the thought that some sort of theoretical understanding could usefully guide practice. Hence, even
as he rejects appeals to Platonic Ideas, he explicitly grants that understanding human health (as it pertains
to human beings, universally) can usefully guide medical practice. Indeed, Aristotle accepts such a view
later in EN I.13.
Assuming, as I have suggested, that Aristotle’s god is DA III.5’s “agent intellect,” which brings all things
in the cosmos to light, Aristotle’s god is akin to the Idea of the Good in its guise as the Sun, which
enables what is cognizable to be cognized (cf. Republic VI.507e–509b).
10.4 Aristotle`s Remarks on the sophói.
 people call Thales and Anaxagoras “contemplatively wise (σοφοὺς), but not practically wise
(φρονίμους)” because these two thinkers appear to be ignorant of what benefits themselves? At first
blush, Aristotle seems to view these two sophoi, as his audience probably does, as wise men with their
heads in the clouds.
In reply, Aristotle aims in EN VI.7 simply to introduce his audience to the sophia/phronêsis distinction.
Since sophia and phronêsis were two popular terms for wisdom, and terms that could be used
interchangeably, Aristotle must find some way to motivate the distinction. Hence, he appeals to certain
common beliefs and prejudices – to what some (unnamed) people “say” (φασιν: 1141b5) about the
contemplatively wise.
Aristotle often takes a dim view of commerce, and he thinks it would be vulgar for sophia to subserve
mere money-making in one’s life. Yet Aristotle recognizes, here at least, that certain kinds of
contemplation can, in some sense, pay off.
For these [people] judge by the externals, perceiving of these alone” (EN X.8, 1179a13–16). Here,
Aristotle gives us reason to doubt the truth of what EN VI.7 insists “they” say concerning Anaxagoras.
For if the many indeed judge only “by the externals” – and Aristotle apparently agrees with Anaxagoras
that “they” do – then they miss something important about the human good. Judging “by the externals,”
the many think that the contemplator lacks practical wisdom. But by raising doubts here about the many’s
judgment, Aristotle suggests that we must question this appearance about those who contemplate.
If sophia were utterly unconcerned with human goods and provided no insight at all into how to obtain
them, then it would be strange for Aristotle to highlight the coherence of some of his own views with
Anaxagoras’ (1179a16–17). With his head in the clouds, Anaxagoras would seem an odd source of
authority against which to test views about all-too-human goods. Could Aristotle perhaps have special
needs to restrict sophia to theoretical contemplation in EN VI.7, but otherwise adopt the common usage
of sophia as that wisdom about practical affairs generally attributed to sophists, lawgivers, and
philosophers?7 Aristotle need not accept that Anaxagoras possessed sophia completely. Yet we still must
explain why Aristotle would cite Anaxagoras, of all people, as a practical authority in EN X.8 if EN VI.7
expresses
Relación Aristotle’s
de Aristóteles conconsidered views. On the best reading of EN X.8, I believe, Aristotle thinks that
Anaxágoras.
Anaxagoras has at least some insights into the relative value of human goods in virtue of his
contemplating.
In EE I.5, for instance, Aristotle credits Anaxagoras with recognizing that human beings exist for the sake
of contemplating the whole order of the cosmos (1216a10–14; cf. Protrepticus 9, 51.11–15/B19). In
Metaphysics A.3, Aristotle applauds Anaxagoras as among those “sober” (νήφων) by comparison with his
predecessors for identifying the cause of all order and arrangement in nature with nous (984b15–22; cf.
DA I.2, 404b1–2).8 So, on these points, perhaps, Aristotle thinks that Anaxagoras, as a contemplator of
divine thinking as a cosmic ordering principle, is worth taking seriously. Anaxagoras’ contemplation
enabled him to attain a more-or-less just estimate of the relative value of external goods for human
beings.
10.5 Sophia without a Prime Mover.
Aristotle’s remarks on the divine as much as possible. Since forms of “god” and “the divine,” taken
together, appear almost twice as often in the Nicomachean Ethics as forms of “happiness” and “happy,”
such “theology-lite” readings risk distorting Aristotle’s views.9 But if my systematic interpretation of
Aristotle is correct, then the independent philosophical adequacy of Aristotle’s views on contemplation’s
place in the human good depend on the adequacy of Aristotle’s conception of sophia, and, ultimately, on
his theological views.
I offer no considered view about the ultimate adequacy of Aristotle’s theology. A fuller discussion is a
task for another work. But Aristotle could respond to Kraut’s claim in two ways.
(1) A long series of intellectual developments led thinkers in the West to reject large parts of Aristotle’s
worldview, and with it, his theology. Still, Aristotle could point out that philosophical theism has not yet
disappeared; nor has the project of natural theology to which Aristotle was an early contributor.
(2) Perhaps Aristotle could accept Kraut’s judgment that Prime Mover theology is best abandoned. Even
then, Aristotle could argue, in the terms of PA I.5’s protreptic to the study of animals, that the natural
world is capable of sparking wonder and awe.