“The end of a virtuous life,” says St Gregory of Nyssa, “is to become like unto God.”St Gregory of Nyssa, Orationes de beatitudinibus, 1 (PG 44: 1200). Because the uniquely Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity hold the preeminent place in the moral life of the Christian believer, the theologian gives these virtues first consideration in any treatment of the moral life. But as Proverbs reminds us, “The man of discretion watches how he treads” (Prov 14:15), and so the Christian believer requires other human virtues in order to lead a good life. And first among these, the tradition numbers prudence. Prudence opens up the human mind to the world of moral truth and value. Within the community of the Church, human prudence achieves an entirely new perfection. Von Balthasar speaks about the “ ‘opening up’ to ‘the Gentiles’ (Gal 3:14) that is effected in the gathering together of Jesus’ followers and the bestowing on them of the Holy Spirit (through faith in him).““Nine Theses” (5), p. 114. The same kind of opening up takes place in the moral life through the graced transformation of the human virtues - what we call the infused virtues. Because Jesus promises the guidance of the Holy Spirit to all those who are gathered in his name, the Christian believer is a man or woman whose soul brims with a graced discretion that continues to develop during the course of a virtuous life. For as Origen rightly remarks, Christ loves the virtues.

In his Summa theologiae, Aquinas elaborates a particularly good schema for setting up a virtue-centered approach to the Christian life. He announces the broad outline of this schema as follows:

The entire subject matter of morals being thus condensed under a discussion of virtues, these, in turn, are to be reduced to seven. Three are theological, and they must be the first topic; the other four are cardinal, and will be the second. As to the intellectual virtues, prudence is one of them and is included and listed among the cardinal virtues.Summa theologiae Ha, prologue.

Altogether in the second part (secunda pars), Aquinas devotes 170 quaestiones to distinct virtues; in the same section, he also specifically relates these virtues to the particular vocations and special charisms that flourish within the Christian community. Of course, this syntagma of the moral virtues forms only the second half of Aquinas’s entire treatment of moral matters. In the first section of the secunda pars, Aquinas develops the more general principles of Christian morality, among which he makes a point of identifying the ultimate telos of intelligent life as the blessed vision of God. In the Christian tradition, says Cardinal Ratzinger, “morality has its starting point in what the Creator has placed in the heart of every person: the need for happiness and love; [and so] human beings are like God because they can love and are capable of reason.”From Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s presentation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to the media; see L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly English edition, no. 50 (16 December 1992), p. 4. The prudent Christian man or woman has put on the mind of Christ, so that the power of Christ can transform the whole person in both mind and heart. The infused virtues not only bring Christian morality to its perfection but also ready the believer for the joyful vision of God.

We know that Aquinas in the Summa theologiae begins his analysis of virtue with the standard textbook definition of virtue that was common among 13th-century moralists: “Virtue is a good quality of mind, by which one lives righteously, of which no one can make bad use, which God works in us without us.”See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 55, a. 4, Following normal procedure, we can consider each element of the definition as Aquinas explains it within his general teleological view of the moral life. First, the formal cause: “Virtue is a good quality of mind.” For Aquinas, virtue belongs to the generic category of quality; more specifically he places it within that kind of quality that Aristotle called habitus. As a philosophical notion, habitus signifies the perfection of a human capacity that enables a person not only to act, but to act well. Because the virtues really alter the particular substances in which they inhere, these good habitus modify or shape the psychological capacities of the human person. But this happens in a way that respects the virtuous person’s ability to express a full range of creativity and human initiative. New Testament belief does not produce boring uniformity; rather the Christian experiences a kind of second-nature conformity to gospel values that makes living an upright life prompt, joyful, and easy. Since virtue is supple, the virtuous person can decide and act on moral issues that result from even the most complex circumstances of the moral life.

Second, the material cause: Since virtue exemplifies a moral or spiritual reality, strictly speaking virtue has no material cause. Rather, for the purposes of analysis, we speak about the subjects in which the virtues exist as supplying for their material cause. These subjects include all the rational powers or capacities of the human soul: intellect, will (or the rational appetite), and the sense appetites. To possess human nature in itself does not suffice to cause virtue; rather, acquired virtue develops by some deliberate exercise of the human capacities or powers, viz, intellect, will, sense appetites.See De veritate q. 1, a. 8: “quaelibet virtus, faciens operationem hominis bonam, habet proprium actum in nomine, qui sui actione potest ipsam reducere in actum.”

Third, the efficient cause: “which God works in us without us.” While human actions can account for the development of the habitus that we call the acquired virtues, the definition envisages the infused virtues as sheer gifts of divine grace. That is, these virtuous forms come directly from the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone serves as the efficient cause of their coming to be and remaining in us. Because their origin and development depend on the divine agency, the infused moral virtues function only within the broader context of the theological life, of faith, of hope, and of charity.

Fourth, the final cause: “by which one lives righteously, of which no one can make bad use.” As an operative habitus, the end or final cause of virtue remains the performance of the virtuous action itself. By definition, the exercise of virtue results only in the embrace of good objects. Each of the moral virtues formally marks off an area of human endeavor, but without specifying the exact shape that every good choice will take. The moral goodness that the virtues realize embraces the whole universe of moral objects precisely as these conduce to our possession of the supreme object of all human pursuit and desire. From a teleological perspective, there really are no general “basic human goods,” for every virtuous act that is to be done in some way embodies a good basic or fundamental to the human flourishing of the person who acts.

Although there are some notable exceptions to this general rule, Christian theology today does not take much account of the distinction between the infused and the acquired virtue. Two factors account for this. The first emerges from discussions in the general area of theological anthropology, and especially the popular appeal that an inclusivist view of nature and grace has enjoyed during the period of post-conciliar theology. Many blame the Leonine neo-scholastic revival for its failure to meet every challenge that contemporary person-centered philosophies set forth, although 20th-century Thomists such as Jacques Maritain, for example, could well appreciate and develop the distinction between person and nature, both common and individual. Today, however, most Christian theologians are willing to consider only the individual person, and him or her precisely as a graced person, that is, as enjoying the benefits of an active personal relationship with the blessed Trinity. As a result, not much is said about the human person as a creature, precisely as one who possesses a created human nature. Nor has the claim that, in Christian theology, creation represents a properly theological notion made much of a difference in this respect. In my view, there is a connection between this vision of nature and grace and the fact that moral theologians have enjoyed a wide berth with their speculations about what does and does not perfect human nature, and why from both pulpit and podium we hear moralists hedge on, if not outrightly condone, some plainly immoral forms of human conduct. Because moral theologians lean toward describing the actual state of the believer exclusively in categories of grace and glory, they pay less attention to human nature with its specific capacities and built-in teleologies. To adapt St Augustine’s description of the knowledge of the angels, theologians prefer to examine the moral life only in the light of the Word. But does this theological mood not risk creating some strange ambiguities? For example, to the extent that inclusivist views of nature and grace result in confusion about the moral responsibility of the person who participates in the life of Christ, we find ourselves confronted with antinomies, such as Catholic groups that advocate “abortion rights,” or Catholic groups that condone the homosexual “lifestyle.”

Secondly, there is the practice among moral theologians of establishing norms and rules for moral conduct. The Decalogue of course explains the Church’s catechetical practice of using the commandments to instruct the faithful in the Christian life. I refer rather to the current fashion among moralists to speculate about the moral life in terms of normative conduct that is established exclusively by appeal to pure obligation of one kind or another. Both those who favor the formulation of absolute moral norms and those who want to provide a cushion for the contingencies of the real world by setting in place some contemporary equivalent of casuistry ironically share the same basic paradigm of norm-centered morality. What is important, however, is that those who develop a moral theology exclusively in terms of such moral norms, whether absolute or not, pay scant attention to the requirements of human nature and its real operative powers at work in the moral life. Rather they produce what I would describe as a morality of the head, in which natural law, if not entirely rejected, is portrayed principally as a product of human intelligence. It is especially true that revisionist moral theologians show little enthusiasm for talk about the virtues of the moral life. Because they fail to recognize both that habitus can serve as a real source of action in the human person and that prudence can grapple with the most complex of real life circumstances, the majority of these moralists agree that only some form of proportional reasoning can really assist the perplexed person who is required to make a moral choice.

