Contemplating Contemplation

Theoria, Praxis, and Energeia in Aristotle's Ethics

by Peter Saint-Andre

This paper is a work in progress, not to be cited as definitive in any way. Last updated: 2026-05-16.

The role of θεωρία (commonly translated as contemplation) in Aristotle's ethics has long been a matter of keen dispute. In this paper I compare and contrast θεωρία with πρᾶξις and connect both concepts with ἐνέργεια to cast θεωρία in a new light.

I. Fields of Meaning

As Aryeh Kosman observes in a discussion of ἐνέργεια [note], a word from ancient Greek does not necessarily map exactly to a word in modern English; each word is used to cover a field of meaning, and the fields might not overlap. As I see it, this is definitely true with the mapping of θεωρία onto contemplation.

First, although translation of Greek θεωρία into Latin contemplatio was reasonable in the context of the Roman reception of Greek philosophy over 2000 years ago, since that time the meaning of Latin contemplatio and then French/English contemplation has drifted significantly from its Greek source (similar changes have occurred with philosophical vocabulary such as virtue, substance, and essence). In particular, consider that the earliest use, and for centuries the most common use, of the term contemplation in English referred to religious musing and devout meditation within Christianity; similarly, the contemplative life was one given up to religious contemplation and prayer to the Christian God, especially in the spirit of the Middle Ages. (OED, s.v.) Yet Aristotle preceded Christianity by centuries, of course, and with a few exceptions (explored below) he doesn't emphasize prayer or religious devotion with respect to θεωρία. Naturally there are other senses of contemplation and contemplative, but they tend to center around a core meaning of somewhat passive, unfocused, wordless musing. Thus on the face of it we cannot safely assume that θεωρία always or ever means for Aristotle precisely what contemplation means for us.

Second, although the cognate term θεωρητικός is often translated as "theoretical", the connection between theory and contemplation is far from clear; indeed, we would normally consider both ancient and modern scientific and mathematical theory to be diametrically opposed to the religious attitude that suffused the contemplative life of Medieval Christendom. Furthermore, it can be hazardous to essentially transliterate an ancient Greek word into a current English word that re-uses the Greek root; rendering θεωρητικός as theoretical might make no more sense than rendering ἐνέργεια as energy or φαντασία as fantasy.

Third, some uses of θεωρία and θεωρεῖν seem to be located outside the contemplative field we're accustomed to. For instance, at EE V.5 / EN VI.5 1140b7-10 Aristotle mentions that the action-oriented (though perhaps philosophically-minded) statesman Pericles excelled at θεωρία when guiding the course of the Athenian polis. More substantively, at two points in Aristotle's discussion of ἀκρασία within EE VI / EN VII (1146b31-35 and 1153a20-23) he seems to use θεωρεῖν to mean something close to "pay attention to", "be aware of", "keep in mind", or "maintain a mental hold on". Indeed, my working hypothesis is that this sense of θεωρία as attention is close to the focal meaning of the term, or at least closer than θεωρία as contemplation.

To test this hypothesis, I shall attempt to behold θεωρία with fresh eyes, free from the Latinate and Christian overtones that the concept of contemplation has accrued over the centuries. My method has two prongs. First, I outline my hypothesis in more detail and look at a cross-section of usage to see if the hypothesis might hold up under scrutiny. Second, following the lead of scholars from John Burnet to the present, I track the dialetical progression of θεωρία, θεωρεῖν, θεωρητικός, and cognate terms on their parallel tracks through the Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics, branching onward from there into both the Politics and the Metaphysics.

II. Beholding Theoria

In brief, I propose that it is fruitful to think about θεωρία primarily as attention, which I would provisionally describe as a conceptual form of awareness attainable by beings having λόγος, i.e., reason-and-speech. Roughly speaking, Aristotle's view seems to be that other animals have what we might call a perceptual form of awareness since they have αἴσθησις, i.e., the ability to sense their surroundings (some animals also have additional cognitive capacities like φαντασία, i.e., the ability to perceive something as, say, threatening or beneficial); this is crucial to their way of being and differentiates animals from plants and non-living things. Human beings have αἴσθησις too, of course, but they build on those capabilities through their capacities for recollection, forethought, imagination, craft, thinking, insight, understanding, reasoning, speech, commitment, and the like. In a way, the difference between awareness (αἴσθησις) and attention (θεωρία) is similar to the difference betrween memory (μνήμη) and recollection (ἀναμνήσις): in each case, animals are capable of the former but only humans are capable of the latter because recollection and attention require a sort of self-direction that is open only to linguistic, conceptual beings. Consistent with these speculations, from this point on I will render αἴσθησις as awareness and θεωρία as attention.

Given the centrality of understanding (ἐπιστήμη) in the human way of life, there is great significance in the distinction Aristotle draws between, on the one hand, having an understanding of a subject (say, having learned geometry but attending to something else, or even attending to nothing while asleep or drunk) and, on the other hand, actively using that understanding (say, while proving a geometrical theorem or applying it to solve a problem). In several places, Aristotle calls the former state τὸ ἔχοντα ("having") and the latter activity τὸ θεωροῦντα. The same basic distinction applies to a person's commitment (προαίρεσις) to act in a certain way, for the self-indulgent person (ἀκρατής) at some level knows the right thing to do but doesn't see that knowledge through in action (almost as if they've fallen asleep or are drunk with a passion that hinders them from doing the right thing), whereas the person of excellent character both knows the right thing to do and sees that knowledge though in action by continually attending to the commitment they've made. Here "contemplating" doesn't seem to fit as a rendering of θεωρεῖν, whereas something like "attend to" or "stay aware of" or "keep in mind" hits closer to the mark.

