CHANGE FROM PHRONESIS TO MODERN MORALITY

CHANGE FROM PHRONESIS TO MODERN MORALITY

Introduction

Immanuel Kant transforms the Greek concept of ethics into modern morality in his Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals. Kant makes a transformation of Greek concept of phronesis into supreme principle of modern morality. It is true that there is nothing called Greek morality or modern morality, but we find merely different theories of morality. Transformation however does not mean mere change. The transformation of Greek into modern morality is nothing but literally inversion-perversion of Greek world.
Man is a rational animal, who has human inclinations. It is reason that makes a person truly human. For Kant, every human has a moral responsibility to act in such a way that it becomes a universal norm. Due to human inclinations man cannot exercise his pure reason. So it becomes our duty to purify our reason and to act from reason. He introduces categorical Imperative, which every person has to make his own. “As our rationality is mixed with sensibility, in order that the moral law be carried out, it must be able to generate specifically incentives.” We have to act out of duty, for our nature is corrupt.
Greek Phronesis

Phronesis is practical wisdom. According to Plato and Socrates phronesis plays a role in arête. Aristotle also makes the same point in Nicomachean Ethics. In this master piece he makes distinctions between two kinds of actions :( 1) actions, which are ends in themselves and are designated as doing or acting, and (2) actions, which are designated as making or producing and have ends different from these activities themselves and these ends are produced by these actions as consequences. Thus, phronesis is the reasoned state of capacity to act. In his view “making and acting are different. So that the reasoned state of capacity to act is different from the reasoned state of capacity to make. Hence too are nor included one in the other; for neither is acting making nor is making acting.” So, for Aristotle making and acting are mutually exclusive categories.
This distinction is further elaborated by St.Thomas Aquinas. He comments, that the reason for this difference is that art is the ‘right reason of things to be made’, where as prudence is the ‘right reason of things to be done’. Phronesis is concerned with action not production.
Change of phronesis into Kantian ethics

Kant in a way rejects the Greek concept of morality, and tries to bring about a new form of morality where human reason plays the vital role. For, Greek concept of morality is nothing concerned with production nor making, thus, Kant tries to relate morality exclusively to a kind of action, which is action of production, to effect the transformation.” Kant has completely derecognized Aristotelien-Thomastic conception of moral action as human action relegating it to non-human unconscious animal action-reaction; he needs to transform Greek ethics and phronesis to make it consistent with the new mode of human action.” To know how Kant is effecting this transformation of Greek phronesis we have to refer the first chapter of Ground Work.
He is merely abstracting the supreme principle of morality through the comparison by reflection. He is abstracting the supreme principle of morality from ordinary rational knowledge of the principle of morality. We have already seen that phronesis is concerned only with action, where the good action itself is its end, it is not concerned with any action, which has an end other than that action itself, and for Kant this Aristotelian ‘reasoned state of capacity to act is good will’. “Kant has introduced a subtle difference from Aristotelian position. Kantian good will is good even if it results in no action. “ Here for Kant only wishing is needed even if it does not produce action.
Good will and Duty

Kant makes goodness of good will completely independent of any kind of action, so that good will is good due to its willing alone transforms good will into a good wish, which remains innocent of the action to be done. Kant implicitly transforms good will into a good wish, which remains innocent of the action to be done. To analyze the notion of good will we need to analyze the concept of duty. The concept of duty is the concept of good will, “exposed, however, to certain subjective limitations and obstacles.” The action done under the impulsion of a mediated inclination cannot be immediately good, it is good mediately and hence it cannot be good in itself rather than it is good as useful for the purpose of self interest. The motive of duty is isolated if we can find an action where there is no immediate inclination for the action, rather there is a contrary inclination yet the action accords with duty. So we have to abstract from even the action where there is immediate inclination for the action.
Kant is not writing the Ground work to teach the humanity how to be moral, rather he is interested in preparing the possibility of transforming metaphysics of morals into a science of morality. He is inscribing morality within the point of view of the subjectivity of the subject. The scriptural commands appear to be contrary to Kant’s claim that moral worth resides in motive of duty and not in inclination.
According to Aristotle, moral knowledge has no particular end, since it is concerned with right living in general, as it is not technical knowledge and hence, it is concerned with natural or moral laws.”Aristotle stresses that phronesis presupposes the existence of nomoi. This is what keeps phronesis from degenerating into mere cleverness or calculation that characterizes the clever person.” The moral knowledge, for Aristotle, is concerned with the right estimation of the role that reason has to play in moral action. For Aristotle these laws are laws of action or conduct of man. Where as for Kant these laws are or principles are Principles of Volition only, thus they have no end or have no reference to the matter of action.
Since the only kind of action recognizes are the actions which are at some end other than themselves which cannot be involved in the estimation of moral worth, so Kant is having only one option to go for a priori formal principle of will in determining the moral worth of action done from the motive of duty. When moral principle is abstracted from the ends of action Kant is not deducing his principle of morality rather he is transforming Greek concept of morality through his reflection on the motive of duty. There is a necessity associated with moral law. For Kant this necessity is the necessity, which binds the rational beings individually. That is to say law has necessity only in the sense of it being necessarily universable over all rational beings individually.

Supreme principle of Morality

Kant is transforming the basic element of Greek ethics, phronesis into the supreme principle of modern morality. It is the aspect of moral reasoning which finds expression in the supreme principle of morality as announced by Kant, “I ought to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” So the principle says that will is good will which determines itself by only that maxim, which is such that in that act of self determination it can also will that its maxim should become a universal law. For Kant, the particular determination of will by a maxim is also a determination of a universal law.
For him, in moral reasoning, the particular determination of the will and the universal determination of law takes place simultaneously and one is involved in the other as it happens in Aristotelian phronesis. So we can say that Kant is very close to the essence of Aristotelian phronesis in his announcement of the categorical imperative. Yet he has completely departs from the Aristotelian concept and transforms it to make it applicable to the new category of human action, which he has recognized under the influence of Critique of Pure Reason. For Aristotle, the law is not strictly universal but only general. In the holding back of the law he is not diminishing the law but finding the better law.
Conclusion
For Aristotle, the law needs to be concretized in each situation of its applicability, which is the business of phronesis. But this is not acceptable to Kant. To be moral law the maxim must be strictly universalizable. If morality and duty is not to be fictitious then the bare conformity to universal law as such without having as its base any law prescribing particular actions must serve the will as its principle. This makes Kantian Ethics depart from Aristotelian Phronesis. Human kind had been thinking of morality in Aristotelian framework, but at the same time has lost the category of human action, which is performed for no end other than its excellent performance. So mankind in general is also becoming Kantian in morality.

Bibliography
Agarwala, Binod Kumar. Phronesis and Categorical Imperative, in Indian Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 31
Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, tras. J. A. K. Thomson. Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1955.
Chackalackal Saju. Unity of Knowing and Acting in Kant. Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2002.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten 1785), tran. H. J. Paton. London: Harper&Row, 1964.