In the previous chapter, we took prudence apart to examine its different acts and parts. There our discussion worked like a mechanic disassembling an engine into component parts. In this chapter, we’ll take the opposite approach. With the work of breaking down behind us, it’s time for building up. Here the discussion will work like a mechanic assembling a car, starting from the chassis, suspension, transmission, and engine. We will situate prudence in the context of the whole moral life to show how it “drives” that whole. Whole, here, means something that is integrated or unified. For a human person, to be whole is to live coherently or consistently for a meaningful purpose. Prudence brings about this wholeness by conducting us steadily to the goal of human flourishing.

Not unlike the parts of a car, which are manufactured for assembly, so too, the virtues are designed to fit and work together. Saint Ambrose writes, “The virtues are connected and linked together, so that whoever has one, is seen to have several.” Saint Augustine adds, “The virtues that reside in the human mind are quite inseparable from one another.” Their observations square with our experience. Where one virtue is seen, more are sure to be found. If I see that a coworker is kind and objective in a conflict, I can safely assume that she’s also peaceable and forgiving. Every once in a while you’ll find exceptions, but virtuous people tend to be virtuous throughout. The virtues, it turns out, are connected. By the same token, the vices, too, are connected. Cicero writes, “If you confess to not having one particular virtue, it must needs be that you have none at all.” Saint Gregory adds, “One virtue without the other is either of no account whatever, or very imperfect.” If I see pride or vainglory in a man, I’m not surprised to learn later that he is easily offended and dishonest. Persons with grave moral faults often have a whole host of vices crowding around inside them, and they’re likely to breed more.

This connection among the virtues isn’t accidental or haphazard. It’s part of the design. If one is temperate, he or she doesn’t just happen to be prudent, just, and courageous. In reality, the virtues actually reinforce each other. They encourage, inspire, or even cause each other to grow and to flourish. Most of this chapter describes how prudence causes the moral virtues. It’s also true, though, that the moral virtues cause prudence, albeit in a different way. Aristotle has a shorthand way for capturing this phenomenon. He says, “As the man is, so he sees.” So, if a man is good or virtuous, then he will reason well or virtuously. In other words, if a man is just, courageous, and temperate, then he will be prudent as well. For, if he has the moral virtues, his well-formed desires aid him to have well-formed thoughts.

Aristotle describes why this is so. He explains that, in practical things, the ends of the moral virtues each work like principles. Principles here mean something like points of departure. They are what motivate or give rise to action. The end of justice is simply what is due to the other. The end of fortitude is difficult sense goods and evils. The end of temperance is simple sense goods and evils. Concretely speaking, these ends may be as humble as satisfying hunger (temperance) or as lofty as worshiping God (justice). Regardless of whether they are low or high, though, a virtuous person develops an orderly appetite for these ends or an orderly relationship to them. He learns to love them well and within bounds. This then affects how he thinks about them — a virtuous person is more likely to think about ends well when it comes to making decisions. He is better disposed to be prudent.

To illustrate this point, say you’re headed down the block to have a much-anticipated lunch at a local diner. As you walk along, you recall that you owe $10 to a friend. As it turns out, you only have $10 on you. Then, as luck would have it, you see this friend standing in front of the diner in conversation with a police officer. From a distance, you hear the police officer say, “You can’t just leave your flashers on. You have to pay the $10 parking.” You also happen to know that your friend is overwhelmed by responsibilities right now and strapped for cash. If anyone is deserving of your aid, it’s her. Because you are just, courageous, and temperate, you see the meeting as providential and your arrival as timely. Here is an opportunity to repay a debt and lend a hand. You don’t think for a minute about how you’ll miss out on lunch. It doesn’t even occur to you. And so, disposed as you are to act prudently, you hurry over to your friend, pay the parking cost, and maybe even extend a dinner invitation for later in the week. Because you have orderly appetites, you see the situation well, more or less, and so act prudently.

Aristotle goes on to explain that the inverse is equally true. If you are the slave of malformed appetites, you will see poorly. Injustice, cowardice, and intemperance each dispose to imprudence. The man who is consumed by a life of vice neither loves nor pursues the ends of the moral virtues as he should; and since he desires perversely, his view of reality is skewed. He sees exclusively in the selfish terms of satisfying his needs. Failings in justice, fortitude, and temperance dispose him to failings in prudence.

