Authenticity, Deliberation, and Perception: On Heidegger’s Reading and Appropriation of Aristotle’s Concept of Phronêsis

At crucial junctures in the development of his concept of authenticity, Heidegger discusses at length Aristotle’s concept of phronêsis; there is a widely held suspicion that those discussions shape that development. The present paper examines that suspicion in the light of an apparent tension in Aristotle’s texts between understanding phronêsis as a perceptual capacity and understanding it as a deliberative capacity. Bronwyn Finnigan has argued that some influential recent Heideggerian scholarship on this topic emphasizes the perceptual and downplays the deliberative, and there is evidence in Heidegger’s texts that might suggest he does too. The present paper, however, offers an alternative to this perceptually focused reading that I call “the all-things-considered judgment reading.” It understands the exercise of phronêsis and the authenticity that Heidegger models upon it as deliberative feats, accommodates the evidence thought to support the perceptually focused reading, and avoids philosophical objections that the latter reading’s understanding of phronêsis invites.