The being of divinity is contemplation

the being of θείον is θεωρία

Remember eudaimonia from the other day? Aristotle thought the highest eudaimonia is contemplation, the highest happiness is contemplation. He thought this because he thought this is what the divinity did.

Let’s try to find some counter-intuitive understandings of “contemplation” and “divinity”.

This is Physics for him

The divine nature of movement is understood as θεωρία

I have to repeat something that seems strange to me- when I google these various concepts in the Greek, H is usually the only major thinker I find that writes about them. βίος θεωρητικóς – this is the highest ideal for Aristotle, vita contemplativa, the contemplative life. And then secondary essays and whatnot are drawing on H.

See how this word looks like Bios? βίος. Life. Aristotle contrasts the contemplative life with two other types of life, ἡδονή and τιμή. These latter two seem to be what Americans tend to care about. He calls these three types of telos, roughly translated as intrinsic directedness.

Away from what the divinity does

such an ἀγαθóν steers being-there away from itself and turns it toward the world

ἀγαθóν = good. The American telos is a type of directedness toward the good.

Why is H the only one that shows up on google for these words?? I’d expect someone random like Dewey or something once in a while, nope it’s just H H H H H H H H H H. Ope, there’s Thucydides. It’s H and the primary Greek texts that pop up in the results.

The three Bios he calls the basic possibilities of existence. I saw one link to vita contemplativa in the Greek that connected it to old Christian monastic communities. The US is not a monastery…

You know how I like to “stabilize” a given thinker’s corpus? H is helping me with that if nothing else

So, this is similar to H the other day postulating which fragments of Heraclitus to read the rest of the fragments through. I never expected the Physics to be primary for understanding Aristotle.

It keeps happening! Every word I google, there he is

This is just another way of saying aletheia. Why does no one else talk about the Greek meaning of “truth”? Hello? Philosophy is from their tradition.

“Hello?”

Isn’t it funny to ask “Hello?”

HELLO?

ἀληθεύειν as βίος θεωρητικóς which presents the genuine and highest possibility of Greek existence.

This is the… physics… of… the divinity?

Yeah, I’d say that doesn’t really seem either Christian or modern.

H calls θεωρεῖν [contemplation] “the unlocking of the world”.

ἐντελέχεια = entelechy = realization of perfection

θεωρεῖν constitutes the most genuine ἐντελέχεια of the being of human beings

The Greeks thought this was what our true destiny is as beings?

So this still doesn’t tell us that much if we keep merely substituting the English word “contemplation” for θεωρεῖν. H defines it as a looking out on the world. We are always “being-here”. For Aristotle the most genuine possibility of being-here is “contemplation”.

Why call it being-there, H? It’s being-HERE.

Well A and H certainly did lots of θεωρεῖν, i.e. lots of what beings are supposed to do as the beings that they are.

I expect this to fall on deaf ears given that “anti-essentialism” is the dogma of the day, and talk of telos is thoroughly essentialist. Essentialism is “judgy” after all. People prefer the other two basic possibilities of existence. Even most of the contemplative types don’t have a directedness to θεωρεῖν strictly speaking but to τιμή, honor, esteem. And the rabble of course is characterized by its directedness toward ἡδονή. Neither of the latter two are being what they’re supposed to be! At least according to Aristotle. Eh if you visit this place then you’re “doing θεωρεῖν” at least.

Pff sure H good luck with that one

the κοινόν must, above all, be subordinated to θεωρεῖν