contemplation

It may also be exercised contemplatively toward nature as a whole. In this case, practical considerations are held in abeyance, and we stand back from nature and look on it with a disinterested concern. Such an attitude is not only peculiar to rational beings but also necessary to them. Without…

…is at the same time contemplated: its appearance is a matter of intrinsic interest and studied not merely as an object of sensory pleasure but also as the repository of significance and value.

…encompassing various techniques of concentration, contemplation, and abstraction, regarded as conducive to heightened self-awareness, spiritual enlightenment, and physical and mental health.

” The pleasures that are the domain of temperance, intemperance, and incontinence are the familiar bodily pleasures of food, drink, and sex. In treating of pleasure, however, Aristotle explores a much wider field. There are two classes of aesthetic pleasures: the pleasures of the inferior…

…of outgoing and return in contemplation; and this account, showing the way for the human self—which can experience and be active on every level of being—to return to the One, is at the same time an exhortation to follow that way.

…was the interior way of contemplation to which anyone with divine assistance can attain and that can last for years, even for a lifetime. This contemplation is a vague, undetermined view of God that inhibits a human’s interior powers. The soul remains in “dark faith,” a state of passive purification…

…God by prolonged, almost constant contemplation. Where large numbers of hermits assembled in the same place, cenobitism (common life) emerged, and the hermits or monks (Greek monachos, “solitary”) elected one of their members abbot (Aramaic abba, “father”). Eastern monasticism produced the rules of Pachomius and Basil in the 4th century,…