IS IT TRUE that the morally virtuous approximate contemplative excellence? If so, then, as I argued in the last chapter, morally virtuous activity would be choiceworthy for the sake of contemplation as for an object of love. Aristotle’s happy person could make all his choices with an eye to contemplation without renderingirr elevant the intrinsic value of courage, justice, temperance, and the other moral virtues.1 In this chapter, I will try to show that, in Aristotle’s account of the intellectual virtues in NE VI, there is a structural similarity between practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom that would give us partial grounds for saying that the one is an approximation of the other. Of course, as I said earlier, which of these virtues is the paradigm and which the approximation cannot be determined solely by noticingth at there is an analogy between them. Nevertheless, it is important to notice the similarity, for in NE VI Aristotle himself seems to emphasize it. It is interestingfor two reasons. First, since Aristotle also believes that contemplative virtue is the most perfect exercise of our rational capacity, the analogy between the two kinds of reason suggests that practical wisdom is not just another kind of reason, but a derivative kind, deservingo f the title reason in virtue of its similarity to contemplation.2 Of course, at the beginning of NE VI, when Aristotle presents the two kinds of reason as analogous, he does not present practical reason as derivative from theoretical reason, and that leads me to the second reason his emphasis on the structural similarity is important. For if one already values practical excellence very highly, as Aristotle’s well-bred audience does, then comingto understand its similarity to theoretical excellence will be a step toward recognizing that theôria has a nobility that one might not have attributed to it before. Aristotle has already shown in books II–V thatmorally virtuous actions are praiseworthy because they are in accordance with right reason. When he turns to NE VI, Aristotle argues that the sense in which right reason is right is analogous to the sense in which excellent theoretical reasoning is right. So, if we admire right practical reasoning, we should also admire right theoretical reasoning. In other words, I believe the structure of NE VI is protreptic, leadingt he audience raised in fine moral habits to an appreciation of theoretical wisdom. Indeed, I will argue that by the end of NE VI Aristotle takes the reader a step further: to appreciate that in some sense theoretical wisdom is a standard for practical wisdom.

CHAPTER FIVE

Theoretical and Practical Reason

IS IT TRUE that the morally virtuous approximate contemplative excellence? If so, then, as I argued in the last chapter, morally virtuous activity would be choiceworthy for the sake of contemplation as for an object of love. Aristotle’s happy person could make all his choices with an eye to contemplation without renderingirr elevant the intrinsic value of courage, justice, temperance, and the other moral virtues.¹ In this chapter, I will try to show that, in Aristotle’s account of the intellectual virtues in NE VI, there is a structural similarity between practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom that would give us partial grounds for saying that the one is an approximation of the other. Of course, as I said earlier, which of these virtues is the paradigm and which the approximation cannot be determined solely by noticingth at there is an analogy between them. Nevertheless, it is important to notice the similarity, for in NE VI Aristotle himself seems to emphasize it. It is interestingfor two reasons. First, since Aristotle also believes that contemplative virtue is the most perfect exercise of our rational capacity, the analogy between the two kinds of reason suggests that practical wisdom is not just another kind of reason, but a derivative kind, deservingo f the title reason in virtue of its similarity to contemplation.² Of course, at the beginning of NE VI, when Aristotle presents the two kinds of reason as analogous, he does not present practical reason as derivative from theoretical reason, and that leads me to the second reason his emphasis on the structural similarity is important. For if one already values practical excellence very highly, as Aristotle’s well-bred audience does, then comingto understand its similarity to theoretical excellence will be a step toward recognizing that theôria has a nobility that one might not have attributed to it before. Aristotle has already shown in books II–V thatmorally virtuous actions are praiseworthy because they are in accordance with right reason. When he turns to NE VI, Aristotle argues that the sense in which right reason is right is analogous to the sense in which excellent theoretical reasoning is right. So, if we admire right practical reasoning, we should also admire right theoretical reasoning. In other words, I believe the structure of NE VI is protreptic, leadingt he audience raised in fine moral habits to an appreciation of theoretical wisdom. Indeed, I will argue that by the end of NE VI Aristotle takes the reader a step further: to appreciate that in some sense theoretical wisdom is a standard for practical wisdom.

1. THE SEPARATENESS AND SIMILARITY OF THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL REASON

We encounter the analogy between practical wisdom and theoretical virtue almost immediately upon beginning NE VI. Indeed, it is the first discussion to which Aristotle turns after his introductory demand for a clearer account of the standard of right reason.³ At VI.1 1139a3–5 Aristotle reminds us of a claim he made in I.13 that practical virtue is actually the good condition of two parts of the soul: the rational part and the irrational part attentive to some degree or other to reason. In other words, the activity of practical virtue is actingan d feeling in accordance with reason’s understanding ofwhat ought to be done.⁴ This account of moral virtue might lead to two mistakes about the picture of human psychology underlying it. In the first place, it might lead us to suppose that (1) while the irrational part cannot be in a good condition unless the reason it obeys is in a good condition, the good condition of the rational part itself is independent of the irrational part it directs. We might think a person can be quite correct in his opinions about what ought to be done regardless of whether his desires and emotions correspond to his considered judgments. If he does not desire as he believes—if, for instance, he is akratic—well, that is a problem with his desire, not with his reason. Furthermore, if the virtue of practical reason is independent of the good condition of desire, we might suppose, bearing in mind Aristotle’s realism about ethics, that (2) the virtue of theoretical reason is not in any interestingwa y different from the virtue of practical reason. In both cases, rational virtue is a matter of judging truly about facts of biology, cosmology, and mathematics on the one hand, and about facts concerningh uman action on the other. In the first two chapters of NE VI, Aristotle denies both (1) and (2). Theoretical and practical rational virtue are interestingly different, and they are so because the virtue of practical reason is not independent of the virtue of nonrational desire. This allows Aristotle to develop an account of the relationship between moral and theoretical virtue accordingt o which they are structurally analogous but genuinely different types of rational virtuous activity.

Let me begin with a sketch of Aristotle’s argument for the distinction between theoretical and practical rational virtue. In NE VI.1 Aristotle notices that theoretical reasoningconcerns objects that differ in kind (ta tôi genei hetera, 1139a9) from the objects of practical reasoning. Whereas scientific or theoretical reason examines things whose principles cannot be otherwise, calculative or practical reasoningexamines things that can vary (ta endecho-mena; 1139a6–8). Now, because the objects of theoretical and practical rea-soningdiffer in kind, Aristotle believes we must attribute our ability to study these two kinds of thingto two different parts of the soul. This is because, according to Aristotle, the soul must be similar to that which it thinks if knowledge is to be possible (1139a8–11). If things whose principles cannot be otherwise are genuinely different from things that can be otherwise, then the parts of the soul by which we know them must be different as well, and in corresponding ways: Theoretical reason must be fixed and unchanging, while practical reason must be able to change to suit the variability of the circumstances it addresses. Thus, Aristotle concludes that the strictly speak-ingrational capacity⁵ has two parts (merê), distinguished by the two kinds of object they reason about: The scientific part (to epistêmonikon) is set over things with unchangeable principles; and the calculative part (to logistikon) is set over the rest (1139a5–8).⁶

We are now in a position to begin to see how excellent theoretical activity is analogous to excellent practical reasoning. For in some sense, the work or function [ergon] of both parts of the rational soul is the same: truth (1139b12). Thus, since virtue is defined in terms of function (I.7 1098a8– 15), there is also a sense in which the virtues of practical and theoretical reason are the same.⁷ On the other hand, since the two rational parts seek truth about fundamentally different kinds of thing, there is also a sense in which they have their peculiar (oikeia) work to do, and thus a sense in which their virtues and virtuous activities differ as well (1139a15–17). Virtuous practical reasoning is truthfulness about things to be done, by oneself and others, while virtuous theoretical reasoning is truthfulness about the unchangeable aspects of nature and the world more generally.

Now, Aristotle will want eventually to argue not only that practical and theoretical reasoning are analogous but that theoretical reasoning is superior to practical reasoning. Furthermore, partly on the basis of this claim, Aristotle will argue that the philosophical life, devoted as it is to theoretical contemplation, is the happiest, and in particular that it is happier than the political life devoted to excellence in practical reasoning.We should pause amoment, then, to see what sense we can make of Aristotle’s claim that practical and theoretical reasoning are genuinely different activities, legitimately requiringd ifferent parts of the soul and different soul capacities to be their ground. I suspect readers have been content to accept Aristotle’s separation of theoretical and practical reason because humility requires us to admit that excellence in the one does not guarantee excellence in the other. Philosophers would probably not make good kings. But this piece of conventional wisdom is not grounds for accepting Aris totle’s claim that these two kinds of reasoning are fundamentally different activities springing from different “parts” of the soul. After all, not every distinction in subject matter calls for a new part of the soul with which to contemplate it. What I ought to do and what the city, through its officials, ought to do are different, but both are the objects of practical reasoning (11 41b23–24). And this is so despite the fact that we think people can be good at managing public affairs while making a mess of their personal lives. Furthermore, as Aristotle himself takes pains to point out, there is an important difference between praxis (action) and poiêsis (production), but despite this difference both are objects of kinds of practical knowledge (1140a1– 5).⁸ The situation is the same on the side of theoretical reason as well. Both mathematics and theology are theoretical sciences. Why, then, is the distinction between things whose principles cannot be otherwise and things that are changeable not an arbitrary basis for dividing the rational soul?

In fact, matters seem to be worse, for it is not at all clear that these objects really do distinguish theoretical from practical reasoning. Aristotle thinks that things happen in the natural world “for the most part” (Phys. II.5 196b10– 13). For example, the form of an oak tree is the final and formal cause of the acorn. It is genuinely explanatory, Aristotle thinks, to appeal to form when describing why the acorn sprouts and grows as it typically does. But not every acorn becomes an oak. Things realize their forms, their forms act as causes, only “for the most part.” So, as Aristotle has described the range of theoretically knowable objects in NE VI.1, biology and physics—the study of changing things—are not theoretical knowledge. The study of physics certainly isn’t practical, though.⁹ Aristotle must, in fact, mean to include the physical sciences amongthe types of theoretical knowledge (Meta. E.1).¹⁰ The point is that even when the theoretical sciences study things that change, they study the unchanging aspects of the phenomena. The objects of practical reasoning, on the other hand, are ta endechomena (whatever can be otherwise than it is) as such. That is, practical reason knows whatever concerns us as agents insofar as it concerns us as agents.¹¹ Ta endechomena in the sense relevant to Aristotle’s distinction between theoretical and practical reason are whatever can be changed by us or what can, by changing, affect our fortunes. Theoretical and practical reason do not necessarily think about different objects, though; they think about the world under different guises.

