What is Phronêsis?  Voegelin and Aristotle

The virtue that Aristotle calls phronêsis . . . is an existential virtue; it is the movement of being, in which the divine order of the cosmos attains its truth in the human realm.[1]

The aim of this essay is to evaluate critically an influential yet peculiar interpretation of the Aristotelian virtue phronêsis (“prudence” or “practical wisdom”).  I am referring to the interpretation found in Eric Voegelin’s seminal essay, “Right by Nature.”[2]  Though there has been an explosion of interest in phronêsis among contemporary political theorists,[3] Voegelin’s interpretation remains unique.  For while most theorists regard phronêsis as a non-spiritual virtue,[4] Voegelin places the experience of divine insight front and center, arguing that phronêsis supplies a crucial link between divine reason and right action: “reasoning about concrete action is part of a movement within being,” Voegelin writes (commenting on Aristotle), “which issues from God and ends in human action.  Just as God moves [kinei] everything in the universe, the divine also moves all things in us.”[5]

If Voegelin is right about phronêsis, then contemporary scholars have truly failed to see what must be a rich spiritual dimension to Aristotle’s account of ethical and political calculation.  But is Voegelin right?  As a way of previewing the conclusions of this study, it might be said at the outset that Voegelin’s interpretation is, in the end, a possible one—it cannot be ruled out based on what Aristotle has written; but it also faces serious obstacles.  Moreover, though Voegelin’s effort to overcome these obstacles may strike many readers as unpersuasive, his analysis is nevertheless worth taking seriously, because, at the very least, it generates deeply significant questions about the extent to which Aristotle’s ethical-political theory is, or is not, transcendently oriented.

PHRONÊSIS IN VOEGELIN’S ESSAY, “RIGHT BY NATURE”

Voegelin’s essay, “Right by Nature,” presents itself initially as a corrective to the way natural law (das Naturrecht) has been studied since the time of the scholastics.  The overarching argument of the essay is that by treating natural law as a “topic” or “idea” (in other words, by dogmatizing it), commentators have effectively obscured the significance of the term, which was originally a “symbol of noetic exegesis.”[6]  Since noetic exegesis is not a “thing” or an “idea,” but an experience undergone by a philosophical inquirer, one cannot fully illuminate noetic symbols without recovering their engendering experiences.  Voegelin’s strategy, then, for recovering the meaning of “natural law” is to examine Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where the words “law” and “nature” were first linked together in a systematic way, and to see where Aristotle’s meditations had taken him.

Where had Aristotle’s meditations taken him?  According to Voegelin, an initial clue is supplied by the fact that what is “right by nature” is treated as something at once “valid everywhere and for all time,” and yet “changeable”;[7] it thus seems (though Aristotle does not say so explicitly) to be something both divine and human.  From this, Voegelin concludes that although Aristotle does not use the word “divine” in his conception of natural law, his view “does not seem to differ in principle from the older one of Heraclitus,” where all human laws are nourished by one that is divine (theios nomos, B 114).  Aristotle, in other words, has reached the very limits of human theorizing—the point where “what is right by nature” no longer seems contained within purely immanent structures.  What the phusei dikaion symbolizes for Aristotle, Voegelin concludes, is the “tension between the immutable divine substance and the existentially conditioned human reality.”[8]

This supplies the backdrop for Voegelin’s analysis of phronêsis, to which I shall turn momentarily.  But first, a word about “phusei dikaion”:  One could, of course, take issue with Voegelin’s analysis of this passage (NE 5.7), since nothing in the text itself, nor any passage in the vicinity of this text, refers to “the divine” in the way that Voegelin’s interpretation requires.  Indeed, Voegelin expresses frustration with Aristotle for this very reason: Aristotle’s “dominant interest” in the polis and in political justice has obscured the sense in which “what is right” transcends the polis relationship.  Aristotle’s text thus “lacks clarity,” suffers from “a mutual contamination of multiple thought sequences,” and “should have been reworked to put the associative sequence in a discursive order.”[9]  Nevertheless, Voegelin is convinced that the passage under consideration represents a “noetic exegesis”—an analysis of the experiential “tension between the poles” of human and divine existence.  Is he right?

It would be difficult to say with certainty.  But Aristotle’s text does not corroborate Voegelin’s interpretation as much as one would like.  That something is “valid everywhere and for all time,” does not make it ipso facto “divine,” according to Aristotle.[10]   Nor does Aristotle himself (pace Voegelin) ever connect what is “just by nature” with what is “valid everywhere and for all time.”  Rather, at the point in Aristotle’s text where this phrase occurs—or one like it (hoti to men phusei akinêton kai pantachou tên autên exei dunamin, NE 1134b25-6)—Aristotle is stating not his own view, but what “seems” (dokei) true to “some people” (eniois, 1134b24).  Aristotle’s own view is that nothing in the realm of ethics is ever “valid everywhere and for all time”—not the first principles of ethics, and certainly not the choices we human beings make on any given occasion (see1139a32-1140b3).  While some things are indeed “just by nature,” such things are always changeable (1134b28-33; cf. 1094b11-27).  Thus Voegelin’s initial assumption—that, for Aristotle, what is just by nature is at once changeable and unchangeable—seems to get him off to a bad start.[11]  We shall have occasion near the end of this essay to reflect more broadly on Voegelin’s interpretation of Aristotelian texts, but let us simply state here that nothing in NE 5.7 requires the view that Aristotle’s conception of “right by nature” derives from an experience of the divine, nor does the text suggest to the average reader that Aristotle was undergoing a “noetic exegesis” of the sort Voegelin describes.  This much, then, on Voegelin’s interpretation of phusei dikaion; let us now turn to his interpretation of phronêsis.

Phronêsis enters the picture at this point in Voegelin’s essay as the power or virtue (aretê) that allows one to “mediate between the poles of the tension” just described—the tension between what is “immutable and everywhere the same, and yet, in its realization, again changeable and everywhere different.”  It is, in the simplest sense, the virtue of “deliberating well” in the realm of human action.  Yet good deliberation is not just a matter of applying fixed rules to concrete situations—it is at once more fluid and (on Voegelin’s interpretation) more ontologically far-reaching than that.  For it involves a “degree of permeability to the movement of being,” which originates in the unmoved mover (that is, in God) and runs right down through the cosmos to the last thing that is moved.  Phronêsis is thus “the locus at which the movement of being in man becomes reality.”  It is activated “through an experience of transcendence,” and is the vehicle through which “the divine order of the cosmos attains its truth” in human action.  Because of its fluidity and far-reaching ontological status, Voegelin refers to phronêsis as an “existential virtue” (eine Existenzialtugend).  It may be described as a “kind of knowledge,” but it is not simply knowledge of general principles and of particular circumstances—it is also, and perhaps most importantly, the experiential knowledge of a “noetic tension in the movement of being” and the implementation of this in action.[12]

