Practical Rationality and A Recovery of Aristotle’s ‘Phronesis’ For the Professions

In the Western philosophical tradition, customary practice has been to distinguish theoretical reason, which is concerned to determine what one should believe, from practical reason (or practical rationality), where practical rationality is concerned to determine how one should act. In recent decades, there has been a renewed interest in Aristotle’s conception of practical rationality, or ‘phronesis.’ My main task here is to explicate some of the important roles such a (recovered) concept can and should usefully play in the professions. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.