in my own words:
- idea/prompt: how should we spend our free time? Plato says we should engage in festive dance and choral singing.
knowledge compressed
- “being in leisure seems itself to contain pleasure and Eudaimonia and the blissful life”
- “It is in leisure that the best activity that exists within us is to be actualized”
- relaxation is not leisure, but learning alone is also not leisure. Learning is a necessary, transitional phase and it is a gateway to leisure. But leisure itself is not the preparation but the end possessed.
knowledge acquisition
from the article by Kostas Kalimtzis (notes taken on 29th of march, 2026)
- leisure, if seen from the perspective in which it was first raised, that is, as a response to the question put forth by Socrates – what type of life is worth living?
- Plato was the first to explore the nature of scholê. His central idea is that attendance to the body’s needs results in busyness, the Greek word is ascholia – the opposite of scholê – and this is why we have so little time for inquiry
- Because leisure is a condition in which humans experience the best possible within themselves, one would have expected that Plato would have given considerable thought to its realization as a political end for the entire polis. Yet this he rejects. In the Laws, his final work, we learn that citizens are to enjoy ample free time, indeed there will even be laws to limit busyness, but that their scholê is to be spent primarily in festive dance and choral singing.
- (according to Plato) Games, music, and dancing are to be crafted by philosopher–legislators as imitations of the divine order. What he calls serious play is meant to instill the pleasure and pain preferences that will allow citizens to conduct their lives according to the laws for their common welfare. Philosophy is presented as the highest form of divine imitation and the most exalted type of serious play, but it is reserved for a tiny handful of exceptional people. In short, theôria, as a republic–wide objective to be pursued in leisure is never entertained. (my note: Plato believed theoria is only for the few, not for the general population. Elitist or kinda true?)
- Aristotle redefined scholê proper, as the condition within which human Entelecheia is actualized and declared it to be, for empirical as well theoretical reasons, essential to both human flourishing and to the polis’ survival.
- being in leisure seems itself to contain pleasure and eudaimonia and the blissful life. [Aristotle, Politics, 1338a1–3.]
- It is in leisure that the best activity that exists within us is to be actualized.[Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1177a12–13]
- In his Metaphysics we are told that the power to wonder, Thaumazein, impels humans to seek out the causes of things and thus we may safely conclude that it is wonder that naturally drives us to leisure, since the riddles of wondering are only to be formulated and inquired into in this carefree state
- Scholê is thus a sign of true freedom and is available to all citizens except when it is deformed, something which Aristotle shows occurs routinely in tyrannies.
- relaxation shall not be conflated with leisure. Leisure begins only after harsh demands for existence are satisfied and these survival needs call for strenuous effort as well as anapausis, which is literally a pause so that one may start to work again. If work is a tightening of the soul, relaxation, play and entertainments are its phases of recovery, its unwinding so to speak
- Nor is learning scholê. With respect to intellectual cultivation Aristotle occasionally uses the word diagogê, a word which literally means that something is being conducted or transported by something or someone.
- Learning may be said to be a necessary, transitional phase which transports us to the opposite bank where nous will be at the ready to function. Leisure is not preparation but an end possessed, and in fact the very word scholê, according to some scholars, may be derived from the verb echein which means to have or to possess. Learning and its travails and joys are definitely the gateway to leisure and would no doubt comprise most of the activities of a leisure culture, but even so it has to be distinguished from the end, just as learning to play the violin is distinguished from performing a violin concerto.
- Music, or theoretical physics, or even philosophy if conducted for pleasure, career, or profit or cleverness, when disconnected from the controlling hand of Nous as its moral purpose do not qualify as scholê
- n Book 8 of the Politics Aristotle conceives of musical education as the instrumentality that will set the groundwork for participation in leisure. He agrees with his teacher [Plato] who saw mousikê as a type of play for forging the moral fiber of the populace, but he went further to hold that that education in mousikê can become the experiential hub for sharing in the life of theôria.
- Scholê, as a way of life, it seems, is not to be determined by economics or technological progress, but from cultural and moral choices.17 And this view, though clarified by Aristotle, did not originate in philosophy. It had deep roots in Hellenic culture. Let us recall the myth of Sisyphus and how this man whom Homer calls kerdistos18 – the superlative for the person who uses mind as instrument for personal gain and self–interest – how this Sisyphus was deprived of all leisure and was condemned to overcome challenges that were devoid of any moral dimension, of any nous and any telos. In the face of our predicament which mirrors the ancient myth, I believe that not only Aristotle but the voices of all our cultures beckon us to find ways to make nous a possible way of life.
references:
[1]: https://apeironcentre.org/aristotle-on-schole-and-nous-as-a-way-of-life/