Not only does Ancient Greek philosophy single out prudence as one of four fundamental virtues. So do Sacred Scripture (Wisdom 8:7) and the Church Fathers.
Forming and practicing prudence is central to Christian moral life. However, understanding how to do so has become difficult. The classical conception of prudence has been supplanted by a very different view of what it is. Here are five books that are helpful for retrieving the Christian view of prudence.
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“The prudent man does good to himself, the virtuous man does good to mankind.” So sayeth Voltaire in his Philosophical Dictionary.
With this pithy aphorism, Voltaire equates prudence with self-interest; virtue with selfless altruism. In his view, the two are at odds with each other.
Such a view was held by other important eighteenth-century thinkers, most notably Immanuel Kant.
Even the more Christian-minded Samuel Johnson viewed prudence as an obstacle to virtue because “it produces vigilance rather than elevation, rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often escapes miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honour. It quenches that ardour of enterprise, by which every thing is done that can claim praise or admiration; and represses that generous temerity which often fails and often succeeds….(P)rudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy." (Idler 57)
We might even talk of prudence in the same way. We might deem ‘prudent’ the person who cautiously calculates every risk and never takes any. We might associate prudence, not with the principled application of moral standards to the appropriate circumstances, but with the tendency to seize on the slightest pretext for not applying them. If so, our understanding of prudence has been shaped largely by the moralists of the Enlightenment.
The classical conception of prudence is very different. Voltaire, Johnson and Kant contrast the prudent person to the virtuous one. Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics equate the prudent person (phronimos) with the morally virtuous one: unfailingly courageous, self-controlled, generous, and just. So does the Christian tradition. Take the Catechism’s number on prudence, which explicitly rejects the Enlightenment conception.
“Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it; ‘the prudent man looks where he is going.’ (Proverbs 14:15) ‘Keep sane and sober for your prayers.’(1 Peter 4:7) Prudence is ‘right reason in action,’ writes St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle (ST II-II, q. 47, a. 2). It is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation. It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure. It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience. The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment. With the help of this virtue we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.” Catechism of the Catholic Church 1806
This number appears in the section on the ‘human virtues’ (1804-1811) and prior to that on the theological virtues (1812-1829). By ‘human virtues,’ the Catechism is referring to the moral virtues. It thereby construes the ‘human virtues’ more narrowly than has traditionally been the case. For example, under the rubric of ‘human virtues’ St. Thomas Aquinas considers all the various virtues that we humans can and ought to possess: intellectual, moral, and theological; those we can acquire through our own exertions and those which are God’s gift alone. To provide a brief overview of the moral virtues, the Catechismrecurs to the classical framework of the four cardinal virtues.
In reducing the moral virtues to the four cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, the Catechism is following a theological tradition that goes back to the Church Fathers and even Scripture itself (Wisdom 8:7, see CCC 1805). Patristic too is the name for the tetrad. It was St. Ambrose who first called the set the cardinal (i.e. lynchpin) virtues. Nevertheless, in proposing these four moral virtues as the fundamental ones, the inspired author of Wisdom and the Church Fathers were drawing consciously on Hellenistic ethics. Plato treated them as such in the Republic. So did the Stoics. Indeed, the Stoic school was the strand of Hellenistic ethics upon which the sacred authors and the Church Fathers drew primarily. They drew out the valid insights from these philosophers and enshrined them within Tradition.
The Catechism alludes in passing to how the doctors of the Church have incorporated valid insights about the virtues from Greek philosophers. It cites the case of St. Thomas Aquinas, who draws on Aristotle when discussing prudence in the Summa theologiae(CCC 1806). This is significant for a couple of reasons.
First, without ever saying so, the Catechism’s number on prudence simply summarises some aspects of St. Thomas Aquinas’s classical analysis of the virtue. It is to him that we need to turn for a fuller exposition on prudence.
Second, there is the Catechism’s mention of Aristotle. It singles him out among the ancient philosophers probably because of his influence on St. Thomas’s canonical account of the virtue. It thereby alludes to how some books of the Bible and later the doctors of the Church have drawn on Ancient Greek ethics to articulate what God has taught us about our moral life. Maybe it is also suggesting that knowing these philosophical sources is useful for understanding this aspect of Scripture and Tradition.
