Phronesis, Poetics, and Moral Creativity

At least since Aristotle, phronesis (practical wisdom) and poetics (making or creating) have been understood as essentially different activities, one moral the other (in itself) non-moral. Today, if anything, this distinction is sharpened by a Romantic association of poetics with inner subjective expression. Recent revivals of Aristotelian ethics sometimes allow for poetic dimensions of ethics, but these are still separated from practical wisdom per se. Through a fresh reading of phronesis in the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, I argue that phronesis should be viewed as at least in part poetic at its very core. That is, phronesis deals with the fundamentally tragic human situation of moral incommensurability, and it responds to this by making or creating new moral meaning. Such a poetics of practical wisdom helps phronesis stand up to significant and important critiques made of it by a range of modernists and post-modernists, pointing a way forward for some important contemporary moral debates.     

辩证法与实践智慧

在西方哲学传统中,辩证法属于理论哲学的方法或研究对象,而实践智慧或明智则只限于实践哲学,只是作为能在社会生活中正确处理对人自身有益处的能力和品质而被讨论[1].但笔者以为,这种辩证法与实践智慧的分离,只是囿于理论哲学视野的缘故.而这一分离的结果是,辩证法由于用错了地方而丧失了信誉,实践智慧则被人们只看成了某种关于生活的常识性琐谈.笔者这里试图表明,辩证法能够作为实践智慧而发挥其作用,且其合法形态只能是实践哲学的实践智慧.本文将从辩证法的实质及其与实践智慧的比较来阐明这一问题.     

Phronesis in clinical ethics

This essay argues that while we have examined clinical ethics quite extensively in the literature, too little attention has been paid to the complex question of how clinical ethics is learned. Competing approaches to ethics pedagogy have relied on outmoded understandings of the way moral learning takes place in ethics. It is argued that the better approach, framed in the work of Aristotle, is the idea of phronesis, which depends on a long-term mentorship in clinical medicine for either medical students or clinical ethics students. Such an approach is articulated and defended.     

海德格尔对亚里士多德实践智慧(Phronesis)的存在论诠释

海德格尔在早期对亚里士多德的实践哲学进行了独特的存在论的诠释.他的基础存在论是这一诠释的重要成果.其中,海德格尔对亚里士多德伦理学中的实践智慧的诠释居于中心地位.海德格尔把实践智慧诠释为此在揭示真理的根本方式.实践智慧是促使人进行本真的决断的"良知",因此它是人本真的个体化存在的前提.而在决断中,体现出一种特别的时机性.正是从亚里士多德描述的人的行动的时机性概念中,海德格尔揭示出了源始的时间性--融将来、过去和现在于一体的绽出的当下.     

Hemingway's Aging Heroes and the Concept of Phronesis

This article explores the concept of phronesis (practical wisdom) in four aging protagonists in Ernest Hemingway's works ranging from the short story A Clean Well-Lighted Place to the novella The Old Man and the Sea. Phronesis represents an understanding of the ways of the world, an acute sensitivity to a critical logic of human existence that can be attained only through extensive experience and suffering. The four aging protagonists are examples of Hemingway's definition of aging productively and profitably by purchasing an inner peace that consists of an intuitive system of continuous adjustment to the exigencies of daily living.     

实践智慧(phronesis)与"技艺"(techne)之喻——由亚里士多德引发的现代思考

亚里士多德虽然将目的在己还是在他作为区分实践智慧与技艺的重要标准,但是由于受“技艺”之喻此种潜在思想图式的影响,亚里士多德关于实践智慧与技艺的划界并非无懈可击,为后代思想家们的进一步思考留下伏笔。马克思提升生产劳动为目的价值,进而批判资本主义社会的“异化劳动”状态;海德格尔则对实践智慧与技艺的区分作了存在论的解读,以此对应人类自身本真-非本真的生存状态;阿伦特则更加注重和强调行动/实践智慧的政治涵义,以此对抗政治上的极权主义。     

Essence,necessity, and definition

Philosophical Studies - What is it for something to be essential to an item? For some time, it was standard to think that the concept of necessity alone can provide an answer: for something to be...     

Physician-assisted death: doctrinal develoment vs. Christian tradition.

Physician-assisted suicide offers a moral and theological Rorschach test. Foundational commitments regarding morality and theology are disclosed by how the issue is perceived and by what moral problems it is seen to present. One of the cardinal differences disclosed is that between Western and Orthodox Christian approaches to theology in general, and the theology of dying and suicide in particular. Confrontation with the issue of suicide is likely to bring further doctrinal development in many of the Western Christian religions, so as to be able to accept physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.     

