An attentive consideration regarding the notions of thaumazein and being aphthonos
presupposed by Plato and Aristotle reveals the intimate reciprocal implication
of wondering/marveling and absence of envy. As characterized by Plato
and Aristotle, wonder depends namely on the capacity of being unrestrictedly
open for the manifestation of something radically undeducible from acquired experience or knowledge. This capacity is, in turn, eminently peculiar of being
good, whose nature is, according to Plato, intrinsecally denoted by absence
of envy, as shown by the cosmogonic activity of the Demiurge as well as by
Socrates acting as midwife of pregnant souls. The contrary attitude is hypottasized
by any form of normativity which pretends to exclusively deduce actions
and knowledges on the basis of prescriptions deriving from past experiences
or abstract generalizations. Such normativity reveals strong analogies
to the
envious person, since the action of this normativity is not capable of producing
openness for the generation of something authentically new.
