Political action and the philosophy of mind

Abstract

The problem of political action has its roots, arguably, in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle seeks to describe an intellectual virtue – phronesis – that is different from the faculty of theoretical reason but that is nonetheless capable of producing genuinely objective, rational knowledge, i.e., knowledge of what is true. The problem, specifically, is to understand how such a thing is possible, and much of the recent literature appears to suggest that perhaps it’s not. Since rhetoric, persuasion, interest and emotion are obviously central features of political life, it may seem that some kind of non-intellectualist and non-rationalist perspective must be the way to go. I argue, nonetheless, that any such account is, and cannot but be, deeply problematic; and I defend, by way of contrast, a decidedly intellectualistic understanding of political enterprise.