The ontological reappropriation of phronesis

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 35-60

  Long, Christopher P ^a  

^a RICHARD STOCKTON COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY   (United States)

Author keywords

Aristotle; Gadamer; Heidegger; Phron sis; Sophia, ontology

Indexed keywords

EID: 20444448155     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1015180421385     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe: Platon: Sophistes, éd. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Vol. 19 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1976), pp. 177-178. For the English see, Martin Heidegger, Plato 's Sophist, Irans. Richard and André Schuwer Rojcewicz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 122. Future references to this text will be followed by the page number to the German edition preceding the English.
2. Some scholars argue \halphronesis is the precursor to Verstehen, others to Entschlossenheit, or Umsicht, and still others to Gewissen. Robert Bernasconi provides a good introduction to the entire debate. See Robert Bernasconi, 'Heidegger's destruction of phronesis', The Southern Journal of Philosophy 28/supplement (1989), pp. 127-147.
3. This is because sophia, unlike phronesis, need not employ logos. Heidegger suggests that legein must speak of something as something, whereas noein directly grasps the first principle and the last ultimate. See Heidegger, Sophist, pp. 180 & 188/124 & 129. He claims that truth, unconcealedness, is "not at home in logos" (ibid., p. 188/129). Heidegger tries to read the dimension of logos out of phronesis by calling it structurally identical to sophia insofar as "it is an aletheuen aneu logou" and suggesting that sophia retains a certain privilege insofar as "sophia is Dasein's positionality toward the beings of the world in the full sense. Phronesis is Dasein's positionality toward the beings which are themselves Dasein" (ibid., p. 165/113). However, Aristotle is clear that phronesis inherently includes logos, and therefore that its grasp of truth is mitigated by the requirement that it think discursively: it must think something as something. For that dimension of Aristotle determined to privilege the eternal over the temporal, this is clearly a liability; but so too is it for that dimension of Heidegger concerned to move beyond the existen-tial analysis of Dasein in order to think Being directly as aletheia - forphronesis is, for better or worse, unavoidably bound to the logos.
4. References to Aristotle are based on the Oxford critical editions: Aristotle, Aristotelis Metaphysica, ed. Werner Wilhelm Jaeger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Aristotle, Aristotelis Analytica Priora et Posteriora, eds. W. D. Ross and L. Minio-Paluello (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964); Aristotle, Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894); Aristotle, Aristotelis Categoriae, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949). References will be given within the text with an abbreviation when necessary followed by the Bekker page. All translations from the Greek are my own.
5. Charlotte Witt has recently suggested that norms and values enter into a given theory from two directions: from the side of the theorizer and from the side of nature. In making this claim, Wilt's analysis both deepens our understanding of the complex ways in which theories are normative and lends urgency to the attempt to develop a conception of ontology capable of critically reflecting upon its own normativity. See Charlotte Witt, 'Form, normativity, and gender in Aristotle: A feminist perspective', in Cynthia A. Freeland, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
6. Denise Schaeffer, 'Wisdom and Wonder in Metaphysics A: 1-2', Review of'Metaphysics 52 (1999): 641-656.
7. While I am sympathetic with Schaeffer's attempt to develop a specifically human conception of sophia, I am skeptical that it can be done based on the attribute of teaching alone. Aristotle himself does not here develop the robust conception of teaching Schaeffer wants to import back into him. Rather, the type of teaching Aristotle seems to have in mind is more like a didactic assertion of the causes - whereby the students simply receive the wisdom of the teacher. (Admittedly, this is an impoverished conception of teaching, one that suggests part of the impetus behind the attempt to rejuvenate phronësis.) Further, if we consider that Aristotle adds the dimension of nous to sophia in the Nicomachean Ethics, a point that Schaeffer justifiably brackets from the discussion of sophia in the Metaphysics, Aristotle's use ofeidenai may take on a significance different from the one she ascribes to it. The perfect tense, with its completed aspect, may be meant to suggest not the dynamic quality of wisdom, but rather, the fact that the wise person has seen the truth directly via nous - the model of sight being the common metaphor in discussions of nous. If this is the case, then sophia, being based on a sort of direct intuitive recognition of the eternal first principles, leaves little room for self-reflection, even when it makes the one possessing it more able to teach the causes. At most, the teacher of sophia reflects on precisely how best to make the students see the eternal truth too.
8. For two very different discussions of the various senses of the universal in Aristotle, see Michael J. Loux, Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle 's Metaphysics Z and H (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991 ), pp. 205ff. and Ute Guzzoni, Grund und Allgemeinheit: Untersuchung zum aristotelischen Verständnis der ontologischen Gründe (Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1975), pp. 71-125. Joseph Owens has emphasized the fact that the universality Aristotle develops in reference to sophia here is that which is associated with the knowledge of causes, but that this does not necessarily imply a simple equation between the universal, cause and form. See Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics. 3rd edn (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), pp. 161-168.
9. Owens, Doctrine of Being, pp. 168.
10. Cf. Aristotle's discussion ofepistëmë and specifically the claim that it concerns things that cannot be other than they are at NE VI.3, 1139b 19-37.