Some may feel that, so far, too much emphasis has been put on philosophers, Church Fathers, doctors, and not enough on the Bible. Surely, it is to Scripture that we should turn primarily to learn about any virtue and how to practice it?
Quite true. However, we also need a framework for systematising Scripture’s scattered moral teachings. The Bible is a collection of books by different divinely inspired human authors, living in distinct periods, addressing particular groups and problems, writing amid disparate cultural and intellectual backgrounds. There are various reasons for adopting and adapting ancient virtue theory to organise its moral teachings systematically.
First, some of the later books of the Bible draw on it. Second, the Church Fathers and St. Thomas use it to articulate comprehensively the moral teaching of Scripture, insofar as it explains accurately the characteristics and development of a perfect human being. Third, even alternative biblical frameworks, such as the Ten Commandments, refer back to the virtues. Although the Catechism organises its comprehensive presentation of Christian moral life (Third Part) around the Ten Commandments, it prefaces its exposition of the Decalogue with a discussion of the virtues. And for good reason. As St. Thomas explains in the Summa theologiae (II-II, prologue), most of the commandments prohibit a certain vice. To understand the commandment, we need to identify the indicated vice and explain why it is wrong. That amounts to explaining why said vice is unvirtuous. Any adequate explanation of the vice’s wrongness supposes an understanding of the virtue. The virtues, not the Ten Commandments or the seven capital sins, are conceptually and ontologically prior.
At any rate, A Catholic reading guide on prudence should begin with Scripture, then look at how the Church Fathers draw on Hellenistic Ethics to articulate the biblical moral teaching systematically, before passing on to the further systematization of patristic theology during the Middle Ages.
1.
As the Catechismpoints out, prudence is “praised under other names in many passages of Scripture” (CCC 1805). One such term is ‘wisdom’ (though Catholic doctrine distinguishes wisdom as such from prudence).
The acquisition of wisdom is the overarching theme of a group of Old Testament books (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Sirach). These books are full of divinely inspired practical advice on how to form prudence and the other virtues in our everyday life. However, they are not always an easy read. Some sections of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, and Sirach are collections of disparate sayings. They bombard us with too much to digest or may simply bore us. For this reason, it is worth having a guide on how to read these books and get the most out of them.
Though scholarly, the book wisely leaves the more technical considerations to the endnotes, appendices, and supplements that make up the latter half. The first half offers an introduction to the wisdom literature and chapter-long surveys of proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Sirach and Wisdom.
In the process, Murphy offers both practical advice and helpful interpretative keys for reading these books.
For example, he offers the following advice on reading the collections of sayings in Proverbs 10:1-22:16 and 25:1-29:27.
“In the experience of many, the proverbs seem to blur all together when they are read at one sitting. The obvious move is to settle for a limited number—–for example to read a chapter at a time——and to select from the (roughly thirty) sayings in each chapter two or three verses that catch the reader’s fancy. Perhaps none will appeal, but that may say more about the reader than the sayings. The point is that one must concentrate on a limited number and sift out those sayings that, for whatever reason, stand out among the rest. Such an attentive reading can yield pleasant surprises, as the author can testify from teaching this book over the years.”
Chapter Eight, on the other hand, addresses the overarching theology of the sapiential books. This is necessary to explain how they fit in with other books of the Old Testament. They refer far less than the latter to God’s covenants with Israel. Instead, they rely much more on more secular wisdom traditions. Nevertheless, they complement the other books of the Old Testament. By reflecting on everyday experiences and situation they underline how “God was as much at work here as in the heady experiences of Israel’s history and liturgical worship. The Lord’s dominion over the created world is at the core of wisdom’s effort to help one live in the world.”
By exploring the many challenges to living virtuously in everyday life, the sapiential books of the Bible are some of the most illuminating on the virtue of prudence.
2.
As ever, we should read Scripture under the guidance of the Church Fathers, and one who did most to unpack the biblical lessons on prudence is St. Ambrose.
His De officiis(On the Duties of the Clergy), modelled on Cicero’s work of the same name, explores how figures from the Bible are the models of the cardinal virtues.
