2.1 Preliminaries

In the context of the Republic, I shall take contemplation to involve knowledge of forms – knowledge that Socrates terms noēsis in his image of the divided line (VI 511d8).Footnote ¹ The objects of contemplation therefore include all the examples of forms that we are given in the central books of the Republic: goodness (506b2–509b9), beauty (476b9–480a13 and 501b2), justice and temperance (501b2), as well as largeness and smallness (523e1–524c11). The form of the good plays a pivotal role, providing the first principle in terms of which the other forms are understood.

There are two distinctions to bear in mind here. First, although contemplation and noēsis are intimately connected, they are not identical: contemplation requires the act of focusing upon knowledge (whether it is being used it for practical ends or not). Put in these terms, my main interest will be in the value of actualising noēsis, not merely in its possession.Footnote ² Second, while perfect contemplation involves noēsis, there might be imperfect types that involve lesser cognitive states. At one point, for instance, Plato uses the language of contemplation in connection with mathematical understanding (dianoia), the state that stands immediately below noēsis on the divided line.Footnote ³ Another example of imperfect contemplation would be thinking about forms without yet having apprehended the nature of the good. This level of attainment is reached when the trainee guardians study dialectic between the ages of thirty and thirty-five. They only acquire knowledge of the good at fifty, which is when perfect contemplation becomes possible for them. In what follows, my main interest will be in the activity of perfect contemplation and its value for the state, but at certain points I shall discuss the value of forms of contemplation that fall short of the ideal.

Of course, the Republic is not the only dialogue in which Plato discusses contemplation. There is a particularly lyrical description in the Phaedrus, in which the souls of the gods, and even of some humans, journey to a place beyond the heavens. Here they are moved in a circle and watch the spectacle of the forms (247c3–248a5). In our earthly life, we can but glimpse flashes of beauty to aid our recollection of that discarnate vision. The Phaedo also talks of contemplation in relation to the afterlife and sounds sceptical as to whether we can attain knowledge of forms in our earthly existence. Finally, the Symposium, like the Phaedrus, focuses on contemplation of the form of beauty, but talks as if we can attain knowledge of it even in this life (212a2–7).

The Republic also seems optimistic about the chances of at least some humans acquiring knowledge of forms in this life. But what distinguishes its treatment of contemplation from these other dialogues is the political context: contemplation is something promoted by and for the ideal state. Hence our main question: what kind of value does contemplation bring to the city that sponsors it?

To answer this question, I shall start with the well-known distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. This distinction appears early in Republic II, where Glaucon challenges Socrates to show that justice is not merely good for its consequences, but also in itself (357b4–358a3). Assuming this distinction, he marks out three types of good: things that have only intrinsic value, things that have only instrumental value, and things that have both. As we attempt to pin down the kind of value that contemplation has for the state, it will be relatively easy to show that it has instrumental value. The challenge will be to show whether it also has intrinsic value. Ultimately, I shall argue that it does not. Such value applies only at the level of the individual.

Before we discuss the civic value of contemplation, it will help to ask about its value for the individual. As we shall see, answering this question involves less controversy than the political case, and some of what can be said of the individual can easily be applied to the state.

2.2 The Individual: Intrinsic and Instrumental Value

It is uncontroversial to say that the contemplation of forms is intrinsically good for the individual. In the Republic, this is clear from the famous passage about the return to the cave (VII 519d4–521b11): the philosophers appear reluctant to return and rule the city because they would much rather stay in ‘the isles of the blest’ (519c5; cf. 540b6). The assumption underlying this whole passage is, of course, that contemplation is the activity of supreme happiness. This also coheres with passages in other dialogues, such as the Phaedo, Symposium and Phaedrus, which place philosophical contemplation at the apex of human life, even as something divine, or at least akin to the divine.Footnote ⁴

What about instrumental value? There is no doubt that using one’s knowledge of forms is essential for leading the truly good and just life. Plato’s view is that such knowledge can be applied in practical decision-making. Whether the outcome of this application involves a bona fide case of knowledge is a famously disputed question.Footnote ⁵ Perhaps true knowledge can only be of forms. Even so, philosophers who apply their knowledge of forms to particulars will still be far better at practical decision-making than those ignorant of the forms.

However, this establishes only the instrumental value of contemplative knowledge, not of contemplative activity. Imagine a philosopher who attains knowledge of the good and, with it, full knowledge of the other forms. They are now able to engage in perfect contemplation. But when they do so, will they accrue instrumental benefit, or does such benefit only arise when they abstain from pure contemplation and apply their knowledge to practical decision making?

One way to show that contemplation has instrumental value is to focus on its relation to pleasure. Actively contemplating the forms, even without any thought for practical decision-making, produces pleasures of the greatest and purest kind, as Socrates attempts to establish towards the end of book IX (583b2–588a10).

There is another way in which contemplation could have instrumental value for the individual. At the beginning of book VI, Socrates argues that, in addition to having the capacity for true knowledge, philosophers naturally possess a range of moral qualities that sound very much like virtues (484a1–487a5). The philosophical mindset is relatively disinterested in material pleasures, which leads it to become temperate; it is also just, because such a person will lack incentives to renege on their agreements. Since philosophers contemplate ‘all time and all being’,Footnote ⁶ they acquire grandness of perspective or vision; from such a perspective, even death seems a small matter, so they are also rendered courageous. On this argument, therefore, sustained contemplation is useful by generating a whole string of moral virtues.

This sounds like clear evidence for the instrumental value of contemplation. But there is a complication. When Socrates talks of the philosopher here, he is probably not thinking, first and foremost, of someone who has acquired full philosophical knowledge, but of someone in the process of acquiring it. The character whom Socrates is discussing, someone who has a philosophical nature, possesses that nature ‘from youth onwards’ (εὐθὺς νέου ὄντος, 486b10–11). This nature reveals gradually itself through the love of learning, not about the world of becoming but of being. As this desire starts to become satisfied, the qualities just mentioned, such as temperance and courage, emerge – and they do so while the person is young (485d3–4). Socrates must be thinking of someone intellectually precocious, who shows an intense curiosity quite early in life about being rather than becoming. The qualities termed temperance, justice, magnanimity and courage start to arise the more they satisfy this curiosity, because their desires for physical pleasures diminish and their vision becomes increasingly broad. However, not yet being backed by fully fledged knowledge, these are not full-blown virtues, but qualities that will eventually grow into the virtues.Footnote ⁷ Strictly speaking, therefore, this passage tells us that ‘imperfect’ contemplation or, perhaps, inquiry into forms, will be useful in generating certain qualities of character;Footnote ⁸ it is not primarily talking about perfect contemplation, that is, the actualisation of full knowledge. Such contemplation does not actually produce such qualities. What we can say, however, is that continued contemplation in the full sense helps to maintain the qualities (which are by now bona fide virtues) and keep them locked in place. This would constitute a further instrumental value, still from the point of view of the individual.

