"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit
quietly in a room alone," Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654. But then
there's Walt Whitman, in 1856: "Whoever you are, come forth! Or man
or woman come forth! / You must not stay sleeping and dallying
there in the house." It is truly an ancient debate: Is it better to
be active or contemplative? To do or to think? To make an impact,
or to understand the world more deeply? Aristotle argued for
contemplation as the highest state of human flourishing. But it was
through action that his student Alexander the Great conquered the
known world. Which should we aim at? Centuries later, this argument
underlies a surprising number of the questions we face in
contemporary life. Should students study the humanities, or train
for a job? Should adults work for money or for meaning? And in
tumultuous times, should any of us sit on the sidelines, pondering
great books, or throw ourselves into protests and petition drives?
With Action versus Contemplation, Jennifer Summit and Blakey
Vermeule address the question in a refreshingly unexpected way: by
refusing to take sides. Rather, they argue for a rethinking of the
very opposition. The active and the contemplative can-and should-be
vibrantly alive in each of us, fused rather than sundered. Writing
in a personable, accessible style, Summit and Vermeule guide
readers through the long history of this debate from Plato to
Pixar, drawing compelling connections to the questions and problems
of today. Rather than playing one against the other, they argue, we
can discover how the two can nourish, invigorate, and give meaning
to each other, as they have for the many writers, artists, and
thinkers, past and present, whose examples give the book its rich,
lively texture of interplay and reference. This is not a self-help
book. It won't give you instructions on how to live your life.
Instead, it will do something better: it will remind you of the
richness of a life that embraces action and contemplation, company
and solitude, living in the moment and planning for the future.
Which is better? Readers of this book will discover the answer:
both.
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