11. I translate this last rather odd phrase, "ösper kephalën echousa epistëmë tön timiötatön," - quite literally. The term 'kepha/en' may be taken to refer to 'nous' in the preceding clause so that the sense of the phrase seems to be that wisdom is scientific knowledge with intellectual intuition; that is, it is not only proper knowledge of what follows from principles, but true knowledge of the principles themselves directly by means of nous.
12. Thus, after recognizing that his strong endorsement of the importance of phronësis at the end of book VI might lead one to think that it was more authoritative than sophia, Aristotle writes: "Thus phronësis gives orders for the sake of sophia, but does not give orders to sophia. Further, [to say that phronësis orders sophia] would be as if someone were to say that politics rules the gods because it gives orders concerning all the things inthecity"(H45a9-12).
13. George Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th edn (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 1714.
14. Hermann Diels, Irans., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. Walther Kranz, 6th edn, Vol. I (Zürich: Weidmann, 1996), p. 233. For Parmenides, suneches is not a determination of time, for being is, strictly speaking, outside of time. However, in 8.5, the temporality ofthat which is seems to be specifically at issue and the goddess is intent on showing that being is eternally present. However, variations of the term also appear in lines 23 and 25, where it seems to take on a spatial determination. I tend to agree with Kirk and Raven who surmise that Parmenides holds being as continuous in the widest sense possible. See G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers. 2nd edn (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 251.
15. hi Metaphysics Z.3 one of the two criteria for something's being called a substance is that it be "to chöriston" (that which is separable); in Metaphysics A.7, 1073a3-5, Aristotle refers to primary substance, God, as "kechörismene tön aisthetön" (that which has been separated from sensible things)
16. Aristotle indicates the ontological independence of primary substances by saying that they are "neither said of some underlying subject nor are they present in some underlying subject."
17. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1990), pp. 317-329. For the English translation, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd edn. Irans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 312-324. Future references will be to the German text, followed by page reference to the English translation.
18. Richard Bernstein has named this sort of discomfort "Cartesian Anxiety," suggesting by this that Descartes's search for foundations is not merely an epistemological exercise, but also "the quest for some fixed point, some stable rock upon which we can secure our lives against the vicissitudes that constantly threaten us." See Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 18.
19. Jacques Taminiaux calls this the "self-referential" aspect of phronësis. He suggests that this dimension of phronësis arises out of the difference between praxis and paies is according to vfhichpraxis has its end in itself, whereaspoiesis, like technë, is always done for the sake of something or somebody else. See Jacques Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, Irans, and ed. Michael Gendre (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1991), p. 124.
20. Bernstein distinguishes between "blind" and "enabling" prejudices in order to elucidate what Gadamer develops as the positive concept of prejudice - namely, the notion that prejudices are conditions of understanding. The distinction between "blind" (unjustifiable) and "enabling" (justified) prejudice does not mean that blind prejudice is not also operational in each act of judgment. To the contrary, this sort of prejudice too must be recognized if we are to take seriously the fact that it is always a finite human being who understands and judges. Richard Bernstein, 'From Hermeneutics to Praxis', Review of Metaphysics 35 (1982): 823-845.
21. For Gadamer's discussion of the positive concept of prejudice, see Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, pp. 274-312/270-307.
22. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 328/322.
23. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, p. 1712. Synesis is derived from the verb synienai, which means "to send, bring or set together," "to perceive or hear," and even in the middle voice, "to come to an understanding about something." Thus, it already has a communal or dialogical dimension built into it. However, Liddell and Scott also explicitly establish "conscience" as one of the meanings of synesis, linking it with syneidë sis. Syneidësis, which means, "a joint knowledge or consciousness," or "conscience," however, is derived from a different root, namely, synidein (ibid., Greek-English Lexicon, p. 1704). This verb is linked to verbs of knowledge related to the sense of sight: synoran, "to see together," and syneidenai, "to share in the knowledge" of a thing, or "to be conscious" to oneself, (when used with the dative). Taken together, the cluster of words in which synesis is embedded clearly suggests that it connotes a sort of intelligence directed towards and intimately related to others. Thus, the translation offered here is designed to bring out this dimension of the term that is otherwise eclipsed when merely translated into English as "intelligence" or "understanding."
24. Heidegger's own insistence on "Gewissen" as a translation ofphronësis must not be permitted to obfuscate my translation of synesis as "conscientious apprehension" which remains un-Heideggerian and to some extent, pre-Christian, insofar as it is designed to capture one aspect of the dialogical dimension ofphronësis in Aristotle. For a discussion of the limitations of Heidegger's view, see P. Christopher Smith, "The I-Thou Encounter (Begegnung) in Gadamer's reception of Heidegger," in Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), p. 521.
25. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 237.
26. Adina Schwartz has argued along these lines, see Adina Schwartz, 'Aristotle on Education and Choice', Educational Theory 29 (1979): 97-107.