Return to the diner, but this time from a vicious perspective. Again, you notice your friend out front in conversation with a police officer. This time, though, you hesitate. At this point in your day, the thought of returning home and preparing a turkey sandwich is just too much to handle. People are always asking you to make sacrifices, but every now and then you need to spend a little something on yourself. After all, your $10 isn’t the only $10 that your friend could use to pay for parking. Technically, you never said when you’d pay her back. What’s another few days? With these thoughts in mind, you sneak in the side entrance to the diner and leave your friend to her fate. This is imprudent, given your motives, but it’s not surprising. You were disposed to imprudence by an inability to recognize what is due to another (injustice), an unwillingness to labor in the kitchen (cowardice), and an inordinate attachment to diner food (intemperance). Behold the flip side of the coin. “As the man is, so he sees.”

The moral virtues heal and elevate desire, and in so doing, they clarify our thinking and dispose us to prudent action.

From this illustration, it’s evident that we need the moral virtues to be truly prudent. Without them, we flounder. From one vantage, this can be dispiriting, especially given our moral weakness. Seen from another perspective, though, it can be encouraging. Moral virtue is a force multiplier: Growth in moral virtue means growth in prudence, growth in one’s whole moral life. The moral virtues heal and elevate desire, and in so doing, they clarify our thinking and dispose us to prudent action. As we become better, we see better. As we grow in moral virtue, we grow in prudence. But while the moral virtues cause prudence, prudence also causes the moral virtues in its own way. It’s to this aspect that we now turn.

When describing the cardinal virtues, St. Bernard of Clairvaux refers to prudence as the “charioteer of the virtues.” According to the image, the charioteer (prudence) sets out with a purpose in mind, namely, winning the race. To that end, he drives his horses (justice, fortitude, and temperance), spurring them on and reining them in, as need be. If he is to compete well, the charioteer must know his horses and how best to treat them. He must also know how they interact with each other so he can coordinate their movements. Effectively, the charioteer is responsible for integrating and unifying his team in pursuit of victory.

From this image, we get a basic understanding of how prudence directs the moral virtues and so makes the human person whole. First, prudence oversees the movements of the individual virtues. Each virtue has its own particular end and inclination: Justice concerns what is due to the other; fortitude concerns difficult sense goods; temperance concerns simple sense goods. Prudence, like a charioteer who knows his horses, gets to know these different inclinations and identifies the best ways to achieve them. Prudence drives each of the lower virtues to its fullest potential by alternately spurring them on and reining them in as it presses on toward victory.

Second, since it has the power to see the whole of life, prudence draws together the movements of the moral virtues and drives them to its own overarching end. In effect, prudence trains the moral virtues into a team. Like the charioteer who might place the strong, impetuous horse in the front and the calm, veteran horse mid-pack, prudence coordinates the moral virtues so as to get the most out of each. In the process, it also raises them to a higher pursuit. Left to themselves, horses don’t dream of winning a race. It’s the charioteer who dreams of such feats. If they succeed, though, both charioteer and horses share in the same victory. Likewise, justice, fortitude, and temperance don’t think in terms of the whole of life. Prudence, though, thinks for them. Prudence holds the goal in mind as it spurs the moral virtues on toward the victory of integral and unified human flourishing under the rule of faith and reason, carried on by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. To appreciate better how prudence causes the moral virtues, let’s look closer at these two main features of prudence’s whole-making work.

The first dimension of prudence’s whole-making work is to help the individual moral virtues achieve their ends. Prudence, the charioteer, tends the stable of the moral virtues by sizing up their different pursuits and identifying the best ways to go about them. In this work, prudence deals with the different inclinations of each of the moral virtues. Inclinations describe the different ways we tend toward different ends, whether those be food, drink, family life, or divine worship. The moral virtues train and perfect these inclinations. In fact, a moral virtue is effectively a healed and elevated inclination for some human end. Prudence helps the moral virtues along by establishing order in these different inclinations. Since inclinations are so foundational for grasping this concept, we will spend a moment trying to better understand their significance.

From a cursory look at creation, we can see that every creature gravitates spontaneously toward what makes it whole. Plants send out roots to collect both water and nutrients and turn their leaves toward the sun’s rays. Animals flee from predators and care for their young in order to fill out their flock, pack, or herd. Human beings plant crops, husband animals, build cities, and seek to know truths of the highest order. Each creature seeks the fulfillment of its nature in the way it “knows” best.

