>>Linda Zagzebski: I have left the virtue of practical wisdom for last because it is
the most important. Aristotle argued that practical wisdom, or phronesis in Greek, is
an intellectual virtue but it is a virtue that is both necessary and sufficient for
the possession of the moral virtues. A person with practical wisdom will have all of the
moral virtues and a person who has any moral virtue fully must also have practical wisdom.
Aristotle thought that there was another kind of wisdom, Sophia (or theoretical wisdom),
which includes a grasp of eternal truths. Aristotle thought that a person with theoretical
wisdom may not be very good at practical matters, and so theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom
are not the same thing. I have great doubts about the distinction between the two kinds
of wisdom. But my main interest in this lecture is practical wisdom and its connection with
moral virtue. Think about all of the virtues we’ve discussed and how often it can happen
that more than one virtue is relevant to the same situation. The demands of the various
virtues might even conflict. We can all think of situations in which the requirements of
truthfulness seemed to conflict with the requirements of kindness. Or situations in which generosity
with your time or your money conflicts with some other virtue that needs your time or
money. And it can conflict with parental or job responsibilities. It takes a certain kind
of judgment to balance and integrate the demands of the different virtues into a single line
of action. It also takes good judgment to figure out how to accomplish the aim of your
virtuous motive. Suppose you’re trying to comfort someone who’s bereaved, there are
things to say that can be helpful and things to say that are not helpful. Having the judgment
to know which is which includes accurately predicting the emotional responses of others
to different options. Have you ever met people who are very good at soothing hurt feelings
or detecting when someone is about to get angry and saying the right thing to prevent
it? I think that practically wise people have that ability. Practical wisdom cannot be simply
a matter of following rules. Maybe there are circumstances in which no rule applies. Or
maybe a rule applies but it ought to be bent a little. A person with practical wisdom would
know whether and when that happens. So practical wisdom is partly a matter of having good practical
judgment. But that is not all that it is. A person with practical wisdom has greater
understanding of the world than the rest of us have. Think again of Confucius, he was
not just a person who was good at giving advice like a newspaper advice columnist, but he
told people things they didn’t even know enough to ask. He said lots of things that
were so inspiring; they have been repeated and studied 2,500 years later. It’s much
harder to define wisdom than courage or honesty. Because even though we can often recognize
wisdom, it’s intrinsic features can be hidden. We can recognize that Confucius was wise but
we can’t identify all of the aspects of his wisdom. But here are some of my hypotheses
about wisdom that we can discuss. First, there are features that I don’t think are intrinsic
to wisdom but are more like signs of wisdom. First, people go to them for advice and the
advice they give seems right in retrospect, it is later endorsed by themselves and others.
Also many of them have a certain bearing and demeanor, they appear calm and reflective
but without being erotic, think again of Confucius. And they say a lot of things that are inspiring.
These features are rather superficial. They help us identify wise people but they don’t
tell us anything much about what makes wisdom, wisdom. What we really want to know is what
it is about wise people that leads others to trust them and to go to them for advice.
We want to know what it is about wisdom that led Aristotle to think that it is both necessary
and sufficient for moral virtue. Here are some proposals about the constituence of wisdom,
some of which have been studied by psychologists. Wise people are good at integrating the requirements
of many different virtues into a single course of action. That’s why people go to them
for advice and why their advice seems right in retrospect. Wise people have a breadth
of general knowledge and a deep understanding of the relative value of things. That is another
reason why people go to them for advice. Wise people have emotional equanimity. They are
attuned to both the natural world and the social environment. That is why people trust
them, why they have a calm demeanor and why they’re able to say things that others find
inspiring. Wise persons are good mind readers. They detect the emotions and thoughts of others
well. That’s why their judgment is later endorsed by themselves and others. I think
that these features show us why Aristotle thought that practical wisdom is sufficient
for having the moral virtues. We would expect a person with these qualities to have the
moral virtues but I’m not sure about the converse. Do you think that a person who is
fully courageous or fully just would have to have practical wisdom? Presumably they
would have good practical judgment but I’m not sure about features like emotional equanimity
and attunement and the ability to be inspiring to others in words as well as deeds. The way
I’m describing practical wisdom: “It is a rare virtue”. There have never been many
people like Confucius. Jonathan Lear describes a different kind of exemplar of wisdom in
his book Radical Hope. Which is the story of Chief Plenty Coup, the last great Chief
of the Crow Nation. The Chief was a visionary Sage who led his people at the time that their
culture was falling apart. Near the end of the 19th century the Crow Tribe were pressured
to give up their ancestral lands and their hunting way of life and enter a reservation.
Chief Plenty Coup describes the devastating affect on his people at that time. He says:
“When the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could
not lift them up again. After that, nothing else happened.” Lear perceives Chief Plenty
Coup as having Aristotelian virtue. He led the Crow by following a vision that came to
him in a dream as a child. His vision included collaborating with the white man against other
tribes when the War for the West was being fought. The outcome was that the Crow were
the only tribe able to keep a portion of their ancestral lands. The Chief kept the Crow together
and succeeded in preserving their customs and spiritual beliefs. I think that Chief
Plenty Coup shows another side to wisdom. Knowing what to do and highly unusual circumstances.
Circumstances in which nothing from tradition can be relied upon. For the Crow, a whole
culture had to be reorganized. Chief Plenty Coup not only had wisdom, but he had hope
as the title of Lear’s book suggests. A virtue that is essential when things are going
very badly. His hope was not just optimism but a firm belief that his vision came from
a spiritual world and he could stake his own life and the life of all of his people on
it. We’ve not talked about hope in this course and hope is often over looked in works
on ethics because it does not directly affect ones treatment of other people but I think
that it is a very important virtue. I will post some references about hope on the course
website.