Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
C.D.C. Reeve
Harvard, 2012

"Aristotle can define soul of every sort - whether nutritive or perceptive or rational - as 'the first actualization (entelecheia) of a natural body that has life in potentiality' (DA II.2 412a27-28) or, more expansively, as 'the first actualization of a natural instrumental body' (DA II.2 412b5-6) [fn3: Since entelecheia (actualization, fulfillment) and energeia (activity, actuality) are intimately related (Metaphysics IV.3 1047a30-32, IV.8 1050a21-23), the soul is also 'the activity (energeia) of some sort of body' (Metaphysics VII.3 1043a35-36).] For a first potentiality is the potentiality someone has, for example, to acquite theoretical knowledge. When that potentiality is actualized through the acquisition of such knowledge, that is its *first* actualization - the first stage in the actualization of the potentiality. The acquired potentiality he now has to exercise his acquired knowledge in actual contemplation is a second potentiality - a second stage in the development of the original first potentiality. Actualizing that second potentiality in actively contemplating something, in turn, is a *second* actualization (DA II.5 417a21-29) or activity (energeia) (DA III.4 429b6-7)." (REEVE-2012, p. 7)

"What moves wish, in turn, is the good - that is to say, the good is wish's teleological cause, the end or goal it wishes for." (REEVE-2012, p. 13) [PSA: if by "teleological cause" we mean that for the sake of which, then in addition to the "moved mover" of orexis or boulesis there are actually two "unmoved movers" for action and commitment: the objective good is "that for the aim of" (hou heneka-hou) and the psuche is "that for the benefit of" (hou heneka-hoi); see JOHNSON, pp. 75-75 and JOHNSON, p. 177 as well as CORCILIUS, p. 135.]

"Besides its distinctive location in the calculative part of the soul and its distinctive relation to calculation and deliberation, wish is also distinctive in being the sort of desire we have for happiness or the good, or what appears to us as such (Metaphysics XII.7 1072a28, NE III.4 1113a22-33). We wish for the end or target, we 'deliberate about and deliberately choose what furthers it' (NE III.5 1113b3-4). Deliberate choice (prohairesis) is thus a matter of choosing (haireisthai) one thing before or in preference to (pro) another (NE III.2 1112a16-17), and so of deliberating about what things shold be done *earlier than* or *in preference to* others to further the desired end: 'someone with understanding chooses the better of two things in all cases' (EE VII.2 1237b37-38)." (REEVE-2012, pp. 27-28) [PSA: see the similarity between Analytics (84b31-37) on proof and EN 1113a5-7 on deliberation; in the latter you work your way closer and closer to identifying a particular action or commitment; see also BROADIE-1991, pp. 219-220.]

"We desire something because it seems pleasant or good, not the other way around. Hence just how much we desire it - how strong our desire is - is itself to be explained by how pleasant or good the thing seems. That is why Aristotle can so readily speak of vice as producing 'distortion and false views about the starting-points of action' (NE VI.12 1144a34-36)." (REEVE-2012, pp. 47-48)

"[W]hat makes something praktikos for Aristotle is that it is appropriately related to praxis or action, considered as an end choiceworthy because of itself, and not - as with 'practical' - that it is opposed to what is theoretical, speculative, or ideal.... If some things are praktikos, because, like practical ones, they are useful, effective, or feasible means to some end, others are yet more praktikos because they further an end by constituting it or being identical to it." (REEVE-2012, p. 57)

"'[T]he noble and just things,' which are the 'matter' that political science investigates, 'admit of so much variation and irregularity that they come to seem noble and just by law alone, and not by nature' (NE I.3 1094b14-16; compare V.10 1137b19). To the well-educated person, however, who understands the degree of rigor to be expected in a given science, noble and just things are expected to hold hos epi to polu, and so are rightly seen to hold by nature (NE I.3 1094b19-27, V.7 1134b24-1135a5). In the case of ethics, the result of lack of education is relativism and skepticism about the value of virtue (NE I.3 1094b16-18)." (REEVE-2012, pp. 82-82) [PSA: that is, the result is either ignorance or sophistry as the extremes for which sophia is the mean, or alternatively foolishness or cunning as the extremes for which phronesis is the mean.]

