Aristotle: Lecture 7 Topic 6

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Aristotle Lecture 7 Topic 6

• Practical Wisdom and Akrasia

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• 1. The Platonic/Socratic Thesis
• Platos 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.

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• (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.

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• 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.
• 2.1 Five Kinds of Knowing
• a) techne craft/art
• b) episteme - science
• c) phronesis practical wisdom/ (tr.
  intelligence T. Irwin)
• d) sophia wisdom
• e) nous intellection/intellectual understanding

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• 2.2 Five 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) phronesis is concerned with things that
  could be otherwise, (not with necessary beings.
• Unlike b) episteme, then, phronesis 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)

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• Unlike d) and e) phronesis 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) phronesis is not
  concerned with the highest things (heavenly
  bodies/gods etc.
• Unlike e) nous, phronesis 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)

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• Definition of phronesis
• 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.

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

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• 2.3 Answer to the first two problems
• Book III Aristotle implies that phronesis 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 doesnt 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)

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• 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.

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• 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 ones body, or
  life with active cancer cells but no debilitating
  symptoms.

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• 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 Aristotles 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 phronesis relate to
  intellect? (Nous)