In the case of our own human nature, there are certain basic inclinations that define who we are and how we are meant to be. First, we want to keep on being. And so, we are naturally inclined to stay in existence. Second, we want to ensure the survival of our species. And so, we are naturally inclined to family life. Third, we want to cultivate meaningful relationships. And so, we are naturally inclined to know the truth about God and to live peaceably in society.

These inclinations (among others) aren’t just something tacked onto our nature as an afterthought. They are at the heart of what it means for us to be human, so deeply impressed in our natures that we refer to them as a law — the natural law. To say that the inclinations are a law means that, if we are to flourish, we must follow them. That doesn’t suggest that we can just abandon ourselves to them. Our inclinations, especially those most basic inclinations to food, drink, and sexual intercourse, are often disorderly. This comes as no surprise since they flow from fallen powers of a fallen nature. As we saw earlier, we experience ignorance in the intellect, malice in the will, and a combination of weakness and concupiscence in the passions. As a result, our natural and good inclinations cannot always be relied upon to track consistently with the true good. Even though we may recognize that a higher good (like the worship of God offered at Sunday Mass) should be preferred to a lower good (like eight hours of sleep after a late night), it may still be hard to choose the higher good when the lower good is very attractive. How, then, do we heal and elevate these different inclinations? How do we follow the natural law? By growth in moral virtue. The moral virtues clarify the natural law for us and empower us to carry it out. They free us for excellence and direct us toward happiness.

In the work of healing and elevating these inclinations, prudence occupies a special place. It exercises a kind of leadership by forming an estimation of the ends of the moral virtues and identifying the best means to those ends. Prudence, the charioteer, trains each of the moral virtues for the roles they are to play in the race and drives them on to the attainment of true human excellence.

The human person is presented with a variety of good ends in need of ordering. Some rank higher while others rank lower, and a choice of one may exclude the choice of another. At a glance, the prudent person is able to take in all these goods, comprehend them, and fix each in its place. Prudence is able to do so because it can survey the whole landscape of human pursuits. It’s not limited to just this or that good. It accounts for everything that is properly human.

To master a language, you can’t just focus on grammar or vocabulary or listening or speaking to the exclusion of other dimensions. It all has to be taken together to become truly proficient. Prudence helps you to master the language of the whole of human life. It’s the virtue of human fluency. Aristotle writes that the prudent man is “able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of things conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of things conduce to the good life in general.” While other virtues are determined to some specific domain of human activity, prudence is focused on human totality. From this standpoint, the prudent person esteems different goods as they ought to be esteemed — according to the role they play in genuine human flourishing.

Because of the overarching perspective that prudence enjoys, it can help the moral virtues to size up their ends, to identify means, and to perfect inclinations along the way. Each moral virtue has its own proper excellence. The virtue of justice heals and elevates the will, rectifying one’s relationships by rendering to the other what is due. The virtue of fortitude heals and elevates the passions by steeling one against difficulties — alternately urging on to confrontation and cautioning from recklessness. The virtue of temperance heals and elevates the passions for food and drink and sexual intercourse (in the setting of married life) by heartening one to enjoy these goods while retaining sobriety of spirit. Left to themselves, these virtues have a sense for their proper excellence, but they don’t necessarily know how to go about selecting means to those ends. This is the task of prudence, because only prudence, informed by law and grace, knows what acting reasonably looks like in the circumstances.

The ends of the moral virtues, we have seen, are just part of the natural law. The human person is built to desire preservation of existence, family life, and genuine communion. The moral virtues don’t have to discover their ends. They are provided by human nature. However, the means to those ends have to be discerned by reason, and the moral virtues are not, of themselves, reasonable. The moral virtues live in the appetites — the will and the passions. They don’t live in the intellect. Thus, they need a reasonable virtue — prudence — to help them sort out the means to their naturally-given ends.

Prudence is responsible for determining how: how to be just, how to be courageous, and how to be temperate.

Prudence is responsible for determining how: how to be just, how to be courageous, and how to be temperate. In the case of justice, prudence grasps when to punish or to pardon in light of the common good. In the case of fortitude, prudence discerns concretely whether to fight, to flee, or to endure, given the persons involved. In the case of temperance, prudence supplies the particular insight into what’s too much or too little given the time and the place. The moral virtues form the appetites to desire well, while prudence applies the reason to think well. Prudence chooses among different desires, directing one in the concrete choice between a corporate reimbursement or a personal expenditure, between a pull-up jump shot or a drive to the hoop, between two cocktails or three. Prudence sizes up the different goods at stake and then selects the best means for achieving the ends.

