Three BIOS THEORETIKOS

Three BIOS THEORETIKOS I could translate the term in this chapter heading, “bios theoretikos,” as “the theoretical life.” But this translation would be misleading. Today we commonly think of “life” as the vegetative processes universal to all living things, such as nutrition and growth. The word “theoretical” may suggest hypothetical and impractical speculations, divorced from reality. What could “life” have in common with “theoretical thought”? The Ancient Greek did not think of life simply as vegetative functions. Life also took other higher forms, including sensing and rational life (life’s highest form). Vision, hearing, smell, touch, and taste are an animal’s most alive sense activities. And beings that possess these senses are more alive than those that lack them. Life is greater in a bird and in animals in general than in plants. Human beings have vegetative and sensitive life and the life of reason, freedom. Reason’s life is higher, more intensely alive, than vegetative and sensitive life. And we still rightly regarded it as life, since what is not alive has no ability to understand. We derive the term “theoretikos” from the verb “theaomai,” “to look at” or “to view.” The bios theoretikos does not consist in speculations divorced from real life. It consists in the contemplation, rational viewing, of reality. This is the highest manifestation of life. Hence, Plato states, “[T]he rich, brave, and wise man alike have their crowd of admirers, and as they all receive honor they all have experience of the pleasures of honor; but the delight which is to be found in the knowledge of true being is known only to the philosopher.” Werner Jaeger adds: Perhaps what is most characteristic among the merely human features of these first philosophers (who were not yet called by this Platonic name) was their specific spiritual attitude, their complete dedication to knowledge, and their immersion in contemplation, which to the later Greeks (but also certainly to their contemporaries), seemed completely unintelligible, yet evoked the highest admiration.1 The Greeks found the life of the reason in human beings to be life’s highest manifestation. Other civilizations failed to see a human life that pursues knowledge for it own sake to be the highest kind of human life because they subordinated knowledge to practical ends, such as surveying fields or building tombs. Simply to look at things with understanding for the sake of knowledge and 14 SCIENCE IN CULTURE understanding did not occur to them. Recognition of a human being as bios theoretikos was Greeks’ most original discovery. This is why so many branches of science arose among the Greeks. In his youthful work called, Protrepticus [Exhortation to Philosophy] Aristotle urged Themistos, King of Cyprus, to take up philosophy. Aristotle presented the King arguments, including one based on “nature’s intention.” Today we value science and learning for their practical benefits, and we treat science as a profession. But Aristotle approached the meaning of science by an analysis of our human nature. If we are a product of Nature, then we are the foremost, the highest, of all nature’s beings. Nature’s products characteristically act toward ends specified by their natures: natural ends. Evidence of this “natural end” appears most often in the last phase of development. First comes the less perfect. In the course of change it becomes perfected, reaches maturity, as it approaches its own natural best state. Aristotle based this conclusion upon the observation of natural processes. The chick breaks out of the egg before it even knows how to walk, fly, or obtain food for itself. It acquires these necessary skills and perfections over time. Aristotle observed that, when we examine the process of individual human development, we see that the bodily part matures first and the spiritual part matures later. Wisdom (phronesis) appears at the end of our lives, if at all, because we do not become wise all at once. In this sense, as a perfection, the last is the best and is development’s end or natural aim. So, Aristotle concluded: “[A] certain form of wisdom is our purpose by nature, and the exercise of wisdom is the final activity in view of which we have come to be. It is therefore clear that since we have come into being in order to exercise wisdom and to acquire knowledge, we also exist in this end.”2 This powerful formulation concerning the human life’s natural end is no arbitrary or wishful thinking on Aristotle’s part. It is the result of an objective analysis of nature. In this line of thinking Aristotle was solidly in the tradition of the first philosophers, such as Pythagoras and Anaxagoras, who said that we were made by God to acquire knowledge and look at things (gnosai kai theoresai). We should subordinate the other spheres of human life, including morality, to wisdom. “Therefore,” he said, “other things are done in view of the goods that exist in man himself. The things that are a good in the body are done for the sake of the good of the soul. We should develop moral perfection for the sake of wisdom, for wisdom is the highest end.”3 Aristotle still did not solve the question of what should be wisdom’s object. As he tells us, his concern was to establish the supreme position that knowledge for the sake of knowledge has in human nature: “[I]f wisdom is the highest natural end, exercise in wisdom would be the best thing of all.”4 Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is human nature’s natural end. .

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