One might think that, once a philosopher has acquired the virtues, they can never be erased. In the passage we have just discussed from book VI, Socrates talks of the philosopher who achieves ‘perfection’.Footnote ⁹ In terms of the curriculum that he will go on to unveil in book VII, this is someone who has spent ten years studying mathematics, five on dialectic, fifteen back in the cave performing military and administrative tasks, before finally studying the form of the good at the age of fifty. During the fifteen-year period in the cave, they are tested to see if they really can be trusted to hold power in the state (VII 539e3–540a2). All this seems to suggest that those who make it through to the end will not be liable to corruption of any kind.

In the Phaedo, however, Plato presents a different perspective. Here, true knowledge of the forms can only be achieved with the complete separation of the soul from the body, that is, at death. While still embodied, the philosopher’s work is never complete: although he detaches himself as far as possible from the body, there will always be corporeal influences that impede his understanding (66d3–67b1). From this perspective, the philosopher never achieves perfection, as the Republic seems to suggest at VI 486e1–487a8.

Perhaps the two dialogues just differ on this point. But there may be more convergence between them. In Rep. X 611b9–612a6, Socrates appears to take a perspective closer to the Phaedo, when he invokes the image of the sea-god Glaucus to describe the soul in its incarnate and discarnate states. While attached to the body it is ‘maimed’ (611b10–11). This could be taken to imply that, for any incarnate soul, bodily accretions (the senses and the non-rational desires) threaten to impede the work of reason. So, the Republic might differ from the Phaedo in allowing that philosophers can attain knowledge of forms even when incarnate (hence the references to perfection in VI 486e1–487a8). But this does not completely remove the risk of slippage: the verb ‘maimed’ (λελωβημένον, 611b10–11) is in the perfect tense, suggesting that the condition persists into the present. So, immersion in the world of particulars, that is, returning to the cave, might have deleterious effects on even the best characters, occluding their vision and even undermining their virtues. But this risk can be counteracted by long periods of contemplation outside the cave, which will sustain the philosopher’s wisdom and keep the other virtues locked in place.

2.3 The Instrumental Value of Contemplation for the State

We can now turn to the civic value of contemplation. Because the question of intrinsic value will turn out to be more controversial in this context, I shall start with instrumental value. Here we can see how some of the points just made about the individual can easily be carried over to the state. This is obviously the case where the instrumental value of knowledge (noēsis) in practical decision-making is concerned. In fact, the point of introducing the forms in books V–VII is precisely to discuss something that will be useful – indeed indispensable – for the good running of the state (cf. 476a1–480a13, 484b4–d7, 520c3–d2 and 521b8–9).

Again, however, this is a point about the value of knowledge rather than contemplation. Are there grounds for saying contemplation itself is instrumentally good for the state? There are two. One follows directly on what we said earlier, about the way in which contemplation generates a string of moral qualities in the soul. This kind of instrumental value applies as much to the state as to the individual. In fact, Socrates discusses it primarily in a political context. At the beginning of book VI, he is still very much concerned to rebut the idea that philosophy and politics are incompatible with each other. So, in this passage, he is explicitly arguing that contemplation of forms generates a whole string of qualities required of a political leader. (Earlier, I was relying on the assumption that such qualities are also important in an individual’s life.) Again, one might say that the contemplation here envisaged is only imperfect, not being based on full knowledge of the forms. But we can still say, as we did earlier, that contemplation in the strict sense might also have the role of helping to maintain the virtues of temperance, justice and the rest. To put it another way, when the philosophers are allowed a break from office and to leave cave for a period, they are refreshing their commitment to a worldview that helps lock their virtues in place, ready for when they return for their next period of rule.

So far, this is just to apply what we said about the instrumental value of contemplation for the individual to the state. But in book VII, Socrates argues in another way for the benefits of contemplation, which applies in the political context. At 519d4–521b11, he and Glaucon discuss the problem of the return to the cave. Philosophers who have left the cave will be reluctant to return from the ‘the isles of the blest’ (519c5) to the chores of ruling down in the cave, likened to Hades at 521c3. And yet they will return: as beneficiaries of the best education a state has to offer, they are bound by justice to rule when so required. But they will be only too happy to resume contemplation as soon as they are allowed.

In this passage, Socrates not only agrees with Glaucon that the philosophers view ruling in a negative light (they disdain it: 521b2); he goes as far as to capitalize on the fact: we need rulers like this, otherwise they will want to cling on to power and enter into competition with others, ultimately leading to faction within the state (521a4–8). And yet unity and cohesion are the most important political objectives (519e1–520a4). All this brings out a further instrumental benefit of contemplation. The mindset caused by the activity and experience of contemplation contributes to political unity. The very fact that philosophers have experienced the joys of contemplation further qualifies them to rule (over and above their ability to make the right decisions). They understand that, from the individual perspective, contemplation is an intrinsic good, the supreme good. This ensures that they approach power in the right way. In other words, the (perceived) intrinsic value of contemplation to the individual indirectly contributes to its instrumental value to the state.Footnote ¹⁰

2.4 Contemplation as a Constituent of Civic Eudaimonia

We can now turn to the question of intrinsic value: is it just a good thing for the state that it includes people contemplating (in addition to the instrumental value that such contemplation brings)? To sharpen up the question, think again of the way Socrates allows the guardians to spend time contemplating when they are not ruling.Footnote ¹¹ In such periods of leisure, are they continuing to benefit the state simply by contemplating? Or is the intrinsic benefit generated at this point merely for themselves, not for society?

Socrates never explicitly says in the Republic that philosophers add intrinsic value to the state just by the act of contemplation; he only ever mentions its instrumental value. But perhaps he endorses its intrinsic value to the state implicitly. One way of making the case for this comes from examining Plato’s concept of civic eudaimonia more closely, and this will involve taking up the well-known debate between those who think Plato espoused an aggregative theory of civic happiness and those who opt for an organic one. Scholars who take the first approach think that for Plato the state’s happiness consists in the happiness of a sufficient proportion of citizens. If correct, it implies that the happiness of philosophers who engage in contemplation will feed directly into the happiness of the state: although contemplation does have instrumental value, seen in this light it also constitutes a component of the civic good. Hence it has intrinsic value. The philosophers who have retreated to contemplate in the Elysian fields are still contributing to the general good.Footnote ¹² If the aggregative interpretation were right, we would have found an implicit argument that contemplation is intrinsically good for the state.

In what follows, however, I shall claim that Plato endorsed a version of the organic theory: civic eudaimonia is a structural property of the state as a whole, sometimes characterised as harmony, but at certain points as unity. If so, contemplation will have only instrumental value, as something that helps maintain such unity. It is not a component of civic eudaimonia.

2.5 Plato’s Organic Theory of Civic Eudaimonia

2.6 Sophia in Book IV

When Glaucon introduces the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goods at the beginning of book II, he uses knowing as an example of something that counts as good in both ways (357c3).Footnote ³² Given the context (he is speaking intuitively), he is most likely thinking of what is good for an individual. But suppose we could make sense of the idea that the state, as such, can exercise knowledge. After all, a state is often spoken of as engaging in other kinds of activity – declaring war, making peace, conducting negotiations, and generally enacting decisions; so why cannot it be said to exercise knowledge? If it can, we might assume, on Plato’s behalf, that the same point made about the individual in II 357c3 applies to the state: exercising knowledge is intrinsically as well as instrumentally good for it.

Now, at IV 427e9 and 428b4–429a3, Socrates claims that the state, as such, can be wise. If it has the virtue of wisdom (sophia), then, in exercising it on specific occasions, it presumably exercises knowledge. Following the logic of Glaucon’s claim about the individual in II 357c3, we can say that, in exercising such wisdom or knowledge, it achieves something intrinsically good for itself (as well as deriving instrumental benefit).

In outline, this is true. One point in favour of the proposal is that wisdom really is a virtue of the state, not merely of individuals within it. This point is easily overlooked. When discussing the state’s temperance at IV 431e10–432a3, Socrates contrasts it with wisdom and courage: while those virtues can be traced back to a particular class in the state (the guardians and auxiliaries respectively), temperance is spread across the whole (likewise justice). However, this contrast is not made in order to reduce wisdom to the possession of wisdom among the guardians (or to reduce the courage of the state to individual courage among the auxiliaries). Look at the way he describes wisdom in the state in book IV:

Civic wisdom is a complex package, involving at least three elements. The first will be the possession of noēsis by individual guardians.Footnote ³³ The second is the application of that knowledge to particulars. Shortly before the text I have quoted, Socrates says that wisdom deliberates ‘about the city as a whole and the betterment of its relations with itself and other states’ (428d2–3). Of course, Plato ultimately thinks that such deliberations require knowledge of the forms, the same knowledge at issue in the activity of contemplation; but what is being held up here and defined as wisdom is a cognitive state that marries knowledge of forms with a grasp of particular facts, issuing in practical guidance.

The third element concerns the effectiveness of the citizens who possess wisdom in their souls. A city with a group of people who possess knowledge of forms and know how to apply it to practical decisions, but who have no political power, is not a wise state. Otherwise, any city that happened to include philosophers who spring up spontaneously (cf. 520b3, automatoi) would be wise. It is crucial that the group of people who possess wisdom individually is described as ‘the part which takes the lead and rules’ (428e8). To assert that a state is wise presupposes that the practical insights of the guardians are accepted and followed by the other two classes. The same point recurs when he applies the definition to wisdom in the soul:

This is what I meant by saying that civic wisdom is a complex package. Only once all these three elements are combined – knowledge of forms (noēsis), the application of that knowledge (through perception) to particulars, and the power to enact it – do we find civic wisdom. And now it should be clear that this virtue is genuinely corporate, not reducible to the wisdom of a few citizens, but a property of the whole entity.Footnote ³⁴

If civic wisdom is a bona fide corporate virtue, there can be corporate knowing (phronein). But it does not follow that the mere contemplation exercised by the philosophers in the ideal state is a case of corporate knowing, because we have just seen that civic wisdom is more than the knowledge exercised in contemplation (noēsis). This means that the actualisation of civic wisdom is not the same as contemplation, which is a simpler kind of knowing. Hence, even if we take the actualisation of wisdom as a case of corporate knowing, we have no licence to say that mere contemplation, as exercised by the guardians in their periods outside the cave, counts as a corporate activity. (And our attempt to apply Glaucon’s example of knowing in II 357c3 as an intrinsic good for the state depended on locating a genuinely corporate form of knowing.) If so, we cannot claim that contemplation has intrinsic value for the state; we have not shown that the state is the agent of such knowing.

So far, this seems to confirm only the weaker conclusion drawn earlier – that Plato does not explicitly make contemplation intrinsically good for the state. But what about the stronger conclusion – that, given the identification of civic happiness with harmony and unity, contemplation can only ever have instrumental value? What we have just said about wisdom complicates the picture. On my view, civic happiness is exhausted by unity and harmony; and yet the exercise of wisdom, which appears to be something different from unity and harmony, has intrinsic value. The implication of this is that for Plato something can be intrinsically good for the state even without being a component of eudaimonia. If so, we cannot mount the stronger argument that anything not included in the ambit of eudaimonia can only have instrumental value.

Nonetheless, I think the stronger conclusion still stands. This is because civic wisdom cannot so easily be divorced from unity and harmony. We have analysed it as a ‘gestalt’ property, which involves the appropriate and harmonious relations between the different classes in the state. It is not mere understanding; it is in fact one manifestation of the harmony and unity in which the state’s eudaimonia consists, because it involves different parts of the state being bonded together under the supervision of the guardians’ expertise. This means that gestalt properties like unity and harmony can still be seen to exhaust the content of civic happiness.

2.7 Conclusion

One implication of my view is that there is an asymmetry between Plato’s approaches to individual and to civic happiness: contemplation is a component of the former, but only a means to the latter. Is this consistent with the state-soul parallel? Here, he makes the unitarian assumption that, when we use a term to apply to two things (e.g. ‘just’ to both state and soul), it has the same sense in both cases (IV 435a6–9). Socrates adheres to this principle when analysing the four virtues of state and soul (IV 441c4–444c4); should we not expect him to do the same for eudaimonia? In other words, if eudaimonia for the state consists in unity and harmony, the same should apply to the soul; and if contemplation only has value as a means to that harmony when it comes to the state, the same ought to apply to the soul – contrary to my interpretation.

