ABSTRACT
The film Fresh is about a street-wise, preadolescent black boy who sells rock cocaine for one drug dealer and transports heroin for another. The context for Michael's virtue, then, is one in which social relations are worn thin by the selfish transactions of money, drugs, flesh, and violence. The film Fresh provides us with the narrative context to explore the concept of phronesis. Typical of most moral virtues, phronesis is a matter of degree. People are more or less practically wise, depending on their ability to keep learning from experience and apply what they learn in a changing world, as they also change. Although phronesis does not require formal education, it does grow through a kind of self-tutelage. Phronesis begins in cleverness—knowing the means to particular ends. The rest of the story illustrates how Michaels phronesis integrates moral understanding, flexible judgment, and imagination.
