Phronēsis and the Art of Healing: Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, and the Phenomenology of Equilibrium in Health

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano Katja Krause Anthony Celano. Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. x + 263. Cloth, $99.00. Celano’s book focuses on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and thirteenth-century scholastic appropriations of it. Its objectives are to unravel the inconsistencies in Aristotle’s accounts of eudaimonia, to establish the prominence of phronesis (practical wisdom), and to reveal alterations of Aristotle’s phronesis in medieval moral thought (back-cover). Celano’s textual analyses are laborious, and some features of his story may be considered stimulating insights. His construal of phronesis as primary to Aristotle’s moral conception (viii), his emphasis on Albert’s contribution to medieval moral thought (chapters 5–6), and his inclusion of the largely uncharted anonymous Erfurt commentary (chapter 8) represent important contributions. Yet Celano tells a tale that others have already told (e.g. R. A. Gauthier 1947–48, quoted by Celano on 78): that Aristotle’s NE contains a single veracity which seemingly transcends history. With their decidedly Christian agenda, however, scholastic interpreters “misread Aristotle’s Ethics” (78) or provided readings “contradictory to his thought” (231). Celano’s story takes its impetus from his view that, with the passage of time, thirteenth-century thinkers (all with close ties to the University of Paris) arrive at an improved grasp of Aristotle’s NE. Celano suggests that, early in the century, when only parts of the NE circulated, William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, and six arts masters tried to get to the root of Aristotle’s ethics, but were “not entirely successful” (99). In the second half of the century, when the NE was translated and disseminated in its entirety, “more gifted theologians, such as Albert, Thomas and Bonaventure” achieved better results in understanding the text than their scholastic forebears had done (99). Celano reads Albert’s early De natura boni, [End Page 160] De bono, and De homine—the latter of which he misconstrues as an ethical work (100)—as preparations for Albert’s subsequent reconciliations of the NE “with the Christian ideals of perfect beatitude and natural law” in his two commentaries on the NE (130). Celano then argues that Albert’s commentaries decisively influenced later medieval commentaries on Aristotle, including that of Thomas Aquinas, while he equally portrays Thomas’s reading of Aristotle as departing from Albert’s (169). Finally, Celano discusses two commentaries on Aristotle’s NE written at the end of the thirteenth century: one by the anonymous Erfurt commentator and one by Radulphus Brito. In Celano’s view, they read Aristotle in “decidedly un-Aristotelian ways” to harmonise his NE with their own moral principles (231); and they replaced the “ground-breaking work” of Albert and Thomas (209) with their “reverence for tradition” (231). Celano’s book is a hero-narrative complete with denouement. Crucial to it is the thesis that the scholastic thinkers he discusses altered Aristotle’s intention in accordance with their Christian agenda. While, in Celano’s reading of the text, Aristotle founded his NE on the “human standard” of phronesis, the scholastic readers established it on “a divine foundation.” They read Aristotle through the lens of foreign concepts such as “natural law” or “synderesis” (viii, 64), and restricted Aristotle’s phronesis to moral decisions (231). Yet I wonder whether this is an accurate picture. The scholastic thinkers discussed here were more concerned with determining the truth about human prudence and happiness than with developing a truthful reading of Aristotle’s text. In their negotiations of this truth, they differed notably in accordance with their different historical contexts. Regrettably, Celano underplays these contexts, which constituted the ‘lifeworlds’ (Husserl’s term) within which they wrote. Indeed, it would be helpful to understand that early thirteenth-century moral theology, as propounded by William and Philip, arose within the theological framework established by Peter Lombard, and merely utilised some Aristotelian moral concepts. In contrast, early thirteenth-century moral philosophy conducted by the arts masters shifted the framework away from Lombard toward an Aristotelian one. This contrast could help evaluate important motives behind the early appropriations...

