H. P. Grice, "Practical reason and 'prudentia'"

PHRONÊSIS [φϱόνησις] (GREEK) ENGLISH prudence, wisdom, practical wisdom FRENCH prudence, sagesse, sagesse pratique, intelligence, intelligence pratique, sagacité GERMAN Klugheit, praktische Vernunft ITALIAN prudenza, ragione pratica LATIN prudentia SPANISH prudencia v. PRUDENCE, VIRTUE, and ARGUTEZZA, INGENIUM, MADNESS, MÊTIS, PRAXIS, PRUDENTIAL, SORGE, SOUL, VIRTÙ, WISDOM The set of possible translations of the Greek term phronêsis [φϱόνησις] shows the extension of its semantic field in ancient Greek, the development of this notion, and the redistributions to which it gave rise in Greek philosophy, as well as its advent in philosophies in European languages on the basis of its Latin translation by Cicero as prudentia. Originally designating thought, without emotion or desire being necessarily excluded, phronêsis, which was long not distinguished from sophia [σοφία], “wisdom, 778 PHRONÊSIS it remains that Plato, more than any earlier philosopher, clearly distinguishes what belongs to phronêsis from what belongs to the body and its “entrails.” Thus in the Timaeus (71d–e), the “appetitive” part of the soul (to epithumêtikon [τὸ ἐπιθυμητιϰόν]), the one that is associated with hunger, thirst, and all bodily needs, is lodged under the phrenes so as to be kept as far as possible from the part that deliberates, thinks, and reflects, which is lodged in the head, itself separated from the rest of the body by the neck. Stressing the fact that this appetitive part of the soul participates neither in the logos [λόγος] nor in phronêsis (Timaeus 71d), Plato even maintains that our conceivers made the liver so that it might be impressed by “images” (phantasmata [φαντάσματα]), and this also makes dreams and divination possible. As force of mind, phronêsis, like thought and reflection, is thereby clearly opposed to aphrosunê [ἀφϱοσύνη], “dementia,” and the proof is, Plato says, that no man in possession of his νοῦς, his (good) senses, is capable of divination. Only someone whose phronêsis, “capacity for reflection,” is impaired in one way or another can succeed in divination (71e). The turn toward the intellectual aspect of the semantic field is thus very clear, and is also shown by the fact that in Plato, phronêsis and sophia are often used as synonyms: they belong to the domain of thought, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom. This is still sometimes the case in Aristotle as well, not only in his “early” writings, such as the Protrepticus, but also in the Metaphysics (Γ.5, 1009b13, 18, 32); Μ.4, 1078b15), notably when he reproaches the “ancients” for not having been able to distinguish between phronêsis, “thought,” and sensation (cf. De anima 3.3, 427a17–22, where we find the same association as in Plato between the noein [νοεῖν], “thought,” and phronein, “intelligence”). Nevertheless, as Aubenque has shown in his magisterial book La prudence chez Aristote, Plato’s usage must not mask the “traditional” sense of the term phronêsis. In fact, although the word phronêsis commonly designated thought in a very general sense, it designated as well, and perhaps especially, thought or intelligence in a more specific sense, namely, to use a formula that Aristotle would not reject, “the understanding of human affairs.” By this is meant both a certain kind of knowledge, the one that concerns precisely human affairs, which are changing and variable, and a certain kind of reasoning and behavior with regard to “life.” This attitude, we might say, is rooted in a solid experience that makes the person who has it “wise”: a person who is called a phronimos, a “prudent, intelligent, sagacious” person, will be able to gauge situations, anticipate them, and cope with them thanks to his experience and discernment. That explains why Aristotle sought to base himself on this “popular wisdom” in seeking, in opposition to Plato, to distinguish a person who is “wise” in the sense of having scientific knowledge, from a person who is wise in the sense of “prudent.” . II. Phronêsis as a Virtue When in the Republic, Plato adopts a four-part classification that was apparently already in use in his time, he hesitates, in designating what we usually translate as “wisdom,” between knowledge, scientific knowledge,” as Plato and even Aristotle often show, came to designate a virtue, an “excellence” (see VIRTÙ, Box 1), exercised in the practical domain. Traditionally included among the four “cardinal” virtues, along with courage, justice, and temperance (or moderation), phronêsis nonetheless has a special status. It is a “dianoietic” or “intellectual” virtue (Aristotle), and even a “science” (the Stoics); but it is also an attitude or behavior that is involved in both private and public affairs—in short, it is, as is usually said, a kind of “practical knowledge.” Every smart manager is a “prudent” person (φϱόνιμος); to be such a person “virtuously” or, better, to be one in a “virtuoso” manner, one also has to know how to anticipate the future and not limit oneself to a timid management style. From this point of view, the Greeks’ “prudence” has almost nothing to do with the “prudence in business” to which Descartes alludes in his prefatory epistle to the French translation of the Principles, where he seeks to distinguish it from the wisdom with which philosophy must be conducted. We can take as an indication of this complexity the fact that Cicero himself, who normally translates phronêsis by prudentia, nonetheless sometimes renders this first of the four virtues by the phrase sapientia et prudentia (De officiis 1.15–16) when he wants to distinguish it from the three other cardinal virtues by its status as the intellectual virtue. I. Phronêsis as Thought The word phronêsis is derived from the verb φϱονέω, which, broadly speaking, means “to be intelligent, to think, to have feelings” (cf. RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, s.v.). In Homer, “thought” (phronêsis) or “thinking” (phronein [φϱονεῖν]) resides in the thumos [θυμός], the “breath,” which is itself, according to Onians (see SOUL, Box 3), contained in the phrenes [φϱένες], the “lungs.” Onians (RT: Origins of European Thought) consequently notes that whereas in Homer, phronein may in fact designate the intellectual aspect of thought, as it does in later Greek (thus Agamemnon “thinking [phroneonta (φϱονέοντα)] in his mind [thumos] things that were not to be realized,” Iliad 2.36–37), this verb nevertheless has a broader sense that also includes the emotions and desire. This is shown again, later on, by the verse in Sophocles’s Philoctetes (1078) in which Neoptolomos hopes that Philoctetes will change his phronêsis with regard to his companions: “Meanwhile, perhaps, he may come to a better mind [phronêsin] concerning us” (trans. Jebb, 208). Here we see that phronêsis does not refer to a purely intellectual act, but rather to the sense of the term “thought” that we still find in expressions such as “have a thought for,” “our thoughts are with you,” and so on. Plato himself, who clearly emphasized the intellectual determination of phronêsis, is still dependent on this polysemy. Thus, after having strongly maintained that the body and the attachment to pleasure that may result from it hobble the development of phronêsis, “intelligence, thought,” which, as seekers of the truth, we ought to cherish, because it alone is worth the effort and will make us truly virtuous (Phaedo 65a, 66a–e, 68a–b, 69a–c), Plato, in the same dialogue, nonetheless classifies it alongside sight, hearing, and analogous functions when the blessed are concerned (111a3–4). Similarly, in the Theatetus (161c), he says that Protagoras, whom some might consider the equal of the gods in wisdom and knowledge (sophia), in reality has no more phronêsis (judgment, intelligence) than a tadpole. However, PHRONÊSIS 779 translates sôphrosunê by both temperantia and moderatio, and even by modestia or frugalitas; cf. Tusculan Disputations 3.16–18). . 1. The new classification of the virtues In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle adopts a distinction that was current in the Academy, but was also traditional, between the irrational part of the soul (which he limits for his current ethical inquiry to the desiring part of the soul, to orektikon [τὸ ὀϱεϰτιϰόν], sometimes simply called “the ethical part,” to êthikon [τὸ ἠθιϰόν], Nicomachean Ethics 6.132, 1144b15) and its rational part, the logos being properly possessed by the latter, whereas the former (at most) listens to the logos and obeys it. Then he distinguishes first the “moral virtues”—or, to give them their true name, the “virtues of character” (êthikai aretai [ἠθιϰαὶ ἀϱεταί])—which are those of the desiring part of the soul, from the “intellectual virtues” (aretai dianoêtikai [ἀϱεταὶ διανοητιϰαί]), which are those of the part to which the logos is specific. Courage, justice, and temperance are thus ranked among these moral virtues or virtues of character that one acquires in early childhood, because character or temperament (êthos [ἦθος]) is shaped and strengthened through habit (ethos [ἔθος]: ibid., 2.1, 1103b17–19; the same play on words is already found in Plato, Laws 7.792e; see MORALS). On the other hand, phronêsis and sophia are ranked not only among sophia and phronêsis (see, for example, Republic 4.427e versus 433b). Furthermore, phronêsis can also designate both the understanding as an ability to reflect in a general way (4.432a) and the understanding as an intellectual ability distinct from