1. Practical wisdom and judgment
Phronesis
Practical wisdom and judgment

2. Phronesis
The term is often translated as prudence or practical wisdom or know-how or common sense.

3. Phronesis
Unlike scientific knowledge, phronesis deals with things that are variable—think of it as good judgment in concrete situations where uncertainty abounds.

4. Phronesis
Those with practical wisdom can see what is good for themselves and for others in general and can manage households and states.

5. Phronesis
Phronesis is acquired over time, through trial and error and testing (rather than grasped as a principle)

6. Phronesis
Those with practical wisdom don’t simply mechanically apply universal rules to situations.

7. Common Sense
Common sense can guide good decision making, but collective common-sense judgments can blind individuals to what is new, unprecedented and different

8. Common Sense
Where do you see examples of what Deetz calls “window-bashing”—repetitively using a theory in situations for which it is not useful or effective?

9. Common Sense

10. Common Sense
Productive vs. Reproductive judgments

11. Common Sense
Productive vs. Reproductive judgments Gadamer distinguishes between productive and reproductive forms of interaction. In productive interaction our prejudices are challenged and reformed. In the dynamic relation between what is brought and what is encountered, our perceiving and understanding of others and the world remains open and transforming. In reproductive interactions we categorize and classify the world and people according to the pre- understandings that we have.

12. Common Sense
Good deliberation then requires exchanging perspectives in a way that challenges preconceptions and widens our scope of understanding and judgment.

13. Common Sense
Good deliberation then requires exchanging perspectives in a way that challenges preconceptions and widens our scope of understanding and judgment. This often involves testing and revising assumptions/universals to account for more specific particulars.

14. Common Sense
Phronesis then becomes a collective accomplishment.

15. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
What does it mean to think particulars?

16. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
Political theorist Hannah Arendt argues that the great atrocities of the Nazi and Soviet regimes were carried out not by blood-thirsty sadists but simply functionaries who refused to think but merely followed orders.

17. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.” 

18. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” 

19. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
Let’s look at an example of failure to think the particular in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary….

20. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
And an example of “enlarged mentality”—thinking informed by a diversity of perspectives—seeing from another’s standpoint to widen one’s scope.

21. Phronesis and Enlarged mentality
Big question: How do we cultivate practices and institutions that lead to more “enlarged mentality” and phronesis and less window-bashing, thoughtlessness, and ignorance of the particular?