Phronesis, Virtues and the Developmental Science of Character

Lapsley, Daniel K.

doi:10.1159/000496758

Cited by 23 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…The emotional motivations phronesis feeds on from the moral virtues may lead in conflicting directions (e.g., the pain of pity may clash with pleasure of satisfied indignation when an evildoer receives comeuppance), or the relevant emotions may be disproportionate to a holistic assessment of the situation. Because "emotion regulation" in psychology is often seen as equivalent to "emotional control," or more specifically to the cognitive policing of wayward non-cognitive emotions, it is easy to understand why this function of phronesis may be misunderstood by some psychologists to involve emotional suppression (Jeste et al, 2020), or to invoke an outdated reason-emotion dichotomy (Lapsley, 2019). Nothing is further from the truth, however, as Aristotelians understand emotion regulation in terms of reason-infusion rather than suppression by reason.…”

Section: Emotion Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…His academic patricide on Plato notwithstanding, Aristotle picked up his mentor's penchant for defining concepts with respect to their most fully realized instances (Cooper, 1977). Hence, Aristotle's own idealistic specification of what counts as phronesis would make the group of actual phronimoi vanishingly small, a fact that understandably turns psychologists off the concept (Lapsley, 2019;McGrath & Brown, 2020). We, however, understand phronesis, similar to the moral virtues, as a "scalar concept," namely, as referring to a set of individual differences whose actualization varies over time, domain, and context (Fowers et al, 2021).…”

Section: Some Relevant Elaborations On the "Standard Model" Of Phronesismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Type of Contextual Integrative Thinking

Kristjánsson

Fowers

Darnell

et al. 2021

Review of General Psychology

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Coinciding with the recent psychological attention paid to the broad topic of wisdom, interest in the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom has been burgeoning within pockets of psychology, philosophy, professional ethics, and education. However, these discourses are undercut by frequently unrecognized tensions, lacunae, ambivalences, misapplications, and paradoxes. While a recent attempt at conceptualizing the phronesis construct for the purpose of psychological measurement offers promise, little is known about how phronesis develops psychologically, what motivates it, or how it can be cultivated. Many psychologists aspire to make sense of wise thinking without the contextual, affective, and holistic/integrative resources of phronesis. This article explores some such attempts, in particular, a new “common model” of wisdom. We argue for the incremental value of the phronesis construct beyond available wisdom accounts because phronesis explains how mature decision-making is motivated and shaped by substantive moral aspirations and cognitively guided moral emotions. We go on to argue that, in the context of bridging the gap between moral knowledge and action, phronesis carries more motivational potency than wisdom in the “common model.” The phronesis construct, thus, embodies some unique features that psychologists studying wise decision-making ignore at their peril.

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Section: Emotion Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Some Relevant Elaborations On the "Standard Model" Of Phronesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Type of Contextual Integrative Thinking

Kristjánsson

Fowers

Darnell

et al. 2021

Review of General Psychology

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“…Although a nonexhaustive list, these perspectives tend to have in common elements that accord with the golden-mean operationalization-of-virtues approach. First, they are rooted in social-cognitive (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005) or developmental (Lapsley, 2019) approaches to personality and so reject the idea of traits (operationalized as between-person factors) as the fundamental units for understanding personality (Cervone, 1991), or in this case, character more specifically. Second, these perspectives emphasize dynamic virtue-relevant behavioral expression as a function of shifting situational features.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost in Translation: The Construct Representation of Character Virtues

Tay

2020

Perspect Psychol Sci

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A seemingly universal lesson is that anything taken to its extreme is detrimental. Indeed, there has been growing interest in testing this idea within psychology. These studies have often been framed in terms of Aristotle’s doctrine of the golden mean or the idea that virtue lies between the vices of deficiency and excess. Recent explicit reviews of this hypothesis in the psychological literature have led to the paradoxical conclusion that one can have too much virtue (i.e., the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect) despite virtue being identified by the golden mean. We argue in this article that this conclusion is due to a reductionist account of virtues in psychology and the resultant measurement of virtues as general dispositional tendencies in behavior. We review philosophical theory on the golden mean to show that the relationship between virtue and relevant behavior is fundamentally about situation-specific optimality. Using schematic models, we contrast the former measurement approach against the latter to explain the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect and further demonstrate why virtues cannot be properly measured as general tendencies in behavior. We conclude with methodological implications of our theory-informed approach to virtue measurement for research design, evaluation, and conceptualization.

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“…The pluralistic philosophical anthropology, in particular its new paradigm of "phronesis" -the ethics of practical wisdom is considered to be the methodological basis of postmodern bioethics (Birmingham, 2004;Darnell et al, 2019;Lapsley, 2019;Toulmin, S., 2003). Its essential characteristic is a bioethicist who freely chooses moral responsibilities for himself, in view of the specific socio-cultural environment.…”

Section: Model Of Postmodern Bioethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioethics as an Anthropological Challenge

Коndratska

Romanovska

Kravchyna

et al. 2021

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The subject of the proposed paper is the disclosure of prerequisites and determinants of the implementation of the soteriological concept of studying the interdisciplinary course of bioethics, the structural model and synectic algorithm of its comprehension and epistemological map of formation of soteriological competence of the future specialist during the study of bioethics. The methodological basis for the implementation of the proposed project is the theory of research-oriented professional education (Inquiry Based Science Education) and, thereafter, technology of advanced learning (Technology Enhanced Learning), which provide wide opportunities to study the course of bioethics in the form of observation of remote virtual experiments on the portal Go-Lab; GRAASP environment for the implementation of author's developments and pedagogically structured programs in the process of performative interaction between teacher and students. The scientific novelty of the material is to substantiate the content of anthropological competencies of future specialists in biomedical specialties and the strategies of obtaining them on the basis of the principles of hermeneutic didactics. Conclusions. Today, obviously, the task of bioethics is not only to protect nature and human life, but also to participate in the realization of the high mission of Salvation. This defines the research field of bioethics as a space of secret dialogue, in which it is desirable to find a place not only for the voice of clinicians, pharmacists, engineers, philosophers, public figures, but also the pastoral voice of the Church.

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Phronesis, Virtues and the Developmental Science of Character

Cited by 23 publications

References 45 publications

Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Type of Contextual Integrative Thinking

Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Type of Contextual Integrative Thinking

Lost in Translation: The Construct Representation of Character Virtues

Bioethics as an Anthropological Challenge

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