Much as St. Augustine in City of God, Ambrose argues that the true models of the cardinal virtues are not illustrious figures from the Roman Republic, but the patriarchs. He explains how Abraham, David, and Daniel embody prudence and offers practical advice on how we can practice it too.
St. Ambrose was not the only Church Father to discuss prudence and the other cardinal virtues. For example, St. Augustine roots all four in charity. This shows how the Church Fathers reinterpret Hellenistic ethics in the light of Sacred Scripture.
However, it is St. Thomas who elaborates the most comprehensive and canonical treatment of prudent.
In doing so, he was building upon the work of earlier thirteenth-century theologians and their appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
The study of Aristotle by medieval scholastics was well underway prior to St. Thomas. Initially, they had focussed on his logic and metaphysics. They only began to read the first three books of the Nicomachean Ethics in the early thirteenth century. This fed into their attempts to explain the nature and kinds of virtue more systematically. It also stimulated a renewed interest in the virtue of prudence, which had been overlooked somewhat by monastic theology, with its focus on discernment (discretio). It was not long before the writers of summae began to include a section on prudence. Philip the Chancellor was the first to do so in his Summa de bono.
However, Robert Grosseteste, Albert the Great, and St. Thomas were the first to study and draw on the complete text of the Nicomachean Ethics. As a result, they were the first to really appropriate Aristotle’s insights on prudence and develop a fuller account of the virtue.
Aristotle discusses prudence primarily in Book Six of the Nichomachean Ethics (which is also Book Five of the Eudemian Ethics). Some scholars argue that the latter work is a more mature or complete statement of his views. However, the former has always been the most widely read and studied of the two. It is the one that has shaped the subsequent philosophical and theological tradition.
Book Six of the Nicomachean Ethics is on the five intellectual virtues, those that perfect the mind. Of those five, prudence (phronēsis) occupies Aristotle’s attention the most. It is the intellectual virtue that perfects practical reason: the mind insofar as it is involved in making choices.
Speculative reason is the intellect insofar as it aims at knowing how things truly are. In practical reasoning, however, we think about how things should be and how we can act upon them to make them so. One intellectual virtue by which we do so is the mastery of an art or craft (technē). The artisan knows how to mould materials skilfully until they take on the form he has in his mind. Prudence, on the other hand, is concerned with achieving human goods in particular situations. For this reason, it differs from scientific knowledge (another intellectual virtue) in several regards. It is deliberative rather than demonstrative. It involves knowledge not just of abstract, universal truths but of the particularities of the contingent situations in which we act. Hence, it cannot be acquired through learning. Experience is needed to distinguish the relevant circumstances and characteristics of particulars.
It also differs from the other intellectual virtues in that one can neither possess nor exercise it without the moral virtues, which for their part also rely on prudence. More on this shortly.
Aristotle’s great contribution was to distinguish how practical reasoning and its virtue, prudence, differ from speculative reasoning and are bound up with our character. By failing to attend to these difference earlier thinkers had believed that philosophers, with their unrivalled theoretical sophistication, would make the best statesmen. The best Athenian statesman, Aristotle points out, was Pericles, who was no philosopher. He had the hands-on knowhow and skill that philosophers without any actual political experience lack and which cannot be gained by mere study. Moreover, by failing to notice the important differences between practical and speculative reasoning, earlier philosophers, such as Socrates, had committed another error. As Aristotle explains in Nicomachean Ethics VII, they had equated virtue with knowledge and vice with ignorance. They overlooked the way in which character, or lack thereof, shapes our decisions and way of seeing things.
There are also some problems which Aristotle does not fully clarify, at least not explicitly. Most significantly, he does not explain how someone who has not been brought up well and is unvirtuous can gain insight into what is virtuous, both in general and in particular. Without such insight, how can such an unfortunate person ever become virtuous? St. Thomas fills in the gaps by showing how everyone has some knowledge of the principles of practical reason.
It is difficult to understand the arguments of Book Six without reading the entire Nicomachean Ethics. Similarly, it is difficult to understand in full St. Thomas’s discussion of prudence and the other virtues without reading the Nicomachean Ethics.
