Different viewpoints on interiority

Nocturne. James Abbott McNeil

When the space of interiority becomes a guiding authority, the individual must detect and distinguish central impulses, feelings and wishes from ones that are less central or conflict with one’s central motives. In other words, interiority must be divided into what is at the core and what is peripheral. In this picture, the measure of one’s actions is whether they spring from and express essential aspects of one’s identity or whether they come from a peripheral place. 

Rousseau’s Confessions 

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So if intellect is something divine compared to the human being, then a life of the intellect is also a divine life in comparison with a human life. But that doesn’t mean we have to follow the motto and think human, since we’re human, or ‘think on mortal things since we’re mortal’. No. We should transcend our mortality as much as possible and do everything we can to live our life by the very best element within us. Yes, it may be small in bulk, but in its power and exaltedness it far surpasses everything else [we have].

It’s also, surely, what you are. Because it’s the part of you that’s in charge; the better part of you.

So it would be absurd not to choose the life {of what you are}; your own life; to choose some other thing’s life!

And what we said before will apply here as well: what’s proper to each thing’s nature is best and most pleasurable for that thing. So that means that for a human being, a life of the intellect is the best and the most pleasurable, since that’s what a human being is (most of all).

So that’s the form of life by which you’re flourishing the most, too.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, book 10.