In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Our analysis of Metaphysics XIII.10 suggested that there may be a sort of episte\me\ of the concrete, composite individual, the very being that was thematized in Metaphysics IX.6–8 in terms of praxis. Although XIII.10 does not establish precisely how actual knowledge of such individuals is possible, it remains of central importance insofar as it points to the possibility of developing a conception of ontological knowledge capable of doing justice to the finite individual. Furthermore, although the nature of this sort of knowledge remains underdeveloped in XIII.10, the text makes some important preliminary suggestions about what this sort of knowledge might entail. First, it must be grounded in the actual encounter with the being with which it is concerned . Second, it is directed primarily toward the individual, not the universal . As we have suggested in the previous chapter, these characterizations point in the direction of the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle turns his full attention and philosophical acumen to contingent existence and develops a conception of knowledge capable of doing justice to the vagaries of such contingency . Specifically, in Nicomachean Ethics VI, he introduces the notion of phrone\sis, a special sort of knowledge suited to the sphere of praxis and explicitly directed toward that which is individual. In fact, Aristotle’s detailed discussion of the inner workings of phrone\sis, found in NE VI, lends insight into precisely how the enigmatic sort of ontological knowledge hinted at in XIII.10 might be conceived. If this is the case, perhaps the notion of phrone\sis, which finds its explicit home in a discussion of the nature of human praxis, may be reappropriated and expanded to fill in the gaps left by Aristotle’s obscure discussion of ontological episte\me\, found in XIII.10. 131 8 Contingent Knowledge Phrone\sis in the Ethics The sort of ontological reappropriation of phrone\sis suggested here is not unprecedented. Martin Heidegger was the first to appreciate the ontological significance of phrone\sis.The first part of his influential 1924–1925 lecture on Plato’s Sophist interprets Aristotle’s conception of phrone\sis in such a way that it rivals the priority given to sophia in Aristotle—and Greek thinking in general—and suggests that phrone\sis reveals something important about the being of Dasein in relation to other beings that themselves are Dasein.1 Further, a number of scholars have come to recognize that Heidegger draws heavily on Aristotle’s conception of phrone\sis in Sein und Zeit, though there is no consensus on precisely which of the “existentialia” developed in that text owe their inspiration to phrone\sis.2 HansGeorg Gadamer further develops the ontological significance of phrone\sis in Wahrheit und Methode by using it as a model for hermeneutics, which for him is no mere matter of textual interpretation but a way of being.3 While both Heidegger and Gadamer appropriate the meaning of phrone\sis for their own philosophical projects, neither attempts to read it as a possible response to the epistemological side of the universal/singular aporia that plagues Aristotle’s Metaphysics itself. The reappropriation of phrone\sis proposed here must be understood in a specific sense. It is neither an attempt to reestablish the original meaning of the term in the context of the Nicomachean Ethics nor even to rediscover Aristotle ’s own intended, but undeveloped, position by an appeal to the appropriations of Heidegger and Gadamer. Rather, we seek to assign phrone\sis an ontological significance that it never explicitly had in Aristotle in order to lend insight into a very real problem that not only emerges in Aristotle’s thinking itself but continues to persist: to what extent is ontological knowledge of the finite individual possible? For Aristotle, the problem manifests itself in the tension between universality and singularity. For us, the problem is fundamentally ethical, for it concerns—to use now the Levinasian terminology— the relationship between the Same and the Other, and the extent to which the being of the Other offers itself to the concepts of the Same. The methodological procedure for what follows is guided by concerns that emerge internally in Aristotle and externally from the recognition that the epistemological relation that grounds ontology is inherently ethical. The procedure is thus inside out and outside in: the internal analysis of Aristotle’s ontology has pointed beyond itself to the possibility of developing an ontological knowledge capable of doing justice to individual beings as such (inside out), but this...

Share