Another distinction relevant to this exploration is that among θεωρητικός, πρακτικός, and ποιητικός (see for instance EE IV / EN V 1139a27). Understanding (ἐπιστήμη) that is θεωρητικός is directed primarily toward the task of attending to the way things are. By contrast, understanding that is πρακτικός is directed primarily toward action (say, courageous action in battle) and understanding that is ποιητικός is directed primarily toward making something (say, a house) or producing a certain effect (say, the health of a patient). In modern parlance, theoretical means abstract, having a high level of generality, speculative, not empirical, not based on evidence or experience, lacking in useful applications, etc.; these qualities are contrasted with what is practical in the sense of solving real-world problems, being workable or effective in practice, being directed toward outcomes, etc. Yet this continuum of ours does not divide up phenomena as the ancients did: among other things, our notion of practicality seems to include both πρᾶξις and ποίησις. Moreover, as we've already seen, for Aristotle successful πρᾶξις requires θεωρία in the doing so as to avoid ἀκρασία.

Yet action and production are not the only foils for θεωρία. In a discussion of various human ways of life (EN 1095b19), Aristotle distinguishes the βίος θεωρητικός from both the βίος ἀπολαυστικός and the βίος πολιτικός. The first of these is not a "theoretical" life lost in abstractions, but a life centrally organized around attending to (and thereby understanding) the way things are - as Anaxagoras is reported to have said, a life of "attending to [θεωρῆσαι] the heavens and the whole order of the cosmos" (EE 1216a13). By contrast, the βίος ἀπολαυστικός is centrally organized around seeking pleasure, and the βίος πολιτικός is centrally organized around contributing to the "one common object" (HA 488a8) of the community; even if the βίος πολιτικός at its highest requires the sort of θεωρία that Pericles exhibited, it is completed by achievements outside the θεωρία itself (the θεωρία is a means to a practical end, as it were). The characteristic actvitity of the βίος θεωρητικός, on the other hand, aims at nothing beyond the θεωρία itself (EN 1177b2, 19).

Thus I propose the following renderings of our key terms:

As a further test, let's consider some of the numerous renderings of these terms that one finds when one peruses multiple translations of Aristotle's works. Here are some renderings of the verb θεωρεῖν, with conversions that use the term attention instead:

Some of my alternative renderings might feel clunky, but that's because we don't have single English words that map precisely to θεωρεῖν, θεωρητικός, and θεωρία (a common problem with translating ancient Greek, as for instance with ἀληθεύειν since in English we don't have a verb for "truthing").

III. Theoria in Action

As noted above, for Aristotle θεωρία plays a significant role in successful action. This role unfolds through both of the major ethical works and into the Politics.

Early in the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle urges us to "attend to excellence and wisdom" (1216a38) and to "attend to the good" (1217b42). Similarly, early in the Nicomachean Ethics he observes that the fulfilled person "always and especially takes action and devotes attention to what is directed by excellence of character" (1100b19).

Aristotle builds on these early hints in the three books that are common to the Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics (EE IV-VI / EN V-VII). Indeed, here it is not only wisdom that requires attention, but also craft, for he states that "every craft is about bringing something into being, i.e., crafting it and attending to how to bring into being something which admits of being or not being, and of which the source is in the one making it and not in the thing made..." (1140a11). The same basic consideration applies to wisdom: "It remains, then, that wisdom is a truth-finding trait to take action with an account about things that are good or bad for human beings.... This is why we think that Pericles and people like that are wise, since they have the ability to attend to what is good for themselves and for human beings" (1140b7-10; see also 1141a25).

This kind of action-guiding attention figures prominently in Aristotle's account of self-indulgence (ἀκρασία). Here the mystery is how someone who understands the good can act in ways inconsistent with that understanding. To break through the impasse, Aristotle draws a distinction (also made in the Metaphysics and elsewhere) between having understanding but not using it and both having and using understanding. As he says at 1146b31-35, it would be terrible if someone who has and uses an understanding of the good - i.e., who has the understanding and attends to it - does the wrong thing; but this is not so surprising in someone who has the understanding but doesn't use it and is inattentive to it in the moment of taking action. A bit later, he claims that the self-indulgent person is "not like someone who knows and attends, but like someone who is asleep or drunk" (1152a14) and therefore inattentive in the moment.

Because the φρόνιμος and the πολιτικός have the same qualities of thought but differ in their way of being, this sort of attention is centrally important for the leader of a community. Indeed, it is little noted that at the very end of the Nicomachean Ethics, after his paean to mind and pure θεωρία, Aristotle returns to this action-guiding sense of attention in his prologue to the Politics. There he says that we must "attend to what saves and destroys communities" (1181b18) and that "once we attend to these things we will have greater insight into what sort of constitution is best" (1181b21).

Although it is not until late in the Politics that Aristotle treats of θεωρία as an activity, he repeatedly (by my count, over twenty times) uses the verb θεωρεῖν to describe the activity in which he and his interlocutors are engaged throughout the book as they "attend to what saves and destroys communities" (1181b18). In this way he reinforces the importance of action-guiding θεωρία to successful governance.

IV. Theoria as Activity

This section will discuss the role of θεωρία in φιλία and φιλοσοφία, as well as the divine nature of θεωρία as an activity.

Notes

Passages Cited

Eudemian Ethics I-III

Nicomachean Ethics I-IV

Eudemian Ethics IV-VI / Nicomachean Ethics V-VII

Eudemian Ethics VII-VIII

Nicomachean Ethics VIII-X

Politics

Metaphysics

Peter Saint-Andre > Writings > Aristotle