Fall 2015

1 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 42 / Issue 1
the same good, much like we simply listen to the doctor’s prescription in order
to achieve health without knowing what the doctor knows (1143b22–30). This
quandary is initially resolved by the argument that there is a difference between
doing these things through ignorance and doing them knowingly, much like
there is a difference between obeying the law voluntarily and doing so from
compulsion. The outward manifestation and product is the same, but they are
not of equal stature, for being good means not only doing good things, but
also knowingly doing them for their own sake. Thus the origin of moral action
greatly determines its character and praiseworthiness (1144a13–22). This is to
say that one cannot analogize prudence to a technē—the right reason inherent
in virtuous action cannot emanate externally, as it does in the arts (technai).
Prudence is not like the medical art (cf. 1140b3–10).
Along with this perplexity in Book VI is another, which arises from the fact
that the account of intellectual virtue culminates in the radical depreciation
and lowering of the human things, including the human good. Aristotle closes
his investigation of intellectual virtue by concluding that wisdom (sophia)—
the knowledge of those things most honorable by nature, i.e., the eternal things
that exist of necessity and are neither generated nor subject to corruption—is
the highest intellectual excellence. This virtue, he argues, is not at all concerned
with the good for the human being “for there are other things whose nature is
much more divine than that of a human being” (1141a34–1141b2). Thus, “wisdom
will not contemplate anything as a result of which a human being will
be happy (since wisdom is not concerned with anything that is coming-intobeing)”
(1143b19–21). Since prudence is the faculty of command or authority,
the second perplexity concerning prudence is that the seemingly lower part of
mind rules—“it would seem strange if prudence, although inferior to wisdom,
will exercise greater authority than it, for what makes or produces each thing
rules and exercises authority over that thing” (1143b34–35). Since it seems
right that the better thing should govern rather than what is worse, how can
prudence both govern and be inferior to wisdom? 8
Aristotle explores resolving the perplexity by turning prudence into
the technical governor acting on behalf of wisdom by articulating it as the
technē of wisdom, which as technical rule is not rule for its own sake, but for
something better. Prudence issues its commands and exercises its authority
8
Aristotle also suggests, we should note, that the problem with prudence ruling is not only that it
governs wisdom per se, but also that it exercises more authority (kuriōtera) than wisdom (1143b34).
That is, it is not only that the best should not be governed by something inferior, but also that the better
should govern rather than what is inferior.