Practical Intelligence and the Virtues
Daniel C. Russell
Oxford, 2009

"[A] broader reading of 'the things towards the ends' holds that those ends are not always already determinate, and that deliberation also involves *specification* of ends. For instance, Aristotle's examples of deliberation include a doctor aiming at making his patient healthy, a public speaker at persuading his audience, and a statesman governing well (NE III.3 1112b12-14; cp. EE II.10 1227a18-21), and clearly these ends are not determinate." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 7)

"[P]hronesis deliberates about 'what sorts of things conduce to the good life in general' (EN VI.5 1140a28, cp. b4-6), its aim being 'doing well' (eupraxia, 1140b6-7) through 'forming a clear view of what is good for themselves and what is good for human beings in general' (1140b7-10)." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 17)

"[T]o be active in phronesis is a constituent part of flourishing (EN VI.12 1144a3-6) ... because it is the excellence of the practical intellect, and thus of a crucial aspect of the human person (VI.12 1144a1-3; VI.13 1145a2-6)." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 17)

Russell provides a helpful discusison of the parts of phronesis. The first of these is sunesis or eusunesis, i.e., "comprehension". He writes: "[A]lthough comprehension does not itself result in decision, it is a crucial part of deliberation, since it is a sort of discriminatory ability to 'read' a situation, as it were, so as to recognize what is salient, to assess how trustworthy one's information is, whether one's situation really does involve a dilemma, and so on." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 21)

The second is gnome, i.e., "sense" (I would translate this as "sensitivity"). He writes: "Aristotle has rather little to say about this virtue: it is concerned with 'making correct discrimination of what is reasonable', or appropriate (epieikeia) (1143a19-20). Aristotle emphasizes that a person with 'sense' has sympathy (sungnome), and as Robert Louden has remarked, this suggests an ability to see things from another's point of view in deliberating about what is reasonable or appropriate." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 21)

The third is nous, i.e., "intelligence" (I would translate this as "insight"). He writes: "[I]ntelligence for Aristotle seems to be that element of phronesis by which deliberation correctly adjusts one's grasp of what one must do in particular circumstances as regards a general end, such as acting generously or as a good friend. In that case, it is that aspect of phronesis by which one gives one's ends a determinate specification that is appropriate to them (Sherman 1989, 44)....  [I]n practical intellect nous is not the process by which one knows how to solve problems here-and-now - that process is experience and practice - but is rather the developed problem-solving ability resulting from experience, and is no more 'intuitive' than analogous problem-solving abilities of builders, physicians, and other technical experts....  [I]ntelligence is the particular aspect of the virtues of character that accounts for the fact that with proper experience and practice, a person can progress from imitating just or temperate persons to being a just or temperate person himself in a reliable and self-directing way (NE II.4)." (RUSSELL-2009, pp. 22-23)

"[I]t may be tempting to suppose that taking care to find the best means to one's virtuous ends is all that virtuous action requires, and thus that phronesis is redundant. But once we take seriously the distinction between cleverness and phronesis, we can see that such a line of thought misses out on an all-important step in virtuous deliberation and decision: specifying and making determinate a virtuous end - finding not just how best to do a benevolent act, but determining what would constitute benevolence in the case at hand. Excellence in the latter determination is what phronesis is all about." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 25)

"A conception of the good life is important for phronesis, which balances different ethical concerns with one another: sometimes courage involves standing and fighting, and sometimes it involves stepping down; one can know the difference in a particular circumstance only by understanding what is worth fighting for, and at what cost, and this means having an overall conception of the good.... This fact suggests that part of having the virtue of courage, say, is to understand why courageous action makes sense, and in particular why it makes sense that such action should have a place in one's life. This seems to be why actions that one deliberately decides to do are especially revealing of one's character: they are especially revealing of the sorts of reasons for acting one takes there to be, and to reveal such reasons is to reveal, ultimately, some sort of view about how one ought to live." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 29) [PSA: having such reasons is a key component of activity 'meta logou'; cf. BURNYEAT-1981; and having an overall conception of the good is having an overall conception of the highest good achievable in action, i.e., the best life]

"On Aristotle's view, an action can be virtuous if it conforms to certain standards of appropriateness - a notion that Aristotle calls *to prepon*, 'the fitting' or 'the appropriate', which is a central feature of his thesis that a virtuous action lies in a 'mean' that is discerned by 'right reason' (orthos logos)." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 76)

"See also MM I.11, whose author claims that even if aspiration falls short, it benefits the aspirant." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 106)

"Phronesis, like virtue, comes in degrees along a range or 'scale', and the notion of 'the virtuous person', complete with phronesis, is not necessarily an ideal for us to aspire to, but an ideal that 'calibrates' that scale and thus makes the very idea of such a scale a meaningful one." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 111)

"[V]irtue ethics ... must treat virtues as psychologically real entities - nexuses of emotions, desires, goals, and values - rather than as mere propensities to certain stereotypical forms of action, since only the former make one flexible enough to act well and rightly in a variety of contexts." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 127)

