Almost finished with Book VI; one more after this.
Difficulties might be raised as to the utility of these qualities of mind. For (1) philosophic wisdom will contemplate none of the things that will make a man happy (for it is not concerned with any coming into being), and though practical wisdom has this merit, for what purpose do we need it? Practical wisdom is the quality of mind concerned with things just and noble and good for man, but these are the things which it is the mark of a good man to do, and we are none the more able to act for knowing them if the virtues are states of character, just as we are none the better able to act for knowing the things that are healthy and sound, in the sense not of producing but of issuing from the state of health; for we are none the more able to act for having the art of medicine or of gymnastics. But (2) if we are to say that a man should have practical wisdom not for the sake of knowing moral truths but for the sake of becoming good, practical wisdom will be of no use to those who are good; again it is of no use to those who have not virtue; for it will make no difference whether they have practical wisdom themselves or obey others who have it, and it would be enough for us to do what we do in the case of health; though we wish to become healthy, yet we do not learn the art of medicine. (3) Besides this, it would be thought strange if practical wisdom, being inferior to philosophic wisdom, is to be put in authority over it, as seems to be implied by the fact that the art which produces anything rules and issues commands about that thing.
Only philosophers talk like this, but Tom wanted to read some philosophy and now you know we really are! This is a related problem to those I raised before, but here the issue is that the categories are artificial. The issue in (1) above is that "philosophical wisdom" has been defined as pertaining only to unchanging things, which for Aristotle include the movement of the stars as well as mathematical truths. It is possible to be philosophical about the nature of justice, but not about how to be just in a particular case: that requires practical action in a set of things that come-to-be and have a particular history. For that we are told we need a separate thing, "practical wisdom," which is -- being separate -- somehow unrelated to the philosophical wisdom from which it draws its first principles for which to reach particular conclusions.
Yet obviously these things are unified. We unify them. They are parts of a whole, the whole that is us. The way the cuts are made may be customary, as the French butcher beef differently from Americans.
The problem with (2) is about 'coming to be,' to whit, how goodness comes to be. If a man is good, what use has he for a faculty for becoming good? (The answer, probably obvious to all of you, is that it was only by having the faculty in the first place that he got to being good.)
(3) is potentially a serious problem, except that it has the same issues as (1).
These, then, are the questions we must discuss; so far we have only stated the difficulties.
(1) Now first let us say that in themselves these states must be worthy of choice because they are the virtues of the two parts of the soul respectively, even if neither of them produce anything.
(2) Secondly, they do produce something, not as the art of medicine produces health, however, but as health produces health; so does philosophic wisdom produce happiness; for, being a part of virtue entire, by being possessed and by actualizing itself it makes a man happy.
Since you need both philosophical wisdom (to get the first principles) and practical wisdom (to get to the correct actions) to be virtuous, each is part of "virtue entire." Since virtue produces happiness, each of them thus is a necessary condition for producing happiness. The analogy to 'health producing health' seems to me to further complicate the artificial divisions: the analogy suggests they are really a whole.
(3) Again, the work of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral virtue; for virtue makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means. (Of the fourth part of the soul-the nutritive-there is no such virtue; for there is nothing which it is in its power to do or not to do.)
The nutritive is the part of the soul we share even with plants, for Aristotle: but it doesn't make decisions, it just does what it has to do. A man has to eat; a buzzard, same as worms.
(4) With regard to our being none the more able to do because of our practical wisdom what is noble and just, let us begin a little further back, starting with the following principle. As we say that some people who do just acts are not necessarily just, i.e. those who do the acts ordained by the laws either unwillingly or owing to ignorance or for some other reason and not for the sake of the acts themselves (though, to be sure, they do what they should and all the things that the good man ought)...
Now, you'll remember that in V.1 justice-as-lawfulness was said to be complete virtue, but not absolutely. Here Aristotle seems to deny that it is properly even justice; just as he had said in III.8 that courage was not really true courage if it was compelled by law, as it is in the citizen-soldier. In both cases he's looking for good-enough solutions for the many, for whom perhaps it is good enough if they can be made to do the right thing even if only under duress. Yet he is truly interested in what the best kind of person will do, not just what will make people behave.
...so is it, it seems, that in order to be good one must be in a certain state when one does the several acts, i.e. one must do them as a result of choice and for the sake of the acts themselves. Now virtue makes the choice right, but the question of the things which should naturally be done to carry out our choice belongs not to virtue but to another faculty. We must devote our attention to these matters and give a clearer statement about them. There is a faculty which is called cleverness; and this is such as to be able to do the things that tend towards the mark we have set before ourselves, and to hit it. Now if the mark be noble, the cleverness is laudable, but if the mark be bad, the cleverness is mere smartness; hence we call even men of practical wisdom clever or smart.
So, above he pointed out that to really be good, and not just being driven to right actions by the law, you have to be in the right state. That state is the state of setting yourself the right ends for the right reasons. You got the right reasons from what he is calling "philosophical wisdom." But you have to derive from those reasons the right acts; and you have to choose those right acts because of those right reasons. That's the only thing that counts as "being good," properly speaking. It isn't obedience to authority; it's internal choice for proper reason.
Practical wisdom is not the faculty [of cleverness], but it does not exist without this faculty. And this eye of the soul acquires its formed state not without the aid of virtue, as has been said and is plain; for the syllogisms which deal with acts to be done are things which involve a starting-point, viz. 'since the end, i.e. what is best, is of such and such a nature', whatever it may be (let it for the sake of argument be what we please); and this is not evident except to the good man; for wickedness perverts us and causes us to be deceived about the starting-points of action. Therefore it is evident that it is impossible to be practically wise without being good.
That's a fascinating way to conclude this, since the problem he raised in the first (2) was that it might be possible to be good without being practically wise. This inverted proof that B requires A doesn't prove that A requires B.
If we take it with the claim that 'being good' only occurs when you do the things that practical wisdom entails, however, we can see the point: you don't get to 'being good' without practical wisdom. A clever man can choose noble aims, but cleverness can easily devolve into mere smartness, in which one is applying intelligence to bad purposes. It's only when you make the shift into tying your intelligence to this facility of wisdom -- whether or not that wisdom is properly divided into two parts, the up-looking "philosophical wisdom" and the down-looking "practical wisdom" -- that you can be sure of being good.
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