But if theoretical reasoningcan at some level study things that happen for the most part, then good chunks of practical reasoning look to be theoretical. After all, much practical deliberation—particularly artisanal reasoning—is about means to our ends; but this is just a matter of figuring out what can be relied upon, for the most part, to cause what. And insofar as practical reasoningconsiders what constitutes our ends, it examines the forms of our ends and their parts. No doubt, Aristotle is more impressed than we are by the difference between the products of craft and of nature. In the case of craft, Aristotle thinks we impose form on matter; natural objects, on the other hand, come to be and change on account of the form they have in themselves. Thus, for Aristotle there is a real difference between things that change through our own efforts and those that change themselves: The latter are natural and the former are not. But this distinction is bound to seem less significant to us, and probably not significant enough to warrant thinking of practical and theoretical reasoningas two distinct kinds of reasoning. Aristotelian scholars are accustomed to wondering whether science, as we now understand it, vitiates the function argument. Does it also threaten Aristotelian ethics by failing to support the ontological categories necessary for an interesting distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning?¹²

Finally, though the different objects of knowledge will sometimes require different methods of inquiry,¹³ methodological difference is not the basis for distinguishing theoretical and practical reason, according to Aristotle in NE VI, and it is not particularly promising anyway . Sometimes their methods will in fact look quite similar. At least, Aristotle encourages us to think so when he puts some bits of practical reasoningin syllogistic form (NE VII.3).¹⁴ At any rate, both kinds of reason draw conclusions on the basis of premises of one sort or another; presumably the same logical rules of inference apply in both cases. And eventually both kinds of reason ultimately need to appeal to premises that are established not by demonstration or deliberation but by dialectic and experience.¹⁵ Now, these observations about method support the thought that theoretical and practical reasoning are analogous. Indeed, at this point they look virtually identical, distinguished merely by an ontological prejudice and an accident of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. Practical reason does not seem to be a different kind of reasoning, much less a kind subordinate to philosophical contemplation and choiceworthy for its sake as an object of approximation.

Despite these reasons to doubt the coherence of Aristotle’s distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning, I believe it is a valuable and a legitimate one for him to make. The difference lies not so much in the methods employed by the practical and scientific faculties or in the difference per se between the particular kinds of fact they consider as they engage in a course of reasoning. Rather, the difference is in what it takes to be living truthfully with respect to the objects of theoretical and practical knowledge. Reason, like our capacity for nutrition, is a part of the soul; it is, in other words, a life capacity, according to Aristotle. Thus its activation is a way of living. Since the function of the whole rational soul is truth, we can call this way of living “grasping the truth” or, as I will tend to say, “living truthfully.”¹⁶ Aristotle believes that the manifestation of truthfulness (i.e., of reason’s performingits function) with respect to theoretical and practical objects is quite different. And so, though a person might be quite capable of living theoretically truthfully, this will not guarantee any capacity to live practically truthfully. In particular, Aristotle believes that without the agreement of the irrational part of the soul, a person will not be able to manifest a grasp of practical truth, and so will not be able, properly speaking, to have that grasp. “For theoretical thought (dianoia), which is neither practical nor productive, the virtuous and bad states (to eû kai kakôs) are truth and falsehood (for this is the function [ergon] of the whole dianoetic part of the soul); but for the practical and dianoetic part [the virtuous state] is truth agreeing with right desire” (1139a27–31).¹⁷ The good condition of a person’s practical reason is not enough, as it turns out, for him to live truthfully with respect to objects of practical concern.¹⁸

Let us take a case of deliberation, a paradigmatic expression of practical reasoning, to see how this is so. The objects of deliberation about my own life are not just anything that could be otherwise; they are the things I could bring about (1112a28–31). That is to say, I reason about them under the description “things I could bring about.” Thus, unlike idle reasoning about things that could happen, practical reasoning, as Aristotle understands it, carries with it an interest in changing things.¹⁹ The point of practical reasoning is to figure out which of these possibilities is good for me to bring about. This is not idle speculation. As Aristotle repeatedly claims, we deliberate not in order that we might know the variety of ways of obtaining the good but in order that we might actually have it (e.g., 1095a5–6, 1179a35–b2). In other words, the specific function of practical reason, the way in which it expresses or aims to express truthfulness, is choice.²⁰ Practical reason aims at a determination to do such and such.²¹ Action and choice (in normal cases the former follows unproblematically upon the latter)²² is the telos of practical reasoning; it shapes my considerations, for example, by getting me to look for the most expedient route to my practical goal (1112b16–17). But choice is a mixture of reasoning(a proper choice, according to Aristotle, is the consequence of rational deliberation toward an end) and desire” (1139a23). “Choice is desiderative thought (noû s) or intellectual desire (1139b4–5). Notice that choice needs more than mere rational wish (bou-leŝis); it needs nonrational desire as well. For Aristotle, choice is not a mere desire; it is a desire that moves the agent, barring outside interference.²³ The akratic agent shows that without some degree of cooperation from appetite, a person’s judgments of practical goodness will not express themselves in chosen action. In Aristotle’s analysis, the akratic makes a choice in the sense of determiningthe particular sort of action he ought to perform but fails to actualize this knowledge because of the interference of independent, nonrational desires.²⁴ The akratic’s knowledge exists only as a capacity; it is not active knowing. Thus, practical reason cannot express truthfulness without the cooperation of desire. Or, to put it more perspicuously, we cannot live truthfully concerning what we ought to do unless we choose well. But given what choice is, “the reason (logon) must be true and the desire right if the choice is to be good, and the one must assert and the other pursue the same things” (1139a23–26) Our ordinary, even nonakratic, experience confirms Aristotle’s point. It may be true that you really do know Serbo-Croatian, but if right now you cannot speak it or read it or understand a word, then in the most important sense you don’t know it. Graspingpractical truth—really possessingit and not just beingcapable of having it—just is the activity of choosing and desiringand actingwell.

This point about the exercise of practical reason holds not only in cases of deliberation, where we are tryingto decide what we should do. It holds for all cases of thinking about the world insofar as it interests us as practical beings, includingcases where we direct our attention to thinking about other people’s affairs. For correct thinking about the affairs of other people is expressed in appropriate feelings of pity and indignation (Rhet. II.8–9). And although the desire to act does not necessarily accompany pity and indignation, these emotions are inclined to make a practical difference (Rhet. II.1 1378a19–22).²⁵ But even when they do not lead us to act, it is nevertheless true that we do not fully grasp the practical truth on these occasions without the accompanying appropriate emotional reaction.

So, as it turns out, the proper objects of practical reasoning—ta endecho-mena, the things possible for us to bring about—do demand a kind of truthfulness peculiar to them and not shared with the objects of theoretical reasoning. Practical reason examines the possible actions available to a person with an eye to doing the one it would be good for him to do. It would be incorrect to say that practical reasoning is complete once it formulates the true proposition, “Ö-ingwould be best.” The interest of practical reason in the particular aspects of a scene relevant to action, the search for the most direct means to an end, the abandoning of a train of thought when reason finds out that, in this situation, action by me is not possible, all suggest that the proper ergon and final cause of practical reasoning is not idle knowledge but action. Whereas theoretical knowledge is manifested most fully in under-standing scientific demonstrations and the first principles from which they are derived, practical knowledge is manifested in choice. Anything less is incomplete knowing.

Theoretical and practical reasoning are analogous, then, because, when done well, both are ways of being truthful. They are genuinely distinct, however, because the objects of the two kinds of reason demand different activities if they are to be grasped successfully. Ta endechomena, the things that can be changed by us, are grasped in action and choice. Thus, practical truthfulness requires the activity of desire. The unchangeable objects of theoretical reason, on the other hand, can be achieved by reason alone. Theoretical truthfulness, then, is the activity of pure thinking.

So far I have been emphasizing the ways in which theoretical and practical reasoning are genuinely different, taking it for granted that the common aim of truthfulness, combined with similar methods of reasoning, will be sufficient to establish their similarity. But if grasping truth in the practical case is a matter of making good choices while grasping truth in the scientific case is a matter of contemplating demonstrations of truths from known principles, we may begin to doubt how similar these two modes of truthful living really are.²⁶ Why should we think we have not stretched the meaning of truth beyond recognition when we apply it to choices and actions as well as to propositions? If we cannot establish a robust enough similarity between the two kinds of truthful living, how likely will it be that love of practical truthfulness will ever develop, in the course of readingthe Nicomachean Ethics, to love of theoretical contemplation?²⁷

We can begin by noticing the connection between akribeia and truthfulness. There is not an English translation of akribeia that does it justice in all contexts. Usually it is translated as ‘precision’ or ‘exactitude’, though in NEVI.7 Ross translates the adjective as ‘finished.’²⁸ The word does have both the sense of perfection and of precision.²⁹ Something is akribês when it is rendered to absolute perfection, with neither too much nor too little.³⁰ And “in general, being akribês seems to amount (vaguely enough) to being of good epistemic quality.”³¹ Now, Aristotle says that, for each part of the rational soul, the virtue of each part is the state by which one is most of all truthful (malista alêtheusei; 1139b12–13). But how do we determine which state this is? Aristotle says that of all the good states of theoretical reason, philosophical wisdom (sophia) turns out to be its proper virtue because it is akribestatê (most akribês) (1141a16). This suggests, then, that akribeia is a mark of truthfulness. It is a sign that the truth has been perfectly grasped. Practical reasoningcan also be akribês, or precise. For instance, Aristotle says that craft reasoning may be more or less akribês (1141a9–10), although it is always less akribês than moral virtue (1106b14).³² This suggests that even though Aristotle tells us not to look for akribeia in ethical philosophy (1094b19–27, 1103b34–1104a10), he does not mean that practical knowledge is lacking in akribeia altogether.³³ Rather, his point seems to be that we should not look for as much precision as we would in theoretical sciences. So one reason it is appropriate to talk about practical and theoretical reason as modes of truthfulness seems to be that it is appropriate to measure their success in reaching their goal in terms of precision. I’ll discuss akribeia in more detail in the next section.

