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Chapter 1
The Art of Practical Wisdom: Phenomenology of an Embodied, Wise ‘Inter-practice’ in Organization and Leadership
Wendelin M. Küpers
published as
Küpers, W. (2013) “The Art of Practical Wisdom ~ Phenomenology of an Embodied, Wise Inter-practice in Organisation and Leadership”, in Küpers, W. & Pauleen, D. (2013). A Handbook of Practical Wisdom. Leadership, Organization and Integral Business Practice. 19-45 Imprint: London: Gower.
Introduction
We live in a world ridden with increasingly urgent planetary problems and unprecedented interrelated global and local challenges. Societally, politically and economically, our world is currently exposed to unprecedented levels of complexities and uncertainties characterized by instability, volatility and unexpected and disruptive change. The recent and ongoing global economic crisis with its failures of responsibilities (Küpers 2011a) and the threatening of natural and socio-cultural ecologies are among many more manifestations of a profound dis-integration and non-integral way of living. Underlying these and many further symptoms and realities are fundamental ontological and epistemological as well as ethical inadequacies and reductive understandings and orientations calling for a more sustainable integration.
The following chapter is based on the premise that re-considering practical wisdom and reviving the meaning of artful wise practices can be an apt medium for realizing such integral understanding and practice. Reasons for re-habitualizing this wisdom for our contemporary times and futures lie in its proto-integral and transformative potential on all levels, especially in organizations and leadership (Küpers and Statler 2008, Walsh 2011, 2012).
In particular, practical wisdom has the capacity to integrate virtuous good, practical and artful ways of life. In other words, wise practicing provides a medium for dealing with the ethics and pragmatics of everyday life, while developing and enacting a creative art of living well.
For developing and realizing such an integrative art, first this chapter will reconstruct Aristotelian ways of practical wisdom as phrónêsis(Φρνησις) that is as practical reasoning, knowledge and virtuous habit. For a more integral understanding then an advanced phenomenology of embodied practice of wisdom is developed. Phenomenological interpretations not only allow a critique of person-centred, cognitivist or mentalist orientations, but consider the materiality, embodied and responsive agency as well as dynamics of wisdom as an inter-relational and emerging process.
For elaborating such processual understanding, this chapter next outlines specifics of a responsive ‘inter-practice’ of wisdom. This relational practicing of wisdom is then situated as one that is connected to creative action in the context of organization and leadership. Furthermore, based on aesthetic dimensions, I will develop a critical phrónêsis as a form of creative practice. For this approach towards a poiêticphrónêsis, the roles of moral perception and moral imagination as well as artistic practices are discussed as phrónêtic capacities. Finally, the conclusion opens up perspectives on practical wisdom as professional artistry and raises some questions for the reader’s further consideration.
In so far as this chapter has a message, it is that a phenomenological and a neo- and post-Aristotelian approach towards the living art of practical wisdom constitute an essential advance on conventional modes of thinking and practicing,organizing and leading towards a wiser praxis and more integral business.
Wisdom as Practical Knowledge and Virtuous Habit in Prâxis
Historically, after being part of oral traditions, wisdom has been most widely reflected in religious and philosophical writings (Birren and Svensson 2005, Osbeck and Robinson 2005). From cross-cultural perspectives it can be seen as diverse, but ‘wholesome’ knowledge (Assmann 1994). Taking the various historical and cultural forms, any critical re-interpreting of wisdom requires considering the historical, social, ethical and political conditions of its ownoperation (Long 2002), including the Aristotelian one, discussed in the following.
Classically, practical wisdom has been seen as one among other virtues, respectively encompassing the principal ones; as once you have practical wisdom you have all the virtues (Aristotle 1985). Moreover, exercising or striving to exercise moral virtues, to make them part of the habituated personal character (ethos), requires a certain form of practical wisdom.
The classical understanding of virtue (Greek: ἀρετή ‘areté’) refers to a form of enacted moral excellence. Its functioning has been ordered as a balance point or golden mean between deficiency and excess in order to find or create eudaimonia - translated as flourishing or happiness - individually and collectively.
Correspondingly, practical wisdom, interpreted as phrónêsis (φρόνησις), was defined by and from Aristotle onwards as a mind-oriented, intellectual virtue. Similar to the related character-oriented moral virtues, its task was to helpin guiding decisions and action that serve the common good or enhance the societal well-being that is the quality of communal and responsible life in the polis.
