Practical Wisdom and Knowledge of the End in Aristotle’s Ethics

초록

In this paper I explore Aristotle’s view of the practically wise person’s knowledge of the end of deliberation. Using Sarah Broadie’s criticism of what she calls ‘the Grand End view’ as a stage-setter, I examine the merits and demerits of the two main lines of interpretation on the nature of the knowledge, which emphasize the roles of character and practical wisdom respectively. The Grand End view, which underscores the role of practical wisdom, I argue, is untenable as an account of Aristotelian deliberation and his view on knowledge of the end. But Broadie’s account, which belongs to the line that emphasizes the role of character, also has a problem and unduly limits the range of Aristotelian deliberation. This problem has its root in the assumption that setting the correct narrow end does not require any involvement of practical wisdom, which I argue is necessary. By bringing out this problem, I argue that in order to be a proper account of a practically wise person’s true apprehension of the end, the character-centered interpretation needs to accommodate the idea of deliberation with a view to unspecified acting well (εὖ πράττειν). Aristotle’s discussion of the action-production distinction in EN VI indicates that he conceives of the possibility of deliberating with unspecified acting well and has no problem with the idea of having a true apprehension of unspecified acting well.

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