Teachingfor the virtues of nursing
Dunne (1999) reminds us that in response to Socrates’ question about whether virtue
can be taught, Aristotle tells us that while teaching is appropriate for the development of
intellectual virtues, the cultivation of moral virtue lies in habituation. In seeking
guidance from Aristotle about how we might go about encouraging the development of
moral virtue in others by the use Ofhabituation, Dunne notes Aristotle’s own ambiguity
in describing phronesis as an intellectual virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics while
leaving it out of discussions of the intellectual virtues elsewhere. The eccentricity (as
Dunne calls it) ofphronesis is writ large if we accept Aristotle’s categorisation of it in
the Nicomachean Ethics as an intellectual virtue and thus, in Aristotle’s own scheme,
teachable as any other intellectual virtue. Dunne notes that it cannot be just one
intellectual virtue among others because it is of central importance in Aristotle’s
account. Phronesis (practical wisdom) is the exercise Ofjudgement enabling us to know
what to do to whom, in what measure in what way and at what time. This is to say that
the expression of moral virtue requires phronesis. In addition, as Dunne puts it “...
ethical virtue is itself required for phronesis. If a clever person is not good, neither will
he be aphronimos (practically wise person)” (Dunne 1999 p. 50) (original emphasis).
As Dunne further notes, for Aristotle there is nothing to be gained from the pursuit of
moral knowledge in the absence of seeking to become moral. For Aristotle the point of
learning more about, for example, justice lies in a genuine desire to become a just
person. And being just requires not only being disposed to be just but also learning to
recognise whatjustice requires in different situations. The person who knows what
virtues require in different situations is the phronimos. Yet the teaching conundrum
remains, for in our time the value placed on theoretical knowledge (the universals in
Aristotelian terms) drives our whole educational enterprise. By and large, the
measurement of knowledge throughout our educational system is geared to and rewards
the demonstration of theoretical knowledge. It is this separation to which MacIntyre so
objects and he does so for Aristotelian reasons. In part this separation is inevitable given
our seeming inability to assess practical knowledge in the kinds of systematic ways that
the current climate of audit culture demands. Even in practice-based work (such as
nursing) the difficulties of measuring practical knowledge remain unresolved. And if
most nursing students (like most other students) are assessment driven then this
separation between theory and practice (between, in Aristotelian terms, universals and
particulars) is likely to increase rather than decrease. By definition then any educational
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