Quality Is Not an Act

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Aristotle

In a Quartz article, “The Secret to a Meaningful Life is Simpler Than You Think ”, contemporary philosopher Iddo Landau thinks many people fail to recognize what matters, or that they don’t realize they have to the power to assign different values of meaning to aspects of their lives to better their view of it. “For those who feel purposeless, Landau suggests a reframing is in order. He writes, ‘A meaningful life is one in which there is a sufficient number of aspects of sufficient value, and a meaningless life is one in which there is not a sufficient number of aspects of sufficient value.’” To put it another way, meaning is an equation where one can add or subtract value variables to get more or less meaning. A less complex approach is posed by Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London in the UK: “The meaning of life is not being dead.”

About the author

Aristotle (/ˈærɪstɒtəl/; Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs, pronounced [aristotélɛːs]; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.