"'[E]ven political scientists shouldn't regard as irrelevant to their work the sort of theoretical knowledge that makes evident (phaneron) not only the fact, but also the reason why' (EE I.6 1216b32-39).... Esteem, too, has similar connotations and connections. To say that something is estimable (timios) is to ascribe a distinct sort of goodness or value to it: 'By what is estimable I mean such things as what is divine, what is superior (for example, soul, understanding), what is more time-honored, what is a starting-point, and so on' (MM I.2 1183b21-23). Thus happiness is 'something estimable and complete ... since it is a starting-point ... and the starting-point and the cause of goods is something we take to be estimable and divine' (NE I.12 1102a1-4)." (REEVE-2012, p. 90) [PSA: I might translate timios as "glorious".]

"Like bees, ants, and wasps, human beings are by nature political animals (NE I.7 1097b11, Politics I.2 1253a7-9), which 'have as their function some single thing they all do together' (HA I.1 488a7-8). But unlike these other animals, human beings do not complete or perfect their natures *by nature*. Instead, craft is needed 'to complete the task nature is unable to complete' (Physics II.8 199a15-16)." (REEVE-2012, p. 104) [PSA: on this topic, see DEPEW-1995.]

"'[I]t is not *human being* that medical treatment makes healthy (except coincidentally), but Callias or Socrates or someone else spoken of in this way who is coincidentally a human being' (Metaphysics I.1 981a18-20; also NE I.6 1097a8-13, X.9 1180b7-23).... [T]he mean is relative to us by being relative not to the species *human being* but to particular instances of it: 'the mean that each sort of person can actually achieve must be best' (Politics IV.11 1295a35-39) [fn9: Contrast Lesley Brown, 'What is 'The Mean Relative to Us' in Aristotle's Ethics?,' Phronesis 48 (1997): 77-93)]" (REEVE-2012, p. 111)

"In ethical and political contexts, kalon is restricted in its application to what is intrinsically choiceworthy and intrinsically praiseworthy: 'Of all goods, the ends are those choiceworthy for their own sake. Of these, in turn, the kalon ones are all those praiseworthy because of themselves' (EE VII.3 1248b18-20; also NE I.13 1103a9-10). But whereas many things - including 'honor, pleasure, and understanding' (NE I.7 1097b2) - have the first of these features, only 'the virtues and the deeds resulting from virtue' have the second (EE VIII.3 1248a36-37, NE I.12 1101b12-16).... Since the specific constituent of virtue and virtuous action that attracts praise is their being in a mean (NE II.7 1108a14-16), and a mean is a kind of symmetry (MM I.5 1185b20) and order (NE X.9 1180a18)." (REEVE-2012, p. 122) [PSA: I'd prefer "valuable" and "laudable" to "choiceworthy" and "praiseworthy".]

With reference to NE VI.13 1144b8-14), Reeve states: "Understanding [nous], therefore, is 'the eye of the soul' mentioned in the earlier passage, and its lack is what is analogized to lack of sight in the later one: 'as sight is to the body, so understanding is to the soul' (NE I.6 1096b28-29; compare Protrepticus B70, Metaphysics IX.10 1052a3-4)." (REEVE-2012, p. 127)

"An unscrupulous person ... is someone who 'greedily takes anything from anywhere' (EE II.3 1221a26-37; compare Problems XVI.4 917a1-2). In other words, he takes as much as he can of money, honors, bodily pleasures, and other goods of competition, which are greed's particular targets (NE IX.8 1168b15-21).... This might explain why practical wisdom appears in a list of virtues and vices as the virtuous mean between the too much of unscrupulousness and the too little of unworldliness." (REEVE-2012, p. 129) [PSA: I'd translate these as cunning and foolishness; see also NATALI-2001, pp. 52-53 on deinotes and arete phusike.]

"While keeping his eye on the target, the possessor of the correct reason "tightens or loosens" (NE VI.1 1138b22-23), as a musician tightens or loosens his instrument's strings until a certain target note is struck (Politics IV.3 1290a22-29; compare Plato, Lysis 209b). The notion of tightening and loosening is then extended to vocal cords, sinews, and other string-like things (GA V.7 787b10-24). Eventually, it is employed wherever a certain tripartite structure is thought to exist, consisting of a continuous underlying subject, often referred to as 'the more and the less' (to mallon kai to hetton), a pair of opposed attributes that can vary in degree, and a target, typically a mean condition of some sort, that can be achieved by increasing (tightening) or decreasing (loosening) the underlying subject to change the degree of the attributes." (REEVE-2012, pp. 131-132) [PSA: there is a connection here to the study of music as preparation for arete, as in Politics VIII.]

