Practical Reason Divided: Aquinas and his Critics

Abstract Early in his discussion of virtue of character, Aristotle takes it to be obvious that virtue is somehow connected with practical reason: ‘First, then, actions should express correct reason. That is a common [belief], and let us assume it; later we will say what correct reason is and how it is related to the other virtues’ (Nicomachean Ethics 1103b31-4). When he argues that virtue lies in a mean, he adds that the mean is ‘determined by reason, and by the reason by which the prudent person would determine it’ (1106b36-1107a2). To make his account of virtue not only true but perspicuous, he seeks an account of prudence (1138b18-34). At the end of his account of prudence, he claims to have answered the question about the nature of correct reason: ‘it is not merely the state expressing correct reason, but the state involving correct reason, that is virtue. And it is prudence that is correct reason in this area’ (1144b26-8).