Contemplation, Action, and the Good Life

The following is an extract from an article (22 February 2014) in Homiletic & Pastoral Review by the late Thomist Dr Richard Becka entitled Contemplation, Action and the Good Life.

If you are the copyright owner and object to our using this extract, please contact us via the comments and we will remove it.

________________________

We are all familiar with the traditional talk about the grandeur of the human soul, consisting in the fact that it can become all things. As Aristotle teaches, the eye “becomes” blue when it gazes upon the blue waters of the seas. Non-knowing beings can only exercise their own nature; but knowing beings, in knowing, become the known, and, thus, Aristotle says that the soul is, in a certain way, all things. The knower becomes the known according to an intentional mode of being, later thinkers said. But, there is an important difference that seems to depend on the nature of the object of knowledge. When the object of knowledge has some perfection in the order of person, the knower tends to become the known, not only according to the intentional mode of being, but according to the natural mode of being as well. In other words, we tend to imitate, but selectively. When the object of knowing is some being on the sub-human level, this imitation is generally not prevalent, although some have pointed out an eerie likeness, at times, between people and their pets. We thus become like the things with which we spend the most time and upon which we focus our attention. For example, infants naturally tend to become speakers, and speakers of the same language as their parents and those around them. This whole idea is captured in the contemporary language of the role-model. The rattlesnake or the shark is not naturally a role model for us. With regard to these objects, we are content to become intentionally the known, to observe its movements and, perhaps, study its behavior; but, with humans it is quite different. Insofar as we know or judge something about them as a perfection, we tend to acquire that characteristic for ourselves, to make it part of our individual nature.

What I am getting at is the traditional dichotomy between contemplation and the practical life, at least, as it has often been presented with regard to the ancients. Thus, John Cooper, in his work Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, says: “Moral virtue only forms a part of the second life, and plays no role at all in the first. The intellectualist is beyond ordinary moral virtues…” Now, granted Cooper modified his view in a later article, and more recent writers have clarified much, but it seems to me that we are still left with too much of a gap between theoria (or contemplation), and action. If we consider what happens when the object of contemplation becomes the perfection of personhood, and the desire to know becomes the desire to be like the known, the contemplative life has a natural effect on the active life.

This seems to reverse the customary roles of the practical life as necessary for the contemplative life, in the provision of the necessities for general biological life, etc.  But isn’t the contemplative life of equal importance for the promotion of the moral life? Aristotle insisted on the importance of a good upbringing in becoming good, but Plato seems to have been more sensitive (at least explicitly) to the need for good role models in that upbringing. Later, Christian writers certainly stressed the transition from the desire to know, to intentionally becoming the known, to the desire to becoming like the known in one’s actual being. From St. Paul’s “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me,” to Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, to Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Transformation in Christ: the movement from knowing to being seems to characterize the focus of attention.

Without denying the distinction between contemplation and doing, the separation, or seeming desire to separate what has been distinguished, seems not to entirely suit the Christian mind. As Aquinas said: “the happiness that Aristotle is talking about in the Ethics is the imperfect happiness in this life.” On the question of speculative and practical science, it is worth noting a text of Aquinas at the beginning of the Summa. He asks whether theology is a practical science, because it treats of human acts. His answer is that it is primarily a speculative science, because it treats primarily of God, but includes, within the unity of the science, human acts, insofar as they relate to God — God as perfectly known in the Beatific Vision. If then the speculative science of theology includes knowledge of human acts, it would seem that the speculative science of philosophical psychology could include ethics, or human acts, as related to the fulfilment of that nature in the perfections of intellectual, moral, and theological virtue. The contemplative life then is not separated from the active life, but naturally issues from the desire and will to become the known, according to not merely the intentional order, but also the natural order and the order of grace; in other words, to issue in the desire to become as fully virtuous as possible. In respect to the person, then, contemplation and action would seem to be more closely related than is sometimes portrayed. In the order of acquired virtue, perhaps Aristotle’s language may have been somewhat responsible for this understanding, but we should also remember his criticism of those who resort to theory alone, and believe that they will thus become good. His insistence that good action requires a combination of intellect and character also speaks to the same active end, acknowledging, thereby, that the speculative character of ethics can only achieve its full nature as practical knowledge if it issues from the will and effort to become virtuous. Later, Christian writers certainly emphasized this practical and active consequence of contemplation with respect to the life of Christ and his followers. The relation of contemplation and action, then, is not merely a theoretical distinction with respect to human activity, but the focus of a dynamic tendency from the desire to become so intentionally—which is the desire to know—to the desire to become according to one’s nature. There is no equal dynamic connected with the desire to know beings less than, or other than, persons.

[…]

Too many commentators have assimilated Aquinas too closely to Aristotle, I believe. He was not a Latin Averroist, he was not Boethius of Dacia. And while I’m at it, I would like to say that I believe it is misleading to characterize his ethics as a natural law ethics, or an ethics of right reason. His ethics is a Christian ethic and, as he says, the perfection of Christian life consists essentially in charity, and the life of the Holy Spirit indwelling in each of us; there is no way in which the most excellent life is that of the intellectual, as such. When Aquinas talks about happiness, or the good life, there are two lives that he has in mind—this earthly life, and the afterlife. Aristotle only has one life in mind. Though Aquinas characterizes the ultimate, eternal life as constituted basically by vision, in this life, vision or contemplation takes a secondary role to the union with God through love. His words are: “It is better to love God than to know Him.” It is by Love that we merit the vision.