On the Aristotelian view, the most ethically valuable sort of practical thinking is a continuous activity that accompanies and completes those activities it guides and that form an essential constituent of those activities. Some might recognize that dialectical activities involve a distinctive kind of practical thinking yet balk at the idea that this sort of practical thought can be better or worse in a recognizably ethical sense. Practical thinking cannot be contained within either of its supposed temporal boundaries. The Kantian conception of practical reasoning, which is often taken to be a neutral framework for ethical theorizing, hides the very possibility of the sort of practical thinking that Aristotelian ethics regards as most distinctively ethical. What is at issue in the confrontation between Kantianism and Aristotelianism is how exactly thought becomes practical, and by extension how the philosophical inquiry into excellence in practical thinking is to be framed.