ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Aristotelian Perspectives For Post-modern Reason (ii) Practical truth and creative discovery It may seem that Aristotelian prudence, Peirce’s maxim and Jonas’s principle are indicators of a negative type, advice as to what to avoid. Indeed the Peircian maxim which we have mentioned is formulated in a negative way, as is Jonas’s responsibility principle.

The fact that the Greek term used by Aristotle ( phrónesis ) can be translated as prudence brings out these negative connotations even more. Some authors prefer to avoid them, rendering phronesis as ‘practical wisdom’ rather than ‘prudence’.

There is, however, no cause for worry about these connotations for, in fact, phronesis is knowledge based on experience and tends especially to foresee the unwanted consequences of our actions, above all those which would make rectification or correction impossible, and which would make us forfeit our very capacity to go on learning from experience and with it our freedom and reason. ‘Prudentia’ appears in Cicero as a contraction of the Latin term ‘providentia’, that is foresight.

If the Modern ideals had been fulfilled completely, then our reason, in the shape of the scientific method, would be our eye on the future, steering research and human action with certainty in such a way that that other kind of practical knowledge, grounded on living experience, fallible and ever fearful that something irremediable might happen, the custodian of our freedom, the knowledge we call prudence, could be forgone. But this was not to be.

Today we need more than ever - because our scope for action is more powerful than ever - the prudential attitude in order to avoid a one-way journey to error, slavery or extinction. That is, we need an attitude of carefulness, of watchfulness and of custodianship of our freedom, rather that a set of rules for exercising it. Nature is creative, prolific, unforeseeable and fecund, as is borne out by our presence among living things.

People also are by nature nodes of spontaneity, substances projected towards the future. In the light of this reality, we do not need to become obsessed with marking routes for our creativity, or rules, or rigour for the rules, but rather with protecting or pampering the capacity for openness, for novelty, for creation, already present in nature, and also in people, in the shape of freedom.