"Presumably, then, practical wisdom also follows the model we have been exploring. The target is the mean in feelings and actions, specified by the correct reason, while tightening and loosening is an adjustment made in some continuous underlying subject of these, which increases or diminishes the degree of a pair of opposite or contrary attributes." (REEVE-2012, p. 133) [PSA: the "correct reason" (orthos logos) is perhaps better described as the "correct account"; see BURNYEAT-1981 on meta logou.]

"In addition to the target on which the possessor of the correct reason keeps his eye, which is the relevant mean state or equilibrium, and the tightening and loosening he employs to hit it, there is also 'some sort of horos of the mean [states], which we say are between excess and deficiency, being as they are in accord with the correct reason' (NE VI.1 1138b23-25).... Hence the doctor's horos is the thing 'by reference to which he discerns what is healthy for a body from what isn't' (EE VIII.3 1249a21-22) - the thing that must be 'looked to in saying what the correct reason is' (EE II.5 1222b7-8)." (REEVE-2012, p. 134)

Reeve argues that the horos or "defining-mark" is specified in the controversial passage at the very end of the Eudemian Ethics (1249a24-b25). Among other things, he claims that in this passage "the term ho theos refers to the human understanding, which is so-called because it is 'the divine constituent' (to theion) or the 'divine thing' (theion ti) in the human soul (NE X.7 1177b28).... The god, in other words, is not God, but human understanding." (REEVE-2012, p. 138) [PSA: this strikes me as far-fetched, at least not self-evident: if Aristotle had wanted to say "nous" or "to theion" instead of "ho theos", he could have done so; but see KOSMAN-2013, p. 186 on the nature of the divine.]

Quoting from NE VI.2 1139a35ff ('eupraxia is an end, and the desire [namely, wish] is for it'), Reeve comments: "Eupraxia is the same as eudaimonia (happiness) (NE VI.12 1143b19-21), therefore, and the same as to eu zen holos (living well as a whole) (NE VI.5 1140a28)." (REEVE-2012, p. 140)

Next Reeve looks at Metaphysics IX.6 1048b18-35, which for our purposes contains this crucial observation: "'Someone who is living well ... at the same time has lived well and is happy and has been happy. If this were not so, these would have come to an end at some time, as when one is slimming. But as things stand there is no such time, but one is living, and has lived.'" Reeve goes on: "[E]nergeia and kinesis are types [PSA: I would say "modes" or "ways"] of being, not types of verbs. A poiesis or kinesis is something that takes time to complete and, like the time it takes, is infinitely divisible (Physics III.7 207b21-25, Metaphysics V.13 1020a26-32). It has a definite termination point or limit, before which it is incomplete and after which it cannot continue (NE X.4 1174a21-23). A praxis, by contrast, does not take time to complete, and so does not really occur 'in time' (Physics VIII.8 262b20-21) but is temporally point-like (NE X.4 1174b12-13). Having no definite termination, while it may stop, it need never finish (Metaphysics IX.6 1048b25-27). As an energeia, then, a praxis is an end, and so is complete at every moment. As the result of deliberate choice, it presupposes [PSA: and is imbued by] a state [PSA: I would say "an indwelling and acquired trait" = hexis] of character, such as virtue or vice (NE VI.2 1139a33-34). Indeed, the praxis is what results when that state is actualized: 'The result [PSA: task] is the end (to gar ergon telos), the energeia is the result (he de energeia to ergon), and this is why the term energeia is called what it is in accord with the result (dio kai tounoma energeia legetai kata to ergon) and extends to the actualization [of the state] (kai sunteinei pros ten entelecheian).' Metaphysics IX.8 1050a21-23).... That result, in other words, is a logically necessary or *internal* end of the actualization of the correlative state. Similarly a praxis is the internal end of a state of character's being actualized. Hence the tel - from telos - in entelecheia." (REEVE-2012, pp. 141-142)

"The difference between productions and actions is not that productions have external ends but they supposedly have no internal ones. In fact, the difference is even more complex than that: '... happiness is a complete activity or use of virtue, and not a conditional use but an unconditional one. By 'conditional uses' I mean those that are necessary; by 'unconditional' I ean those that are noble. For example, in the case of just actions, just retributions and punishments spring from virtue, but are necessary uses of it, and are noble only in a necessary way, since it would be more choiceworthy if no individual or city needed such things. On the other hand, just actions that aim at honors and prosperity are unconditionally noblest. The former involve choosing something that is somehow bad, whereas the latter are the opposite: they construct and generate goods.' (Politics VII.13 1332a7-18)." (REEVE-2012, pp. 145-146)

"[T]he fact that happiness is our end is determined by our nature and function, and so holds with a necessity that puts it outside the range of what is up to us to affect or change." (REEVE-2012, pp. 161-162) [PSA: thus the study of eudaimonia is a matter for theoria.]

