A Philosophy of Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today (Part III)
The Recovery of Aristotelian Prudence
The recent interest in Aristotelian prudence is part of an overall attempt to recover the notion of judgment in political philosophy and pedagogy as a response to postmodern critics who have questioned the validity of theoretical reasoning and its fusion with practice.27 Convinced of the existence of such a gap, some scholars have looked to political judgment as a way to replace theoretical and scientific reasoning in order to reinforce rather than undermine the politics.28 In their task, these scholars have returned to Aristotle for guidance in the recovery of political judgment. For them, Aristotelian prudence (phronesis) is the model of political judgment that avoids the elitism of Plato’s philosopher-kings as well as the rigidity of theoretical and scientific reasoning.
One of the problems with theoretical or scientific reasoning is its rigid, abstract, and moral disengaged character that is focused solely on universal solutions to particular problems.29 This form of reasoning immobilizes judgment of any type and creates a politics of expertise and bureaucracy that is democratically unaccountable.30 Furthermore, as a solitary activity rather than one of shared deliberation, theoretical and scientific reasoning is essentially a product of self-interest rather than deliberation about the common good.31 Even if one were able to understand the common good, the person, as a scientific and detached observer, would lack the sympathy to promote and sustain it. The end result is an education that cultivates theoretical and scientific reason at the expense of the virtues of accountability, deliberation, and sympathy for the common good.
Unlike theory or science, phronesis is flexible, practical, and a product of a common understanding about particular, concrete action. However, this recent revival of the study of phronesis either downplays or steers clear of Aristotle’s natural sciences and theoretical reason. For example, Barber and Beiner claim that theoretical wisdom is not required for the cultivation of prudence, while Sullivan subordinate theory to serve practical ends, such as civic education, rather than the contemplation of the truth.32 Other thinkers, such as Steinberger, have argued that phronesis is an alternative form of intellectual virtue, like theoretical reason, but applicable only to particular matters, such as politics.33 In their attempt to supplant scientific reasoning with phronesis, these scholars have detached Aristotle’s understanding of prudence from both his conceptions of science and theory.
I argue that Aristotle’s conceptions of science and theory, particularly his understandings of nature and noetic intelligence, are critical to understanding Aristotle’s phronesis.34 Without these key elements, phronesis becomes either another type of theoretical reasoning preoccupied with particulars or a form of calculation concerned with power struggles. The Aristotelian conceptions of nature and theory therefore are critical components to the construction of phronesis. Without a properly understanding of these concepts first, thinkers make the error of engaging in a form of abstract reasoning themselves in their recover phronesis, a mistake that they accuse their non-Aristotelian colleagues of committing.
The Paradox of Nature
To understand Aristotle’s understanding of phronesis, we must first look at conception of nature with particular attention to the paradox that he pointed out in the Nicomachean Ethics where the “right of nature” (physei dikaion) “everywhere has the same force and does not exist by people’s thinking this or that . . . and yet it is changeable – all of it (kineton mentoi pan).”35 Aristotle’s statements are perplexing: physei dikaion is everywhere the same, with such acts like murder, theft, and adultery as always being bad, but all of it is also changeable (NE 1107a12-14). How can physei dikaion be both universal and contingent at the same time? And how is it related to phronesis?36
On the one hand, Aristotle argued that physei dikaion was universal: it had the same force everywhere in the forbidding of such acts like murder, theft, and adultery. On the other hand, physei dikaion was changeable in the sense that universal principles can have diverse actualizations according to time, object, aim, and method: “the right time, with reference to the right object, toward the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way” (NE 1106b20-23). The criteria of time, object, aim, and method allowed Aristotle to make the distinction between murder and killing. If certain acts fell short or exceed this criteria (the mean), then they were considered bad, for as Aristotle wrote: “There is neither a mean of excess and deficiency, nor excess and deficiency of a mean (NE 1106a25-1107a26).
For instance, murder is distinct from killing. When done at the right time, with respect to the right persons, and with the right aim and method, killing is naturally right. When overshooting or falling short of their mark, this action is murder. The act of murder did not break some abstract rule but it missed the mean in concrete action. Although the criteria of time, object, aim, and method may appear vague, for example, “do not kill at the wrong time, involving the wrong object, with the wrong purpose and method,” for Aristotle it was appropriate to a reality that did not yield a permanent, detailed standard. Moral and ethical acts were not governed “by any art of set of precepts” but rather “according to right reason” because what was right was “not one, nor the same for all” (NE 1103b31-1104a9, 1106a32). Each situation must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis with the underlying universal substance of ethics – the one way of being good – driving all of the means.37
The paradox of physei dikaion, being simultaneously universal and changeable in action, is personified in the excellent person (phronimos) who could choose the mean in practical situations (NE 1107a1). This phronimos was probably also the serious person (spouadios) who saw “the truth in each class of things, being as it were the norm and measure of them,” and the “man called without qualification good” who possessed not just phronesis but all the virtues, for “with the presence of the one quality, phronesis, will be given all the excellences” (NE 1113a30-35, 1144b30-1145a1). The phronimos or spouadios therefore was guided primarily by phronesis but also included other intellectual virtues, such as noetic intelligence, in his decisions.
Notes
27. Some non-Aristotelian examples of scholars who want to return to judgment for the philosophical and pedagogical purposes are Ronald Beiner and Jennifer Nedelski. Judgment, Imagination, and Politics: Themes from Kant and Arendt (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littefield, 2001); Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know It?(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Leslie Paul Thiele, The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Alessandro Ferrara, The Force of the Example: Exploration in the Paradigm of Judgment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
28. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Stephen G. Salkever, Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Peter J. Steinberger, The Concept of Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); William Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). These scholars reject Martha Nussbaum’s contention that Aristotle is too elitist as a guide for democratic politics. Martha Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
29. Barber, The Conquest of Politics, 151, 205; Beiner, Political Judgment, 75-79, 85, 106; Michael Walzer, “Democracy and Philosophy,” Political Theory 9 (August): 393.
30. Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk (New York: Free Press, 1981); Walzer, “Democracy and Philosophy.”
31. Beiner, Political Judgment, 16.
32. Barber, The Conquest of Politics, 209; Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Philosophy, 170-3; Steinberger, The Concept of the Political, 126-27.
33. Steinberger, The Concept of the Political, 117, 279.
34. I follow Arendt and Masters who embrace Aristotle’s natural science before recovering phronesis. Larry Arendt, “The New Darwinian Naturalism in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 89 (June): 389-400; Roger D. Masters, The Nature of Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
35. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1134b18-20, 30. All subsequent citations for Aristotle will be in-text. Translations are mine own.
36. One possible solution is that Aristotle was suggesting a form of deontological ethics with a universal substance and shifting accidents, making physei dikaion absolute in an essential sense and kineton pan absolute only in a formal sense. However, as will be shown, this interpretation is not as persuasive as the one with Aristotle recognizing that physei dikaion is substantively paradoxical.
37. The evaluation of moral and ethical situations on a case-by-case basis does not necessarily equate into moral relativism. Aristotle’s statement that physei dikaion was valid everywhere and that certain actions, such as murder, theft, and adultery, were universally evil was a clear rejection of relativism.
dox & then bring to bear on it your comprehensive understanding of Aristotle, what he intends & how he brings it to fruition. Many thanks!