Why the Practice of Medicine is Not a Phronetic Activity

This essay argues that the practice of medicine is not a phronetic activity in the original Aristotelian sense of that term. Jonsen and Toulmin are two philosophers who have conflated the techne of medicine with phronesis. This conflation ignores Aristotle's crucial distinction between techne and phronesis and his use of the medical analogy. It is argued that medical reasoning is similar to phronesis but does not exemplify it. Phronesis will not save the life of medical ethics. The concept could be utilized as a moral prosthetic.