Phronêsis is, then, a faculty or virtue by means of which human deliberation becomes open to divine being.  This is the interpretation I wish to test against what Aristotle says about phronêsis in the Ethics.  However, here we run into a difficulty.  For Voegelin is evidently well aware of the obstacles he confronts in Aristotle’s text—he in fact doubts Aristotle’s ability to convey the significance of phronêsis to his audience[13]—thus Voegelin’s interpretation is not, strictly speaking, textual;[14] yet Voegelin is sure that Aristotle himself (the text notwithstanding) understands phronêsis in its full existential sense.[15]  How can he know this?  Apparently, the answer lies in certain general insights Voegelin has about Aristotle’s position in the history of thought and the way Aristotle at once inherits and “derails” the legacy of “Platonic transcendentalism.”[16]  Yet Voegelin’s insights on this score are not set out clearly in his study of Aristotelian phronêsis, nor do they derive directly from Aristotle’s presentation of phronêsis in the Ethics.  What, then, is the student of phronêsis to do?  What I propose to do in the remainder of this essay is, first, to examine Aristotle’s discussion of phronêsis in Ethics book 6.  This will have to be sketchy due to considerations of space, but it can perhaps supply a sense of the character of Aristotle’s discussion.  What I propose to do then is to highlight some of the difficulties the text poses for Voegelin’s interpretation, and then, finally, to step back and inquire into Voegelin’s view of Aristotle in general.

PHRONÊSIS IN NE 6

The discussion of phronêsis in book 6 of the Ethics is Aristotle’s effort to show how “right reason” (orthos logos) guides action.  What exactly is “right reason”?  It is the excellence (aretê) of the intellectual part of the soul.  However, this definition, while true, does not yet say enough; for the intellectual part of the soul consists of two elements—one scientific (epistêmonikon), the other calculative (logistikon)—and these do not relate to action  in the same way.  In fact, the “scientific” part of the soul does not seem to relate to action (praxis) at all, since its concern is with subjects “whose fundamental principles do not admit of being other than they are” (for example, geometry, mathematics and theology), while action and the type of reasoning that guides action relate to matters “which do admit of being other” (1139b7-8).  Thus if one wants to understand right reason in matters of human action, one must examine the “calculating” element of the soul, the excellence or virtue of which Aristotle refers to as “phronêsis.”

What does phronêsis entail?  Aristotle approaches the subject (as usual) by way of common opinion.  In common parlance, phronêsis is ascribed to the “phronimos”—that is, to the “practically wise man.”  And the chief characteristic of a phronimos is his ability to deliberate well (kalôs bouleusasthai, 1140b26) about what is good and advantageous.  This common opinion resonates with Aristotle’s claim that phronêsis belongs to the “calculative” part of the soul, since “deliberating and calculating are,” in his view, “the same thing” (1139a13).  But it supplies only the most rudimentary understanding of phronêsis.  For phronêsis and deliberation are not simply identical.  Aristotle thus proceeds to refine this common-sense view by supplementing it with other ideas from common sense and, at the same time, differentiating phronêsis from numerous cognitive abilities that relate to it more or less closely.[17]  What I wish to do here is to discuss a few of the most salient themes of Aristotle’s analysis.

A. Phronêsis is Ethical, Oikonomic and Political

Initially, phronêsis comes to light as the ability to deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for oneself (1140a26 [hautô], cf. 1141b29 ff.)—as if it were related primarily to one’s own person and not to the good of others.  Aristotle is quick to point out, however, that this conception is too narrow.  For when phronêsis is ascribed to men like Pericles—i.e., to statesmen who “have the capacity of seeing what is good for themselves and for mankind” (1140b9, my italics)—it becomes clear that phronêsis extends well beyond the self.  It is the excellence of those “capable of managing households and cities” (1140b10-11); and thus it pursues a “good” at once personal, domestic and political.  This accords well with Aristotle’s famous reflection in the Politics that man is by nature a zoôn politikon, a “political animal.”  There simply can be no “good for the self” that promotes the individual to the total exclusion of the group.  For “one’s own good cannot exist without household and city” (NE 1142a9-10, my italics).  Aristotle, then, recognizes that deliberation and phronêsis are similar, but he shows how they differ in scope: while deliberation may potentially concern private matters (even to the detriment of political life), phronêsis cannot.  Phronêsis refers, always, to a form of deliberation that is in harmony with social and political order.

B. Phronêsis and the Good Life “as a Whole”

The reason phronêsis cannot be strictly private is that it entails an understanding of the complete human good.  This is another way in which phronêsis differs markedly from mere deliberation.  It is true that in common parlance, a person may be called phronimos when he deliberates well about a partial sort of good: for example, how best to promote health or security (1140b27-8).  But in these cases, he is always said to be phronimos “with respect to something,” or to possess phronêsis “in something.”  What Aristotle is interested in, by contrast, and what he means by phronêsis, is the ability to deliberate well with respect to the eu zên holôs, the “good life as a whole.”  In other words phronêsis must take cognizance of the “end” (telos) of human life as it deliberates about actions that might promote that end.  There are, of course, many “particular ends” in relation to which good deliberation may bring a man success (1142b32).  But phronêsis in an unqualified sense takes account of “the end in the unqualified sense,” and Aristotle identifies this with “the good life” (eupraxia, 1139b3; cf. 1142b28-33).

For this reason, “prudence” is not the best rendering of “phronêsis,” (though it is a common rendering),[18] for prudence sometimes suggests mere skillfulness at managing a situation, while phronêsis clearly entails something more.  That it does can be readily seen from Aristotle’s differentiation of phronêsis from “cleverness” (deinotêta) in NE 6.12:

There exists a capacity called “cleverness,” which is the power to perform steps conducive to a goal we have set for ourselves and to attain that goal.  If the goal is noble, cleverness deserves praise; if the goal is base, cleverness is villainy.  That is why phronimoi [plural of phronimos] are often described as “clever” and “unscrupulous.”  But in fact this capacity is not phronêsis, though phronêsis does not exist without it.  Phronêsis, that eye of the soul, cannot become a hexis without aretê.  (1144a24-30)[19]

Phronêsis, in other words, has a built-in view of the good, of human excellence as a whole, and it is this which lends direction and shape to its deliberations.  In fact one cannot possess phronêsis without possessing all the other virtues of character, Aristotle believes; they go hand-in-hand.  Because phronêsis requires an understanding of our “end in an unqualified sense” (to telos haplôs, 1142b30), it cannot come into being without the other virtues; and because it represents the very ability to put these virtues into action through right reason, they cannot exist without it: “It is impossible to be good [agathos] in the full sense of the word without phronêsis or to be a phronimos without the moral virtues [tês êthikês aretês]” (1144b31-2).