When the theologian inquires what difference sanctifying grace makes for a life of virtue, the simple affirmation that the acquired moral virtues can develop within the setting of a call to supernatural beatitude and the sacramental practice of divine charity does not suffice. For this proposal offers only an extrinsic explanation, in which the Christian life merely provides an opportunity for instruction in virtue. But Aquinas and the tradition that follows him advance an integrated view of the infused virtues. Unlike those schools that consider theological faith and charity sufficient to account for the virtuous Christian, Thomistic ethics dares to consider the infused virtues as true forms that exist in the operative potencies of the nature that belongs to the individual Christian who loves God above all things and his neighbor as himself or herself. That the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the infused virtues together form the spiritual endowment of every justified believer is the clear teaching of Trent. These graces are not only the perks of the saints.

Virtue shapes the life of the Christian believer set on the path to beatitude. Thus, Aquinas explains the need for God’s special action in the virtuous life in the following way:

Besides the natural principles that humankind possesses for its perfection in the order natural to it, men and women need virtuous habitus… So also, besides the… supernatural principles [of grace and the theological virtues], we are endowed by God with certain infused virtues which perfect us in the ordering of our actions to their end, which is eternal life.De virtutibus in communi q. 1, a. 10. The text that precedes this citation runs as follows: “There is infused into us by God, to enable us to perform acts ordered to eternal life as their end: first grace, which gives the soul a certain spiritual or divine being; and then, faith, hope, and charity. By faith the mind is enlightened concerning supernatural truths, which in their order stand as do principles naturally known in the order of natural actions. By hope and charity the will acquires an inclination to the supernatural good to which the human will, by its own natural operations, is not adequately ordered.”

The universal call to holiness determines the reason for the existence of the infused virtues. Our behavior needs to be conformed to all that points toward eternal life, and neither charity nor faith in itself suffices to transform every feature of the moral life so that our choices become more and more centered on God and directed toward him. As the Letter to the Philippians puts it: “Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise” (Phil 4: 8).

The infused virtues describe the kind of life that is proper to the City of God, the heavenly city of grace.See La Vertu, t. II la-2ae, questions 61 -70, in Somme theologique (Editions de la Revue des Jeunes), ed, R. Bernard, O.P., esp. Appendice II “La vertu acquise et la vertu infuse,” pp. 434ff. While it remains perfectly legitimate to talk about a perfection that exists for human nature itself, the ultimate perfection of each soul simpliciter loquendo, as the scholastics said, comes only from union with God. In a text from the De veritate, Aquinas again explains that “we do not need infused habitus for any other activity than that which natural reason dictates, but just for a more perfect performance of the same activity.”De veritate, q. 14, a. 10. The fuller context for this remark is as follows: “One who is some distance from an end can know the end and desire it; however, he cannot engage in activity which directly concerns the end, but only in that which is connected with the means to the end. Therefore, if we are to reach our supernatural end, we need faith in this life to know the end, for natural knowledge does not go that far. But our natural powers do extend to the means to the end, although not precisely as ordained to that end.” This means that the infused virtues, inasmuch as they operate within the life of faith, provide a safer and surer performance of the good actions that lead to happiness, even though in some cases they produce the same action materially considered, to wit, when both acquired and infused virtues of personal discipline moderate the impulse emotions and bolster the contentious emotions.

The Thomist commentatorial school further explains the difference between the acquired and infused virtues. The 16th-century renaissance commentator Cardinal Cajetan considers the difference according to the infused virtues’ cause, formal object, and their relation to an end. First, the formal object: The infused virtues have a different formal object from the acquired virtues because the infused virtue operates according to a higher principle, namely, according to a divine measure - secundum regulam divinam.Special attention should be paid to Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 91, a. 4 ad 1, which discusses the relationship between natural law and divine law as distinct participations in the lex aeterna. The difference in formal object is realized diversely in the virtues of personal discipline, justice, and prudence. For justice and its allied virtues, a new formal object even changes the material cause of these virtues, that is, the very stuff which justice transforms, or as the Second Vatican Council expresses it “the material of the heavenly Kingdom.”See Gaudium et spes, no. 38. On the other hand, the material element of the virtues of personal discipline, that is, the tempered or bolstered spirits in temperance and the sustained or strengthened forces in fortitude remain the same for both the acquired and infused virtues. Second, the difference in cause and end means that God remains both the origin and the end goal of the infused virtues. St Paul prays that every believer will reach “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).The infused virtues form part of the supernatural organism which makes up the Christian life. But virtue does not mean determinism. Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (San Antonio, 1975), for instance, emphasizes virtue-development as a way to counteract various forms of social determinism. In his judgment, virtue underscores the role of freedom as an indispensable quality of the human person within the human community. As a category of the moral order, infused virtue realizes in human conduct the unity of faith and knowledge about Jesus Christ that is promised to every one who embraces gospel truth.

As a real habitus of the person, Christian moral virtue never entails a repression of sense urges, but rather orders these inclinations of our nature according to the mind of Christ.By contrast, the voluntarist view that the human will alone ultimately achieves all virtuous conduct accordingly proffers grim prospects for harmony between reason and the affective life. Moreover, to view the virtues as heroic exercises of will power is to ignore a fundamental truth concerning human sense appetite, namely, that the lower appetites are born to obey reason. Compare Summa theologiae IIIa q. 15, a. 2, ad 1. The infused virtues allied with cardinal temperance and fortitude differ then from continence and perseverance; these dispositions, even when they are found in the Christian, simply account for a willed enforcement of moderation in face of attractive things and of strengthening in the face of harmful ones. True virtue accomplishes more than a simple truce between unruly passions and the imperatives of a duly informed will; it impresses the measure of reason upon the passions themselves. However, because the infused or Christian virtues belong with the life of theological faith, hope, and charity, the Christian believer realizes this virtuous life only within the context of a living faith in Christ, of whom St Paul writes: “He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful in you” (2 Cor 13: 3). In one who believes in him, Christ supplies the full measure of virtue, “for he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God” (2 Cor 13: 4). And, therefore, neither deformity of appetite nor weakness of intellect can frustrate the power of Christ in our lives. Since the theological virtues energize the infused moral virtues, the love of Christ opens up the way for the final perfection of each man and woman created in the image of God.

In order to explain the importance of prudence in a distinctively Christian but comprehensive moral teaching, the Christian tradition, and especially Aquinas, borrows generously from the classical notion of phronesis, or practical reasoning.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, aa. 1 -16. In an unusually long quaestio, Aquinas sets forth a detailed description of prudence in itself. The material falls under four headings: (1) what kind of virtue is prudence (aa. 1 - 5); (2) what is its proper activity in the moral life (aa. 6-9); (3) what are is specific divisions (aa. 10-12); and, (4) what traits describe a prudent individual (aa. 13-16). For further information on this important matter, see the excellent and detailed commentary of R. A. Gauthier, O.P., UEthique a Nicomaque, vol. 1 (2d ed., Louvain, 1970), pp. 273-283. But Christian prudence displays none of the restrictions inherent in philosophical systems of ethics that tend, as von Balthasar says, “to establish the human subject as his own legislator, as an idealized, autonomous subject who imposes limitations on himself in order to reach perfection.”“Nine Theses” (6), p. 115. By contrast, Christian prudence offers to the human person a means to participate in the wisdom of God, “in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor 2: 13). In order for this grace to work, however, prudence must rely on something higher than itself. The Christian tradition names the “something higher” eternal law. In his exposition of the eternal law, Aquinas unhesitatingly adopts St Augustine’s definition: “That law which is named the supreme reason cannot be otherwise understood than as unchangeable and eternal.”See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 91, a. 1, sed contra: “ ‘Lex quae summa ratio nominatur, non potest cuipiam intelligent! non incommutabilis aeternaque videri.’“ See St Augustine, De libero arbitrio Bk 1, chap. 6 (PL 32: 1229; CCL 29: 220).

For the Christian theologian, eternal law represents nothing other than the divine wisdom that directs every created being to its proper end or telos. Infused prudence makes this eternal law available to every Christian believer whatever native intellectual abilities he or she may possess.In “St Thomas on Law” The Etienne Gilson Series 12 (Toronto, 1988), pp. 4, 5, James P. Reilly, Jr offers the following succinct account of Aquinas’s view: “The Eternal law, then, is nothing other than divine wisdom as directive of the motions and acts of every created being. Consequently, all creatures are measured and regulated by Eternal law, and the natural tendencies or innate inclinations of all creatures to their proper acts or end are from Eternal law [cf. ST Ia-IIae q. 93, a. 5]. Since Eternal law is the governing idea in the ruler of the universe of being, the governing ideas in lower rulers and the obligatory force of these ideas are also derived from it [ST Ia-IIae q. 93, a. 3: “Cum ergo lex aeterna sit ratio gubernationis in supremo gubernante, necesse est quod omnes rationes gubernationis quae sunt in inferioribus gubernantibus, a lege aeterna deriventur.”]. Therefore, Eternal law has a primacy with respect to every kind of law; and, correspondingly, whatever is-whether necessary, contingent, or free-is subject to divine governance [ST Ia-IIae q. 93, aa. 4-6]. Because the Christian participates in the divine wisdom, he or she cornes to know the truth about the moral life in accordance with the divine Word of creation. “As a consequence,” concludes Cardinal Ratzinger, “the heart of all morality is love, and by always following this direction, we inevitably find ourselves encountering Christ, the love of God made man.”Ratzinger, L’Osservatore Romano (see note 4).

The Christian conception of prudence takes full account of both classical philosophy’s notion of practical reasoning, phronesis, and the Christian realization that love constrains amor meus, pondus meum. From both of these sources, Christian moral theology is able to offer a full and compelling account of virtuous prudence as a nexus of knowledge and love: This takes on special importance in light of the usual connotations associated with “prudence” in modern usage. In today’s common parlance, prudence implies that a person exercises right circumspection, whereas for the best of the Christian moral tradition, prudence connotes the full and confident exercise of authentic love and practical wisdom. Moreover, both of these elements remain essential for prudence to operate well. Still, one-sided approaches to prudence exist. For example, certain traditions of moral intellectualism develop the view of John Duns Scotus that prudence represents a pure knowing, capable only of pointing out moral obligation. These theories stress prudence as a form of practical intelligence. From another perspective, Suarezian voluntarism neglects the important role that the human appetites play in actually achieving good conduct.For further information on the particular emphases of the 17th-century Jesuit commentator Francisco Suarez, see John F. Treloar, S J., “Moral Virtue and the Demise of Prudence in the Thought of Francis Suarez,” The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1991), pp. 387-405. Stephen D. Dumont, “The Necessary Connection of Moral Virtue to Prudence According to John Duns Scotus Revisited,” Recherches de Theologie ancienne et medievale 55 (1988): 184-206, offers an interpretation of the position of Scotus. Voluntarist theories consider a loving will sufficient for achieving moral probity. Few ethicians advert to the fact that rational principles are unable by themselves to guarantee that human action will attain true moral good. And fewer still recognize that human appetites, though they contain what Aquinas calls the “seeds” of virtue, cannot in themselves supply a right moral measure for human conduct.For a text that expresses the relationship of prudence to the ends of human appetites, see Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 6, ad 3: “finis non pertinet ad virtutes morales tanquam ipsae praestituant finem, sed quia tendunt in finem a ratione naturali praestitutum…” Because the virtuous life aims to make human conduct godly, the virtue that directs the whole moral life must shape the thought and touch the heart of the believer.

For pedagogical reasons, the ethicist ordinarily considers prudence in the form of what the tradition calls “monastic” or individual prudence. But the Christian moral teaching also addresses the need for the development of specialized prudences as these address the specific requirements of different social groupings. Thus for example, Aquinas talks both about a political prudence that specially guides the development of virtues that pertain to the common good, and an economic prudence that directs the development of those virtues required in various home-units within the polis. In short, the prudent person must engage in activities that aim at diverse ends such as one’s own personal well-being, those of the household, and those of the larger political arena.In Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 11, ad 3, Aquinas explains the relationship that exists between the different orders in which prudence operates. Thomas Gilby, Prudence, vol 36 of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa theologiae, p. 38, remarks that the text expresses “a thought characteristic of the author: subordination does not spell the obliteration of secondary principals or ends, or reduce them to the level of mere instruments and means to an end.” In Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 50, Aquinas discusses types of prudence as “subjective” parts of the cardinal virtue: royal or political prudence; economic prudence; military prudence.

Prudence principally concerns the implementation of practical knowledge; this cardinal virtue strengthens human intelligence, the activity of the mind. We associate seeing with the human head. So the 7th-century etymological theologian Isidore of Seville suggests that prudens derives from porro videns, that is, “looking ahead.” And in fact, the virtue of prudence is often represented in medieval sculpture by a figure with three faces, each one looking in a different direction.For example, the tomb of St Peter Martyr in the Basilica of S Eustorgio in Milan. St Augustine, however, offers a philosophically more satisfying definition when he says that prudence is love choosing wisely between the helpful and the harmful.De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae Bk I, chap. 15 (PL 32: 1322). Aquinas clarifies the relationship between loving practical intelligence and prudent love: “Prudence is said to be love, not that of its nature it is a kind of love, but because its activity is caused by love.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 1, ad 1. Prudence points the believer in the right direction toward God. And this explains why Augustine further explains “that prudence is the love that well discerns between the helps and hindrances in our striving towards God.”Ibid. Without the active direction of prudence, human conduct remains supine and prone to miss the mark; without true prudence, a person’s actions inevitably manifest either excess or defect with respect to embracing the proper ends that compose human well-being. In short, prudence ensures that the believer possesses a complete moral culture and lives a well-ordered life, so that he or she easily reaches the goal of beatitude.

As the standard definition puts it, prudence establishes a recta ratio agibilium, a right norm or measure for human conduct. Because prudence immediately guides the judgment of conscience about the good to be done or the evil avoided, prudence seeks an end that lies outside the order of purely theoretical knowledge. Prudence shapes human actions in the concrete circumstances of the Christian life. “The prudent character,” says Aquinas, “must needs know both the general moral principles of reason and the individual situation in which human actions take place.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 3. But by itself, this practical knowledge never secures the order of execution, the actual being-there of a moral action. In fact, even the moral conscience cannot by itself account for making the transition from the order of moral knowledge to the real world of human activity. One has only to consider the common experience that some persons, in fact, act against the dictates of their conscience. So Aquinas points out that “deliberation is about what is to be done for the sake of an end.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 2. In this context, end stands for the actual securing of the good things that concretely make up Christian perfection. Because prudence concerns the agibile, the do-able, the moral theologian needs to explain how this virtue exercises its directive role in achieving the good ends that comprise Christian communio.