As a concern for what is practically good in each here and now, phrónêsis focuses on making the ‘right’ use of knowledge and preferential choices or judgements for the prudentially doable actions of humans as rational, social and political animals.It works by determining the mean at which virtue aimsand reflexively finding a proper balanced middle way between undesirable extremes, avoiding states that are ‘too hot’, experiencing the agitation of excess, as much as ‘too cold’,experiencing inert states of sterility and indifference(Aristotle 1985, 1998).
Importantly, this capacity depends on an openness to each situation and the ability toperceive as well as to have the appropriatefeelingsor desires about it, todeliberateon what is appropriate in specificcircumstances, to value, to respond and to act adequately (Aristotle 1985, Schwartz and Sharpe 2006). Thus, phrónêsis incorporates and operates through the integration of various modes in relation to the world, including embodied, sensual and tacit knowing, intuition and emotions (Roca 2007). All of these modes are gained through gradually acquired experience (empeiría) and can be cultivated through practicing and deliberating with and for virtuous Others.
As much as phrónêsis ispart of the very being of those practicing it, its actions are always constrained to some extent by fate, luck and contextual circumstances. Accordingly, wisdom is processed in a world of uncertainty and ambiguity, where cause and effect may not be clear-cut and in which the result of an act or decision cannot be predicted, while knowing that the political good is often ‘irregular’ and ‘imprecise’ (Lord 2002: 80). Understood more as a steady state than a final endpoint or final product, the aspiration of the practically wise (phronimos) is more an open process that is always moving toward the good as never-quite-achieved telos. This processual orientation calls for a continuous reappraisal of strategies for approaching virtuosity and goodness respectively the potential for the good in the particular (Gadamer 1982).
As it is bound up with lived situated experience,worldly phrónêsis has been differentiated by Aristotelian thinking from other forms of knowing and practices. Accordingly, phrónêsis is different from contemplative, transcendental wisdom (sophía) and from a theoretical and universal knowledge of abstract reasoning (theoría). These privileged forms of knowing are based on epistêmê, and on nous as intellectual intuition, for gaining knowledge about necessary and eternal first principles or first causes as the highest form of intelligibility, using formal logic and mathematical calculation, seeking the excellence of or participating in the divine. For a complete understanding of wisdom along phrónêtic dimensions, ‘sophían elements’, like cosmic and intuitive knowing, may also need to be included (Trowbridge and Ferrari 2011). Moreover, Baehr very recently (2012) showed convingly how theoretical and practical wisdom are conceptually and practically intertwined. On the competence level, theoretical wisdom as a cognitive competence can be interpreted as a component or mode of practical wisdom. In turn, theoretical wisdom sometimes aims at acting for the sake of deep explanatory understanding and thus can be seen as constituting one dimension or application of practical wisdom.
Furthermore, phrónêsis has been distinguished from a product-focused technical knowledge (tékhnê) and poiêsis as producing or making activities. Tékhnê knowledge refers to a particular ‘knowing how to’ as used in craft and art by applying a replicable skill or set of techniques to make artefacts based on an eidos (idea or a plan or design) to be deployed by an instrumental mindset. The end or goal of action in a tékhnê-focused orientation – and its corresponding realization through poiêsis as its making – is established before production begins. And tékhnê is used to figure out the procedure for using resources (khresis) and material transformation for useful or aesthetic goods. The worth of a poiêtic activity and its artefacts can only be judged by their effects and consequences that is how well they serve the intended purposes. In contrast, or supplementing the dominating calculative means-ends mentality of object- and consequence-orientedtékhnê, phrónêsis is concerned with actions that relate to the originary prâxis of human beings, and it is used for knowing how to live fully.
Thus, there are two kinds of practices: poiêsis, which is guided by tékhnê; and the more comprehensive prâxis, which is guided by phrónêsis. This prâxis is present not only in the execution of certain actions, but is always already given with existence itself, insofar as it constitutes its nature and precedes every particular action. As phrónêsis is used in and for prâxisas acting for the common good, it manifestsa situated practical reasoning, knowledge and habit, which directs action for acting well (euprâxía) and living well (éu zén). Whilst calculating tékhnê is the knowledge that steers the activity of making (poiêsis), in which means and ends are distinguishable from one another, deliberating phrónêsis guides prâxis in a way by which the ‘doing’ that is practiced constitutes an end in itself: ‘Poiêsis Makes Things, Prâxis Makes Perfect’ (Eikeland 2008: 122).