bodily abilities (5.461a). In other words, the terminology is still far from being fixed, and no matter what turn Plato tried to give to this notion, it remains that in his work, phronêsis continues to have multiple meanings. A. Aristotle’s work It is in the sixth book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that phronêsis is first clearly treated as a virtue or “excellence.” It is not that Aristotle was the first to consider phronêsis a virtue, but that he gave this notion a special sense, basing himself on popular usage while at the same time radically reformulating things. Aristotle’s contribution is characterized by at least three features: a. a sharp break with Plato’s intellectualist turn; b. a clear distinction between the respective domains of sophia and phronêsis; and c. a redistribution of the four virtues (which, since Saint Ambrose, it has been customary to call “the four cardinal virtues”), namely, prudence (phronêsis/prudentia), courage (andreia [ἀνδϱεία] / fortitudo), justice (dikaiosunê [διϰαιοσύνη] / iustitia), and temperance or moderation (sôphrosunê [σωφϱοσύνη] / temperantia-moderatio; Cicero 1 And Thales fell Thales, who is supposed to have been the first of the Seven Sages of Greece to have borne the fine name of sophos [σοφός], is said to have fallen into a well while he was looking at the heavens, causing him, moreover, to be mocked by his servant. Plato reports the anecdote in the Theatetus (174a), where he uses it to poke fun at ignoramuses with slaves’ souls who mock true sages, the philosophers who, even if they may in fact fall into a well and look silly, in reality possess true knowledge of the things of this world, namely, the knowledge that makes one truly free. It is also recounted by Montaigne, who gives it a quite different, juicier interpretation: I feel grateful to the Milesian wench who, seeing the philosopher Thales continually spending his time in contemplation of the heavenly vault and always keeping his eyes raised upward, put something in his way to make him stumble, to warn him that it would be time to amuse his thoughts with things in the clouds when he had seen to those at his feet. (“Apology for Raimond Sebond,” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Frame, 402) (N.B.: Montaigne follows here the version of the anecdote given in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 1.34, in which the servant deliberately leads Thales to a hole that she has previously dug.) Unlike Plato, Montaigne thus adopts, and radicalizes, the point of view of the “popular opinion” that Aristotle mentions in order to convey the distinction he is trying to make between sophia and phronêsis: knowledge of things of a theoretical order is not of the same nature as knowledge of things of a practical order. The possession of the former in no way entails possession of the latter, as Thales’s fall into the well clearly shows (Nicomachean Ethics 6.7, 1141bff.). That is why Thales can be considered a sophos, but not a phronimos. Even when sophia wants to take revenge on the servant, and prove that she, sophia, is capable of practical applications, this does not guarantee her the status of phronêsis. Sophia can be practically effective without being ethically virtuous. That is the meaning of the anecdote reported in the Politics (1.11, 1259a6–23). Thales performed an epideixis [ἐπίδειξις], a “demonstration,” a display of sophia: having predicted, thanks to his astronomical knowledge, that there would be an abundant olive harvest, he gave deposits for the use of all of the olive presses, and then rented them out again at the rate he wanted, thus inventing the monopoly and chrematistics, and proving that “philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but their ambition is of another sort” (1259a16–18, trans. Jowett). Phronêsis is not the same thing as sophia, even when the latter is applied; and the Aristotelian sage, whether he is a phronimos or a sophos, knows it in a way quite different from the Platonic sophos. REFS.: Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by R. McKeon. Translated by B. Jowett. New York: Random House, 1941. Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Translated by D. M. Frame. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965. 780 PHRONÊSIS trans. Ross). For this definition concludes this way: “And by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom [phronimos] would determine it.” Thus Aristotle underscores the essential role of the prudent man in the very definition of moral virtue: it is the prudent man who determines the mean, the “happy medium.” Incarnated in the phronimos, phronêsis thus intervenes long before it is defined as such within the study of the intellectual virtues (ibid., 6.5–9). 