The prevailing accounts of Aristotle's view of practical wisdom pay little attention to all the intellectual capacities discussed in Nicomachean Ethics Book 6. They also contrast the phronimos with the wicked, the continent or the incontinent, rather than with those who have 'natural virtue' (innate or habituated), and thereby they neglect the importance of experience, through which those capacities are acquired. When we consider them, we can see what sort of experience is needed and hence what sort aspirants to full (...) virtue should be trying to acquire. It turns out that much of the knowledge such experience yields is just plain worldly knowledge. But it is not to be despised on that account. The phronimos must meet a threshold of knowledge that he will, indeed, share with some of the wicked, but will have a superior version that goes beyond theirs. (shrink)

Este texto buscará demonstrar o caráter fundamental desempenhado pelas circunstâncias da ação ou das particularidades do caso na ética aristotélica, especialmente quando Aristóteles analisa a concepção de epieikeia . Na discussão da epieikeia, é ressaltada a relação das particularidades e das regras gerais, deixando antever a prioridade da primeira em função da opacidade das últimas. Isto não significa afirmar um particularismo estrito, pois as regras ou princípios gerais ainda têm um papel a desempenhar, ainda que não seja um papel determinante.This (...) text will seek to demonstrate the fundamental character played by the circumstances of action or particularities of case in Aristotelian ethics, especially when Aristotle analyzes the epieikeia conception. In the epieikeia discussion, the relation between particularities and general rules is discussed, prefiguring the priority of the former due to the opacity of the latter. This does not mean to ratify a strict particularism, as the rules or general principles still have a role to play, though not a determining one. Keywords: epieikeia, strict particularism, rules, moderate particularism. (shrink)

Abstract 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. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that (...) the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude. (shrink)