In the performance of a good human action, the believer conforms entirely to what Pope Leo XIII called “that ordination of reason that one calls the law.”Leo XIII, “Libertas praestantissimum,” citing Aquinas, Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 90, a. 1. But universal knowledge, even practical moral principles that claim universality, such as the Kantian categorical imperative, cannot supply the immediate premises for human action. In other words, general maxims or principles do not suffice for human action. But while prudence depends on the eternal law, the prudent person must address the concrete singular, that is, the individual case.Within the perspectives of a realist epistemology, particularization depends on the activity of the senses, but it belongs to the internal senses, especially the vis cogitativa or the ratio particularis to form the composite of the individual sensible object. For further information on these notions, see Thomas V. Flynn, O.P., “The Cogitative Power,” The Thomist XVI (1953): 542-563. Of course, to say that prudence concerns particulars does not mean that, in the final analysis, prudence is reduced to a form of casuistry. Because the uncertainties of the unexpected individual case pose a threat to prudence, philosophers sometimes depreciate the capacity of prudence to measure up to the scientific character of sure knowledge through causes. And in fact, because of the contingency of singular events, practical reason does fall short of the excellence that belongs to the theoretical sciences according to the Aristotelian notion of science.The many and varied contingencies of human life make it extremely difficult to ensure that prudence will achieve its appropriate goal: a good human action. Since human appetites do not observe the regularity that other physical bodies or mathematical entities do, ethics, and other life sciences in general, do not attain the same degree of certitude that one finds in the physical or mathematical sciences. Conscience merely applies the judgment of practical reason to particular circumstances, so even a well-formed conscience does not ensure that its “dictate” (dictamen) will perforce result in a good human action. From a purely human point of view, therefore, one reproaches the prudent person neither for failing in what reasonably cannot be foreseen, nor for failing to achieve mastery over the highly exceptional case. Prudence fulfills the definition of virtue inasmuch as it ensures that a prudent person will act well in the majority of instances. But Christian prudence aided by the gift of Counsel compensates for the limitations of practical reasoning through the action of the Holy Spirit.

Prudence differs from art, which is concerned not with the good things that a person does, but with the good things or artifacts that a person can make. Because prudence must produce good human conduct, only well-tempered passion ultimately ensures that one who knows the truth about moral conduct will act so as to achieve the good end of the moral virtues. To put it differently, only well-formed rational and sense appetites can guarantee the truth-claim of the minor premise of a practical syllogism, for instance, “at this time, and under these circumstances, I should not now take this drink.” Pure moral deontologies completely miss this point. “Kant’s categorical imperative,” explains von Balthasar, “has not escaped the danger of unbending harshness, for his formalism made him place abstract ‘duty’ over against the natural ‘inclination’ of the sensible part of our being.”“Nine Theses” (7), p. 118. Prudence then must involve the shaping of both intellect and appetites. As an intellectual virtue, prudence seeks to establish objective truth in the context of the here and now moral situation. But as a virtue of the practical intellect, prudence also relies on the rectitude of the appetites, with the result that whatever judgment prudence makes concretely fulfills the finalities of human nature. This is why prudence qualifies as a virtue simpliciter, it renders a person outrightly good. By themselves, the intellectual virtues only achieve some formal aspect of human perfection, such as truth. In simpler terms, excellence of mind and excellence of character constitute different realities; as a moral virtue or habitus, prudence makes its possessor good and renders good what he or she does. But as a recta ratio agibilium, prudence specifically concerns the actual performance of good human acts.

The Christian tradition especially associates prudence with watchful solicitude. According to the Latin Vulgate version, First Peter urges us: “Estote prudentes, et vigilate in orationibus,” that is, “Be prudent, watching out for your prayer life” (1 Pt 4: 7). Christian prudence requires care about the important matters of life and even a right measure of disquiet when opportune. Aristotle describes the magnanimous person as one who maintains an easy-going posture and enjoys leisure.See Nicomachean Ethics Bk 4, chap. 3(1124b24). Aquinas modifies this overly confident description; he describes the person who lives according to Christian prudence as one who remains tranquil, “not because she or he is not solicitous about anything, but because the prudent person is not over-anxious about many things, but remains confident and unworried over matters where one ought to have trust.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 9, ad 3.

Prudence signifies a perfection of human intelligence applied to action. The rectitude of prudence lies in its bearing upon the true, ultimate end of human existence. Prudence supplies a “word“about human action, a moral logos, that establishes a ground or condition for acting. Thus, prudential action always leads to the end of human growth and perfection.For further background to this notion, see Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., “How Flexible Is Aristotelian ‘Right Reason’?” in The Georgetown Symposium of Ethics. Essays in Honor of Henry Babcock Veatch (Lanham, MD, 1984), pp. 49-65. But how does prudence effectively guide the other moral virtues?

First of all, prudence helps the believer settle upon the right means to achieve a good moral objective. In one text, moreover, Aquinas remarks that “prudence directs the moral virtues not only in making a choice about the means, but also in appointing the end.”See his treatment of the relationship of the intellectual virtues to the moral virtues and Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 66, a. 3 ad 3. In the here and now situation, prudence points the person toward the concretization of the good ends that constitute human flourishing. The proper operation of prudence thus requires that all of a person’s appetitive powers (especially the sense appetites) bear on the complex of good ends that compose the well-being of an individual. Because human appetites can reach out only for the good, prudence depends on the moral virtues.

We need to make an important distinction about prudence and the ends of human life, about how prudence develops human nature with its specific capacities and built-in teleologies. The directive function of prudence does not mean that it actually establishes or appoints (praestituat) the particular end or telos that formally defines each of the moral virtues. Rather, as Aquinas puts it, prudence “arranges our activities which serve to reach [these ends].”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 6: “Et ideo ad prudentiam non pertinet praestituere finem virtutibus moralibus, sed solum disponere de his quae sunt ad finem.” In the order of intention, ends function as starting points, not merely as goals. Each human person possesses an instinctive understanding of the principles of practical action; the scholastics called this capacity synderesis.For further information, see Summa theologiae Ia q. 79, a. 12 and De veritate q. 16, a. 1. In a particularly illuminating passage, Aquinas explains the relationship that exists between prudence, which develops out of synderesis, and the ends of the moral virtues:

The end of the moral virtues is theirs, not as though they themselves appoint it, but because they stretch out to it as set for them by natural reason. In this they are helped by prudence, which opens the way and arranges the steps to be taken. We are left with the conclusion that prudence ranks above and charges the moral virtues; still synderesis moves prudence, rather as insight into principles advances into scientific knowledge.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 6, ad 3.

In this text, Aquinas compares synderesis to the direct grasp of first principles in any science through the power of insight. Prudence so develops these principles that the prudent person’s actions serve to achieve and realize the end of the moral virtues. Such a construal of the moral life reflects a long-standing Christian tradition; indeed Aquinas develops the rich suggestion of the late-fifth-century Christian author Pseudo-Dionysius, namely, that “even before the external distinction appeared between the virtuous man and his opposite, the ultimate distinction between the virtues and the vices existed long beforehand in the soul itself.”De divinibus nominibus chap. 4 (PG 3: 733), trans. C. E. Rolt, The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology (London, 1920), p. 112. Aquinas phrases it with greater succinctness, “the ends of the moral virtues pre-exist in reason.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 47, a. 6.

What is the significance of the fact that the ends of the moral virtues already exist in some fashion in human reason itself? For a person concretely to discover the mean of any moral virtue denotes that he or she actually attains the end or telos of the virtue. But in any individual and contingent action, such an attainment requires more than what a simple grasp of first principles provides. Recall that prudence principally constitutes a form of reasoning. In particular, this virtue involves discursive reasoning in search of practical truth through collecting and appreciating all of the contingencies that mark a given situation. The moral theologian distinguishes between the virtuous mean in the formal sense and in the material sense. The formal mean of any virtue signifies the actual definition of the mean, that is, the right reason that universally defines the end of a moral virtue; the material mean of a virtue signifies the same rational measure as actually realized in a concrete circumstance. Whereas ethical theorists can identify and specify the formal mean of a moral virtue, only the proper exercise of discursive prudence achieves here and now the moral good as actually determined by right reason for a particular situation.In his commentary on the secunda secundae, q. 47, a. 7, no. II, Cajetan writes: “… formaliter, pro ipsa medii ratione ; materialiter, pro re denominata media… Primo modo est bonitas rationis ; secundo modo est res bona bonitate rationis. Primo modo est finis moralis virtutis, secundo autem est id quod est ad finem.” Critics of virtue-centered moral theory sometimes suggest that, while narrative accounts or depictions of virtue may describe moral character, virtue in itself does little to help a person make a moral choice.For example, see Raphael Gallagher’s review of Servais Pinckaers, L’Evangile et la morale (Fribourg/Paris, 1990) in Stadia Moralia 29 (1991): 484-488. Such criticisms fail to grasp how prudence concretizes the moral good.

Prudence puts right reason into human emotion. Between the first glint of synderesis and the proper act of prudence that is command, the mature moral person develops a well-defined structure of practical reasoning. Moral philosophers distinguish at least three distinct moments within this development: first, a stage of universal moral reflection, the pre-scientific grasp of moral principles; second, the appearance of moral science or ethics;Recall that the contingency and uncertainty of human events makes the science of ethics more of a reasoned opinion than a sure science, but the grace of Christ establishes its own sort of certainty in the moral life that allows theological ethics to lay claim to a sureness that our natural resources fail to provide. third, the act of conscience, or a practical judgment made by applying moral knowledge to a particular act, that is either about to be done or already accomplished. The scholastic theologians accordingly interpreted prudence after the model of a demonstrative syllogism. Speculative discursive reasoning involves at least two operations of the intellect: (a) the seizure of first principles of speculative reason through the quasi-habitus of understanding (intellectus), and (b) subsequent acts of judgment and reasoned demonstration that develop the conclusions of a particular science. In this way, human intelligence develops its potential or capacity for true moral knowledge. Unlike the syllogism of the speculative intellect, the practical syllogism of prudence entails a movement from the order of intention (actus signatus) to the order of execution (actus exercitus). In other words, the person of purely speculative learning can choose whether to act in accord with what he or she knows or not, but the prudent person who chooses to act must always act prudently, that is, in accord with the principles of proven moral science. It is important to note that, even though the judgment of conscience concerns a particular case, this judgment still remains in pura cognitione, that is, purely in the order of cognition. Only prudence ensures that the right judgments of conscience move a person to accomplish virtuous actions.

As an intellectual virtue, prudence shapes the individual moral conscience in harmony with authentic human ends, and from this synergy of right reason and moral virtue, a person’s conscience receives its executive power. As so many unhappy cases illustrate, any person can suffer from an ill-formed conscience. Take the case of assisted reproduction that involves artificial insemination. A spouse may think that a given set of (extraordinary) circumstances permits a man to masturbate in order to obtain semen samples; and today, given the encouragement and counsel of medical personnel, the same individual arguably remains in a state of invincible ignorance. However, in a moral analysis that takes virtue seriously, the casuist concern for subjective responsibility or culpability in fact retains a quite peripheral place. Although the husband may conscientiously hold the view that masturbation for the sake of obtaining semen constitutes a permissible exception to the mean of chastity, because chastity always excludes the auto-erotic behavior, such a person unfortunately abides in moral error. As long as it accurately reflects the eternal law, right practical reasoning can never validate a judgment of conscience that particular circumstances allow for masturbation. Moreover, the Church’s Magisterium in Donum vitae explicitly teaches otherwise. Accordingly, even when the invincibly ignorant husband masturbates, the action remains a bad action and carries with it the inherent punishment that abides in all disordered activity.On this, see the teaching of Veritatis splendor, no. 63. In sum, an erroneous conscience can never provide the basis for an action that furthers the perfection of the human person. The believer who is shaped by prudence is saved from an erroneous conscience through his or her personal knowledge of moral truth.

Prudence aims at shaping the character of Christian believers so that they can participate fully in the communion of charity that abides in the Church. In the moral life of each person, the virtue of prudence must both conform and be conformed: prudence must be conformed to moral wisdom, i.e., to all that human intelligence can learn about a given subject. Prudence also learns from divine truth. In turn, prudence conforms human behavior, so that human action lies ad finem, that is, in accord with the right direction that the ends or goods of human nature stipulate. Prudence brings us into a right conformity with the “thing” or res, with reality as God knows the world to be. Unlike the good musician who may “know” how to play a false note, the prudent person is unable voluntarily to commit an imprudence, even though, as we have seen, involuntary error may produce a false conscience and a special kind of moral situation.

Prudence moves the human person to action; the prudent man or woman actually behaves in a virtuous way and does not simply deliberate about how to act. Whereas imperative decision constitutes the chief act of prudence, the Christian tradition nevertheless distinguishes three moments in the realization of a prudential act: counsel, judgment, and command. Counsel involves a rational deliberation about means to an end. This process of seeking counsel requires that the prudent person already enjoy the rectitude of appetite that bears upon the end of the moral virtues. Otherwise, disordered emotions would inevitably unsettle the deliberative process, with the result that such a person would be inclined to seek counsel from those who share his or her own disordered bent. In the traditional scheme, counsel is to be distinguished from “consent” (consensus), or the affective settling onto means that effectively moves the person to the second act of prudence, which is judgment. Judgment involves a rational determination or decision that strengthens the affective settling onto means that “consent” achieves. The judgment of prudence responds to the question: “What am I to do now?” The virtue of prudence ensures that this judgment makes a determination that falls within the legitimate ambit of moral virtue; but as I have said, a poorly formed conscience can frustrate the effective realization of this judgment.

To make a well-reasoned judgment about what is to be done here and now never guarantees that a person acts upon the judgment; human action requires an imperative motion from the intellect. As the principal act of the virtue of prudence, command transforms the judgment of conscience into an imperative: command accounts for the existential coming-to-be of the virtuous action. In a realist view of human action, the act of command (imperium) remains an intellectual act, not an act principally associated with the will.See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, q. 17. But because command carries this imperative note, prudence is to be distinguished from a simply intellectual virtue. For this cardinal virtue, as I have said, enters into the formal act of a moral virtue, namely, to choose the good simpliciter or outrightly. In this view, recta ratio intervenes in the behavioral virtues at a point where the inclination of appetite meets the act of choice or election that prudence brings to completion by its act of command. The true exercise of Christian prudence corrects the Socratic fallacy that identifies virtue with simple knowledge of the right things to do. Instead it endows the believer with the full power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable” (Phil 4: 8).Prudence fonns the basis for good spiritual direction. Although certain classical schools advise that one obey the directives of a spiritual director, this does not conform to the view of Aquinas. Rather one should seek as a “spiritual director” a man or woman of prudence, on whose virtue one can rely to shape one’s counsel. For this reason, Dominican obedience, while it requires that one ordinarily obey a superior without good counsel (that is, an incompetent person), never requires that the subject modify his or her thinking (i.e., prudence) so as to conform to the ill-advised counsel or judgment.

