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.
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.
Now this faculty is not identical with Prudence, but Prudence implies it.
(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: