The main idea of this study is that the Aristotelian notion of phronesis can be understood as the result of the elaboration of a new form of rationality, as a consequence of the great Grundlagenkrisis that affected mathematical thought between the fifth and the fourth century B.C. owing to the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes. Phronesis is actually the rationality of the contingent, i.e. of an ontological field that can be directly linked to that one of the incommensurable: the field of the movement, of the continuum, of the time. This thesis is supported by an analysis of the place of phronesis in the system of the dianoetical virtues (as a part of the logistikon), of the peculiarity of its object (the middle term) and of its method (a comparative and analogical method). Phronesis appears then as a form of rationality that requires necessarily the overcoming of the Pythagorean identification of reason with commensurability: which needs, according to the author, another conception of universality, no longer as the search for a common element (the substance), but as the search for the middle term (the mediation, or the connection), which opens to the dia-logical, and not logical, dimension of rationality pointed out by philosophical hermeneutics.

La Phrônesis comme rationalité diagonale: Entre universalisme et relativisme

CHIURAZZI, Gaetano
2012-01-01

Abstract

The main idea of this study is that the Aristotelian notion of phronesis can be understood as the result of the elaboration of a new form of rationality, as a consequence of the great Grundlagenkrisis that affected mathematical thought between the fifth and the fourth century B.C. owing to the discovery of the incommensurable magnitudes. Phronesis is actually the rationality of the contingent, i.e. of an ontological field that can be directly linked to that one of the incommensurable: the field of the movement, of the continuum, of the time. This thesis is supported by an analysis of the place of phronesis in the system of the dianoetical virtues (as a part of the logistikon), of the peculiarity of its object (the middle term) and of its method (a comparative and analogical method). Phronesis appears then as a form of rationality that requires necessarily the overcoming of the Pythagorean identification of reason with commensurability: which needs, according to the author, another conception of universality, no longer as the search for a common element (the substance), but as the search for the middle term (the mediation, or the connection), which opens to the dia-logical, and not logical, dimension of rationality pointed out by philosophical hermeneutics.
2012
Hermeneutic Rationality / La rationalité de l'herméneutique
LIT Verlag
International Studies in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology
Collana: International Studies in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology, vol. 3
97
112
9783643115492
http://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/3-643-11549-2
ermeneutica; razionalità; phronesis; etica; Aristotele
G. CHIURAZZI
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/98619
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