Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
eBook - PDF

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

An Essay on Aristotle

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

An Essay on Aristotle

About this book

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

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

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Yes, you can access Action, Contemplation, and Happiness by C. D. C. Reeve in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophie & Philosophie ancienne et classique. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface
  3. Abbreviations and Editions
  4. 1. The Transmission of Form
  5. 2. Truth, Action, and Soul
  6. 3. Theoretical Wisdom
  7. 4. Virtue of Character
  8. 5. Practical Wisdom
  9. 6. Immortalizing Beings
  10. 7. Happiness
  11. 8. The Happiest Life
  12. Index of Passages
  13. General Index