3. Phronêsis and its field of action Aristotelian phronêsis thus occupies a rather special place that continues to be of great interest to modern thinkers (see PRAXIS, PRUDENTIAL). It is a virtue, but it is also a certain kind of knowledge, a certain kind of understanding: the understanding of practical things. Generally speaking, its domain is that of “doing.” That is why Aristotle does not hesitate to classify it among the “productive sciences” (poiêtika [ποιητιϰά], Eudemian Ethics 1.5, 1216b18; he is using the term “science” [epistêmê (ἐπιστήμη)] in a broad sense), even though phronêsis is distinct from poiêsis [ποίησις] in the sense of technê [τέχνη], because it does not “produce” anything external to itself (Nicomachean Ethics 6.4; see PRAXIS). But phronêsis is indeed “productive,” because contrary to the theoretical sciences, knowledge is not its only end. Only phronêsis governs action. If Aristotle bases himself on the fact that we recognize as “prudent” a person who manages his own affairs as well as possible, he immediately reworks this popular meaning by noting that “we think Pericles and those like him to be prudent men [phronimous] because they are capable of seeing [dunantai theôrein (δύνανται θεωϱεῖν)] what is good for them and for men in general” (ibid., 6.5, 1140b7–10). This is a clear break with Plato, who did not hold statesmen in high esteem, and Aristotle further emphasizes it by observing that “political wisdom and practical wisdom are the same state of mind” (ibid., 6.8, 1141b23–24). Once it is established that phronêsis is the art of deliberating well concerning the means to an end, Aristotle explains that it is especially a knowledge of particular things and is thereby closer to sensation than to knowledge in the strict sense. That is why, he says in substance, a young man may very well be an excellent mathematician—mathematics never involves, after all, anything but “discourse”—but he cannot be a good politician, because that requires experience, and thus time (ibid., 6.9, 1142a11–20). the intellectual virtues that are acquired through experience (empeiria [ἐμπειϱία]) and are obviously indispensable so far as phronêsis is concerned, but also among those acquired through education (didaskalia [διδασϰαλία]: Nicomachean Ethics, 2.1, 1103b14–17). 2. The distinction between sophia and phronêsis When he takes up the study of the intellectual virtues (Nicomachean Ethics 6.2), Aristotle begins by subdividing the properly rational part into a “scientific” part (to epistêmonikon [τὸ ἐπιστημονιϰόν]) and a “calculative” part (to logistikon [τὸ λογιστιϰόν]), also called “opinionative” (to doxastikon [τὸ δοξαστιϰόν],1144b14; it is less a matter of calculating in the literal sense of the term than of making conjectures). The scientific part of the soul is the domain of theoretical things, that is, those that cannot be other than they are—in other words, necessary things, which are the only ones that can be made the object of truly scientific study, precisely because they are necessary. The excellence of this part is called sophia, or “wisdom,” as it is usually translated. The calculative part of the soul, on the other hand, is the domain of things that can be other than they are, that is, contingent things—and, very specifically, within this domain it is the sphere of “human affairs” (ta anthrôpina pragmata [τὰ ἀνθϱώπινα πϱάγματα]), “things to be done” (ta prakta [τὰ πϱαϰτά]), that is the ambit of the calculative part of the soul. The excellence of this part is called phronêsis. Emphasizing the radical heterogeneity of these two domains, Aristotle thus breaks up what Plato had tried to unify: sophia, which understands nothing about the domain of things to be done, does not govern phronêsis; and phronêsis, insofar as man is not the most excellent thing in the world, does not govern sophia. The “conflict of faculties” is thus settled. As a result, in contrast to the moral virtues, the “intellectual” virtues do not form a homogeneous whole. Let us not delude ourselves, therefore, regarding the intellectual character of Aristotelian phronêsis: phronêsis and the set of moral virtues form a whole, an autonomous domain, that of practical life (see PRAXIS), which cannot be reduced to scientific knowledge properly so called. The proof of this is that Aristotle already presupposes phronêsis in the famous definition of moral virtue as “a state of character concerned with choice [hexis proairetikê (ἕξις πϱοαιϱετιϰή)], lying in a mean [mesotês (μεσότης)], i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle” (Nicomachean Ethics 6.2, 1106b36–37, 2 The four cardinal virtues Plato, though he did not necessarily invent it, makes use of the four-part classification “wisdom (sophia or phronêsis), justice, courage, temperance.” The