We must aim at graduating practically wise young men and women, if we are to restore the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues as the proper ends or goals of education. Instead of limiting education to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive domain objectives, we should embrace a baptized prudence.

Aristotle’s prudence has its limits, however, as well as its transcendence. Like artistry, prudence itself is not enough for the Christian educator, but it can participate in or integrate with the other goals of education. In this article we will attempt to map out those limits of prudence and also address the possibilities of prudence for transcending into higher realities. To continue our metaphor of the head, heart and hands from earlier in this series, we have noted that the artistry of the hands is not enough, but we must enter into the deeper realms of the heart (i.e. prudence); in a similar fashion, the heart itself will, on its own, come up short. After all, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick,” according to Jeremiah (17:6 ESV). 

The Limits of Perfect Prudence and Self-Interest

This Christian view of the heart’s deceitfulness is not simply a commentary on how hard it is for a person to develop genuine prudence, the equivalent of an Aristotelian claim for its rarity, “A man of practical wisdom, who can find?” Instead, it speaks to the thoroughgoing corruption of human prudence itself. Let me explain what I mean. Given Aristotle’s analysis, prudence consists of fear and hope undergirded by natural self-love. Definitionally prudence aims at my own personal human happiness. Since that requires good friends in a polis or city-state involving specialization to provide the good things of life, as well as the public justice of reciprocity and law-abiding citizens, then my own interest coincides with the manifestation of the moral virtues. 

However, Aristotle does not sufficiently address the question posed by the biblical book of Job, why good conduct should remain prudent if it no longer leads to personal eudaimonia. The Satanic claim in the book of Job is that a prudent form of righteousness devolves ultimately into mere self-interest, and when tested it amounts to no more than punishable wickedness. In fact, dependent as it is on an accurate assessment of the particular realities of human life, Aristotelian prudence operates within an immanent frame of reference, rather than a transcendent one, to use the terms of Charles Taylor (see A Secular Age). 

While Aristotle maintains an under-the-sun perspective on the correspondence between righteousness and earthly reward, the book of Job unveils a transcendent perspective held roughly in common with Plato, Aristotle’s predecessor, who likely struggled with the injustice of Socrates’ execution in a way that Aristotle did not. While the issue addressed by Plato’s Republic was first and foremost justice rather than practical wisdom, the character of Socrates at least took up the extreme objection of the ring of Gyges. Injustice becomes more prudent than justice if a man has the capability of getting away with it, pictured well by a ring of invisibility. Absolute power, and with it absolute prudence, corrupts absolutely. And on the other hand, when given the appearance of injustice, “the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, [362a] the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire” (361e-362a). 

Christians have seen in this passage of Plato a proto-evangelion to the Greeks; in addition to the verbal and situational similarity to the passion of the Christ, even more impressive might be its intended effect: to chasten the limits of a worldly Greek wisdom. As the apostle to the Gentiles would put it about four centuries later, “So then Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach a crucified Messiah, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles” (1 Cor 1:22-23, orig. trans.). Why is such a proclamation foolish? Because who would follow a leader so lacking in practical and political wisdom, that he would end up a public failure, executed as a lowly criminal! Plato’s mysterious and extended discourse in the Republic is intended to provide a mystical as well as rational answer to the dilemma of righteousness and self-interest. The answer ultimately becomes dependent on mythical tales of the afterlife and revelatory accounts of the soul like the myth of Er. In this way, Plato’s wisdom embraces a transcendence similar to Christianity but which is lacking in Aristotle. 

Aristotle’s definitional argument against this involves the claim that it is mere cleverness, and not practical wisdom which can manipulate ends in a morally neutral or corrupt manner. Prudence itself caps all the virtues and makes them true or genuine: “Therefore, as in the part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom” (VI.13). Not even natural virtues, or mere propensities towards the right way of living or doing something qualify, but only the wholeness of the moral excellences governed by reasoned practical wisdom: “It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue.”

In one sense, we could rightly criticize Aristotle for cooking the books here. If the definition of the correct mark for any of the moral virtues amounts to what the prudent man would choose, how do we actually know the difference between cleverness and practical wisdom, since the clever man might suppose himself to be practicing all the virtues? And we, lacking in full prudence, have little basis on which to judge the clever man for his Machiavellian prudence and political artistry. Aristotle does not give us hope of a transcendent frame of reference from which to call into question the machinations of our prudential self-interest. We have entered a circularity of reasoning; he may in fact describe the truth of the matter, but that does not enable a corrupt human person to actually enter into the loop of perfect virtue, governed by practical wisdom.

The Limitations of Human Calculation and Control

Aristotle would likely object to this challenge by stating that we are looking for the wrong sort of precision in his ethics, when we aim at a circular perfection of virtues (see Nic. Ethics I.3). The point is to give us enough of a sense to be getting on with as we take aim at various human goods. Life isn’t perfect, choices are complex, and chance or luck must be given its due in human affairs. In this way, Aristotle would prefer to emphasize a different limit of prudence, not the dilemma of self-interest, but the limitations of human calculation and control in a complex universe.

According to Herodotus, the wise man Solon famously questioned King Croessus’ claim on happiness, given that the gods are temperamental and a man’s fortune’s can quickly turn from better to worse or vice versa. In book I ch. 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle acknowledges the role of chance in contributing to happiness. While he ultimately disagrees with the conclusion of Solon, that we should only pronounce happiness upon an individual when we’ve seen the end of their life, nevertheless he acknowledges the limits of control available to the prudent individual:

Now many events happen by chance, and events different in importance; small pieces of good fortune or of its opposite clearly do not weigh down the scales of life one way or the other, but a multitude of great events if they turn out well will make life more blessed (for not only are they themselves such as to add beauty to life, but the way a man deals with them may be noble and good), while if they turn out ill they crush and maim blessedness; for they both bring pain with them and hinder many activities. Yet even in these nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul. (Rev. Oxford Trans., 1739)

Aristotle’s ultimate conclusion is still that moral and intellectual excellences, as activities, have a staying power in human life that mostly overcomes the changes and chances of fortune. Excellent activities “are more durable because those who are blessed spend their life most readily and most continuously in these,” and therefore the happy man “will be happy throughout his life,” for “he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously” (1739). 

We can note that Aristotle’s philosophy does leave room for the fact that even the most perfect prudence does not have all resources available to turn all events to its own good. In fact, we might even say that there is nothing to prevent prudence itself from leading to catastrophic failure. You could make the absolute best decisions with the knowledge available to you and still be undone by circumstances. Aristotle had a proper appreciation for the nature of tragedy; sometimes in this world the great-souled individual can meet with extreme hardship. In such cases, we would do better to appreciate the limits of practical wisdom to bring about human blessings, rather than throw up our hands at the value of prudence at all. In a way, Aristotle anticipates a Stoic “resignation” in the passage quoted above. Epictetus famously taught his disciples that, when kissing their child goodnight, they should call to mind the fact that the one they love is mortal and could die tomorrow. Far from the coldness that Stoics are criticized for, such reflections as “memento mori” (“Remember that you will die”) should increase gratitude and an emotional tenderness, alongside the nobility and decorousness that Aristotle has named. 

Christian Suffering and Purified Prudence

Christians, likewise, endorse a submission to providence that chastens and humbles those proud of their own prudential reasoning. Job’s response to his third grand misfortune stands as a model for Christian suffering: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’” (Job 1:20-21 ESV). The audience understands from the transcendent visions of the heavenly court that Job’s suffering comes because of a cosmic test posed by the adversary, but Job himself is left none the wiser for why his wise and righteous life has fallen short of its natural reward. Nevertheless, his worshipful submission to a hard providence is genuine and complete, even if he ends up answering the accusations of his “friends” by challenging the justice of God. Job is never given an answer, and so the implicit conclusion of the book is that the faithful must embrace righteous suffering regardless of prudential reward.

We have already had occasion to reference Jesus’ endorsement of a baptized prudence, “Be wise [phronemoi] as serpents but innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16b). But the context is instructive for the current topic. Christian prudence must uniquely transcend self-interest in a world that is in violent opposition to the gospel. The chapter begins with the twelve apostles’ particular mission to cast out demons, heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God, but the nature of Jesus’ instructions in the chapter seems intended to characterize the Christian mission throughout the church age. Jesus endorses a unique sort of anti-prudence in terms of the disciples’ preparation for the journey: “Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food” (Matt 10:9-10). 

The disciples are sent out “as sheep in the midst of wolves” (10:16a), innocent victims intentionally led forth to be falsely accused, flogged, dragged before authorities, hated by all and delivered over to death. Jesus is going to put the dilemma of Plato’s Republic and Job on display on a grand scale with the Christian apostles and martyrs. As the apostle Paul explains, “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as men sentenced to death, for we have become a spectacle to the cosmos, both to angels and men” (1 Cor 4:9). Christian prudence is transformed by faith and hope to be “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:10). Christian students become like the teacher Jesus, who is hated and persecuted by the world (Matt 10:24-25). In so doing they deliberately choose to accept less than earthly happiness for the sake of transcendent happiness. They are commanded, “Deliberate about [phroneite] the things above, not earthly things. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:2; orig. trans.). They fear the God who controls eternal destinies over human authorities and worldly rewards (see Matt 10:26-33). This wisdom is the substance of faith itself, which sees the unseen, and it effects a remarkable transformation on the nature of prudence.

Christian prudence is, at the end of the day, so remarkable that it hardly looks like prudence at all, when gazed on from this angle. And yet there is a sort of rational calculation to it. The introduction of eternal judgment, and therefore the heightened stakes of an eternal weight of glory or misery, radically upends the rational calculation of human goods. This enlightened prudence dictates not only the outcome of Pascal’s wager (Belief in God is the only rationally self-interested course of action, given the possibilities of heaven and hell.), but also a life of radical self-sacrifice. The pearl of great price of eternal happiness claims from us any cost, any sacrifice in earthly goods. As Jim Elliott, the martyred Christian missionary to Quechua Indians of Ecuador, famously wrote in his journal on Oct 28, 1949: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” 

Christianity thus resolved the corruption of self-interested prudence through the call to take up our individual cross and follow Christ, through personal suffering to infinite joy beyond. In this context the golden rule to do unto others as we would have them do unto us can actually find fulfillment, because a dove-like hope has quieted the serpent of self-interest. Prudence is transcended but it remains even while swallowed up in faith, hope, and love. After all, the “unblushing promises of reward” in the New Testament (to quote Lewis’ “Weight of Glory”) prevent us from claiming unselfishness as a virtue in itself. The fear and hope inbred through natural self-love are not abandoned but grow up into full manhood, as it were. Christians do not throw out prudence entirely, but embrace a baptized and purified prudence of faith, hope and love.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10), but in the transformation of wisdom into perfect love, fear becomes faith and only prudential love remains (see 1 John 4:17-18). As St. Paul concludes,

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor. 13:8-12)

The Christian, then, cannot agree with Aristotle that the philosophic wisdom or sophia characterized by knowledge and comprehension is the highest intellectual virtue. For him, the Unmoved Mover sits in pure deistic contemplation and therefore non-acting philosophic wisdom is crowned king of the intellectual virtues. The Christian worships a God whose steadfast love endures forever, who in His very being is love, who is Eternal Act. And so, not only is our partial knowledge dwarfed by his perfect perception of all things, knowledge itself passes away in prudential love, as we come face to face with the living, acting God. 

Prudence and the Other Intellectual Virtues

Of course, such theological reflections do not negate the way in which intuition, scientific knowledge and philosophic wisdom properly transcend practical wisdom. We are simply acknowledging that the theological virtues of faith, hope and love uniquely draw up the life of prudence into themselves, and in this way lead prudence beyond and above the intellectual virtues of the head. The heart transcends the head in the realm of the spirit. But it is not less true to remark on the ways that the head stands above the heart. The classical educational endeavor itself requires this. Have I not before remarked on the joy of learning for its own sake? 

The utilitarian and practical perspective on schooling and learning tends toward a reductionism that views knowledge simply as power. Prudential learning looks to advantage and endeavors to provide for earthly needs by a course of schooling that will lead to a good job with a good salary. But in the actual course of learning, new loves and affections are found. The beauty of education is that often a study begun for some advantage becomes an end in itself. There is a higher nobility found in the disinterested enjoyment of knowledge for its own sake, and, whatever our theological comments may have seemed to indicate before, this too is a form of love. The love of learning and the love of reality for itself and not merely as a means is part and parcel of full intellectual virtue. This limit and transcendence of practical wisdom occurs naturally and is not a rare mystery beyond our normal experience. Observation and calculation, with a view to the self, almost of its own accord will move a person towards a real encounter with the other as an end in itself. 

