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PRUDENCE is both one
of the intellectual virtues
and one of the cardinal moral virtues.
It connotes a right judgement in practical matters.
In all our actions when we seek to attain a particular end there is need for prudence to judge, which is the better, and safer,
alternative method.
A statesman, for example, pursuing the goal of international peace has need of prudence to determine what steps should be taken
here and now, and what courses should be avoided. Prudence in this wide sense, of the right choice of means and methods, is an
intellectual virtue, and may be the quality of good and bad men alike. Thus we rightly speak of a prudent investor seeking to save
and increase his personal fortune, or of a prudent thief, who carefully plans his thefts to, combine the minimum of risk with the
maximum of profit. For prudence as an intellectual virtue is simply the right choice of means for the attaining of a given end - any
given end.
Prudence as a moral virtue, however,
is the right choice of means for the attaining of one particular end - the living of the good life. Under this principal end are
to be subsumed the more particular ends which are the goals of the different virtues.
For example, the virtue of temperance tends towards the right control of the passions as its end. Prudence determines what actions
here and now conduce to that end, and so are temperate, and therefore are a part of the good life.
Since prudence is right judgement, it is a virtue of the intellect, and since its function is to issue in action, it is a virtue of the practical intellect. For it determines, not general or speculative truths, but practical truths - things that are known for the sake of use. It does not seek to discover what is the nature of virtue, nor to lay down general rules, but to guide man in the practice of virtue by telling him what to do now, and to apply general rules to this particular case.
Yet prudence is not merely right judgement
about particular situations,
but right judgement issuing in action.
We should never call anyone prudent who knows what ought to be done but does not
do it.
Prudence, therefore, involves and implies a good will - a will to do what is right.
In other words, the moral virtues are so interconnected that a man cannot be
prudent, i.e. act prudently, unless he be already brave, temperate and just - for he cannot perform the actions which prudence
dictates unless he has a will strengthened against the temptations of fear, lust and self-interest; and he cannot exercise these
other virtues unless he be prudent. For it is by prudence that he determines in each particular case what is brave or temperate or
just. Without prudence the brave man is foolhardy, the temperate man puritanical, the just man scrupulous. Prudence, indeed,
directs the acts of all the virtues, even the theological. For acts of faith, hope and charity must also be performed prudently,
in the right degree and time and place. Regard must be had to the needs of mind and body for relaxation, and to the claims of
other persons and duties. The having of such regard is the work of prudence.
The essential acts
or functions of prudence are said by St. Thomas to be three (S.T. II, 11, quaest. xlvii, art. 8):
to take counsel,
to judge
and to command.
Prudence first of all considers carefully ways and means.
So far as human uncertainty of the future allows, it takes into account all
circumstances and possibilities.
With these considerations in mind, it determines what now it is best or right to do.
Having so determined, it commands that the action be performed.
For example, the virtue of charity inclines a man to give a certain sum of money away.
He considers a number of causes and persons, he weighs their varying needs and the use to which they would put his gift. He sets
the advantage of one large gift against a number of smaller ones, and finally, it may be, he decides that his gift is best given
to one particular person. Having so decided, he gives. It will be seen from this example that there are two necessary qualities in
every act of prudence - carefulness and confidence. In the acts of consideration and judgement there must be no undue haste. Every
reasonable care must be taken that no relevant factor is left out of account. In the act of command there must be promptness and
decision. Once the mind is made up, the order to act must be given. Further delay and hesitation and worry is imprudent. We can
never have absolute certainty about the results of our actions or the correctness of our judgements, for we are ignorant not only
of the future but also of many present things that have a bearing on the matter. Once we have given to it that degree of careful
attention that the importance of the subject demands, we have satisfied the claims of prudence. Further delay and hesitation
after that only lead to further perplexity and obscure still more our vision and paralyse the will. Such conduct is over-cautious
and so imprudent.
Prudence is thus almost identical with conscience,
for it is prudence that informs the conscience.
When the conscience gives a correct judgement, ordering us to do this particular action, that is an act of prudence. For the act
of prudence is a judgement of conscience in accordance with a prudent estimate of the given situation. And just as we are never to
blame if we act in accordance with conscience, even when conscience is in error, so we are never to blame if we act after prudent
consideration.
For the two are the same thing.
To act prudently is to act after careful and honest thought.
Even if our decision turns out wrong, still it was prudent, given the situation as we saw it and could not help seeing it. A
conscientious judgement - which is to be followed, without blame even though it is wrong - is a judgement arrived at after careful
and honest thought.
In order to arrive at a prudent judgement
there are needed a number of other qualities.
These qualities, which are necessary for the perfect possession and practice of the virtue of prudence, are called by St. Thomas
its "integral parts". We should call them component parts, for they are essential elements or units which go to make the
whole, and without any one of which the whole is incomplete, but each of which by itself is of little value. It derives its value
from being a part of a whole. For the virtue of prudence St. Thomas gives eight of these "integral parts" or subsidiary
habits.
They are:
(1) Memory, or experience.
A knowledge from past experience of how men generally behave, and of how things usually turn out, is of great assistance in the
formation of a prudent judgement. Wise men learn from experience, and speculative and theoretical knowledge is tested and
corrected by application to practical problems and by observation of actual life. Hence it is that those who have had long and
wide experience are generally more prudent counsellors than those who have not.
(2) Intelligence,
whereby is meant the capacity to sum up and appreciate a situation, as well as an understanding of the particular moral principles
or rules which have to be applied to it. It is clearly the part of a prudent man considering a problem, to disentangle the
relevant from the irrelevant, and to penetrate to the meaning and purpose of a moral rule so that he may rightly discern whether
it is properly applicable to this situation or not.
(3) Willingness to learn from others,
for no one man can be expert in, or have first-hand knowledge of, all branches of life and all kinds of peoples. Prudence is
concerned with particular acts and situations, and these are infinitely various. Hence it is necessary that the prudent man be
willing to learn from others.
(4) The capacity to argue correctly,
to infer from the general to the particular, and to put facts together. In order to arrive at a prudent decision in a complicated
situation there is need of clear and acute reasoning. Imprudent decisions are often the result of wrong inferences and
consequential wrong applications of general principles to particular cases. A prudent man is greatly helped if he has a clear
head.
(5) An ability to see quickly what are the best means to a given end.
This is of especial use and importance when a situation arises suddenly and calls for immediate action. It is really a natural
gift, akin to cleverness or shrewdness, but it is capable of development and increase by practice, and can also be acquired by
constant effort. It is the "knack" of seeing "what will do" and what will not.
These qualities are all concerned with the capacity to form a
judgement after consideration of the past and of things as they are now. They all contribute to summing up a situation and
arriving at an accurate appreciation of a position. The remaining three qualities are concerned with forecasting the future, to
the end that the action proposed to be taken now may be that which will in fact attain the desired result.
(6) Foresight, not in the sense merely of foreseeing what is going to happen, but in the sense of foreseeing that the
action proposed will in fact conduce to the desired end of the good life.
In other words, it is the quality of foreseeing the necessary results of the action, that they will not be bad. Thus a prudent man
never advises a bad action as a means of attaining a good end, for that is imprudent. It is taking a short view only. Thus a
large-scale robbery might seem the quickest and most efficient way of raising money for a charity. But it would be imprudent;
because robbery is harmful to the good life, and tends away from the end of prudence instead of conducing towards it. From the
point of view of prudence - the living of the good life - the robbery does more harm than the charity does good. The cardinal
maxim of prudence is that one may not do evil that good may come. And the prudent man must be able to foresee that his action will
not be itself dishonest.
(7) He must also have circumspection, that he may be able to foresee that
his action will not be made wrong or fruitless by the circumstances in which he will perform it. For
example, I may wish to cultivate someone's friendship. To this end I decide to invite him to dinner. But I overlook the fact that
he is a vegetarian and resents all invitations to dinner, or that the day for which I have invited him is Good Friday. Lack of
circumspection involves the choice of means that are bad or vain through external circumstances.
(8) Lastly there is need of caution, that the action proposed will not be prevented from achieving its results by any external
causes. For example, if a man decides that it is his duty to work every day between tea and dinner, he is incautious if at the
same time he decides to buy a wireless set. Or if he writes an important letter but entrusts it for posting to a careless child.
In short, prudence requires the faculty of careful and clear consideration of the facts, and shrewd forecasting of the effects of the actions that it orders to be done.
Prudence concerns the right choice of means
to ends in the sphere of human actions.
Therefore there are as many different kinds of prudence as there are different kinds of ends of human actions.