(2)Εἰσὶ δὲ πᾶσαι αἱ ἕξεις εὐλόγως εἰς ταὐτὸ τείνουσαι 25 λέγομεν γὰρ γνώμην καὶ σύνεσιν καὶ φρόνησιν καὶ νοῦν ἐπὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐπιφέροντες γνώμην ἔχειν καὶ νοῦν ἤδη καὶ φρονίμους καὶ συνετούς. πᾶσαι γὰρ αἱ δυνάμεις αὗται τῶν ἐσχάτων εἰσὶ καὶ τῶν καθ᾿ ἕκαστον καὶ ἐν μὲν τῷ 29 κριτικὸς εἶναι περὶ ὧν ὁ φρόνιμος, συνετὸς καὶ εὐγνώμων ἢ συγγνώμων τὰ γὰρ ἐπιεικῆ κοινὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἁπάντων ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ πρὸς ἄλλον. (3) ἔστι δὲ τῶν καθ᾿ ἔκαστα καὶ τῶν ἐσχάτων ἅπαντα τὰ πρακτά καὶ γὰρ τὸν φρόνιμον δεῖ ψινώσκειν αὐτά, καὶ ἡ σύνεσις καὶ ἡ γνώμη περὶ τὰ 34 πρακτά, ταῦτα δ᾿ ἔσχατα. (4) καὶ ὁ νοῦς τῶν ἐσχάτων ἐπ᾿ ἀμφότερα καὶ γὰρ… VI xi 2–4The structure of book VI of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is not pellucid. The general purpose of the book is to define the concept of practical wisdom or φρόνησις and the method by which Aristotle attempts to reach his aim is that of contrasting practical wisdom with other seemingly relevant concepts. The main contrast here, underlying the book as a whole, is that between practical wisdom and theoretical wisdom (σοφία) or ‘science’ (ἐπιστήμη).Another, less general, contrast is the one drawn in chapters ix–xi, from which the above quotation is taken, between practical wisdom and a series of three fairly specific states of knowledge, or capacities: excellence in deliberation (єὐβουλία, ix), ‘understanding’ (σύνєσις, x) and ‘judgement’ (γνώμη, xi 1). These are practical abilities and hence are closely connected with practical (as opposed to theoretical) wisdom but they are not identical with that type of knowledge. The exact way in which they differ from practical wisdom is left somewhat in the dark, but it is possible, I believe, to see them as distinguishing parts of the total state of knowledge which is practical wisdom.

This paper will discuss Hans-George Gadamer's 'The Enigma of Health' Chapter 2, 'Apologia for the Art of Healing's (1965). In this chapter, Gadamer defends the art of healing as essentially an ability to reproduce and re-establish the health of an ill person. He considers modern medicine's progressive reliance on technology as mechanical rather than an art of healing. In support of this concept, I will also refer to Gadamer's Chapter 6, 'Between Nature and Art' and briefly to Beardsworth's 'Practices of Procrastination'. First, I will discuss the above works showing how the authors make their arguments and what conclusions they draw, and then I will relate these arguments and conclusions to nursing, gerontological nursing in particular.

Medicine, in the modern world, is perpetually developing and changing in parallel with scientific advances, developing technology, new researches, explorations and inventions. While the methods, vehicles and also diseases are evolving, the essence and fundamental qualities for being a “good” physician in the context of virtues originated from Ancient moral philosophy keep still their worth. In this study, Aristotle’s books written on ethics- such as the Nicomachean Ethics, Magna Moralia, Eudemian Ethics and Ethics- were reviewed and the virtues that the physician ought to have syllogized from them. The virtues, which the physician ought to have in all processes of medical practice as well as patient-physician relationship, are wisdom, temperance, justice, good sense (gnome), understanding (synesis), intelligence (nous) and experience. The virtues could be assessed as the combination of theoretical reason/wisdom (sophia), practical reason (phronesis) and techne in sense of the art of medicine as the combination of basic moral and intellectual virtues as well as good trait. The virtues originated and continued from Ancient time to the present as universal and unchanging qualities could a physician make “excellence-oriented” and hence “good” in professional and moral sense. It is the main point that the maintenance of the unchanging values to be a “good” physician reaching the excellence in the changing world by means of advancements in science and technology.

The purpose of the paper is to study the interrelatedness of rationality, virtue, and practical wisdom in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by offering a critical interpretation of the bipartition of the soul presented in Chap. 13 of the first book. Aristotle relies on the partition of the soul into a rational and a non-rational part when he distinguishes between ethical and intellectual virtues. The paper will question the adequacy of these divisions and show that Aristotle himself casts doubt on them while leaving open the possibility of understanding the soul in an alternative way which will prove to fit better with his own exposition of deliberate choice and the integration of virtuous action and practical wisdom.