While tékhnê can be conceptualized in terms of its ‘possession’ (being) and its ‘application’ (use or production), phrónêsis cannot be instrumentalized (Dunne 1993) because the good that is embodied in phrónêtic action is a combination of the motives of the agent and the action being done.
Activities based on integrity and practical judgement of how to become and act wisely in this particular moment, case and context are forming a prâxis, which has a value in itself. As prâxis integratesembodied experiences, reflection and actions, it is a condition of possibility of phrónêsis and its development (Kemmis 2012). Accordingly, ‘phrónêsis…is not a knowledge of ethical ideas as such, but rather a resourcefulness of mind that is called into play’ when circumstances demand an intervention. It is a habituated disposition that has ‘developed an eye … or a nose for what is salient in concrete situations’ (Dunne 1993: 368,Aristotle 1985 1143b13, 1033,Eidinow and Ramirez 2012). Our moral commitments are disclosed by the situations this eye identifies as worthy of note, of responsive action and agendas pursued then in the course of life by phrónêsis as executive faculty.
Problematizing the discussed differentiations, according to Eikeland (2006, 2008), Aristotle’s prâxis-orientation is in danger of becoming invisible by operating with simplified and mutually exclusive divisions between epistêmê,phrónêsis and tékhnê, and by conflating other distinctions. Ways of dichotomizing simply miss the complexity and richness of both Aristotle and the world confronting us. Therefore, the separation between phrónêsis and poiêsis especially needs to be problematized and a re-integration developed. Such integration requires seeing practical wisdom as embodied and a(i)esthetic practice as well as critically re-interpreting phrónêsisas itself being a responsive poiêsis.
Phenomenology of Embodied Practices of Wisdom –Prâxis and Flesh
Vital for any phenomenological understanding of wisdom is that it is not only a special form of empirical-analytic knowledge and that it cannot be adequately investigated sufficiently as merely cognitive competency or meta-cognitive capacity and expert knowledge used for judgements.
Acquiring and having intellectual knowledge and advanced cognitive functioning(Baltes and Smith 1990) is only one among other elements of becoming, enacting and transforming wisdom (Kitchener and Brenner 1990, Ardelt 2004, Baltes and Staudinger 2000, Hays Chapter 7) anddepends on a coalition of multiple experiential factors.
Therefore, instead of a cognitive or mentally biased approach, a phenomenology of wisdom strives to overcome the neglect of bodily and dynamic dimensions involved. Rather, it conceives wisdom as an embodied practice, which is constituted and processed through experiential, affective, implicit, life-worldly dimensions(Küpers 2007). This orientation was already latently inherent in an Aristotelian understanding of phrónêtic thinking as an embodied reasoning, which makes use of bodily and imaginative forms of knowing (Polkinghorne 2004). Considering practical wisdom as a form and enactment of bodily processing implies seeing, interpreting, and realizing wise practicing as a medium of relational be(com)ing. Accordingly, it is bringing forth effects on the bodily situated, feeling, thinking, acting, self, others and inter-involved multipleparties (Yang 2008). In this sense, practical wisdom is more than a composite of personality characteristics,logos-based competencies or reflected knowledge bound to reductionist intellectualism or idealism.[1] Such interpretations would fail to adequately acknowledge the embodiment and situatedness of experience and its structural constraints that influence or deflect virtuous behaviours.
Phenomenologically, all practices and practicing are embodied, that is they are mediated by bodily processes and forms of embodiment constitute and involve various modes of practical engagements (Küpers 2012). According to Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1995) our body is our very way of ‘being-in-the-world’ that is experiencing and belonging as well as being practical and communicatively situated in the everyday-life with Others. Accordingly, practice is built upon a pre-reflective, ambiguous ‘ground’ of primordial experiences and inter-corporeal relationships as well as expressive dimensions.As life-worldy practice is first and foremost embodied and practitioners embodied beings, they are both part of the world and coextensive with it that is constituting, but also constituted (Merleau-Ponty 1962). Consequently, the life-world is found meaningful primarily with respect to the ways in which practitioners perceive and act within it and which acts upon them (Crossley 1996). Importantly, ‘embodiment’ does not simply refer to bodies’ physical manifestation, nor is the body merely a physico-perceptual thing or only a surface for inscription.Rather, being embodied means that practitioners are dynamically incarnated in and mediate through mundane experiences, actions and passions, others and their environments in an ongoing, foremostly sensual and meaningful relation. Thus, the embodied practicing subjects, as well as their socio-cultural embodiment, are situated in a tactile, visual, olfactory and/or auditory way. Whatever they perceive, feel, think, intend or do, they are exposed to a synchronized field of interrelated senses and synaesthetic sensations (Merleau-Ponty 1962), processed through body-schemes and body-images as existential and transcendental structures of lived perception, knowledge and behaviour (Tiemersma 1989).
