ABSTRACT
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that in order to attain the highest form of happiness, or eudaimonia, we must fulfill the human function of acting according to a rational principle, and we realize this, to the highest degree, through the theoretical intellectual virtues, especially philosophic wisdom. In this chapter, I apply a transcendental phenomenological approach to retrieve the Aristotelian theoretical intellectual virtues of intuitive reason (noûs), scientific knowledge (episteme), and philosophic wisdom (sophía), and I argue that Husserl’s phenomenological theory of reason, in part by virtue of its being unburdened by a problematic substance ontology, provides a means for reinterpreting the Aristotelian theoretical intellectual virtues in an improved manner that highlights the importance of recognizing both horizons of indeterminacy that surround all objects of knowledge and the necessarily complementary relationship between practical and theoretical reason. In view of these phenomenological insights, stemming from recognition of the significance of indeterminacy, a transcendental phenomenological reinterpretation of the intellectual virtues makes evident that philosophic wisdom must involve, in tandem with the theoretical clarification of sense, active attentiveness to the wide-ranging ethico-practical implications of theoretical understanding that horizons of indeterminacy suggest.
