Section 11: Judgement

What is called “judgement (gnômê)”–by which people are said to “be sympathetic judges” and to “have judgement”–is a correct discrimination of what is equitable. _[20] This is shown by the fact that we say the equitable person is above all others someone of sympathetic judgement, and identify equity with sympathetic judgement about certain facts. And sympathetic judgement is judgement that discriminates what is equitable and does so correctly. And correct judgement is that which judges what is true.

Now all the dispositions we have considered converge, as might be expected, to the same point. _[25] For when we speak of judgement, discernment, prudence, and understanding we credit the same people and say they possess judgement and understanding when they exercise prudence and discernment. For all these abilities deal with what comes last, that is, with particulars. And being a person of discernment and of good or sympathetic judgement consists in being able judge about the things with which prudence is concerned. _[30] For a concern for equity is common to all good people in relation to others. Now all things to be done are included among particulars or what is last. For not only must the prudent person know particular facts, but discernment and judgement are also concerned with things to be done, and these are what is last.

Also understanding or insight is concerned with what comes last in _[35] both directions. For both the first terms and the last are objects of understanding and not objects of argument. And the understanding or insight that is presupposed by demonstrations _[1143b1] grasps the unchangeable and first terms, while the understanding or insight involved in practical reasoning grasps the last and variable fact, that is, the minor premise. For these variable facts are the starting-points for the apprehension of the goal, since the universals are reached from the particulars. Of these, therefore, we must have perception, and this perception is an insight or understanding. _[5]

This is why these dispositions are thought to be natural endowments–why, while no one is thought to be wise by nature, people are thought to have by nature judgement, discernment, and understanding. This is shown by the fact that we think our powers correspond to our time of life, and that a particular age brings with it understanding and judgement, as if nature is the cause. Hence understanding or insight is both beginning and end, since demonstrations are from these and _[10] about these. Therefore, we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of prudence no less than to demonstrations, because experience has given them an eye they see correctly.

We have stated, then, what prudence and philosophical wisdom are, and with what each of them is concerned, _[15] and we have said that each is the virtue of a different part of the soul.