Camaldulensian Disputations

On the Active and Contemplative Life

characteristic ...to set down the types of living. "These things," said LORENZO, "are most excellent. But if someone were now to ask me whether there are also other duties which the human soul performs besides these you were mentioning? I would answer that there are indeed several more." imagination "The soul performs many," said BAPTISTA, "while it is in the body. But it does not escape you that when we investigate the life of man, only that is required which is so much its own that it belongs to man alone, and to no one else. What, then, shall we say belongs to someone, unless it is that toward which he is most inclined and disposed? For they Referring to the Peripatetic (Aristotelian) philosophers. said a thing 'lives' by that which is both its own and toward which it moves of its own accord.

If we wish this to be so, we shall never say a man 'lives' for the reason that he nourishes his body, or raises it from a tiny size to its proper stature, or produces another like himself. For these duties of life are not his own or unique, but are shared with crops and trees; nor again because he either feels or moves.

of beasts / of an ox

For how does he differ in this from the beasts? But it is because he understands, which he surely has from the mind; once you depart from man, you will find no living creature that shares in it. Now, it belongs to the mind both to act with reason and to contemplate the truth. Therefore, once those other duties of life—which are no more ours than they are the other animals'—have been excluded, we shall say that the life of man, by which he is truly man, consists in action and contemplation. For as to the fact that some strive to add a third type—which depends on pleasure—to those two, they seem to be vehemently mistaken. For although

compared to beasts / animal

most mortals—either given over to sleep and the belly, or charmed by the enticements of Venus A metaphor for sexual or carnal desire., and always face-down on the ground—behold nothing lofty, I do not see why they should be numbered among men rather than cattle. For as for the bodily pleasures by which the senses are tickled: since they are not from the mind but from the senses themselves, why should we think they ought to be ascribed to man rather than to the other living creatures?

Since, therefore, the mind alone is our own, unless we degenerate from our nature, we shall live with it as our guide: so that we direct all our pursuits either toward the necessities of life—and not for ourselves alone, but since we are born for community and society, let us consult the interests of parents, children, and all friends, and cultivate the just and the right—or, having either cast aside civil cares and actions or deferred them to another time, we may lift ourselves up to the contemplation of truth. Therefore, we either act or we meditate; nor does it disturb me that some, dealing with us too captiously, deny that contemplation is a kind of living. For they say that the name 'life' carries with it a certain motion, whereas contemplation itself is situated in rest rather than in motion. solution Even if I do not deny this—especially since it is written in the book titled Wisdom: "Entering into my house, I shall rest with her" A quotation from the Wisdom of Solomon 8:16; the "her" refers to Wisdom herself.—who nevertheless would not see that even if we must be free from external motions while we are engaged in the investigation of things, it nonetheless cannot be completed without some kind of motion? Alberti argues that mental activity is itself a form of internal "motion" or life. It remains, therefore, since we are inquiring into the life of man and not that of the other living creatures, that it consists either in doing things or in the knowledge of truth; and so in both, that if it is done by right reason, we both do something pleasing to the immortal God and deserve the very best from the human race. These things you [will find] among the ancient poets, whom in the ancient religion they called Theolo[gians]... In the Renaissance, poets like Orpheus or Homer were often called "ancient theologians" because their myths were believed to hide sacred truths.