Such an experience of prudence transcending into disinterested intuition, knowledge and wisdom is almost proverbial. From thinking of ourselves we become lost in contemplation of curious mysteries. The boy who has gone to collect firewood stops to look at a piece of wood and is mesmerized by the moss growing on it, then the insects crawling about, and his practical task forgotten, he freely spends precious minutes indulging his curiosity. This too is part of a full life engaged in the good things of the created order God has made. And so, we must progress still further up and further in, to account for the full beauty and flowering of human intellectuality. The life of the mind has its own rewards. To these we must turn next in our series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues.

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We’ve also explored how the underpinnings of prudence are instilled in the young through practice according to principles, examples of good character, and appropriate discipline. Prudence itself can then flower into fully blooming rationality through a pedagogy of dialectic, rhetoric, and ethical inquiry. Students who have had their “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:14 ESV) will then be equipped to live virtuous and prudent lives. And if they add some measure of political, managerial or leadership wisdom to their personal prudence, these graduates might just lead their communities and the culture at large in a wiser direction.

But readers familiar with Aristotle, whether from a college philosophy class or an inspiring YouTube video, may be left wondering, “What about the virtues themselves? What about Aristotle’s famous mean?” Today were going strengthen the connection between Head and Heart by describing how the beginnings of prudence can help a person develop the moral virtues through aiming at the mean or intermediate state. Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is an incredibly helpful aid to self-regulation and self-government. Through understanding and teaching students the nature of virtue and vice, we give them one of the linchpins of prudence that has stood the test of time.

Moral Virtue as a Mean between Excess and Deficiency

What does Aristotle mean by the “mean” or “intermediate” in his discussions of moral virtue? In Book II, chapter 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle introduces this idea of the mean through a physical analogy:

First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. (Nicomachean Ethics II.2, trans. W. D. Ross, Internet Classics Archive)

“Defect” here refers to a deficiency, when there is too little of something, the excess refers to too much. If you work out too little or too much, both those extremes will have a negative effect on strength, just like eating too little or too much will hurt a person’s health. But an amount that is in between or “proportionate” will have a positive effect. That right amount is the virtuous mean or intermediate. Aristotle then applies this principle to two common virtues: 

So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from and fears everything and does not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean. (Nicomachean Ethics II.2, trans. W. D. Ross, Internet Classics Archive)

We might summarize Aristotle here by observing that courage is a mean or intermediate state of proportionate fear between cowardice, on the one hand,  and rashness on the other. Courage, as a virtue, then is not simply a passion, like fear, but a state of character, whereby a person has been accustomed to feel fear or confidence at the right sorts of things in the right amounts and at the right time (see Nic Ethics II.5). 

Developing courage over time, then, can be helped by a sort of nascent awareness of our own tendency toward excess or defect in our responses or passions. In the same way, when I become aware that temperance consists in a mean or intermediate state between the excess of too much indulgence pleasures or the wrong sorts in the wrong ways, and insensibility of the deficiency in pleasure, I can learn how to prudently manage my own inclinations to aim nearer the mark. 

Aristotle helpfully remarks that the intermediate or mean of virtue isn’t always halfway between two equal and opposite vices, but is an intermediate “relative to us”: “if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little- too little for Milo, too much for the beginner in athletic exercises” (Nic Ethics II.6). So in similar fashion to this physical analogy, moral virtue too has 

the quality of aiming at the intermediate… for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. (Nic Ethics II.6)

The intermediate is a helpful concept for understanding virtue because it provides us with the moral categories for avoiding pendulum swinging from one extreme to another. There is a real danger in swinging continually from one vice to another that we must guard ourselves and our students against. Aristotle concludes this thought with the blatant remark that “men are good in but one way, but bad in many” (Nic Ethics II.6), a comment that could have come out of a Christian theology book. “To miss the mark [is] easy, to hit it difficult,” he says, reminding attentive readers of the linguistic origin of the term ‘sin’ in Greek as to miss the mark. Which mark? The intermediate virtue that we should be aiming at!

Aristotle’s Moral Virtues in Prudential Perspective

For those who have paid close attention to this series of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, it may be that this descent into the details of his theory of moral virtues seems out of place. (Never mind the fact that we’ve already discoursed on the analogy between artistry and morality in our series on Apprenticeship in the Arts….) While I can assure you that we are right on track, or hitting the proper mean as far as I’m concerned, that may convince you less than a deliberate appeal to Aristotle:

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme. (Nic Ethics II.6)

Did you catch it? While we’ve jumped back several chapters from the Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, where Aristotle’s mini-treatise on the five intellectual virtues situates the life of the mind within his broader ethical vision of the good life, still Aristotle’s consistent terminology is at play here. Practical wisdom consists in that rational principle to choose correctly the mean of moral virtue rather than the vices of excess or deficiency. 

What then are some of these Aristotelian virtues, along with their vices of excess and deficiency? It seems obvious that knowing or perceiving the nature of virtue and vice will help the person who is developing prudence to aim correctly. In the case of prudence, we must, says Aristotle, “not only make this general statement, but also apply it to the individual facts,” because the particulars are essential to reasoning about what will make for human flourishing (Nic Ethics II.7). 

The following table has been developed from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, ch. 7, and also Books III-IV, when Aristotle returns to each of these to discuss them in more detail (using mainly Ross’ translation, but with some additions/alterations). Take a moment to look it through and contemplate the Aristotelian mean. 

It is important to note that even Aristotle confessed that the names are not always apparent for either the excess or deficiency. Ambition, for instance, is a challenging virtue and vice because sometimes people call ambition the vice, when someone is too ambitious and sometimes an ambitious person is praised (see IV.4). Aristotle’s conclusion is that the character of moral virtue is “to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions”: he has given us the middle way as a target and argued for “moderation in all things.” This claim does not let us off from the hard discipline of virtue; in fact, he states that often there is a more opposed vice, whether for humanity as a whole or for a particular individual, that must be violently striven against. For instance, Aristotle barely even discusses insensibility, since he knows that self-indulgence is the vastly more common flaw (see III.10-12)

On the contrary, most often we must, as in archery practice, aim toward the opposite side of the target, since we see clearly that when we shoot at the bull’s eye, our arrow inevitably strays off to a particular side. As Aristotle explains, 

Hence he who aims at the intermediate must first depart from what is the more contrary to it, as Calypso advises–

Hold the ship out beyond that surf and spray.

For of the extremes one is more erroneous, one less so; therefore, since to hit the mean is hard in the extreme, we must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils…. But we must consider the things toward which we ourselves also are easily carried away; for some of us tend to one thing, some to another; and this will be recognizable from the pleasure and pain we feel. We must drag ourselves away to the contrary extreme; for we shall get into the intermediate state by drawing well away from error, as people do in straightening sticks that are bent. (II.9)

This involves a knowledge of self and particulars that only the eye of prudence can rightly perceive. And so it is that we encounter the inevitable chicken or the egg syndrome of moral virtue and prudence: both require some measure of the other’s presence even in their first formation. 

A Christian Assessment of Prudential Aim

Christians might initially object to these Aristotelian categories as being unbiblical. Surely Jesus and the apostles do not represent holiness as in every case an intermediate between extremes? Should we really aim at vice rather than virtue in order to straighten ourselves out? We can deal with these objections by first noting that Aristotle is crystal clear that while in one sense the essence of virtue is a mean, “with regard to what is best and right it is an extreme” (II.6). As for whether we should aim at an opposite vice in order to hit the mark of virtue, we need look no further than Jesus’ hyperbolic words in the Sermon on the Mount: 

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matt 5:29-30 ESV)

I cannot think of a stronger endorsement of aiming at insensibility in order to fix the fatal flaw of intemperance and self-indulgence. Lest we forget, the term ‘self-control’ used in the New Testament derived from the Aristotelian and Stoic tradition of reflection. 

We must admit that the idea of proper pride as a sort of crown of the virtues strikes against the heart of the New Testament’s overwhelming endorsement of humility. Part of this is easily accounted for based on a different view of the facts of the human situation. In Christian theology, human beings are poor and needy sinners standing by nature under the judgment of a holy God. In such a context humility before God and fellow image-bearers is the only right disposition. Still, even Christians can resonate appropriately with some aspects of Aristotle’s description of the man of proper pride, as characteristic of Jesus at least, if not the Christian martyr:

Again, it is characteristic of the proud man not to aim at the things commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel…. He must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one’s feelings is a mark of timidity), and must care more for truth than for what people will think, and must speak and act openly; for he is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar. He must be unable to make his life revolve around another, unless it be a friend; for this is slavish, and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people lacking in self-respect are flatterers. (IV.3) 

We need not quibble over details, but we can simply observe that a person’s worldview as well as their assessment of the particular details of life and relationships will inevitably influence their take on what exactly each virtue looks like.

Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice offers its own semi-Christian chastening of Mr. Darcy’s Aristotelian proper pride. When charged by Elizabeth (ironically) with the faults of pride and vanity, he disavows vanity but says that “pride will always be under good regulation where there is a real superiority of mind.” It is this Aristotelian view that he must modify in his repentance after being initially rejected in his proposals. There is good reason to fail to endorse all the details of Aristotle’s exact take on what is and is not virtuous. At the same time, we would be unwise not to take on board Aristotle’s fundamental insights into the nature of virtue as an intermediate state between excess and deficiency. We can recognize with him that “to find the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows” and this unique sort of knowledge is in fact prudence. So also, “any one can get angry–that is easy–or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; that is why goodness is both rare and laudable and noble” (II.9).

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If our educational renewal movement consistently graduated students well on their way to practical wisdom, that fact alone would entail a remarkable positive inheritance. I might go so far as to say that, even if our educational methods bore no better fruit in standardized test scores or excellent artistry in language, mathematics, or the fine and performing arts, still it all would have been worth it if our graduates were more prudent. Part of the reason for this is that no man is an island, and so, regardless of other attainments, the influence of these prudent citizens on the world at large is nothing short of incalculable. Prudence is the quintessential virtue of true leadership.

Much ink has been spilled on the liberal arts as the proper training for a free human being. A free society relies on men and women leaders who are able to reason persuasively with both verbal and mathematical precision, in order to lead us to human flourishing. As Aristotle asserts,

That is why we think Pericles and people of that sort to be practically wise–because they have theoretical knowledge of what is good for themselves and for human beings, and we think household-managers and politicians are like that. (Reeve, Aristotle on Practical Wisdom, 56; VI.5 translation)

In actual fact, it is not the liberal arts simply, but the liberal arts facing prudential matters that prepare a person for leadership. Study of the liberal arts can tend toward the arcane, mystic and purely academic. The best students of abstract intellectual matters are not always the best leaders. 

Aristotle’s inclusion of both household-managers and politicians justifies our exploration of prudence as a leadership trait generally. When he says that “political wisdom and practical wisdom are the same state of mind, but to be them is not the same,” (VI.8, Revised Oxford Trans.) he further clarifies that political wisdom is that type of practical wisdom concerned with the city, just as economic or household management is that practical wisdom concerned with the household. This doesn’t negate the fact that a person could have individual practical wisdom but not the leadership varieties, because of lacking particular knowledge of that sphere. But it does mean that practical wisdom expands up into all types of leadership spheres, making the essence of practical wisdom itself highly desirable. 

After all, our graduates will lead in various ways after their Christian classical education, whether it be as parents themselves, church and small group leaders, coaches, business managers and executives, and perhaps even politicians. Our world needs more prudent leaders, just as it does more prudent individuals. 

In this article we will explore practical wisdom in dialogue with Jim Collin’s idea of Level 5 leadership from his book Good to Great. Then we will note some practical implications for training prudent leaders through the school experience today.

Level 5 Leadership and Prudence

In his masterfully researched Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers set out to discover what separated enduringly great businesses (measured “objectively” by publicly available stock valuation) from comparison companies. According to his own admission Collins “gave the research team explicit instructions to downplay the role of top executives so that [they] could avoid the simplistic ‘credit the leader’ or ‘blame the leader’ thinking common today.” In spite of this, the presence of what they came to call “Level 5 Leadership” in all the Good to Great companies at the time of transition kept staring them in the face, the more so since the traits they saw were so paradoxical and unexpected. 

