The Virtue of Prudence at The National Art Museum, Catalonia

Prudence was considered by the ancient Greeks and later on by Christian philosophers, most notably Thomas Aquinas, as the cause, measure and form of all virtues. It is considered to be the auriga virtutum or the charioteer of the virtues. It is the cause in the sense that the virtues, which are defined to be the perfected ability of man as a spiritual person (spiritual personhood in the classical western understanding means having intelligence and free will), achieve their perfection only when they are founded upon prudence, that is to say upon the perfected ability to make right decisions. For instance, a person can live temperance when he has acquired the habit of deciding correctly the actions to take in response to his instinctual cravings. Its function is to point out which course of action is to be taken in any concrete circumstances. It has nothing to do with directly willing the good it discerns. Prudence has a directive capacity with regard to the other virtues. It lights the way and measures the arena for their exercise. Without prudence bravery becomes foolhardiness; mercy sinks into weakness, and temperance into fanaticism. Its office is to determine for each in practice those circumstances of time, place, manner, etc. which should be observed, and which the Scholastics comprise under the term medium rationis. So it is that while it qualifies the intellect and not the will, it is nevertheless rightly styled a moral virtue. Prudence is considered the measure of moral virtues since it provides a model of ethically good actions. The work of art is true and real by its correspondence with the pattern of its prototype in the mind of the artist. In similar fashion, the free activity of man is good by its correspondence with the pattern of prudence. (Josef Pieper) For instance, a stockbroker using his experience and all the data available to him decides that it is beneficial to sell stock A at 2PM tomorrow and buy stock B today. The content of the decision (e.g., the stock, amount, time and means) is the product of an act of prudence, while the actual carrying out of the decision may involve other virtues like fortitude (doing it in spite of fear of failure) and justice (doing his job well out of justice to his company and his family). The actual act's goodness is measured against that original decision made through prudence. In Greek and Scholastic philosophy, form is the specific characteristic of a thing that makes it what it is. With this language, prudence confers upon other virtues the form of its inner essence; that is, its specific character as a virtue. For instance, not all acts of telling the truth are considered good, considered as done with the virtue of honesty. What makes telling the truth a virtue is whether it is done with prudence.古希腊人以及后世的基督教哲学家——尤以托马斯·阿奎那（Thomas Aquinas）为代表——将审慎视为一切德性的根源、尺度与范式。它被称作auriga virtutum（美德的驭手）。 所谓"根源"，是指作为精神性存在的人之德性（在古典西方语境中，精神人格意指拥有理智与自由意志），唯有以审慎为根基——亦即以做出正确决策的完善能力为根基——方能臻于完满。例如，当一个人养成了针对自身本能欲望做出恰当行动抉择的习惯时，他便能践行节制之德。 审慎的功能在于指明具体情境下应采取的行动路径，它并不直接意愿其所洞察到的善。审慎对其他德性具有指引作用：它为德性的践行照亮道路、划定尺度。若无审慎，勇敢便会沦为鲁莽，仁慈会蜕变为软弱，节制则会演变为狂热。审慎的职责在于，在实践中为每一种德性确定应当遵循的时间、地点、方式等具体情境，而经院哲学家将这些情境归入medium rationis（理性中道）这一概念之下。因此，尽管审慎仅赋予理智以规定性，而非作用于意志，它仍被恰当地归为一种道德德性。 审慎被视为道德德性的尺度，因为它为合乎伦理的善好行动提供了范式。正如艺术作品因契合艺术家心灵中原型的样式而具有真实性与实在性，人类的自由活动亦因契合审慎的范式而成为善好的行动。（约瑟夫·皮珀（Josef Pieper）） 例如，一名股票经纪人凭借自身经验与可获取的全部数据，决定于明日下午2时抛售股票A并于今日购入股票B。该决策的内容（如标的股票、交易数量、时间与方式）乃是审慎活动的产物，而决策的实际执行则可能需要其他德性的支撑：比如坚毅（克服对失败的恐惧去执行行动）与正义（出于对公司与家庭的正义义务尽职尽责）。行动本身的善好与否，需以经由审慎做出的原初决策为标尺来衡量。 在古希腊与经院哲学中，"形式"指的是一事物之所以为该事物的特有规定性。以此语境而言，审慎为其他德性赋予了其内在本质的形式，亦即作为德性的特定品格。例如，并非所有讲真话的行为都可被视为合乎诚实德性的善举。唯有当讲真话的行动契合审慎之时，它才称得上是诚实之德的践行。