An Introduction to "Reading Phronesis"
Is Substack a Functional Place for Workshopping?
The following is from what I hope will be my master’s dissertation on character education come 2027. I’m posting a slightly edited version of it here largely to get some feedback from my most stalwart readers. I’m working a particular angle with this project, and I do have publication plans for it post-completion. If this proves successful, I will run other portions of my work through here over the coming months. If it proves unsuccessful, well, that’s fine too.
I often think about a rather famous Aristotelian phrase: μία γὰρ χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ (1934, p. 32). Rackham’s English translation of Aristotle’s Greek, rendering it as “one swallow does not make spring,” reflects the proverbial way it is understood (1934, p. 33). As someone who spent a lot of time in the classroom, working with students ranging from age eleven to eighteen, both interpretations were frequently bandied about in conversation. A student who cheated on a test might be the swallow in a situation, as a means of showing that maybe their moral failure was a fluke or one off rather than the harbinger of changing seasons. Over the course of many years, I came to see how the more proper way to approach this idea is that what is passed on in the classroom, even if executed perfectly on a given assessment or project, was not sufficient to consider a student successful. If, as Aristotle suggests, the good life must be measured across an entire lifetime, then what I did in the classroom to promote virtue in my students was merely a short stage on the way to what I hoped would be a virtuous adulthood. Still, it was a common experience to worry just how many swallows were needed to finally herald the longed-for Summer. It was reading The Abolition of Man that helped orient me in recognizing my relationship to my students as someone concerned with their character:
In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful (Lewis, 2001, p. 38).
The teacher who passes honour on to their student will not be there when it is exercised on a battlefield. And the instructor who chastises a student for dishonesty likewise will not be present when that person chooses to be truthful with their spouse in a difficult situation. Those were the “teach to the test” moments than came to define my time in the classroom. And my experience showed that the primary method for drawing students into the virtues was through great literature. But before moving into a discussion of how literature aids in character education, it is important to turn back towards Aristotle to see what he has to offer in terms of moral formation.
Chief among Aristotle’s concepts related to character education is his use of phronesis and the role it plays in this discussion as a kind of moral knowledge (1934, p. 345-347). It is not just the absorption of new information, but rather a confrontation for the participant which prompts action (Gadamer, 2014, p. 324-325). Knowledge in this sense is not that of the craftsman or engineer, in the sense of being directly tied to the manipulation of materials but consists instead of being a “self-knowledge” that consists in the individual’s moral consciousness (Gadamer, 2014, 326). Though distinguishing this knowledge is not easy, Hans-Georg Gadamer offers three points which serve this very purpose. First, phronesis is knowledge that is to be experienced (2014, p. 327). Unlike the technical knowledge of a craftsman, which is obtained for a specific goal and possibly abandoned if utility allows, phronesis comes into existence at the moment of action (Gadamer, 2014, p. 327-330). For example, a person does not plan to stop a robbery from taking place, and yet it would be phronesis which allows just such action to occur when the circumstances arise. Second, phronesis is aimed towards a general quality of life, rather than the specific ends of technical knowledge (Gadamer, 2014, p. 330). In this way, phronesis and experience become synonymous. Stopping a robbery is made possible by the kind of life that has been habituated to right action, so much so that such deeds are a natural part of an individual’s disposition. Third, the nature of phronesis as circumstantial and experiential also opens up the need for “sympathetic understanding” (Gadamer, 2014, p. 332). Knowledge of this kind goes from theoretical to concrete when the individual must put themselves in someone else’s shoes. A person with phronesis can see outside themselves, for the ability to recognize the right thing to do becomes a shared experience.
References
Aristotle. 1934. The Nicomachean Ethics, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2014. Truth and Method, London, Bloomsbury Academic.
Lewis, C. S. 2001. The Abolition of Man, San Francisco, HarperCollins.
I've been thinking a lot recently about what it means to educate the chest. Especially wondering how much the typical structure of school days really allows for the confrontation which (if I'm reading it correctly) phronesis demands.