Phronesis

Phronesis (Ancient Greek: φρόνησῐς, romanized: phrónēsis) is an ancient Greek word for a type of wisdom or intelligence. It is more specifically a type of wisdom relevant to practical action, implying both good judgement and excellence of character and habits, sometimes referred to as "practical virtue". Phronesis was a common topic of discussion in ancient Greek philosophy.

For the academic journal, see Phronesis (journal). For the band, see Phronesis (band). For the album by Monuments, see Phronesis (album).

The word was used in Greek philosophy, and such discussions are still influential today. In Aristotelian ethics, for example in the Nicomachean Ethics, it is distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues – such as episteme and techne. Because of its practical character, when it is not simply translated by words meaning wisdom or intelligence, it is often translated as "practical wisdom", and sometimes (more traditionally) as "prudence", from Latin prudentia. Thomas McEvilley has proposed that the best translation is "mindfulness".[1]

Ancient Greek philosophy

Plato

In some of his dialogues, Plato showed his teacher Socrates proposing that having phronēsis is the same as being a virtuous person. By thinking with phronēsis, a person has virtue. Therefore, all virtuousness is a form of phronēsis.[2] In the mind of Socrates phronēsis equals virtue, they are the same thing.[3] Being good, is to be an intelligent or reasonable person with intelligent and reasonable thoughts. Phronēsis allows a person to have moral or ethical strength.[4]

In Plato's Meno, Socrates explains how phronēsis, a quality synonymous with moral understanding, is the most important attribute to learn, although it cannot be taught and is instead gained through the development of the understanding of one's own self.[5]

Aristotle

In the 6th book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Plato's student and friend Aristotle famously distinguished between two intellectual virtues: sophia (wisdom) and phronesis, and described the relationship between them and other intellectual virtues.[6] Sophia is a combination of nous, the ability to discern reality, and epistēmē, a type of knowledge which is logically built up and teachable, and which is sometimes equated with science. This involves reasoning concerning universal truths. Phronesis involves not only the ability to decide how to achieve a certain end, but also the ability to reflect upon and determine good ends consistent with the aim of living well overall.[7]

Aristotle points out that although sophia is higher and more serious than phronesis, the highest pursuit of wisdom and happiness requires both, because phronesis facilitates sophia.[8] He also associates phronesis with political ability.[9]

According to Aristotle's theory of rhetoric, phronesis is one of the three types of appeal to character (ethos). The other two are respectively appeals to arete (virtue) and eunoia (goodwill).

Gaining phronesis requires experience, according to Aristotle who wrote that:

...although the young may be experts in geometry and mathematics and similar branches of knowledge [sophoi], we do not consider that a young man can have Prudence [phronimos]. The reason is that Prudence [phronesis] includes a knowledge of particular facts, and this is derived from experience, which a young man does not possess; for experience is the fruit of years.[10]

Phronesis is concerned with particulars, because it is concerned with how to act in particular situations. One can learn the principles of action, but applying them in the real world, in situations one could not have foreseen, requires experience of the world. For example, if one knows that one should be honest, one might act in certain situations in ways that cause pain and offense; knowing how to apply honesty in balance with other considerations and in specific contexts requires experience.

Aristotle holds that having phronesis is both necessary and sufficient for being virtuous; because phronesis is practical, it is impossible to be both phronetic and akratic; i.e., prudent persons cannot act against their "better judgement."

Pyrrhonism

Pyrrhonism denies that the existence and value of phronesis has been demonstrated. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus explained the problem of phronesis as follows:

Thus, insofar as it is up to his phronesis, the wise man does not acquire self-control, or if he does, he is the most unfortunate of all, so that the art of living has brought him no benefit but the greatest perturbation. And we have shown previously that the person who supposes that he possesses the art of living and that through it he can recognize which things are good by nature and which evil, is very much perturbed both when be has good things and when evil. It must be said, then, that if the existence of things good, bad, and indifferent is not agreed upon, and perhaps the art of life, too, is nonexistent, and that even if it should provisionally be granted to exist, it will provide no benefit to those possessing it, but on the contrary will cause them very great perturbations, the Dogmatists would seem to be idly pretentious in what is termed the "ethics" part of their so-called "philosophy".[11]

Modern philosophy

Heidegger

In light of his fundamental ontology, Martin Heidegger interprets Aristotle in such a way that phronesis (and practical philosophy as such) is the original form of knowledge and thus primary to sophia (and theoretical philosophy).[12]

Heidegger interprets the Nicomachean Ethics as an ontology of Human Existence. The practical philosophy of Aristotle is a guiding thread in his Analysis of Existence according to which facticity names our unique mode of being in the world. Through his ‘existential analytic’, Heidegger recognises that ‘Aristotelian phenomenology’ suggests three fundamental movements of life including póiesis, práxis, theoría and that these have three corresponding dispositions: téchne, phrónesis and sophía. Heidegger considers these as modalities of Being inherent in the structure of ‘Dasein’ as being-in-the-world that is situated within the context of concern and care. According to Heidegger phronesis in Aristotle's work discloses the right and proper way to be Dasein. Heidegger sees phronesis as a mode of comportment in and toward the world, a way of orienting oneself and thus of caring-seeing-knowing and enabling a particular way of being concerned.

