Action, Contemplation, and Happiness: An Essay on Aristotle [Hardcover]

The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotles greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotles views on knowledge and reality.

That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotles metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotles writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotles philosophy as a whole.

The title of this book might suggest that it is an essay dealing exclusively with themes in Aristotles Ethics, but this study by Reeve is actually a comprehensive analysis of themes in Aristotles biology, psychology, physics, metaphysics, and more. It encompasses Aristotles remarks on the generation of animals, through his teleological and hylomorphic physics, into his analysis of desiderative and rational (practical and theoretical) functions of human souls. Reeve weaves all of these themes together toward the final end and purpose of all things, namely, union with andl5