"Because eupraxia or doing well in action is practical wisdom's end and practical wisdom exerts architectonic control over all the crafts, the end 'unconditionally' (as opposed to in relation to somethign and for something else) is not what is produced, but what is prakton (NE VI.2 1139b2-3). Looked back at, what is prakton is what is already done, already actualized. Looked forward at, as it is when we are deliberating, what is prakton is what is doable." (REEVE-2012, p. 167)

"A decree stemming from a governing body is thus analogous to one stemming from a human agent's practical understanding, in that both produce the actions of the very telic systems of which they are parts." (REEVE-2012, p. 168) [PSA: here by "decree" Reeve refers to boulesis, i.e., a resolution.]

"In cases of incontinence, wish is moved against nature by appetite, affecting practical understanding's grasp [PSA: and awareness = theoria] of the major premise.... Because the action that is the conclusion of a practical demonstration occurs only if nothing prevents it, it is not entailed by the premises but is caused, rationalized, and explained by the fact that the premises are believed or accepted [PSA: and kept in awareness] by the agent." (REEVE-2012, p. 175)

Still with regard to the weak-willed person, Reeve says: "The defect in him as a deliberating agent may lie not in his strictly deliberative abilities, however, but rather in his appetites and feelings, which, failing to be in a mean, distort his practical perception, causing him to misperceive his situation." (REEVE-2012, p. 178)

"The major term in a practical demonstration is or designates happiness, which, as a practical starting-point, is an end: 'in actions the end for the sake of which [the action is done] is a starting-point' (NE VII.8 1151a16).... In such a demonstration's minor premise, the middle term is or designates a particular (type of) action, which, like every particular, is grasped by perception (NE VII.3 1147a25-26).... 'What happens seems parallel to the case of understanding and syllogizing about unchanging objects, But there the end is a theoretical proposition (for when one has understood the two premises, one has understood - that is, put together - the conclusion), whereas here the conclusion that follows from the two premises [being put together] becomes the action.' (MA 7 701a8-13) [PSA: It is logos, i.e., phronesis, that binds these two directions together, and awareness, i.e., theoria, that maintains or preserves the bond in action.] .... In one way, then, happiness is a starting-point, since it is the ultimate end of all action. In another, the particular actions that instantiate it are starting-points, since it is from them that a filled-out understanding of (the universal) happiness comes." (REEVE-2012, pp. 180-181)

"Although deliberation and calculation are commonly identified (NE VI.1 1139a12-13), a narrower sort of practical or action-determining deliberation is also recognized, whose distinctive target is 'the best for a human being of things done in action' (NE VI.7 1141b13-14)." (REEVE-2012, p. 183)

"[D]eliberative perception involves a universal reachable only through practical deliberation, and so inherits its reliability conditions from those of practical deliberation. Among these conditions is the possession of desires and feelings in a mean, since if these are excessively weak or strong, they constitute the vice that produces 'distortion and false views about the starting-points of action' (NE VI.12 1144a34-36)." (REEVE-2012, p. 185)

"[T]he political life is still rejected, on the grounds that virtue is 'too incomplete to be the good, since it seems possible to possess virtue, yet be asleep or inactive throughout life'" (NE I.5 1095b31ff) (REEVE-2012, p. 223)

"Aristotelian eudaimonia includes a large perfectionist element ... that happiness seems to lack. Eudaimonia may all by itself make a life *worth* living and need of nothing.... In some respects, then, Aristotelian eudaimonia might be better translated as 'well-being' or 'flourishing' - although it would seem strange to worry about whether one should wait to say that someone was flourishing until he was dead (compare NE 1.10-11)." (REEVE-2012, p. 227) [PSA: these concerns might evaporate if we translate eudaimonia as "fulfillment" or "living well"; there is nothing strange about waiting until the end of life to evaluate about whether someone truly lived well.]

