We return to José Ortega y Gasset and another quote from his book What Is Philosophy?, simultaneously making a connection to his previously-cited book of essays On Love:
[T]heorizing, philosophizing are, properly speaking, not living - precisely because they are a form of living; the theoretic life, the contemplative life ... Theory, and its extreme form, philosophy, are the attempt which life makes to transcend itself; it is to de-occupy oneself, to de-live, to cease to be interested in things. But this dis-interesting of oneself is not a passive process. On the contrary, it is a form of being interested: for instance, to be interested in something while cutting the intro-vital threads which link it to me - saving it from its immersion in my life, leaving it alone, in pure reference to its own self, seeking in it its very being. To be dis-interested is, then, to be interested in the inner self of each individual thing, to dower it with independence, with substance, one might almost say with personality - putting myself in a position to look at it from within its own point of view, not from mine. Contemplation is an attempt at transmigration. But that - to seek in a thing what it has of the absolute and to cut off all other partial interest of my own toward it, to cease to make use of it, to cease to wish that it serves me, but to serve it myself as an impartial eye so that it may see itself and find itself and be its very own self and for itself - this - this - is this not love? Then is contemplation, at root, and act of love, in that in loving as differentiated from desiring, we are trying to live from within the other and we un-live outselves for the sake of the other?
First I'd like to translate these insights into some of the alternative renderings I am using in my translations of Aristotle. To theorize or to be interested or to contemplate (to engage in θεωρία) is to give attention; to de-occupy oneself is to be at ease or at leisure (i.e., to engage in σχολή, in contrast to the pre-occupation of ἀσχολία); personality or personhood is ψυχή (traditionally translated as soul) - the aliveness which Aristotle attributes not only to humans but also to the other animals and to plants; that something exists for itself is what Aristotle calls "that for the sake of which" (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα) in the sense of both the aim of its actions and the beneficiary of its actions; and love is φιλία in all its forms (including the love and affection of parents, children, siblings, spouses, friends, even fellow citizens).
Second, I'd like to personalize and humanize these insights even more deeply. Yes, I can gaze out my window in meditation and dower with independence the squirrels scampering up and down the ponderosa pine trees in my yard, and I can even do this with the trees themselves, which sprouted before I was born and which will be here long after I have passed from the pageant of life; these beings don't exist to serve my purposes but to live for their own sake. Yet when I cultivate the attitude of "being interested in the inner self of each individual thing", that applies most significantly not to arbitrary things out in the world but especially to my fellow human beings, and most especially to those with whom I have close personal relationships. A friend, a sibling, a lover - these wonderful people don't exist for my sake but for their own sake, aiming primarily at their own fulfillment, not mine. I can enjoy their presence in my life and gratefully receive whatever they freely wish to give, but I feel a great responsibility to do so both without taking them for granted and with the utmost respect for their independence and autonomy.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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