It is also likely that Aristotle considers both practical deliberation and theoretical speculation to be forms of reasoning because in a sense they are both precise in grasping the same kind of thing. Like Plato, Aristotle thinks of the good as the characteristic concern of reason. It is perhaps no surprise to find that, according to Aristotle, practical reason knows the good. Phronê sis, in particular, is concerned with the human good on the most general level (1140b4–6), but even technical reason aims at the good in its particular sphere (1140a25–30). Insofar as an artisan lets the intended product guide his actions, he accepts it as a source of value for his actions.³⁴ What may be more surprising is that theoretical reason, like its practical cousin, also contemplates the good. Of course, in the theoretical case reason will not consider the good as an end to be achieved. But according to Aristotle the good is not only a practical first principle; it is a metaphysical and physical first principle as well. For example, in the Metaphysics Aristotle says that sophia—the most authoritative kind of knowledge—is the science of that for the sake of which, and this is the good at the most general or universal level (Meta. A.2 982a19–82b10). And in NE VI Aristotle says sophia is directed toward the most honorable things (timiôtatôn; 1141a18–20, 1141b2–3). Even when Aristotle has a more modest conception of theoretical inquiry, for instance, in his biological and physical writings, we see that the good is never far from the surface. For instance, Aristotle argues that we cannot give an adequate account of the parts of animals without explaining their final cause or relationship to the good of the whole animal (PA I.1). In De Anima Aristotle differentiates the kinds of soul with reference to their ends and defines soul itself as the final cause of the body (415b9–17). Scientific explanation, then, seems to be very much a matter of getting it right about what the good of each physical thing is. In that way it is analogous to practical reasoning. In both cases, reasoning is more truthful to the extent that it is precise about the good in its sphere of inquiry.³⁵

We may still feel, however, that Aristotle is equivocating in some way when he says that the desires as well as the formulation of the appropriate reasons for those desires are true. So let me explain in greater detail what I think Aristotle has in mind. Aristotle thinks we grasp the practical truth not by entertaining correct propositions about what would be good for us but by desiring the right things for the right reasons. The affective element of morally virtuous action is partially constitutive of our fully knowing the human good. This seems to us an odd way to think about truth since for us truth is usually taken to be a feature of propositions that we can schematize in a truth table. But we should bear in mind that Aristotle’s picture of knowing the truth is never that of a person entertaining(with appropriate justifi-cation) a proposition that corresponds to reality. Aristotle’s knower himself corresponds to the object known. However we are to interpret the obscure discussion of the active intellect in De Anima III, it is clear that, according to Aristotle, noû s in some way becomes the form of the object it knows.

From this point of view it is not a gross equivocation on the notion of truth to say that the virtuous agent knows the truth by choosing and acting. In realizing the human good in his actions, he corresponds to the object of knowledge in the appropriate way.³⁶ We might say that for Aristotle, all rational excellence is a matter of being in a truthful relationship to the object of knowledge. We will, of course, want to know why choice is the appropriate way to grasp practical truth, while all other truth can be grasped by reason alone. I leave that question, however, for a fuller study of Aristotle’s moral epistemology.³⁷

So practical reason and theoretical reason are truthful when, in their different ways, they grasp precisely and fully the nature of the relevant good. Of course, desire on its own also aims at good things; and desire, like reason, is right when it aims at what really is good. There is an important difference, however, in the way reason and desire are directed at the good. While reason treats the good as the good, nonrational desire does not. Nevertheless, although the proper object of appetite is pleasure, its natural purpose (i.e., its tendency in a healthy person) is to lead people to the food they need.

Appetite, then, aims at the good though not as the good. Here, then, is a way that desire itself is analogous to the activity of theoretical and practical reasoning. In this light it is striking to note the way in which Aristotle draws an analogy between the movement of desire and the actualization of reason. Aristotle says that what affirmation and denial are in thinking (dianoia), pursuit and avoidance are in desire (1139a21–22). In other words, pursuit is desire’s way of saying“yes.” Thus, the activity of the desiderative aspect of practical virtue is analogous both to the thinking aspect of that same virtue and to the activity of purely scientific virtue.³⁸ And when desire is shaped by reason, as it is in choice, that rational desire becomes a grasping of the truth of the human good.

In summary, then, the activity of practical reasoning is structurally analogous to the activity of theoretical reasoning. Both kinds aim at being truthful and akribês. And, at least in part, the truth at which reason aims is inextricable from the good of the object of rational consideration. Furthermore, insofar as practical reasoning has a desiderative element, it aims at the analogue of truth—right avoidance and pursuit. Thus, the person of practical excellence and the philosopher engage in activities that bear a close structural similarity. Despite initial impressions, the politician’s activity is closely akin to the philosopher’s.

But there is more to be said than this. For according to Aristotle, theoretical contemplation is not only akin to practical reasoning; it is superior (1143b33–34, 1145a6–11). Is it also the case that practical excellence is derivative from theoretical excellence, so that it is right to say that its exercise is a teleological approximation of theôria? We have taken the first step by showing that, according to Aristotle, the two kinds of reasoning are analogous. In the remainder of this chapter I will argue that, according to NE VI, practical wisdom is theoretical wisdom in practice.

2. THEORETICAL ŜOPHIA VERSUS PRACTICAL WISDOM

After distinguishing theoretical and practical wisdom in the first two chapters of book VI and arguing that in both cases, though in different ways, virtue is excellence in truthfulness, Aristotle turns to an examination of the various theoretical and practical rational states: scientific knowledge and noû s, or grasping of the first principles of scientific demonstration, on the one hand, and phronêsis and craft knowledge on the other (VI.3–6). Phronê sis turns out to be the excellence of practical reason (1140b24–30). In the seventh chapter Aristotle turns to a discussion of sophia, or wisdom.³⁹ Aristotle argues that a person is wise when he both knows the scientific demonstrations of theological (or quasi-theological) truths and grasps the first principles from which they are derived.⁴⁰ In other words, sophia is the excellence of theoretical reason. This is a tendentious claim, and Aristotle knows it. Describing the nature of wisdom is not (as it was in the case of craft, for example) a matter of refining our understanding of an activity that we all more or less recognize as wisdom. It is to argue that a particular kind of intellectual accomplishment is the highest of which we are capable.⁴¹

Now some have interpreted this chapter as primarily an argument that theological science is the highest form of theoretical knowledge. After all, Aristotle frames the argument as a debate over which objects of full scientific knowledge are the most honorable and so are fitting objects of wise contemplation (1141a18–20). The point that wisdom is some sort of full scientific knowledge and is not practical wisdom is quickly won (or at least insisted upon).⁴² This interpretation cannot be correct, however. Immediately after Aristotle declares that theology or cosmology is sophia, he considers the argument that politics or practical wisdom is sophia and rejects it on the grounds that human beings are not the best things in the cosmos (1141a20– 22). In rejecting human affairs as the object of the highest form of knowledge, Aristotle is rejecting the claim of practical intellectual accomplishment to be the best. That’s because, according to Aristotle, the most perfect knowledge of human affairs is realized in action, not in theory.

Aristotle’s championing of theoretical knowledge may come as a bit of a surprise. He begins the chapter on wisdom by noticing that, in the arts, we call those artisans wise whose artistic ability is most akribês. Phidias, for example, the sculptor of the Parthenon, most perfectly realizes the ends of his craft, and is for that reason called a wise sculptor (strange to our ears) (1141a9–10). But, Aristotle says, excellence in craft is not what we mean when we call someone wise simpliciter. “We think some wise people are wise generally (holôs) and not with respect to a part or some other particular thing” (1141a12–14). This contrasting of intellectual accomplishment “with respect to a part of life” (kata meros) as opposed to “with respect to the whole of life” (pros to eû zên holôs) is a familiar one. It is Aristotle’s way of distinguishing artistic excellence from excellence in living well generally, that is, phronêsis (1140a25–28). Thus, when he makes this contrast again at the beginning of the chapter on wisdom, one might expect him to argue that wisdom simpliciter, as opposed to wisdom with respect to a part, is practical wisdom.

It is not clear how Aristotle’s first argument in favor of theoretical wisdom is meant to tell against the superiority of practical wisdom. He notices that Phidias and other master artisans are called sophoi because the craft as they possess it is most akribês (1141a9–11). Thus, as we saw earlier, akribeia is a sign of wisdom (1141a16–17). Why, though, is complete scientific knowledge more akribês than practical wisdom? Posterior Analytics I.27 gives three rules (which I will discuss in reverse order) for determining the relative akribeia of two sciences. One science is more precise than another when (1) “it depends on fewer items and the other on an additional posit (e.g., arithmetic and geometry)” (87a34–35).⁴³ It is not clear that phronêsis fares worse than theoretical wisdom with respect to this test and, in any case, the Posterior Analytics does not explain why this feature affects akribeia or epistemic quality. (Perhaps because, by being derived from fewer premises, it is closer to first principles and the source of truth?) I will leave it aside for now.

The second rule does seem relevant to the status of theoretical and practical knowledge, however. One science is more precise than another, Aristotle says, if (2) “it is not said of an underlying subject and the other is said of an underlying subject (e.g., arithmetic and harmonics)” (87a33–34). The underlying subject is the matter of an object. What Aristotle is saying, then, is that sciences that concern form alone are more precise than those that concern embodied form. Since phronêsis not only concerns the embodied human good but is realized in action, it will, by this measure, be less precise than scientific knowledge of god, a pure, eternally actualized form.

Although Aristotle’s greater respect for knowledge of the disembodied is, perhaps, at bottom the result of a Platonic disdain for matter, it is not a piece of mere prejudice. As I mentioned earlier, Aristotle accepts the common Greek belief that like can be known only by like.⁴⁴ The result is that he believes only form is truly knowable. Our minds can receive the perceptual and intelligible forms of things in the world, but (obviously) cannot accept their matter. (Otherwise our minds would literally become the things they sensed and knew!) Matter can be known only to the extent that it has form. Thus, when the mind turns itself to the examination of things that are, by nature, embodied, there will always be something in the object of inquiry slightly beyond the reach of the mind. But the situation is actually worse than this, for even when our minds do grasp the form of a material object, we do not grasp something that is necessarily, though only partially true. The matter of objects not only eludes our knowledge, it resists the form that shapes it. As Aristotle says, “matter cannot be easily brought under rule” (GA 778a4–9).⁴⁵ So, knowledge of the physical and human world is less precise, less complete, less akribês than the knowledge whose object is pure form. In the latter case, on the other hand, the mind in some (albeit mysterious) sense becomes the object of knowledge. Thus it grasps it completely.

There is evidence in NE VI.7 that Aristotle is thinking of akribeia as a matter of grasping form. The master craftsmen at the beginning of the chapter are most akribeis in their fields because they most of all are able to realize the form of a statue in marble.⁴⁶ The matter is too intractable for a lesser craftsman to express his knowledge of form. The virtuous person is akribês is a similar way. When he chooses the intermediate action, doing and feeling neither too much nor too little, he manifests his knowledge of the fine and good. Nevertheless, because excellent practical reasoning is knowledge of embodied things, it can only imperfectly do what theoretical reasoning can do perfectly.

Finally, let us turn to the third criterion of akribeia: “One science is more precise than another and prior to it if [3] it is at the same time of the fact and of the reason why and not of the fact separately from the science of the reason why” (87a31–33). Akribeia in this sense is surely a mark of intellectual accomplishment. As Aristotle often remarks, people are wise not in virtue of knowing facts but in virtue of understanding their cause (e.g., Meta. A1 981b27–29). Furthermore, he seems to have this rule in mind in NE VI.7 when he writes, “Then it’s necessary that the wise person not only know the things from the first principles [i.e., the demonstrations], but grasp the truth of the principles also. So that sophia would be noû s and epistêmê” (1141a17–19). This is an argument, though, about what sort of theoretical knowledge is sophia. It is not at all obvious that practical wisdom fails this test, for the wise person also knows both what he should do and why.

