Action, Contemplation, and Happiness: An Essay on Aristotle (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780674063730)

The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality.

That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.

Author: C. D. C. Reeve
ISBN-10: 0674063732
ISBN-13: 9780674063730
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/12/2012
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.20w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2012 pg. 2
Choice 08/01/2012