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vii Yves R. Simon (1903)-1961) was one of the greatest modern students of the ancient virtue of practical wisdom, called phronesis by Aristotle and prudentia by his great Latin commentators in the Middle Ages, such as St. Thomas Aquinas... Simon did not live to see his proposed book on practical knowledge to completion. He had already published two papers which he planned to include in his book. But, aside from some text for another chapter, he was able to finish only a draft of additional material, some notes, and a group of letters to Maritain dealing with the more crucial details of the proposed argument. What follows is an effort to reconstruct what would have been Simon's final book had he lived long enough to finish it.
xii Simon's... message is a simple one: the traditional concept of practical wisdom has been lost in the past four centuries of Western experience. Its recovery is an urgent need in our individual and social lives.
p.2 Dangers that look absurd, like those incurred by jockeys and car racers, by mountain climbers and circus performers, are socially beneficial inasmuch as they keep alive, in young people especially, a readiness to die without which society would suffer every day from softness and cowardice, and be exposed to betrayal in times of crisis.
[JLJ - In my own philosophy, a circus or car race is simply a "trick that works" in attracting a ticket-paying public - it simply works with regard to entertaining and making money in a socially acceptable way - provided of course that no one has sustained a protest against improper treatment of animals, say, or improper safety measures (for crowds or drivers or pit crews or race officials) or excessive speeds. As far as climbing a dangerous mountain, there is a certain amount of being that can be classified as a 'reveling in the present' that requires no logical or practical explanation, an enjoyment of the spirit of danger, so to speak. We have here Simon's alternative interpretation, which works for him and is an interesting challenge of sorts to my previously stated position. Simon simply tries - and ultimately convicts - young people for being young people, for being full of energy and in need of expression, and for being in/on a search for the self.]
p.4 A practical judgment is ultimate inasmuch as, all hypothetical considerations being transcended, it has the character of a command.
[JLJ - That is, when it is not uttered with a "?" mark at the end, or in the form of a question, as in a request for an opinion accepting, or opposing. Practical judgements are properly shared with others, and possibly modified according to the opinions of others.]
p.4 All practical judgments belong to the order of practical thought.
[JLJ - I would say that a practical judgment belongs to a scheme of sorts that is being executed - the predicament calls for the strategy which in turn calls for the scheme which calls for the judgement, which in turn calls for the taking of one action rather than another. The world of business is full of companies that were not successful, even though they executed nothing but 'practical thought'. What is needed in business is a business plan backed by a strategy to make sales and indirectly, profits, which can be reinvested or held in reserve for tough times.]
p.9 External things, whether they be things of nature or works of human industry, admit of being good or poor in a physical sense and admit of being put to a good or to a bad use.
p.10 It is entirely clear that the judgment concerning use is closer to action than any judgment about nature... The ultimate practical judgment involves the consideration of human use
p.12-13 a practical judgment admits of being true or false in more than one sense. It may be true by conformity to the factual state of affairs: this is the primary, the theoretical, the unqualified meaning of truth. In that sense a practical judgment always falls short of certainty inasmuch as any practical situation involves contingencies that defeat the most earnest endeavor to establish the conformity of our judgments to the factual state of things contingent, i.e., of things that can be otherwise than they are... good judgment consists, to a large extent, in an ability to know where to stop in the indispensable quest for a certainty that indeed cannot be attained in the world of contingency in which our actions take place... We have to fight our way between careless action without appropriate inquiry and a neurotic search for certainty in uncertain matters.
p.13 the practical judgment... is capable of another type of truth, of a practical truth... of a truth that is one not of cognition but of direction... For a judgment that is unqualifiedly practical, the proper way to be true is to be true in a practical sense; that is, to be true as a rule of action.
p.14 When the desire is right, when the genuine end is properly intended, which implies that there is conscientious inquiry into the real state of affairs, practical judgment can be reasonably expected to be followed by successful action.
[JLJ - Obviously, Simon is less a businessman, sportsman or warfighter than Nicholas Rescher. In the fields of business, sports and war, successfully accomplishing a contested goal of importance does not depend merely on a 'desire' that is 'right' and a 'practical judgment.' Competition using tricks that work can be intense, and things are often not what they seem to be. Complexity frustrates the accomplishment of such goals and requires a strategy, an experienced plan composed of tricks that work, and a period of maneuver where one hopes to outwit an adversary, possibly by offering what is desired in the form of a trap or 'loss leader', or writing clever wording in a proposal or product packaging that seems to offer much, but in reality nothing unreasonable or out of the ordinary is promised or in fact delivered.]
p.17 The practical judgment... is ultimately determined not by cognition but by inclination, and its determination is certain if the inclination that ultimately determines it is right.
[JLJ - Laughable. Most 'practical judgment' is just a guess, based on cues which usually represent or indicate the presence of certain things otherwise hidden, and which leads to a manufactured story that operates to guide behavior in the absence of certainty. Practical judgment is called for by a scheme which usually works, in a certain predicament. As a strategy for managing our predicament we develop the scheme, the scheme calls for the judgment, which points out or indicates the pre-decided way to 'go on.' A judgment is meaningless unless it is called for by a scheme which is selected and executed as part of a wise strategy.]
p.20 the disposition in charge of the ultimate practical judgment cannot be a mere habitus: it is a virtue, i.e, a habitus that procures excellence in exercise as well as in quality. Again, the last practical judgment is the form of human action and involves... the requirement of excellence in human use.
p.27 in all phases of human existence fulfillment [JLJ - i.e., execution] takes place under circumstances that do not make for unqualified understanding.
p.32 a practical proposition that is general in character, but whose generality is not strictly connected with an essential necessity, may not hold in a number of cases.