But perhaps Aristotle thinks that theoretical wisdom grasps “the why” more securely than practical wisdom does for the same reason practical wisdom is more akribês than craft. From the point of view of excellence in grasping truth, practical wisdom’s broader scope (it knows about all of life, whereas craft knows only a part) is important not simply because it incorporates a greater quantity of facts. What matters is that practical wisdom grasps a first principle—happiness or the human good—that explains the value of each part of life, including the crafts.⁴⁷ (Remember craft products are good because the ends they lead to are good.) It can provide a deeper, more systematic explanation of what craft knows in a more limited way. If this makes practical wisdom more akribês than craft, we can expect theoretical knowledge of the Prime Mover (if this is, indeed the object of sophia) to be more akribês still. The order of the entire world depends ultimately on the Prime Mover. Thus, whereas the practically wise person takes the nature and value of happiness as given, the student of cosmology understands why human happiness is ordered in the way that it is. Aristotle suggest something along these lines at Metaphysics A.1 981b27–982a1:

Everyone supposes that what is called wisdom (sophia) concerns first causes and first principles. So that, just as we said before, the experienced person seems to be wiser than those having any perception whatsoever, and the craftsman seems wiser than experienced people, and the master-craftsman than the manual craftsman, and theoretical science more than the productive ones.⁴⁸

I have constructed what I suspect may be Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that theoretical wisdom is more precise than its practical cousin. However, this is not the front on which Aristotle makes his case against phronêsis. Instead, he launches an attack on the dignity of the things practical wisdom thinks about. This is fortunate since, no doubt, the supporters of practical wisdom would feel that the test of akribeia was rigged in favor of the theoretical sciences to begin with. The question at issue in deciding what to call sophia is which form of knowledge is a more worthwhile possession. Theoretical sophia may be more akribês, but it’s a further question whether it is, for this reason, more desirable. As I read it, Aristotle has two criticisms of practical reasoning, each of which he formulates once with respect to phro-neŝis (1141a20–28) and once with respect to politics (1141a28–1141b8): (1) there are many things better and more divine than human beings and their affairs (1141a21–22, 1141a33–1141b8), and (2) “the wise”—that is, what one must know in order to be counted wise⁴⁹—is a plurality in the case of practical wisdom but unitary and universal in the case of theoretical wisdom (1141a22–28; 1141a29–33).

In arguing for (1), Aristotle simply asserts that the heavenly bodies are more divine than people are and calls for his witnesses Anaxagoras, Thales, and other men reputed to be wise because they know “extraordinary, amazing, difficult, divine (but useless) things” even though they are incapable of taking care of themselves (1141a34–b8). These wise men live as much among divinities as it is possible for a human being to do. So much is to be expected from Aristotle. Nevertheless, it is a point worth Aristotle’s while to make (and would have been more worth arguing for!), since Aristotle’s rival, Isocrates, claimed that the deeds of heroes and great men were the proper object of philosophia on account of their great superiority.⁵⁰ Of course, if Aristotle is correct about the superiority of the objects of theoretical study, that would be a persuasive consideration in favor of the superiority of excellent theoretical reasoning. Aristotle’s point is not just that these philosophers spend time with the divine objects of their thought in the way that someone might say he spends time with Plato by reading his dialogues. If we in some way become like what we know as we are knowing it, then philosophers who study the divine heavenly bodies actually make themselves similar (in a way) to the best things in the world.

In (2) Aristotle exploits the fact that practical reason examines the world from the practical point of view, seeking to understand how its changes could affect the agent’s good. Since what is practically good will depend on whom it is good for, practical knowledge is not a unitary accomplishment. There will be as many different practical knowledges as there are individuals (or groups, in the case of political science)—including animals—to be benefited.

There are two reasons this fact tells against the claim that phronêsis is sophia. First, if a person (a veterinarian, say) is practically wise with respect to dogs, he will be unable to apply that knowledge anywhere but the canine world. Thus, a person can be practically wise about the good even when there are many practical goods he does not know. But this limitation of understanding to only a part of nature was the reason we rejected the idea that craft might be wisdom (1141a12–14). Craft knows about only a part of life; practical wisdom knows about the whole thing. But now we see that phronêsis knows only about human life. Theoretical sophia, on the other hand, if it studies the first mover(s) of the cosmos, in some sense knows the principles of everything. But surely the wise person knows all. So phronêsis seems too limited to be wisdom. Second, we might think that the principles that knowledge grasps ought to hold true universally. But far from being universal, practical wisdom must be ready to act against whatever generalizations about the human good there may be if, in a particular circumstance, something else would be good. A good doctor, for example, will not prescribe aspirin for a headache to a patient who is allergic to aspirin. In an important sense, then, practical knowledge is not interested in grasping general principles of the good or even of the good of a particular thing. What it seeks is the ability to produce particular goods on particular occasions.⁵¹ Theoretical science, on the other hand, meets the expectation that knowledge provides universally applicable understanding of a subject. Once a person knows about colors, for example, or straight lines, his knowledge will apply wherever colors and straight lines appear. Thus, theoretical knowledge seems to be more of the character of knowledge than practical wisdom does.

So according to Aristotle the excellence of theoretical reason is true wisdom because it elevates us by causing us to know better things, and because it is more universal in its applicability and aim and, therefore, more perfectly captures the essence of what we take to be knowledge. These strike me as genuine reasons to consider theoretical wisdom to be superior as a kind of knowledge to practical wisdom. If knowing is what you care about, then you ought to prefer theoretical knowing. Of course, it is not clear that we do care about practical wisdom as a kind of knowing(even though it is plausible to define the function and good of reason as grasping truth). But Aristotle has already made the case in the function argument of NE I.7—and perhaps now we wish he had said more—that human happiness is a form of rational living. Thus, if practical wisdom is to have any claim at all to ultimate concern, it must be as a form of rationality. (Does the conception of rationality against which Aristotle measures theoretical and practical reason perhaps beg the question in favor of theoretical reason? It is notable, however, that he does not play his trump card, viz., that contemplation is the activity of god [NE X.8 1178b8–22]. The main argument of the NE is always made from the standpoint of our interest in human goods.)

But let us turn our attention to the interesting, and somewhat surprising, fact that in making these arguments, Aristotle assimilates theoretical wisdom to divinity and practical wisdom to bestiality. In order to argue that the practically wise is variable while the theoretically wise is not, Aristotle claims there is a practical wisdom, at least in a loose sense, for animals as well as for human beings. This leads Aristotle to suggest that practical wisdom does not distinguish human beings from animals: “For they say that the one who looks well to the particular things concerning himself is practically wise. . . . For which reason they even say that some of the beasts—those which seem to be capable of having foresight with regard to their own life—are practically wise” (1141a25–28).⁵² This observation is of profound importance for the project of the Nicomachean Ethics, for in suggesting that some animals may have practical wisdom, Aristotle plants the seed for the thought that the activity of practical wisdom cannot be our human function, and hence not our good. Ultimately, of course, Aristotle does believe that practical reasoning is a distinctively human capacity. The genuine exercise of practical reason is something more than the memory and foresight of some animals (Meta. A.1 980a27 ff.). (Notice how even here he presents the alternative position as something that seems to be true.) But he does nothing to dispel this misconception in NE VI.7. On the contrary, he uses the similarity between practical wisdom and animal “foresight” to further denigrate phronê sis. If we are willing to assimilate human and animal abilities to plan ahead, then we must be thinking of practical wisdom as a capacity to get what is good for us. This is, in fact, the aspect of practical reasoning which Aristotle stresses in this chapter (1141b8–14). But if that is so, then what universal knowledge is constitutive of phronêsis will appear to be of secondary importance. As Aristotle says, “if a man knew that light meats were digestible and wholesome, but did not know which sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health” (1141a25–28 [cited above], 1141b18–21).⁵³ People with experience but little learning are often more adept at producing the good result than are the sheltered and well-read (1141b16–18). But the intellectual accomplishment phronêsis gives a person is practical (1141b21). Phronêsis now looks to be an ineffective or, at best, redundant capacity to acquire goods. In arguing that theoretical wisdom is superior to the best practical reasoning, Aristotle seems to overshoot his mark. Sophia is more akribês and divine; phronêsis does not make us any more akribeis than animal desire does. We may now be wondering whether phronêsis is really such a valuable possession at all.

3. THE RELATIONSHIP OF PHRONEŜIS TO THEORETICAL WISDOM

In the wake of NE VI.7, it is unclear how the two kinds of truthfulness are connected to happiness. Sophia, on the one hand, has been celebrated as useless, while phronêsis has come close to being demoted to an animal accomplishment. Thus VI.7 leads directly (or almost directly)⁵⁴ to the aporiai of VI.12. They are: (1) What use is sophia, since it is not in any way concerned with human happiness (1143b18–20)? (2) What use is phronêsis, given that, if our desires are in a good condition, we will reliably go for the good regardless of whether we know it? Indeed, even if we don’t have perfectly trained desires, all we need is to obey someone else who knows what we ought to do (1143b20–33). Finally, (3) “in addition to these problems, it would seem to be strange if [practical wisdom] were authoritative over sophia even though it’s worse than sophia; but the art producingea ch thing rules it and issues orders about it” (1143b33–35). In order to solve these aporiai, particularly the second, Aristotle must rehabilitate the value of practical wisdom. Phronêsis is different from mere animal cunninga t acquiring the goods of fortune, and it is essential for human happiness. Students of Aristotle expect that this reassessment of the importance of practical rationality must come at some point, but when it does we may wonder if it will weaken Aristotle’s claim that excellent theoretical reasoningi s superior. I will spend the last part of this chapter examining how Aristotle answers the problems raised in these aporiai, particularly the second and third, because I believe his discussion explains how, even in its rehabilitated form, the activity of practical wisdom is subordinate to and acts for the sake of theoretical wisdom.

The solution to the first aporia is fairly straightforward and I will not discuss it here. In brief, Aristotle claims that sophia is useful for happiness because its exercise constitutes happiness (1144a3–6).⁵⁵

The passage in which Aristotle solves the second aporia includes some of the most notoriously difficult claims to interpret in the entire Nicomachean Ethics. In my discussion I will try as much as possible to avoid the thorny issues surrounding what role in particular Aristotle intends phronêsis to play in practical virtue and what its connection to cleverness (deinotêta) and dis-coveringthe means to an end is meant to be. Instead, I will concentrate on Aristotle’s claims about what intellectual practical excellence adds to nonrational dispositions to pursue what is good. For it seems that Aristotle’s primary purpose in this passage is to rehabilitate the status of practical wisdom after the beating he gave it in VI.7. Phronêsis perfects a distinctively human function, Aristotle argues now, and what it enables us to do is not something of which beasts are capable.

