Why does Aristotle Think that Ethical Virtue is Required for Practical Wisdom
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8104720 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ursula Coope (Corpus Christi CollegeMerton Street, Oxford OX1 4FJUK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 142-163 |
| Publication date | 2012-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Phronesis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8868 • E-ISSN: 1568-5284 |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1163/156852812x628998 |
| OpenAlex | W1979967788 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 33 |
| References cited | 6 |
In this paper, I ask why Aristotle thinks that ethical virtue (rather than mere self-control) is required for practical wisdom. I argue that a satisfactory answer will need to explain why being prone to bad appetites implies a failing of the rational part of the soul. I go on to claim that the self-controlled person does suffer from such a rational failing: a failure to take a specifically rational kind of pleasure in fine action. However, this still leaves a problem: could there not be someone who (unlike the self-controlled person) took the right kind of pleasure in fine action, but who failed to be virtuous on account of bad appetites? If so, would such a person be practically wise but not virtuous? I end with some suggestions about how Aristotle might answer this
Action (physics · Ancient philosophy · Epistemology · Pleasure · Practical reason · Practical wisdom · Soul · Virtue · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology · Philosophy
Phronesis and the Virtues ( NE vi 12–13)
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Beginning and Ending with Eudaimonia
Competing Ways of Life and Ring Composition ( NE x 6–8)
Aristotelian Continence Reconsidered
Protreptic Aspects of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle on the Anthropological Difference and Animal Minds
Aristotle’s Analysis of Akratic Action
Aristotle on Friendship and Being Human
Was Aristotle a Humean? A Partisan Guide to the Debate
Spot the Differences!
Aristotle’s Peculiarly Human Psychology
The Relationship between Aristotle’s Ethical and Political Discourses ( NE x 9)
The Eudemian Ethics and Its Controversial Relationship to the Nicomachean Ethics
The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic Hedonists
Philosophical Virtue
Speech and the Rational Soul
Aristotle on the Definition of What It Is to Be Human
Happiness and the External Goods
Why Is Aristotle’s Virtue of Character a Mean? Taking Aristotle at His Word ( NE ii 6)
The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle's Anthropology
Aristotle on How Pleasure Perfects Activity ( Nicomachean Ethics x.5 1175a29-b14)
The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle
Aristóteles e a necessidade do conhecimento científico
Wisdom, Political Expertise and the Unity of Virtues in Aristotle
Aristotle on Virtue of Character and the Authority of Reason
Aristotle Against Delos
Practical wisdom as conviction in Aristotle's ethics
Aristotle’s conception of practical wisdom and what it means for moral education in schools
Empeiria and Good Habits in Aristotle’s Ethics
Plutarch and Machiavelli
Knowing in Aristotle part 2
| Unique citing works | 33 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,75 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2025 (12) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 33 |