Introducing a new blog experiment

I am a reluctant blogger.  The future of this page may demonstrate that.  I have, however, succumbed for the moment to the medium, despite my continuing conflictedness, because I have been encouraged to share some of my thoughts with a slightly wider circle than a few close friends.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

This blog is about cultivating wisdom, prudence, practical virtue.  In Aristotle's ethical vocabulary, that is phronēsis.  In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes phronēsis from sophia as, to put it crudely, universal theory differs from everyday practice.  Both are integral in his view to the pursuit and attainment of aretē, or virtue.  Aristotle aims not at virtue alone, but activity in accordance with virtue.  And that ultimately is what I hope in this blog to explore.


I approach this exploration as a person with many interests and a slightly varied background.  Both (the interests and the background) help to explain the polytropos term in the blog's title.  Homer applies the term to Odysseus, the many-wayed one, to signify in a single word with a broad semantic range the pluriformity of the Ithacan's journeys, experiences, wiles, intelligence, and, yes, practical knowledge.  The author of the New Testament book to the Hebrews uses the term to describe the variety of ways in which God's previous revelatory self-disclosure unfolded.  In terms of this blog, the term polytropos captures well both the position from which I begin this blogging experiment and my intention to traverse more than one or two narrow topics as part of the ultimate cultivation of phronēsis.

Odysseus blinding Polyphemus (Odyssey, bk. 9)

Nevertheless, I anticipate that certain patterns, or pockets, of interest will appear as time passes.  Some clusters of topical reflection will be more extensive than others.  In particular, I expect that many links and posts will be of a political and economic nature.  This is for the basic reason that phronēsis is about the daily, practical outworkings individually and in community of our collected knowledge.  It is about knowing how best to assess the right aims or ends, particularly the end of living well as humans, and how to make real progress toward realizing those desired ends.  


In one sense, politics is -- or, rather, should be -- the intersection of applied prudence and community life.  The ultimate aim of Odysseus's knowledge, shrewdness, and journeys is the restoration of practical relationships in his home and his city-state.  Just as Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is a natural precursor to the Politics, so the exploration of phronēsis is just a dotted-line divided from political reasoning.  The borders are porous.


It will take many turns to feed this healthy appetite for practical wisdom.  And in some cases it will in fact require these twists and turns simply to create a hunger at all for phronēsis.  It is not something highly valued in general in our culture, and it is not something that comes naturally to us.  Pursuing these paths from different angles is the purpose of the following blog experiment.