"As completeness is allied with the telic hierarchy introduced by the identification of happiness with the end of political science, so telic self-sufficiency or the self-sufficiency of an end is allied with completeness: 'The same conclusion [that happiness is the best good] also appears to follow from considerations of self-sufficiency, since the complete good seems to be self-sufficient.... We take what is self-sufficient to be what all by itself makes a life choiceworthy and in need of nothing, and we think happiness is like this' (NE I.7 1097b6-16).... [H]appiness 'will also need external prosperity, since we are human beings; for our nature is not self-sufficient for contemplation, but needs bodily health too, and the availability of food and other kinds of service' (NE X.8 1178b33-35). The implicit contrast is with ... the gods, whose lives consist essentially in the activity of contemplation alone, and so are self-sufficient for it (Metaphysics XII.7 1072b26-27, XII.9 1074b34-35). In order for happiness all by itself to make a *human* life choiceworthy and in need of nothing, that life needs other things: 'Happiness obviously also needs external goods to be added.... Besides, deprivation os of some things ... mars our blessedness'." (NE I.8 1099a31ff) (REEVE-2012, p. 235) [PSA: note the repeated emphasis here on *need* and *lack* and *deprivation*; see further below regarding the Protrepticus...]

"To be sure, a human *life* needs to be augmented with external goods if it is to be apt for such happiness, but the *happiness itself* needs nothing." (REEVE-2012, p. 236)

"To be practical wisdom, then, a state of the calculative or deliberative part of the soul must be appropriately correlated with the virtue of character and must have something like the maximization of contemplation as its end or target." (REEVE-2012, p. 237) [PSA: why maximization? the examined life does not require maximization but the appropriate amount...]

"When Aristotle elsewhere employs the notion of a function for more general philosophical or scientific purposes ... he associates a thing's function with its essence, its virtues or excellences with what enables it to complete its function well, and its end or target with its function completed in accord with those virtues.... 'Just as every instrument is for the sake of something, the parts of the body are also for the sake of something, that is, for the sake of some action, so that the whole body must evidently be for the sake of some complex action ... so the body, too, is somehow for the sake of the soul, and the parts of the body for the sake of those functions for which each is naturally adapted.' (PA I.5645b14-20). That is why the human function, as a rational activity of the soul, is something additional to all the functions of the bodily parts (NE I.7 1097b32-33)." (REEVE-2012, pp. 240-241)

Regarding self-sufficiency again, Reeve quotes from the Protrepticus: "'The activity of theoretical wisdom (to phronein) and contemplation (to theorein), therefore, are the function of the [human] soul, and of all things it is most choiceworthy to human beings, just as sight, we think, is to the eyes, since one would choose to have sight even if nothing additional to it and different from it were to come about because of it.' (Protrepticus B68-70)" (REEVE-2012, p. 244) [PSA: here again note the emphasis on not being in need of anything additional and different, as at EN 1097b15; something additional and different might be desirable, interesting, or pleasant, but a life without those things would still be *worth* living, i.e., deeply and inherently valuable.]

Coining the terms "part-whole complete", "value complete", and "end complete", Reeve writes as follows: "The adjective teleion, which derives from telos ('end,' 'goal'), is discussed in the following entry in Aristotle's philosophical lexicon: '[1] We call [part-whole] complete that outside which not even one part (morion) is to be found, as, for example, the complete time of each thing is the one outside of which there is no time to be found that is part of that time, and [2] we also call [value] complete that which, as regards virtue or goodness, cannot be surpassed relative to its kind, as, for example, a doctor is complete and a flute-player is complete when they lack nothing as regards the form of their own proper virtue.... Moreover, virtue is a sort of completion, for each thing is complete and every substance is complete when, as regards the form of its proper virtue, it lacks no part of its natural extent (to megethous). [3] Again, things that have attained a good end are called [end] complete; for things are complete as regards having attained their end ... which is a last thing.... And the last thing for the sake of which [something is done] is also an end.' (Metaphysics V.16 1021b12-30). When Aristotle speaks of virtue as being complete, he often means that it is [1] part-whole complete. In the Eudemian Ethics, for example, he identifies complete virtue with virtue as a whole, incomplete virtue with its parts: 'life (zoe) is either complete or incomplete, and similarly virtue, since in the one case it is whole (hole), in the other a part (morion)' (EE II.1 1219a36-37). There and in the Magna Moralia he also identifies complete virtue with the amalgam of practical wisdom and the virtues of character he calls kalokagathia or noble-goodness (MM II.8 1207b20-27, EE VIII.3 1249a16-17). In both, he identifies happiness with activity in accord with complete virtue in a complete life (MM I.4 1184a35-b9, EE II.1 1219a38-39). At the same time, he acknowledges the existence of practical wisdom as a virtue of thought, not of character, characterizes it as inferior to theoretical wisdom, and recognizes the contemplative activity that theoretical wisdom perfects or completes as of the greatest possible import to happiness (MM I.34 1197b3-11, EE VII.15 1249a24-b25). What he does *not* do is explain how all these claims can be consistent with one another." (REEVE-2012, p. 245)