In response to the charge that we are no more able to acquire the noble by knowing it, Aristotle asks us to step back to an earlier stage of the Nico-machean Ethics. In book II, when he was first defining moral virtue and the actions it produces, he said that although a person does not have to be virtuous in order to do actions that look virtuous from an external point of view, a fully virtuous action is one performed in a virtuous way (1105b5–9). In other words, a fully virtuous action is not just the one that is intermediate; it is one that is chosen and chosen for itself (1144a13–20). Now, as we saw earlier, choice is a kind of desire. And no matter how clever our reason is in figuring out how to achieve the general object of desire in this situation, if the desire is not right, there will be nothing laudable in the cleverness (1144a20–28). Thus the denigrators of practical wisdom are right to the extent that they say the value of practical reasoning depends on having the right emotional dispositions. But we also learned that choice is the termination of a train of rational deliberation. This suggests that an action will not be chosen, much less fully virtuous, unless it springs from practical reasoning as well as from right desire.

Now the origin of chosen action in reason does not on its own establish that it is any particular excellence of practical reasoning that makes us better able to achieve the good. Aristotle claims here that cleverness at reaching a preestablished goal is not the same thing as phronêsis or practical intellectual excellence (1144a23–29). So, at this point, it looks as though if we have good habits of desire, mere cleverness should be sufficient to satisfy them.

But Aristotle’s purpose here at the end of VI.12 is to remind us that fully excellent human action is the product of choice. As such, excellent human action is the product of reasoning of some sort or other. Thus a human being’s capacity to pursue and secure his good, unlike the same sort of capacity in an animal, is an expression of human rationality.

But once we see this, we are in a position to see that excellence in practical reasoning transforms our nonrational desires for our good. At the beginning of VI.13 Aristotle says we need to reexamine moral virtue in light of the discussion of the connection between reasoning and desire (1144b1). Just as there is a difference between cleverness oriented by right desire and cleverness on its own, so too there is a difference between the nonrational state of soul that we tend to call virtue—Aristotle calls it “natural virtue”—and full virtue, which implies the presence of rational excellence. Natural virtue is an innate tendency to desire the kinds of things fully virtuous people desire, but it is in no way peculiar to adult human beings. Certain animals, for instance, and children are naturally aggressive in defending their own against threats. It is common to call such people and animals brave, even though we are not at all inclined to think that they have chosen their actions as the result of deliberation. Now, although the naturally virtuous want the right sorts of things in general, they realize their desires in a scattershot fashion, often to their ultimate harm (1144b4–9, III.8 1116b23–1117a9). Excellent practical reasoning, involving understanding of which particular actions in a given situation really do have the general character sought by desire, changes this natural tendency into a disposition that always hits the mark toward which these natural dispositions direct us. In other words, practical wisdom ensures that we really do those fine actions we may naturally desire to perform. This is just practical truthfulness: accurately realizing the practical good.

Yet it seems to me that Aristotle says a bit more than this. In introducing this discussion he says that people want the characteristics of courage and justice and temperance to be present in them “in another way” (1144b7–8). And at the end of the discussion he says that true virtue is not desire in accordance with right reason but desire that is with right reason (1144b26– 27). The presence of reason in some way or other transforms the way in which we desire. It is not enough that we want what reason would command. Otherwise what would be needed would be not be phronêsis but mere cleverness. Our desiring must be more intimately connected to our rationality. How could this be so?

I suspect that Aristotle must think practical wisdom transforms the target of natural moral virtue so that it is similar to the end of natural virtue, but not quite the same.⁵⁶ In fact, the end of full virtue is not the same as the end of natural virtue. Earlier, in the chapter on phronêsis (VI.5), Aristotle said that the end or telos of practical wisdom is eupraxia, that is, doingor faring well. The end is also the actions themselves, for true actions, as opposed to productions, have their ends in themselves (1140b6–7). Now in a colloquial sense it is natural to all human beings, and perhaps all animals with foresight as well, to aim at eupraxia, for everyone, virtuous and ordinary alike, aims at a sufficiency of external goods. So we cannot, in the first instance at least, claim that practical wisdom transforms the end of the naturally virtuous just by saying that it makes that end be eupraxia. Nevertheless, the conception of eupraxia at which the practically wise person aims will be different from the eupraxia of the naturally virtuous. Not only does phronêsis aim at eu-praxia, Aristotle says it aims at the virtuous action itself. When a person chooses a virtuous action for its own sake, he’s choosing it as worth choosing in itself. That is to say, in choosing a virtuous action as the chosen action it essentially is, the person chooses it as an expression of his practical rationality. ⁵⁷ Whereas the naturally virtuous person chooses his actions for the sake of defending his family or being fair , the fully virtuous person chooses to defend his family or to be fair because that is what it makes most sense to do. And if this choice is excellent, it will express excellent rationality. So phronêsis added to natural virtue makes excellently chosen action or practical truthfulness the target of full virtue.

Thus the presence of phronêsis transforms the conception of eupraxia at which good nonrational desires aim. From the point of view of natural virtue, faring well is efficacy in obtaining the external goods we desire in virtue of our sociable animal nature: sufficient food and other pleasures, protection of family and friends, fairness in social order, and so forth. As we saw in the discussion of VI.7, eupraxia in this sense does not require the presence of phronêsis or even of choice. But the fully virtuous person values his actions as excellently chosen. That must mean that he aims now, not just at external goods, but at the pursuit of those goods in a way that manifests practical reason. From the point of view of full virtue, then, the eû (‘well’ or ‘good’) of eupraxia is the product of practical reason.⁵⁸ In other words, the presence of phronêsis transforms the animal pursuit of the good into an expression of rationality. “This state, although it is similar [to natural virtue], will then be virtue in the strict sense” (1144b13–14). Just as excellent practical reasoning is inseparable from good desire, so too good desire in the strictest sense is inseparable from excellent practical reasoning(1144b14–17). This is why Aristotle insists on a modification to his original definition of moral virtue: “All people are likely to attest that the state in accordance with (kata) phroneŝis is virtue. But we need to go a little further. For virtue is not only the state in accordance with the right reason, but it is the state with (meta) the right reason; and phronêsis is right reason concerning things of this sort” (1144b24–28).

Now, this is all a very handy way of solving the second aporia with which VI.12 began. Eupraxia for human beings is rational pursuit of external goods, and practical wisdom is indispensable for that. But this solution seems to make the third aporia even more intractable. After all, practical wisdom is the state of practical truthfulness regarding things that are good and bad for human beings (1140b4–6), and sophia is one of those good things. If sophia is one good among many, then according to the solution of the second aporia its correct pursuit will be valuable to the agent as just another occasion to express his practical rationality. This would be odd if what Aristotle argued in VI.7 about the superiority of sophia is correct, however. For now it looks as if phronêsis will be using a superior form of truthfulness as a means of manifesting its imperfect form of truthfulness. In other words, it looks as if practical wisdom will be authoritative over philosophical contemplation. But unless there is some way for phronêsis to express a sense of its inferiority to theoretical wisdom, it doesn’t look as if it really will grasp the truth about human goods and bads.

Aristotle’s solution is to claim that practical wisdom relates to sophia in a different way than it does to other good things. In the pursuit of other goods, we live well and truthfully by the way in which we pursue them. Namely, when we choose them in a way that expresses excellent practical rationality—when we choose them in a way that makes sense and do so because it makes sense—we perform our human function to perfection. But in the pursuit of sophia, practical wisdom “does not use it, but it looks to how it may come to be; so it issues orders for its sake, but not to it” (1145a8– 9). In other words, in practical wisdom’s pursuit of sophia it aims at doing well and manifesting truthfulness not by the way in which it conducts its pursuit (although this will still matter), but by the fact that this is what it is choosing—this is the goal of the choice it issues in. We express our rational nature by making our final end be the highest form of reasoning available to us. In the pursuit of all other goods, excellent practical reason pursues practical truthfulness; but in the pursuit of philosophy, its goal is theoretical truthfulness. (Thus, actual contemplation is a practical as well as a theoretical accomplishment.)

It is often a subject of debate in interpretations of NE VI just what Aristotle intends his discussion in this book to show. He begins by noticing that, so far in the Nicomachean Ethics, he has said the virtuous person figures out the intermediate action by looking to some target (skopos), and there is some limit (horos) that determines the intermediate, virtuous states and makes them in accordance with right reason (1138b22–25). But, Aristotle complains, this isn’t very informative. If we wanted to know what medicines to apply to the body of a sick person (perhaps ourselves), it would do us no good to know that we should do what the medical art prescribes or what the doctor would order (1138b25–32). So, Aristotle says, now he will tell us what right reason is and what limit (to the intermediate virtuous states) it sets (1138b32–34).⁵⁹ The problem is that it’s not clear what his answer is. Absent is any rule for determining which actions are right such as we find at the end of the Eudemian Ethics.⁶⁰ What, according to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, is the target at which right reason aims? What help does NE VI give us?

I hope that the preceding discussion suggests an answer. In the remainder of NE VI.1 and in VI.2 Aristotle argues that the target (skopos) of practical reason is excellence in truthfulness. That is, reason aims at the excellent exercise of its function. Furthermore, he argues that practical reason cannot fully achieve this aim unless desire pursues the very same things that reason asserts (1139a25–26). This, then, is the way in which right reason marks off the limits of the intermediate, virtuous states. In order for a person to attain complete practical truthfulness, he must be disposed to desire and feel as reason directs. Aristotle does not deny the truth of the intuition described back in NE I that the happy and virtuous person aims at eupraxia (1094a22–24, 1098b20–22). In the second chapter of NE VI Aristotle says the unqualified end of action and the object of desire is eupraxia (1139b1–4), and in the chapter 5 discussion of phronêsis Aristotle says eupraxia itself is the end (telos) of practical wisdom (1140b7). But whereas in the beginning of the Nicoma-chean Ethics we were likely to think of eupraxia as doingbrave or temperate or just deeds, now we must give eupraxia a slightly different interpretive spin. As the ends of practical reason, these deeds are ways of being truth ful.

This already must come as a surprise to us members of Aristotle’s audience who have been raised in fine habits. We might have thought that virtuous actions were fine and valuable as ways of doing good; now Aristotle tells us that they are valuable as ways of being rational and true. But as I have suggested, Aristotle goes a step further. Once we see that the primary aim of phronêsis is truthfulness, we are in a position to see that the good at which practical wisdom aims is but a paler version—from the point of view of truth—of the good at which theoretical wisdom aims in contemplating the most divine objects. It is not unreasonable to say that sophia is the implicit standard of right practical reason, even if sophia does not figure explicitly in the deliberations of the virtuous person. (We will look in the next two chapters at the extent to which concerns with truthfulness and contemplation do figure explicitly in the deliberations of the virtuous agent, according to Aristotle.) This superiority of contemplative wisdom is expressed in the fact that sophia is the only good achievable by action over which phronêsis is not authoritative (kurios).

When we ask what Aristotle intends to accomplish in NE VI, then, I think we should answer that he intends to give us a more substantive account of the goal of right practical reason than he has given so far. This will not, of course, be an algorithm for discovering the right action under any circumstances, nor will it be a description of the happy life so detailed as to function as an algorithm.⁶¹ Instead, just as it would be of some help to tell the medical questioner that the right medical treatment aims to restore a balance to the elements of his bodily nature, so Aristotle promises a richer description of what the virtuous person is trying to do, in light of which we can guess the kinds of considerations the virtuous person takes into account in his deliberations. So, what is the target of the practically wise? In one sense it is practical truthfulness. Suppose, for example, that a virtuous person must decide how to respond to an injury. In the first instance he will aim at doing whatever he has most reason to do; in other words, his goal will be excellently chosen, truthful action. This already affects his deliberation, for instead of immediately being carried away by anger to seek some gruesome revenge, the practically virtuous person will determine whether revenge is good. He will ask what his relationship with his assailant is. Do they share a common good? Was the injury a purely personal affair, or was it part of broader social discord? Would revenge (or punishment) be a move toward or away from the restoration of social order? The relevant considerations may be many, but throughout his deliberations the morally virtuous agent will aim at choosing the action that most of all is true to the good in these circumstances, and he will value his action as such. We might say that in choosing and acting just as he does, the phronimos aims insofar as possible to realize and act appropriately to his rational nature. (It does not seem to me inaccurate of Aristotle to describe the virtuous agent as committed to the truth. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, seemed not only just but truthful. Indeed, his justice was a way of being truthful.) So in one sense the target of practical wisdom is truthfulness in action. But in another sense it is contemplative truthfulness, not as the target of production (though it is sometimes this, too), but as a target of emulation. For in acting just as he does, the morally virtuous agent holds himself to a standard of truthfulness more perfectly realized in theoretical contemplation. And his actions aim at this standard whether he understands it fully or not.

¹ I mean that the happy person could choose the moral virtues for this reason. As will become clear, he will not have to choose virtuous actions for the sake of contemplation in order to be genuinely virtuous and happy (in a secondary way).

² Aristotle claims that sophia is the superior rational virtue and, in particular, that it is superior over phronêsis in the last two chapters of NE VI (1143b33–34, 1145a6–11). I will discuss the superiority of theoretically rational virtue at the end of this chapter.

³ Commentators often find it to be a rough transition from the demand for a clear account of right reason in the first half of NE VI.1 to the discussion of the two rational parts of the soul in the second half of VI.1. This may well be due to Aristotle’s having added, for the NE, a new introduction to EE material (Gauthier and Jolif 1970, not. ad VI.1). I hope that, by the end of my discussion of NE VI, however, the transition will not seem a non sequitur.

⁴ That is, virtue requires not only correct rational wishes but appropriate feelings and nonrational (non-good-oriented) desires.

⁵ As opposed to the irrational part that shares in reason in a way.

⁶ Thus, Aristotle uses a Platonic principle to argue for an un-Platonic conclusion (Rep . V 477c ff.). Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not. ad 1139a6–8) also notice that not only does Aristotle use a Platonic principle of soul division, he also divides objects of thinking along Platonic lines. The result is that, in NE VI.1 at least, Aristotle’s logistikon looks to be the same as Plato’s doxastikon, although now endowed with genuine knowledge. (See NE VI.5 1140b25–30, where Aristotle actually calls the practically rational soul the doxastikon.) This will cause problems, as we shall see in note 9.

⁷ Greenwood (1909, 74) notices the connection between VI.2 and the function argument. Kraut (1989, 58–59) also notices the similarity in function of practical and theoretical reason.

⁸ Obviously I mean practical in the broad sense, i.e., pertaining to things we can change or bring about. I do not mean practical in the sense of pertaining to praxis.

⁹ Gauthier and Jolif (1970) think this problem arises from Aristotle’s adopting Plat o’s way of distinguishing the logistikon (reasoning) from the doxastikon (opining) as his way of distinguish-ingth e epistêmonikon (scientific knowing) from the logistikon (calculative or deliberative knowing). They point out that in De Anima Aristotle drops this way of dividing the rational soul and opts instead to identify the parts on the basis of what they do, i.e., as the speculative and practical intellects (not. ad 1139a14–15). It is clear from what follows in NE VI that Aristotle intends these two rational faculties to cover theoretical speculation and practical reasoning, respectively. It may be that he is simply being careless in VI.1. But we should also note that very many things that are changeable are, insofar as they are changeable, of particular concern to us as agents.

¹⁰ Aristotle can cause confusion on this point himself when he explains the nature of physical science by analogy to technê (craft) (Phys. II.2). But this is not because he thinks there is any-thing practical about physics. Rather, he thinks the objects of natural science are related to their own changes in the way that craftsmen are related to changes in the materials with which they work, namely, natural substances move themselves toward their own ends (Broadie 1990, 392– 396). Thus, Aristotle thinks the science of craft changes can provide a model for the structure of physics; in particular, the fact that technê must know about the matter as well as the form is reason to think that even though physics is primarily concerned with form, it must study matter to a certain extent as well (Phys. 194a12 ff.).

¹¹ This is presupposed in Aristotle’s argument in Meta. E.1 that physics is a branch of theoretical science, along with mathematics and theology (which he assimilates with knowledge of separable and unmovable substance). His argument is that whereas practical and productive knowledge studies things that are changed by independent agents (i.e., people) and not by themselves, physics studies things whose principle of change is internal (1025b18–24). The idea must be that physics is genuinely a theoretical science because it does not view the world from the point of view of human agency.

¹² There are, of course, different ways of distinguishing practical and theoretical reasoning, e.g., Kant believes that practical reason is able to discover the necessity of our freedom, whereasspeculative reason can discover only its possibility ([1785] 1977, 4:461). As I understand Kant, however, practical and speculative reason are not distinguished as faculties, nor are the two sets of reasoning two kinds of activity. Rather, we distinguish practical from speculative reason depending on the use to which reason itself is beingput.

¹³ In particular, things with unchanging, necessary principles are amenable to strictly scientific demonstration (Post. An. I.4), whereas particular events are not. Thus, while it would be inappropriate to attempt a scientific demonstration of what ought to be done on a particular occasion, genuine knowledge of mathematics (for example) requires such rigor (NE 1094b23–27).

¹⁴ The practical syllogism may not be part of deliberation proper (Cooper [1975] 1986, 51), but it is certainly an expression of intellectual activity. Aristotle says that, in akrasia, the failure of the premises of reason’s syllogism to be synthesized into a conclusion (action) is a failure of knowledge to be fully realized (see note 18, below).

¹⁵ Cooper ([1975] 1986, 65–70) and Reeve (1995, 56–61).We might also notice that the argument structures discussed in the Rhetoric are meant to be pieces of practical reasoning, but they are often the same as those discussed in the Topics , a handbook of argumentation in general. Even if such debates do not yet rise to the level of philosophical wisdom, they are exercises of theoretical rational capacity. See Kraut (1989, 58–59) for discussion of methodological similarity.

When Frede suggests that genuine knowledge that, e.g., poultry is good to eat requires scientific knowledge of human physiology in Aristotle’s very rigorous sense (1996, 168), he implies that genuine practical knowledge is almost identical to true theoretical knowledge. For reasons I give below, I believe there are important dissimilarities. This should not cause us to think that practical wisdom does not rise to the level of genuine rationality, however. Even though Aristotle believes that practical reason fails to achieve the epistomological ideal set by theoretical wisdom, it is important for the interpretation of his moral theory to see that nevertheless practical reason and its virtue, phronêsis, express genuine rationality. Practical reason, like theoretical reason, essentially aims at and grasps truth. See pp. 114–115, 117–119 below.

¹⁶ By “living trut hfully” I mean to indicate a wide variety of ways in which a person may grasp the truth, only one of which is entertaining a true proposition. The verb alêtheuô, which can mean ‘be right about’, indicates that alêtheia (truth) can be attributed to the knower himself as well as to what he knows. See 1139b12–13, where Aristotle says that the parts of the rational soul alêtheusei when they possess their proper virtues. Also see 1127a24, where Aristotle talks about the virtue of being prone to truthfulness (on alêtheutikos) in words and in life.

¹⁷ Some may object that this passage does not commit Aristotle to saying that practical reason needs the cooperation of nonrational desire, since Aristotle distinguishes rational desire (boulêsis) from various nonrational desires. It does not particularly matter for my argument whether we think of the right desire here referred to as boulêsis (rational wish), on the one hand, or epithumia (appetite) or thumos (spirit), on the other. (Although, since boulêsis is rational desire and so cannot ever disagree with reason, it would be odd, if Aristotle is referring to boulêsis here, for him to insist that the right desire must agree with reason.) I would point out, though, that the highest form of practical truthfulness is practical wisdom and it does require the cooperation of nonrational desire.

¹⁸ Cooper ([1975] 1986, 61–62) offers a similar rationale for the difference between theoretical and practical knowledge. Unlike theoretical knowledge, “[p]ractical knowledge must make, or tend to make, a practical difference in what a person prefers on the whole to do and does do in his life.” Cooper’s caveat leads me to suspect, however, that we do not interpret the difference in exactly the same way. In a footnote he writes, “[t]he qualification is necessary to take account of sufferers of akrasia, who know what to do, but fail to do it.” Now, while it is true in some sense that the akratic agent knows what to do, it is also true that he does not fully know what to do. For what the akratic’s desires prevent him from doing is fully actualizinghis knowledge (1146b31– 1147a24). aThus, in interpreting Aristotle we must resist the temptation to say that the akratic perfectly well knows what to do. He does not know it perfectly well, for perfect practical knowing, according to Aristotle, is chosen action. (The akratic knows what to do in the much same senseas I know the elevation of Sewanee, Tennessee, I just can’t think of it right now. The difference in these two cases is the role nonrational desire plays in preventing actuali zation of knowledge.)

¹⁹ This is why for Aristotle reason is desiderative; not just any reason, of course, but reasoning with a view to an end we can bring about (1139a35–36).

