Intellectual Virtue
Moral virtue alone is not enough. What makes virtue work in actual cases is phronesis — practical wisdom — and Book 6 is where it becomes a technical concept.
Summary
Book 6 opens by returning to the doctrine of the mean and the observation that "act according to right reason" — while true — tells us nothing definite. What is right reason? The book's task is to answer that question. Aristotle begins by dividing the rational soul: one part grasps things whose principles cannot be otherwise (the scientific part); another deliberates about things that can be otherwise (the calculative or practical part). The excellences of these parts are correspondingly different.
Five intellectual virtues are distinguished. Scientific knowledge (epistēmē) is the disposition to grasp necessary truths by demonstration. Technical skill (technē) is the disposition to produce things according to true rational account. Intuitive understanding (nous) grasps the first principles that scientific knowledge takes as its starting points. Philosophical wisdom (sophia) is the combination of scientific knowledge and nous applied to the highest objects. And practical wisdom (phronesis) is the disposition to deliberate well about what is good for human beings in general and to act accordingly. Phronesis is not cleverness — cleverness is the ability to find means to any end, good or bad. Phronesis is the disposition calibrated to the genuinely good end.
The most important feature of phronesis is that it requires experience and cannot be had young. Aristotle's observation is precise: a young man may be a good mathematician, because mathematical truths require no contact with life, but he cannot be a good moral philosopher. Ethics is about things that can be otherwise — about how to act in particular circumstances — and only experience gives access to those particulars. The practically wise person is therefore the person whose general values are right and whose perception of particular situations is reliable: the person who can see what the present case calls for and do it. Book 6 closes by noting that moral virtue without phronesis and phronesis without moral virtue are both incomplete.
- Book 1Book 1 introduces the question and the method. All action aims at some good; the highest good is eudaimonia. The function argument...
- Book 2Book 2 introduces moral virtue as habit, distinguishes it from intellectual virtue, and gives the doctrine of the mean. Virtue is...
- Book 3Book 3 establishes the theory of voluntary action and moral responsibility, then applies it to the first two virtues: courage...
- Book 4Book 4 works through the moral virtues beyond courage and temperance: generosity, magnificence, magnanimity (the most contested)...
- Book 5Book 5 gives the treatise's full account of justice: general justice (complete virtue toward others) and particular justice...
- Book 6Book 6 introduces the intellectual virtues: scientific knowledge, technical skill, practical wisdom (phronesis), intuitive...
- Book 7Book 7 examines akrasia (weakness of will) — the phenomenon Socrates thought impossible. Aristotle argues it is real: the akratic...
- Book 8Book 8 distinguishes three kinds of friendship — utility, pleasure, and virtue — and argues that only the third is friendship in...
- Book 9Book 9 examines self-love, the dissolution of friendships, the question of how many genuine friends one can have, and the argument...
- Book 10Book 10 revisits pleasure — not a process but an activity, the unimpeded exercise of a faculty — and then answers the treatise's...