The second dimension of prudence’s whole-making work is intimately associated with the first dimension. Prudence, the charioteer, coordinates the movements of the moral virtues and drives them together toward its goal. Prudence assembles and harnesses its team to fashion an integrated and unified life bent on human flourishing.

Let’s return briefly to the discussion of inclinations. The moral virtues each have inclinations to their respective ends: Justice is inclined to what is due to the other, fortitude to difficult sense goods and evils, and temperance to simple sense goods and evils. It’s not only the moral virtues that have inclinations, though. Prudence has its own inclination as well, an inclination not of appetite but of thought. Aristotle writes, “All men, by nature, desire to know.” As we have said, sometimes that knowledge is for knowing’s sake, and sometimes it is for doing’s sake. Prudence guides this latter inclination to the practical truth, moving us to choose well for what makes us flourish. In effect, prudence heals and elevates the inclination of practical reason — the reason’s pursuit of what is to be done, and not just in this or that setting, but for the whole of life.

While it holds this truth in mind, prudence calls upon the moral force of justice, fortitude, and temperance for achieving the end that it alone is able to understand. In the process, the moral virtues come to their most excellent expression in the fulfillment of the whole. With prudence driving them onward, the rigor of justice, the audacity of fortitude, and the moderation of temperance all assume their highest realization. How does this play out in the concrete? Let’s say that you are, by temperament, a very anxious and detail-oriented person. Often, your mind is consumed with practical things, especially when those things seem urgent. You are trying to manage it but only with limited success. Unsurprisingly, this disposition makes it hard for you to pray. You try to meditate for thirty minutes each morning, but your mind wanders toward practical things. When this happens, you set aside your prayer in order to list your action items. You muse to yourself that, perhaps, this is what the Lord wanted you to pray about. If you’re honest, though, you don’t really believe the rationalization. For, although momentarily relieved by rehearsing the day’s duties, you soon feel disappointed that you were so easily deflected from your prayer.

As of late, however, you have had some successes. On a couple of occasions, you were able to resist the urge and persevere in your meditation. When that happened, your mind was soon quieted as you attended to the Lord less anxiously. As you have grown in virtue, prudence interiorizes the experience of these successes and calls upon the pertinent virtues to aid you when the occasion next arises. As the mental list begins to populate, prudence kindles justice to recall that your commitment to the worship of God is more important than these little tasks. Further, prudence commands fortitude to quell the fear that what is not immediately written down will necessarily be forgotten. It also tasks temperance the night before to ensure a good night’s sleep, apart from which this prayer time wouldn’t have been possible in the first place. In this one simple act, justice, fortitude, and temperance are all drawn into worship through the coordination of prudence. Each of the moral virtues participate in the victory of prayer, and, in the act, your moral life comes together in the pursuit of a wholly human end.

Prudence, Saint Thomas teaches, is like the providence of the moral virtues. Just as providence disposes creatures sweetly and strongly within a well-orchestrated divine plan, so prudence draws the moral virtues into its own rational designs. Prudence is able to account well for the whole course of our human lives. Whereas the moral virtues lower their eyes and plow ahead, prudence stands upright and surveys the scene as it sets about its wise work. By taking into account the whole of the human affair, prudence gives full scope to justice, fortitude, and temperance, looking beyond their blinders into its own plenary vision.

Which leads us back to the image of prudence as charioteer of the virtues. Prudence, we have seen, is uniquely suited to assist the moral virtues in their respective pursuits and draw them into a wholly human work. Apart from prudence, they may exhibit some excellence or achieve certain goods, but they will never reach their full potential. The moral virtues without prudence are like untrained horses. When they’re running wild or resisting the breaker’s whip, they may be inspiring, but they’re also terrifying — beautiful at a distance, but scary up close. Once trained though, these horses become part of a human work — employable for labor and leisure alike, called into genuine human pursuits. It’s from among their ranks that you have your war horses and race horses, the great horses of memory. Under the tutelage of the trainer, the cavalryman, and the jockey, these horses do something special. So too with the moral virtues. Under the care of prudence, the charioteer of the virtues, the moral virtues are driven to the realization of their ends and coordinated in the work of human flourishing.

