Kitap 6
2
This is proved by the fact that we also speak of people as prudent or wise in some particular thing, when they calculate well with a view to attaining some particular end of value (other than those ends which are the object of an art); so that the prudent man in general will be the man who is good at deliberating in general.
3
But no one deliberates about things that cannot vary, nor about things not within his power to do. Hence inasmuch as scientific knowledge involves demonstration, whereas things whose fundamental principles are variable are not capable of demonstration, because everything about them is variable, and inasmuch as one cannot deliberate about things that are of necessity, it follows that Prudence is not the same as Science. Nor can it be the same as Art. It is not Science, because matters of conduct admit of variation; and not Art, because doing and making are generically different,The words since . . . itself the end in the mss. follow 5.4 for human beings. since making aims at an end distinct from the act of making, whereas in doing the end cannot be other than the act itself: doing wellSee note on 1.4.2. is in itself the end.
4
It remains therefore that it is a truth-attaining rational quality, concerned with action in relation to things that are good and bad for human beings.
5
Hence men like Pericles are deemed prudent, because they possess a faculty of discerning what things are good for themselves and for mankind and that is our conception of an expert in Domestic Economy or Political Science.
5
(This also accounts for the word Temperance,σωφροσύνη, the quality of the σώφρων (σῶσ-φρήν) or sound-minded man, Aristotle derives from σώζειν and φρόνησις. Cf. 8.8.4. which signifies preserving prudence.
