In Book X, Chapter 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes the puzzling claim that "eudaimonia extends just so far as theoria does"; much of the puzzle arises from the fact that in standard translations this is usually rendered as "happiness extends just so far as contemplation does", which according to some recent scholars implies that happiness consists primarily or exclusively in acts of contemplation. By contrast, I would render it as "fulfillment extends just so far as attending does" - still somewhat puzzling, but something that I think I can unpack in a more reasonable manner.
In the Philebus, Plato has Socrates argue that no human being would ever want to experience physical pleasures without the accompanying psychological awareness of those pleasures, since that would betoken a merely animal existence. Aristotle seems to be saying much the same thing in the full passage from the Nicomachean Ethics:
[T]he other animals have no share in fulfillment, being completely deprived of such activity [i.e., theoria as attending]. For while the whole life of the gods is blessed, and that of men too in so far as some likeness of such activity belongs to them, none of the other animals experiences fulfillment, since they in no way share in attending. Fulfillment extends, then, just so far as attending does, and those to whom attending more fully belongs are more truly fulfilled, not by-the-way, but as directed by attending; for this is in itself glorious. Fulfillment, therefore, must be some form of attending. [Revised Oxford Translation modified; 1178b24-32]
One approach to elucidating this matter comes from Alexander Grant, who all the way back in 1885 wrote as follows:
[A] psychical energeia [i.e., activity - PSA] must be different from the same category exhibited in any external object. Life, the mind, the moral faculties, must have their 'existence in actuality' distinguished from their mere 'potentiality' by some special difference, not common to other existences. What is it that distinguishes vitality from the conditions of life, waking from sleeping, thought from the dormant faculties, moral action from unevoked moral capacities? In all these contrasts there is no conception that approaches nearer towards summing up the distinction than that of 'consciousness.'
Instead of the notoriously slippery word "consciousness", I prefer the verb "attending". Grant seems to be saying that the activity of attending to things distinguishes aliveness from nonexistence, waking from sleeping, and a capacity from its activation. This is true even of animals which engage in perceptual awareness, but is even more true of human beings, which engage in conceptual awareness through the activity of attending.
Another way to put it is captured in a passage from What Is Philosophy? by José Ortega y Gasset:
Life is knowing oneself, it is evidential. It is right to say that living comes first and then philosophizing - in a very strict sense this is, as you see, the principle of my entire philosophy. It is well that this should be said, but not without noting that the root and heart of living consists of knowing oneself and understanding oneself, of observing oneself and what surrounds one, of being transparent to oneself. Therefore, when we put the question, "What is our life?" we might answer, "Life is what we do, of course, because living is knowing what we do; in short, it is finding oneself in the world and being occupied with the things and beings in the world."
To my mind, "knowing what we do" is equivalent to the Socratic requirement (described in Plato's Laches) to give an account of one's life, while "being occupied with the things and beings in the world" is equivalent to attending to them through the ongoing activity and practice of theoria. Fulfillment extends just so far as attending does because living consists in knowing oneself, which is a matter of attending to one's life in the world.
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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