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Harm reduction poses conceptual difficulties. This article looks to Aristotle's practical ethics, centered on the notion of phronesis, to shed some light on how to think about harm reduction in the current French context. After summarizing Aristotelian ethics, we attempt to apply them to people who use products, and then to people who carry out harm reduction interventions. While our reading of Aristotle is not enough to make propositions on what harm reduction should aim to produce and not just prevent, it does enable us to propose a practical modus operandi necessary for successful action. The Aristotelian perspective of a world experienced as contingent, indeterminate, left to chance, encourages us to think a model of harm reduction based on deliberation, the matching of means and ends, attention to context, the search for the right moment, intuition and experience.