However, Socrates does not apply anything like the same attention to the analysis of eudaimonia in the Republic as he does to the virtues. In my view, his approach to individual eudaimonia develops as the work progresses, and this is because his views on the nature of the soul start to change. Up to the end of book IV, it is quite possible that individual eudaimonia tracks civic eudaimonia quite closely: unity and harmony do seem uppermost in Socrates’ mind when he talks about how justice benefits the individual soul and promotes its happiness at IV 443d5–e2. But he might have changed his position on the nature of the soul after he has introduced the metaphysics of the central books. The best evidence for this comes towards the end of the work, at X 611d8–612a6.Footnote ³⁵ Socrates has just argued for the immortality of the soul and now raises the possibility that the soul’s true nature is not tripartite but consists entirely of reason (the only element in us that survives the death of the body, unlike appetite and spirit). For us, the importance of this point is that, if the soul is not tripartite, it can no longer be parallel to the state with its three classes of guardians, auxiliaries and producers.

Admittedly, this passage only suggests that the soul might not be tripartite. But, at the very least, it leaves the question of the soul’s true nature open for further investigation.Footnote ³⁶ And, as long as there is a question mark over this issue, it is no longer clear how similar the eudaimonia of the (true) soul will be to that of the tripartite state.Footnote ³⁷

2.8 Appendix: The Translation of Rep. IV 421c3–5

Towards the end of Section 2.5.2, I discussed the significance of the way Socrates concludes his response to Adeimantus’ objection at the beginning of book IV. I translated the final few lines of Socrates’ response as follows:

Although most of my translation is uncontroversial, I depart from other English versions in the way I render the end of the sentence: ‘we should set aside the question of how nature assigns a share of happiness to each of the classes’. Grube is representative of the more usual approach: ‘we must leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness’.Footnote ³⁸

The difference between my translation and the orthodox one is important in the debate over how Plato conceived of civic happiness. As I pointed out in Section 2.5.2, my version makes him set aside the question of how nature enables the citizens of the ideal state to enjoy happiness as individuals. For the reasons I gave earlier, this strongly favours the organic view. By contrast, the standard translation appears compatible with both the organic and aggregative theories of civic happiness. (1) Advocates of the organic view will say that the happiness of the city is reached as soon as it is ‘well ordered’ (καλῶς οἰκιζομένης, 421c3). The rest of the sentence refers to something that is not part and parcel of civic happiness: the happiness of individual classes (and hence citizens). So, on the standard translation, once the city is well-ordered and happy, our job is done, and we leave it to nature to sort out individual happiness as something that lies outside our aim as founders. (2) For advocates of the aggregative view, the last clause constitutes an important stage in the process of securing civic happiness: the process started with individual classes sticking to their tasks; that led to the city becoming well-ordered; nature will then see to it that individual classes get what happiness they can; then, in the final stage (not actually stated), once individuals have attained their happiness, this can all be aggregated so that we have achieved civic happiness.

So the standard translation leaves both interpretations in the running; my translation does not. In the light of this, it is important to establish which is correct. The difficult lies solely with the last clause: ἐατέον ὅπως ἑκάστοις τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ἡ φύσις ἀποδίδωσι τοῦ μεταλαμβάνειν εὐδαιμονίας (421c3–5). First, we need to look into the meaning of the word ἐατέον. This is a verbal adjective, derived from ἐάω. Aside from the occurrence of the word in our passage, there are twenty-two uses of it elsewhere in Plato and they fall neatly into two categories. Sometimes it means ‘one should allow’ in the sense of granting permission. In Rep. II–III there is a cluster of such uses in the section dealing with the censorship of poetry, where Socrates discusses what sort of content should be allowed in the ideal state.Footnote ³⁹ The second sense of ἐατέον is ‘one should dismiss’; occasionally the term is coupled with χαίρειν, ‘one should say goodbye to’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Some of these uses concern a context in which we are being told to dismiss (or, at least, leave on one side) an issue, problem or question.Footnote ⁴¹ Excluding the use of the term in our passage, ἐατέον appears twelve times meaning ‘dismiss’ or ‘abandon’; ten times meaning ‘permit’ or ‘allow’.

Now turn to in the remainder of the sentence: ὅπως ἑκάστοις τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ἡ φύσις ἀποδίδωσι τοῦ μεταλαμβάνειν εὐδαιμονίας. What sort of clause does ὅπως introduce? The conjunction can introduce a final clause (and other related kinds of clause, expressing aim or aspiration); it can also introduce a relative clause or an indirect question. If it is a final clause it has to be followed by a future indicative or a subjunctive. But here it is followed by a present indicative. So it cannot be expressing an aim or intention; it either introduces a relative clause expressing the manner in which nature distributes happiness to individual groups in the city, or an indirect question – the question of how nature distributes such happiness.

We can now put the two pieces together. The ὅπως-clause follows directly after ἐατέον. I can make no sense of this juxtaposition if ἐατέον means ‘we must permit’: what follows is either an indirect question or a relative clause, but ‘we must permit how nature distributes happiness’ sounds bizarre. Those who adopt this sense of ἐατέον are in effect reading the text as if Plato had said that we must allow nature to distribute happiness. But if ἐατέον meant this, ἡ φύσις would have to be an accusative as the direct object of ἐατέον, and ἀποδίδωσι an infinitive: ‘we should allow nature to distribute … ’. The standard translation is not actually a translation of the Greek that we have before us.Footnote ⁴²

