The medieval Arabic philosopher Ibn Rushd — known in Europe as Averroes — spent decades as court physician in Andalusia while simultaneously writing the most influential commentaries on Aristotle produced in the Islamic world. He noticed something his patients kept demonstrating: the body doesn't just house the mind, it argues with it. When his patients' physical condition declined, their capacity for practical judgment — what Aristotle called *phronesis* — declined with it. Not their raw intelligence, but their ability to read a situation and act wisely in it. This is a different claim than 'exercise improves mood.' It's the claim that your physical state is part of your reasoning apparatus, not separate from it. Aristotle's *phronesis* was always meant to be embodied — the person of practical wisdom wasn't a brain on a stick. Ibn Rushd just made that explicit through clinical observation. Today, before a high-stakes conversation or decision, notice what your body is doing. Tension in the jaw. Shallow breath. Fatigue behind the eyes. These aren't just physical states — they're corrupting your read of the room.

Name a decision you made in the last week that you later second-guessed — were you physically depleted when you made it?

Drawing from Islamic Philosophy synthesized with Aristotelian Ethics — Ibn Rushd (Averroes, Commentaries on Aristotle, c. 1169–1195) synthesized with Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, c. 350 BCE)