Not only the Greeks in general — Aristotle no less than Plato — but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was an element of purely receptive "looking," not only in self-perception but also in intellectual knowing or, as Heraclitus said, "Listening-in to the being of things."
The medievals distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, of searching and re-searching, abstracting, refining, and concluding [cf. Latin dis-currere, "to run to and fro"], whereas intellectus refers to the ability of "simply looking" (simplex intuitus), to which the truth presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye.


p. 11 - Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948)

Josef Pieper Quotes

Not only the Greeks in general — Aristotle no less than Plato — but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was an element of...

Not only the Greeks in general — Aristotle no less than Plato — but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was an element of...

Not only the Greeks in general — Aristotle no less than Plato — but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was an element of...

Not only the Greeks in general — Aristotle no less than Plato — but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was an element of...