Educating Phronesis

Abstract This chapter begins by charting the vagaries of educational discourses on phronesis, and by eliciting some developmental insights from Aristotle. The chapter tries to reconstruct a systematic model of moral development out of those basics. It then elicits various hypotheses about the development of phronesis from the Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian literature and, hence, lays the foundations of an educational research programme on phronesis. A serviceable conceptualization will need to offer ways to evaluate the educational credibility of each hypothesis in real life, rather than just serving as a new philosophical plaything. The chapter then reviews various findings from the educational literature on phronesis. The fourth section explores some lessons learnt from a study of a phronesis intervention for Police Science students, in particular about the limited role of teaching in the design of such an intervention. The chapter closes with some reflections about the education of civic phronesis.