Aristotle’s doctrine of practical wisdom.

Werner Jaeger has remarked, “Aristotle is the only great figure of ancient philosophy and literature who has never had a Renaissance.” Although this statement was made possibly thirty years ago and may not now be true for all of Aristotle’s philosophy, it is, I fear, true for at least his Ethics. Whereas Plato’s theories have enjoyed almost constant re-examination and criticism throughout recent years, the same cannot, unfortunately, be said for those of his great successor. One explanation for this lies, perhaps, in the fact that contemporary Ethical investigation is not interested in the same things in which Aristotle was interested: it is not interested in casuistry: it is not concerned primarily with answering such questions as ‘what is the nature of the good life?’ But neither does it concern itself so much with such matters as the moral character and how a man becomes good. For Aristotle, on the other hand, these questions were the most important. While modern Ethics tends to enquire into the meanings of certain terms like ‘right’ and ‘good’ and ‘obligation’, Aristotle either quickly establishes meaning or assumes it and hastens to enquire into processes: how we come to know what the human good is; how we become good; how we become responsible for our actions; how we make a judgment of what we ought to do in a particular situation.[...