"Phronesis as Ethical Expertise: Naturalism of Second Nature and the Unity of Virtue"

The paper defends a novel understanding of practical wisdom, in which it is equated to a rational-affective master virtue that encompasses an orientation towards the various goods that, according to the standard views, are the objects of the discrete ethical virtues. In this way, our view implies an understanding of the integration of reason and emotions, which locates their interaction in a comprehensive ethical expertise, rather than in every single ethical virtue. Emotions enter the moral sphere via ethical expertise, which plays the fundamental role of integrating both the different moral requirements of each situation and the emotional and cognitive appreciation of its features. By doing so, our novel account also has the advantage of preserving the agent from the potential risk of disintegration, which is intrinsic to any fragmented view of how the virtues interact and operate. Finally, and most importantly for the purpose of the present paper, our view of how ethical expertise works may give important hints on how its relation to nature should be conceived. Against Naturalism of the first nature, and in line with Naturalism of the second nature, we propose a kind of ethical naturalism that places normativity at the level of the second nature and assigns to ethical expertise the strong role in stepping back from first nature in order to respond to the moral demands of each situation. By possessing affective wisdom, one is endowed with the ability to shape one’s first nature, so as to develop an ethical outlook that amounts to a second nature. In this light, nature cannot be confined to what is subject to causal laws and must be conceived as inclusive also of the broader space of reasons, to whose normative significance we have to be responsive. And this is precisely the role played by our global ethical expertise, conceived as the master virtue responsible for cross-domain moral discernment.