Aristotelian ‘Phronesis’ and the dilemma of its translation

Abstract

The Greek Phronesis is among the key concepts in Aristotle’s ethics and politics. It appears especially in the Book VI of his Nicomachean Ethics. The translators of Aristotle’s work could only render those aspects of its meaning that they were able to comprehend. The present study examines how phronesis is transmitted into Arabic in the revised version of the first known translation of the Nicomachean Ethics by Isḥāq Ibn Ḥunain (9th century) where he renders it to ta‘aqqul, ‘aql or fahm, and the translation made by ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān Badawī (20th century), who translates it as fiṭna. The findings are occasionally compared with the English and German translations of the same text by two significant commentators of Aristotle. The paper concludes that while Ibn Ḥunain’s renderings are historically justified, all in all, Badawī has translated the Greek terms with relative faithfulness, although he occasionally fails to establish a correlation between the concepts.