Abstract

ANY SCHOLAR INVESTIGATING ARISTOTLE’S ACCOUNT of φρόνησις sooner or later encounters the question whether φρόνησις concerns means to the ends of human actions or those ends themselves. There is an abundance of literature, mostly French, on the topic; nevertheless, the question is worthy of reconsideration, because an element essential to answering the question, namely an understanding of the ends of human action or πρᾶξις, has not received adequate treatment in the literature to date. One reason for this oversight is that Aristotle defines πρᾶξις as having its end in itself, in distinction from ποίησις which has its end in something external to itself. Hence, when Aristotle says in Nicomachean Ethics 3 that actions are for the sake of things other than themselves, scholars have tended to conclude that Aristotle is confusing moral action and poietic action in this passage. In addition, there is an ambiguity about the very notion of an end in the Nicomachean Ethics which has not been fully recognized and explained. It is clear from the beginning that happiness is the end of ethics; yet it is worthy of note that Aristotle speaks of ends both in the singular and in the plural. If πρᾶξις is a specific action in specific circumstances, and if, as Aristotle says, it has its end in itself, how are we to understand these ends, or this one end, happiness, as the end of a particular action? Could it be in fact the case that practical actions have ends other than themselves, as the passage from Nichomachean Ethics 3 suggests? Since Aristotle says that the principles of actions are their ends, is there one end which unifies moral activity? How can an indeterminate end such as happiness, the supreme good, be the real end of a specific action? To answer these questions we will need to explain, in a manner consistent with Aristotle’s other statements, how moral action has its end, how it can have an end other than itself, and what are the different perspectives in which things can be regarded as ends. We will then be in a better position to reconsider what it is that makes our actions moral and how the morality of our actions is related to φρόνησις in its role as the discerner of practical truth.