Abstract

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is punctuated by a tension between orienting one's life towards practical and ethical goals on the one hand, and orienting one's life towards theoretical and contemplative activity on the other hand. According to Aristotle, we are political and social beings, but we also have a theoretical and divine element in us. Given these two aspects of human nature, shall we choose to cultivate one at the expense of the other, or shall we choose both--and if the latter, then how shall we explain the place each holds in a well-lived human life? ;According to Aristotle, phronesis, practical wisdom, is expressed in the ethical virtues, while sophia, theoretical wisdom, is expressed in theoria, the activity of contemplation. I resolve the apparent conflict between the practical and the theoretical by explaining first the relationship between phronesis and sophia, and next the relationship between ethical virtue and contemplation. ;Sophia is necessary to the possession of practical wisdom. In showing this, I introduce distinctions among several types of particulars and universals, and I pair these with the concepts of means and ends, in order to argue that the central characteristic of the phronimos, the person of practical wisdom, is an ability to choose, through experience which leads to self-knowledge, ends and means which are appropriate to him as a particular agent. Further, in order to choose such particular ends and means well, the phronimos must take into account a general description of human nature. Since understanding human nature is a theoretical undertaking, theoretical knowledge plays a crucial role in the practical choices of the phronimos. ;The final chapter of the dissertation explains theoria as the essence of happiness . Theoria defines and is coexistent with eudaimonia, and it explains the possibility of human eudaimonia, but it is not the sole constituent of the best human life; ethical virtue is a necessary, but non-essential, part of human eudaimonia. This understanding completes the resolution of the apparent conflict between the practical and the theoretical, by allowing ethical virtue to be a necessary part of the best human life, while simultaneously explaining the special status of theoria in Aristotle's picture of such a life