Jeni Dhodary’s Reviews > Aristotle: Protrepticus: A Reconstruction > Status Update

"And what about the philosophers themselves? If you confined them together in the same house and an equal number of madmen in another house next door, you would get much, much, greater howls from the philosophers than from the madmen!"

"...the pleasure that comes from life is the one that comes from the uses of the soul, for this is being truly alive."

"...he who contemplates correctly is more alive, and he who most tells the truth lives most, and this is the one who is intelligent and observing according to the most precise knowledge."

"...nothing divine or happy belongs to humans apart from just that one thing worth taking seriously, as much insight and intelligence as is in us for, of what’s ours, this alone seems to be immortal, and this alone divine."

"...all the things that seem great to people are an optical illusion...For force, size, and beauty are risible and worth nothing, and beauty seems to be like that because nothing is seen with precision...What is long-lasting in human affairs, what is of long standing? It is actually owing to our weakness, I think, and the shortness of our lifetime, that these appear to be much of anything."

"...the ‘philosopher’ seems to have a will for a certain science that is prized for itself, and not on account of anything else resulting from it."

Continued: "And they turned their hands to philosophy throughout the whole of their domestic life, weaving the profit from it into their actions and their habits of mind, as well as into the construction of their cities and into the management of their private homes, as well as of skilled manufacturing and preparations for war or peace..."

"...mathematics contributes to purity of cognition and subtlety in thoughts, as well as to accuracy in its reasoning and contact with their own incorporeal substances, as well as to proportion and good temper and conversion to reality; and in the human person it provides order in his way of life, as well as rest from the passions and beauty in character traits, as well as discoveries...beneficial to human life."

To refute: "For animals too have small glimmers of reason and intelligence, but they have absolutely no share of theoretical wisdom, and this is shared only with the gods, just as humans are actually left behind by many animals in the precision and strength of their senses and their drives..."

"...when sensation and intellect are taken away, a human becomes roughly the same as a plant; when intellect alone is taken away, he turns into a beast; when irrationality is taken away but he remains in his intellect, a human becomes like a god."