Phronesis (φρόνησις) — “Prudence” or “practical wisdom,” the intellectual virtue that enables one to deliberate well about what is good and beneficial for human beings, not in general but in each particular situation. The Greek term derives from phronein, “to think” or “to have discernment.” Aristotle is the decisive thinker here: in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book VI) he distinguishes phronesis from the other virtues of thought. It differs from sophia (theoretical wisdom), which concerns the necessary and eternal and culminates in contemplation; it differs as well from technē (technical know-how, tied to production) and from epistēmē (demonstrative knowledge of the universal). Phronesis, by contrast, deals with the contingent and changeable — with what can be otherwise and depends on human action. Its domain is not abstract calculation but perception of what the occasion demands: it is the knowledge that recognizes, in the concrete case, which course of action hits the right mean (mesotēs) between excess and deficiency. For this reason it is inseparable from moral virtue: the practically wise person (phronimos) is one whose good character and good judgment reinforce one another, as opposed to the merely clever individual, skilled in means but indifferent to ends. For example, knowing when, toward whom, and to what degree it is right to become angry calls for prudence, not a fixed rule. In the twentieth century Gadamer reclaims phronesis as a model for hermeneutic understanding — the application of what is understood to a concrete situation, rather than its mere repetition.
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