Stoics call these four virtues “primary” (tas prôtas [τὰς πϱώτας]: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 6.92; the term phronêsis was then adopted to designate the most important of them); but the expression “cardinal virtues” was not used by the Greek philosophers. Saint Ambrose uses this term to designate the civil virtues that every good Christian must possess in addition to the three theological virtues, namely, faith, hope, and charity. In fact, he usually calls them “principal” virtues (principales), and in this we can see a relic of Stoicism. However, Saint Ambrose enumerates seven “principal virtues”: the Spirit of wisdom and intelligence, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, and the Spirit of holy fear (De sacramentis, 3.2.8–10; De mysteriis, 7.42). Finally, defining moderatio as the virtue that tempers justice, Saint Ambrose considers it for that reason to be the most beautiful of all (De paenitentia, 1.1.1–2).la langue latine). From this point of view, he was certainly not wrong, because we can read in Aristotle that “it is to that which observes well the various matters concerning itself that one ascribes practical wisdom [phronimos]. This is why we say that some even of the lower animals have practical wisdom, viz., those which are found to have a power of foresight with regard to their own life” (Nicomachean Ethics 6.7, 1141a25–28, trans. Ross). But while Aristotle based himself on popular beliefs, Cicero relies on the strict Stoic definitions of sophia and phronêsis when he translates the latter by prudentia: “By prudentia, in Greek [phronêsis (φϱόνησις)], we mean a virtue different from sapientia: prudence is the knowledge of what is to be desired and avoided; wisdom, which is, as I have said, the supreme virtue, is the knowledge [scientia] of things divine and human, which includes communal and social bonds between the gods and men” (De officiis 1.153). Thus even when Cicero, following in the footsteps of Panetius and middle Stoicism, maintains that honestum, “honorable conduct,” which is the foundation of all morality, derives from one of the four virtues the Stoics considered primary, he nonetheless stresses that these four virtues are “interconnected and interwoven” (ibid., 1.15). Moreover, since it is in this passage that Cicero translates the first of these virtues by sapientia et prudentia, defining it as “the quest for and discovery of the true,” we see that he clearly remains dependent on Stoic rationalism. Given that this definition of prudentia became common in the world of Greco-Roman antiquity—it was retained by Augustine: “Prudence [prudentia] is the knowledge [scientia] of the things that must be desired and the things that must be avoided” (On Free Will, 1.13.27)—we might see in this a good reason not to resort to the translation by “prudence” when it is a matter of Aristotelian phronêsis. However, it must be noted that Thomas Aquinas, who discusses prudentia at length in his Summa theologica (IIa, IIae, qu. 46–56) from an Aristotelian point of view, did not bother with this difficulty and avoided the obstacle presented by the authority of Augustine—prudentia is a virtue, and knowledge is contrasted with virtue (qu. 47, art. 4)—by saying that the latter “understood knowledge in the broad sense of any act of right reason [ibi large accipit scientiam pro qualibet recta ratione]” (ibid.). Similarly, when he reaffirms, following Aristotle, that “prudence intimates action” (Nicomachean Ethics 6.11, 1143b8, where we read that phronêsis is “imperative,” epitaktikê [ἐπιταϰτιϰή]), Aquinas once again gets around Augustine, who seems to limit phronêsis to “knowing how to be wary of the hazards that threaten action” (qu. 47, art. 8). Today, of course, prudence is seldom defined in any but this Augustinian manner, as caution—for example, when driving a car. But the French translation of phronêsis by sagesse, “wisdom,” is no better (French speakers will often say that a child is sage, and in France comités de sages are empanelled to give direction on matters of policy: is it not as if these sages could be expected to provide wise advice because they are not engaged in action?), and has, moreover, the great disadvantage that we then have to wonder how to render sophia and sophos. Translators who refuse to render Aristotle’s phronêsis by “prudence” (prudencia, B. The new Stoic order In proportion to their dogmatism or absolute rationalism— for them, the wise man’s knowledge is an unshakeable knowledge that covers every domain, all of them closely interwoven with the others, and the great majority of men must be considered a bunch of good-for-nothings (phauloi [φαῦλοι])—the Stoics make phronêsis as a virtue the “knowledge [epistêmê] of bad things, of good