As part of the longer argument towards the conclusion that ethical virtue is central in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , in the previous chapter and in Chapter 5, I argued that ethical virtue requires practical wisdom and conversely in two different ways. In Chapter 5, I explained how ethical virtue involves reason (practical wisdom) as opposed to being merely in accordance with reason, and in Chapter 8, I explained how the practical syllogism that the person with practical wisdom gets right, involves the virtues of character. However, the aspects of practical wisdom I have discussed so far have been fairly minimal, so one might think that the person with practical wisdom needs to know a lot more than what I have so far discussed. Therefore, in this chapter, I raise some puzzles about what, or how much, the Aristotelian good person has to know, and what the good student needs to know in order to study ethics. The answers have far-reaching consequences for the way in which we should read Aristotle's own Nicomachean Ethics , as well as for the appropriate way to address the immoralist. It is uncontroversial that Aristotle thinks that knowledge is insufficient for ethical virtue (e.g., EN II 1105b1–5, 12–18 cf. X 9 1179b4–10). Reading a book is no substitute for engaging in virtuous action. However, it is unclear what knowledge, if any, is necessary for being a good person, according to Aristotle. On the one hand, there are philosophers, like David Wiggins, who think that the good person can grasp the situation at hand and do the right thing without any knowledge of general principles or of other disciplines.

Has traditional medicine had its day? The need to redefine academic medicine

The End of Practical Wisdom: Ethics as Science in the Thirteenth Century ANTHONYJ. CELANO ThE DESCRIPTION of the nature of ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) presented a difficult problem to the masters of the thirteenth-century university, who viewed an important element of their philosophical task to be the rigorous classification of human knowledge. The specific problem of moral speculation concerns its nature as science: is ethics truly a "science," similar to other philosophical pursuits, such as metaphysics or natural philosophy, or is it more akin to what we call art, in the manner of sculpture or literary endeavors ? Despite Aristotle's own statement about ethics as science--that concerning it we can indicate truth only roughly and in outline (NE lo94bze-z3)--his meaning is far from clear. The greatest part of the NE examines the origin and practice of moral virtue, which admits a variety of human customs and habits. The principles of the "science" of ethics depend not upon the immutable laws that govern natural phenomena, but rather upon the actions of human beings. The variety and diversity of human practices which may be called good seriously undermine the scientific nature of ethics. While many modern commentators on the NE may ignore the problem of a science that speaks of subjects, premisses, and conclusions that are, at best, "true only for the most part" (NE lo94b16-2~), Aristotle acknowledged those who thought ethics existed merely by convention.' Aristotle's ethics is, in a sense, more art than science, since he knew that a subject without demonstrative conclusions de- ' NE lo94b14-~ 7. Aristotle's raises the question here whether moral excellence exists by nature or by convention. He does not answer the question until VI.11 where innate talents of judgment, intelligence, and understanding are combined with the conventional teachings of wise persons within the societyto produce moral wisdom (l 14366- 14).Like many of his philosophical conclusions, this one transcends previous solutions by incorporating aspects of conflicting ac counts into his finalposition. [~5] 226 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:2 APRIL 199 5 duced from immutable first principles was not strictly scientific. Aristotle maintains a semblance of scientific reasoning in his ethical treatises not by mimicking scientific method, but rather by appealing to a standard which, though flexible, is not entirely dependent upon individual desires and societal practices . That standard is the phronimos or practically wise person. The unity of Aristotle's ethics arises from his understanding of phronesis, the virtue of practical wisdom, which allows human beings to judge correctly in the practical matters that comprise a moral life. The phronimos, the practically wise person, is able to judge correctly about the ends of actions as well as the proper means to attain them. Despite Aristotle's appeal to the standard of the practically wise person, the difficulties associated with locating the standard of conduct in particular human beings can lead to doubt concerning the validity and efficacy of his moral teachings. One could argue that if the criterion for judging the rectitude of a moral act lies in an appeal to what the phronimos or spoudaios~would do in similar circumstances, the one who judges must already have accepted the moral worth of the standard's actions. In a very real sense, Aristotle's ethics begs the question of moral goodness, since the actions of the phronimos are said to be good, and moral goodness is measured by how an act compares to the conduct of the phronimos.3 Aristotle would likely agree with this criticism of his position, but would respond that ethics, unlike other sciences, does not seek independently verified principles. He would argue further that the science of ethics depends upon the actions of human beings, and its goal is to affect human behavior. When Aristotle says "regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by considering those who are the persons we credit with it" in Book VI of the NE (114oa24-25), he reconsiders the question of the unity of ethical experience that he mentioned in Book I. Ethics is structured not so much by nature or eudaimonia (admittedly important considerations), but by the actions of...