C. Phronêsis and Action

Aristotle’s focus on the “end in an unqualified sense” should not, however, obscure the fact that phronêsis is concerned primarily with action:

Phronêsis is concerned with human affairs and with matters about which deliberation is possible. . . .  No one deliberates about things that cannot be other than they are, nor about things that are not directed to some end [telos], an end that is a good attainable by action.  The unqualifiedly good deliberator is he who, by calculating, can aim at and hit the best thing attainable to man by action.  (1141b8-14, my bold)

While phronêsis clearly takes cognizance of the ultimate end for man (eudaimonia, eupraxia) its own end or purpose is, in a sense, much less grand: “Its end,” Aristotle writes, “is to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do”: its function is “enjoining” [epitaktikê] (1143a8-9).  This is important to recognize because, in the final analysis, one cannot deliberate about (or choose) eudaimonia as such; what one can choose is actions.  And it is these (when well chosen) that make up the good life.

The philosopher Michael Oakeshott once observed that “I cannot want ‘happiness’; what I can want is to idle in Avignon or to hear Caruso sing.”[20]  While I am not sure if Oakeshott is right about “wanting,” he would certainly be right about deliberating and choosing: “no one deliberates”—Aristotle agrees—about “actions he cannot possibly perform” (1140a32-3).

This concern with action is what differentiates phronêsis from other intellectual activities that have their end in what “exists by necessity” and “cannot be otherwise”—activities such as epistêmê, sophia and theoria.  Aristotle underscores the difference in two ways.  On the one hand, “it is impossible to deliberate about what exists by necessity.”  Thus phronêsis does not concern itself with the spheres in which epistêmê, sophia and theoria operate.  On the other hand, those who do concern themselves with these spheres do not necessarily possess phronêsis.  In fact, they often do not:  “That is why men like Anaxagoras and Thales are said to be ‘sophos’ but not ‘phronimos’: when we see that they do not know what is advantageous to them, we admit that they know extraordinary, wonderful, difficult, and supernatural [daimonia] things, but call their knowledge useless because the good they are seeking is not human (1141b3-9).

D. The Horizontal Dimension of Phronêsis: “Starting Points” and “Ends”

Again, the main reason that phronêsis differs from the other, more sublime cognitive activities is that its “end” concerns actions.  By this point we have seen Aristotle use the word “end” in multiple contexts, referring to multiple things, and it will perhaps be helpful to set out a little more clearly the senses in which “end” factors into his analysis.  Let us begin with the informative passage that occurs in book 6, chapter 2:

The starting point [archê] of action—i.e., its source of motion [kinêsis], but not its end [ou heneka]—is choice.  The starting point of choice, however, is desire and reasoning [orexis kai logos] directed toward some end [heneka].  That is why there cannot be choice without nous and thought [dianoias], and without moral character [ethikês hexis].  For eupraxia and its opposite in matters of action do not exist without thought and character.  Now thought alone moves nothing [outhen kinei].  But thought directed to some end and concerned with action can do so.  And this is the kind of thought which also initiates “production” [tês poiêtikês archei], for everyone who produces does so for an end [heneka]—not an end [telos] in the unconditional sense [haplôs], but relative to something, namely, the product.  However, in action <as opposed to production>, eupraxia (or the desire of it) is the end [telos].  Therefore choice is either nous desiring or desire thinking [orexis dianoêtikê]; and in this sense, the starting point [archê] is man.

This passage is not easy on first reading, but it is actually fairly straightforward.  It presents an essentially chronological analysis of ethical action, which might be diagramed as follows:

I. Orexis kai logos (a)è        II. Proairesis           (b)è      III. Praxis       (c)è     IV. Eupraxia

(Desire and reason)                          (Choice)                          (Action)                         (The good life)

Archê of choice                              Archê of action                                                         Heneka/telos of action

Aristotle presents four snapshots in the horizontal movement of ethical action, represented here by Roman numerals.  He first traces the movement of ethical action back to the choice to act, which is itself initiated by a kind of “reasoned desire.”  This “reasoned desire” might be described (at least in part) as future-looking or imagination-based.  For it takes its bearings from a state of being not yet enacted.  And yet it has been enacted many times.  It is the vision of the good life supplied in part by habituation (childhood training in virtue), and in part by the power of nous to make generalizations about this habituative experience.[21]  What is key here is that the vision of the good life must affect the individual as a “desire” (orexis).  For “reason” on its own, Aristotle believes, is not a source of motion in the sphere of ethical action.  Only reason directed toward some desire is.  The good life, then, stands as the “end” of ethical action in the grand sense (it is the end of “reasoned desire,” of “choice” and of “action”) and it is also the “starting point” of ethical action in the sense that the vision of it, and desire for it, initiate the deliberation about means.

The arrows and letters in the diagram represent transitions between the snapshots, and while each is interesting to think about, only the first is presently significant.  Transition (c) is in one sense non-existent.  That is to say, in Aristotelian ethics, actions (praxai) themselves constitute eupraxia.  Happiness is not the result of virtuous acts, it simply is virtuous acts.  This constantly bears reminding in our present culture, where happiness is so-often associated with action’s rewards: for example, fame, wealth, or material well being.  For Aristotle, rewards are certainly worth having, but they are not the animating force of ethics; virtuous action itself is.  For this reason, snapshots (III) and (IV) could, in one sense, be collapsed.  But in another sense they cannot; for (III) represents a specific virtuous act on a specific occasion, while (IV) represent the complete set of virtuous acts which together make up the good life as a whole.

Transition (b) represents an important and interesting aspect of contemporary ethical theory—the problem of translating choice into action—but I do not believe it was a significant part of Aristotle’s theory.  It is not exactly the problem of akrasia (weakness of will), which infects the formation of choice itself, not the fleeting moment between choice and action (1142b18-20).  Thus, as far as I can tell, (b) does not exist as a question in Aristotelian ethics.  For Aristotle, action follows unproblematically from choice; choice is the force that sets actions in motion.

Transition (a) is the important one for our analysis.  It is here that phronêsis comes in.  Phronêsis is the intellectual ability that moves from a “reasoned desire” for the good life—eupraxia—to actions conducive to that end.  It is thus responsible for the motion running from (I), through (II), all the way up to and including (III).  It does this by means of good deliberation.  But what exactly does good deliberation entail (i.e., how exactly does phronêsis work)?  Aristotle’s answer is necessarily sketchy, but in order to understand it at all, one must shift from a horizontal to a vertical plane.

E. The Vertical Dimension of Phronêsis: Universals and Particulars

In the vertical dimension, the path of deliberation follows a downward motion from “universal” (to katholou) to “particular” (to kath’ hekaston).  This is, of course, the language of syllogism, and Aristotle refers explicitly to various syllogisms (hoi syllogismoi) in his discussion of phronêsis.[22]  But while phronêsis has a generally syllogistic structure, it is doubtful that a full-fledged practical syllogism could be mapped out in any significant detail.  In fact Aristotle himself shies away from this task.[23]  Nevertheless, the structure of syllogism in general supplies a useful device for understanding the vertical dimension of phronêsis.  Aristotelian syllogisms run essentially as follows:

Premise 1:       All B is A;

Premise 2:       all C is B;

Conclusion:    therefore, all C is A.