things, and of what is neither good nor bad” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.92). The founder of the school, Zeno of Citium, who was still influenced by Socratic monism, went back beyond Aristotle to the Socratic conception of the unity of virtue-knowledge. Then phronêsis, whose name could be preserved, was merely one of the multiple versions of this virtue-knowledge, even if, by basing oneself on Plutarch, one could probably attribute a certain precedence to it: it was part of the definition of each virtue, which means that the phronêsis that enters into the definition of each of the virtues had to be distinguished from phronêsis “in the special sense.” Thus, whereas courage is “prudence in domains requiring endurance, and moderation is prudence in domains requiring a choice, prudence in the strict sense [tên d’ idiôs legomenên phronêsin (τὴν δ’ ἰδίως λεγομένην φϱόνησιν)] is prudence in domains concerning distribution” (Plutarch, “On Stoic Self-Contradiction” 1034a, in RT: The Hellenistic Philosophers). Although this first conception did not persist among the Stoics, they did continue to reject Aristotle’s sharp distinction among domains, which was itself founded on a monist psychology: “They suppose that the passionate and irrational part is not distinguished from the rational part by any distinction intrinsic to the nature of the soul, but that the same part of the soul, which they call thought and the directive part [dianoian kai hêgemonikon (διάνοιαν ϰαὶ ἡγεμονιϰόν)], becomes a virtue or a vice insofar as it completely reverses itself and changes in the passions and alterations of its habitus or character, and that it contains nothing irrational in itself” (Plutarch, “On Moral Virtue” 441d, in RT: The Hellenistic Philosophers). Even if it continued to use the word phronêsis and to make it a virtue, Stoicism could not tolerate the existence of an autonomous and heterogeneous domain of science, as is found in Aristotle. That is why when Chrysippus, for example, seems to adopt the traditional classification of the four “cardinal” virtues, which the Stoics called “primary” virtues (), he insists at the same time on their strong cohesion: “[The Stoics] say that the virtues are in a relationship of mutual implication [antakolouthein allêlais (ἀνταϰολουθεῖν ἀλλήλαις)], not only because anyone who has one of them has them all, but also because a person who accomplishes an action in accord with one of them accomplishes it in accord with them all” (Plutarch, “On Stoic Self-Contradiction” 1046e, in RT: The Hellenistic Philosophers). Similarly, Chrysippus continues to maintain that all virtue is knowledge, even if each virtue is a different kind of knowledge. C. Phronêsis and prudentia In choosing to translate phronêsis by prudentia, Cicero heard in the latter an echo of providentia, the art of foreseeing. Prudentia is in fact derived from providentia (pro-video, “to see ahead, foresee”; cf. RT: Dictionnaire étymologique de -- aphrosunê (sottise in the French translation of Diogenes Laertius, ed. and trans. Goulet-Cazé) that, as a “primary” vice, is the contrary of the “primary” virtue phronêsis. Of course, we do not speak Greek better than do the Greeks, but we might have expected aphrosunê to be opposed not to phronêsis but to sôphrosunê, that other “primary” virtue that since Cicero we have translated as “temperance” or “moderation,” and whose task it is to regulate bodily pleasures, chiefly those of touch and taste, according to Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 3.13–15; the moderation of the ancients will be opposed to Christian “concupiscence,” which has so much to do with vision). Aphrosunê is not opposed to sôphrosunê, however, but characteristically to phronêsis, “wisdom,” “virtue,” or “knowledge.” It was the term akolasia [ἀϰολασία], a word that designates literally the character of that which has not been pruned and has grown all by itself, that the Greeks usually opposed to sôphrosunê (cf. Plato, Republic 4.431b; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 3.15; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.93). The whole question, as Plato and all his posterity said, is education, the crucial period being when the child is learning to control his body (Republic 2.377a–b). This explains Aristotle’s strange play on words: “That is why we call temperance [sôphrosunê] by this name; we imply that it preserves one’s practical wisdom [hôs sôizousan tên phronêsin (ὡς σῴζουσαν τὴν φϱόνησιν)]” (Nicomachean Ethics 6.5, 1140b12): one may very well be dissolute and a good mathematician, be drunk and still know that two plus two equals four; but one cannot be both dissolute and prudent. B. Understanding the Aristotelian circle and contemporary questions For some of our contemporaries who are quick to seek in Aristotle the solution to the problems we face in dealing with G.W.F. Hegel’s strong criticisms of Immanuel Kant and moral formalism, Aristotle is supposed to have developed a formidable circle between phronêsis and the three other main moral virtues: we cannot be morally virtuous without prudence, Aristotle says, or prudent without moral virtue (Nicomachean Ethics 6.13, 1144b30–32; 10.8, 1178a14–19). But this is to forget that in Aristotle, phronêsis is above all a virtue or “excellence,” and not just any form of “practical reason,” even if it is an “intellectual” virtue. The apparent paradox has to do with the fact that the person who ensures the choice of the happy medium defining moral virtues, namely the prudent person, cannot exist without first having moral virtue, and in particular the moral virtue Aristotle considers the most important of all, sôphrosunê, temperance or moderation. But this is a matter of education. The explanation is not at all paradoxical, even in appearance: although moderation is necessary to guarantee the correctness of practical judgments, no such guarantee is necessary to ensure the correctness of theoretical or mathematical judgments, for example. That is why, following in this respect Plato’s adage, Aristotle puts such stress on the necessity of giving children a proper upbringing: the desiring part of the soul has to be accustomed to obeying the properly rational part, which will acquire all of its value when the time comes for reason to govern. The virtue of prudenza, etc.), whether because of its “technical” translation in Cicero, the meaning this notion acquired in Kant (in whose work “prudence” is no more than “cleverness,” Klugheit), or unfortunate modern meanings of the term, end up splitting “wisdom” into two: on the one hand, “wisdom” as such, to translate sophia, and on the other, “practical wisdom” or “practical reason” (praktische Vernunft, ragione pratica). There is no lack of resources; in French, the translation of sophia by philosophie and phronêsis by sagesse has even been proposed (Gauthier and Jolif, Aristote). III. Phronêsis, Sophia, and Sôphrosunê The translation problems that arise from the twofold Greek and Latin tradition, as well as the development of the terms “wisdom” and “prudence” in our languages, are obviously not simple issues. The difficulty has to do with what the “moderns” as well as the “ancients” call “wisdom” (sagesse). One symptom of this is the definition of the “Sage” that we find in Furetière’s dictionary: “A philosopher who, through the study of nature and past events, has learned to know himself, and to conduct his actions well. Plutarch wrote a fine Treatise on the Banquet of the Seven Sages. The Sage has passions and moderates them. The Stoics, seeking to create a Sage, only made a statue of him” (RT: Dictionnaire universel). But since, for the notion of wisdom (sagesse), Furetière refers first of all to God’s knowledge, and then to the knowledge that humans can acquire through the study of physics and morality, it is remarkable that through this very barb directed at the Stoics, it seems that one point in their doctrine is reaffirmed: wisdom is not only the superior art of living of a person who knows how to shelter himself from what torments other people—Montaigne’s famous “soft pillow”—but primarily a knowledge of a theoretical order that, because it is theoretical, proves the basis for a self-knowledge that enables us to conduct our actions well. (It would, moreover, suffice to add dialectics to physics and morality to obtain the three inseparable parts of the Stoic system that constitute the Stoic Sage’s virtues.) A. Phronêsis, aphrosunê, sôphrosunê This difficulty is illustrated by both Aristotle and the Stoics, to whom we owe our heritage with regard to phronêsis, a peculiar heritage in the sense that in antiquity, it was the Stoic heritage that prevailed and that ended up allowing the philosophy of modern times to reduce the Aristotelian heritage to almost nothing, whereas for our contemporaries, it is the Aristotelian heritage that seems to be the most interesting (cf. Pellegrin, “Prudence”). But that is to forget that in both cases, it is primarily a question of “virtue” and of what has to be called “wisdom” (sagesse). In this sense, if we recall that what Plato opposed to phronêsis as “wisdom” or “knowledge” was aphrosunê, “madness” (Timaeus 71e), it will not be without interest to note that when the Stoics oppose to the primary virtues the primary vices, which they define, consistently with their exposition, as “ignorances [agnoias (ἀγνοίας)] of things of which the virtues are the sciences [epistêmai]” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.93), it is again