Plato and Europe
Jan Patočka
Stanford University Press, 2002

"What in fact does the care of the soul mean? It means to want to be in unity with one's own self. Man, originally and always, is not in this unity with himself; this is incredible work, the work of a whole life." (p. 189)

"The natural movement [PSA: I would say activity = ἐνέργεια] of the human being is that kind of movement leading not only to that - that we are a form for others - but that within ourselves, in this movement of our life, we reveal other things and us ourselves. Our own life is movement. The movement of the shoot is from the grain of wheat to the mature plant, which flowers, is fertilized, and creates new grains. Then this movement is repeated. This movement is of its own sort the revealing of what is hidden in the germ. The movement of the human being - qua human - lies in the human capability to comprehend the movement of all other beings, that he can take them into himself and give them, in his own mind, in his own proper existence, a certain place. He, so to speak, fills himself with them. For that reason, Aristotle says that the distinctive character of our being, that is our ψυχή, our soul, are in their own way, things. It is the place of things, not in the material sense, but rather such, that in it things show themselves to be that which they are. The soul is εἶδος εἶδων, the form of all forms and the place of all forms." (p. 193)

"So just as cognizance, so also decision heads after some goal, wants to satisfy something within us, is rooted in a certain kind of self-comprehension, the comprehension of what, in the proper sense of the word, we want [PSA: τὸ αἱρετόν], and what we want, in a certain senses, [is] who we really are.... [quoting 1095a14ff] Here, all of a sudden only acting is spoken about, cognizance is subsumed under activity. [further quote] What Aristotle alludes to is the very peculiarity of the Greek language, for which εὐπράττειν, 'to do good' also means 'to be happy.' When someone is doing well, then Greek says εὐπράττειν (to do well) about this, and the wish of all is εὐπράττειν (that is, literally, 'to do good,' even though naturally, it is not perceived thus. So, all say it the same way, but what is the fundamental nature of happiness? The Greek word is εὐδαιμονία (happiness). Many translate it as 'bliss,' but this is utterly false, because with the word bliss we imagine the blissful state of that other world or of beings singularly perfect. But what Aristotle is concerned with here, is the exact opposite; he is concerned with emphasizing that everyone, even the most vulgar, use the same expression. It is terribly important that just in these principal things there is disagreement among people. [PSA: Kaufmann would say that εὐδαιμονία is a contested concept] Disagreement between the manifoled and the one, and the same in various periods of life [PSA: cf Hindu stages and the like], and perhaps even otherwise, but this is just that important thing we spoke about at the beginning, that the principles of human acting are changeable and differing. This neutral word 'happiness,' about which Kant, as you know, said that it is not any kind of concept; it is something terribly indeterminate, it cannot be defined in any way, perhaps cannot be enclosed within conceptual limits at all." (pp. 202-203) [PSA: the only way to make εὐδαιμονία determine is to live a life well lived: the measure of greatness in philosophy is a life]

"Happpiness - I said - is something in which takes place comprehension of oneself. When it gives itself a goal, our life returns, in a certain sense, to itself.; its activity is oriented to itself; it comprehends itself. We must take the characteristics of these three forms of life from this point of view. The question is: In the case of this βίος ἀπολαυστικός, the pleasure-seeking life, is the core of the proper self itself actually somehow crippled? Is the core handicapped in the case of the life [of] honor and risk [i.e., the βίος πολιτικός]? This is what this is about. With this thought we must approach the interpretation of Aristotle's words.... For, each of these ways of life concerns the realization of what is still not yet realized. In each of these orientations, our life gives itself a certain shape from fundamental possibilities among which we can choose. This is precisely characteristic for a free being. This positive principle of freedom is hidden in the contingency of principles of human action. And what belongs to human freedom? That man can find or not find himself in the choice of his life and in the realization of what follows from that choice, that he can, so to say, seize or miss himself, that he can seize - what? In this we see the problematicity of freedom, the problematicity of the being which is free, the problematicity which no one and nothing can take away from man. Plato takes this problematicity away from man. For Plato, what is good is already here. The Good is written into the very last essence of things; the good is its first principle, from which entire existence follows and upon which entire existence hangs. To focus upon it and to direct one's attention to it means to constantly measure oneself with an absolute measure. The absolute measure says what is good. But human life is more problematic, and Aristotle sees it as such, as far more problematic. That is the new fundamental experience with which Aristotle goes to the problem of the care of the soul." (pp. 205-206)

"For Aristotle, the life of the reasonable political, politically living person is almost on the same level as the life of the philosopher. But the life of the philosopher is divine - it is not entirely human. Why? Because what the philosopher occupies himself with is divine. If we said that the political life is the highest, then we should make man the higehst [thing] in the world, the higest that is, but this is not possible. There are other, far more perfect, higher things in the world: the gods. And what do the gods do? Just that, which belongs to the gods. And the gods are eternal, blissful - here the word blissfulness belongs - the gods are εὐδαίμονες (happy), in the strong sense of the word. Why? Because in their activity, in their life, there is nothing disturbing, nothing that should indicate some kind of peak and some valley, some possibility to find oneself or miss oneself. Just what distinguishes man from other finite living earthly beings, freedom, is still only something deficient with regard to the life of the gods. The contingency encompassed within it, the possibility to miss onself is a defect: god cannot miss himself. In himself, god is still divine. This means that god lacks freedom.... For in themselves, the gods can do only what is divine, permanent, eternal. Of course, what does 'to do' mean here? Their life has to be activity, but one that is always at its goal [PSA: τέλος]. It is not an activity like the human one, which is not at its goal just because man lives in the direction of the principles that he himself still has to find, in which he himself has to constitute himself. This, the gods do not have to do. Such a hint of divine life exists within the human. On the basis of this intimation we also comprehend what divine life means. It is the life of constant spiritual discernment." (p. 207)

"[W]hat man does when he philosophizes and touches the divine regards that which is and which is eternal. This is Plato's discovery. But we must take the specifically human in this equivocal sense: on the one hand, the core of man is somewhere in proximity to that which is eternal; on the other hand, man is something of his own, which in its own way holds itself besides the divine in a kind of amazing autonomy, because man is the 'finite creator,' man is the finite being which does that, which does not yet exist, and which does this according to principles that are not eternal, which it itself still has to constitute. In this lies the strength and originality of life; in it, and not before, man forms himself and discovers himself. This self-creating and self-discovering is one and the same thing." (pp. 208-209)

"In that man is a substance that creates something that is not here, continbent things, and that it creates them freely and in this forms and comes to know itself - in this is the foundation of that bending into the horizontal [PSA: in contrast to Plato's vertical orientation]. The movement of human existence upon which Aristotle reflects is different; it is a movement, which, although it goes from the low ground of the βίος ἀπολαυστικός (to live a life of pleasures) upward all the way to the βίος θεωρητικός (contemplative life), bends itself back again to earth and to realization, to acting, and that means, to the very individual and contingent things. In the multifariousness of the good, that the good, the goal man seeks, is not a necessary, eternal idea already here, but rather something dispersed in various conceptions of what is happiness - in that is the universality that can never be encompassed in the idea." (p. 212) [PSA: in ancient Greek wisdom the multifarious nature of the good is reflected in the variety of principles embodied in the pantheon of divinities; cf. OTTO 1954]

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