Instead, let us try the other sense of ἐατέον: ‘we should dismiss’. If ὅπως introduces an indirect question (which is more likely than a relative clause), this reading seems far more plausible on purely philological grounds. It makes obvious sense to talk of dismissing, or putting to one side, a question. As I said in footnote 41, some uses of ἐατέον appear in just this context. Hence my proposed translation: ‘we should set aside the question of how nature assigns a share of happiness to each of the classes.’ There is a grammatical parallel to this within the Republic itself. Plato uses the verb ἐάω with an indirect question at VI 506d7–8: αὐτὸ μὲν τί ποτ’ ἐστὶ τἀγαθὸν ἐάσωμεν τὸ νῦν εἶναι (‘let’s leave on one side what the good itself is for the time-being’).Footnote ⁴³ The verbal adjective ἐατέον can also be found with an indirect question in the pseudo-Aristotelian work, On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias 975a19: Ἀλλ’ ἄρα εἰ μὲν δυνατά ἐστιν ἢ ἀδύνατα ἃ λέγει, ἐατέον (‘But we should aside whether what he says is possible or impossible’). This is how we should take the grammar of Rep. 421c3–5. As such, the Greek is completely natural.Footnote ⁴⁴

There is an interesting postscript to all this. In book V, towards the end of the discussion of the second wave of paradox, Socrates talks of the benefits that the guardians and auxiliaries will derive from being in the city. The harmony and fellow feeling that he has discussed mean that they enjoy security; all the necessities of life are provided for (without the stress that wealthy people have in managing their property). They will be even more fortunate than Olympic victors, who traditionally enjoyed not only honour, but also free meals for life at the state’s expense. At this point, having waxed so lyrical about the life of the guardians, he recalls their discussion from the beginning of book IV:

Socrates is clearly referring to Adeimantus’ challenge at the beginning of book and to his reply (419a1–421c5). But there is an enigma here: he says they promised to return to the issue of the guardians’ happiness if the occasion permitted. Where did they make this promise?

I do not think he ever made such a promise explicitly. But our translation of 421c3–5 offers some help. There, Socrates says that they should leave on one side the question of how nature apportions the different classes a share in happiness, the very question he answers in 465e5–466a6, at least for the case of the guardians and auxiliaries. At 421c3–5, he did not say whether he was leaving the question on one side permanently, that is, dismissing it, or whether he was just temporarily postponing it.Footnote ⁴⁵ If I am right in my translation of 421c3–5, we have a partial solution: when he says in book V that they promised to return to the issue (if the occasion arose), he at least implies that they earlier put it to one side. This dovetails with my reading of 421c3–5.Footnote ⁴⁶ By contrast, the standard translation renders the back-reference in book V a complete enigma.

All this confirms a point that some commentators have made against Popper’s critique of the Republic:Footnote ⁴⁷ Plato is not indifferent to the happiness of particular groups (especially not the guardians, which was the point of Adeimantus’ complaint). If he were, he would presumably have dismissed the question of their happiness permanently. Perhaps we can say that, although the happiness of the state is an organic, structural property, Plato still expects us to be concerned with individual happiness. There is a distinction between what constitutes civic happiness and what our concerns as founders are. As founders we are concerned to promote civic happiness, an organic property, but also to be aware of the individual happiness of our citizens.Footnote ⁴⁸

3.1 Introduction

We now turn to Aristotle’s views on the civic value of contemplation, specifically the question of how contemplation contributes towards civic happiness in the ideal state. As in my discussion of Plato, I shall approach this topic by tackling the broader issue of how Aristotle conceives of civic happiness, whether he sees it as an aggregative or an organic property. Once this is answered, we can explain how the contemplative activity of certain individuals within the state contributes to its overall happiness.Footnote ⁴⁹

By way of an introduction, I shall briefly set out the texts that we shall be consulting (in this Section and in Section 4), along the way giving an outline of the nature of Aristotelian contemplation.Footnote ⁵⁰ As before, I shall also use this introduction to describe the kind of value that contemplating has for the individual. This will help us answer our main question about its value for the state.

3.2 Aristotle on Civic Eudaimonia

We are now ready to address our central question: even if contemplating is intrinsically good for the individual, how is it good for the state? (For all the reasons just given, it cannot have instrumental value for the state, any more than it does for the individual.) But how exactly does it contribute intrinsic value in this context? I shall pose the question in terms of civic eudaimonia. In Pol. VII 1–2, Aristotle assumes that happiness or eudaimonia is a property that applies to the state and that a state reaches its telos when it attains happiness. So how does contemplation contribute to the eudaimonia of the state?

To answer this question, I wish to follow a similar strategy as before when dealing with the Republic. I shall start with the question of whether civic eudaimonia is merely an aggregate reducible to the happiness of the individuals within it, or whether it is organic in character. If we take the aggregative view, it becomes easy to see why individual contemplation is good for the state. Merely by contemplating, citizens can in principle add to the sum of happiness. If we take the organic view, matters will be less straightforward: we need to determine what the organic property of civic eudaimonia consists in and then establish how contemplation contributes to it.

The question of which view of civic eudaimonia Aristotle took is at least as vexed as with the Republic. Our texts seem to point us in both directions, and there is currently little consensus on the issue. By way of an introduction, I shall give a sample of texts that have been used to support the aggregative view and then turn to passages that seem to point towards the organic one.

3.3 Appendix: The Aims of the State in Pol. III 6

In Section 3.2.3, I argued in favour of the organic interpretation of secondary eudaimonia. But we should discuss what has seemed to some to be a problem with this view. In Section 3.2.1, we listed four texts from the Politics that have been used to support the aggregative view. We can safely say that two of them are clearly compatible with the organic view: II 5, 1264b15–24 and VII 13, 1332a32–4, which merely imply in some (unstated) way that civic eudaimonia requires the eudaimonia of some citizens. But the other two (1323a14–19 and 1324a23–5) might seem more problematic, because they could be taken as implying a more direct connection between the aims of the legislator and individual happiness. Consider again Pol. VII 2, 1324a23–5:

Martha Nussbaum, who supports the organic view for other passages in the Politics, thinks this text entails an aggregative (or as she puts it, a ‘distributive’) account of civic eudaimonia. The implicit argument here is that the best constitution aims at civic happiness; but, since it aims at the happiness of each individual citizen, civic happiness must be understood as aggregate of individual happiness. For this reason, she thinks that Aristotle confusingly embraces both the organic and aggregative views of civic happiness.Footnote ⁹¹

Now, perhaps organic interpreters can dig in their heals: the best constitution aims at organic happiness; this is maximised when each citizen is happy (for the reasons given in Section 3.2.3); hence the maximally happy state will indeed be one in which ‘every person, whoever he is, can act best and live happily’. But I think there is another way of accommodating this text (and the companion text quoted above, VII 1, 1323a14–19). We can see this by turning to a passage in Pol. III 6 where Aristotle talks directly about the purpose of the state:

I have numbered the different sections of this passage to bring out its structure. In (1) he sets out the two questions that he intends to answer, and the rest of the quote is his answer to the first (1a). (3) States the actual answer, while (2a) and (2b) state the reasoning that supports it.

