Greek philosophy
Aristotle
384 – 322 BCE
Phronesis — practical wisdom — is knowing what this situation asks, which no rule can supply in advance. The oldest statement of the book's account of judgement.
Read alongside: Shape
- Start with
- Nicomachean Ethics
- Where they resist the book
- Aristotle assumes a stable community with settled ends. That is precisely the condition the book says no longer holds.
Works worth the time
Nicomachean Ethics
Practical wisdom as a capacity built by acting, not a rule learned before acting.
Read the work at Project Gutenberg ↗Read further
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Aristotle's Ethics ↗
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Where Aristotle appears
Judgement is a virtue, not a procedure.
Aristotle's phronesis is practical wisdom: knowing what this situation asks, which no rule can supply in advance. Arendt insists that action is unpredictable and irreversible, and that its remedy is not control but promise and forgiveness. MacIntyre supplies the word the book leans on — practice, with standards internal to it.