Interpreting Aristotle’s Directions

Abstract

Abstract In the course of examining practical wisdom in Nicomachean Ethics VI, Aristotle takes a good look at theoretical wisdom too. One of his reasons is completeness: the Ethics is mainly a study of human virtue, moral and intellectual, and Aristotle wants to cover every subdivision of the field. Then there is the need to prepare for subsequent arguments showing that even the best practical activities fail to qualify as consummate happiness, at least when compared with god-like theoretical activity. 1 And yet another reason, which concerns me here, lies in Aristotle’s hope of throwing light on the nebulous topic of practical wisdom through comparison and contrast with the theoretical kind. With this in view, he summons up for us in broad strokes the picture of theoretical science (episteme) which he has already drawn in detail ‘in the [sc. Posterior] Analytics’.2 It seems not to have occurred to him that the reverse comparison might also be helpful: that an account of practical wisdom and practical reason might shed light on their theoretical counterparts too. But this possibility has not been lost on some of his interpreters.

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