²⁰ I infer this from the flow of argument in VI.2: Aristotle begins by saying he will look for the virtue, and thus the function, of the theoretic and practical parts of reason. Then Aristotle discusses choice and the way in which it involves both desire and reason. I take it his point is to show that, just as moral virtue—the virtue of the nonrational soul—is a prohairetic state (1139a22–24), so too practical rational virtue, coming from a different angle, is a prohairetic state (i.e., a state concerned with prohairesis, or choice). Then, once Aristotle has established the function of practical reason as deliberation issuing in choice, he can define practical rational virtue in terms of its contribution to good choice. Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not. ad 1139a15–b13) agree that the discussion of choice in VI.2 is an elucidation of the species of truthfulness that is practical.

Notice that in my interpretation, Aristotle thinks all kinds of practical reason are expressed in choice, and so all practical reasoning—phronêsis and technê alike—requires the cooperation of desire. But is this correct? Sarah Broadie has argued (1991, 78–82) that moral virtue is distinguished from craft knowledge precisely insofar as the former but not the latter is a pro-hairetic state, a state involving a settled disposition to choose and so involving a settled disposition to desire certain things. It is indeed true that in NE II.4 Aristotle says that while virtue requires (1) knowledge, (2) choosing the actions and choosing them for their own sakes, and (3) a firm and unchangeable character, craft requires only knowledge (1105a26–b2). That seems proof against my claim that the exercise of craft knowledge requires a certain state of desire. We should note, however, that in the next line Aristotle goes on to say that knowledge is of almost no account in the possession of virtue (1105b2–3). This clearly is an opinion he will revise (in NE VI.13) when he argues for the inseparability of moral virtue and phronêsis . So even though in NE II.4 Aristotle does want to distinguish craft knowledge and virtue on the basis of their relationship to prohairesis it is not immediately clear what the distinction is supposed to be. (Perhaps Aristotle only means that moral virtue, unlike craft, chooses its actions for their own sakes? If so, this would correspond to Aristotle’s distinction between praxis and poiêsis ([Gauthier and Jolif 1970, not. ad 1105a29; Irwin, trans. 1985, not. ad 1105a28].) Aristotle’s explanation of choice in NE III.2 only exacerbates the obscurity of his point in II.2 about the connection between moral virtue, technê, and choice. The only positive characterization Aristotle gives of choice there is that it is the natural outcome of prior deliberation (1112a15). But when we turn to Aristotle’s discussion of deliberation in the next chapter, he always uses examples of craft deliberation to explain his meaning. The implication, although admittedly Aristotle never says so, is that craft knowledge, when used, issues in choice. At least, Aristotle says that we choose to do what deliberation leads us to (1113a2–5).

When we turn to NE VI, where Aristotle addresses the difference between craft and phronêsis directly, we see that Aristotle does not appeal to desire and choice as a way to make this distinction. On the contrary, it is assumed that both are deliberative activities and that they differ in their objects of deliberation: Craft deliberates about a part of life; phronêsis deliberates about the whole thing(11 40a25–28). Now as I said, NE III.2–3 suggest that deliberation naturally ends in choice. We also know, from NE III and again from NE VI (1113a9–12, 1139b4–5), that choice is deliberative desire. So, if craft is a deliberative activity, it seems we ought to conclude that craft per se is realized in choice and requires the cooperation of desire just as much as phronêsis does. And since craft is a state of the soul, it ought also to be some sort of prohairetic state.

Still, I confess that the evidence of VI.2 is unclear. Aristotle claims to be talking about the function of practical reason as a whole, but he slips into talking about the virtue of practical reason, whose desiderative counterpart is moral virtue (1139a22). Presumably Aristotle slips back and forth in book VI because the virtue of practical reason, and not craft, is his real interest there. This can cause difficulties for interpretation, however. Aristotle is quite clear that craft, although a rational accomplishment, is not a practical rational virtue (1140b21–25), so not everything true of the desiderative counterpart of phronêsis will necessarily hold for the desiderative counterpart of craft.

Perhaps we could say that technê is an ancillary prohairetic state. After all, a person may possess craft knowledge as a first actuality without ever having an actual desire to exercise it. Unless producing that particular product is desirable from the point of view of his life as a whole, the craftsman will never engage in craft deliberation. (This is why choice is particularly indicative ([oikeiotaton] of moral character [NE III.2 1111b5–6].) Thus, for the virtuous person, craft will depend on phronêsis. The ancillary status of craft does not imply, however, that the craftsman’s desires qua craftsman can be in any old state when he uses his special knowledge. In other words, the regulation of his nonrational soul is not entirely the work of his moral character. For it is part of having a craft that, while it is being exercised, at least some of the craftsman’s desires conform to whatever it is his craft reasoning tells him to do. These desires are not external to the craft. Broadie gives an example meant to show that emotional disturbance does not make us deny craft knowledge to a person. If a person makes a mess of building something from fear of the enemy at the gate, we do not say that he doesn’t know how to build; we say, rather, that his cowardice prevented him from using his knowledge. I agree that this sort of emotional disturbance does not impugn artistic knowledge. But not all emotional disturbance is external to craft in this way. For example, think of a builder who is easily satisfied with mediocre products, whose laziness leads to sloppy execution. Or think of a person whose love of excess leads him to unsuitable ornamentation of the things he makes. Such people are bad as craftsmen. It seems to me, then, that craft, like phronêsis, requires something like a prohairetic state.

However we solve these difficulties, though, this much is clear: full possession of craft knowledge requires that in the appropriate conditions the craftsman has the right desires and performs the right actions. Craft knowledge does not, on its own, issue in all-things-considered judgments; it needs the exercise of phronêsis to decide what craft product is needed. But once phro-neŝis gives the go-ahead, the craftsman needs the cooperation of desire in order to possess craft truth, since the craftsman must decide to proceed in such and such a way.

²¹ I am persuaded by Cooper ([1975] 1986, 24–46) that choice is a decision to perform an action of a certain type. That decision is realized in a specific action. I do not think anything in what I say depends on this interpretation, however.

²² Mele [1985] 1999, 184–188.

²³ On the other hand, because choice is the result of rational deliberation, choice is not necessary for voluntary action. Children and animals, for example, act voluntarily but not from choice (NE III.2 1111b8–9). So desire is necessary for choice, but choice is not necessary for voluntary action.

²⁴ I will not take a position here about precisely how the akratic’s epistemic faculties break down. All that’s necessary for my argument here is that akrasia—the failure to be moved by one’s deliberations—is an epistemic as well as a conative deficiency.

²⁵ Aristotle defines the emotions as things that cause people to change their judgments (Rhet. 1378a19–20). Since this definition is given in the context of a study of rhetoric, the judgments that emotions can incline us to change are, at least in part, judicial judgments. Thus, Greenwood (1909, 67) is wrong to infer from 1143a9–10 (“understanding is only critical” and not directive, as phronêsis is) that “sunesis is quite detached from orexis and so from prohairesis.”

²⁶ This is why, although I agree with Charles (1999, 216–217) that Aristotle does describe practical and theoretical reason as being analogous, I believe he is too blithe in grounding the analogy in the fact that both kinds of virtue consist in “grasping truths.”

²⁷ I thank Tad Brennan for helping me to see the seriousness of this problem.

²⁸ Irwin (trans., 1985) translates in VI.7 as ‘exact expertise’ or ‘exact knowledge’ depending on whether Aristotle is discussing craft or science.

²⁹ Thucydides, the akribeia of the ship (LSJ). To the ideas of perfection and precision (completeness and accuracy), Greenwood (1909, 35) adds stability: Scientific knowledge would be stable, then, because in grasping the truth of the demonstrations and their premises, a person would not be vulnerable to changing his mind. Though this sounds plausible, I’m not sure what basis, if any, Greenwood has for saying this.

³⁰ Akribês can also mean frugal or stingy (LSJ).

³¹ Barnes 1994, 189, not. ad Post. An. I.27.

³² Why does Aristotle think that moral virtue is more akribês than craft? Aristotle may mean that moral virtue is more akribês because it grasps the first principle of practical activity (i.e., happiness, the human good), while the goodness of crafts can be understood only with reference to this first principle. See my discussion (pp. 111–112) of Aristotle’s claim that one science is more precise than another when “it is at the same time of the fact and of the reason why” (Post. An. 87a31–32). Another possibility, suggested by Broadie (Broadie and Rowe 2002, not. ad 1106b14–16), is that, unlike the craftsman, the morally virtuous person must be utterly uncompromisingabout his goals. Whatever Aristotle’s rationale for calling moral virtue more akribês, akribeia is a sign of greater truthfulness. For phronêsis combined with moral virtue is the perfection of the part of the soul that seeks practical truth.

³³ Though I agree with Reeve (1995) that there is some reason to think there can be a proper science of human life (Pol. 1279b11–15), I doubt that the NE is meant to be such an exercise. Aristotle repeatedly says that his object is action, educational reform, and happiness, and not only knowledge. Furthermore, Aristotle dismisses theoretical speculation of matters to do with the human good that are not practical, for instance, an intensive examination of the human soul (I.13 1102a23–26) or the way in which good things are good (I.6 1096b26–31). In other words, he emphasizes that the NE is reasoning with a view to an end in action. That’s what practical reasoning is.

³⁴ It strikes me that in the passage at 1140a25–30 Aristotle is explaining how phronêsis aims at the good in a way that is different from the way technê aims at goods. That suggests that all practical reason aims at the good in some way or other.

³⁵ There are, of course, some passages that militate against this view. I mentioned above that Aristotle says sophia contemplates the most honorable things. But it is not obvious that the most honorable things are good. For instance, at Meta. M.3 1078a30–b6, Aristotle seems to say that the good is not found among unmovable things (although the beautiful is). If wisdom is concerned with unmovables, that ought to mean that it is not concerned with goodness. Aristotle’s meaning here is ambiguous, however. Immediately after saying this, he contradicts “those who say that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or of the good”; on the contrary “these sciences say and prove a very great deal about them [presumably]” (1078a33–35, my emphasis). Why does Aristotle say that mathematics can teach us about the beautiful and the good if only the former is found among the unmovables? Perhaps all Aristotle means by his first remark is that good does not exist for the unmovables. They might themselvesstill be good, however. At any rate, Aristotle describes the first mover as thinking the good and “the most excellent of things [viz., itself]” (Meta. Ë.9 1074b23–34). Since the activity of the divine is the exemplar of theoretical reasoning, it seems safe to conclude that excellent theoretical reasoning, like excellent practical reasoning, is a matter of getting it right about the good.

If I am right then Aristotle’s allocation of these two kinds of reasoning to two parts of the rational soul is not such a radical departure from Plato as we might have thought. For both Plato and Aristotle, the first principle of all reasoning is the good. Aristotle differs from Plato when he claims that the practical human good is distinct from the goods of other things. They are not the same, although they are analogous. Furthermore, Aristotle, unlike Plato, thinks that the good condition of the nonrational parts of the soul is not just a prerequisite for virtuous practical reasoning but is actually partly constitutive of virtuous practical reasoning.