Collins describes the Level 5 executive as a person who “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will” (20). He goes on to describe it this way:

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States President Abraham Lincoln (one of the few Level 5 presidents in United States history), who never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation. Yet those who mistook Mr. Lincoln’s personal modesty, shy nature, and awkward manner as signs of weakness found themselves terribly mistaken, to the scale of 250,000 and 360,000 Union lives, including Lincoln’s own. (22)

Lincoln provides an inspiring example of this “professional will” combined with “personal humility.” These leaders are not the superstar executives that led the company to a brief period of high profitability during their tenure as CEO, but then left it in the lurch at their departure. 

Collins lists a hierarchy of five levels of leadership that we can profitably set in dialogue with Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence:

• Level 1 – Highly Capable Individual: Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.

• Level 2 – Contributing Team Member: Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.

• Level 3 – Competent Manager: Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.

• Level 4 – Effective Leader: Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.

• Level 5 – Level 5 Executive: Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. (Jim Collins, Good to Great, 20) 

First, the highly capable individual has established good habits or virtues that productively make use of the talent, skills and knowledge that he has. This individual level of prudence calculates correctly that it will be beneficial to himself to work well and be known as a good worker, as that will provide him with the good things of life.

Second, the contributing team member has what Aristotle calls “consideration” or “judgment” (gnome; see Nicomachean Ethics VI.11), discerning correctly what is fair in working together with a team. This fair-mindedness relies on a perception or comprehension of each person’s rights and responsibilities. 

Third, the competent manager receives objectives or goals from and is able to use his cleverness (a morally neutral category related to practical wisdom in Aristotle; see VI.13) to organize people and resources toward meeting those goals. Moreover, this manager does so in a way that coordinates those combined efforts well and is in this sense political. We now see the forerunners of prudence approaching something like it in applied political leadership. 

Fourth, the effective leader adds still another element of practical wisdom, in that the leader first perceives and then articulates “a clear and compelling vision”–something that Aristotle would have called understanding the proper ends or goals of human flourishing and then having the art of persuasion to communicate it to others. The effective leader not only has the cleverness to chart out a path to these goals, but discerns the end from the beginning because he has high standards of excellence (virtue) within himself that enable this perception. 

Fifth, the level 5 leader adds on to these the crowning achievement of practical and political wisdom, because he has subsumed his own personal benefit within the good of the community or organization as a whole. Collins hesitates to use the term servant leadership because of how it might degenerate into mere niceness in our imaginations, but the conclusion is unavoidable:

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious–but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves. (21)

Christians should not be surprised by this finding, resonating as it does with the model of self-sacrificial leadership attested in scripture.

The sacrificial leadership described in Collins’s Good to Great also has a firmness of will, reminiscent of Charlotte Mason’s Way of the Will, which we have already had occasion to mention. The prudent leader may take time to deliberate well and correctly, but once his mind is made up about the best course of action, his will is iron. This iron will can coexist with a heart of humility partly because his knowledge is so firm and clear. He sincerely knows why, how and what is best for himself and others precisely because of his practical wisdom. 

A Pathway for Prudent Leaders

There are several practical take-aways for Christian classical schools that accept prudence as one of their aims. The first comes from the possibility of taking these 5 levels as a scope & sequence of sorts for leadership development in our schools. It might be fair to criticize the value of group work and teamwork in class projects from the vantage point of simple academic attainments. But if, as we are contending, school should act as a training ground for prudent decision-making in life, then the back-and-forth negotiations and power dynamics of persons are possible life lessons in and of themselves. Mentoring students up the levels of leadership could function as one strand in the curriculum governing this type of learning activity. 

It is worth pausing to note that it is important to differentiate this from simple rhetorical skill. Often in rhetorical training, it is the speech or paper that is graded or ranked, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the viewpoint taken. This isolation of the simple product of persuasion makes sense when we are focusing on developing the art of rhetoric only, but if we expand the vision to prudent leadership, then we can see that the speech functions holistically within a vision & strategy, a web of relationships, a set of challenges, and a perception of the resources, needs, and trade-offs of various pathways. While real-life experience leading is the most accurate training ground for this, proxies involving actual leadership of other students can help. 

It is for this reason that student leadership within a house system or student council can be a proper classical educational feature. Not because schools should function like democracies, but because of our educational goals. These leadership opportunities mimic real-world complexity than games or assignments since they involve real human beings and definite choices for their good or ill within a timeframe and constraints. Of course, if we were merely talking about strategy, it might be that our modern strategy games (whether board games, video games, or computer games) might afford the best training. Chess is a good example of this, originating as it did almost 1500 years ago in India, and its venerable history of mimicking military tactics. A little bit of such things throughout youth might be of value to future prudent leader, but because all the particulars of an actual leadership situation matter, becoming a grandmaster will be unlikely to transfer to level 5 leadership.

In fact, this case helps to illustrate one of the key differences between artistic training and an education for prudence. While artistry of any sort benefits from an abundance of focused practice within the discipline, game, or subject matter, too much specialization might actually be a hindrance to prudent leadership. As David Epstein illustrates in his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, a wide array of experiences often equips us with a better intuition, vision, and creativity for making decisions in the complex situations we face. 

In this sense too, the liberal arts were made for prudence, not only because they prepare a person with practical skills to lead (writing, discussing, speaking, calculation, charting, etc.), but also because they help us encounter the world in all its variety and prevent us from focusing too narrowly on one subject or aspect of things. Prudent leaders are generalists, who have encountered the world in all its complexity: people, products, research, and relationships, to name just a few aspects. They draw from all this varied data to make complex calculations about the best course of action and they regularly lead others to human goods. 

Let’s smooth this liberal arts pathway with lessons for level 5 leadership at our schools.

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To answer this question we must return to Aristotle’s definition of prudence itself, borrow from Charlotte Mason’s “way of the will,” and consider educational activities that align appropriately with the nature of practical wisdom. These three pieces will enable us to develop a pedagogy of prudence, through which, with God’s help and the student’s voluntary learning, we can pass on prudence to the young. 

The Defining Traits of Prudence

In his Nicomachean Ethics book VI Aristotle’s main goal is to illuminate the nature of phronesis or practical wisdom. In fact, he addresses the other four intellectual virtues (artistry, intuition, scientific knowledge, and philosophic wisdom) mainly in order to define more precisely what prudence is by comparison with other species of the overarching category or genus, intellectual virtue. This makes sense given the fact that it is a treatise on ethics, and so intended to clarify how we are to live in the world. Prudence itself involves the deliberate choices that would lead to a good life.

In one place, Aristotle defines practical wisdom as “a state involving true reason, a practical one, concerned with what is good or bad for a human being” (Reeve, Aristotle on Practical Wisdom, 56; VI.5 translation). It is not simply having good habits but involves the reasoning faculty of a human being, directed particularly at things that are good or bad for us as human beings. Practical wisdom is therefore not concerned, strictly speaking, with what objectively happened in the past or with what might happen in the future or elsewhere, but which has no immediate relevance to us. “Nothing that happened in the past, however, is deliberately chosen–for example, nobody deliberately chooses to have sacked Troy” (Reeve, 50; VI.2). It is concerned with those things that might benefit or harm us as human beings.

In this way, practical wisdom differs from scientific or theoretical knowledge, which makes truth claims about the world regardless of their relationship to us. Nevertheless, there is an analogy between them. As Aristotle explains, “What assertion and denial are in the case of thought–that, in the case of desire, is precisely what pursuit and avoidance are” (Reeve, 48; VI.2). Prudence causes us to pursue or avoid things, whereas knowledge simply asserts or denies. This is precisely what makes practical reasoning practical in Aristotle’s thinking; it is the type of thinking that we engage in as doers, actors in the world. Therefore, our desires and our deliberate choices are involved in the experience of practical wisdom. 

The Way of the Will

These two companions (desire and deliberate choice) might be said to make practical wisdom what it is. But they are uneasy companions even in the best of times. And that is because our desires are often in conflict with one another and with reason. As the apostle James says, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel” (4:1-2a ESV). This is why, for Aristotle, the moral virtues are a necessary precursor to practical wisdom, because if a person’s desires are entirely corrupt, he is not able to reason correctly about what is good for himself. His vision is so blurry, so obscured we might say by the log in his own eye, that he cannot see with any clarity what would in fact be good, either for himself or anyone else. 

Charlotte Mason, a British Christian educator from the turn of the last century, offers the “way of the will” as a guide to moral “self-management.” Being aware of our conflicting desires and able to manage them through deliberate choice is part and parcel of what prudence consists of. She explains this explicit instruction that children should be given in order to fortify their wills in vol. 6 Towards a Philosophy of Education:

Children should be taught (a) to distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts away from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of, or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (ch. 8)

We might add on to Mason’s categories here by helping our students understand that they often want not one thing but many different things, and that part of becoming wise is not listening to only one of those voices, those competing desires, at any one time. We are prudent if we hear them each out in turn, think through the options rationally to discern what is best for us, and then choose with our will. And at the same time, as we will to follow one particular desire, we stop our ears to the others through tactics like diversion. (I have discussed this tactic and another like it, pre-committment) at some length in a two-part series entitled “Educating for Self-Control”: 1) A Lost Christian Virtue, 2) The Link Between Attention and Willpower.)

Among the moral virtues that are a necessary prerequisite to Aristotle’s course on prudence he names specifically temperance (sophrosune in Greek), noting that it is called this because it saves or preserves (sozousan) the person’s practical wisdom (ten phronesin; see Reeve, 58; VI.5). The temperate and wise man has a strong will, in Mason’s terminology, to be able to resist the suggestions of wayward desires. Of course, our ultimate goal is that a person would desire the right things in the right way and to the right degree. The moral virtues help set the desires straight on things that are actually good for you as a human being and at a degree that is appropriate. But in this life, we know as Christians, we will still struggle against the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life. And so, we must strive for temperance and prudence, baptized by charity, at one and the same time.

But what is the central work of prudence itself? What does it take to will correctly with regard to human good? For Aristotle, the mental act of deliberation is highlighted as the key activity of a prudent person:

Practical wisdom, however, is concerned with human affairs and what can be deliberated about; for of a practically wise man we say that this most of all is the function, to deliberate well, and nobody deliberates about what cannot be otherwise or about the sorts of things that do not lead to some specific end, where this is something good, doable in action. The unconditionally good deliberator, however, is the one capable of aiming, in accord with calculation, at the best, for a human being, of things doable in action. (Reeve, 64; VI.7)

Deliberation then is the golden key that unlocks the door of a prudent life. A wise person must be able to think through options, calculate the respective values of different human goods, and accurately choose the best course of action. 

Training the Powers of Deliberative Reasoning

For Aristotle this deliberation or consultation will take the form of what we might call deliberative or practical syllogisms. They will know fundamental or categorical principles of what is good for human beings (the universal or major premise), and then they will also know the particular facts of this or that situation (particular or minor premise), leading them to reason: 

• Heavy water is bad to drink.
• This water is heavy.
• Therefore, I should not drink it. (see VI.8)

The practically wise person will be able to reason quickly and correctly about the new situations he faces in order to decide optimally about how to act in any doubtful situation (see the end of VI.9). 

From this follows the primary method of our pedagogy of prudence: students should be trained in logic, rhetoric, and ethics. It may seem at first glance that this is a curricular, rather than a pedagogical claim, until we recognize the role of logic and rhetoric as productive arts. When understood correctly, dialectic or logic, as well as rhetoric, are tools for the process of inquiry or deliberation. The process of inquiry and deliberation involves the student in seeking the truth through discovering arguments and reasons. It follows that a student who has a practiced ability to perceive reasons for and against a course of action will be able to deliberate well. If the student has studied ethics, he should have the major premises necessary for his practical syllogisms. Of course, he must also have enough experience of the world, so that he is not at a loss for discerning the particulars of his situation. 

Training in dialectic, rhetoric, and ethics, then, are not merely courses that must be added on in the high school or college years, but are instead a set of pedagogical practices that should be embedded in a student’s study from their earliest encounters with the “humanities,” those subjects that are concerned with instructing the conscience with the hard-won wisdom of mankind. This is why the Narration-Trivium lesson capitalizes on and expands Charlotte Mason’s narration-based lesson structure to explicitly name dialectic and rhetoric as proper responses to a rich text. To be clear, dialectic and rhetoric can face in two directions, as it were. They can be turned toward theoretical knowledge, on the one hand, establishing through reasoning some truth that has no direct bearing on my life or choices. Or else, they can face ethics and practical affairs and engage in the practical thinking of deliberation, where options are weighed about what is best for a human being. 