There is, for example, domestic prudence, which is the good government and direction of one's household and family, and there is
military prudence, the quality of a good army commander, and there is political prudence or statesmanship. But all these
different kinds of prudence may be reduced to two. Individual prudence, which is the right management by an individual of his own
acts to the end that he may live the good life; and social or regal prudence, which is the right management of one's own or other
people's actions with a view to the well-being of society or of some social unit. It is well known that many saintly people
possess the virtue of individual prudence to a high degree, but yet lack social prudence and are thereby ill-fitted for the rule
and management of societies. Just as there are others who are well able to act prudently as rulers and governors, seeking and
promoting the true welfare of those for whom they are responsible, who are yet without individual prudence; perhaps because they
are unable, through lack of temperance, to control their own passions and so act imprudently where they themselves are
concerned, in a way which they would never counsel to others, nor, if they had authority, permit.
The sin of imprudence is not the mere absence of prudence - for that, children
may have from lack of experience - but an active opposition to, and denial of, prudence.
It is manifested in three ways.
(1) It may take the form of rashness.
This is the vice of those who plunge into action without proper consideration and reflection. Its gravity is conditioned by the
gravity of the action. For the more important the matter on which we are engaged, the stricter is the obligation upon us to give
it proper and careful thought. This rashness is exhibited by those who rush into marriage without reflecting on its seriousness,
or by those who are ready immediately to give forceful advice and counsel on difficult and perplexing points.
(2) Imprudence may also take the form of negligence and thoughtlessness.
This is not the same as rashness, for rashness involves taking no thought at all, but negligence taking too little thought. It
means making up one's mind too quickly, without pausing to enquire whether there may not be further considerations, which ought
to be taken into account. It is a kind of levity, which is contented with the first thought that occurs and is too lazy or too
intent on the action proposed, to bother to reflect further.
(3) The last form of imprudence is known as inconstancy. It means going back on a decision rightly and prudently arrived at,
through some gust of passion. As when a man who has decided, after reflection, that he ought to give up alcohol, yields to a
sudden temptation and changes his mind.
The sins of imprudence nearly always arise
from intemperance, especially in the matter of sex.
The temptations of sex are strong and insistent, and once they are given a hearing they are potent to override and silence the
arguments of reason or prudence. Indeed it is not so much that the sensual do not listen to reason, they do not even hear it.
But all the passions are in their own degree the enemies of prudence. The avaricious, the ill-tempered, the ambitious are all
victims of imprudence, for the force of their vices prevents them from attending to wise counsel and drives them to action without
prudent reflection.
There is another kind of imprudence, which errs
by excess.
It is a false prudence, either because it is directed to a wrong end or pursues a particular end more thoroughly than it
deserves, or else because it bestows on a good end an excessive caution and anxiety. To the first form belongs worldly prudence,
which gives all its care to worldly matters, whether pleasure or profit, to the neglect or subordination of man's true end. The
pleasure-loving and the astute are imprudent in this way. To the second form belongs the fault of the anxious and the scrupulous.
They worry too much about the future, whether it be the necessities of life or their progress in virtue. The end that they are
seeking is in either case good, but they are unreasonably prudent and cautious. They are not satisfied when they have taken the
proper amount of thought and care, but continue to fret and worry lest things should not turn out right, lest after all they
should be failing.
The virtue of prudence whereby we arrive at right decisions is above all things necessary to the good Christian. It is perhaps true that nowadays we think too little about it; we are too apt to give our praise to the man of decision, who knows his own mind and is always ready for immediate action or advice; we are inclined to overrate the gift of intuitive understanding and to trust overmuch in sudden inspiration. It is perhaps true also that we underrate the difficulty and complexity of moral decisions, and, it may be, their importance; that we rest too easily in the assumption that if we mean well things will somehow turn out all right, and that in any case we cannot be blamed if we did or advised what we thought right at the time; that we forget that we have a duty to act prudently and not rashly or thoughtlessly. For these reasons it is worthwhile to call attention to this virtue, and address ourselves to its cultivation. The seeds of it are present in all men, for it is a part of reason; to those who believe in and love God, God gives the desire to live according to His will, and reveals what is His will. This is infused prudence. The way to prudence, therefore, is threefold. To control desire, so that reason is given her proper hearing, and we do not rush into action without thought, because of the strength of our passions. To pray to God that He will enlighten our understanding with the gift of counsel and wisdom. To reflect and meditate upon our true end and inheritance, that we may grow accustomed to considering all our actions and problems in the light of our eternal destiny as the children of God. It is the mark of prudence that it considers all things not in the light merely of our life here on earth, but in the light of our life on earth as preparatory to our citizenship in Heaven. Meditation, prayer and discipline are the means to the acquiring of this prudence.