³⁶ I thank Robert Adams for suggesting to me that Aristotle’s theory of practical truthfulness might be an instance of a correspondence theory of truth. See Adams (1993) for a discussion of this topic with respect to Kierkegaard.

³⁷ For example, Thomas Nagel ([1974] 1979) has argued that we can know what a subjective point of view is like only by inhabiting it or something analog ous to it. Rudolf Otto ([1917] 1923) has argued that the holy can be known only via a feeling of “mysterium tremendum.”

A suggestion by Reeve (1995, 56–66) is worth mentioning in this context. (This following point is limited to moral reasoning and does not include the other modes of practical reasoning.) Aristotle claims throughout his discussions of individual moral virtues that the virtuous person performs fine (kalon) actions for the sake of the fine. Thus, the person of practical wisdom must be adept at knowing or in some sense seeing which actions are fine and good. But, as I will discuss in greater detail in the next chapter, though the virtuous person is rationally drawn to the good, the fine attracts him at a nonrational level as well. Indeed, it is an identifying mark of the fine that it produces a particular kind of pleasure in those who have been raised well. It is hard to imagine, then, how a person could see a potential course of action as fine without desiring it and feeling a nonrational pleasure in its anticipation. I’m not suggesting that the feeling of desire is itself the knowing. Children may be attracted to the fine without realizing that it is the fineness of the action that is appealing. But if one does not take pleasure in, say, the prospect of giving a fine gift to one’s community, it’s not clear that one can be sure such an action is, in fact, fine on this occasion. One may triangulate to the fine as best one can, but the opinion that this action is indeed fine will be to some extent a piece of guesswork. The fine, as the special object of moral reasoning, may not be the sort of thing that can be known without the appropriate emotional response.

³⁸ Gauthier and Jolif (1970, not. ad 1139a30–31) suggest that the analogy between practical reasoning and desire is also presupposed at 1139a29–31 when Aristotle says that the function of practical reason is truth homologôs echousa têi orexei têi orthê (being in agreement with—having the same logos as—right desire). The question, then, is what prevents theoretical reason from having truth in agreement with right desire? Gauthier and Jolif correctly answer that there can be an agreement only when reason and desire are for the same objects.

³⁹ It is true that in VI.6 Aristotle claims that sophia involves scientific demonstration, but the point there is to argue that the grasping of first principles (noû s) is not sophia. The discussion of what sophia is is undertaken in earnest in VI.7.

⁴⁰ Aristotle says that sophia studies the most honorable (timiôtatoi) objects. It is unclear whether he intends this to be the study of divine objects, or cosmology, or whether he thinks cosmology is theology. In any case, the objects sophia studies are more honorable than human affairs.

⁴¹ Notice in his argument that phronêsis is not wisdom, Aristotle says it would be strange if someone thought that politikê or phronêsis was the most important (spoudaiotatê). He realizes that the debate over the nature of wisdom is a debate about the highest form of human knowledge. This is a point Gauthier and Jolif miss entirely in their determination to translate sophia as ‘philosophie’ (1970, 479–480). The fact that by sophia Aristotle refers to philosophical contemplation is beside the point here. This is a use of the word for which he must argue. See Meta . A.1 for evidence that Aristotle was well aware of the variety of accomplishments one could call sophia. His point there, by the way, presupposes that sophia always refers to the highest form of knowledge.

Despite the inaccuracy on this point, Gauthier and Jolif have an interesting over view of the development of the concept of sophia in Greece (1970, 480–489).

⁴² Gauthier and Jolif 1970, not. ad 1141b2–3; Greenwood 1909, 35.

⁴³ All translations of the Posterior Analytics are from Barnes 1994.

⁴⁴ For evidence of this belief prior to Aristotle, see Empedocles (Kirk, Raven and Schofield 1983, fr. 392–394) and Plato and Phaedo 79c–d. For Aristotle’s theory, see DA III.4. Aristotle does not think that before the soul actually knows (or perceives) it possesses the qualities of its object; but it takes on those qualities, in a way, when it is actually knowing.

⁴⁵ For this reason Barnes (1994, 190) links the second rule of akribeia in Post. An I.27 to NE 1094b11–27, where Aristotle says ethics is less precise than mathematics because it holds only for the most part.

⁴⁶ I am not confident in this interpretation. At Meta. 981b5–6 Aristotle says, “master craftsmen are wiser [than ordinary manual craftsman] not because they are capable of acting but because they have the account and understand the causes.” Notice that if this is what he means here in the NE, then he praises Phidias not because his statues are so particularly beautiful but because he understands the principles of his craft. This would be akin to admiring Michelang elo for his extraordinary understanding of marble and the proportions of the human figure.

⁴⁷ There has been some controversy about whether the phronimos needs to know the nature of happiness—the first principle of ethics—in order to act well (Broadie 1991, 198–202, 232– 242; McDowell 1998). I am inclined to think that he must have some kind of general grasp of happiness (i.e., he must know that the human good is the most excellent rational activity, though he may not realize that this specifies theôria), but I do not think anyone would deny that he must in some sense know why what he does is the right thing to do.

⁴⁸ See also Meta. 982b4–10. If this is the argument Aristotle has in mind in NE VI.7 it would explain the move from his remark that craft is not broad enough to be wisdom to his subsequent claim that, since wisdom must be the most akribês form of knowledge, full theoretical excellence is wisdom (1141a16–20). Otherwise the invocation of akribeia at this point is a nonsequitur; he will not have shown that theoretical wisdom passes the test of breadth that craft failed.

⁴⁹ Stewart (1892, not. ad 1141a22) suggests that to sophon is the subject or agent of sophia, that is the “wise being or faculty.”

⁵⁰ Panegyricus 48, cited in Broadie (Broadie and Rowe) 2002, not. ad 1141a33–34. At Anti-dosis 266–269, Isocrates claims that the best that can be said for Academic philosophy is that it prepares one for the “greater and more serious (ta meizôkai ta spoudaiotera)” subjects that Isocrates himself teaches. See also Broadie and Rowe 2002, 52–54.

⁵¹ Aristotle’s discussion of equity (epieikeia ) is interesting in this regard: “In those matters where it is necessary to speak universally, but it is not possible to do so correctly, the law takes what is for the most part, but is not ignorant of possible mistakes. And [the law] is no less correct, for this mistake is not in the law, nor in the lawmaker, but is in the nature of the case. For the matter of practical affairs is simply of this sort” (NE V.10 1137b14–19). Thus, the judge does not break the law when he (correctly) makes exceptions to it.

⁵² At Meta. A 980b21–24 bees are said to be phronimoi. See also History of Animals 611a15–16, 612b18–31, 623a7–8, 630b18–21, where deer, birds, spiders, and elephants are said to be phronimoi. Cf. GA 753a7–17.

⁵³ Broadie (1991, 78 ff. and chap. 4) argues that Aristotle is concerned elsewhere to show that phronêsis is not a craft. This is correct, and we should notice that Aristotle is to some extent responsible for the misconception!

⁵⁴ Further discussion of practical and political wisdom, as well as the related topics of understanding and judgment, intervene.

⁵⁵ There has been some disagreement over whether sophia produces happiness (1) as health produces happiness (Greenwood 1909), (2) as the state of health produces actualizations of health (Joachim 1951), or (3) as health formally constitutes health (Gauthier and Jolif 1970; Stewart 1892). I am inclined to accept (3) for reasons similar to those given by Gauthier and Jolif. Namely, Aristotle is here explicitly contrasting the way health causes health with the way the medical art causes health, i.e., with the efficient cause. But both (1) and (2) describe forms of efficient causation.

There is also some question whether this argument is supposed to apply to the usefulness of phronêsis as well. Aristotle explicitly discusses only sophia, but because of the plural at 1144a3 Greenwood (1909), Ross (1924), and Stewart (1892) think it must apply to both. Gauthier and Jolif (1970) concur with the opinion of Burnet (1900) and Joachim (1957), however, that Aristotle means to speak only of sophia. While both sophia and phronêsis produce happiness, only sophia produces it in this way. Their argument is supported by similarities between this passage and a passage in EE VIII.3, where phronêsis is said to produce happiness as a doctor produces health. Even if the first interpretation is correct and the activity of phronêsis does constitute happiness, NE X.8 shows us that phronêsis does not constitute happiness as sophia does, since its activity is happiness only in a secondary way (secondary, I believe, because it is an approximation to the full happiness to be found in contemplation).

⁵⁶ I do not mean to claim that phronêsis is of the end. I mean only that the presence of phronêsis transforms the end at which moral virtue aims. In other words, by a nonrational process the presence of phronêsis makes something different look attractive to desire.

⁵⁷ This is how the enkratic, or continent, person will become fully virtuous. By repeatedly choosing virtuous actions as the products of his choice, he will habituate himself to desiring those actions as the products of his choice.

⁵⁸ I want to be careful not to read Aristotle as a Stoic here. My point is not that practical wisdom makes people value their pursuit of food, etc., solely as expressions of rationality. Rather, practical wisdom makes people value their pursuit of things that really are good for them as primarily valuable because it expresses the human rational function. Aristotle would not count an action as practically wise if it did not figure out the best way to acquire or otherwise use something external (in a broad sense) that really was good.

⁵⁹ Some commentators read kai toutoutis horos in 1138b34 as ‘i.e., what the boundaries of right reason are’ (Joachim 1951, not. ad 1138b34; Stewart 1892, not. ad 1138b32). But 1138b23–25 suggests it is the mean states that have a horos in virtue of being in accordance with right reason. (Joachim considers my interpretation but rejects it without comment.) I will not discuss here Tuozzo’s (1995) claims that ho orthos logos refers to a rule or measure and not to a capacity. It seems to me that even if we think of the orthos logos as a capacity, we can only know it if we know the skopos at which it aims. This skopos will function as some sort of rule or measure for the capacity of reason.

⁶⁰ “What choice and possession of the natural goods—whether bodily goods, money, friends, or other goods—will most of all produce contemplation of god, that choice or possession is best and this the finest standard (horos)” (EE 1249b16–19). But even here it is not clear that theôria provides the sole limit for the use of the goods of fortune. Aristotle may mean only that ria is the noblest of such standards, another one being morally virtuous activity itself theo (Broadie 1993, 384–386).

⁶¹ In other words, Aristotle is not promising an objectionable version of the Grand End theory of practical reasoning. I should say here, though I will not attempt to argue, that I think my interpretation of the NE allows Aristotle to think of moral virtue as having an end distinct from virtue itself, with reference to which it deliberates without succumbing to the problems associated with the so-called Grand End interpretation of the NE. See Broadie 1991; Cooper [1975] 1986; McDowell 1998; and pp. 145–146 below, for further discussion.