Let us consider phronêsis briefly in this light.[24]

Phronêsis begins from a “first principle” (archê), which is said to be “universal.”  Although Aristotle does not express this first principle fully, he reveals clearly what he takes it to be:

For the syllogisms which express the principles initiating action run: ‘Since the end, or the highest good, is such-and-such . . .’—whatever it may be; what it really is does not matter for our present argument.  But whatever the true end may be, only a good man can judge it correctly.  (1144a31-33)

The first principle is the “end or the highest good.”  This can only be one thing, namely, the “good life for man,” which (we recall) stood at the “end” of the horizontal axis.  It has now been imported to the vertical axis where it forms the “first principle” of ethical deliberation.  In order to do so, it must be stated propositionally and in such substantive detail that deductions can be drawn from it.  That Aristotle cannot express it such should come as no surprise, since “the good life for man” contains so many different forms of action and thought.[25]  In general terms, however, the syllogism that Aristotle seems to have in mind would begin: “all actions of a certain type (B) contribute to the good life.”  He would then be able to reason down the chain: “action C is B; therefore, action C would contribute to the good life.”  At this point, deliberation would be over and action C itself would immediately follow.[26]  This is how phronêsis takes its bearings from a universal starting point.

In addition to universals, phronêsis must also take account of particulars.  Here is what Aristotle says on this score:

Phronêsis does not deal only with universals.  It must also be familiar with particulars, since it is concerned with action and action has to do with particulars.  This explains why some men who have no scientific knowledge are more adept in practical matters, especially if they have experience, than those who do have scientific knowledge.  For if a person were to know that light meat is easily digested, and hence wholesome, but did not know what sort of meat is light, he will not produce health, whereas someone who knows that poultry is light and wholesome is more likely to produce health.  Now phronêsis is concerned with action.  That means that a person should have both <knowledge of particulars and universals>, or knowledge of particulars rather <than of universals>.  (1141b14-23)

The importance of particulars in phronêsis cannot be overemphasized.  Phronêsis is not a matter of abstract reasoning.  Its purpose is to enjoin action, and in order to do this it must be able to recognize particular actions, objects and circumstances.  The example Aristotle has chosen here is rather trivial (in the great scheme of things)—it concerns physical considerations of diet;[27] but the point is clear: it would do a person little good to know that “all light meat is healthy,” if he does not also know that the meat he is considering ingesting (e.g., this piece of chicken) is light.  Knowledge of particulars is thus essential to successful deliberation in matters of action.

Much more could be said about this vertical dimension of phronêsis.  Aristotle, for example, supplies some interesting details about where mistakes may occur in the chain and how these might detract from the goodness of an act (1142b15-33).  But the main point I wish to stress here is simply this: that in the vertical dimension deliberation stems from a universal first principle, which Aristotle identifies as “the good life,” down to a particular action.

TEXTUAL OBSTACLES FOR VOEGLIN’S INTERPRETATION

At this point, I want to turn back to Voegelin and consider the way Aristotle’s text bears on his interpretation.  The major difficulty Voegelin faces is not that the text contradicts, but that it does not corroborate.  At no point does Aristotle refer to divine or transcendent experience; at no point does he present phronêsis as anything more than a purely immanent, human power; and at no point does he suggest that it is an “existential virtue” in the way Voegelin uses that term.  Is there any reason based on the text for assuming that phronêsis is something more than Aristotle suggests?  There are a few possibilities, which I want to consider here—possibilities for locating a transcendent, divine force at work in phronêsis.  Each is suggestive, but I do not think any of them warrants the interpretation Voegelin offers.

The first concerns to the interrelationship between phronêsis and what in Book 10 of the Ethics comes to be called theoria.  Theoria is, no doubt, a “divine activity,” on Aristotle’s view (see NE 10.7).  It is also “noetic,” i.e., an operation of nous (1177b18).  Thus theoria meets the criteria of the sort of divine experiences Voegelin was interested in documenting.  And while theoria and phronêsis are not the same thing (since theoria concerns matters that are eternal and unchanging, while phronêsis concerns action), if phronêsis could be shown to depend upon theoria in some way, then the argument might be made that phronêsis is more transcendently oriented (so to speak) than at first appears.[28]  Does phronêsis in fact depend upon theoria?  The answer is, in a sense, yes.  Here is why: Phronêsis begins (as we have seen) from a vision of the “good life as a whole.”  In book 6 of the Ethics the “good life” is shown to be identical to the exercise of the moral virtues; but by Book 10 it is clear that the good life entails something more: it entails the practice of theoria.  If this is so, then phronêsis will have to take account of theoria in its vision of the good life as a whole; and in this case, its otherwise mundane, deductive activities will be put (at least to some degree) in the service of a divine purpose.  In this sense, then, phronêsis depends upon theoria.

Moreover, theoria evidently depends upon phronêsis as well, according to Aristotle.  For a person cannot possibly engage in theoria if his life is not well-managed; and this requires the practice of the moral virtues, which in turn requires phronêsis.  Theoria and phronêsis turn out, then, to be intricately interdependent.  And if they are so interdependent, they must both be a “divine” activity.

The problem with this line of thinking lies in its vagueness.  It is, of course, true that theoria depends upon phronêsis for its actualization.  (It might also be said to depend upon eating, breathing and sleeping.)  But this in itself does not warrant the conclusion that phronêsis (any more than eating, breathing and sleeping) is a “divine activity.”  Likewise, it may be true that phronêsis, due to its dependence upon theoria, operates “in the service of” a divine good (as Voegelin suggests),[29] but again the same can be said of eating, breathing and sleeping.  For if theoria is defined as the highest good, then everything that one does will turn out to be, in some sense, a “service” to that good.

Be that as it may (and perhaps we do want to say that eating, sleeping, and all that we do is in service to a divine end), this is certainly to miss a crucial distinction: namely that phronêsis and theoria do not relate to the divine end in the same way.  For theoria is a directly divine activity on Aristotle’s view.  That is why it “far surpasses everything else in power and value” (1178a1-2).  Theoria simply is “being divine” as such, while phronêsis plays only a supporting role at best.  In other words, theoria is “essentially” related to the divine, while phronêsis is “accidentally” related.   This is a key distinction, both for preserving the integrity of theoria and for properly understanding the role of phronêsis.  The distinction is lost, however, when the two are casually and vaguely lumped together as the activity of “the divine.”