The first of these premises, (2a), refers to Pol. I 2, with its famous claim that human beings are by nature political animals (1253a2–3). The claim here in III 6 seems to be that, because people are political animals, they seek to live together not only when they need help. There is an impulse in us that drives us to live together, even when we do not have to do so to meet our needs.Footnote ⁹³ This then cues a discrete point (2b): nevertheless (οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ) people also come together to seek mutual advantage for achieving their own ends, here specified as living the noble life (ζῆν καλῶς), that is, eudaimonia in Aristotle’s sense. Putting these two points together, we can see that Aristotle is distinguishing two rationales behind the state’s existence.Footnote ⁹⁴

Now turn to (3): ‘living nobly, then, most of all is the goal [of a city] for all in common and separately’.Footnote ⁹⁵ Aristotle does not say explicitly to what or whom the end belongs (hence my use of square brackets). But it must be the city: that is the question he has been attempting to answer in (1a). Yet some translate the sentence as if the end, viz. noble action, is the end of human life, both when lived in a society and when lived individually.Footnote ⁹⁶ But what he must be saying is that living nobly is the end of the state – for everyone in common or for individuals taken separately. In other words, the state exists to promote eudaimonia at two levels, for the citizens as a collective and for them as individuals.

These two levels, distinguished in (3), correspond to the two different rationales given for the existence of the state in (2). This is obvious in the case of (2b), which prepares the ground for saying that the state facilitates eudaimonia for the citizens as individuals. But I also think that (2a) helps explain what he means when he talks in (3) of the state’s goal as living nobly ‘for all in common’. To see this, we need to take a step back and ask why (2a) refers back to his famous claim from Pol. I 2 than human beings are political animals.

As expressed in Pol. I 2, this claim is intimately bound up with the thesis that the polis is prior to the individual, the thesis that we mentioned in Section 3.2.2, with its analogy between the state and a living body. The claim that human beings are political animals is stated both before and after this analogy (cf. 1253a1–18 and 27–39). So, to do justice to the fact that they are so closely related, we need to read them in the light of each other. This is not difficult to do: in saying that humans are by nature political animals, he means that it is part of their nature to live with others, specifically to form a part of a larger community that has a telos of its own; to serve a corporate goal. This is the desire to which (2a) refers. By contrast, (2b) points to the way the state can support a citizen’s desire to achieve individual eudaimonia.

The upshot of this is that Aristotle can perfectly well maintain an organic conception of civic happiness, while claiming that the state also exists to promote individual happiness.

4.1 Introduction

How many citizens would be expected to engage in contemplation in the ideal state? For Plato, the answer is clear. He is quite explicit that the class of philosopher-rulers is very small (Rep. IV 442c4). While somewhat bleak, this approach creates no tensions within his theory: the contemplation of the philosopher-rulers is needed to ensure the unity of the state, and the fact that the number of contemplators is very small does not undermine this goal.

For Aristotle, things are less straightforward. On one hand, he aspires to promote happiness as far as possible within the state. His pronouncements on promoting individual happiness are bold: ‘it is evident that the form of government is best in which every person, whoever he is, can act best and live happily’ (VII 2, 1324a23–5).Footnote ⁹⁷ Since contemplation represents supreme happiness (NE X 7–8), it is an activity he should be especially keen to maximise. On the other hand, he is often thought to identify contemplation with a highly specialised discipline, the study of the divine, the ‘highest’ objects in the cosmos. Here are two passages from NE VI 7 to that effect:

Other passages in the NE have been taken to suggest a similarly demanding view of contemplation.Footnote ⁹⁸ Scholars have identified this with Aristotle’s own metaphysical theology or ‘first philosophy’. If the Metaphysics is anything to go by, this sort of study would start with empirical observation of natural phenomena along with a survey of his predecessors’ views on the relevant topics, and then develop into an increasingly abstract investigation into substance, essence, and form, culminating in contemplation of the unmoved mover. If this is an accurate account of what is required for contemplation, Aristotle cannot reasonably expect more than a handful of citizens to engage in it.

How serious is this problem? Richard Kraut implies that it would generate an ‘intolerable paradox’ if Aristotle were to insist that, ‘in the best city, where people are as happy as possible, at most a few will achieve the perfect happiness that Aristotle equates with philosophical contemplation’.Footnote ⁹⁹ In reply, some might say that there is no paradox here, let alone an intolerable one. In the ideal state, the aim is indeed to make people as happy as possible, but the qualification ‘as possible’ might mean that they achieve only as much happiness as their natural capacities allow. For most people, this does not involve immersion in metaphysical theology. Nonetheless, given the right educational programme, they can still aspire to a life that is happiest in a ‘secondary degree’, the life of moral virtue and practical reason (NE X 8, 1178a9–20). Meanwhile, those few who possess the capacity for contemplation will be enabled to fulfil it. At the level of the individual, everyone will achieve as much happiness as is possible – for them.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

There is no formal contradiction in Aristotle’s position, even if he really does limit the scope of contemplation to metaphysical theology. But perhaps there is still a tension, if not a paradox. In his discussion of the ideal state at Pol. VII 14–15, he argues that its happiness requires leisure, where the necessities of life have been met and its citizens are free from labour of various kinds. But this in turn raises the question of what they are meant to do with such leisure: safe from enemy attack and well provided with external goods, how are they to use their time?

It would certainly not be enough for them to occupy themselves with pleasure and amusement; they need to engage in activity of some kind. Specifically, they need to engage in praxis, without which there can be no eudaimonia. By praxis I mean an activity that has its end in itself, a noble activity. Just and temperate actions have a dual role to play here. They help secure leisure by producing health and civic concord respectively. But in so far as they do this, they count as ‘production’, poiēsis, Aristotle’s term for action done for an end beyond itself. They are also instrumentally necessary for maintaining leisure: abundance brings dangers of its own, which justice and temperance are well-suited to address.Footnote ¹⁰¹ At the same time, being noble, they are choiceworthy in themselves; as such they also count as examples of praxis. This means that engaging in, for example, justice – attending courts and assemblies – also counts as using leisure to engage in eupraxia and hence to achieve eudaimonia. By contrast, contemplation has no end outside of itself. It is pure praxis, never at the same time poiēsis. It never helps us achieve or maintain the conditions of leisure; it is just what we use leisure for. Hence, it provides the perfect answer to the question of how to spend our leisure-time and ensure that it leads to eudaimonia.

