ABSTRACT
Contemplation is an activity (of relative physical inactivity) which is predicated upon the occupation of specific and peculiarly social and cultural spaces and places. By extension then, the more general and systematized vita contemplativa (more general and systematized to the extent that the vita contemplativa is the socially organized and demarcated province of contemplation) stands as the expression of the entirely and self-consciously social and cultural existence. It is a life which is, according to its own requirements, quite divorced from anything which might possibly be construed as existing by nature. This foundation of the vita contemplativa has its roots in Aquinas and through to Arendt. Aquinas initiated the case subsequently made by Arendt of the identification of contemplation with experiential and environmental quiet standing apart from the un-quiet of the mundane relationships of the fabrication of objective things. That fabrication is a problem to the extent that it tends to become identified as the essential and natural activity of humanity and, furthermore, to the extent that the products of fabrication tend to become reifications.
