What is Phronêsis? Voegelin and Aristotle

David D. CoreyAssistant Professor of Political Science

Baylor University

2

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

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).

3

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 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

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.

4

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

6 Ibid., p. 140. On Voegelin’s notion of noetic exegesis and noetic meditationin 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.

5

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

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

6

“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

8 Ibid., p. 146.

9 Ibid., pp. 141-44.

7

“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

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.

8

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

11 Though Voegelin adopts this assumption, he is also somewhat equivocal aboutit. 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 “Aristotletalks 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. Thispage 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.

9

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

10

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 audience13—

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

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 ofcosmological thinking, because its activation through an experience of transcendence does not become explicit.”

14 Consider, in this regard, Voegelin’s interpretive procedure sketched out inOrder 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 whichexpress 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.

11

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.

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.

12

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,

13

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.

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).

14

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

15

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

16

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 factthis capacity is not phronêsis, though phronêsis does not existwithout it. Phronêsis, that eye of the soul, cannot become ahexis without aretê. (1144a24-30)19

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 happento be major. Since this is a conference paper, however, (not a submission forpublication) I shall not indicate every change I make along the way. I simplyalert the reader here that some of the translations are my own.

17

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

18

the best thing attainable to man by action. (1141b8-14, my italics)

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

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

19

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

20

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 anend [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) II. Proairesis (b) III. Praxis (c) IV.

Eupraxia

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

Archê of choice Archê of action

Heneka/telos of action

21

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

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

22

“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

23

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.

24

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.

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 ofa full-fledged “practical syllogism,” which would have to begin from some sortof 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).

25

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

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

26

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 on

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 explainswhy some men who have no scientific knowledge are more adeptin 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 knowsthat 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)

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

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

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

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.

29

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

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

30

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

29 “Right by Nature,” p. 150.

31

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

32

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 naturalqualities or characteristics, but it is evident that withoutnous 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 inthe 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

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 onthe 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 callsthe virtue of political wisdom—that which is best and divine in us is

33

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

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.

34

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

35

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

33 To quote, once again, a passage I quoted in the first paragraph above: “Thereasoning 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.

36

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

35 If I am right in this regard, then Aristotle’s position on the divine firstcause 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 leavethe knowledge of the absolute good out of consideration. Yet if this knowledgewere such a great help, it would make no sense that all the craftsmen are

37

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 underconstraint 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

ignorant of it and do not even attempt to seek it” (NE I.6, 1096b35-1097a7, my italics).

38

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

39

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

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 thusrecognizes in Aristotle’s gropings problems of experience and exposition whichVoegelin himself has had to wrestle with. The reason I am not going to pursuethis 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.

40

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

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

41

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

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.

42

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 notionof 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 richnessof his myth is in Aristotle reduced to the conception of Godas the prime mover, as the noesis noeseos, the “thinking on thinking.43

41 Ibid., pp. 365-6.

42 Ibid., p. 276.

43 Ibid. p. 276.

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

44 Ibid., pp. 356 and 293.

44

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.”

45

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

46

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

45 Ibid., p. 333.

46 Ibid., pp. 333-4

47

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 Aristoteliananalysis 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 realizedwithin history.47

47 Ibid., p. 335-6

48

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

49

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

50

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.

51