A Philosophy of Prudence and the Purpose of Higher Education Today (Part IV)
The Paradox of Prudence
Like physei dikaion, phronesis also appears to be contradictory. Aristotle defined it as the “ability to deliberate well about what sorts of things conduce to the good life in general” but could produce “no demonstration” of its first principles, even though its particular actions were true in practice” (NE 1140a24-1140b30; 1142a11-30; 1146b35-1146a7). In other words, phronesis could not become a science (episteme), which was concerned with first principles that of necessity were always the same. Because its attention was on the particulars and the contingents of the world, phronesis could not start from universal premises or produce universal conclusions. But if there were so, how could phronesis deliberate about the good in general, especially as it could not demonstrate such a deliberation? How could phronesis have a theoretical capacity when its objects were particular?
This paradox about phronesis can be clarified by looking at Aristotle’s concept of nous (intellect) as something both divine and human and the source of theoretical reasoning, like noetic intelligence. Nous was “something divine” and superior to “our composite nature,” but it was also “more than anything else is man.” By following nous, humans could make themselves immortal and “strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us” (NE 1177b27-1178a8). Aristotle discovered that human beings possessed something within themselves that was different from them and yet paradoxically that was the best thing of them. This thing could be discovered by the cognitive faculty that Aristotle termed nous.
Humans possessed a divinity that was superior to but connected to them. Aristotle wrote that there were “things much more divine in nature even than man,” which included not only the heavenly bodies but also the creator god as a physical force (NE 1141b1-2; Metaphysics, 98b-984a). In the Metaphysics Aristotle stated that “first philosophy” studies ontology, eternal causes, and the “first mover” god who was “in a better state” than humans (Metaphysics, 1003a-1005a, 1026a, 1072b). Although this “first mover” was not a creator god, it was the one who set things in motion as a final cause. It accomplished this not by the act of creation but as the object of desire and thought that attracts all desiring and thinking things. Thus, when Aristotle spoke of nous present in nature as the cause and order of the world, he conceived of the world as being preserved by the rational and love-inspiring attraction of the prime mover (Metaphysics, 1072a20-1072b4; 984b15-20).
Nature (physis) therefore was reality moving towards the prime mover. Defining nature as a member of “the class of causes that acts for the sake of something,” Aristotle declared that “the form” of any reality and the “mover” of any nature “often coincide, for the what and that-for-the-sake-of -which are one, while the primary source of motion is the same in species as these” (Physics, 198a20-198b10). Physis was reality in its immediate form that moves towards its own final cause while simultaneously exist in a state of tension towards the prime mover as the ultimate final cause. The different “natures” that exist are only diversely experienced aspects of the prime mover’s rational and love-attracting permeation of the cosmos.
The evidence of the claim that physis was both natural and divine was the “experience of nous” itself. In Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle asserted that “the object of our search is this – what is the commencement of movement in the soul? The answer is evident: as in the universe, so in the soul, it is God. For in a sense the divine element in us moves everything” (1248a25-27).” Aristotle’s primer mover was a transcendent entity that still existed in the cosmos and generated a two-in-one motion that gave physis, including humans, a dual and yet single final cause (telos). This double-single movement of the soul towards the prime mover was what Aristotle called physis: it was both everywhere valid and changeable at the same time.
For humans, the path to unity with the prime mover was through nous: humans were to follow a single ethical direction with various adjustments made to remain on this path. Virtue was not the obedience of abstract rules but following phronesis as led by the primer mover’s pull. Phronesis consequently was the motion between the prime mover and humans that occurred within the nous of the phronimos. It was the motion of the divine-human nous of the phronimos to choose action in daily life (NE 1151a15-20). The phronimos looked to universals insofar as he was attuned to the prime mover, but these universals varied because the correctives were dictated by fluid needs. It was the phronimos’ judgment and action that became the standard of virtue because his attraction to the nous enabled him to find the right intermediates that testified to his goodness.