The Uses of Aristotle in Garamer\u27s Recovery of Consultative Reasoning: \u3cem\u3eSunesis\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eSungnômê\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eEpieikeia\u3c/em\u3e, and \u3cem\u3eSumbouleuesthai\u3c/em\u3e

Abstract

Using Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s exposition of Aristotle\u27s adjuncts to phronêsis, or the knowing that guides deliberation, namely understanding, forbearance, and clemency, this Article attempts to retrieve a communal reasoning still evident in Homer but increasingly covered over beginning with Plato and continuing through Hobbes and Locke, in the English-language tradition, and, more recently, Rawls and Toulmin. This Article shows that, in Gadamer\u27s reading of him, Aristotle emerges as a crucial interruption of this tendency of Western thought to abstract from the communal origins of reasoning and to start instead from what an isolated individual sees for himself or herself and only then communicates to someone else