Aristotle: Lecture 7 Topic 6 Practical Wisdom and Akrasia

1.The Platonic/Socratic Thesis Plato’s Socrates is famous for holding two fundamental doctrines: (UV)There is only one virtue (all the different virtue words being words for the same thing); (VK)Virtue is knowledge. (UV) implies that one cannot have one virtue without having them all, but it is a stronger claim.

(VK) has two consequences Vice/Badness of character/Immoral action is ignorance. There is no knowing akrasia: (NKA)One cannot know what is right to do and then do wrong. In Protagoras, the principal reason for holding (NKA) is this: if you choose a rather than b, that shows that you think a is better than b; it is therefore impossible to think a is better than b, and yet choose b rather than a. This is only plausible on the following assumption: (P)It is impossible to think a is better than b while also thinking that b is better than a. Choosing b rather than a, is thinking that b is better than a.

2. Phronesis Aristotle does, where Plato does not, distinguish between the various kinds of knowledge. This is important for anyone holding that virtue is knowledge, for it, virtue, might be one of several different kinds of knowledge. 2.1Five Kinds of Knowing a) technē– craft/art b) episteme - science c) phronēsis – practical wisdom/ (tr. intelligence – T. Irwin) d) sophia – wisdom e) nous – intellection/intellectual understanding

2.2Five Kinds Distinguished Unlike a) techne is concerned with doing/production rather than making (1140b3-4). The activity of producing/making aims at a product/artefact/good that is separate from (and better than) the activity. Like a) phronēsis is concerned with things that could be otherwise, (not with necessary beings. Unlike b) episteme, then, phronēsis is concerned with things that can be otherwise (1140b2-3). (“No one-deliberates about what cannot be otherwise, or about what lacks a goal that is a good achievable in action.” 1141b15)

Unlike d) and e) phronēsis is not just about universals but also about particulars (1141b15). (“for it is practical and practice is concerned with particulars” Ackrill: “for it is concerned with action and action is about particulars” Irwin. Hence experience is more important than knowledge Unlike d) sophia (episteme and nous combined in relation to the highest things) phronēsis is not concerned with the highest things (heavenly bodies/gods etc. Unlike e) nous, phronēsis deals with particular facts which can only be apprehended by a kind of perception, rather than with the first principles of reasoning (1142a27). “for comprehension (nous) is of the definitions for which no reason can be given, while practical wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particular, which the object not of knowledge but of perception…” (1141b27)

Definition of phronēsis “It remains then that it (practical wisdom) is a true and reasoned state (of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for good action itself is its end.” 1140b4-6 tr. Ackrill “The remaining possibility, then, is that intelligence is a state grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about what is good or bad for a human being. For production ha its end beyond it: but action does not, since its end is doing well itself, [and doing well is the concern of intelligence.]” tr. T. Irwin.

2.4.Three Closely Related Problems Problem One: How does phronēsis relate to deliberation? Problem Two: Is phronēsis merely reasoning about means (instrumental reasoning) or is it also reasoning about ends? Problem Three: How does phronēsis relate to intellect? (Nous)

2.3Answer to the first two problems Book III – Aristotle implies that phronēsis is practical deliberation about means, and not about ends 1113a20ff. Book VI.12 Aristotle says that it is virtue which makes the goal/target right, and phronesis sorts out the things which are ‘towards’ the goal [ta pros to telos] (1144a7-9; see also 1144a20-2). End of book VI.12, Aristotle seems to say that you cannot have phronesis without being virtuous, apparently on the ground that reasoning towards an end doesn’t really count as phronimos if the end is not the right one. “For virtue makes the goal correct: and intelligence (practical wisdom) makes what promotes the goal correct.” (1144a7)

It would be really odd if Aristotle had such a technocratic and formalistic conception of practical wisdom, and claimed that our end happiness eudaimonia is given and therefore not in need of practical wisdom. This is true on both the dominant and inclusive readings of happiness/eudaimonia Wiggins thesis: a can be a “thing towards the end” b, in two distinct senses where: 1.a is a means/instrument or procedure for bringing about b (see 1113a20) 2.the existence of a is constitutive of b, or an element in its constitution.

An Aristotelian example. The end health is given, and medicine is just working out the most efficient or best means of realizing it. In some sense medicine aims at health. But is health given clearly and distinctly, regardless of situation. Situation: 75 year old man has mild cancer. The cancer may well kill him in 10 years. The cancer is treatable, but the treatment will last a year, has debilitating side-effects, which take a year for him to recover from. Is this a case of we know what good health is but not the means to it? Or is this a case that we need to know in more detail, in any situation, what is health? Life without the active cancer cells in one’s body, or life with active cancer cells but no debilitating symptoms.

If 2) is correct then deliberation about “what is towards ends” is more than just deliberating about means: it is also deliberating about ends. So, if he is correct, Wiggins manages to “dissociate Aristotle’s whole theory of deliberation from that pseudo-rationalistic irrationalism, insidiously propagated nowadays by technocratic persons, which holds that reason has nothing to do with the ends of human life, its only sphere being the efficient realization of specific goals in whose determination or modification argument plays no substantive part.” Wiggins, (1980) 227. Problem Three: How does phronēsis relate to intellect? (Nous)