Phronêsis in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Amy Gordon

“Choice” is a word that is bandied around today with remarkable ease and frequency. We often speak of “choice” with respect to trivial matters: the choice of where to eat for lunch, what to wear to an interview, where to do our grocery shopping. Or, we might consider “choice” and “choices” to refer more properly to decisions that change our lives, such as whether I should marry, whom I should marry, what I shall do with my life, and so on. Most recently, “choice” has been given a particular notoriety in ethics, as it is increasingly used to justify questionable practices (an option which completely misses the point of ethical debate – what is called into question is not usually the freedom of choice, but the advisability of certain choices, when they are considered alongside the fact that we are responsible to others as well as to ourselves).

I would like to look at conditions necessary for choice, that is, as located within the person who chooses. We often tend to think of choices as more or less isolated events bearing little connection to each other, events that occur uniquely in the absolute freedom of the deliberative subject. Aristotle, however, adds more to the notion of choice in the Nicomachean Ethics when he discusses phronêsis, which may be translated as “practical wisdom” (or “prudence,” as we will call it here for the sake of convenience).

It is interesting that Aristotle discusses moral virtues (those dealing with passions and actions) before he considers the intellectual virtues, among which prudence will be numbered. In beginning a consideration of moral virtue, Aristotle notes that the capacity for doing something well or badly is produced by concrete actions.¹ Aristotle comments on the notions of moral and intellectual virtue:

“Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name ethike is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit).” (Bk. II, 1103a)

The basic distinction is that intellectual virtue can be taught, whereas moral virtue seems to “happen” or “come about” from habit. Nevertheless, even here, note the parenthetical remark that teaching “requires experience and time.” It would be interesting to explore what role experience plays in teaching for Aristotle. It signifies that the activity which is pointed at by the words “teaching” and “learning” is perhaps more complex than a mere transferal of information through speech from one mind to another – it requires not only a teacher who knows, but a student who has a certain experience (and presumably an experience that is always growing). This is a point to which Aristotle alludes at the beginning of the text:

“Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs.” (Book I, 1095a, emphasis my own.)

In Book VI, Aristotle enumerates the intellectual virtues. Among these intellectual virtues he makes certain distinctions, based on the different kinds of objects that the intellect may consider or “contemplate.” The first fundamental distinction is between the necessary truths, or truths which do not change, and variable or contingent matters, i.e. things that can be or not be. Prudence is concerned with contingent things, and specifically, those that are within our power to do. Aristotle makes a further distinction between things that are possible for us – there is a practical intellectual virtue which is concerned with producing things (technê) and another virtue which is concerned with guiding action with reference to an end that is not a production (phronêsis). Certain actions are desirable for themselves, or in Aristotle’s words, “good action itself is its end,” whereas an action of making or producing something is for the sake of the product.

In reading these kinds of distinctions, one begins to catch sight of two different notions of good – that which is desired for itself, and that which is desired in reference to something else. For example, something which is desired in itself might be conversing with a friend, listening to a beautiful piece of music, making a winning goal in a game of soccer. Something that is desired for something else could be practicing scales at the piano in order to be able to play a beautiful piece of music well, building a house for the sake of living in it, cooking, and so on. Obviously, it is rare that the distinction between what is desirable for itself and what is desirable for something else is so clearly defined in reality. For instance, conversing with a loved one is always valuable in itself, and yet one might do so while at the same time receiving consolation from or counseling or giving comfort to the loved one. A person might enjoy things that are considered to be means towards something else, for example, cooking, or painting, or even practicing scales. However, it remains that there are some things that are wholly desirable for themselves, and other things that are not of themselves fundamental to the notion of happiness, although they play some kind of role in the service of happiness.

¹ “It is by playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities.” (1103b)

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