Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Key to Moral Decision-Making:
Excerpt: How do we best arrive at decisions to act in situations in which there is a conflict between our moral values (such as equality versus freedom) or even between deeply ingrained moral virtues (such as honesty versus compassion)? Most virtue theories have an answer in the form of so-called ‘cardinal moral virtues’ that trump other virtues, or even a single ‘master virtue’ that calls the shots if there is a conflict, such as justice in Plato’s system or neighbourly love in Christianity. Yet there are also systems of virtue that do away with any arbitrator of this kind and simply suppose that developing one virtue will automatically spill over into and inform other virtues, such as in the positive psychological system of six virtues and 24 character strengths where the ‘chain’ of virtues is considered to be as strong as its strongest links (Peterson and Seligman, 2004).