A second way in which phronêsis may seem to have a divine dimension has to do with its incorporation of nous.  As I mentioned in passing above (p. 13), nous has a hand in the power of phronêsis to attain its vision of the good life.  This is certainly the case, as can be seen from Aristotle’s distinction between “natural virtues,” such as cleverness, and full-fledged hexeis such as phronêsis:

It is true that children and beasts are endowed with natural qualities or characteristics, but it is evident that without nous these are harmful. . . .  As in the case of a mighty body which, when it moves without vision, comes down with a mighty fall because it cannot see, so it is in the matter under discussion.  <If a man acts blindly, i.e., using his natural virtue alone, he will fail;> but once he acquires nous, it makes a great difference in his action.  At that point, the natural characteristic will become that virtue in the full sense which it previously resembled.  (1144b7-14)

It is noetic insight into the good life that transforms merely “clever” deliberation into phronêsis.  Nous, then, is an essential ingredient of phronêsis.  And nous (recall from what was just said) is the very power at work in theoria, one which Aristotle clearly identifies with our “divine most” element.  Therefore, if nous is essential to phronêsis, then phronêsis must be in just that sense a “divine activity.”[30]

As persuasive as this sounds, I do not believe it is correct.  For it is my understanding that Aristotle uses the term “nous” in two distinct ways: in one sense to refer a “divine-like” power of the soul to investigate its own thought—what Aristotle describes as noesis noeseos, or “thinking on thinking”;[31] in another sense, to refer to a basically mundane capacity of reasoning up from particulars to a universal understanding of what those particulars have in common.[32]  That Aristotle is using nous in the latter sense when he connects it with phronêsis is clear from the following passage:

As for nous, it deals with ends [eschata] in both directions.  It is nous, not reason [logos] that has as its objects primary terms and definitions as well as ultimate particulars.  Nous grasps, on the one hand, the unchangeable, primary terms and concepts for demonstrations; on the other hand, in questions of action, it grasps the ultimate, contingent fact and the minor premise.  For it is particular facts that form the archai for <our knowledge> of the goal of action: universals arise out of particular facts, and this perception is nous.  (1143a35-b5)

The function of this passage in Aristotle’s analysis is precisely to explain the way nous works within phronêsis.  It is different—Aristotle here suggests—from the way it works in scientific reasoning (episteme, i.e., the study of unchangeables), where it supplies “first principles” for demonstrations.  In practical matters, nous concerns itself with particulars and reasons up from these to what Aristotle refers to as the “minor premise” and the “first principle” of action.  In other words, there is noetic insight involved at every stage of practical deliberation from particulars to universals, but this insight is induced from particulars.  It involves the process of noetic induction that Aristotle details fully in Posterior Analytics II.19.  This activity, I believe, has little if anything to do with theoria, and Aristotle nowhere describes it as “transcendent” or especially divine in character.  Thus the mere connection between nous and phronêsis supplies a very weak link between phronêsis and “the divine.”  It certainly supplies no reason for understanding phronêsis as a downward motion from a divine first principle to a concrete human action, as Voegelin seems to understand it.[33]

There is one more way in which phronêsis might be regarded as a divinely-oriented activity.  This one is perhaps the strongest of the arguments, yet it is also the furthest removed from Aristotle’s text.  It is the old argument that everything has to begin somewhere.  In other words, if one inquires into the causes of things, there must be some point at which the causal chain comes to a stop, a point at which a “first cause” comes into play.[34]

Where, then, does phronêsis begin?  In Aristotle’s account, it begins from a vision of the good life which manifests itself in the human actor as a “reasoned desire.”  But this is certainly not the ultimate beginning.  For we can still ask where that vision of the good life originates.  As we have seen, Aristotle’s answer is that it originates in nous doing its characteristic inductive work on particulars.  But why should we accept this as a final answer?  Surely nous is not (in its human form, at least) sui generis.   Surely nous too must begin somewhere.  What, then, is the cause of nous?  The answer to this question is no mystery in Aristotelian philosophy.  The first cause of nous is God, the “unmoved mover,” from whom all motion in the universe derives its energy.

This, I say, is not in doubt in Aristotelian philosophy.  But then, we must ask why Aristotle says nothing about this “first cause” in his account of phronêsis.  The omission is not in my view accidental, but rather constitutes an essential feature of Aristotle’s ethical-political thought: namely, the belief that divine first causes shed little, if any, light on questions of human action and deliberation.  To be sure, human action stems ultimately (if one goes back far enough in the causal chain) from a divine first cause.  But in Aristotle’s view this point is otiose, since it has no bearing on conduct.[35]  On both the horizontal and the vertical axes described above, Aristotle’s inquiry into the origin of phronêsis stops at a human beginning: the goal of good living.  He shows no interest in looking past that goal.  The reason for this would seem to be simple: he thinks that humans are, in the most important sense, the cause of their own ethical conduct.  Consider, especially, NE 3.1 in this regard:

It is of course generally recognized that actions done under constraint or due to ignorance are involuntary.  An action is done under constraint when the initiative or source of motion comes from without. . . .  [But] agents act voluntarily, because the initiative in moving the parts of the body which act as instruments rests with the agent himself; and where the source of motion is in oneself it is in one’s power to act or not to act. (1109b35-1110a17)

It may be true that the “unmoved mover” is the first cause of all motion, but it is clear from this passage that Aristotle does not think such causes explain human conduct in any significant way.  The significant causal force, Aristotle believes, lies within human beings themselves.

The three points just discussed constitute, I believe, some of the reasons why Voegelin and his followers may regard phronêsis as a “divine,” “transcendent,” and “existential” virtue.  That I do not think this view is warranted should by now be perfectly clear, but I hope that my reasons for rejecting it are clear as well.  What I want to do by way of concluding is to make a few brief remarks about Voegelin’s view of Aristotle in general.  I think this is necessary for the following reasons.  First, if Voegelin’s divine view of phronêsis does not derive from Aristotle’s text—and I do not believe it does—we should ask where this view does come from.  And I think the answer lies in Voegelin’s general understanding of Aristotle.  Secondly (and less charitably), if Voegelin has misread Aristotle on phronêsis, we should ask what general views of Aristotle led him to do so.  In other words, we have not yet inquired deeply enough into the assumptions Voegelin brings to bear on his interpretation of Aristotle.

VOEGELIN’S TREATMENT OF ARISTOTLE

Taken on its own, Voegelin’s treatment of Aristotle in “Right by Nature” can only be described as peculiar.  It is peculiar because Voegelin, on the one hand, uses Aristotle in a positive way to recover the original noetic experiences behind the symbol “right by nature” (this is the strategy set out in Voegelin’s first paragraphs); and yet Voegelin is, on the other hand, repeatedly critical of Aristotle for failing to appreciate and to represent those experiences in the right way.  This critical aspect of the essay poses serious problems not only because it is so often cryptic and obscure (let us be frank); but also because one wonders how Voegelin knows what the “right way” to appreciate and to represent Aristotle’s experiences is, when his source for that knowledge—Aristotle himself—turns out to be so unreliable.  In other words from what perspective is Voegelin able to insist that Aristotle (a) underwent the sorts of transcendent experiences Voegelin believes he did, and (b) failed to represent those experiences adequately?[36]

These questions can be answered, I believe, if one turns to Voegelin’s study of Aristotle in Volume Three of Order and History: Plato and Aristotle.[37]  One may not agree with the answers one finds there (and I shall unfortunately have no room here to consider them critically), but there are answers to be found.  In general, the perspective from which Voegelin approaches Aristotle is two-fold: he regards him on the one hand from a Platonic perspective, according to which Aristotle is a fellow-traveler who, however, has begun a process of “derailment”; and he regards him from a Christian perspective, according to which Aristotle is groping for understandings which Christian revelation would make more luminous.  Let me say a few brief words about each of these perspectives.