Objectives In this study, for a practical approach to a happy life, the philosophical concept of happiness is explored centered on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The purpose of this study is to find out the plan for practical moral education through.
 Methods To this end, we conducted a literature study by examining the preceding research papers related to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and based on the analyzed content, we tried to suggest educational methods that can be practiced in the educational field in relation to the current elementary school morality and basic practical guidelines of the curriculum.
 Results As a result, a moderate activity according to Aristotle's practical wisdom is a moral activity, that is, a virtuous activity, and such virtuous activity does not end as a one-time thing, but can be recognized as virtuous only when it is carried out with educational continuity. Since the formation of practical wisdom is possible through long life experiences on the premise of a perfect understanding of theoretical wisdom, it is necessary to have a pedagogical perspective that enables students to habituate the understanding of practical wisdom through practice in the field of elementary school.
 Conclusions Therefore, an important purpose in moral education is an educational environment that allows students to achieve practical wisdom by themselves rather than approaching them through a knowledgeable dialogue about virtue so that they can lead true happiness and become a habit in life. It is necessary to incorporate practical moral education according to Aristotle's concept of happiness in school experience so that it can lay the foundation for habituation of virtue that can form and implement practical wisdom through self-understanding.

Conscientious Objection Based on Patient Identity

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom by Anthony Celano Matthew R. McWhorter Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy: Moral Goodness and Practical Wisdom. Anthony Celano. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 272 pp. Anthony Celano’s Aristotle’s Ethics and Medieval Philosophy is a recent collection of studies from a veteran scholar of medieval philosophy who has conducted more than thirty years of research into the ethical doctrine of Aristotle and its reception by thirteenth-century Latin thinkers. Celano observes that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the seminal kind of cultural achievement that admits of numerous interpretations and developments (7). At the same time, Celano promotes a central thesis in this volume that underscores that the content of the Ethics must be differentiated from how it was understood by medieval commentators. The hermeneutical key that should be used to understand Aristotle’s original doctrine, Celano contends, is one that recognizes practical wisdom (phronesis) as having a broader scope than that which was admitted by the medieval commentators, a scope that includes the ability to originate moral norms (viii–ix). In contrast, Aristotle’s medieval commentators were influenced in their reading of the Ethics by the natural law doctrine found in Scripture and Patristic thinkers (5) and as found in the works of Cicero and Seneca (238). The medieval commentators, Celano maintains, read Aristotle with an “acceptance of natural law and synderesis” and, due to these presuppositions, subsequently “transform Aristotle’s Ethics from one based upon a human standard into one that depends upon a divine foundation” (viii). The interpretational result is a truncated understanding of practical wisdom that is no longer recognized as able to originate “moral universals,” that is restricted to the prudential ability to apply the “eternal principles of action” (ix). Elsewhere, Celano refers to this as “the evolution from practical reason to prudence” (241). He points to Albert the Great as the primary medieval thinker who significantly restricted the scope of practical wisdom in this regard (169). Celano’s volume is divided into nine chapters. The work includes selections from Aristotle’s Greek and extensive Latin quotations, as well as frequent citation of relevant English and international secondary sources. Celano begins his study by briefly outlining certain moral topics that can affect one’s interpretation of the Nicomachean Ethics. These topics include how one understands the nature of happiness (eudaimonia), the relation of Aristotle’s ethical doctrine to a natural moral law, and the structure of moral acts. Celano then provides a longer treatment of the issue of happiness in connection [End Page 1430] with Aristotle’s doctrine of practical wisdom. The study then shifts and proceeds chronologically through the works of important thirteenth-century thinkers. His third chapter begins this chronological survey by focusing on William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor. The fourth chapter examines commentaries on the Ethics authored prior to 1248 (an anonymous commentary, a commentary ascribed to Robert Kilwardby, and the pseudo-Pecham commentary). Celano then dedicates two chapters to Albert the Great and his treatment of Aristotle’s Ethics. This discussion is followed by a chapter focused on Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, and then a chapter examining two late-thirteenth-century commentaries, one of which is ascribed to Parisian arts master Radulphus Brito. Celano closes the volume with a short concluding chapter that returns to discuss in part the themes outlined in his first chapter (namely, the issues of natural law and practical wisdom). Celano states that he developed this book out of a desire to understand what he describes as Aristotle’s two different accounts of happiness that are found in separate sections of the Nicomachean Ethics (vii). These distinct accounts, Celano maintains, also indicate different understandings of human goodness (23). He contends that one account, in book 1, describes happiness as resulting from a combination of contemplative and practical activities (2). Reading the Ethics in light of this first account results in what Celano (appropriating terminology from W. F. R. Hardie) calls the “inclusive” interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of happiness (2 and 16). In contrast, a second account that Aristotle provides, in book 10, describes happiness as the result...

