We must therefore consider virtue also once more; for virtue too is similarly related; as practical wisdom is to cleverness-not the same, but like it-so is natural virtue to virtue in the strict sense.
This is the first time that Aristotle has mentioned "natural virtue." Until now we've talked about virtue as an acquired habit. But, to return to the potentiality/actuality distinction that is so important in Aristotle, you can't make a saw out of wool. Potentiality is first actuality: iron can become a saw, and so it is already potentially a saw in a way that wool is not. Natural virtue is going to play the role of this first actuality of virtue.
This is going to become important. It is where we get the notion of something being "second nature" to you: you have your first nature -- the potential -- and then your second nature -- what you developed that potential into. Let's continue.
For all men think that each type of character belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature; for from the very moment of birth we are just or fitted for self-control or brave or have the other moral qualities; but yet we seek something else as that which is good in the strict sense-we seek for the presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and brutes have the natural dispositions to these qualities, but without reason these are evidently hurtful.
This is a point that will appeal to AVI, I think, for whom nature tends to prevail in the nature/nurture discussion. Here is Aristotle's nod to it: some people, by nature, have more fitness to be brave or self-controlled. These qualities can and should be guided and perfected by reason, but if you don't have them as potentials to start with you never will have the actualities either.
Only we seem to see this much, that, while one may be led astray by them, as a strong body which moves without sight may stumble badly because of its lack of sight, still, if a man once acquires reason, that makes a difference in action; and his state, while still like what it was, will then be virtue in the strict sense.
Therefore, as in the part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom.
So: while you may be born fitted for courage (say), you won't become courageous in the strict sense until you develop phronesis. You have to learn to apply this natural quality wisely. at you
Now we can talk more completely about how this process works (which Thomas was interested in earlier: how to realize it). The steps are these:
1) Birth, with the natural virtues that you happen to have.
2) A good upbringing, which gives you stories about the good and noble, honorable and virtuous from trusted sources.
3) Intuitive reason, which apprehends what is good from the stories and the way in which they are told.
4) Philosophical wisdom, which derives the first principles about what is good, noble, honorable, and virtuous from the findings of your intuitive reason about the stories from that upbringing.
5) Practical wisdom (phronesis), by which you derive in the circumstances in which you find yourself what the virtuous thing to do actually is, and do it using your natural virtue's potential to do such a thing.
6) Virtue, the state of character that arises from this practice becoming a habit and then the state of character itself.
This is why some say that all the virtues are forms of practical wisdom, and why Socrates in one respect was on the right track while in another he went astray; in thinking that all the virtues were forms of practical wisdom he was wrong, but in saying they implied practical wisdom he was right.
This is confirmed by the fact that even now all men, when they define virtue, after naming the state of character and its objects add 'that (state) which is in accordance with the right rule'; now the right rule is that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. All men, then, seem somehow to divine that this kind of state is virtue, viz. that which is in accordance with practical wisdom. But we must go a little further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with the right rule, but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue; and practical wisdom is a right rule about such matters. Socrates, then, thought the virtues were rules or rational principles (for he thought they were, all of them, forms of scientific knowledge), while we think they involve a rational principle. It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue.
Nice concession to Socrates there. I suspect he would have appreciated it; there's a chance he would have bought the argument, since it considered his difficulties directly and addresses them in a way that many subsequent generations found satisfactory.. He and Aristotle never met directly but were connected by Plato, who was the student of one and the teacher of the other.
Aristotle goes right on to solve another puzzle that daunted Socrates.
But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from each other; the same man, it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of which a man is called without qualification good; for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the virtues. And it is plain that, even if it were of no practical value, we should have needed it because it is the virtue of the part of us in question; plain too that the choice will not be right without practical wisdom any more than without virtue; for the one deter, mines the end and the other makes us do the things that lead to the end.
That issue of the separation (or not) of the virtues really bothered Socrates; it is ubiquitous in Plato's dialogues. Aristotle has given us the furniture for a straightforward answer to why a man could be virtuous in one way but not another: he lacked the natural virtue for one virtue, but had it for another. As such, when he applied his phronesis, he was able to excel in one virtue (say courage) but not the other (say moderation of sexual appetite). The phronesis is the same; but the underlying potential is not the same in all people.
Some people become more virtuous than others because they had the potential to actualize. Some people become virtuous in one way and not another because they had potential here but not there. We can look at the cases we know empirically and see how plausible that answer is: he's just like his father; he reminds me of his grandfather; it's no wonder he turned out that way.
But again [phronesis] is not supreme over philosophic wisdom, i.e. over the superior part of us, any more than the art of medicine is over health; for it does not use it but provides for its coming into being; it issues orders, then, for its sake, but not to it. Further, to maintain its supremacy would be like saying that the art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all the affairs of the state.
The art of medicine is not supreme over health because it is practiced for the sake of health. Therefore, it is subordinate because it is in the service of the prior thing. Philosophical wisdom showed us what the great, the noble, and the good were. Phronesis is just helping us achieve what philosophy attained: it is the servant, not the master.
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