In fact, Aristotle goes further than this, claiming that philosophy is necessary for happiness (1334a23 and 32), and he makes no attempt to whittle this down by allowing most citizens to make do with justice and temperance (thereby securing for themselves a life of secondary happiness). True, at one point he does (rather obliquely) let slip that not everyone is capable of contemplation (VII 14, 1333a27–9), but if he really thought that large swathes of the population are barred from the activity, why is there no mention of the fact?

This, of course, is only an argument from silence; as such, it may cut little ice with those who see no problem in Aristotle’s thought, not even a tension. In what follows, however, I shall work on the assumption that there is a prima facie tension in Aristotle’s philosophy, and seek to resolve it. I shall do this by arguing that Aristotle did not limit intellectual contemplation to metaphysical theology. Contemplation covers a broader range of intellectual activity, accessible to a larger swathe of the citizenry than is usually thought.

4.2 Contemplation and Culture

Before pursuing this solution, I wish to review a very different attempt to expand the range of contemplation in Aristotle’s ideal state. There is a view in the literature, going back to Friedrich Solmsen in the 1960s, that the virtue termed philosophia in Pol. VII 15 and the corresponding activity of contemplation should not be understood in the intellectualist way presented in the NE.Footnote ¹⁰² Solmsen argued that, in the Politics, Aristotle has in mind cultural engagement, particularly in mousikē, the combination of music and poetry. When he suggested the idea, he pointed to the way that the rest of the Politics proceeds: in VII 13–15, Aristotle talks about the way the legislator is going to promote his citizens’ correct use of leisure and plan their education accordingly. Even though he uses the term philosophia to describe the virtue that is to be actualised in leisure, when he goes on to describe the educational programme in book VIII, he is almost exclusively concerned with mousikē.Footnote ¹⁰³ If contemplation involves engagement in the arts, especially music and poetry, it is easy to see how most citizens can be expected to participate in it.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Solmsen’s view has proved controversial.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ One objection to his reading stems from its assumption that Aristotle ever uses the word philosophia to refer to mousikē and literary culture elsewhere. Certainly, it is a term with a very broad range, but it may always refer to some sort of intellectual pursuit. Whether it can be even broader than this and refer to artistic or cultural pursuits is far from clear, although it cannot be ruled out. Aristotle sometimes defines philosophia very narrowly: in Met. XII 8 1073b4, it is used in its most restrictive sense, to refer only to ‘first philosophy’ (metaphysical theology) and is distinguished from the mathematical sciences. But he also uses it to cover intellectual interests more generally. Metaphysics VI 1 groups together different theoretical disciplines as a species of philosophia, implying that practical disciplines could also count.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ But although it a very broad term, the crucial question is whether its meaning extends beyond intellectual culture. I can see no examples where the term obviously refers to cultural, for example, literary, pursuits. One advocate for Solmsen’s view, Carnes Lord, points to a passage in Pol. II 5, which talks of improving the citizens of a state ‘by habits, philosophy and laws’ (1263b39–40). He claims that ‘philosophy’ here refers to a society’s ‘traditional culture’, especially its ‘literary culture’.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ But we cannot be sure of this; the term might mean intellectual culture.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ One might make the weaker claim merely that the love of artistic culture is similar to philosophy. In Poetics 9, 1451b5–7, Aristotle claims that poetry is more philosophical than history because it deals more with the universal.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ But this still falls short of identifying literary culture as a form of philosophia.Footnote ¹¹⁰ In general, the evidence for taking the term philosophia to refer to artistic culture is weak.

Solmsen’s view also runs into difficulties when we look at the flow of argument in Pol. VII 13–15. In this passage, Aristotle mentions philosophia as part of a discussion about what virtues the statesman needs to cultivate among his citizens. Philosophia appears alongside courage, justice and temperance as the cluster of virtues required in the ideal state (VII 15). He also insists that the statesman should rank these virtues, depending on whether they are inferior or superior, and on whether they have instrumental or intrinsic value. He maps these virtues and their associated activities onto the distinction between leisurely and non-leisurely activities: courage is associated with purely non-leisurely activity, temperate and just activities are both leisurely and non-leisurely, while philosophia is purely leisurely.

But these are not the only considerations that the statesman has to bear in mind when thinking about the virtues and their corresponding activities. He also needs to take account of moral psychology. In VII 14, 1333a16–27, Aristotle sets out the division of the soul familiar to us from NE I 13, between the rational and affective parts, and, within the rational, between practical and theoretical reasoning. Immediately after distinguishing these three soul parts, he says that we can also distinguish different activities corresponding to them, adding:

It is at this point that he introduces the distinction between work and leisure as one criterion for ranking different virtues (and their corresponding activities). But shortly afterwards, he returns to the division of the soul to say that the statesman should always keep in mind the distinctions between the different parts of the soul (1333a38–9). Aristotle’s insistence that the statesman should bear in mind the different parts of the soul – including theoretical reason – is a major stumbling block for Solmsen’s view. By understanding philosophia in terms of cultural engagement rather than intellectual contemplation, he makes the theoretical part of the psychological distinction completely irrelevant to the argument, despite Aristotle’s explicit instruction to the contrary. (Engagement in mousikē is not an activity of the theoretical part, which is solely concerned with eternal and unchanging truths.)

Furthermore, when we ask ourselves how the statesman will take account of the psychological distinctions in his law-making, the obvious answer is to do precisely what Solmsen tell us to avoid: to import the theory set out in the NE. The highest part of the soul is theoretical reason; the virtue of that part is philosophia, and its activity is also purely leisurely, having no goal beyond itself. On this account, it is easy to see how the distinction between parts of the soul and between work and leisure converge, as Aristotle expects them to.

4.3 The Extent of Intellectual Contemplation

Let me now pursue my own way of extending the scope of contemplation, which will proceed by broadening the range of what counts as a theoretical science and so establishing that the theoretical intellect operates over a wide terrain, not just metaphysical theology. At certain points in the Metaphysics, Aristotle makes a three-fold division among theoretical sciences:

These texts make it clear that Aristotle has a broad understanding of theoretical (contemplative) science, one that embraces not only theology (metaphysics), but also natural science and mathematics. The highest form of contemplation is concerned with first causes; it is theological in nature. But those engaged in mathematics or natural science can still be said to contemplate, because they are activating the theoretical part of their intellect. And the crucial point for our purposes is that both these species of sophia are more accessible than metaphysical theology – as I shall now attempt to show.

