Practical wisdom concerns not just excellence at the intellectual activity involved in making, i.e., purely instrumental or strategic thinking, but rather the intellectual excellence involved in praxis, i.e., genuine action. So practical wisdom would seem to presuppose moral virtue. Moreover, Aristotle says that practical wisdom is a kind of insight or perception. The practically wise person is able to see what is the appropriate degree of passion and the appropriate action in response to it. But now, this is apt to seem very puzzling.
Moral virtue is determined by the mean.
The mean is determined by the principle that would be used by a person of practical wisdom. A person of practical wisdom is someone who deliberates well from ends that he has as morally virtuous. This seems a very tight circle indeed. She pursues these ends for their own sake, and chooses acts of these kinds for their own sake, and chooses for its own sake to be the kind of person who cares doing these kinds of things for their own sake, and so on. Eudaimonia is not, however, distinct from these excellent, distinctively human activities.