Section 7: Philosophical wisdom

When it comes to skills and crafts we ascribe wisdom (sophia) to their most accomplished practitioners. For example, we might call Phidias wise and highly skilled at making stone sculptures. _[10] Likewise, we might call Polyclitus wise and highly skilled at making bronze sculptures. In these cases, we don’t mean anything by “wisdom” except excellence in a skill.

Yet we think that some people are wise in general, and not just wise in some particular field or in some other limited way. Homer uses “wise” in this general way when says in the Margites:

Him did the gods make neither a digger nor yet a ploughman _[15]
Nor wise in any particular way.

Therefore, wisdom must clearly be the most accomplished form of knowledge.

It follows that the wise person must not only know what follows from principles, but must also possess truth about principles. Therefore, philosophical wisdom (sophia) must be insight combined with systematic knowledge–systematic knowledge of the highest objects which has received as it were its proper completion.

We say “of the highest objects” because it would be strange to think that political wisdom _[20] or prudence is the best knowledge. For the human is not the best thing in the world. Now if what is healthy or good is different for humans and for fishes, but what is pale or straight is always the same, anyone would say that wisdom is the same for all, but what is prudent is different. For we ascribe “prudence” _[25] to someone who is good at discerning the things that concern oneself. And it is to this sort of person that we will entrust such matters. This is why we say that even some of the other animals have prudence, namely, those that are found to have a power of foresight with regard to their own life.

It is also evident that philosophical wisdom and political wisdom cannot be the same. For if the knowledge concerned with one’s own interests is to be called “philosophical wisdom,” there would be many _[30] philosophical wisdoms. There would not be one philosophical wisdom concerned with the good of all animals, but a different philosophical wisdom about the good of each species. For there is not even one medical science concerning all beings.

But if the argument be that the human being is the best of the animals, this makes no difference. For there are other things much more divine in nature than even humans. For example, most obviously, the beings by which the universe _[1141b1] is united and held together.

From what has been said, then, it is clear that philosophical wisdom is systematic knowledge combined with insight, of the things that are highest by nature. This is why we say Anaxagoras, Thales, and people like them have philosophical wisdom but not prudence, when we see them ignorant of what is to their own _[5] advantage. And this is why we say that they know things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless–because it is not human goods that they seek.

Prudence, in contrast, is concerned with things human and things about which it is possible to deliberate. For we say that this is above all the work of someone who has prudence: to deliberate well. _[10] But no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, nor about things which have not some goal. Rather, people deliberate about a good that can be brought about by action. Someone who is without qualification good at deliberating is someone who is capable of aiming in accordance with reason at the best things for humans that are attainable by action.

Nor is prudence concerned with universals only–it must also recognize the particulars. _[15] For it is practical, and practice is concerned with particulars. This is why some people who lack knowledge, especially those who nevertheless have experience, are more practical than others who know. For if someone knew that white meat is digestible and healthy, but did not know which sorts of meat are white meat, he would not produce health. But the person who knows that chicken is healthy is more likely _[20] to produce health.

Now prudence is concerned with action. Therefore, one should possess have both kinds of knowledge: philosophical wisdom and prudence. Or rather, one should possess prudence even more than philosophical wisdom. For here too there is one kind of knowledge that is the ruler.