By distilling the insights taken from the charioteer images, we can think of prudence as the reason of the virtuous appetites. Prudence, in its interaction with the will and passions, can be said to infuse reason into every aspect of human life. From beyond the bounds of the intellect, prudence’s insight into the practical truth overflows into the appetites, inspiring virtuous action and shaping the appetites accordingly. This can be seen in two main ways.

First, prudence infuses the appetites with a habitual desire for a reasonable life. Aristotle writes that the moral virtues direct the appetites to a kind of mean, maneuvering them between excess or defect. The courageous man, for instance, wends his way between rashness (excess) and cowardice (defect) and the temperate man navigates between overindulgence (excess) and insensibility (defect). This mean is determined by prudence, but the determination actually spills into the very appetite itself. To give an everyday example, think of your approach to the kids’ menu. At a certain point, we all stop ordering from it. That first departure may be a conscious decision to set aside childish things, but at a certain point, we just move on from it entirely. Imagine going back to the kids’ menu now. Chances are that we no longer even enjoy those meals. Our appetites have changed. We want food that is more substantial and real. What is true of food is also true of the good more generally. As prudence infuses reason into our appetites over the years, we come in time to desire what is more substantial and real in human life.

Second, the appetites themselves come to interact more reasonably. One of the effects of the wounds of original sin is that we enter the world in an unreasonable state. Each of our appetites seeks its end with little concern for how it ought to coordinate with the others. Each appetite acts like a pouty child endlessly repeating “Mine!” Before the fall, man would have found it easy to pursue a variety of human goods in orderly fashion. Now, it is exceedingly difficult. By infusing reason into the appetites, though, prudence begins to order the appetites according to the pattern of their original harmony. Each appetite is empowered to interact fruitfully and reasonably with the others, because each has been made part of reason’s integral and unified work. The whole of one’s life has been made to bear the mark of reason.

Both of these aspects of infusing reason involve the moral virtues. Moral virtues mature the appetites and help to coordinate a reasonable harmony among them. St. Thomas Aquinas writes that “Moral virtue is a habit accompanied by right reason, which, of course, is prudence.” The moral virtues, as the allies of prudence, work with reason to reintegrate and unify the human person. As a result, the moral virtues come to share in the nobility of prudence’s dignity. The moral virtues experience something of prudence’s providence. To illustrate this, take the example of temperance.

Left to itself, temperance just concerns food, drink, and sexual intercourse. There’s nothing about its activity, though, that is distinctively human. We share its inclinations with cows and kangaroos. But, when taken up by prudence, temperance goes well beyond the animal kingdom. As Josef Pieper writes: “Only by means of this perfected ability to make good choices [prudence] are instinctive inclinations toward goodness [appetites] exalted into the spiritual core of man’s decisions, from which truly human acts arise.” In alliance with prudence, temperance is drawn more fully into the life of reason. In this setting, whether one is selecting the menu for a dinner party or deciding to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, the choice takes on a new aspect. The passions are still engaged, but as suffused with reason’s judgment.

Temperance, here, isn’t just a matter of slowing down and saying no. Prudence draws it into a richer human story, one that prudence alone is able to tell. For the temperate woman, it is not enough to say, “I am inclined to family life, therefore I will marry this man standing next to me and begin.” That might not be the best choice, especially if the particular man under consideration is very young or is about to leave the country for a work rotation or is called to a religious vocation. In the end, the human person is ordered to a whole life, a life of integrity and unity, one in which the moral virtues play an important role — one perfected and coordinated by the virtue of prudence.

Prudence, with its infusion of reason, is simply the human excellence par excellence. It’s the competence that sorts out the different aspects of one’s life and brings them together in the pursuit of happiness. It’s in this spirit that the Desert Fathers refer to prudence as “the mother, the guardian, and the director of the virtues.” Prudence gathers the power of the lower virtues, spurs them on according to its clear-sighted vision, and guides each in its proper place. Prudence sees to the perfection of a whole person, for it is the place of prudence to integrate, to unify, and ultimately to infuse the whole of human life with its reasonable excellence.

Are there particular virtues you feel like you need to work on? How might growth in those virtues help with growth in prudence?

What are some practical steps you can take toward establishing a more prudent prayer life?

Think of some moments in your day where you feel overwhelmed by desire, whether to eat a snack or look at your phone or something else. What role does your conscious thought ordinarily play at those times? How can prudence infuse reason into those moments?