The difference between Plato and Aristotle is not, according to Voegelin, that they developed two entirely different metaphysical systems.  The often alluded to “opposition between Platonic transcendentalism and idealism on the one side, and Aristotelian immanentism and realism on the other,” is in Voegelin’s view vastly over-simplistic.[38]  This is because (a) Aristotle was a member of Plato’s academy and even wrote numerous Platonic-type works on subjects of divine experience;[39] (b) Plato’s own experience of, and symbolization of transcendent experience was far from perfect.  Plato unfortunately “hypostatized transcendental being into a datum as if it were given in world-immanent experience; and he treated absolute being as a genus of which the varieties of immanent being are species.”[40]  Thus, to the extent that Aristotle criticized Plato’s ways of representing transcendent experience, he had something legitimate to criticize.  And finally (c) Aristotle’s own focus on the “immanent” side of human experience would not have been possible in the first place without an understanding of the non-immanent, i.e., of the transcendent, from which the immanent acquires its very character as such.  The “natural” only comes into view as a corollary of the transcendent.[41]  The principal differences between Plato and Aristotle, therefore, seem to Voegelin more a matter of emphasis than of systematic disagreements about the fact of, or significance of, transcendent experience.

This said, however, there are real differences of emphasis, and they are, in Voegelin’s view, extremely significant for the history of philosophy.  In one sense, Aristotle corrected the problem of Platonic hypostatization at the “great price of eliminating the problem of transcendental form along with its speculative misuse.”[42]  In a more nuanced formulation, Voegelin explains that,

Aristotle rejected the Ideas as separate existences, but neither did he repudiate the experiences in which the notion of a realm of ideas originated nor did he abandon the order of being that had become visible through the experiences. . . .  The consequence is a curious transformation of the experience of transcendence which can perhaps be described as an intellectual thinning-out.  The fullness of experience which Plato expressed in the richness of his myth is in Aristotle reduced to the conception of God as the prime mover, as the noesis noeseos, the “thinking on thinking.[43]

In essence, Aristotle rejects Plato’s attempt to symbolize divine experience by means of myth and mythological symbols such as the Idea of the Good, but in so doing, he fails to produce a symbolization that is as rich as the Platonic prototype.  Plato thus stands to Aristotle as a “spiritual founder” stands to a follower and disciple; his life and work represent a high water mark or “epoch in the history of mankind.”[44]

In this (Platonic) light, Voegelin has two basic points to make about Aristotle’s ethical and political philosophy.  One is that Aristotle has preferred to treat “natural” topics as much as possible, and to treat them in a “natural” way.  That is to say, he has oriented his own philosophical inquiries primarily in the direction of immanent problems and puzzles, avoiding to a large extent (except in the Metaphysics) the subject matter of transcendence.  In terms of ethics and politics, this means that Aristotle’s inquiries into human order tend to stop short of discussing the divine ground of order; he tends to view the constitution of the polis as the ultimate source of order and the science of constitution making as the architectonic human science.  This is a criticism which Voegelin repeatedly alludes to in “Right by Nature.”

Voegelin’s second point (very puzzling in my view) is that Aristotle has a problem with terminology: that is, he insists on transforming symbols developed for the purpose of articulating transcendent experiences into “topio,” or topics of philosophical speculation.  Here is Voegelin:

The leap in being differentiates world-transcendent Being as the source of all being, and correspondingly attaches to the “world” the character of immanence.  Since experiences of transcendence can be articulated only by means of language which has its original function in the world of sense experience, the symbols, both concepts and propositions, which refer to the terminus ad quem of an experience of transcendence must be understood analogically. . . .  The derailment occurs when the symbols are torn out of their experiential context and treated as if they were concepts referring to a datum of sense experience.  The structure of the fallacy is simple indeed; one can only say to a presumptive philosopher: Don’t do it!  If the error is committed nevertheless, even by an Aristotle, one will look for its source not in a failing of the intellect but in a passionate will to focus attention so thoroughly on a particular problem that the wider range of the order of being is lost from sight.

In Voegelin’s view Aristotle commits a fallacy—the fallacy of treating symbols of noetic exegesis as “topics.”

One reason why this is so puzzling is, of course, that in the essay “Right by Nature,” it is the Stoics and scholastics who are said to have committed this error, while the study of Aristotle, by contrast, is put forth as a way of recovering the “experiential bases” of the symbols in question.  I suppose it is not impossible to reconcile these perspectives on Aristotle.  Perhaps Aristotle only begins to derail, and thus one can still return to Aristotle (cautiously) to recover transcendent experiences.  But Voegelin certainly does not make this complexity clear in “Right by Nature,” nor does his general view of Aristotle (expressed in Plato and Aristotle) offer much hope that one will “recover” transcendent experiences in Aristotle’s Ethics.

Another reason why this critique is so puzzling is that it shifts a bit by the end of Plato and Aristotle, after Voegelin has conducted a thorough analysis of Aristotle’s Politics.  At that point, Voegelin still maintains that there is a “derailment,” and it still relates to Aristotle’s use of terms; but the problem is no longer that Aristotle transforms “symbols” into “terms” per se, but that he simply applies analytical categories where they do not belong.  This (slightly different) criticism is occasioned by the fact that Aristotle attempts in the Politics to analyze the polis—its people and its constitution—in terms of “matter” and “form.”  This leads to difficulties which, Voegelin believes, “have their origin in the attempt to apply the ontological categories . . . developed in the Physics and Metaphysics, without further clarification to the order of human existence.”[45]

It should be amply clear that the ontological categories, developed on occasion of the enumerated models in Physics (II, 3) and Metaphysics (I, 9 and XII, 3) are not adequate instruments for the theoretization of order in society.  Aristotle’s attempt to use them nevertheless is a clear instance of the transformation of philosophical categories into topoi, torn out of the context and used in speculation whether they fit the field of problems or not.[46]

The tail end of this quote sounds, indeed, as if Voegelin is making the same criticism he had made before (viz., that Aristotle transforms symbols into topics).  But the difference is not negligible.  Here Aristotle borrows terms from his own analyses of nature and metaphysics.  That they do not apply neatly to the problems of the polis is undeniable, but it does not follow that Aristotle has torn transcendental symbols out of the experiential context.  Neverthesless, this is one of Voegelin’s oft-repeated criticisms of Aristotle, and while it is not clear how, exactly, it should be applied to the essay “Right by Nature,” it at least supplies some background for the peculiar and equivocal treatment of Aristotle there.