Relational approach to work: conceptual definition and scale development

The aim of this study is to conceptually define and develop a scale to measure relational behavior in the workplace associated with theorized differences in how women and men approach work. Drawing from the gender studies and organizational literatures, the construct is defined and a relational approach to work scale is developed. Data were collected from a sample of 223 graduate students with work experience. Findings show preliminary evidence of reliability and validity.     

Constructs, operational definition, and operational analysis

We argue that a certain picture of the relationship between language and the world informed Meehl’s outlook on how science worked. That picture authorized talk about constructs and has led to construct proliferation and other problems. Operational analysis offers an alternative view and suggests that a major shortcoming of soft psychology is its lack of disciplined limits on acceptable verbal behavior.     

Motion variability--its definition, quantification, and origin

The concept of motion variability is discussed and a normalized measure for its quantification is introduced. An example demonstrates that this new measure constitutes a global indicator of the current state of a motor learning process. The causes of motion variations are briefly discussed. They include initial perturbations of the skeletal, muscular, and neural systems as well as perturbations due to incremental changes, during motion execution, of external forces, muscular parameters (fatigue), afferent sensory inputs, and of the motor programs controlling the execution of the motion.     

Justice, citizenship, and role definition effects

A limitation of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature is that theory and empirical evidence suggest that some employees define OCBs as part of their job. A theoretical framework that addresses this problem is tested in this article. The framework focuses on 2 effects: a role enlargement effect (i.e., employees with more favorable attitudes define OCB as inrole behavior, which, in turn, results in greater citizenship) and a role discretion effect (i.e., the relationship between employees' attitudes and their citizenship will be stronger among employees who define OCB as extrarole behavior). In tests of this framework with 2 independent samples of supervisor-subordinate dyads, role definitions were found to moderate several relationships between procedural justice and OCB, providing support for the role discretion effect. Implications for OCB theory and research are discussed.     

托马斯"实践智慧"及"智德"思想的意义与价值

托马斯(St. Thomas Aquinas,1224/5～1274)作为士林哲学(Philosophia Scholastica;Scholastic Philosophy)的集大成人物,他以前所未有的周详方式与广大篇幅面对并处理prudentia(prudence)课题,肯定它是理智的"明智",更是四枢德的首德-"智德".智德与其它三种枢德(义德、勇德、节德)并举或连用,为伦理德行的"基本德行"(principal virtues).本文拟从四方面阐明托马斯"实践智慧"、"智德"思想的意义与价值.     

Workaholism: definition, measurement, and preliminary results

Questionnaires were developed to assess the concept of workaholism, defined in terms of high scores on measures of work involvement and driveness and low scores on a measure of enjoyment of work, and to contrast this profile with work enthusiasm, defined as high work involvement and enjoyment and low driveness. Additional scales were devised to test several predictions about the correlates of workaholism. A test battery including these scales was given in a mail survey to a national sample of male (n = 134) and female (n = 157) social workers with academic positions. The psychometric properties of the scales are described. Cluster analyses for each sex revealed groups who corresponded to the workaholic and work enthusiast profiles as well as several other profiles. As predicted, workaholics were higher than work enthusiasts (among other groups) on measures of perfectionism, nondelegation of responsibility, and job stress. They were also higher on a measure of health complaints. Investigations are being initiated to determine the association of workaholism and other score profiles with objectively diagnosed cardiac disorders and with measures of occupational performance.     

The tangled web of Buddhism: an internet analysis of religious doctrinal differences

This article looks at the ways in which globalization and modernization have led to a number of changes in Buddhism. These include both the cultures in which it is practiced as well as the form that this practice takes. One consequence of existing within new cultures is that a religion that has been the majority faith for over 1000 years in many Asian countries is now a minority faith in the West. This study tests the hypothesis that religious doctrinal differences are relative and the borders between religious organizations are malleable. In order to overcome inherent difficulties in studying small atypical organizations, these analyses rely on new methodological techniques by building on the internet and website links as a sociological tool. This study examines the use of websites by American Buddhists, both to determine the networks they are part of and what content they use. Comparisons are drawn to the similarities between American Buddhism as a small foreign religion and independent non-denominational Christian congregations. Consequences for studying Buddhism and future avenues of research involving the internet are discussed.