"[T]alk of 'the virtuous person' affords a way of *modeling* practical problems, not *solving* them .... by focusing attention *away* from a decision procedure for solving the problem and onto an approach to the problem that takes as central the way in which one makes it, carries it through, etc., including the idea that virtuous action includes a skillful practical reasoning on the part of the one facing the problem." (RUSSELL-2009, pp. 137-138)

"[A] virtue is a kind of character trait ... a certain pattern of desires, goals, emotions, attitudes, beliefs, priorities, and so on." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 172)

"[T]he virtues, not unlike practical skills, say, develop differently from person to person, and in a spotty and uneven way in every person, but ... we should not mistake these developmental patterns for the structure and boundaries of the virtues themselves." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 173)

"Aristotle compares the magnificent person to an expert artisan (NE IV.2 1122a34), as both have an eye for perceiving what is 'suitable' and 'in good taste'." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 214)

"It is ... puzzling that Aristotle should begin his whole discussion of magnificence by observing that all the magnificent are generous (but not necessarily vice versa; 1122a28-29), yet proceed to place magnificence alongside generosity nonetheless. [fn13: See 1122a28-29; cf. similar claims about 'magnanimity' at 1123b5-6, 1125b1-8.]" (RUSSELL-2009, p. 216) [PSA: Perhaps Aristotle has a dialectical reason for doing this; e.g., to hint that there is really only one arete.]

"Aristotle holds that one of the virtues - practical wisdom or phronesis - is essential to every other virtue, and to the operation of all the virtues in a unified and mutually supporting way (NE VI.2 1144a29-b1; VI.13 1144b30-1145a6). Nonetheless, Aristotle does offer his list of virtues without indicating either that that list should be understood as complete, or how one would continue that list in a principled way from where he leaves off." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 217) [PSA: perhaps because the list doesn't really matter...]

"[T]here is no sharp division between the more ethical and the more hands-on skills, since part of what makes an expenditure 'appropriate' is that it aims at expenditures that do in fact benefit and beautify one's city." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 222) [PSA: this might be similar to the lack of a sharp division, in Greek thought, between craft and fine art.]

"Aristotle says (NE VI.12, 1144a6-9) that a virtue makes one's 'target' the right one - to do what is just, say, or courageous - but insists that this alone is not enough to *act* in a virtuous way. Being virtuous is much more than having one's heart in the right place. It is also a matter of knowing what to do." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 223)

"The Aristotelian ... insists that the virtues must all be underwritten by the psychological attribute of practical wisdom or phronesis, and makes this the basis of the consistency of the virtues, on the grounds that phronesis enables the agent to adjust to a wide variety of situations." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 316)

"According to Aristotle, although virtue is gained through habituation, this process results not in a 'broad-based behavioral disposition' but in an appreciation of certain sorts of aims as appropriate and reasonable in an intellectually and emotionally stable way. As Julia Annas notes ... 'A virtue, unlike a mere habit, is a disposition to act *for reasons*.'" (RUSSELL-2009, p. 324) [PSA: acting for reasons is acting with an account, i.e., 'meta logou']

"Aristotle says that to act as the virtuous person acts is to act for the sake of a goal that one values for its own sake, and to which one is firmly committed (NE II.4 1105a31-33). And virtue requires wisdom or phronesis because hitting the 'mean' with respect to virtue is a matter of properly adjusting one's behavior to complex situations (see NE II-V, EE II) ... and therefore requires reasoning well about just what achieving such goals amounts to (see NE VI.1, 12-13). That is why Aristotle says that virtue 'makes the goal correct, while wisdom makes what leads to it correct' (VI.12 1144a7-9)." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 325)

"On the Aristotelian view, the consistency of a virtue is not the consistency of a broad-based disposition relatively free of situational variables. Rather, it is the psychological consistency of certain kinds of strategies for adjusting oneself to situations. Notice, then, that part of such strategies, at least when one is practically intelligent, is to adjust one's behavior so as to avoid certain kinds of situations and to seek out others. Situationism teaches us that one cannot simply trust to 'dispositions'; one must be very careful about one's surroundings, because they can shape us even as we shape them." (RUSSELL-2009, pp. 326-327)

"[A]n Aristotelian conception of the virtues can take on board the point that character is, among other things, socially sustained. In fact, it is a point that Aristotle himself explicitly *does* take on board, in his discussion of friendship." In support, Russell quotes NE IX.12 1172a1-14. (RUSSELL-2009, p. 328)

"The intuitive notions of 'depth', and of attributes that are part of 'who one is', are ... descriptions of that level of practical reasoning at which one constructs ends for oneself. Ends are 'constructed' in two respects.... [E]nds are constructed insofar as one's ends are made determinate through deliberation... [E]nds are constructed in the more radical sense that one adopts certain ends through practical reasoning, within a broader ethical outlook on what is good for human beings." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 375)

"[S]elf-construction is not the 'historical' notion of having originated one's character oneself, but the forward-looking notion of being able to conduct oneself in accordance with one's stable values and preferences." (RUSSELL-2009, p. 378) [PSA: see also the discussion of future orientation in IRWIN-1988]

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