In addition to what we might call Voegelin’s “Platonic critique of Aristotle,” there is a Christian critique to be noted as well.  And here I can simply allow Voegelin to speak for himself:

Aristotle, while admitting that his model of the best polis is tailored to the historical conditions of a society of mature men, of the spoudaioi, insists nevertheless that his paradigm articulates the essence of the polis.  That proposition is tenable if the two assumptions be granted that (1) the nature of man has achieved its full actualization in the type of the spoudaios who cultivates the bios theoretikos, and (2) the full unfolding of human nature is possible only in a society of the polis type.  Neither of the two assumptions can be admitted as true after Christ, to be sure—but the relation of the more differentiated Christian anthropology is of interest at the moment only in that it allows us to circumscribe the Aristotelian analysis of essence as a search for perfection, within the more compact experience of physis, of nature, which in Christianity is conducted under the assumption that perfection lies in the beyond. . . .  He is convinced that perfect order can be realized within history.[47]

From a Christian perspective, Aristotle operates under a mistaken assumption that man and society can be made perfect in immanent existence.  In this sense all of Aristotelian ethics from his view of “right by nature” to the place of phronêsis in deliberating about right action is tainted by the fact that he immanentizes what will later become revealed as a strictly transcendent eschaton.  This is of course easy to say, but the extent to which Aristotle does in fact view human perfection as immanently attainable is not altogether clear.  (He has cautionary words on this score in Ethics 10.2: e.g., “we should become immortal as far as is possible.)  Nor is it clear to me that the mere fact of a complete transcendent fulfillment should allow us to neglect an immanent science of ethics and politics which strives to be as ideal as possible.

CONCLUSION

In light of these reflections from Plato and Aristotle, the critical remarks of “Right by Nature” become a little less cryptic and obscure.  Whether Voegelin’s general critique of Aristotle is fully justified or not is another question, which space does not permit me to consider.  With respect to the question of phronêsis, however, I offer the following final remarks.  Voegelin’s interpretation of phronêsis is, in my view, textually unjustifiable.  The text does not directly contradict the interpretation, but it does not endorse it either.  And for the reasons I spelled out above, there are serious textual obstacles for understanding phronêsis in a spiritual or transcendent way.  On the other hand, Voegelin’s interpretation would gain plausibility if it could be shown that Aristotle’s immanent philosophizing on matters of ethics and politics occurs within a broader framework of transcendent experience and a spiritual understanding of the human good.  This, I think, Voegelin effectively shows.  But this still leaves open a central question, and that concerns the extent to which, and/or the precise ways in which, Aristotle regards his immanent philosophizing as related to this broader spiritual orientation.  Put differently, the question is whether the absence of spiritual reference points in Aristotle’s treatment of phronêsis (and in most of his ethics in general) is accidental or deliberate—whether it constitutes a failure on his part to make certain connections clear, or whether it represents a deliberate effort to separate spiritual and practical considerations.  This seems to me a profound and important question—the question of the implicit spirituality of Aristotelian ethics.  Like every serious reader of Aristotle, I hold an opinion on this topic, but it is only an opinion, and a systematic treatment of the question has yet to be attempted.  It is not my view that Voegelin’s treatment is as systematic as it could be.  But it is a beginning.   And readers who are inclined to agree or disagree with Voegelin have their work cut out for them.

 

Notes

[1] Eric Voegelin, “Right by Nature,” in Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 6, trans. M. J. Hank (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, [1966] 2002), p. 156.

[2] “Right by Nature” was first published under the title “Das Recht von Natur,” in Sonderausgabe der Österreichischen Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 13 (1963).  It later appeared as a chapter in Voegelin’s 1966 book, Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik (Munich: R. Piper & Co Verlag), pp. 117-124.  All my citations refer to the new translation (cited in note 1 above), which replaces the longstanding Niemeyer translation (Notre Dame, 1978).  On the influence of Voegelin’s interpretation, consider for example James M. Rhodes, “Right by Nature,” Journal of Politics 53 (1991): 318-38; and, more recently, Thomas J. McPartland, Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), pp. 205-7.

[3] See, for example, Larry Arnhart, Aristotle on Political Reasoning (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981); Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Stephen G. Salkever, Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); and Peter J. Steinberger, The Concept of Political Judgment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993).

[4] For a discussion of this tendency, see Richard S. Ruderman, “Aristotle and the Recovery of Political Judgment,” American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 409-420.  Like Ruderman, I think the theorists who take this view misunderstand phronêsis; but I do not share Voegelin’s spiritually charged view of phronêsis either.

[5] “Right by Nature,” p. 149.

[6] Ibid., p. 140.  On Voegelin’s notion of noetic exegesis and noetic meditation in general see McPartland, Lonergan pp. 193-8, 209-13, and 220-22; see also William M. Thompson, “Philosophy and Meditation: Notes on Eric Voegelin’s View,” in Glenn Hughes, ed., The Politics of the soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 125-6.

[7] “Right by Nature,” pp. 140, 145; cf. Aristotle NE 5.7.

[8] Ibid., p. 146.

[9] Ibid., pp. 141-44.

[10] The first principles of geometry, mathematics and physics are valid everywhere and for all time, yet Aristotle differentiates these sharply from the “divine” first principles of theology.

[11] Though Voegelin adopts this assumption, he is also somewhat equivocal about it.  He does recognize in one place that “even though there is obviously something that is right by nature, it is still always changeable” (“Right by Nature, p. 145, cf. p. 153); but he goes on to conclude (ibid.) that “Aristotle talks of the physikon dikainon, at one place as that which is valid everywhere (taking it to be its divine substance),” when in fact Aristotle does not.  This page of Voegelin’s essay (p. 145) contains, in my view, a mistake that corrupts the remainder of the essay, including Voegelin’s interpretation of phronêsis.

[12] “Right by Nature,” pp. 147, 151, 149, 151, 152, 156, 152, 155-6, 149.

[13] See ibid., p. 152: “Aristotle’s phronêsis, too, is an existential virtue, but its existential character does not become sufficiently clear in the climate of cosmological thinking, because its activation through an experience of transcendence does not become explicit.”

[14] Consider, in this regard, Voegelin’s interpretive procedure sketched out in Order and History, vol. III: Plato and Aristotle (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1957), p. 279: “The ‘philosophies’ of order must not be taken at their face value, but must be critically examined under the aspect whether the symbols used have retained their original meaning as symbols which express the experiences of the transcendent source of order, or whether they are used as speculative topoi for purposes widely differing from the Platonic love of the divine measure.”  Voegelin’s view of Aristotle in this regard can only be described as highly ambiguous.

[15] See “Right by Nature,” p. 153: “It is obvious that Aristotle does know existential virtues but fails to identify them clearly as such, nor does he differentiate them from the other virtues.”  Cf. Plato and Aristotle, p. 275: “The realm of ideas was one of the symbols which expressed the philosopher’s experience of transcendence.  And Aristotle was not only aware of this origin but was able to participate in these experiences.”