For this reason, and not simply for their own rhetorical training, should students be asked to deliberate about the best course of action for a character in a novel or a figure from history. By living vicariously through the decision-points of many people who have come before them, students gain facility with externalizing the thought-process of deliberation. While this is not the same thing as their own deliberate choices, it is an incredibly effective way to engage the faculty students will use in their own lives. This process of deliberation can be put on display in the classroom in any number of ways, whether it be through set speeches or essays, where a student endeavors to persuade others of the right course of action in a fictional or historical situation, or through harkness table discussions and socratic seminars, where the teacher poses some ethical dilemma. The important thing is that teachers regularly discuss, and get the students to discuss, human values and choices, using biblical moral categories. How else are students to grow in prudence if they never deliberate? 

A helpful tool in this regard is the pro and con chart, where students list out the positives and negatives of a possible choice in terms of its effects on self and others. The discipline of pausing long enough to think through all the ramifications not only develops a student’s analytical thinking, it also improves their invention, or ability to think of reasons or arguments. Traditionally, listed as one of the canons of rhetoric, invention will benefit from a student’s frequent use of common topics, like the more and the less, the better and the worse, the greater and the lesser, etc. (see Aristotle’s Topics).

In addition to vicarious exercises in deliberation, parents, teachers and mentors should utilize every opportunity that arises to assist a young person in their own deliberation process. We will be able to do this by acting as counselor rather than decision-maker. The college and career guidance counselling process is perhaps the prime example, because often in our culture this is a decision that parents hand over to their teenage children, even if some constraints are imposed. Parents and mentors should be asking questions, providing students with an awareness of the experiences of other students, and raising categories of what might be valuable or desirable in a college or career choice. It is not a matter of doing the thinking and deciding for these older students, but of helping them engage in a genuine process of decision-making that is not short-circuited by one or two considerations. These big decisions of early life will make a deep impression on students and act as guides for their process of making all the other important decisions of their life.

In the next article, we will see how this training in deliberative reasoning not only prepares our students for a wise personal life, but also enables them to lead in their homes, communities and churches.

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The book of Proverbs provides the perfect illustration of this. In it we find not only programmatic statements of value like “Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice” (16:8 ESV), but also observations about human nature like “A worker’s appetite works for him; his mouth urges him on” (16:26). As we explained last time, these are truthful opinions worthy of being shared with the young to help them learn to understand the world around them and to value things rightly. 

Early education should be packed with content of this sort, both directly from the mouths of teachers, but across all the subjects of study. Reading and writing instruction should not merely train in skills but should be rich in moral wisdom. In this way, we can sow the seeds of virtue and wisdom in the young. We have already had occasion to remark on the intimate connection between the moral virtues and practical wisdom. They are two sides of the same coin. As Aristotle says, “the function of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral excellence; for excellence makes the aim right, and practical wisdom the things leading to it” (Nicomachean Ethics VI.12; rev. Oxford trans., 1807). And again, “it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral excellence” (VI.13, 1808). 

We had to go somewhat far afield, with both John Amos Comenius, the great Czech educational reformer of the 17th century, and Aristotle as our guides, during the last article, in order to establish the necessity of laying this foundation of virtue and prudence in early education. In this article, we will put some flesh on the bones of this “good instruction” by teachers of the young through delineating the role of principles and practice, examples and discipline. 

Principles and Practice

First of all, we can pick up again and dust off the analogy between artistry and morality that we explored while introducing our series on Apprenticeship in the Arts. “Excellences we get by first exercising them,” Aristotle asserts, speaking of the moral virtues which are inextricably tied to prudence, “as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts” (Nicomachean Ethics II.1, 1743). Practice, in line with the correct principles, will form a person toward either artistry or morality. 

As in apprenticeship in the arts then, laying the appropriate foundation for prudence involves both moral practice and principles. John Amos Comenius emphasized the preliminary role of practice in craftsmanship, and he does the same for each of the other cardinal virtues. Regarding temperance, he says, in his Great Didactic,

“Boys should be taught to observe temperance in eating and in drinking, in sleeping and in waking, in work and in play, in talking and in keeping silence, throughout the whole period of their instruction.

“In this relation the golden rule, ‘Nothing in excess,’ should be dinned into their ears, that they may learn on all occasions to leave off before satiety sets in.” (212)

Temperance constitutes a guiding principle for the ordering of students’ days that parents and teachers should heed. Notice how Comenius draws from traditional wisdom for a principle that should be actively, rather than passively “dinned into their ears.” 

As modernists and postmodernists we are apt to recoil at such tough love, but we would do well to question our assumptions. Either we order their days, emotions, and minds with an open door to intemperance (e.g., playing video games all day, eating unhealthy foods, staying up late into the night, etc.), or we hold the line and cause them to practice temperance day in and day out. Intemperate habituation is no small issue to worry about; as Aristotle said, “It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather, all the difference” (Nic Ethics II.1, 1743). 

Apparently moral subtlety is not a virtue for an early education in prudence. Instead Comenius envisions a type of moral catechism with answers drawn from scripture and wise men to provide rules for life (answering questions like “Why should we strive against envy?” “With what arms should we fortify ourselves against the sorrows and chances of life?” “How should we observe moderation in joy?” “How should anger be controlled?” “How should illicit love be driven out?”; 216). These provide the guiding principles to accompany the practice of daily life.

Comenius goes on to delineate the reason for this habituation according to the cardinal virtues. It lies in the rational nature of a human being and therefore develops the proper connection between moral habits and the principled deliberation of prudence:

The principle which underlies this is that we should accustom boys to do everything by reason, and nothing under the guidance of impulse. For man is a rational animal, and should therefore be led by reason, and, before action, ought to deliberate how each operation should be performed, so that he may really be master of his own actions. Now since boys are not quite capable of such a deliberate and rational mode of procedure, it will be a great advance towards teaching them fortitude and self-control if they be forced to acquire the habit of performing the will of another in preference to their own, that is to say, to obey their superiors promptly in everything. (212-213)

For Comenius, obedience to a prudent parent or teacher acts as a preliminary stage in a person’s development of prudential wisdom. Since children cannot be entirely rational in consulting about which operation or act to perform, they should obey their elders, who at the same time explain to them the reasons for why one course of action should be preferred to another. 

Children thus act as moral apprentices through the habit of prompt obedience, practicing the very thing that they will do in later life when they must subordinate the impulsive and emotional part of them to their rational and deliberate mind. Again it must be reiterated that this is not the possession of prudence itself, but it is, in Comenius’ mind, “a great advance” toward it. A development of his playful analogy, sowing the seeds of virtue, helps him explain why:

“Virtue must be inculcated at a very early stage before vice gets possession of the mind.

“For if you do not sow a field with good seed it will produce nothing but weeds of the worst kind. But if you wish to subdue it, you will do so more easily and with a better hope of success if you plough it, sow it, and harrow it in early spring. Indeed, it is of the greatest importance that children be well trained in early youth, since a jar preserves for a long time the odour with which it has been imbued when new.” (215)

For this reason, we can see as injurious the inclination of many parents and teachers, to say of some vice a young child is displaying, “Oh, he’ll grow out of it.” Weeds do not disappear of their own accord but grow and infest the field. The diligent labor of bringing up children involves, first, sowing well the field, but then, harrowing it, as well, breaking up the ground and tearing up the weeds through proper discipline. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Examples and Discipline

So far we have explained the importance of providing principles alongside practice to prepare the hearts and minds of students for moral virtue and intellectual prudence. In his Great Didactic Comenius reiterates this Aristotelian emphasis on ‘practice, practice, practice’ as he transitions to a discussion of examples: 

We have seen in chaps. xx. and xxi. that it is by learning that we find out what we ought to learn, and by acting that we learn to act as we should. So then, as boys easily learn to walk by walking, to talk by talking, and to write by writing, in the same way they will learn obedience by obeying, abstinence by abstaining, truth by speaking the truth, and constancy by being constant. But it is necessary that the child be helped by advice and example at the same time. (215)

Just as in other skills and arts, practice according to good principles provides the foundation for prudence. In a similar way to training in artistry, where theory should not crowd out the importance of examples and models, so also in prudence moral exemplars hold a crucial role.

When the classicists among us think of moral exemplars, we might imagine Plutarch’s Lives or Aesop’s fables, the well-known figures of history and literature who demonstrate for us right and wrong behavior in the vivid color of a narrative. And this is right, but Comenius reminds us of the even more living curriculum of the lives of people in the school community: “Examples of well-ordered lives, in the persons of their parents, nurses, tutors, and school-fellows, must continually be set before children” (215). Comenius seems to suggest highlighting virtuous and wise individuals in the community through public praise and story-telling. We could imagine this being done in the classroom or assembly-hall, formally and informally. 

Comenius’ reason for valuing living examples resonates with modern research on mirror neurons and our imitative nature as human beings: 

For boys are like apes, and love to imitate whatever they see, whether good or bad, even though not bidden to do so; and on this account they learn to imitate before they learn to use their minds. By ‘examples,’ I mean living ones as well as those taken from books; in fact, living ones are the more important because they make a stronger impression. And therefore, if parents are worthy and careful guardians of domestic discipline, and if tutors are chosen with the greatest possible care, and are men of exceptional virtue, a great advance will have been made towards the proper training of the young in morals. (215)

We might supplement Comenius statement about children “learning to imitate before they learn to use their minds” with reference to the recent research that links imitation to the foundational emotional and artistic skills, say in mirroring the emotions of another through facial expressions or the hand-grasping movements of another simply by observing (see Patrick’s article The Imitation Brain). This monkey-see, monkey-do (or monkey-feel) may be less than the fully blossomed rationality of prudence, but it is a fundamental and therefore necessary step along the way. 

Parents and teachers must remember that their example and influence will have a real and overarching effect on the moral development of the children under their care. This is not an area where “Do as I say, not as I do” is going to be effective (if there is any domain where that works…). Ironically, it is this personal lack of prudence that contributes to parents’ lack of perseverance in discipline. Did you notice how in the block quote above Comenius transitioned immediately from living examples to the necessity of parents as “worthy and careful guardians of domestic discipline”? In his mind these are connected, because the faithful administration of discipline in the little things of the home functions as an overflow of a prudent and godly life.

In our modern cultural imagination we picture the pickiness of a hot-tempered and unpredictable parent when we think of domestic discipline: e.g., the surly father who corrects his son’s eating habits or messy room when he himself is in a bad mood from work. But for Comenius and the Christian tradition (“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” -Ephesians 6:4), “domestic discipline” involves consistency, emotional warmth, and a sensitivity to the child’s needs and abilities. In another counter cultural move (for us anyway), Comenius agrees with Charlotte Mason that children should “be very carefully guarded from bad society, lest they be infected by it” (216). Apparently, the idea that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” has a deeper moral point to it. Comenius also believes that ‘idleness is the devil’s playground’ for the young, who are apt to “be led to evil deeds or contract a tendency to indolence” through it (216). They should therefore “be kept continually employed either with work or with play” (216). 

It is important to note the Christian coloring that Comenius has given discipline in its role in developing prudence, at the same time as we consider the tradition’s questioning of corporal punishment in school. Quintilian, the famous Roman rhetorical teacher, for instance, had ruled against the use of corporal punishment in his Education of an Orator as tending toward a slavish disposition in students and abusiveness on the part of the tutor (I.3.14). Comenius, likewise, seems to have a lighter approach, remarking famously on the natural curiosity of children and the easiness of the way he recommends. However, when it comes to moral and spiritual matters he has a Christian seriousness that we must reckon with. He begins by noting the inevitability of discipline: “Since it is impossible for us to be so watchful that nothing evil can find an entrance, stern discipline is necessary to keep evil tendencies in check” (216). 