It is through an embodied living in the midst of a world of touch, sight, smell and sound that the practitioners reach what they perceive and handle in relation to others at work and are affected by these senses and sensations. Moreover, practitioners act or cope wisely or unwisely, while being situated spontaneously and pre-reflectively in accordance with their bodies and within their embodiment. For this reason, the embodied experience and practices are emerging within a genuine horizon on which they ‘body-forth’, thus projecting their possibilities into the world in which they are enmeshed.The lives of political leaders like Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi are real-life examples of this kind of embodied wisdom (Biloslavo and McKenna Chapter 6).
Following an intentional and responsive orientation, the actor or agent within the sphere of (potentially wise) practice does not feel only ‘I think’, but also ‘I relate to’ or ‘I do’. In other words, the atmosphere within which wise practices are situated is not only what people ‘think about’ it, but primarily what they ‘live through’ with their ‘operative intentionality’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962: xviii) as a bodily, pre-reflexive, non-representational, but concrete spatial motility and situated responses. This responsiveness itself refers to a specific answering practice (Waldenfels 2008) within a ‘responsive order’ (Gendlin 1997). This implies that as a living body and being embodied, practitioners respond to meaningful questions, problems or claims posed to them through embodied conditions and embedding contexts. Correspondingly, practical wisdom has been interpreted as ‘the capacity to recognize the essentials of what we encounter and to respond well and fittingly to those circumstances’ (Fowers 2003: 415). However, what is meant by ‘well’ and ‘fitting’ is debatable and calls for critical reflection and dialogical negotiation. Thus, embodied practical wisdom is not only a discerning intellectual and virtue-oriented process of deliberating the means and reflecting the ends of contextually constrained actions. Rather, it also involves sensing, perceiving, making choices and realizing actions that display appropriate and creative responses under challenging circumstances through bodily ways of engagement.
Practicing wisely arises from participation in embodied acts and responses of organizing its practice. In that it makes bodily relations and response primary, Merleau-Pontyian phenomenology provides an appropriate prâxis-philosophy for a body-mediated understanding of practical wisdom. In contrast to mere doing, prâxis refers to deliberately taking actions as they occur within a situated sphere, and being morally committed, and thus happens as an embodied conduct in connection to a ‘held-togetherness’ (‘Zusammenhang’) that is a dynamic Gestalt. This Gestalt refers to a relational whole, which is integrating parts of acting and enactment, while functioning as a medium in which lives interrelate. Thus prâxis-Gestalts emerge in sayings, doings and relatings (Kemmis and Grootenboer 2008). For Kemmis (2012: 150), the happeningness of prâxisis the embodied action itself, ‘in all its materiality and with all its effects on and consequences for the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political dimensions of our world in its being and becoming’. By considering these dynamically interrelated dimensions, whicharepreceding and grounding all theory of practice, Merleau-Ponty is offering an extended understanding of also socially wise practicing within a phenomenal co-present field. In particular, it allows for studying embodied practicing as joint, plural action and cooperation, processed through ‘We-Mode’ intentionalities and collective commitments (Tuomela 2007, Schmid 2009), enacted as ‘We-can’.
The ‘bodies-in-action’ of wise prâxis is practically and constitutively engaged and serves as a medium in the disclosure of the world and in the creation and maintenance of meaning and signification. From a phenomenological perspective, not only is practicing embodied, but being embodied is always already a way of mediating the (potentially wise) practicing through lived situations. Within this situatedness, the living body mediates between internal and external, or subjective and objective, as well as individual and collective experiences and meanings of wise practices.This body-mediated performance coordinates the relations between individual behaviour, social relations, artefacts and institutions, particularly through language and communication as the expressive media of interrelation (Merleau-Ponty 1962).