For each of the cardinal virtues, the scholastic theologians identified three classifications of parts. These classifications help us to organize the variety of virtues that are clustered around the cardinal virtue. The basis for the distinction lies in the various ways that philosophers divide a whole: an integral whole, a subjective whole, and a potential whole. Like the integral parts of an organic body, there are the component parts of a virtue; whatever belongs essentially to the constitution of a virtue is called an integral part. Like the species contained in a genus, there are the specific types of a generic virtue; these are its subjective parts. Like the various active powers of a living substance, there are the virtues accessory or allied to the principal virtue; these are called its potential parts. Take the rational soul as an instructive example of a potential whole: the other capacities or potentiae of the human soul, viz, its vegetative and sensitive functions, participate to the extent that they are able in the rationality of the human soul. The following schema summarizes the standard teaching on the three different parts or classes of sub-virtues that fall under the four cardinal virtues.

Schema of Parts

1. Integral Parts: These parts of the moral virtues represent the characteristic activities or psychological dispositions that any moral virtue requires in order to accomplish its proper act; as component parts, these traits or characteristics do not constitute distinct virtues.
2. Parts That Realize The Same Formal Type:
   • Subjective Parts: These virtues represent the different species of a cardinal virtue; as real virtues (habitus), they possess the full and univocal realization of the virtue in question. What qualifies any virtue as a subjective part of a cardinal virtue is that the virtue fully realizes the generic definition of the cardinal virtue.
   • Potential Parts: The potential parts of a cardinal virtue, though they constitute real virtues in themselves, realize the formal type of the cardinal virtue only in an analogous, i.e., restricted, way. While an allied virtue represents a diminishment of the full cardinal virtue as a type, it can happen, as in the case of the relationship of religion to justice, that a potential part of a cardinal virtue represents a more noble expression of human behavior than the cardinal virtue to which it is allied.

The integral parts of prudence are its component elements. While prudence needs the moral virtues in order to function properly, the prudent person also needs a variety of qualities or traits so that he or she can undertake the distinctively discursive reasoning that marks prudence. The Christian tradition names eight integral parts of prudence; together they provide a psychological sketch of the character type that can both recognize and enact moral truth. It can happen that in a given person, these qualities are phenomenally uneven, but the habitus of prudence compensates and corrects for any extreme irregularity. As an intellectual virtue, prudence requires: (1) memory; (2) intuition (insight/intelligence); (3) docility (teachableness); (4) sagacity (acumen); (5) reason (reasoned judgment) and as an imperative or prescriptive virtue, (6) foresight; (7) circumspection; (8) caution.The Latin terms are variously translated into modern languages; for further information on English usage, see vol. 36 of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 49, aa. 1-8. Consider the example of a driver approaching an intersection.

I approach a familiar intersection [memory] and am alerted to what practical wisdom may immediately provide about dealing with intersections [intuition], some of which I may have learned during the driving lessons that cost dearly [docility]. Sizing up the actual situation of the moment [sagacity], I come to a decision about how to proceed through the intersection [reason]. However, at this moment, I am still at the stop sign. Now, with the recognition that the stalled vehicle on the other side of the road will not impede movement through the intersection [foresight], and with due regard for other possible impediments to free movement [circumspection], I move to put my foot to the gas and proceed, though still with a certain wariness that an on-rushing car may yet appear in an instant [caution]. The example stops at the point of command, for at that moment, the virtue achieves its perfection, and human action comes to rest in its appropriate term.

The subdivisions or subjective parts of prudence include not only the prudence needed to govern one’s own life (monastic prudence), but also that required for special undertakings, such as the military life, or for assuming the burdens of civil governance that is ordained to promote the well-being of the common good. Thus, statesmanship and lawmaking belong to those who hold authority in self-contained communities. Political prudence differs from individual prudence, and because of the former’s role in directing the common good, it enjoys a certain excellence over individual prudence.

The potential parts of prudence aid the first two acts of prudence: counsel and judgment. Since the principal act of prudence, imperium, belongs to the cardinal virtue itself, no allied or potential part strengthens the principal act of the virtue. However, there is a principle which claims that whenever there exists a distinctive end, there also exists the need for a distinct virtue. Aquinas states the principle this way: “A distinction of the various virtues should be drawn according to the distinction of activities which are not to be resolved into the same cause.”See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 51, a. 3. So the other acts of prudence do require strengthening by allied or potential virtues. Good counsel, eubulia, strengthens the act of counsel; whereas judiousness (synesis) and farsightedness (gnome), both strengthen the act of judgment.

Aquinas maintains Aristotle’s Greek term eubulia for the virtue of good counsel or well-advisedness in investigation. This activity is not resolved into the same cause as prudence. (This is evident in the fact that some people excel in offering good counsel to themselves and to others, and still remain congenitally unable to move beyond this point.) Eubulia, then, promotes a particular good end, namely, to enable a person to develop the practice of seeking and giving good counsel.For further information, see Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 51, aa. 1,2. Likewise, the virtues of synesis or judiciousness and gnome or farsightedness constitute special virtues; for they too strengthen a person to achieve distinctive goals within the larger scope of a prudential life. In the case of these virtues, the particular activity that requires the strength of distinctive habitus is judgment. Synesis is sound judgment about ordinary matters. It differs from prudence, for, as Aquinas again explains: “Sometimes it happens that a well-judged deed is put off or done carelessly or improperly. And so, to crown the virtue of sound judgment, a principal virtue is needed, which is well and truly imperative: such is prudence.”See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 51, a. 3, ad 3. Because in matters of exceptional cases one needs to invoke certain unique principles, the wit to judge the cases of this kind differs from ordinary synesis Gnome signifies sharpsightedness or perspicacity of judgment in the face of circumstances other than what constitutes the normal routine. Aquinas observes that some people excel in this virtue; moreover, because to judge rightly about extraordinary matters in every circumstance betrays a mark of divine providence, such persons are rightly called wise men or women.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 51, a. 4.

By definition, a virtuous action achieves an authentic or true moral good through the instrumentality of well-regulated reason. In this way, virtue perfects a person by making, as Aristotle puts it, both an action and the one who performs it good. Vice, on the other hand, generates actions that are not in conformity with the rule of right reason, so that, either through excess or by defect, all vicious actions instantiate a definite form of evil. As a matter of fact, the mean of a particular virtue often resembles one vicious extreme more than another; or, to put it differently, certain vices more easily masquerade as virtue than others. For instance, insensitivity frequently appears more like true temperance than the excess of debauchery does or, to some persons, foolhardiness might resemble fortitude more than the defect of timidity. Generally speaking, the virtues attached to temperance more closely resemble their defective forms and those associated with fortitude more their excessive forms. The defective forms of prudence, imprudence and negligence, deform one or another of prudence’s distinguishing acts: counsel, judgment, and command. By contrast with these flawed forms of prudence, there also exist several species of counterfeit prudence, that is, a prudence that is ordered to a dishonest end.

Just as prudence plays a guiding part in all moral virtue, so imprudence is at work in all sin and vice. In particular, imprudence covers a number of sinful actions that alter the poise that prudence requires to achieve its goal of a good moral choice. Precipitousness or undue haste in taking action obstructs the virtue of eubulia or good counsel. Inconsideration or thoughtlessness impedes the virtue of sound judgment. And the sins of inconstancy and negligence strike at the heart of prudence itself, by weakening the person’s resolve to follow through on the command or imperium. Because of the architectonic role that prudence plays in the moral life, these sinful dispositions and actions affect, as I have said, every aspect of the virtuous life.

