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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Aristotelian Perspectives For Post-modern Reason (ii) Conclusion Is there still anything left like a method of discovery? Something does indeed remain different from ‘anything goes’, a mid point between algorithm and anarchism: the prudent being and the metaphorical being.

This is the only rule that can face up to an ever different reality, new and changing, because it is law incarnate: it is the prudent person who can carry out prudent actions, it is the metaphorical person who can create new connections, images or theories. An a human being is thus a being set in time, creative, who can respond to novelty with novelty.

Prudence advises us always to have an open mind and an open attitude, to welcome as true that which comes to us as truth, but never in such a way that it becomes impossible to check it, always with some, albeit remote, reserve. In the same way that prudence recommends virtue as a precondition of freedom, of rectification, of correction, and in the final instance, of creation.

Only prudence can extract wisdom from past experience and direct future action in a non-mechanical but rational way, without certainty or arbitrariness, remaining always open to novelty, to the extraordinary, whether it comes from the world or from the person himself. Only prudence is compatible simultaneously with truth and creativity. Prudence recommends also a culture of itself which will make us not only prudent, but also, as Paul Ricœur says, metaphorical[^37] .

This is the genuinely creative part, which will also have to be built into the person himself and which no method can guarantee if it does not arise from within or we do not appropriate it from a culture. In any event, Aristotle is more optimistic regarding the possibility of becoming prudent than becoming metaphorical. The former seems to be attainable through education, by doing prudent works with the guidance of a prudent person.

While, according to Aristotle, it is very important to be metaphorical, but ‘it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius for to draw good metaphors is to perceive resemblance’[^38] . In my opinion, there must remain for further research the problem of whether it is possible to cultivate creativity. Since Aristotle’s time, many things have changed, among them our knowledge of didactics and of the psychology of learning.