This can easily be seen on the case of one of the natural sciences, biology. In the Parts of Animals 1 5, Aristotle compares biology with ‘first philosophy’ (i.e. metaphysical theology):

A similar point can be made about mathematics. Think for a moment of the most famous textbook in geometry, Euclid’s Elements, written around 300 BC and used widely in schools and colleges right up until the nineteenth century (and, in some cases, beyond): the collection of proofs that deduces a large number of propositions from a relatively small set of principles. Euclid’s work conforms, at least in general terms, to Aristotle’s conception of a science set out in the Posterior Analytics. The whole work operates at a level of abstraction that could satisfy Aristotle’s requirement of studying what is necessary and unvarying. Of course, there is a great deal of uncertainty and controversy as to how closely Euclid’s system matched the ideal Aristotle sets out in the Posterior Analytics.Footnote ¹¹³ Since Euclid post-dates Aristotle, we have to be wary of anachronism. But some of the theorems Aristotle mentions as examples in the work appear as fully worked out proofs in Euclid.Footnote ¹¹⁴ So it is highly likely that the level of difficulty that would be experienced by someone working through the proofs in an Aristotelian mathematics would be very similar to the level required by Euclid. And as is well, known, this level has been found to be widely attainable in schools and colleges down the centuries. So, in terms of accessibility, mathematics scores high, certainly higher than metaphysical theology.

4.4 Divinity and Contemplation in the Nicomachean Ethics

To solve the problem about the narrowness of contemplation, I have argued that Aristotle has a broad notion, embracing not only metaphysical theology, but also mathematics and natural science. But is this response compatible with those texts that associate contemplation with the study of the divine? All these texts, it should be said, come from the NE. The Politics presents no difficulty in this respect because it does not mention divinity at all.Footnote ¹¹⁵ So in this section, we shall examine the relevant passages from NE VI and X that link contemplation to the study of the divine and see whether they really do exclude mathematics and biology from the realm of contemplation.

4.5 Objections and Replies

I have argued that Aristotle has a broad notion of contemplation, with three species, all of which contribute to primary eudaimonia, the kind that is ranked over the life of phronēsis and moral virtue in NE X 7–8. This is true, even though one of them, the exercise of sophia in its unqualified sense, counts as the absolute gold standard.Footnote ¹²⁰ My purpose all along has been to argue for an understanding of contemplation that can be practised by a large number of citizens. But it could be objected that this provides only a limited solution to the original problem. Aristotle still seems to expect that his citizens will become experts in natural science or mathematics. Yet this seems a rather meagre extension: the number of professional mathematicians and natural scientists is still small.

By way of a quick response, we might remind ourselves that Euclid’s Elements formed part of the school and college curriculum for many centuries. So perhaps Aristotle is not being unrealistic (assuming, once again, that his conception of mathematics was at a similar level of difficulty). But perhaps this is a little naïve: did adolescents and college students really master all the books of Euclid, immersing themselves in all the proofs contained therein? Isn’t it more likely that they had only a partial understanding and that a lot of the time students relied on rote-memorising rather than diligently studying the logical relationships between each step of each proof?Footnote ¹²¹

To respond to this objection, we need to consider a further way of broadening the scope of contemplation, beyond saying that there are other types of sophia than metaphysical theology. This involves thinking about the threshold at which contemplation can be said to start. Within the case of mathematics, for example, there are degrees of participation in theōria. There is the professional mathematician, of course, but at the other end of the spectrum consider a student – in our terms, either at high school or in the first year at university – who has been studying geometry. What might this involve? I have already referred to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, which presents a model to which any science should conform, a tightly unified system of principles and proofs. Although deeply influenced by what was the most successful example in his day, mathematics, he thought the same pattern of scientific demonstration could be applied to other disciplines, such as biology. But because mathematics (including arithmetic and geometry) was so much at the forefront of his mind, most of his examples of proof are mathematical. The expert will have grasped the set of principles or axioms and then seen how a large number of theorems can be derived from them. They will have achieved a synoptic mastery of the whole system.

But consider someone who has only grasped a part of the discipline: they have studied a small number of proofs, but at least in these cases they are able to start with the first principles and see how these or some of them, taken together, imply the theorem in question. (They are not relying on rote-learning.) Having studied this far, they are able to stand back and contemplate what they have learnt. What part of their soul, according to Aristotle, is operative here? It has to be the theoretical subdivision of the rational part. It is not as if students use practical reason or technē in doing geometry, while professors use theoretical intellect. Such a student has already passed the threshold into contemplation.Footnote ¹²² So my reply to the objection is that one is still actualising theoretical reason, even if one has only a partial understanding of geometry or of any of the mathematical or natural sciences.

Nonetheless, this response gives rise to yet another objection. Partial understanding does not constitute sophia, the virtue of the theoretical intellect (even qualified forms of sophia, such as mathematics or natural science). Hence, whatever activity one engages in cannot count as activity in accordance with virtue; as such, it cannot be eudaimonia. So would Aristotle actually have recommended that the citizens engage in it?

In response, consider the following passage from NE X 7:

This passage comes towards the end of the chapter, after Aristotle has set out a series of arguments in favour of pursuing intellectual contemplation. Here he mentions an objection that could be raised against him, but then provides a response. When he talks of intellect being ‘small in bulk’ he is probably saying that the efforts of even the greatest human thinker are puny compared to the activity of the unmoved mover. His point is that this difference, however great, is no reason not to contemplate to the best of one’s ability. But, as a general point, this should apply also to anyone who has at least some ability to contemplate. Consider an adolescent (or a citizen heavily burdened with political tasks) who can follow a few proofs but is tempted to abandon the activity because their efforts seem puny compared to a professional. The argument Aristotle advances above forbids this type of defeatism as much as it forbids a professional giving up in the realisation that another being (the unmoved mover) far surpasses them: just a small amount of contemplation possesses so much value that it is always worthwhile. As soon as one passes the threshold into contemplation, the value of what one is doing should override any temptation not to persevere.Footnote ¹²³