Prudence

Understanding Prudence

Prudence gives a decision enough thought to see its likely consequences, uncertainties and available alternatives. It asks what the purpose deserves, who may be affected and what can reasonably be known. The strength is considered choice, not the ability to eliminate every risk or foresee every outcome.

Prudence: finding the balance

The host needs to carry cups across a room.

The fitting preparation concerns the actual task and leads to a decision.

Prudence gives…

A considered choice gives reasons a place before momentum takes over. Other people can understand the plan and identify a consequence the decision-maker has missed. A reversible trial can make uncertainty more manageable without pretending it has vanished.

What Prudence makes possible

Planning can include a stopping point, a way to correct a mistake and an honest account of what remains unknown. Prudence can also support action after enough relevant consideration; endless deliberation may leave the very purpose of the decision unattended.

Prudence in ordinary life

• For an ordinary reversible change, try a small version before committing everything to it.
• Ask who else will have to live with the consequences of a convenient plan.
• Before postponing again, identify which unanswered question could actually change the choice.

Nearby virtues, different work

Perspective widens the field of concern. Fairness gives relevant interests their due. Bravery faces fear. Prudence weighs consequences in choosing a worthy course; mere caution or profitable calculation does not establish it.

Bravery · Fairness

Prudence and its counterfeits

Calculation without ethical purpose is a counterfeit of Prudence: the host perfects a plan that shifts avoidable difficulty onto someone else. Genuine prudence includes the worth of the purpose and its effects. Paralysis disguised as care is another counterfeit when irrelevant preparation repeatedly replaces a needed decision.

How to cultivate Prudence

Name the purpose, likely effects and important uncertainties. Seek information proportionate to the decision. Where possible, use a reversible trial. Decide what would cause you to revise or stop, then act when further ordinary consideration is unlikely to help.

Try it today

Choose a routine decision. Name one likely consequence, one person affected and one uncertainty. If appropriate, make a small reversible trial before deciding whether to continue.

Keep the practice proportionate

Use an ordinary low-stakes decision, not a medical, legal or financial problem requiring specialist guidance. Prudence does not promise safety. A cautious appearance is not the measure of moral worth.

A question worth returning to

Whose consequence have I left out, and what would make me revise the plan?

Quotations and further reading

These historical passages offer different philosophical and literary perspectives. Each note identifies its setting, point of comparison and relevant limits; none supplies an official definition of this strength.

1. Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, that other point, which lieth more open, and falleth within vulgar observation; which is faithful counsel from a friend.

   Francis Bacon · The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

   Of Friendship

   Bacon adds faithful counsel to his account of the benefits of friendship. Another person’s view supplies more than agreement.

2. Simplicity of life, begetting simplicity of taste, that is, a love for sweet and lofty things, is of all matters most necessary for the birth of the new and better art we crave for; simplicity everywhere, in the palace as well as in the cottage.

   William Morris · Hopes and Fears for Art

   p. 1THE LESSER ARTS [1]

   Morris argues for simplicity of life and taste as conditions for renewing art. His aesthetic ideal does not establish a universal minimum of possessions.

3. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, is dependent.

   John Stuart Mill · Utilitarianism

   CHAPTER II.

   Mill appeals to accumulated experience of actions when explaining practical morality. It is a philosophical defence of learning from consequences.

4. Otherwise you will begin with spirit, indeed, careless of the consequences, and when these are developed, you will shamefully desist.

   Epictetus · The Enchiridion

   XXIX[2] · Thomas Wentworth Higginson translation; Liberal Arts Press edition, copyright 1948, revised 1955.

   Epictetus warns that an energetic beginning can ignore the consequences required to continue. The article’s small pause considers the full action, not only its start.

5. No one lays down a certain design for his life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces.

   Michel de Montaigne · Essays

   CHAPTER I——OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS · Charles Cotton translation, William Carew Hazlitt edition, 1877

   Montaigne notices deliberation divided into pieces rather than a settled account of a life. The passage invites attention to how a small choice fits a wider purpose.

6. And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.

   Kahlil Gibran · The Prophet

   THE PROPHET · , Alfred A. Knopf, 1923; Almustafa is the literary speaker

   Speaker: Almustafa, literary speaker created by Kahlil Gibran

   Gibran’s Almustafa imagines a fall becoming a caution for those behind. The image gives attention to consequences a social dimension; it does not blame a person for stumbling.

7. What we need are those habits, dispositions which lead to impartial and consistent foresight of consequences.

   John Dewey · Human Nature and Conduct

   VII · ,

   Dewey calls for dispositions that support impartial, consistent foresight. A useful pause considers consequences beyond the outcome we already want.

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