Cleverness
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 5 anchored passages
Deinotes · cleverness · contrivance · plot · subtlety
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
The morally neutral capacity to devise and execute means to a proposed end, called Prudence when the end is good and knavery when base.
Now this faculty is not identical with Prudence, but Prudence implies it.
There is a certain faculty called Cleverness, which is the capacity for doing the things aforesaid that conduce to the aim we propose, and so attaining that aim.
(Cleverness on the other hand is not incompatible with Unrestraint—which is why it is sometimes thought that some people are prudent and yet unrestrained—because Cleverness differs from Prudence in the manner explained in our first discourse:
Cyclops
The opposition between Odyssean cleverness and the Cyclops's brute physical power, with cunning ultimately triumphing
Odysseus:
my plan is fraught with subtlety.
Truly we have long heard of thy cleverness.