“Collective Phronesis”. A Collective Virtue Ethics Interpretation of the Accumulation Argument of Politics III, 11

The aim of this paper is to explore a relatively understudied Aristotelian notion, collective phronesis. The first part will attempt to disambiguate the concept through a careful examination of its first occurrence in the accumulation argument of Politics III, 11 and its ramifications. I will summarise the accumulation argument for collective phronesis in six main claims, that can all be traced back to the Aristotelian text. I will then consider two recent interpretations of this passage in a second part: Kristján Kristjánsson’s and Jean-Marc Narbonne’s. While Kristjánsson’s ‘aristocratic’ reading rightly insists on the continuity between individual and collective phronesis, and thus on interpreting the passage in light of virtue ethics, I think that his account of collective phronesis does not perfectly square with the content of the six points Aristotle made in the accumulation argument. In particular, I will show that his concept of collective virtue is too weakly emergent to be faithful to the substance of the Aristotelian argument. I will thus consider Narbonne’s ‘democratic’ interpretation of Politics III, 11 to refine Kristjánsson’s framework and make a case for a strongly emergent collective phronesis.