Reeve presents an ambitious, three hundred page capsule of aristotle 39 s philosophy organized around the ideas of action, contemplation, and happiness. He aims to show that practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom are very similar virtues, and therefore, despite what scholars have often thought, there are few difficult questions about how virtuous action and theoretical contemplation are to be reconciled in a happy life. First, reeve aims to discuss the notions of action, contemplation, and happiness from the perspective of aristotle 39 s thought as a whole. To do this, he covers a truly extraordinary range of topics from the corpus, and his highly integrative, multidisciplinary approach is to be applauded.

Second, he plans to think everything out afresh for myself, as if i were the first one to attempt the task. Ix because of this, he only rarely engages in detail with scholarly debates on major topics. Third, reeve describes the structure of his text as a map of the aristotelian world, which proceeds through a holism of discussions that evolve as the book progresses. Ix x as such, readers should not expect a point by point argument about specific aspects of aristotle 39 s views about action, contemplation, and happiness that arise from his physical, metaphysical, and theological views. Nor should they always expect reeve 39 s first word on a subject to be the same as his last. For instance, in chapter 2, he introduces the idea of practical perception as the simple experience of perceptual pleasure and pain then in chapter 5, he extends this idea to include a highly complex noetic activity that results from rational deliberation.

Finally, reeve supplements his discussions with original translations of aristotle, many of which are extensive excerpts set apart from the main text. These translations are comfortably clear and readable, which makes them accessible to readers of all levels. Specialists will notice that some translations of key terms are rather traditional e.g. The first two chapters argue that we acquire our abilities to act and to contemplate in similar ways. Chapter 1, the transmission of form, explains aristotle 39 s views about the material processes by which human beings come to be contemplators and rational agents.

Since there is no bodily organ for rational understanding nous , the material processes that generate the human body in sexual reproduction cannot generate our understanding. Instead, understanding, both practical and theoretical, enters the human organism from the outside, which reeve interprets to mean that it comes from the circular motions of the ether that accompany but are not part of the sperm when it fertilizes the menses. Chapter 2, truth, action, and soul, explains the psychology of human agency and rational thought, the capacities of the soul that control action and truth. Here, reeve argues that our practical and contemplative activities share not only a material origin, but also a developmental starting point: sense perception. Because it is fallible, sense perception is not sufficiently controlling of truth to be solely responsible for human agency and contemplation, but it does provide a foundation for inductive learning. In the theoretical or contemplative case, ordinary sense perception is the foundation. In the case of action and practical thought, however, learning begins with what reeve calls practical perception, which is the experience of pleasure and pain in the perceptual part of the soul.

Practical perception then serves two purposes: to give us an object to pursue or avoid with our appetitive desires, which also occur in the perceptual part of the soul, and to provide an inductive foundation for practical thought. However, since practical perceptions are not themselves motivational states 41 43 , reeve could have been clearer about whether and in what sense this induction results in genuinely practical i.e. The next three chapters argue for the importance of theoretical thought in the practical sphere. Chapter 3, theoretical wisdom, argues that when we understand what scientific knowledge amounts to for aristotle, we can see that his epistemology includes ethical, political, and productive sciences as well as natural, cosmological, and theological ones.

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All these sciences have the same demonstrative structure, and rely on universal, invariant principles. To explain how this is possible, reeve argues that all scientific truths express a universal, invariant, necessary, and really obtaining connection between universals. But in particular cases, the indefiniteness of matter can create exceptions to these absolutely universal and invariant truths. 82 thus, reeve claims, even ethical laws or rules can be absolutely universal and invariant, but still hold only for the most part, because the matter involved in a particular situation rather than genuinely normative considerations, one assumes can cause an exception without threatening the strictness of the law itself. This, in turn, makes it possible for us to conceive of an aristotelian ethical science on the same model as natural sciences.

Chapter 4, virtue of character, goes on to argue that aristotle himself uses various sciences, including ethical and political ones, to define virtue of character as a state concerned with deliberately choosing, in a mean in relation to us, defined by a reason, that is, the one by which the practically wise man would define it. 103, reeve 39 s translation like any scientific definition, reeve claims, this one is stated in terms of genus and differentiae, so that the mean in relation to us is the genus of virtue of character. He then devotes most of the chapter to defending and explaining aristotle 39 s claim that virtue of character is a mean in relation to us. Compared to most scholarly discussions of these topics, reeve focuses comparatively heavily on the idea that virtues of character are relative to one 39 s political constitution and to one 39 s status as a human being man, woman, child, slave , and comparatively little on aristotle 39 s own explanation of the mean as relative to a particular time, place, agent, object, quantity, and so on. 1 chapter 5, practical wisdom, explains practical wisdom in terms of the so called practical syllogism. On reeve 39 s view, practical reasons have two aspects or parts, which correspond to the two premises in a syllogism. All practical reasons aim at a target, which corresponds to the major premise of a syllogism that states a universal, invariant, scientific law, grasped through understanding nous in the most general case, a definition of human happiness.

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And our practical reasons also involve a definition or defining mark telling us how to hit the target in a particular situation. This corresponds to the minor premise of a syllogism, and we grasp it through a different exercise of understanding which is a species of practical perception that reeve calls deliberative perception. 181 186 together, these two premises generate an action, which corresponds to a description that is validly entailed by the two premises.