Consider for example the person who acts with precipitation, viz, the truly inconsiderate person. Though it is not virtuous to deliberate endlessly about a course of action, still less does it become a person not to reflect at all on his or her behavior; recall the Proverb, “The man of discretion watches how he treads” (Prov 14: 15). But because many persons consider themselves to be their own best friend and since even more persons cherish a false notion of personal responsibility and autonomy, men and women more often than not are reluctant to take counsel from anyone other than themselves. The inconsiderate person proves that the unexamined life is not worth living. The best remedy for an inconsiderate attitude consists in seeking conscientiously the counsel of mature men and women, especially in the important areas of life. For the Christian believer, the Magisterium provides an authentic source of good counsel.

Imprudence further manifests itself when a person makes superficial judgments or when someone judges according to standards that are entirely subjective. On the other hand, a firm attachment to perpetual reflection also impedes the making of sound judgments; this happens in those persons who foster a never-ending state of hesitation about a proper course to follow. If we consider conscience as an act of particular judgment that applies moral principles to specific circumstances, imprudence effectively distorts the judgment of conscience. Contrary to what moral subjectivism holds, an individual conscience does not form an infallible guide for realizing a good life.See the very illuminating section of Veritatis splendor, no. 62 which explains why though non-culpable error of judgment may not be imputable to the agent, the evil done still does not cease to be an evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good.

Finally, the vices opposed to prudence include inconstancy or the affective blocking of prudent directions. Inconstancy results in giving up on a decided course, “for a person is called inconstant when reason fails to carry out effectively what he or she has thought about and decided upon.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 53, a. 5. The vice of inconstancy manifests the unity of the moral life which is based on the inescapable relationship between sound judgment and rectified appetite. And although inconstancy ordinarily stems from an appetitive source, it is principally a failure of the mind to follow through upon a resolve.See the interesting description in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 53, a. 6, ad 3 that Aquinas gives of continence and perseverance as forms of constancy in the reason, where there also exists inconstancy. Even Aristotle reckoned the power of pleasure to impair the judgment of reason. In the Christian life, Gregory the Great specifies that unchastity or lust most frequently fosters imprudence.For Aristotle, see Nicomachean Ethics Bk 6, chap. 5 (1140bl3 ff.) and for Gregory the Great, see the Moralia Bk 31, chap. 45 (PL 76: 621). “The lustful person,” says one spiritual author, “will usually be found to have a terrible hollowness at the center of his life, and he is agitated to fill it, not daring to desist, lest he should have to confront the desert he has made of himself.”Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today, (Notre Dame, IN, 1978), p. 187. In this perpetual state of agitation lies one of the root causes of the sins against prudence.

Aquinas defines negligence as “a certain slackness of will which results in the reason’s not being solicitous about coming to effective decisions on things that ought to be done and how they ought to be done.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 54, a. 3. The Christian tradition considers such negligence as a special sin against prudence. The casuists, who were very concerned with subjective responsibility, expended much energy discussing the conditions for due knowledge and culpability. However, if one can judge from the modest treatment that Aquinas gives to the topic, it seems that the patristic tradition of morality that he interprets and mediates adopts an entirely different emphasis about negligence. A person can lack sufficient energy for gaining the necessary knowledge required for good behavior or, on the other hand, fail to put into execution a good proposal that is already decided upon. The sinful attitude that negligence describes represents less a particular vice and more a psychological attitude or state that fosters different vices. Since imprudence never occurs in isolation from other moral faults, the negligent person remains prone to further sin. This proclivity to rest in unhappy ignorance accounts for its particular viciousness.

The distortions of prudence frequently result from unchastity, but other moral faults produce counterfeit versions of prudence. For prudence can also appear in false guises. This happens either when a person develops prudence-like qualities in order to achieve an end that does not conduce to true happiness (for instance, when one makes bodily comfort an ultimate goal), or when a person wittingly adopts improper means in order to achieve a good goal. Because persons with uncontrolled wants easily substitute their own providence for the guidance that reflects the eternal law, the tradition names avarice as the capital vice responsible for turning a person away from the designs of divine providence.

The first species of counterfeit prudence is carnal or fleshly prudence. The person who possesses this imitation of virtuous prudence pursues the disordered interests of his or her own self; as a form of exaggerated egoism, the carnally prudent person looks after created goods first and last. Carnal prudence belongs, for example, to the miser who masters every possible way to gain a profit or to the Don Juan who masters every form of seduction that leads to sexual gratification. Authentic prudence of course does look after material things, but within an ordered hierarchy of goods, as when one maintains a careful diet in order to study better (Aquinas’s own example!).Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 55, a. 2. For prudence regulates a person’s embrace of the goods of human flourishing so that they remain ordered within the context of a complete and good life and, in the case of infused prudence, the virtue ensures that these goods conduce to the perfect happiness of the saints, beatitudo.

Cunning, guile, and deception describe those circumstances “when in pursuit of some end, whether right or wrong, a person takes ways that are not genuine, but feigned and specious.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 55, a. 3. The cunning, guileful, and deceptive person pursues resourceful ways to hide from himself or herself as well as from others the evil means taken for accomplishing an objective. The goals may be respectable in themselves, but because of me deceitful approach that such people take to achieve them, the moral action is vitiated. If words are used to perpetrate the deceit, we call the counterfeit prudence cunning or guile; if the duplicity involves actions, then it is cheating. This form of false prudence usually reveals the presence of a deeper spiritual disease; Nietzsche spoke about the penchant in the modern era for people to turn false before themselves, to serve as their own self-executioners. Those unable to love themselves properly are most tempted to fall victim to sham prudence. Since spiritual orphans lack the conviction about their self-worth, they experience difficulty in being honest about how they pursue even their worthwhile goals. The cunning person attempts to live a double life. For it can happen that a cunning person wants to please God in some areas, but to please himself or herself inordinately in others.

As a remedy for the duplicity that marks cunning, guile, and deception, the New Testament repeatedly urges the believer to trust that God will provide whatever good things are necessary for life. False prudence effectively subordinates a loving confidence in divine providence to care for one’s temporal life; this vice shapes a person to appreciate those things that are less important for human fulfillment and to depreciate or to ignore completely those things that remain indispensable for perfect happiness. Again, Christian wisdom warns that lust and covetousness foster imprudence and mock prudence.

St Gregory the Great develops an instructive list of the fruits that accompany the capital vices of avarice and lust:

From avarice there spring treachery, fraud, deceit, perjury, restlessness, violence and hardness of heart against compassion. … From lust are generated blindness of mind, inconsiderateness, inconstancy, precipitation, self-love, hatred of God, affection for this present world, but dread or despair of that which is to come.Gregory the Great, Moralia Bk 31, chap. 45.

Since the person who sins against prudence mocks the counsels of God, these vices strike directly at the heart of what is required for biblical faith conceived as a trusting confidence in the care of the heavenly Father. The person without prudence becomes self-absorbed in a disordered love of self, with the result that he or she loses the spiritual capacity to perceive the reality of divine providence and to appreciate the gratuity of the divine love. Such a person remains stunted in the life of faith, for he or she has not yet learned how to say authentically the prayer that distinguishes the disciples of Jesus from all others, to address God confidently as Father.

Since it transcends the narrow limits of personal self-interest, truly virtuous prudence represents the highest achievement of the spiritual life. Recall that “one cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 7: 24). Trust in the providence of the heavenly Father sets the standard for a proper solicitude about the things of this life. The Christian tradition, in sum, recognizes in the prudent person one who looks at the birds of the air and considers carefully the lilies of the field (see Mt 7: 25-34). No other attitude lies open for the man or woman who would rely fully on divine truth as the ultimate rational measure for living a happy life.For a profound study of the relationship of asceticism to the prudent life, see L.-B. Geiger, O.P., Philosophie et Spiritualité (Paris, 1963), pp. 318-322.

