Introduction

This volume collects essays from philosophers and psychologists who offer new perspectives and accounts of the traditional virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Within the Aristotelian tradition, practical wisdom is the main intellectual virtue responsible for the attainment of a good life, and the wise person, whose main exemplification is the good statesman, is the model toward which one should aim. Aristotle defines phronesis as the intellectual virtue of the “practical” side of the rational soul, that is, the one whose object is “what can be otherwise” (NE VI.7, 1141 a1). Its aim is the attainment of truth in action: Although virtuous ends are set for an agent by their ethical virtues – that is, the excellences of the appetitive part of the soul – the deliberation needed to determine the right mean each virtue consists in, as well as to discern which particular action better instantiates that virtue in each case, pertains to practical wisdom:

It is wisdom that has to do with things human, and with things one can deliberate about; … the good deliberator is the one whose calculations make him good at hitting upon what is best for a human being among practicable goods. Nor is wisdom only concerned with universals: to be wise, one must also be familiar with the particular, since wisdom has to do with action, and the sphere of action is constituted by particulars.

(NE VI.7, 1141b8–17) Thus, there can be no virtue without practical wisdom, and vice versa:

Again, the “product” [i.e., happiness] is brought to completion by virtue of a person’s having wisdom and excellence of character; for excellence makes the goal correct, while wisdom makes what leads to it correct.

(NE VI.12, 1144 a7–9)