Review: [untitled]

Author(s): J. D. G. Evans
Reviewed work(s):
La vérité pratique: Aristote Éthique à Nicomache Livre VI by Jean-Yves Chateau
Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 50, No. 2 (2000), pp. 625-626
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3064885
Accessed: 08/03/2010 09:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to The Classical Review.

http://www.jstor.org
 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 625

JEAN-YVES CHATEAU(ed.): La verite pratique. Aristote Ethique a

Nicomache Livre VI (Tradition de la pensee classique). Paris: Librarie
philosophique Vrin, 1997. Pp. 376. Paper, frs. 250. ISBN: 2-7116-
1298-8.
These essays record a lecture series given in Paris in 1993-4 on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 6.
The collection is structured to provide both a detailed commentary, which proceeds chapter by
chapter, on the themes and topics in Book 6, and a more generally focused account of the issues,
both philosophical and scholarly, that arise for philosophers and historians of philosophy when
they reflect on this text. The eight essays in Part 1 address the first part of the project, while the
seven in Parts 2 and 3 address the second. The contributors are all distinguished philosophers
and scholars, some of them notably so. The work is complemented by a short but useful
bibliography of recent writing on EN 6. The indexing is slight; in particular there is no index of
passages.
The editor and authors celebrate the importance of this Aristotelian work as a contribution to
philosophy. 'Practical truth' is in their title; and Paul Ricoeur focuses on this key concept in an
introductory essay which highlights the challenging and problematic nature of Aristotle's linkage
of action and thought. EN 6 has the aim of showing how rational excellence plays an indis-
pensablerole in right action, and also how the nature of this rationality is conditioned by the fact
that it is essentially directed upon action. These reflections gain point, as so often in Aristotle,
when we see how they serve as a corrective to inadequacies in his predecessors'views. In this case
the principal targets are twofold: a Platonic view of reason as able by contemplation and theory
alone to determine right action, and a Protagorean programme for subjecting reason to deter-
mination by emotional and appetitive elements in human psychology without essential recourse
to reason.
The present volume is animated by a sense of excitement about Aristotle's discussion of this
matter. A number of contributors emphasize the significance of his contribution to moral philo-
sophy by comparison with Aquinas (principally Pinchard, but also Leandri and Chateau), Kant,
and Heidegger (Guest, also Chateau). A notable omission from this historical cast are the
Utilitarians, since for contemporary analytic philosophers they, together with the deontologist
Kantians, form the two pillars of contrast which define the significance of Aristotle's virtue ethics.
Moreover, consideration of Benthamite calculation of value would be highly pertinent to any
conception of practical reason, including the Aristotelian one.
But how well do the contributors grasp and elucidate Aristotle's key idea that the conclusion of
practical reasoning is an action, rather than a statement or a thought? They certainly supply
extensive rumination on Aristotle's distinctions between the various intellectual virtues. Alain
Petit analyses the contrast between science (episteme) and skill (techne), and seeks to show that
phronesis should be reduced to neither of these. That latter virtue is the subject of Bernard
Besnier's discussion; he correctly emphasizes its unrestricted application, which it shares with
sophia. But then, as Marie-Christine Bataillard argues, the emphasis on contingency and
relativity, which Aristotle appeals to in order to distinguish sophia from phronesis, makes it
hard to reinstate the latter as a genuine intellectual virtue. The concluding analytic chapter, by
Jean-Louis Poirier on EN 6.12-13, carries the suggestive title 'Socrates was right. . .'. Of course,
as he recognizes, Socrates was also wrong: the elements of human goodness (the virtues) are not
all reducible to knowledge, and so different individual persons can be variously distinguished in
terms of their possession of virtue, or, more properly, virtues. One cannot be virtuous in any
respect without phronesis, but this particular intellectual virtue needs to be allied to some virtue
of character in order to generate a disposition to good action.
Some intellectual virtues are independent of the sphere of action, notably nous and episteme,
and, in a different way, techne. Sophia straddles this division; and Aristotle's account of the
relation between this virtue and phronesis in Chapters VII and VIII seems to me to contain the
core of his message in this treatise. The high value attached to wisdom must not be allowed
to obscure the indispensable role that practical sense must play in the human good life. There is
a need for a recognition of diversity and complexity in the range of intellectual virtues which
matches a similar need in the case of the virtues of character.So Socrates was doubly wrong. He
reduced the complexity of virtues of character to one intellectual virtue; and he oversimplified
once more with the intellectual virtues, through failure to identify the particular one which must
accompany the non-intellectual operations. Aristotle's insight, as the contributors here only
? Oxford University Press, 2000
626 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