In his general introduction to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Aquinas makes a curious reference to the insight of the ancient philosophers: “Aristotle,” reports Aquinas, “says that it is not good for those who are moved by a divine prompting to take counsel according to human reason; but that they should follow their interior prompting, because they are moved by a better principle than human reason.”Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 68, a. 1. Aquinas is not suggesting that the divine promptings of the gifts are adequately understood by pagan philosophy. Rather, he indisputably centers his general teaching on the gifts around the virtue of charity. “The gifts of the Holy Spirit,” he writes, “are connected with one another in charity, in such wise that one who has charity has all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, while none of the gifts can be had without charity.”Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 68, a. 5. The tradition correctly emphasizes that the gifts of the Holy Spirit work their effect on the moral life through the theological virtues, so that everything the Christian believes and hopes for plays an active role in the faithful exercise of Christian virtue. While it may seem odd for Aquinas to introduce so distinctively Christian a reality as the gifts of the Holy Spirit by referring to classical philosophy, we can appreciate how this text suggests the special help that the gift of Counsel brings to prudence.

The general rule that explains why any virtue requires the assistance of a gift holds true for the virtue of prudence. There remains a real lack of proportion between what any virtue, even an infused moral virtue, can achieve in a person and the final end of the Christian life that lies in beatitudo. In his treatise on the Flight from the World, St Ambrose expresses this disproportion in distinctively Christian terms.

We have died with Christ. We carry about in our bodies the sign of his death, so that the living Christ may also be revealed in us. The life we live is not now our ordinary life but the life of Christ: a life of sinlessness, of chastity, of simplicity and every other virtue.St Ambrose, On Flight from the World, chap. 6, 36; chap. 7, 44; chap. 8, 45; chap. 9, 52 (CSEL vol. 32, pp. 192, 198-199, 204).

To observe St Ambrose’s language, the gift of Counsel subordinates the imperium or command of infused prudence to the new life of Christ that belongs to every believer. Because prudence enjoys a directive role in the moral life, Counsel also enjoys a certain priority over the other moral virtues and the gifts that assist them. Accordingly, Counsel directs the virtue of justice, with its gift of Piety; the virtue of fortitude, with its gift of Courage; the virtue of temperance, with its gift of the Fear of the Lord.

Because of its fundamentally probative character, even infused prudence requires the aid that the gift of Counsel brings. Since the practical reason operates in a discursive manner, there exists a variety of ways for the practical reason to fail in grasping or discerning the moral good. The ordinary counsel-taking and deliberation that prudence requires withstands only with great difficulty the conglomeration of unsettling factors, especially the commotion that disordered passions cause. And such factors can tilt prudence’s effective operation. Moreover, since even virtuous counsel naturally follows the measure of human reasoning, the soul’s journey to God requires a special guidance from the Holy Spirit. This guidance, however, does not amount to the bestowal of new information, as if a gift of the Holy Spirit supplies the believer with personal revelations. Rather, counsel works by conaturality; that is, it develops out of a familiarity with divine things that grace gives to the human person. Aquinas explains the relationship of prudence to the gift of Counsel in the following way:

Prudence or eubulia, whether acquired or infused, directs us in our searchings into matters that our minds can grasp, and enables us to be of good counsel for ourselves or for others. Still, because of our mind’s inability to grasp all individual and contingent events that can possibly happen, it happens that “the thoughts of mortal men are fearful and our counsels uncertain” (Wis 9:14). Consequently we need in our searchings the guidance of God, who knows all things. This comes through the gift of Counsel, whereby we are guided by the advice, as it were, of God, rather as in human affairs those who are not sufficiently qualified to work things out for themselves require the counsel of wiser persons.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 52, a. 1, ad 1.

This text makes explicit that the light of the Holy Spirit helps infused prudence to discover the just mean for human actions in a way that harkens willingly to the salvific instruction that we discover in the Church.

Prudence involves a complex of virtues that strengthen the acts of command, judgment, and counsel. The acts of judgment and counsel, it is true, already rely on the special virtues of synesis, gnome, and eubulia But the act of counsel especially requires divine assistance, for “it conveys the notion of the mind being moved to ponder under the influence of another’s advising.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 52, a. 2, ad 1. In the case of Christian prudence, God serves as the principal Other who advises those who seek to know the truth that makes one free (see Jn 8: 31). In Aquinas’s view, since “the eternal law provides the supreme rule for all human rectitude,” the truth that Christ communicates to his disciples reveals in human terms the hidden mysteries of the eternal law.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 52, a. 2. “With all wisdom and insight,” says St Paul, “God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1: 8 -10). As a pledge of abundant divine pleasure and with confident assurance, the gift of Counsel aids prudence, provided that the believer remains open to the good advice of others, and, in the final analysis, of God himself.

In the Christian life, all require instruction. The gift of Counsel effectively helps the believer remain in the Church as a learner. In the state of fallen nature, the human person ordinarily finds it easier to set his or her life in motion than to suffer being set in motion; but this propensity for moral autonomy falls short of the mark set by Christian revelation. While the tension that arises in the believer who must continually depend on the work of the Holy Spirit for perfecting good counsel disappears in the saints, Aquinas maintains that the wayfarer who lives according to the gift of Counsel especially imitates the saints in heaven who remain in a state of a simple turning toward God - simplex conversio ad Deum.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 52, a. 3.

Instead of the legalistic minimum associated with the fulfillment of obligation, the life of the virtues and gifts achieves the maximum of Christian perfection. So since the time of St Augustine, the Christian tradition in moral theology associates one of the New Testament Beatitudes with each of the cardinal virtues and gifts. The Beatitudes represent the fullness of Gospel life. St Augustine names the fifth Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Mt 5: 7), as the beatitude that best manifests the virtue of prudence and the gift of Counsel. He does so because the person who remains attentive to the counsels of the Holy Spirit above all heeds the important New Testament injunction to show mercy. But good Counsel ensures that the believer knows how to show mercy in a way that is neither sentimental nor mawkish. In other terms, well-counseled mercy never accompanies false compassion nor does it follow upon presumption about God’s forgiveness. Mercy kisses truth and justice, as the Psalmist reminds us. Counsel abets mercy to the extent that it renders a believer docile to the eternal norm for all moral truth. In his commentary on Psalm 19, Aquinas summarizes the Christian perspective on the role of the gift of Counsel in the moral life.

Firstly, “May he grant you your heart’s desire,” is interpreted to mean what you will, as it bears upon the end, as if the Psalmist were to say, may he lead you to the end which you yourself intend. The end is God, as Proverbs [10: 23] has it: the desire of the righteous ends only in good. Secondly, “Fulfill all you plans” is interpreted to mean those things which are pointed toward the end [his quae sunt ad finem]. Because we are unable to foresee everything, our counsels remain feeble, as Wisdom [9: 14] puts it: the reasoning of mortals is worthless, and our designs are likely to fail. God, however, wants to confirm us toward the Good and this in a twofold way: (1) by directing our counsels which should be concerned with actively seeking eternal life, as in John 16: 24: hitherto you have asked nothing in my name, ask, and you will receive; that your joy may be full; and (2) by his giving us what we need in order to pursue our good counsels toward the joyful possession of himself.In psalmos xix, no. 2 (Vives edition, vol. 18, p. 336). Aquinas composed the Postilla super Psalmos toward the end of his life, v/z, 1272 or 1273. He is using the Gallican Psalter of the Vulgate, which then was proper for Dominican liturgical usage. Psalm 19, verse 5 reads: “May he grant you your heart’s desire, and fulfill all your plans! [… tribuat tibi secundum cor tuum omne concilium tuum confirmet.]”

Because of his gracious love and concern for every human person, Jesus especially promises that the Counsel that comes from the Holy Spirit will never disappear from the Church. “I still have many things to say to you,” the Gospel of John records Christ saying, “but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:12, 13).