The Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics by Gerard J Hughes

Author:Gerard J Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue

In VI, 5, Aristotle remarks that temperance (and doubtless the other moral virtues as well) preserves practical wisdom, since it preserves our beliefs about what is to be done. He points out that while a lack of virtue does not upset our beliefs about geometry, it does distort our perceptions of what has to be done and why. We are doubtless all familiar with instances in which our emotional imbalance has made it impossible for us to have a perceptive judgement about what has to be done; we are too involved, too close to the situation to be able to rely on our judgement. What, precisely is this ‘judgement’, then? Aristotle gives us one possible way to answer this question, by examining the contrast between the practical deliberations of the good man and those of someone who is merely clever. He thus takes into account the kind of example I gave earlier about the Nazi doctors:

Now, if the aim is noble, cleverness is praiseworthy; if it is base, then cleverness is just unscrupulousness. So we describe both people of practical wisdom and those who are unscrupulous as clever. But practical wisdom is not just cleverness, though it does require cleverness. It is a habitual state which is developed in the eye of the soul only in the presence of moral virtue, as we have already said and is clear enough. For instances of reasoning about practical matters have as their starting point ‘Since the end is of such and such a kind’ (whatever – anything will do as an example). But the end is not clear except to a good person. Wickedness distorts [our judgement] and leads to our being deceived about the starting points of action. Obviously, then, one cannot be a person of practical wisdom without being a good person.

(VI, 12, 1144a26–b1)

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