I am currently looking for the specific source of a claim attributed to Aristotle. ‘the absolute good is contemplation and learning, not action’ (or a similar conceptual translation).
Could you please clarify which of Aristotle’s works contains this argument?
Aristotles description of the value of philosophical life is in his book Ethics. He says it is the highest good (not the only good). The idea was developed by the Stoics who went further and claimed that virtue was the only good. This includes the claim that virtue is acting in accordance with reason even if the consequences are not what you wanted because the consequences are outside your control.
Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying…or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
From Nichomachean Ethics:
7. 1. [1177a11] But if happiness [εὐδαιμονία/eudomonia] consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect [νοῦς/nous], or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already that this activity is the activity of contemplation.