05 Feb Phronesis, emotion and metaphor

Über Lebenskunst, Berlin 2011

‘Each of these three concepts has something to do with motion. They are ancient and enduring, and they are about motion, change, solidarity, knowledge, the ethical – and performance.

Aristotle uses the word phronesis in several contexts, to describe a mode of being that is appropriate to situations so uncertain and complex that there is no comprehensible order. phronesis is a kind of reasoning together between people. It is improvising when there are no rules or beliefs or patterns of conduct to give one a sense of how things should go if they were to go right. It has to do with one’s character, and how we are with one another … Thoreau preceded other philosopher in not separating facts and values, emotions and the mind. He writes: ‘We fully know only those facts that are warm, moist, incarnated’… And metaphors move meaning across sensorial fields…’

key words: Aristotle, Paul Ricoeur

at the Walden Night, Über Lebenskunst, Der Haus der Kulteren der Weldt, Berlin 2011