ABSTRACT
Phronesis, or practical wisdom, is grounded in Aristotelian philosophy but supported by multi-disciplinary literature within social science and has been conceptualised here for peacebuilding as a form of knowledge that (is):
Experienced
Embodied
Organically developed through experimentation
Uses tacit recognition of context patterns and
Demonstrates context-relational judgements
Phronesis draws heavily from lived experience. Employing multiple forms of knowing, it is an epistemology that integrates both subjective and objective experience. Knowledge is embodied and gut instincts and intuitive knowledge are valued. This responsiveness is a necessary tool for scanning and reading the nuances of context and lends itself to experimentation and organic, fluid development. Phronesis is fine-tuned to draw upon explicit but also tacitly held pattern recognition of context to guide action for the ‘particular’. Context, however, may be better understood as intersecting patterns in a given habitus. Judgements about ‘what to do’ are drawn from the tacit recognition of meaning drawn in the interpretation of the interplay of these patterns. Pattern recognition informs choices in particular situations and is processed fluidly and intuitively against what may or may not be viewed as possible in the given context. Difficult to name explicitly or to easily describe in words, such judgements describe and illustrate an understanding of ‘the context for action’.
