PRUDENCE — The p. Music of the 13th century — Venice, basilica of St Mark.
The common judgment that practical reason must pronounce, guided by p., is an act of conscience; conscience is an act or faculty, not a virtue. P. is the virtue of governing and disciplining the whole moral life, directing and ruling action because it knows the supreme principles of practical order and knows how to apply them to practical life. The act by which, in the face of a particular case, a judgment is pronounced on the morality of an act is conscience; and in order that this act may be well performed, practical reason must be perfected by the habit of the virtue of p. Conscience is therefore also an act of the virtue of p.
P. is a true moral virtue, both because it requires moral dispositions and because of its object. This is constituted by human acts, intrinsic to the agent, whether a physical person or a community, in so far as they must be done or omitted in order to act honestly. Its object also includes the moral virtues which it directs as moderator and to which it is so closely bound that neither can it exist in a perfect degree without all the other moral virtues, nor can these exist without p. Thus the act of any other virtue belongs to it not in so far as it is an act of fortitude, chastity, etc., but in so far as it must be placed here and now, that is, in those particular circumstances of time and environment, and in relation to the due end. The aspect of such an act which p. has in view is its practical truth, that is, its rectitude or orientation to the ultimate end. Yet the virtue of p. does not merely attend to the extreme circumstances of the act of virtue to be performed, but also determines in what manner and measure the act must be performed (medium virtutis), the just mean in which moral virtues consist, the just mean between excess and defect.
Prudence — The p. Music of the 13th century — Venice, basilica of St Mark.