Section 7: Contemplation is the highest good

If living a happy life is engaging in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue. And the highest virtue will be the excellence of the best element in us. Whether this element is understanding or something else that is thought to be our natural ruler and guide and has insight into things noble and divine, whether it is itself also divine or only the most divine element in us, the activity of this in accordance with its proper virtue will be complete happiness. That this activity is contemplative we have already said.

Now this would seem to be in agreement both with what we said before and with the truth. First, the activity of contemplation is the best, not only because understanding the best thing in us, but also because the sort of things that can be contemplated are the best things that can be known[–namely, whatever is good, noble, or beautiful]. Second, contemplation is the most continuous activity, since we can contemplate more continuously than we can do any action.

Furthermore, we think a happy life has pleasure mixed with it, but the most pleasant of virtuous activities is agreed to be the activity in accord with philosophical wisdom. At any rate, philosophy, the love of wisdom, seems to offer pleasures wonderful for their purity and stability, and it is to be expected that those who have attained knowledge will pass their time more pleasantly than those who are seeking it.

Moreover, the self-sufficiency that is spoken of will belong most to contemplative activity. For while a philosophically wise person, as well as a just person or someone possessing any other virtue, needs the things that are necessary for living, [such as money and property,] once these things are adequately supplied, the just person still needs people toward whom and with whom he can act justly–and this is the same for the temperate person, the courageous person, and any other morally virtuous person. But the philosophically wise person, even when by himself, can contemplate. And the wiser he is, the better he is able to contemplate. The wise person can perhaps contemplate better if he has fellow-workers. But still, he is the most self-sufficient.

Further, contemplative activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake, since nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating. From practical activities, however, we get something apart from the actions we do.

Additionally, a happy life is thought to reside in leisure, since we are busy so that we can have leisure, and make war so we can live in peace. Now the activity of the practical virtues is exhibited in political or military affairs, but the actions concerned with these seem to be unleisurely. Warlike actions are completely unleisurely. For no one chooses to be at war, or provokes war, for the sake of being at war. Anyone would seem absolutely murderous if he were to make enemies of his friends in order to bring about battle and slaughter. But the actions of the statesman and citizen are also unleisurely, and–apart from the political action itself–such actions aim at power and reputation. Or at any rate political actions aim at happiness for oneself and one’s fellow citizens–a happiness different from political action itself, and evidently sought as being different.

So if among virtuous actions political and military actions are distinguished by nobility and greatness, but are unleisurely, aim at an end beyond themselves, and are not desirable for their own sake, while the activity of understanding, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in serious worth and to aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its pleasure proper to itself (and this augments the activity), and the self-sufficiency, leisureliness, unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man), and all the other attributes ascribed to the supremely happy person are evidently those connected with contemplative activity, it follows from all this that contemplative activity will be the complete happiness of a human being, if it be allowed a complete term of life. For none of the attributes of happiness is incomplete.

But such a life would be better than one in accord with what is merely human. For it is not insofar as a person is human that he will live such a contemplative life, but rather insofar as something divine is present in him. And to the degree that this divine element is superior to our composite human nature, to that degree is the activity of this divine element superior to the activities in accord with the human virtues. If, then, understanding is divine in comparison with the merely human, the life according to contemplation is divine in comparison with human life. But we must not follow those who advise us to think only about human things because we are human, and only about mortal things because we are mortals. Instead, we should, as much as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us. For even if it is small in bulk, it surpasses everything else all the more in in power and worth.

This divine element–namely, one’s understanding–would also seem to be what each person actually is, since it is the authoritative and better part of each person. It would be strange, then, if someone were to choose not to live the life of one’s genuine self but rather the life of something else. And what we said before will apply now: that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasurable for each thing. For a human being, therefore, the life in accord with understanding is best and most pleasurable, if indeed understanding is most of all what a human being is. The life in accord with understanding is therefore also the happiest.