[16] See Plato and Aristotle, p. 273 ff.

[17] Aristotle’s differentiation of phronêsis from other more or less closely related cognitive abilities (nous, epistêmê, technê, sophia, deinotês) turns book 6 of the Ethics into an epistemological tour de force.  What is often lost sight of, however, among Aristotle’s distinctions is that book 6 is essentially about phronêsis.  It is to a much less extent about sophia, which represents the excellence or virtue of the “scientific” part of the soul, because Aristotle does not regard this virtue as especially helpful in matters of moral action: see 1141b3-9 (quoted below).

[18] See, e.g., the frequently-used Irwin translation, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999).  Ostwald, whose translation I prefer, renders phronêsis in the traditional way as “practical wisdom.”  For a discussion of some of the pros and cons of various renderings, see David Bostock, Aristotle’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 77.

[19] Translations from the Ethics are based on Martin Ostwald Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Library of Liberal Arts, 1962); frequently, I make minor changes to Ostwald; in the case of the present passage my changes happen to be major.  Since this is a conference paper, however, (not a submission for publication) I shall not indicate every change I make along the way.  I simply alert the reader here that some of the translations are my own.

[20] On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 53.

[21] I shall have more to say about the sources of this vision below.

[22] See, e.g., 1142b22-26: “It is also possible to attain something good by a false syllogism [pseudei syllogismô], i.e., to arrive at the right action, but to arrive at it by the wrong means when the middle term is false.  Accordingly, this process, which makes us attain the right goal but not by the right means, is still not good deliberation.”  See also 1144a31.

[23] Partial and trivial examples he does supply (examples concerning “white meat” [1141b18-23] and “heavy water” [1142a21-3]), but these fall far short of a full-fledged “practical syllogism,” which would have to begin from some sort of statement about the good life.  In the one spot where Aristotle does discuss such a syllogism, he (perhaps understandably) fails to give a full account of its major term (see 1144a31).

[24] I am aware of the distastefulness of referring to syllogisms in the present, analytical/positivist climate, but I believe they are an indispensable part of Aristotle’s understanding of phronêsis.  Aristotle’s exposition of syllogistic reasoning can be found in the Prior Analytics.

[25] The principle would have to run something like: “Since the end or the highest good is (a) performing acts of courage, self-control, generosity, high-mindedness, etc., in accordance with right reason; as well as (b) performing intellectual acts such as phronêsis, episteme, sophia, and theoria….”

[26] This says nothing about the complicating factors of (1) the competing relative values of the various types of good that constitute the good life, for example intellectual versus moral virtues, or (2) the question of the conditions under which any given pursuit might be more or less appropriate, e.g. time, place, manner, etc.

[27] Cf. the other rather trivial example Aristotle offers (1142a21-3): “In our deliberations, error is possible as regards either the universal principle or the particular fact: we may be unaware either that all heavy water is bad, or that the particular water we are faced with is heavy.”

[28] See, e.g., Thomas McPartland, Lonergan, p. 206-7.

[29] “Right by Nature,” p. 150.

[30] McPartland, pp. 206-7 is suggestive of this possibility as well: “Whereas the contemplative life seeks knowledge for its own sake, . . . and though the practical life seeks action, employs the ‘practical syllogism,’ and focuses on the particular and the contingent, these differences should not obscure the fact that they both share what is highest in human life.  They both participate in the self-transcending normative process of questioning, which ranges from involvement with images of physical things to the self-luminosity of the pure act of nous.  They both share in noetic consciousness.  All the virtues, both theoretical and practical, are inherently interrelated.  This means that in authentic political life—a kind of phronêsis that Aristotle calls the virtue of political wisdom—that which is best and divine in us is actualized.  The subject matter of political science therefore concerns the participation of human nous in the activity of the divine Nous.”

[31] See Metaphysics XII.9, 1074b; and NE 1177a13-23, 1177b19-20.  Aristotle’s remark about the divine nature of nous at 1177b19-20 contains a qualification which I think is no accident: “the activity of nous, inasfar as it is an activity concerned with theoretical knowledge, is thought to be of greater value than the other [activities].  Nous itself is not always divinely oriented, and when it is not, it does not possess this superior status.

[32] This argument is fully elaborated in my article “Voegelin and Aristotle on Nous: What is Noetic Political Science?” Review of Politics 64 (Winter, 2002): 57-79.  I think Voegelin, and those under his influence, simply collapse an important distinction between the two types of nous.

[33] To quote, once again, a passage I quoted in the first paragraph above: “The reasoning about concrete action is part of a movement within being, which issues from God and ends in human action” (“Right by Nature,” p. 149).

[34] This is an argument that Voegelin employs routinely (see, e.g., “What is Nature,” in Anamnesis, p. 170 ff.).  In a sense, Voegelin’s consistent frustration with Aristotle is that he refuses to push his analysis of ethical action back far enough in the direction of its divine origins.

[35] If I am right in this regard, then Aristotle’s position on the divine first cause would be the same as his position on the Platonic form (eidos) of the Good: “Perhaps one may think that . . . by treating the absolute Good a pattern, we shall gain a better knowledge of what things are good for us, and once we know that, we can achieve them.  This argument has, no doubt, some plausibility; however, it does not tally with the procedure of the sciences.  For while all the sciences aim at some good and seek to fulfill it, they leave the knowledge of the absolute good out of consideration.  Yet if this knowledge were such a great help, it would make no sense that all the craftsmen are ignorant of it and do not even attempt to seek it” (NE I.6, 1096b35-1097a7, my italics).

[36] One possible answer, which I am not going to explore very deeply here, is that Voegelin has simply undergone identical experiences to Aristotle and thus recognizes in Aristotle’s gropings problems of experience and exposition which Voegelin himself has had to wrestle with.  The reason I am not going to pursue this explanation too far—although it may contain a degree of truth—is, first of all, that it takes such a dim of view of Aristotle’s skill at exposition that I find it somewhat absurd on its face, and secondly, that Voegelin himself offers a different (and somewhat more helpful) set of answers to our question in another place, namely Order and History, vol. III.

[37] Plato and Aristotle was published in 1957, thus it supplies a backdrop for the later article “Right by Nature.”

[38] Plato and Aristotle, p. 274.

[39] These are dialogues, which are all lost.  See Voegelin, ibid., pp. 271-2.  Voegelin’s inference from the mere titles of these works that Aristotle was accepting of Socratic-Platonic transcendent experiences is not one of the strongest parts of his argument.

[40] Ibid., pp. 275-6.

[41] Ibid., pp. 365-6.

[42] Ibid., p. 276.

[43] Ibid. p. 276.

[44] Ibid., pp. 356 and 293.

[45] Ibid., p. 333.

[46] Ibid., pp. 333-4

[47] Ibid., p. 335-6