[JLJ - Another author (Nicholas Rescher, Scientific Explanation, 1970, p.172) has dubbed this a quasi-law.]
p.36 It is true that in practical affairs what matters primarily is fulfillment, not understanding.
p.40 It goes without saying that many actions are best performed out of sheer habit and that it is altogether good not to waste the freshness of our thought on things that habit takes care of best.
p.42 "Understanding kills action, for in order to act we require the veil of illusion..."
p.44-45 Aristotle briefly describes the qualities expected of people who take a course in moral science... any person who is in the habit of following his passions should keep away from the lecture room of an ethics teacher... he would waste his time, and his study would be "vain and unprofitable, because the end is not knowledge but action."
[JLJ - ...but there are certain times when the best plan is not to act at once but to watch and wait. 'Action' must therefore give way to my general-purpose concept of 'going on' within the predicament, as our ultimate 'end.']
p.52 a judgment that is unqualifiedly practical, as practical action itself, implies an approach that is synthetic, in two respects. (a) For one thing, this judgment puts together, in the form of a command, a certain thing to be done and the act of existing. This we have called the synthesis of realization... (b) Secondly, the thing to be done is supposed to be complete, to comprise every circumstance necessary for that thing to be good here and now. Some of these circumstances may be relative to the contingencies of the situation.
[JLJ - ...not true for (b) if your practical judgment is to choose a direction for exploration, or to diagnose a position of strength, in a game, a business, or in a war. The act of exploring implies that more remains once the current task has proceeded awhile. A practical diagnosis leaves room for error, but follows a practical scheme which detects most featues which are relevant.]
p.54 We can now appreciate the sense in which moral philosophy can be said to direct human action. By the very fact that it is concerned with the right and the wrong use of our powers, moral philosophy says that human action ought to be such and such. And this is an act of direction. However, direction is obviously incomplete when the action to be elicited is considered apart from the contingencies that are a part of it when the "this" under consideration is joined with the act of existing.
p.60 In our discussion of the ultimately practical judgment, we described the unique relation of this judgment to human use... moral philosophy aims at the direction of action
p.67 Clearly, these judgments of finality are themselves derived from apprehensions of natures, of essences, of whatnesses and of the corresponding tendencies.
p.68 But this practical judgment, clearly antecedent to the practical concept, is itself derived from a theoretical judgment of finality to which an understanding of essences and tendencies is unqualifiedly anterior. It is the notion of finality which bridges the gap between the study of nature... and the study of human use
p.75 So far, we have seen that the ultimately practical judgment is primarily concerned with fulfillment
p.79 People... cannot understand why philosophers, after having formulated and vindicated principles, are unable, or unwilling, to give them the slightest information about what could be done to apply these principles.
p.80 Does there exist, somewhere between moral philosophy and prudence, any distinct epistemological entity, less abstract and less explanatory but more practical than philosophy, less practical but more general, and closer to the scientific ideal, than prudence? Is there such a thing as practically practical science?
p.82 the concepts of moral philosophy answer the theoretical question "What are the things?" ...On the other hand, the concepts of practically practical science are engaged in an answer to a practical question. Recall that the practical question par excellence is the question "What ought we to do?"
[JLJ - Yes, what ought we to do right now, with what we have with us, with what we can recall from elsewhere, with what we can create or transform from one thing into another, with what we can borrow, with what we can steal (we will also call it borrowing, to make us feel better, and that it was borrowed out of dire necessity), and against the similar but opposing forces arrayed against us, in our present predicament, and with the predicament after that one - just now taking shape in our imagination - and rapidly approaching.]
p.85 We hold that history is not a science. Yet it often deals with facts that are established with certainty... But its explanations, if considered theoretically, are uncertain.
[JLJ - History is simply the manufactured story which catches and holds our attention or the attention of our society when we ask, "what happened?", and which emerges from rapidly constructed news, when competed factually with alternate versions.]
p.101 Concerning the practically practical disciplines, I deliver my conclusion right away: they exist; they are irreducibly distinct both from theoretically practical sciences and from prudence; they are valuable and important, but they are not sciences.
p.103 a theoretical question, i.e., a question of the "what are the things" type, [is not] a question of the "what ought we to do, what shall we do, what should we have done" type, i.e., a practical question.
p.103 The practically practical disciplines are not sciences because their explanations are practical explanations.
p.104 Whatever the nature of their explanations, what is it that would give the practically practical disciplines the power to make themselves certain? As far as I know, the certainty of a discipline - and in order for a discipline to be scientific we need it to be certain in its explanations - results... from an analysis into axiomatic premises
p.105 the long conclusion of a paper of mine on "Practical Wisdom." ... developed the idea that in practical matters the significant thing is not so much explanation as fulfillment.
[JLJ - In practical matters, what matters are results, just like the U.S. fitness business with that name. (Results the Gym is a Health Club facility at 315 G Street Southeast in Washington, DC.) What also matters are side effects, intended or not, visible or hidden, large or insignificant.]
p.109 a discipline termed practically practical still belongs to speculativo-pracical knowledge.
p.110 it... seems to me that a discipline loses its scientific character as soon as whatever it explains is explained only in a practical sense.
p.111 I am strongly inclined to hold that disciplines that exercise explanatory certainty with regard to practical explanations alone... belong to the habitus of the practical intellect... The certainty of the practically practical disciplines does not proceed from an analysis into axioms, but from the righteous inclination of the heart.
p.111-112 I am tempted to conclude... the ultimate practical judgment... because it is the completely determinate form of the action, is as practical as action itself.
p.123 This problem may be considered from another angle.
[JLJ - ...wisdom which can be applied to any situation...]
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