While techne is a way of being concerned with things and principles of production and theoria a way of being concerned with eternal principles, phronesis is a way of being concerned with one's life (qua action) and with the lives of others and all particular circumstances as purview of praxis. Phronesis is a disposition or habit, which reveals the being of the action while deliberation is the mode of bringing about the disclosive appropriation of that action. In other words, deliberation is the way in which the phronetic nature of Dasein’s insight is made manifest.

Phronesis is a form of circumspection, connected to conscience and resoluteness respectively being-resolved in action of human existence (Dasein) as práxis. As such it discloses the concrete possibilities of being in a situation, as the starting point of meaningful action, processed with resolution, while facing the contingencies of life. However Heidegger's ontologisation has been criticised as closing práxis within a horizon of solipsistic decision that deforms its political sense that is its practico-political configuration (Volpi, 2007). [13]

In the social sciences

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre called for a phronetic social science. He points out that for every prediction made by a social scientific theory there are usually counter-examples. Hence the unpredictability of human beings and human life requires a focus on practical experiences.

The psychologist Heiner Rindermann uses in his book Cognitive Capitalism the term phronesis for describing a rational approach of thinking and action: "a circumspect and thoughtful way of life in a rational manner" (p. 188). Intelligence is supporting such a "burgher" lifestyle.[14]

gollark: That's not some sort of universal truth, just a rough heuristic which is somewhat accurate.
gollark: I mean, those apply to some narrowly defined things in physics, for limited definitions of "action" and such, but not in general so far as I can tell.
gollark: I don't think so, unless you really stretch the definition most of the time or claim it's metaphorical or something.
gollark: Like "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" and such.
gollark: It's just that stuff like "thought isnt action. so things that started as thought are just concepts in action, the action is still the same action as all other actions, push and pull." and "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" don't seem like... semantically meaningful sentences. I mean, they're... valid sentences, but don't look like they're actually conveying any true useful information.

See also

References
  1. Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought, 2002, p. 609
  2. W. K. C. Guthrie - A History of Greek Philosophy: Volume 6, Aristotle: An Encounter (p. 348) Cambridge University Press, 29 Mar 1990 (reprint, revised) ISBN 0521387604 [Retrieved 2015-04-25]
  3. T Engberg-Pedersen - Aristotle's Theory of Moral Insight (p. 236) Oxford University Press, 1983 (reprint) ISBN 0198246676 [Retrieved 2015-04-25]
  4. CP. Long - The Ethics of Ontology: A Structural Critique of the Carter and Reagan Years (p. 123) SUNY Press, 1 Feb 2012 ISBN 0791484947 [Retrieved 2015-04-22]
  5. S Gallagher - Hermeneutics and Education (Self-understanding and phronēsis - pp. 197-99 SUNY Press, 1 Jan 1992 ISBN 0791411753 [Retrieved 2015-04-26]
  6. Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6
  7. NE VI 1140a, 1141b, 1142b
  8. NE VI.5.1142
  9. NE VI.5.1140b
  10. Nicomachean Ethics 1142a, Rackham translation with Greek key terms inserted in square brackets.
  11. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, III, 31
  12. Günter Figal, Martin Heidegger zur Einführung, Hamburg 2003, p. 58.
  13. Franco Volpi (2007) 'In Whose Name?: Heidegger and "Practical Philosophy"', European Journal of Political Theory 6:1, 31-51,
  14. Rindermann, Heiner (2018-02-15). Cognitive Capitalism: Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations (1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781107279339. ISBN 9781107279339.

Sources and further reading
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics trans. Terence Irwin (2nd edition; Hackett, 1999) ISBN 0-87220-464-2
  • Robert Bernasconi, “Heidegger’s Destruction of Phronesis,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 28 supp. (1989): 127–47.
  • Clifford Geertz, "Empowering Aristotle." Science, vol. 293, July 6, 2001, p. 53. HyperGeertz-Text: Empowering_Aristotle
  • Martin Heidegger, Plato's Sophist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
  • Gerard J. Hughes, Aristotle on Ethics (Routledge, 2001) ISBN 0-415-22187-0
  • Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Duckworth, 1985) ISBN 0-7156-1663-3
  • William McNeill, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
  • Ikujiro Nonaka, Managing Flow: A Process Theory of the Knowledge-Based Firm (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008).
  • Amélie Oksenberg Rorty [ed.], Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (University of California Press, 1980) ISBN 0-520-04041-4
  • Richard Sorabji, "Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74, 1973–1974; pp 107–129. Reprinted in Rorty)
  • David Wiggins, "Deliberation and Practical Reason" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76, 1975–1976; pp 29–51. Reprinted in Rorty)
  • Roberto Andorno, "Do our moral judgements need to be guided by principles?" Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 2012, 21(4):457-465.
  • The dictionary definition of phronesis at Wiktionary
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