"[T]heoretical wisdom is the virtue of the best thing and the one with most control, so that its activity is complete happiness (NE X.8 1098a16-18, X.7 1177a12-17). Thus it is now recognized as a more complete virtue than full virtue of character. Yet the sense in which it is more or most complete cannot be a matter of [1] part-whole completeness, since, again, full virtue of character is not part of theoretical wisdom. Instead, it seems that the completeness it possesses to the greatest extent is something more akin to [2] value completeness, so that theoretical wisdom is more value complete than full virtue of character, because relative to the kind *virtue*, it cannot be surpassed in value. While theoretical wisdom may be more value complete than full or complete virtue of character, it is apparently less part-whole complete than human virtue as a whole, which includes both of them (NE VI.12 1144a5-6). In the case of virtues, in other words, it might seem that the two sorts of completeness can come apart." (REEVE-2012, p. 246) [PSA: but full virtue of character might be a *precondition* of sphia...]

"The Nicomachean Ethics recognizes that if activity in accord with theoretical wisdom is to constitute complete happiness, it must receive 'a complete span of life' (biou) (NE X.7 1177b25) or must occur in or throughout 'a complete life' (bioi teleioi) (NE I.7 1098a18). What it doesn't do it explain what a complete life is or what makes it complete. The Eudemian Ethics refers to the 'life with most control' (biou tou kratistou) (EE I.3 1215a4-5), emphasizes the importance of ordering 'one's life (bion) in relation to some end' (EE I.2 1214b10), and replaces bios with zoe in requiring happiness to be 'activity of a complete life (zoe)' (EE II.1 1219a38-39) but is equally silent about what makes a bios or zoe complete. In spelling out what a complete life is, the Magna Moralia stands alone: 'Since, then, happiness is a complete good and end, we should not overlook the fact that it will also exist in what is complete, For it will not exist in a child (since a child is not happy) but in a man, since he is complete. Nor will it exist in an incomplete time, but in a complete one, such as that of a human life (bioi). For it is correctly said among the masses that a life's happiness should be discerned in its longest time, since what is complete should exist in a complete time and a complete human being.' (MM I.4 1185a1-9) As in the case of virtues and ends, then, the completeness attributed to lives is part-whole completeness." (REEVE-2012, p. 248)

"An individual human being's life, however, is the sort in which a biographer or a dramatist might also take an interest, and a *biographical* life can be a success - can be worthwhile and in need of nothing - even if it isn't of normal length. One way it might be so is by containing, like the life of a great hero, 'a single action that is noble and grand' - that is to say, an action of the sort the Iliad or Odyssey is built around, 'an action that is unified, and a whole as well, whose parts, consisting of the events that happen, so constructed that the displacement or removal of any one of them will disturb and disjoint the whole' (Poetics 8 1451a32-35). Such a life may in a way be part-whole complete, but what is really important is that by achieving a good end it is [3] end complete. Whether we consider virtues, ends, or lives, then, Aristotle seems to move away from thinking of their completeness in part-whole terms and toward thinking of it in telic terms." (REEVE-2012, p. 249)

"One sort of simplification the Nicomachean Ethics engages in when portraying the contemplative life is a result of its focus on the *virtues* whether of character or thought, since this has the effect of making the star of the contemplative show - the most virtuous or excellent kind of contemplation - look like the entire cast. A second sort of simplification is caused by its focus on the question of what activity in accord with what virtue *happiness* is, which tends to make the contemplative components of the leisurely life look like the leisurely life as a whole. This has the further effect of overheightening the contrast between the leisurely contemplative life and the unleisurely political life that supports it. When we appropriately correct for these simplifications, we see - to put it provocatively - that the best political and contemplative lives are not so much two separate lives as distinct phases of the same life." (REEVE-2012, pp. 269-270) [PSA: on stages of life a la the Hindu ashramas, see also DAHL, p. 87]

"Leisure for a productive worker may well just be time off from work. This, no doubt, is how we conceive of it ourselves. We are at leisure when our time is our own to do with as we please. Aristotle's view is different: we are at leisure not when we are, as we say, doing nothing, or doing as we please, but when what we are doing is choiceworthy because of itself. Much practical activity is, in that sense, already somewhat leisurely, even if, because it also has an additional end, somewhat unleisurely." CITATION? [CHECKTHIS]

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