06.10.2026 Diary XXXVI Phronesis: where the rule ends

06.10.2026 Diary Page XXXVI

A rule says what to do. It does not say when not to do it.

Tuesday. There are nearly two hundred and fifty articles on this site and most of them describe a method. This morning was one on which none of them worked.

I set a timer, it did not work. I tried the two-minute rule, it lasted two minutes, and in the third minute I got up. The first step I had written the previous evening was sitting on the desk and even looking at it felt tiring. Lists, cards, closed tabs. All in their places and none of them doing anything.

On days like this my old reflex kicks in right away: there is a mistake in one of the methods, or in me. Then a third possibility came to mind, and that day I kept it by giving it a name. Maybe there was no mistake. Maybe there was a question the methods could not answer.

Aristotle's distinction

In the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle separates the kinds of reason from one another. Sophia, knowing the things that do not change: mathematics, the laws of nature. Techne, the rule of making something: carpentry, medicine. The third is phronesis, that is, practical reason.

Phronesis is not knowing rules. It is being able to see what is right in a particular situation, for a particular person. Aristotle defines it as a kind of knowledge, but a kind that does not come out of a textbook: it develops by looking at individual situations, being wrong and looking again. That is why a young person can be a genius in mathematics but cannot be a phronimos, that is, a practically wise person.

When I read this distinction the first thing I noticed was that a method article is techne. It says how a job is done. It does not say when to do it, or whether to do it today. That decision remains outside the article.

The leaden rule of Lesbos

Aristotle uses an image on this subject, and I have loved it for a long time. The builders of the island of Lesbos used a ruler made of lead that bends to the curve of the stone. A straight ruler cannot measure a curved stone; the leaden ruler takes the shape of the stone and draws the measure from it.

Aristotle gives this ruler as the example of equity, that is, epieikeia. The law speaks in general; the case is a single case. A general sentence does not give the right result in every individual situation. Equity is deciding, where the law ends, by looking at the law's purpose.

Someone who has had a legal education knows this concept under the name equity and feels a kind of discomfort about it: does the rule apply, or the purpose of the rule? This discomfort is not misplaced. Rules give predictability. Equity accepts unpredictability.

What I did with the method

The question I asked myself this morning sitting at the desk was not which method I would apply. Nobody was asking me that anyway; the methods were ready. The question to be asked was this: what can be done to this desk today?

The answer was outside the methods. Going over yesterday's piece did not work today, because the mind was not in a state to produce something new. But I noticed it was in a state to make corrections. I opened an old text and for forty minutes only shortened sentences.

This was not a method. It is written on no list. It was today's leaden ruler: measuring not by the shape of the work but by my shape right now.

Could this be an excuse

It could, and this needs saying. Phronesis can be used as a legitimate name for bending every rule. The warning I wrote in the piece on kairos applies here too: the sentence "today is not suitable" is the most elegant cover for postponing.

Aristotle knows this. The phronimos is not the one who sets no rules, but the one who applies the rule well. Their flexibility does not come from lack of measure; because they know the goal, they can change their way. The goal is fixed, the way is flexible.

Where I draw the line is this. If the goal is clear, flexibility is legitimate: today this job was to be written, I changed the way of writing it. If even the goal bends, that is, if the decision "today I will do nothing" is made, there is no phronesis. There is something else.

The dilemma I described in the all-or-nothing thinking article comes out of here too. The rule is applied or dropped. Phronesis opens a third way: keeping the purpose of the rule and changing its form.

In strategy work

Building digital strategy, almost the whole of my job is full of this question. There is a framework, there is a checklist, there are a sector's known best practices. And every client is an exception.

The moment I struggle with most is when I notice that the framework does not fit a client and I cannot say so. Because applying the framework is safe. If the result turns out badly there is a method to blame. Leaving the framework and looking at the situation leaves the decision entirely on me.

I spoke about the price of this choice in strategy is choosing what not to do. Phronesis is exactly accepting this price: not being able to hide behind the rule.

An experiment

There is a common belief that phronesis cannot be taught. Aristotle does not say exactly that. The source of practical reason is experience, and experience accumulates by noticing mistakes.

I am trying a small habit for this. Every time I do not apply a method, I write the reason in one sentence. Not "I did not apply it," but "I did not apply it because of this, and I did this instead."

A month from now, looking at these sentences, a pattern will come out. Some will really be decisions born from the situation. Some, I will read with shame, will be a new name for postponing. The only way to separate the two is to keep a record.

Habit comes first

Phronesis has a precondition, and if we skip it it will be misunderstood. In the second book Aristotle says that virtues are acquired by habit: we become just by doing just acts, brave by doing brave ones. First the act, then the character.

This requires staying faithful to the rules first in order to be freed from the rules. A musician cannot improvise without memorizing scales; a judge cannot show equity without knowing the law. Flexibility stands on the foundation.

That is why, to be able to say "rules are not enough" comfortably, the rules must first have been applied a great many times. For someone who has never tried the methods, the sentence "no method works" is not phronesis, it is a lazy generalization. For someone who has tried and seen where they got stuck, the same sentence is data.

Prudence in the language of law

In Turkish law this concept has a name of its own: basiret. The Commercial Code requires every merchant to act like a prudent businessperson. The law does not list what prudence is one by one; it sets a measure: "what would a prudent businessperson have done?"

This is the legal equivalent of Aristotle's phronimos. A rule cannot be written, because situations are so varied; instead a type of person is described and behavior is measured beside them. The reasonable person, the careful merchant, a good head of the family: all of them are different names for the same solution.

When I adapt this to my own days an interesting question comes out: in today's situation, what would a person who knows their job and means me well have done? The answer most of the time comes not from one of the methods; it comes from yesterday's lesson, today's condition and the purpose of the work.

The limit of a method

Under every method I write on this site the same sentence stands, or should stand: I cannot know that it will hold for you. This is not a sentence of assurance, it is a declaration of limit.

Phronesis points exactly to that limit. A method is general knowledge; your morning today is an individual situation. Nobody can make the passage from the general to the individual, neither the writer of the method nor this page. Only someone who is inside that situation can make that passage.

This can also be read as a relief. If a method does not hold every morning, that does not have to be the failure of the method or of me. It is the nature of knowledge that general knowledge does not always fit the individual perfectly.

What I listened to today

Arvo Pärt: Es sang vor langen Jahren.

Written for an alto voice, a violin and a viola, on a poem by Clemens Brentano. Three instruments and a voice, each standing in its own place; none overpowers another, none is the same as another.

I find the piece fitting for the end of this morning. The three voices are bound to the same rule but do not play the same notes. The rule is shared, the application depends on the person.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Wednesday and one of the methods will come back. Which one it will be I will look and decide tomorrow morning. There is no list I wrote beforehand; I suppose that means something too.