Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Phronesis
/froʊˈniːsɪs/noun
Practical wisdom: knowing what the right thing to do is in this particular situation, and doing it.
The Greek roots
φρόνησις
phrónēsis
practical wisdom
φρήν
phrḗn
midriff, seat of thought
Literally: “the working of the mind”
The story of the word
Aristotle separates it in the Nicomachean Ethics from sophia, which grasps eternal truths, and from techne, which knows how to make things. Phronesis has no manual, cannot be taught to the young and comes only from having lived through cases. The root noun φρήν meant the midriff, because early Greeks put thought and feeling below the neck, and it survives in frantic, frenzy and in Bleuler's 1908 coinage schizophrenia, the split mind.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
Same family
frenzyfreneticschizophrenia
In a sentence
The whole argument for judicial discretion is an argument about phronesis.
No checklist substitutes for phronesis at three in the morning on a ward.