Good Morning Everyone!! Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend. Sisyphus’ boulder is back at the bottom of the hill. Let’s push it as high as we can this week.

Last edition, we wrapped up our week focusing on reflection. This week, we’re going to build off that by examining what our favorite thinkers have to say about attention. However, I’d like to put a little spin on it. While most people associate attention with cognition or productivity, we’re going to examine attention as love, desire, and devotion. We’ll dig into the minds of our staples; the Greeks, Stoics, Aquinas, Buddhists, etc. We’ll also look to some more modern voices to see how these takes have evolved over the years. So let’s get into it.

Today, for our main course, we’ll look to Plato and Aristotle to set the foundation for the rest of the week. To burn that off, we’ll do a simple baseline exercise that will identify the subjects of our attention. To wrap it up, we’ll open up both Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for our Book Nook.

I’m starving, so let’s dig in! Thought Breakfast is served!

After five days of reflection last week, we’re on fertile ground. Friday left us off with reflection igniting direction. To set ourselves in the right direction, we have to have the right attention.

When you hear the word “attention,” you might think of the practical applications, such as: your attention span, cognition, productivity, etc. However, the subject of attention goes much deeper than the productive purpose it can serve. Plato and Aristotle both see attention as an orientation of the soul. Wherever we place our attention determines what we become aware of, and this is what we become.

To Plato, attention is not passive looking, but turning the soul towards what is real as a result of proper reflection. In his Allegory of the Cave, he shows us that an unreflective life is a life of misdirected attention.

Thomas Aquinas puts this into perspective very well when he talks about the nature of human learning. He says that we go from what is most obvious and hardly as real, to things that are more real but much less obvious.

Plato’s attention is the act of “turning around” (periagoge). In order to climb the ladder of truth, you must reorient your attention towards what is true. That being said, a lot of what is true is not made obvious to our senses, which is why Aquinas got that shoutout.

Distraction is what happens when your gaze remains fixed on the shadows of the cave. In Plato’s allegory, the majority of prisoners wanted to remain in the cave, choosing the blue pill in their own matrix. The philosophical equivalent is still largely true in the world today. People don’t care to reorient their attention towards higher and better things because the routine subjects of their attention are familiar, safe. This is why Plato sees attention as a form of morality. We attend upward and downward, toward truth or illusion. Some might argue that a middle ground persists where your attention might plateau, but to Plato the acceptance of that plateau would still be immoral, and thus you’re still attending to illusion. Over time, the soul will become what it habitually attends to. Maybe all of that is why Dante’s first level of Hell is reserved for the “indifferent.”

Plato’s successor, Aristotle, also gives his two cents on attention as intellectual virtue and habit. Aristotle says that human flourishing (eudaimonia) requires a cultivation of the right habits of mind. Therefore, attention is a practice of training your perception to notice what is relevant to acting well. Aristotelian virtue ethics emphasizes the importance of deliberate choice (prohairesis). This term depends on guided attention: What am I noticing? What am I ignoring? What am I privileging as important?

So to Aristotle as well as Plato, virtue emerges from repeated attentive choices after proper reflection. Attention ultimately shapes character.

Plato is attending more upward, towards the highest truths. Aristotle stars by attending downward, with more of a focus on practical wisdom and living well. Putting them together, we see how attention is both orientation and cultivation.

Attention is not merely noticing. It’s intentional awareness with direction. Before reflection, transformation, or habit… we must choose where to look. To the Greeks, attention serves as the foundation of all learning and all becoming.

Ask yourself:

You can name to yourself the top three things consuming your attention today, even mundane ones. Then evaluate if your attention is properly spent on these things.

“The mind’s eye must be turned away from the world of change until it can endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being.” - Plato, Republic (Book VI)

This small quote is Plato’s purest take on attention-as-orientation. He basically says that if you’re not willing at your core to become the best possible version of yourself for the greater common good, then you ought not even to participate in the “world of change” until you are ready to direct your eyes only towards the good of the highest order.

We’ll hand the mic to Aristotle to see his more grounded approach:

“Choice is not something that comes to be without thought and reasoning.” - Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III.3

This highlights the flow from attention, to deliberation, to action. Aristotle does a fantastic job of framing attention as the foundation of intentional living.

Munch on that for today. Watch where your mind’s eye goes. This one was a bit long, but we’re just setting the foundation for the rest of our week. As always, take it easy and come back tomorrow for another steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast!

Thank you for reading along with us today! If you enjoy this content, and want to start your days grounded in thought and mindfulness, I suggest you have a seat at our table! Smash that button below to check out more editions and subscribe!

Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast

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