Four Cardinal Virtues
NOTES for “The Four Cardinal Virtues”
Prudence:
The virtue of prudence is the mold and mother of all the other cardinal virtues, of justice, fortitude, and temperance.
For Pieper the fact that people feel strange when they hear the discussion of prudence occur indicates that they are genuinely lost in terms of the relationship to Western culture.
“…there is a larger significance in the fact that people today can respond to this assertion of the pre-eminence of prudence only with incomprehension and uneasiness. That they feel it as strange may well reveal a deeper-seated and more total estrangement. It may mean that they no longer feel the binding force of the Christian Occidental view of man.”
Often people think of prudence as something which is utilitarian.
“We tend to misunderstand the phrase, and take it as a tribute to undisguised utilitarianism. For we think of prudence as far more akin to the idea of mere utility…then to the ideal of nobility.”
For Pieper prudence can only occur with goodness.
“Prudence is part and parcel of the definition of goodness…. All virtue is necessarily prudent.”
“Prudence is the cause of the other virtues being virtues at all. For example, there may be kind of instinctive governance of instinctual craving; but only prudence transforms this instinctive governance into the “virtue” of temperance. Virtue is a “perfectibility” of man as a spiritual person; and Justice, fortitude, and temperance, as “abilities” of the whole man, achieve their “perfection” only when they are founded upon prudence, that is to say upon the perfect ability to make right decisions.”
“Prudence informs the other virtues; it confers upon them the form of their inner essence.”
“Ethical virtue is the print and seal placed by prudence upon volition and action.”
“The intrinsic goodness of man – and this is the same as saying his true humanness – consists in this, that “reason perfected in the cognition of truth” shall inwardly shape and imprint
Prudence:
The virtue of prudence is the mold and mother of all the other cardinal virtues, of justice, fortitude, and temperance.
For Pieper the fact that people feel strange when they hear the discussion of prudence occur indicates that they are genuinely lost in terms of the relationship to Western culture.
“…there is a larger significance in the fact that people today can respond to this assertion of the pre-eminence of prudence only with incomprehension and uneasiness. That they feel it as strange may well reveal a deeper-seated and more total estrangement. It may mean that they no longer feel the binding force of the Christian Occidental view of man.”
Often people think of prudence as something which is utilitarian.
“We tend to misunderstand the phrase, and take it as a tribute to undisguised utilitarianism. For we think of prudence as far more akin to the idea of mere utility…then to the ideal of nobility.”
For Pieper prudence can only occur with goodness.
“Prudence is part and parcel of the definition of goodness…. All virtue is necessarily prudent.”
“Prudence is the cause of the other virtues being virtues at all. For example, there may be kind of instinctive governance of instinctual craving; but only prudence transforms this instinctive governance into the “virtue” of temperance. Virtue is a “perfectibility” of man as a spiritual person; and Justice, fortitude, and temperance, as “abilities” of the whole man, achieve their “perfection” only when they are founded upon prudence, that is to say upon the perfect ability to make right decisions.”
“Prudence informs the other virtues; it confers upon them the form of their inner essence.”
“Ethical virtue is the print and seal placed by prudence upon volition and action.”
“The intrinsic goodness of man – and this is the same as saying his true humanness – consists in this, that “reason perfected in the cognition of truth” shall inwardly shape and imprint