Phronesis Retrieving Practical Wisdom in Psychology, Philosophy, and Education

Phronesis, or practical wisdom, has interested philosophers (and more recently psychologists) for millennia. In the last decade or so, a bandwagon of diverse academics has been working with and celebrating the notion of phronesis as a metacognitive capacity, guiding morally aspirational cognition and action. In Phronesis: Retrieving Practical Wisdom in Psychology, Philosophy, and Education, Kristján Kristjánsson and Blaine J. Fowers work through some of the relevant puzzles created by the recent phronesis discourse, filling gaps in the current literatures, and pushing the research agenda in new directions. The book does so in a way that is radically interdisciplinary and draws in equal measure on insights from psychology, philosophy, and education. Through its revised and applied Aristotelianism, the book makes a contribution to vital ongoing debates within moral psychology, moral philosophy, professional ethics, and moral education about the salience of phronesis - addressing the topic accessibly both for academics in key disciplines and for a wider readership of intellectually minded readers. In addition, it offers practical advice about the development and education of phronesis in different areas of professional practice and secondary and college-level education.

1 - Aims and Scope: Getting Phronesis Right
2 - A Neo-Aristotelian Phronesis Model and Some Philosophical Alternatives
3 - 3. The History of Wisdom Research in Psychology, and the New Common Model
4 - 3. Comparing Our Phronesis Model with the New 'Common Model' and Other Psychological Alternatives
5 - The 'Gappiness Problem' in Moral Psychology and the Relevance of Phronesis
6 - A New Measure of Phronesis: Empirical Findings
7 - Phronesis in Professional (Medical) Ethics
8 - Phronesis and the Civic Virtues
9 - Collective Phronesis
10 - Difficult Decisions and Post-Phronetic Pain
11 - Educating Phronesis
12 - Concluding Remarks

Professor Kristján Kristjánsson's research focuses on issues at the intersection between moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral education. He is Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics at the University of Birmingham. He is also Editor of Journal of Moral Education. He has published extensively in international journals on his research topics. Among his books are The Self and Its Emotions (C.U.P., 2010), Virtues and Vices in Positive Psychology (C.U.P., 2013), Aristotelian Character Education (Routledge, 2015), Virtuous Emotions (O.U.P., 2018), Flourishing as the Aim of Education (Routledge, 2020), and Friendship for Virtue (O.U.P., 2022). Professor Blaine J. Fowers is a Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Miami, and conducts theoretical and empirical investigations of virtue and flourishing. He studies virtues, higher order goals, and their links to choiceworthy goods and human flourishing. Fowers has published over 100 peer reviewed articles, books, and book chapters. He has given dozens of Keynote and Invited Presentations. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham, England in 2016. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of the Joseph B. Gittler Award for Contributions to the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology.