Nicomachean Ethics

Regarding wisdom, we attribute it in the arts to the most precise arts, for instance we call Phidias a wise sculptor and Polyclitus a wise statuary, meaning nothing else by wisdom in these cases than that it is the excellence of an art. But we think that there are some who are wise as a whole, not in a particular respect nor wise in some other thing, as Homer says in the Margites: The gods made him neither a digger nor a plowman nor wise in any other way. So that it is clear that wisdom would be the most precise of the sciences. Therefore, the wise man must not only know what follows from the starting-points, but also possess truth about the starting-points themselves. So that wisdom would be intuitive reason and scientific knowledge, being scientific knowledge of the most honorable things, having, as it were, a head. For it is absurd if anyone thinks that politics or practical wisdom is the most excellent thing, unless man is the best thing in the cosmos. Indeed, if what is healthy and good is different for men and for fishes, but what is white and straight is always the same, everyone would say that what is wise is the same, but what is practically wise is different; for they say that that which observes well the individual things concerning itself is practically wise, and they will entrust these things to it. Hence also people say that some of the wild beasts are practically wise, namely those which appear to have a power of foresight regarding their own life. It is also manifest that wisdom and politics would not be the same; for if they call that which is concerned with what is beneficial to themselves wisdom, there will be many wisdoms; for there is not one wisdom concerned with the good of all animals, but a different one for each, unless indeed there is also one medical art concerned with all existing things. And if it is because man is the best of the other animals, that makes no difference; for there are other things far more divine in their nature than man, as for instance, most visibly, those things of which the cosmos is composed. From what has been said, then, it is clear that wisdom is both scientific knowledge and intuitive reason of the things that are most honorable by nature. This is why people say that Anaxagoras and Thales and men like them are wise, but not practically wise, when they see them ignorant of what is advantageous to themselves; and they say that they know things that are extraordinary, wonderful, difficult, and divine, but useless, because they do not seek human goods. But practical wisdom is concerned with human things and with things about which it is possible to deliberate; for we say that this is especially the work of the practically wise man, to deliberate well, but no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, nor about those which have no end, and that a doable good. And the man who is good at deliberating in an absolute sense is he who, by calculation, aims at the best of the doable things for man. Nor is practical wisdom concerned only with universals, but it must also know particulars; for it is practical, and action is concerned with particulars. This is why some who do not know are more practical than others who do know, and among others, those who have experience; for if a man knew that light meats are digestible and healthy, but did not know what kinds of meat are light, he would not produce health, but he who knows that chicken is healthy will produce it more. But practical wisdom is practical; so one must possess both, or the latter more. And here too there would be a sort of masterly wisdom.