What Is the Life of Theōria? — Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

About this event

August 9 \- Back in NE book I chapter 5 (1095b14–1096a10), Aristotle names four ways of living that stand out as representative of how any human being might choose to live his own life for the sake of flourishing. Aristotle elaborates on three of these four ways of living in the chapter: the life of pleasure, the life of honor, and the life of money making. As for the fourth way, the life of theōria, Aristotle promises to get to it later (1096a4–5). . It is now later. After having discussed matters concerning the virtues, friendships, and pleasures, and after again summarizing the conditions of human flourishing, Aristotle at book X chapter 7 (1177a12–1178a7) will finally tell us what he means by the life of theōria. . \-\-\-\- . We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, book X, which is about pleasure and human flourishing. . The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review: . 1\. What is the full\-time job of being a human being? 2\. What is the systematic structure of the human potential? 3\. What is a virtue of character \{*ēthikē aretē*}? 4\. How does one come to acquire any of it? \(E\.g\. pride\, ambition\, bravery\, gentlemanliness\, generosity\, candor\, fairness\, friendliness\, …\) 5\. How does one formulate right desires? 6\. How is one to recover from being bad to becoming a good person? 7\. What is entailed in and what is required of being a friend? . . The project's cloud drive is here (https://mega.nz/folder/vqJCXIQJ#muxiUXMHhfljvxKnWaOxZA), at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.