On Aristotle’s Practical Wisdom And Moral Habituation

Practical wisdom and moral virtue respectively play different roles in Aristotle’s ethics:moral virtue makes the goal correct,and practical wisdom makes what leads to it correct.However,Aristotle implied that practical wisdom,which is the excellence of rational part of the soul,is more than a sort of instrumental means.Instead,it has a great influence on establishment of moral ends and moral ends must be rational.Focusing on these issues,there are debates between intellectualism and Humean reading in academics.Intellectualists believe it should be practical wisdom determines the ends,while Humean insist insist that practical wisdom only serves the desire.This paper attempts to maintain the basic distinction which Aristotle made between the roles of the two virtues,investigate the elements of intellectualism in Aristotle’s ethics,and explore the influence of reason on moral virtue from the perspective of moral habituation.I argue that an important dimension of moral habituation is the development of practical wisdom.In addition to making agent realizes the specific ways needed to successfully achieve moral ends,the development of practical wisdom also makes an important contribution to the formation and stability of moral motivation.Through a rational moral learning process,learners’desire can have the ability to establish the correct moral ends in the stage of mature virtue.The hole paper is mainly composed of three parts.The first part first briefly summarizes Aristotle’s theory on soul,and combs the definition of moral virtue and practical wisdom which established according to division of soul,as well as their source and characteristics.Its focal point is the relationship between the two virtues,which leads to the debate on the two interpretation tendencies of the role of practical wisdom.This paper selects two main argumentation strategies of intellectualism.The first is the elements argument——we believe that happiness,as the overall good,can be decomposed into various virtue elements.We just don’t think about happiness,but virtue,as the constituent element of good,is considered by us under the framework of the overall end.The second is the "nous" argument,which holds that nous plays a similar role in practical realm as in theoretical realm;and ends of action is the inductive rational understanding.Humeans criticized and revised these interpretation strategies.First,although deliberation can make us understand the elements needed for a good life,it can not establish general moral ends.Second,the grasp of the end can be understood as the causal reasoning of "things towards the end",which does not involve the deliberation of the end itself.Finally,the concept of "nous" in Nicomachean Ethics is mainly to grasp the specific particulars and minor premises,not the ability to obtain the first principle in practical realm.The second part aims at the problems faced by Humean reading,to improve it to be compatible with more intellectualism elements in Aristotle’s text.First of all,Aristotle’s concept of "desire" shows that desire is controlled and guided by reason.Humean reading emphasizes character rather than deliberation determines the appearance of good objects,but this is achieved through rational training process.The development of deliberation ability actively shapes the desires in this process.Secondly,practical experience is different from art or scientific experience.Practical experience not only provides agent with instrumental means to achieve specific goals,but also shapes the moral sensitivity of agent by improving their moral perception ability,so that practical wisdom,as the excellence of practical reason,is different from pure technical cleverness.The third part mainly describes a rationalized moral training process and demonstrates the influence of the development of practical reason on the establishment of moral motivation.Reason plays different roles in different stages of moral development.The imitation and external inculcation during early habituation provide the starting point and materials for the formation of practical wisdom,train us to make appropriate responses to different moral situations and form certain values,which will be integrated into a systematic reasoning in the mature stage of deliberation ability and recognized by reason.On the other hand,the excellence of practical reason brings rational happiness by perfecting activities,which indirectly affects the formation of moral motivation.Finally,based on this virtue training mechanism,I draw a picture of moral development different from the general"Virtuous Motives" views,and discuss the possibility of improvement on the character.