A Likely Story:Character and Probability in Newman and Austen Dwight Lindley (bio) John Henry Newman was no Janeite. While there is evidence he read most or all of her novels, they did not entirely suit his taste: "everything Miss Austen writes is clever," wrote Newman in an 1837 letter to his sister, "but I desiderate something. There is a want of body to the story. The action is frittered away in over-little things.… Miss Austen has no romance—none at all" ("Extract" 117). Jane Austen, in other words, was not enough like Walter Scott. And yet, while Newman preferred plots of a different scope and coloration, he and Austen had more in common than these lines might suggest. In particular, they shared a certain conception of narrative intelligence, understood in broadly Aristotelian terms. An 1821 book review by Richard Whately, admirer of Austen and soon-to-be mentor to Newman, nicely underscores some of the features of thought Newman would come to share with Austen: in it, Whately celebrates the realism of an Austen novel ("this Flemish painting"), suggesting that it arises from her adherence to "the general rules of probability" in the depiction of character. Because the actions and choices of her characters are intelligible in terms of probability, they strike the reader as realistic, or in accord with "human nature." The result is that they "guide the judgment," giving us a clearer view of the world, and furnishing "general rules of practical wisdom" (88). Now, Newman was only an occasional, amateur writer of novels, but his theoretical work in epistemology easily maps onto Whately's description: at the heart of his view of human knowing was the way that something like Aristotelian prudence ("judgment," or "practical wisdom") discerns the truth about the character of things by means of probability. This is no coincidence, for it was Whately, beginning the year after his essay on Austen, who played a signal role in forming Newman's epistemological sensibilities.1 It makes sense that the kind of practical intelligence on display in an Austen narrative should be the same kind of intelligence Newman theorized in many different works. The questions this essay seeks to address are: exactly how much do Austen and Newman have in common, and at the same time, where do they differ, and why? Newman, of course, as an Oxford scholar and public [End Page 101] intellectual, read much more widely than Austen: how did the differences in their reading and formation distinguish (what may be called) her basic Aristotelianism from his? To put them together is to realize, despite their differences, the presence of a largely unnoticed, but crucially influential tradition in nineteenth-century thought: beneath both the novelistic realism of Austen (and her successors) and the epistemological realism of Newman (and those who followed him) lay a common, Aristotelian theory of narrative probability and intelligence. Understanding this tradition will shed light not only on Newman and Austen themselves, but on the internal dynamics of Aristotelian narrative theory in general, and the development of realism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In order to understand both their shared theory and their differentiating characteristics, it will be helpful to set them against the backdrop of that tradition of which they were a part. The argument will proceed in five steps, as follows: first, an account of Aristotle's ethical probabilism in the Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, and Poetics; second, an explanation of his reception among seventeenth-century French literary theorists, with a particular focus on René Rapin; third, an overview of the eighteenth-century English Aristotelianism that emerged under the influence of the French; fourth, a view of Austen's conception of probability in the novels, with special attention to Sense and Sensibility; and finally, an outline of Newman's own unique development of the tradition in his Fifteen Sermons, Essay on Development, and Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The Aristotelian Theory For Aristotle himself, the important concept to understand is the way probability makes the ethical world intelligible. In a passage early in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes his way into the subject by observing that different disciplines work with different subject matters (hul...

Ethics, at its core, relates to our practices and their moral justification. The practice of medicine, by definition, takes place in a fundamentally ethical context. In ordinary circumstances the goals to which physicians direct their medical practices are held tacitly, but sometimes fresh examination of these is occasioned. This conceptual article considers a range of approaches that have been taken to the notion of health, ancient and modern, historical and contemporary, beginning with the socio-cultural, then the health political, and finally the medical philosophical. Although these are contrasting perspectives, each are bound up with questions of values and of the relation between the objective and subjective. The contrast is discussed between the idea of health as a positive and dynamic condition in terms of functional ability, and characterisations of health as purely the absence of disease. Finally, a typology of theories of health is proposed along ontological and epistemological lines.

Stressors and strains of medical training and practice.

How can the experiences of stakeholders with doctors inform medical selection and education