27. In his exuberance for the concept ofphronësis in Aristotle, Jacques Taminiaux misspeaks when he writes: "Since phronësis concerns neither products (as techne does) nor imperishable things (as epistëmë does), it is not concerned with anything universal, but with what pertains to the individual, ta ekasta (sic.), and the proper time, to kairos" (Taminiaux, op. cit., pp. 123-124). To the contrary, phronësis is concerned with the universal; however, this is neither the hegemonic universal of epistëmë, nor the pre-established eidos of technë. Whereas epistëmë subsumes particulars under universals according to the necessary rule of the universal and technë manipulates particulars so as to fit it into the preconceived eidos of the producer, phronësis approaches each new situation with certain universal assumptions which it must constantly be prepared to revise according to its encounter with the concrete individual. The universal and the individual are co-determined in this encounter.
28. Gadamer has, of course, emphasized that understanding, interpretation and application must always be understood as a unified process. Thus, application is itself at once understanding and interpretation (Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 308/313).
29. David Wiggins, following John Cooper, has suggested that there are two possible readings of the "pros" here: the first takes it in terms of the means-ends logic, the second recognizes that the very existence of the thing "counts in itself as a partial or total realization of the end." David Wiggins, 'Deliberation and practical reason', in Amélie Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle 's Ethics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), p. 224. Cf. John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 19-23.
30. Richard Sorabji, 'Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue', in Amélie Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, p. 218.
31. Although Natali argues that it is most reasonable to take Aristotle's insistence Uùphronësis concerns what leads towards the ends and not the ends themselves at face value, he too recognizes that when phronësis is linked to arete, there seems to be room for the claim that phronësis is involved in determining ends: "Aristotle's theory aims to rule out the possibility of deliberating passionlessly about the end to be pursued, in the way a mathematician analyzes a problem. The orientation to good action depends on phronësis, which takes its end from virtue, which is determined by a logos which is, in its turn, phronë sis" See Carlo Natali, The Wisdom of Aristotle, Irans. Gerald Parks (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2001), p. 58.
32. The manner in which these universals becomes fixed via induction links epistëmë more closely with phronësis than one might think. However, epistëmë, unlike phronësis, remains guided by an ideal of absolute certainty that phronësis is not.
33. Heidegger has recognized the structural affinity between sophia and phronësis calling the conception of sensation Aristotle develops here practical nous (Heidegger, Sophist, pp. 159ff/110ff).
34. This explains why Aristotle calls it sensation of "another kind," for sensation proper is "common to all humans" (982al 1-12) and not only to the virtuous.
35. Sorabji, 'Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue', p. 216.
36. Ibid., pp. 204-205.
37. The distinction Aristotle establishes in a rather convoluted manner between the continuous, syneches, and the successive, hexes, in Meta. 1068b26-1069al8 is perhaps interesting in this context; for Aristotle suggests that it is contact that turns succession, hexes, into contiguity, echomenon, of which continuity, syneches, is a species. There Aristotle calls something "syneches" "whenever the limit of two things that are touching and held together become one and the same." Thus, what differentiates the successive from the continuous is precisely the touching that reduces difference to the same. Succession, on the other hand, respects this difference, but recognizes that that which is successive is determined both by what came before and what will come after.
38. Cf. Physics IV11.219b 1-2, where Aristotle defines time in terms of motion as "the number of motion with respect to a before and after." Taminiaux has recognized that Aristotle hints at, but never explicitly develops, another conception of temporality when he establishes the difference between kinesis and praxis in Metaphysics IX.6 and further in Nicomachean Ethics VI.5, when he establishes the difference betweenpoiësis and praxis. The analysis of the temporality of phronesis found here owes much to Taminiaux's basic contention that". . .praxis includes its own goal, and, as such, isteleia, or complete. It means that at each moment, praxis unifies what it previously was and what it will be, its past and its future, whereas the kinesis of which poiesis is a species, leaves its past and future unrelated to one another" (Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project ojFundamental Ontology, p. 125).
39. Aristotle uses this sort of phrase to refer loprohairesis at NE III.4.111 Ib27, to bouleusthai atAf£'III.5.1112bll-12andp/!raêràAf£'VI.13.1144a7-8. Herethe>raA"maybetaken to suggest the futural dimension of phronesis.
40. Such a position seems to be championed by Schwartz, who argues that Aristotle must place strict limits on the creativity of the phronimos precisely because he had an "unquestioning commitment to one highly specific and inclusive set of goals" that determined his conception of the good life (Schwartz, 'Aristotle on Education and Choice', p. 106).
41. W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 212. Ross also points out that Aristotle seems to have embraced an objective contingency in the Ethics that he took so seriously as to refuse to develop a clear conception of a universal law of causation (ibid., pp. 208-209).
42. Natali suggests that "Aristotle is rather tolerant, and regards as acceptable many behaviors that do not stray too far from the mean" (Natali, The Wisdom of Aristotle, p. 98). He seems to concur with Ross's assessment outlined above when he argues that Aristotle does not introduce a dogmatic conception of an ultimate end into his discussion of phronesis (ibid., p. 45).
43. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 326/321.
44. Natali emphasizes that "Aristotle connects the virtues and actions much more closely than the Academics did" in his excellent discussion of the manner in which Aristotle differs from his contemporaries (Natali, The Wisdom of Aristotle, pp. 119ff). Aristotle himself affirms this at NE 1.9 1098b30-l 099a7.