Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
(Trans. W.D. Ross)
VI.6. Scientific knowledge [episteme] is judgement about things that are universal and necessary, and
the conclusions of demonstration, and all scientific knowledge, follow from
first principles (for scientific knowledge involves apprehension of a rational
ground). This being so, the first principle from which what is scientifically
known follows cannot be an object of scientific knowledge, of art, or of
practical wisdom; for that which can be scientifically known can be
demonstrated, and art and practical wisdom deal with things that are variable.
Nor are these first principles the objects of philosophic wisdom, for it is a
mark of the philosopher to have demonstration about some things. If, then, the
states of mind by which we have truth and are never deceived about things
invariable or even variable are scientific knowledge, practical wisdom,
philosophic wisdom, and intuitive reason, and it cannot be any of the three
(i.e. practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, or philosophic wisdom), the
remaining alternative is that it is intuitive
reason [nous] that grasps the
first principles.
VI.7. Wisdom (1) in the arts we ascribe to their most
finished exponents, e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus as a maker of
portrait-statues, and here we mean nothing by wisdom except excellence in art;
but (2) we think that some people are wise in general, not in some particular
field or in any other limited respect, as Homer says in the Margites,
Him did the gods make neither a digger nor yet a ploughman
Nor wise
in anything else.
Therefore wisdom must plainly
be the most finished of the forms of knowledge. It follows that the wise man
must not only know what follows from the first principles, but must also
possess truth about the first principles. Therefore philosophic wisdom [sophia] must be
intuitive reason combined with scientific knowledge—scientific knowledge of the
highest objects which has received as it were its proper completion.
Of the highest objects, we say;
for it would be strange to think that the art of politics, or practical wisdom,
is the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world. Now if
what is healthy or good is different for men and for fishes, but what is white
or straight is always the same, any one would say that what is wise is the same
but what is practically wise is different; for it is to that which observes
well the various matters concerning itself that one ascribes practical wisdom,
and it is to this that one will entrust such matters. This is why we say that
some even of the lower animals have practical wisdom, viz. those which are
found to have a power of foresight with regard to their own life. It is evident
also that philosophic wisdom and the art of politics cannot be the same; for if
the state of mind concerned with a man's own interests is to be called
philosophic wisdom, there will be many philosophic wisdoms; there will not be
one concerned with the good of all animals (any more than there is one art of
medicine for all existing things), but a different philosophic wisdom about the
good of each species.
But if the argument be that
man is the best of the animals, this makes no difference; for there are other things
much more divine in their nature even than man, e.g., most conspicuously, the
bodies of which the heavens are framed. From what has been said it is plain,
then, that philosophic wisdom is scientific knowledge, combined with intuitive
reason, of the things that are highest by nature. This is why we say Anaxagoras,
Thales, and men like them have philosophic but not practical wisdom, when we
see them ignorant of what is to their own advantage, and why we say that they
know things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless;
viz. because it is not human goods that they seek.
Practical wisdom on the other
hand is concerned with things human and things about which it is possible to
deliberate; for we say this is above all the work of the man of practical wisdom,
to deliberate well, but no one deliberates about things invariable, nor about
things which have not an end, and that a good that can be brought about by
action. The man who is without qualification good at deliberating is the man who
is capable of aiming in accordance with calculation at the best for man of things
attainable by action. Nor is practical wisdom concerned with universals only --
it must also recognize the particulars; for it is practical, and practice is
concerned with particulars. This is why some who do not know, and especially
those who have experience, are more practical than others who know; for if a
man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome, but did not know which
sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows
that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health.
Now practical wisdom is concerned
with action; therefore one should have both forms of it, or the latter in
preference to the former. But of practical as of philosophic wisdom there must
be a controlling kind.