partially recognize, is that action is necessitated by intellectual processes, although not itself such
a process; it is a conclusion from reasons.
The volume will provide a valuable resource to all serious students of Aristotle's epistemology
of ethics. A final question in my mind is: why is it so hard to translatephronesisconvincingly?The
francophone contributors agree on 'prudence'; and although this carries unfortunate resonances
of M. Prudhomme, it does have the merit of single-word synonymy over such anglophone
renderings as 'practical skill' or 'practical reasoning'. But none of these renderings (in either
language) seems at all adequate to what Aristotle, who is an ordinary-language philosopher,
wants to highlight as a central feature of human excellence. There is much further work to do
here.
Queen's Universityof Belfast J. D. G. EVANS

M. SIM (ed.): The Crossroads of Norm and Nature. Essays on

Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics. Pp. xxii + 343. Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1995. Cased, $55.00 (Paper, $21.95). ISBN: 0-8476- 7939-X
(0-8476-7982-9 pbk).

G. FREUDENTHAL: Aristotle's Theory of Material Substance. Heat

and Pneuma, Form and Soul. Pp. xii + 235. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1995. Cased, ?30. ISBN: 0-19-824093-7.
The Crossroadsof Norm and Nature is a collection of new papers on the relation of Aristotle's
Ethics with his Metaphysics. May Sim outlines clearly the range of possible options for this
relation, but, more importantly, has managed to gather papers that meet the challenge. They are
grouped in three parts which examine: the ethics in relation to the metaphysics; the methods
that may or not be common to both; the basic concepts of cause, elements, matter-form,
potentiality-actuality which are characteristic of Aristotle's thought. In more detail, the first
part consists of (Chapter I) 'The Substance of Aristotle's Ethics' by Ed Halper, (Chapter II)
'Human Being, Beast and God: The Place of Human Happiness According to Aristotle and
Some Twentieth-Century Philosophers' by Deborah Achtenberg, (Chapter III) 'Senses of Being
in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics' by May Sim, (Chapter IV) 'Aristotle's "Exclusive" Account
of Happiness: Contemplative Wisdom as a Guise of the Political Philosopher' by Ronna
Burger, (Chapter V) 'Two Perspectives on the "Ultimate End"' by Susanne Hill, (Chapter VI)
'The Ultimate End of Action: A Critique of Richard Kraut's Aristotle on the Human Good' by
Timothy Roche, and (Chapter VII) 'Reply to Professor Roche' by Richard Kraut. The second
part comprises (Chapter VIII) 'Plato's Ghost: Consequences of Aristotelian Dialectic' by
C. Wesley DeMarco, (Chapter IX) 'Working Through Puzzles with Aristotle' by John J. Cleary,
and (Chapter X) 'Theories of Meaning and Ontology in Aristotle's Metaphysics' by Deborah
Modrak. The third part is composed of (Chapter XI) 'The Philosophic Background of
Aristotle's Aitia' by Julius Moravesik, (Chapter XII) 'Composition and Unity: An Examination
of Metaphysics H.6' by Michael Loux, (Chapter XIII) 'Understanding Process: Reflections
on Physics 111.1' also by Michael Loux, and (Chapter XIV), 'Why the Elements Imitate the
Heavens: Metaphysics IX.8 1050b28-34' by Helen Lang. In this satisfying volume, readers will
find a cornucopia of well analysed and argued material based on a broad reading of primary
sources, from the Presocratics to Proclus (in John Cleary's article). However, some will feel that
the quest for unity occasionally stretches the evidence too far. Nonetheless, readers will value
the care expended on the semantic nuances of the Greek, such as the background of translating
teleios as complete rather than perfect. Several articles illustrate the complex topics with useful
tabulations or charts. The eighteen-page general index covers most of the concepts and terms,
but there is no general bibliography,which is unfortunate because few of the articles have one in
addition to their annotation.
In Aristotle's Theory of Material Substance. Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul, Gad
Freudenthal examines an important but overlooked concept in Greek thought: the pneuma.
He concentrates on Aristotle, and presents him within the history of science with the aim of
uncovering the early, materialist ground of Aristotle's philosophy and theology. F. proposes that

? Oxford University Press, 2000