not in πρᾶξις and its specific virtue, φρόνησις, that the human "desire to see" finds its inevitable end? Yet what exactly is this "seeing" intrinsic to human πρᾶξις?
The Glance of The Eye
Central to φρόνησις is what Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics identifies as a practical αἴσθησις, a practical vision or "perception" that discloses the ultimate arche and telos of πρᾶξις, namely the concrete situation of action in all the particularity of its givenness. Phronesis, as Aristotle puts it, "concerns what is ultimate [eschatou], and this is the object of praxis [to prakton]" (NE, 1142 a24). Yet the kind of αἴσθησις in question is not that of the mere sense-perception of sense-objects, but is something like the sort of aisthesis whereby "we perceive that the ultimate figure [eschaton] in mathematics is a triangle." Two things are distinctive of the kind of aisthesis belonging to mathematics: First, we perceive the object—the figure of the triangle—as a whole; and second, our perceiving reaches a kind of end or stop (stesetai) in this perception.
Aristotle emphasizes, however, that "the term αἴσθησις applies in a fuller sense to mathematical intuition than to φρόνησις; the practical intuition of the latter belongs to a different species" (NE, 1142 a30). The αἴσθησις intrinsic to praxis clearly cannot be the same as the αἴσθησις at work in mathematics, given that the objects of mathematics and geometry are unchanging and universal. By contrast, the kind of perception found in φρόνησις must pertain to praxis itself in all its particularity and contingency. As Heidegger remarks, it is not a theoretical or contemplative seeing, not a "mere looking," but a "circumspective looking" (umsichtiges Hinsehen: GA 19, 163) that is guided in advance by the end of eupraxia, acting well. This end is not a particular or determinate good, but the highest good for human existence as a whole (τὸ εὖ ζῆν ὅλως: NE, 1140 a28). Good circumspection sees a situation not just in one determinate respect, but above all with respect to this more general good, as a good not just for me, but for human beings in their plurality and worldly belonging together (NE, 1140 b7–21). Yet for Aristotle the good is not a universal, but relative to the finite situation and circumstances of the actor (cf. NE, 1096 a11ff.). The seeing of the situation must thus be circumspective, at once encompassing and open. Yet such circumspection has something in common with the mathematical αἴσθησις in that it both perceives its object as a whole and reaches an end or stop in this perception. As Heidegger puts it, what φρόνησις must perceive is the whole factical situation within which we have to act, and this situation, as the ultimate limit of such perception,