The whole work of sowing the seeds of prudence is for Comenius elevated to the spiritual plane of reference, when we view it from a Christian worldview–a fact that increases the need for watchfulness and careful treatment of moral maladies through timely discipline:

For our enemy Satan is on the watch not only while we sleep, but also while we wake, and as we sow good seed into the minds of our pupils he contrives to plant his own weeds there as well, and sometimes a corrupt nature brings forth weeds of its own accord, so that these evil dispositions must be kept in check by force. We must therefore strive against them by means of discipline, that is to say, by using blame or punishment, words or blows, as the occasion demands. This punishment should always be administered on the spot, that the vice may be choked as soon as it shows itself, or may be, as far as is possible, torn up by the roots. Discipline, therefore, should ever be watchful, not with the view of enforcing application to study (for learning is always attractive to the mind, if it be treated by the right method), but to ensure cleanly morals. (216-217)

Comenius’ measured approach stands between the extreme positions of our time and his, where the sterner forms of punishment (and even the name of punishment) is either neglected or over-used. His little phrase, “as the occasion demands,” endorses the prudential use of varied types of rebuke or consequence in a way that fits the students’ moral misstep.

If we are to recover the Aristotelian goal of prudence, we must reconsider the details of discipline as a part of a moral education. Principles and practice, examples and discipline form the appropriate web of “good instruction” that functions as a preliminary training in prudence, with the ultimate goal that students internalize right and wrong and a true sense of the value of things in the moral and spiritual universe from a God’s-eye perspective.

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So far in this series we have had occasion to develop the Christian underpinnings for prudence. “Be wise [phronemoi, prudent] as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), Jesus tells his disciples, utilizing the same word for prudence that Aristotle had named among his five intellectual virtues hundreds of years before. And while the New Testament does not consistently endorse this linguistic distinction between practical and philosophic wisdom (phronesis vs sophia), still the emphasis of the Bible lands squarely on the practical ability to discern the difference between good and evil, to see through the deceitfulness of sin and value goods rightly. Augustine’s ordo amoris, or the proper ordering of loves, provides an important theological development of the Greek philosophical vision of the prudent man. 

Practical wisdom is thus necessarily contrasted with philosophic wisdom (sophia), which for Aristotle involved perception (nous) of first principles and scientific knowledge (episteme) about invariable things, things that never change. We might call these invariable things eternal truths and think more readily of mathematics and metaphysics, than history and literature. What is best for human beings differs with different particulars. Christians might likewise contrast abstract or theoretical knowledge about the divine being, that He is eternal, immortal, impassible, etc., with knowing God himself in a saving relationship. As James writes in his letter, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!” (James 2:19 ESV). In the same way, prudence has the heart of action in a way that other intellectual virtues do not. 

Adopting a prudential perspective thus has the potential to transform our classical Christian educational paradigm by pumping the lifeblood of practicality back into it. To do that we must now begin to answer in earnest the question of how. What are the proper methods of instructing the conscience and instilling moral wisdom? We must begin with the preliminary stages of instilling prudence in the young, before delineating a pedagogy of prudence for our older students. The full dawning of prudence requires the later stages of reflection and rationality that await higher intellectual development in high school and college years. 

Can We Even Teach Prudence? 

At first, in consulting Aristotle we might be tempted to despair of a pedagogy for prudence. After all, the main requirement for developing prudence in Aristotle seems to be experience, a notion that is illustrated by the fact that scientific knowledge (episteme), while technically of a higher rank among the intellectual virtues, is attainable much earlier than prudence (phronesis):

What has been said is confirmed by the fact that while young men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has no experience, for it is length of time that gives experience; indeed one might ask this question too, why a boy may become a mathematician, but not a wise man or a natural scientist. Is it because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the first principles of these other subjects come from experience, and because young men have no conviction about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them? (Nicomachean Ethics VI.8, p. 1803 in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2)

In modern teaching circles we are inclined to believe that it is abstractions and universals that stymie the young mind. Aristotle provides a good counter to our inclinations here, as does the documented Flynn effect: “the increase in correct IQ test answers with each new generation in the twentieth century.” In his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein explains the increasing understanding of abstractions for children in the modern world:

A child today who scores average on similarities would be in the 94th percentile of her grandparents’ generation. When a group of Estonian researchers used national test scores to compare word understandings of schoolkids in the 1930s to those in 2006, they saw that improvement came very specifically on the most abstract words. The more abstract the word, the bigger the improvement. The kids barely bested their grandparents on words for directly observable objects or phenomena (“hen,” “eating,” “illness”), but they improved massively on imperceptible concepts (“law,” “pledge,” “citizen”). (39)

It turns out that abstractions are not as impenetrable to the young as we had thought. The linguistic environment of modern societies, which is rich in such abstractions (if deficient in other ways…), has provided for a steady advance in this sort of thinking. 

It has not, we can assert anecdotally, seemed to afford any meaningful advance in the particulars of prudence. Experience, we are tempted to believe, may not be the best teacher, but perhaps it is the only teacher of practical wisdom. We might forgive Gary Hartenburg, the author of Aristotle: Education for Virtue and Leisure (from the Giants in the History of Education series from Classical Academic Press), for claiming that the development of prudence must wait for after the conclusion of formal education (53-54).

I think that this pessimistic conclusion, however, is incorrect. Even if we must go beyond Aristotle’s admittedly incomplete writings on education (the section of his Politics which concerns education is corrupt and ends abruptly before its actual conclusion), we have reason to hope that we can influence the development of prudence in the young. In addition to a host of classical and Christian resources that answer the question, “Can virtue be taught?”, in the affirmative, as David Hicks memorably put it in Norms and Nobility (Buy through the EdRen Bookstore!), we need look no further than the great Christian educational reformer John Amos Comenius. 

Sowing the Seeds of All the Virtues

You might recall that John Amos Comenius, the brilliant Czech educational celebrity of the late Reformation era, came to our aid earlier in this series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. His reflections helped to establish the ultimate goal of Christian education as the cultivation of all the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues. In this way we were able to effectively replace Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain with a more holistic Christian paradigm focused on the virtues. Prudence uniquely ties together the moral and spiritual virtues at the rational center of human thought. It has therefore rightly been regarded as a hinge virtue, one of the cardinal (from the Latin cardo for hinge) virtues of classical and medieval tradition. 

Comenius, also, provided us a pedagogy of artistry through his method of the arts, laid out first in his Great Didactic, then refined and developed in the Analytical Didactic, which he published much later in life. The first of these developed analogies from nature to detail a thrilling and vibrant (if at times startling) educational vision. The second delighted in the bracing air of analytical logic and method, rather than continuing the playful analogies of his first great educational work. 

In a chapter of The Great Didactic entitled, “The Method of Morals” he begins by stating programmatically, “All the virtues, without exception, should be implanted in the young. For in morality nothing can be admitted without leaving a gap.” We can pause to note the natural metaphor of implanting, sowing the seeds of virtue we might say. (I explored this idea for the benefit of parents on Coram Deo Academy’s website: intro, memory, habits, ideas.) For Comenius, like Aristotle, the virtues do not “exist in separation from each other…, for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the excellences” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.13, Rev. Oxford Trans., 1808). 

Comenius goes on, drawing from medieval and classical tradition, to endorse the cardinal virtues explicitly, as the hinges on which the door of virtue is swung open:

Those virtues which are called cardinal should be first instilled; these are prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. In this way we may ensure that the structure shall not be built up without a foundation, and that the various parts shall form a harmonious whole. (211-212)

Comenius’ ordering of these virtues seems deliberate, as he continues through them in the order named, delineating certain “fundamental rules” for “shaping the morals” and “instilling true virtue and piety” in schools (211). It is refreshing to see Comenius’ clear endorsement of the classical tradition’s call to teach virtue and establish a bedrock of piety in our students (on which we might reference Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s chapter on piety in The Liberal Arts Tradition). 

But why does Comenius list prudence first? Most of the time the cardinal virtues are enumerated with prudence last as the crowning achievement after the preliminary moral virtues. Surely our awareness of Aristotle’s categorization of prudence as an intellectual virtue would cause us to place it after the moral virtues of temperance, justice and fortitude. We must read on to see that Comenius’s practical advice on how to instill these virtues requires the seeds of prudence to be sowed alongside every virtue. We cannot really train in virtuous habits, unless we are at the same time laying the foundation of prudence in the hearts and minds of the young. 

The Method of Instruction in Prudence

Charlotte Mason distinguished her method of habit training from mere behaviorism by her insistence on going back further than simply “sowing a habit” to “reap a character”. We must sow the idea that makes the habit valuable and good. In the same way, Comenius regards prudential instruction as the basis for the development of the moral virtues. He begins by stating, “Prudence must be acquired by receiving good instruction, and by learning the real differences that exist between things, and the relative value of those things.” Surprisingly, perhaps to our postmodern ears, Comenius asserts that “good instruction” on values is not only possible, but is grounded in objective reality. 

In our contemporary culture ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’ are sharply distinguished, and opinions and value judgments are classed as unimportant because they are contested in the public square. But practical wisdom is precisely concerned with, in Aristotle’s words, “that part [of the soul] which forms opinions” (Nic. Ethics, VI.5, 1801), and “correctness of opinion is truth” (VI.9, 1804). Understanding the “good instruction” of a teacher on the “real differences… between things” and the “relative value of those things” is therefore a preliminary to prudence. As Aristotle explains, 

Now understanding [nous] is neither the having nor the acquiring of practical wisdom; but as learning is called understanding when it means the exercise of the faculty of opinion for the purpose of judging of what some one else says about matters with which practical wisdom is concerned–and of judging soundly. (VI.10, 1805)

The key point for our purposes is that, while understanding a teacher’s “good instruction” is not prudence itself, it does exercise the faculty of opining and judging soundly. It therefore constitutes sowing the proper seeds for prudence, or laying the right foundation, to continue with Comenius’ vivid metaphors. 

Comenius elaborates on this preliminary instruction in prudence quoting from John Ludovic Vives, one of the great educators of the sixteenth century:

A sound judgment on matters of fact is the true foundation of all virtue. Well does Vives say: “True wisdom consists in having a sound judgment, and in thus arriving at the truth. Thus are we prevented from following worthless things as if they were of value, or from rejecting what is of value as if it were worthless; from blaming what should be praised, and from praising what should be blamed. This is the source from which all error arises in the human mind, and there is nothing in the life of man that is more disastrous than the lack of judgment through which a false estimate of facts is made. Sound judgment,” he proceeds, “should be practiced in early youth, and will thus be developed by the time manhood is reached. A boy should seek that which is right and avoid that which is worthless, for thus the practice of judging correctly will become second nature with him.” (212)

We can pause here to note that this sort of instruction cannot be given by a man or woman without sound judgment and some measure of prudence herself. You cannot give what you do not have. In matters of prudence, John Milton Gregory’s Law of the Teacher could not be truer: a teacher must know that which he would teach. We should also fix in our minds clearly that our modern dichotomy between fact and opinion has been entirely done away with (at least in this translation…). The fact is that riches are less valuable than friendship; you can call this an opinion or judgment if you want, but it does not reduce the importance or truth of such a fact. 

Proverbs provide a collected store of such judgments or estimates of the facts of a case, which can provide a preliminary to prudence for the young. Even where the reasoning of moral sayings and aphorisms is not spelled out, they are of immense value to the young in averting prudential error in valuing things rightly. As Aristotle claims, “Therefore we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for because experience has given them an eye they see aright” (Nic. Ethics VI.11, 1806). 

It is in the realm of prudence, then, that we must question Charlotte Mason’s outlaw of opining before children:

One of our presumptuous sins in this connection is that we venture to offer opinions to children (and to older persons) instead of ideas. We believe that an opinion expresses thought and therefore embodies an idea. Even if it did so once the very act of crystallization into opinion destroys any vitality it may have had…. (Toward a Philosophy of Education, vol. 6; Wilder, 2008; 87)

If by “opinions” we are talking primarily about personal views on contemporary issues or debatable matters of history or literary criticism where solid evidence is lacking, Mason’s point is well-taken. The precious class time should not be concerned with such trivialities and the accidence of their teacher’s preferred opinions. 

But if instead we are talking about matters related to living a good life and the general human condition, with what is truly valuable in life and what dead ends and roadblocks have prevented many people for making virtuous choices, then Charlotte Mason’s opinion about opinions must be soundly discarded. If a teacher’s hard-won opinions about such matters are not worth passing on to the young, the teacher should not be employed to give care to the young. In fact, we might go so far as to state that the most important quality of a teacher or tutor of the young is that he or she be a man or woman of prudence, with the ability to give instruction in the form of good opinions about life in the midst of all the studies. As John Locke openly declares in Some Thoughts Concerning Education:

The great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him by little and little a view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy, and in the prosecution of it to give him vigor, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets him upon are but as it were the exercises of his faculties and employment of his time to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect. (70)

The studies themselves pale in comparison to the training in “good habits” and the teacher’s instruction in “the principles of virtue and wisdom.” 

So, our conclusion, for the moment, is that the teacher of the young should not muzzle herself when it comes to opining on matters of wisdom and virtue. She should proactively and deliberately seek to share all the accumulated wisdom on living a good life that she has available to her, from proverbs and sayings, passages of scripture, lessons of life from history, literature, and modern examples. It is the job of a teacher of the young to thus opine. In the next article we’ll continue to explore the methods of instilling prudence in the young through not only “good instruction” but the use of examples, rules and discipline.

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At the same time, we noted in the last article that our recovery movement has at times struggled to name prudence or practical wisdom specifically as a central strand of the liberal arts tradition. And because of our modern scientism this has likely resulted in a de facto neglect of prudential wisdom in the classroom. We may give lip service to wisdom and virtue as our goals, but our teachers may be only nominally inclined to turn the liberal arts we train or the classic works we study toward the ends of practical wisdom. 

Even when we teach ethics, we are often like C.S. Lewis’ moral philosophers, quick to philosophize in the abstract, and to teach Great Books in their historical and literary context, but reticent to help students apply moral reasoning to their own lives. In fact, there may be some classical educators who view such preachiness as out of place. Their view of classical education is all classical languages and literature, mathematics and science for its own sake and for the mental training they afford. Practical considerations that include the particulars of modern life and the choices that students will have to make are, in their estimation, wholly out of place. They are quick to cry pragmatism and utilitarianism, preferring instead an arcane and ivory tower classicism. I would encourage such persons to read Proverbs, Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Republic, and then return to read the rest of this series. 

In fact, Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence proposes the ideal middle way in education between practicality and liberality, between what is useful and learning for its own sake. The joy of learning is indeed one of the values of the classical tradition, but so is practicality and a stoic awareness of the limited time we have on earth. We might think of this under the classical quest for the good life or the life well lived. Education is not all fun and games, even arcane and intellectual ones; our choices often have the weight of life and death upon them. In this light, all subjects of study have a practical dimension to them, in terms of how human beings should think about, value and use them for other ends. There is a hierarchy of goods and needs, and human beings ought to value the world in a certain way, in accordance with a true ordo amoris, to cite Augustine’s phrase for a proper ordering of loves. By adopting this perspective or attuning ourselves to this dimension of things, we will begin to see how we might instill prudence in the young. 

Deliberating about the Beneficial

Aristotle begins his more detailed discussion of the intellectual virtue of prudence or phronesis with a set of common sense considerations:

Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general.

Nicomachean Ethics, VI, ch. 5 (trans. by W. D. Ross accessed at The Internet Classics Archive)

People with prudence are masters of deliberation or consultation (as some translations have it; the Greek bouleuo can mean to “take counsel, deliberate, or resolve after deliberating”). They are able to consider counsel within themselves or with the help of others (“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” Prov. 15:22 ESV), especially regarding what is good, beneficial or expedient for themselves. 

In case the idea of expediency or prudence itself sounds too Machiavellian, it is to what is expedient or beneficial (Greek sumphero) that Paul appeals in 1st Corinthians 6:1, instead of what is simply lawful. In this case, what is expedient or beneficial can be a guide to practical thinking with a higher moral standard than mere law. In this way, Aristotelian expediency can be baptized by applying Jesus’ Golden Rule to love others as we love ourselves. Since we naturally desire what is good and beneficial for ourselves, the spiritual virtue of love of God and neighbor can guide the intellectual virtue of prudence as we deliberate about what is good for our neighbor and ourselves in God’s good world. 

We must pause here to head off a potential misunderstanding of Aristotle’s statement above. In claiming that practical wisdom entails the ability to “deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some particular respect” like health or physical fitness, Aristotle might be heard as endorsing a philosophical quest for the good life, rather than something practical. On this view, Aristotle’s prudent person asks the big questions of life and doesn’t settle for simplistic answers or get sidetracked by subjects. After all, isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 

However, Aristotle cannot mean that a person could have practical wisdom and yet regularly and deliberately make choices that are unhealthy. Otherwise, how could it be that, as Aristotle later states, “it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, ch. 13). In their true form, moral virtue and practical wisdom are inextricably linked. So, some awareness of particular subjects, like health, that impinge on human wellbeing must be included in an education which aims to promote prudence. But it is one thing to study the art of medicine, with the goal of a profession in the medical field. It is entirely another to acquire the general understanding of particulars that will enable a person to live a healthy life, as one aspect of the good life. 

From this vantage point, we are prepared to distinguish between two ways in which an education might be practical. The more common usage today sees education as job training. And for all its abuses, there is a legitimate sense in which an education should involve apprenticeship in practical arts, trades and professions. An educated person should, in a Christian’s view at least (see e.g., 2 Thess 3:10, ESV: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”), be prepared to provide for himself and have something to share with others (Eph 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”). The second way education may be practical is in providing an understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, what is beneficial, excellent and praiseworthy in human life. Practical education not only enables a man to earn a living, but also to conduct his life.

Because of this, the art of medicine may be optional, but the study of health is not. But too often we neglect this second type of practicality in favor of the first. The same might be said of other subjects: history and politics, science and literature, technology, mathematics and economics. All these have their practical dimension, in which some understanding of them will help one to make beneficial or expedient decisions for oneself and others in the world. 

Deliberating with the Variables

Aristotle goes on to explain practical wisdom as distinct from the arts:

This is shown by the fact that we credit men with practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have calculated well with a view to some good end which is one of those that are not the object of any art. It follows that in the general sense also the man who is capable of deliberating has practical wisdom.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 5

In essence, prudential wisdom then is about calculating, consulting or deliberating about what is best. It consists in properly weighing the options. Moral virtue itself is a habit, and therefore does not involve deliberation. But only by deliberation are moral virtues maintained as habits, and only through the right hands will a person see the right ends and value the means correctly. The arts likewise involve habits, as well as thoughtful analysis of means and ends, but only for the purpose of production, not for essential choices about how to live in the world.

The prudential perspective thus sets limits on what is valuable to know or think. It is as the Psalmist said, 

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

Psalm 131:1 ESV

There is a humility in the concerns of prudence to focus on earthly things and human things, rather than divine or arcane marvels. The way Aristotle distinguishes these categories involves the idea of the variable and invariable, what is changeable or unchangeable. Philosophical discussions of contingency developed from this distinction between what must necessarily and logically be true and that which could be otherwise. We might think of variable things as the facts of a case. They are matters which could be different in a different case.

This distinction between the variable and invariable aligns with Aristotle’s distinction between practical wisdom (phronesis) and scientific knowledge (episteme). He explains,

Now no one deliberates about things that are invariable, nor about things that it is impossible for him to do. Therefore, since scientific knowledge involves demonstration, but there is no demonstration of things whose first principles are variable (for all such things might actually be otherwise), and since it is impossible to deliberate about things that are of necessity, practical wisdom cannot be scientific knowledge nor art; not science because that which can be done is capable of being otherwise, not art because action and making are different kinds of thing. The remaining alternative, then, is that it is a true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man. For while making has an end other than itself, action cannot; for good action itself is its end.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 5

The goal of production is always its usefulness for something else, but a decision to act a certain way has its goal in itself: living a good life. So far so good on the distinction between artistry and prudence. We have had occasion already to define scientific knowledge (episteme) as the ability to demonstrate some truth. In Aristotle’s logical system of distinctions, the possession of scientific knowledge involves the demonstration or proof of something from first principles that could not be otherwise. Aristotle later mentions an example from mathematics: “that the triangle has or has not its angles equal to two right angles.” No one deliberates or takes counsel about that but only about affairs in which he can make a choice. The first principles that entail knowledge about triangles are fundamental and of necessity; we cannot really imagine a world in which they were otherwise. 

Our conclusion, then, is simply a restatement of Aristotle’s definition of prudence (phronesis) as a “true and reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to things that are good or bad for man.” The true reasoning of practical wisdom takes place in deliberation, when a person takes counsel by considering various actions. He or she must know the particulars of the situation as well as universal human values. As Aristotle’s says, 

Nor is practical wisdom concerned with universals only—it must also recognize the particulars; for it is practical, and practice is concerned with particulars. This is why some who do not know, and especially those who have experience, are more practical than others who know; for if a man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome but did not know which sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 7

Aristotle comes full circle on the example of health, enabling us to confirm that there is a prudential perspective on the subject of human health. We can distinguish it even further from scientific knowledge now through this example. While a person might know through deductive reasoning from the first principles of (ancient) medicine and nutrition that light meats are digestible and wholesome, he could still be unaware of the particulars. An experienced person might not know the general categories and theory, but know the particular facts that chicken is wholesome. So, in deliberating about what to eat that might promote health, the experienced person is at an advantage over the person with theoretical knowledge.

Reclaiming the Practical Perspective for Classical Education

All that we have seen so far demonstrates the legitimacy of taking a practical perspective on various subjects in education. One of the unfortunate effects of the modern education landscape is that practicality has been subsumed under progressive education’s utilitarianism and pragmatism. In defending subjects like Latin, ancient and medieval history, and the arts, from those who swept out impractical subjects for dead people, some classical educators have strapped on the armor of “art for art’s sake” so long that have reflexively neglected the proper practicality of the classical tradition.

In this context, contemporary educators have tended to stress research findings to support making subjects relevant to the lives of their students. On the one hand, such insistence on connecting everything to students’ day-to-day lives seems extreme and anti-classical. Must I really make connections between modern day gang wars and the stories of the Greeks and Trojans? Context is everything. Such a teaching move could be either far-fetched or brilliant. Besides, the supposition that every subject of study must prove itself as relevant to the student before he or she can rightfully be expected to engage it with their full attention is manifestly pernicious. Teachers and schools end up cutting valuable subjects and justifying the practicality of STEM on the job-preparation motive alone. 

On the other hand, we now have classical reason, founded in the educational objective of developing prudence, to adopt the practical perspective, especially on the humanities, health, and economics, without neglecting the cultivation of other intellectual virtues in their place. After all, relevance is only one among several factors that “reduce stress and lead to the thinking, reflective brain response” (see Neuroteach, by Whitman and Kelleher, p. 69). It is not the case that every subject must justify itself as practical, in the sense of relevant to my personal life decisions. Yet the practicality of instructing the conscience for life must be the beating heart of the whole educational experience, not the whole of education but a living center that pumps the blood of human interest into every other part.

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In The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education (Version 2.0, Revised Edition), Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain argue for a recovery of the tradition of moral philosophy against the reductionism of the modern social sciences. Their account of the intellectual history that led to the replacement of this classical and Christian paradigm for wisdom in ethics and the humanities, broadly considered, faithfully unpacks the faulty assumptions of this shaky modern and postmodern problem. In this series on replacing Bloom’s taxonomy with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues, we have already had occasion to bring the razor edge of their intellectual knife to bear upon Bloom’s taxonomy itself. After all, Bloom’s taxonomy majors on a false analogy from the natural sciences (i.e. a taxonomy for ordering biological species) for the emerging social science of modern education, now obsessed with measurement, clear objectives, and abstract knowledge. 

But as stunning as Clark and Jain’s tour de force is from a broad, intellectual perspective, it leaves us with something missing that only a full recovery of Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence can help us grasp. In order to understand this missing link, we will need to explain more completely Aristotle’s distinctions between prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis) and not only philosophic wisdom (sophia), but also their forerunners, scientific knowledge (episteme) and intuition (nous), as well as the moral virtues, with which prudence is inextricably linked. This set of distinctions will help us recognize more clearly the nature of this lost goal of education, the student’s prudence to decide and act reasonably with regard to human goods. 

(Read the first article in this series: The Counsels of the Wise, Part 1: Foundations of Christian Prudence.)

The key to Aristotle’s distinctions can be found in kernel form in a passage of C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man, which we have already cited. In defending the moral law against modernist skepticism, he claimed, “I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers” (24). Lewis’s point is that the character of a person is influenced by his upbringing and habits, more than his skill or intellectual attainments in philosophical speculation. Such a consideration raises the question of whether we are merely aiming at creating clever devils, or if we intend to educate students for genuine moral virtue and wisdom. In fact, in claiming that there is a type of wisdom, a moral philosophy even, which does not require the moral virtue of the philosopher, Lewis is underlining a crucial set of distinctions found in Aristotle.

Different Intellectual Virtues Have Different Ends

Aristotle began his Nicomachean Ethics by noting that different arts and sciences have different sorts of goals: “Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth” (Book I, 1; Revised Oxford Trans., p. 1729; 1094a1ff.). The intellectual virtues contribute in different ways to the ultimate goal of happiness, Aristotle’s eudaimonia or human flourishing. These goals are not ancillary to the nature of the intellectual virtues themselves, but are part and parcel of their nature. It is because of this that we not only can but must distinguish between moral philosophy or science and practical wisdom or prudence, even though these seem to have the same subject matter. 

Perhaps Aristotle’s most helpful example of this set of distinctions occurs when he is discussing the difference between artistry and science. Using an example where the subject matter seems to overlap, he contrasts the perspective of the carpenter and the geometer:

For a carpenter and a geometer look for right angles in different ways; the former does so in so far as the right angle is useful for his work, while the latter inquires what it is or what sort of thing it is; for he is a spectator of the truth. We must act in the same way, then, in all other matters as well, that our main task may not be subordinated to minor questions. Nor must we demand the cause in all matters alike; it is enough in some cases that the fact be well established, as in the case of the first principles; the fact is a primary thing or first principle. Now of the first principles we see some by induction, some by perception, some by a certain habituation, and others too in other ways. But each set of principles we must try to investigate in the natural way, and we must take pains to determine them correctly, since they have a great influence on what follows. For the beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole, and many of the questions we ask are cleared up by it.

I, 7; R. Oxford, p. 1736; 1098a29 – 1098b8

The first part of this paragraph is clear enough; a carpenter doesn’t bother with the speculative complexities of angles and their essence like a geometer does. All he needs is a good-enough right angle to be getting on with. In fact, if he paused and contemplated the angle’s essence and relationships too long, he would cease acting as a carpenter. 

What is perhaps harder to see is how Aristotle’s train of thought applies this idea to his own treatise on ethics. We might expect him to side with the geometer, but instead he is claiming to avoid the “minor questions”of moral philosophy or speculative science that might distract him from the “main task.” What is his main task, we might ask? To instruct human beings in making decisions regarding what is good for them (i.e. to teach prudence), we must conclude. He needs a good-enough right angle, which any practiced carpenter can perceive just fine; right angles are one of those “facts” or “first principles,” with which a carpenter must work all the time in his craft. When we get these straight, the battle is more than half-won. 

In artistry or craftsmanship, these principles are perceived, reasoned at by induction, or habituated. The same is true of philosophic wisdom, where intuition (the Greek nous) must perceive first principles correctly, while scientific knowledge (episteme) demonstrates universal truths. Prudence or practical wisdom (phronesis) likewise has its forerunners; in fact, when Aristotle mentions “habituation” he most likely has in mind the habit-forming process as the necessary background for the intellectual virtue that deliberates well with regard to human goods. The moral virtues must link arms with the intellectual virtue of prudence for either to be complete.

As he explains, the prerequisite for understanding the subject matter of prudence is a proper moral upbringing:

Hence any one who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just and, generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits. For the facts are the starting-point, and if they are sufficiently plain to him, he will not need the reason as well; and the man who has been well brought up has or can easily get starting-points. And as for him who neither has nor can get them, let him hear the words of Hesiod:

Far best is he who knows all things himself;

Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right;

But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart

Another’s wisdom, is a useless wight.

I, 4; R. Oxford, p. 1731; 1095b4ff.; quotation is from Works and Days 293-7.

A person cannot even “listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just” without some measure of moral excellence or “good habits,” according to Aristotle. It’s not that the situation for such a person is hopeless, but he must listen to and store up in his heart the counsels of the wise if he is to remedy the faults of his uninstructed conscience.

So far so good, as we have already mentioned the link between the moral virtues and prudence. But the presence of Lewis’s imaginary “moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers” seems to put the lie to Aristotle’s claim that good habits are a prerequisite… unless we consider the possibility that our modern moral philosopher is not a prudent man at all, but simply a scientist. He may reason accurately from accepted starting points or first principles in the tradition of inquiry for his discipline, but these do not originate from his personal convictions or familiarity with human goods through personal habituation. He is a professional, an academic, a peddler of abstract knowledge.

This then is the danger of missing Aristotle’s distinctions in intellectual virtues, because they are distinctions in the goals or ends of education. The carpenter’s goal is to create something with the material he uses; right angles are part of the necessary means to his product. The geometer aims to demonstrate abstract truths about angles and their relationship. What then is the moral philosopher’s goal? Is it demonstration of abstract truth about human nature? Then he is a scientist and he may or may not be very wise in his own life. But the prudent person requires a different sort of intellectual precision, because he must deliberate and make practical choices about how to live his life, in the midst of all the particularities that he inhabits. Too precise a moral science may not, in fact, be very useful to him. 

As Aristotle explains,

Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, exhibit much variety and fluctuation, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention and not by nature. And goods also exhibit a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each of our statements be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits: it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.

Book I, 3; Revised Oxford, p. 1730; 1094a13ff.

In a way, Aristotle is going further than our claim to say that moral science may be a flawed endeavor in and of itself. This coheres with Clark and Jain’s critique of the modern move toward the social sciences rather than accepting the tradition of moral philosophy. For Aristotle’ prudence is the goal of moral philosophy: his is a practical philosophy for life.

Filling the Gap in PGMAPT

The gap in Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s The Liberal Arts Tradition comes from the fact that they trace an intellectual history of the shift in assumptions or first principles for the academic disciplines of the social sciences or moral philosophy. While important in its own right, this move neglects the goal of prudence as an intellectual virtue: the person’s actual well lived life. But one way of developing the Aristotelian distinctions would argue that even moral philosophy is a form of sophia, philosophic wisdom. And while Aristotle ultimately regards sophia as a higher intellectual virtue than phronesis, he does not thereby exclude phronesis as necessary for a happy life (book VI, ch. 13). 

For this reason, we propose an addition to Clark and Jain’s PGMAPT (Piety, Gymnastic, Music, liberal Arts, Philosophy and Theology) paradigm of the liberal arts tradition. Piety, Music and Gymnastic may help form the habituated moral sensibilities necessary for prudence, but none of them seem to constitute the intellectual virtue of prudence itself. The liberal arts (as well as the fine and common arts) are traditional paths of artistry, as we contended in our series on Apprenticeship in the Arts. Philosophy has been traditionally divided into wisdom about the natural world, human goods and affairs (or moral philosophy) and divine philosophy or metaphysics, but the traditional terms for intellectual virtue in these areas are either science or scientific knowledge (episteme), or its more finished attainment of wisdom (sophia), which assumes an accurate perception and understanding of first principles (intuition or nous). 

Aristotle’s terminology and distinctions bring to light the need for another category alongside the acquisition of the liberal arts at the heart of this paradigm: the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom or prudence (phronesis). Otherwise, we leave out the reasoned outcome of moral formation: the educated person’s intellectual capacity to deliberate about what is good for himself and for other human beings. Andrew Kern of the CiRCE Institute has discussed rhetoric as the master art to rule them all, defining it as the art of decision-making in community. This helpfully draws out part of the connection between the liberal arts and prudence; they are in fact interdependent. On the other hand, Kern’s move unhelpfully collapses Aristotle’s distinction between the intellectual virtues of prudence and artistry. One can be skilled in the liberal arts and imprudent; likewise, a person could be prudent but a poor communicator.

In actual fact, the proper goals of education must include prudence separately from the liberal arts, otherwise we will end up neglecting the beating heart of education, just like the modern educators that C.S. Lewis bemoaned. In our zeal for the traditions of the liberal arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric, or arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, we will neglect teaching students to reason effectively with regard to their own choices as individuals. At the school where I work we have a Latin saying that we often repeat at assembly, non scholae, sed vitae, not for school, but for life. The liberal arts, as I have argued elsewhere, are in fact also practical tools for the workaday world, in spite of our Aristotelian love of leisure and the contemplative life. But viewed in and of themselves and without the guiding heart of prudence, without practical reasoning in line with the traditional moral virtues, the liberal arts are hollow. They must have blood of real moral decision-making pumping through them, if the body of our education is to be more than a hollowed-out corpse. 

Another way of putting this might be to call for a third strand through the trunk of the tree of Clark and Jain’s PGMAPT paradigm. Instead of piety simply remaining in the grounding or roots of the tree, “governed by theology” up top, it should intertwine with the liberal arts in the form of prudential wisdom, as distinct from moral philosophy (nota bene: the trivium might more naturally find its culmination in metaphysics then). To be clear, I am not claiming that Clark and Jain have forgotten about or been unconcerned with matters concerning the development of prudence, only that without naming practical wisdom distinctly as an intellectual virtue, it does in fact tend to be neglected by teachers in a modern educational environment. 

Moral virtue has been and will continue to be a major concern of the classical education movement. The point of this series, however, is to see what light Aristotle’s specific and unique paradigm of five intellectual virtues sheds on the goals of education. Aristotle’s distinction between the moral virtues and the intellectual virtues, specifically the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom calls for a recognition of prudence as a proper goal of education:

Excellence too is distinguished into kinds in accordance with this difference; for we say that some excellences are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state; and of states we call those which merit praise excellences.

I, 13, p. 1742; 1103a4-10

Influenced as we are by Bloom’s taxonomy of objectives in the cognitive domain we tend to separate moral matters from so called academic ones; of course, simply by adopting a Christian frame of reference, we may go some way toward the practices that attempt to habituate piety and good morals in the young. Our teachers may also be less reticent in teaching various subjects to bring up aspects of goodness within a committed moral frame of reference. But this does not mean that students are actively instructed in moral reasoning in any substantive way through a standard course of study.

The liberal arts can be used in service of prudence or practical wisdom, but they can also be used in the service of episteme, scientific knowledge, or nous, intuition or understanding. They are formidable tools in this sense. But between Is and Ought, the reasoning of Fact and of Value, Truth and Goodness, there is a wall of separation. Just because something is so does not make it right. Modern skepticism about value judgments posits that “they are entirely subjective and relative to the individual who makes them,” Mortimer Adler points out in Six Great Ideas (68). Therefore, the modern academic bred on Bloom’s has been inclined to collapse all prescriptive statements into merely descriptive ones. Teachers trained in modern colleges and graduate schools have been trained in this sort of descriptive precision, and will therefore be unlikely to venture out into the prescriptive arena of moral reasoning in their teaching of literature, history, science and mathematics, unless practical wisdom is made a specific course goal of their instruction. 

How would we in fact instruct the consciences of our students for prudence throughout the K-12 sequence? This will be the subject of future articles. But before we close we can note a one promising idea for teaching prudence already present in the classical education movement. That is David Hicks’s conception of the Ideal Type in Norms and Nobility:

An Ideal Type tyrranized classical education. The ancient schoolmaster in his intense struggle to achieve a living synthesis of thought and action exemplified this Ideal and passed it on to his pupils by inviting them to share in his struggle for self-knowledge and self-mastery, the immature mind participating in the mature. Against this Ideal were the master’s achievements and his pupil’s judged. All fell short, of course, but some – and here’s the rub – far less short than others.

David Hicks, Norms and Nobility, 43.

Hicks’s educational vision is described by Gene Veith and Andrew Kern as “moral classicism” for good reason (Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America, revised and updated, Capital Research Center: 2001; see pp. 37ff). In his restoration of “norms” Hicks seems to fuse the ideals of artistry, practical wisdom and philosophic, in the persons of master and pupil, as aspiring individuals. In this way his fusion represents dramatically the type of inquiry of the Great Books and humanities that would cultivate practical wisdom; even science “must be pulled down from its non-normative pedestal,” and be turned toward practical wisdom. Scientific “analysis must be framed within the normative inquiry [of human values] if science is to serve life, not destroy it” (Norms and Nobility, 145).

Reviving moral philosophy in the later years of K-12 education is not enough. Instead, we must fully recover the intellectual virtue of prudence as a major goal of education in our classical Christian schools and allow a vision of the Ideal Type to shape our curriculum and teaching methods in all subjects and grades.

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When we compare these bite-sized pieces of “analysis” and “comprehension” to the artistry of grammar and rhetoric, for instance, we can see that Bloom’s Taxonomy has dwarfed the beauty and complexity of the educational enterprise in an effort to make it scientific and measurable. Through our exploration of Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of artistry or craftsmanship (techne in Greek), we’ve rediscovered the traditional nature of the arts and their situatedness in human culture and civilization. Treating this educational goal like a machine part that can be installed the same way in any number of factories around the world doesn’t quite do it justice. 

There is, however, a general method for training an apprentice in an art, but for competent training to occur, all the specifics of the art itself must be in view, and the teacher must be a competent craftsman himself to apprentice a student. We should not be surprised at the minimal attainments in intellectual complexity, speaking and writing ability, or piercing scientific inquiry of our students, when our teachers’ colleges are not aimed at developing paragons of intellectual virtue. After all, the student will become like his teacher. 

Of course, not everything is about intellectual attainment as it is conventionally understood. As we have seen, within the Aristotelian understanding of artistry are included athletics and sports, common and domestic arts, the professions and trades, fine and performing arts, as well the traditional liberal arts of language and number. All of these traditions have been developed in different ways over the centuries and it is the skills and sub-skills of these traditions of expertise that we are training students in, whether through deliberate or purposeful practice.

Apprenticeship in artistry ties together the heart, head and body in a unique way that will take us some way to restoring a truly Christian and classical vision for the goals of education. But artistry is not enough. In fact, what we are aiming for must necessarily take us further up and further in. As the tradition expressed in various ways, even the liberal arts themselves are preparatory. They are not the final end, but in themselves transcend toward something higher. Although as an intellectual virtue artistry involves the heart and head, it is best symbolized by the training of the hand. In the classical hierarchy of value, the heart must direct the skills of the hand as merely a part of the life well lived. 

The Intellectual Virtue of the Heart: Prudence

We must now move upward and enter the realm of the heart. Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of phronesis is often translated as practical wisdom or prudence. He defines it as “a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods” (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 5; rev. Oxford trans., 1801). If the intellectual virtue of artistry is concerned with our human ability to make things in the world, prudence refers to our ability to act, and to choose how we will act. In this connection we can return to Mortimer Adler’s helpful explanation of Aristotle in Aristotle for Everybody. He breaks down Aristotle’s conceptions of human beings into three categories: Man the Maker, Man the Doer and Man the Knower (16-17). Adler clarifies that these are more like dimensions than rigidly separated parts of the human being. Just as “a dimension is a direction in which I can move,” (16) human beings can make, act, and know. It is important to clarify that each of these dimensions is intellectual; as Adler explains,

Aristotle was very much concerned with the differences that distinguish these three kinds of thinking. He used the term ‘productive thinking’ to describe the kind of thinking that man engages in as a maker; ‘practical thinking’ to describe the kind that he engages in as a doer; and ‘speculative’ or ‘theoretical thinking’ to describe the kind he engages in as a knower. (17-18)

Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues fall neatly into these three dimensions of thinking. Artistry falls under our creative ability to make things in and of the world; prudence under our ability to deliberate about how we shall act, make choices and intentionally act to attain some good in the world; intuition, scientific knowledge and philosophic wisdom under our ability to know. In laying this out so neatly, Aristotle is attentive to the overlapping and interpenetrating character of these dimensions of our thinking. In regaining his terminology, we rediscover forgotten goals of education that we have been unable to correctly name for generations.

Prudence is one such forgotten gem. Adler goes on to describe the dimension of Man as Doer: 

In the second of these dimensions, doing, we have man the moral and social being—someone who can do right or wrong, someone who, by what he or she does or does not do, either achieves happiness or fails to achieve it, someone who finds it necessary to associate with other human beings in order to do what, as a human being, he or she feels impelled to do. (17)

If, as we contested (in Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education), the ultimate purpose of Christian education is the eternal happiness of human beings through the manifestation of all the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues to the glory of God in salvation, then prudence too cannot be left out of our educational paradigm. 

Foundations of a Christian Prudence

As an intellectual virtue, prudence sits at the center of a human being, tying a person’s enacted choices in the body to their mind. It represents the seat of a person’s will or ability to choose, and the locus of their affections and desires. The heart is the wellspring of life. As Jesus makes clear, it is not the beautiful things a person makes that show the character and ultimate destiny of an individual, but how the person lives; it is not what he knows, but what he does that shows the nature of a man. False prophets, those who presumptuously claim special knowledge from on high, will be recognized by their fruits:

Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matt 7:16b-20 ESV)

That Jesus is not referring to people’s acts of production by the analogy of fruit is clear enough from the context. He goes on (7:21-23) to envision how even the most spiritual products of artistry—prophecy and exorcism and “mighty works”—are not reliable signs of a person’s genuineness, but only their actions: whether or not they are “workers of lawlessness” (7:23). 

Even if the New Testament does not retain Aristotle’s exact lexical distinction between practical wisdom and philosophic wisdom (phronesis and sophia), we can discern its prioritization of a practical wisdom for life that joins hands and head in a pure heart. For instance, consider how James challenges the believer who boasts in the wisdom of the mind:

Who is wise [Greek: sophos] and understanding [epistemon, scientifically knowledgeable?] among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom [sophia] that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual [Greek: soulish], demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom [sophia] from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:13-17)

What sort of wisdom should the Christian be primarily concerned with? Not the soulish wisdom of the world, typical even of the wisest pagans like Aristotle. It is a relational wisdom, characterized by humility and good conduct, rather than self-aggrandizement. While James uses the term sophia, he undoubtedly has something akin to practical wisdom in view. Notice how every instance of it has to do with actions in the world and relationships with others, not the comprehension and demonstration of universals in the highest subjects, as Aristotle had defined sophia.

We might pause here to note that even in Aristotle’s day, his proposed distinctions between these intellectual virtues were not followed well or strictly. He notes in Book VI, ch. 7 that in his day sophia was used of the “most finished exponents [of the arts], e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus as a maker of statues, and here we mean nothing by wisdom except excellence in art” (1801). In no age or culture can we trust the words and categories that are commonly used as the best or wisest way to map reality. This again is why Bloom’s Taxonomy was doomed from the start to simply reaffirm the modernist assumptions of its own day. Taking teachers’ own terms for their goals as the starting point for a taxonomy of educational objectives is an anti-philosophical move, savoring of pragmatism. It assumes the average Joe or Mary has the truth without inquiry or instruction. Aristotle, on the other hand, is a leading proponent of beginning with the common language conceptions, but then challenging them and attempting to explain them from within a broader philosophical frame of reference.

But returning to our foundations for a Christian prudence, we could go on to enumerate a host of passages which demonstrate the Bible’s emphasis on this lost virtue. St Paul’s claim that “knowledge puffs up but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1) points the way to a Gospel-shaped prudence that sacrifices for others, rather than holding up my own individual happiness as the final end. It is this agape way of choosing and acting in the world that transcends Aristotle’s earthly goods with a spiritual frame of reference and an imperishable wreath (1 Cor 9:25). In case this seems too far-fetched an endorsement of Christian prudence, we could cite our Lord’s direct command to his disciples, “Behold I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; be therefore wise [phronemoi, prudent] as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), which likewise baptizes a worldly prudence with a spiritual purity.

“Every scriptural text,” according to Paul, “is God-breathed and profitable for instruction, for rebuke, for correction, for an education [paideia, discipline or enculturation process] that is in righteousness, that the person devoted to God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17). The Bible itself aims at the moral and intellectual instruction in prudence that will enable the believer to live well. I can’t think of any higher endorsement of a prudence-focused form of education than that.

The major concern of the biblical book of Proverbs is manifestly analogous to Aristotle’s prudence, concerning more how a man lives than what he knows abstractly. While there are occasional glimmers of how the Hebrew term hokhma (wisdom) includes knowledge of the natural world and its innerworkings (see e.g. 8:22-31 and compare Solomon’s wisdom in 1 Kings 4:29-34), the predominant focus of a Proverbs education is the practical wisdom to live a flourishing life in submission to God’s moral instruction. That after all is the tenor of the whole book, it is an education in prudence that the proverbs themselves aim at. (This has far-reaching implications for a pedagogy of prudence, by the way, which we will explore in a subsequent article.) The book of Ecclesiastes, likewise, pushes the boundaries of prudence “under the sun,” in order to establish a God-centered, immanent frame of reference for a life well lived: 

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (12:13-14)

Both the awareness of future judgment and the love of God displayed on the cross must color the Christian educational vision of prudence. But they do not eliminate it. 

We have already had occasion to cite the author of Hebrews, who calls for Christian maturity: “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (5:14). The term ‘discernment’ helps bring out the critical relationship between prudence and the ability to deliberate correctly in Aristotle. Similarly to how we must discern between good and evil in biblical terminology, deliberation is different from inquiry into truth, for Aristotle, but instead names when a person thinks correctly about human goods and the courses of action that he might choose. 

The Moral Virtues and Prudence

We already discussed this passage from Hebrews while exploring the analogy between artistry and morality. We noted that “constant practice” is involved as the foundation of a developed discernment. Moral habits and virtues enable the flowering of prudence as a youth’s reason develops. The heart of prudence must have a bodily foundation in the nerves even as it transcends into the rational nature of a human being. As C.S. Lewis put it in The Abolition of Man, with which we critiqued Bloom’s Taxonomy near the start of this series,

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism… about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man rust rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. (24-25)

While the moral virtues are strictly speaking outside the purview of our study on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, they are intricately tied to the acquisition of prudence. In fact, for Aristotle, each one is impossible without the other. As he puts it, “the function of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral excellence; for excellence makes the aim right, and practical wisdom the things leading to it” (VI.12; 1807). 

A man in battle who is cowardly aims incorrectly at his own preservation, since his nerves and emotions are not trained to endure the possibility of his own death. The proper habit training and implantation of ideas (“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”; “How sweet and honorable it is to die for one’s country,” from Horace’s Odes, III.2.13; see Lewis, Abolition of Man, 21-22) would have provided him with the right aim: what we would call his moral duty. Practical wisdom would guide him in thinking rationally about the choices he must make on the way to the set of aims his gut and chest have attuned him to. Only those who have been trained by “constant practice” can discern or deliberate correctly regarding what is good and right. 

Perhaps the best way to understand this as moderns is through the idea of conscience. It is not quite right for Jiminy Cricket to say, “Always let your conscience be your guide.” In actual fact, the conscience itself is precisely what must be trained and renewed, if we are to discern correctly. As Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). The mind or conscience—Paul uses the term nous (“intution”), but it seems to have the nuance here of a person’s frame of reference for moral decision-making specifically—must be transformed. In addition, continual testing or deliberating is required if a person is to discern God’s will. The conscience is key, but not as an infallible guide.

Charlotte Mason, the late 19th and early 20th century British Christian educator, understood this well. In her fourth volume entitled Ourselves, Mason discusses a series of what she calls “Instructors of Conscience”: Poetry, Novels, Essays, History, Philosophy, Theology, Nature, Science, Art, Sociology and Self-Knowledge (Book II, pp. 71-104). This list puts the lie to the supposition that we can do nothing as educators to influence the moral formation of our students. If we only consider for a moment why many Great Works on these subjects were written in the first place, we can quel the nagging modern fallacy that education should have nothing to do with a child’s “personal” moral values. 

The subjects of study named by Charlotte Mason are all worthy of fuller consideration when we explore how in fact we can educate our children for prudence: the great answer being that we are to open our students’ minds and hearts to the counsels of the wise, as the name for this mini-series suggests. But for now we can note the dangers of the uninstructed conscience in Mason’s words:

There is no end to the vagaries of the uninstructed conscience. It is continually straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel. The most hardened criminal has his conscience; and he justifies that which he does by specious reasons. ‘Society is against’ him, he says; he ‘has never had a fair chance.’ Why should he ‘go about ragged and hungry when another man rides in his carriage and eats and drinks his fill?’ ‘If that man has so much, let him keep it if he can; if cleverer wits than his contrive to ease him of a little, that is only fair play.’ Thus do reason and inclination support one another in the mind of the Ishmael whose hand is against every man; and, if every man’s hand is against him, that is all the more reason, he urges, that he should get what he can take out of life. (vol. 4 p. 60)

Moral reasoning is natural to all human beings. But the uninstructed conscience cannot be trusted to deliberate or reason correctly regarding what is good for itself or for human beings generally. All the humanities at least, are aimed to one extent or another at passing down some of humanity’s hard-won wisdom about how best to act and live as a human being. 

One of the most damning sins of Bloom’s taxonomy in this regard is that it directs a teacher’s focus away from the beating heart of the subjects she is teaching. Instead of drawing moral wisdom from the heart of a novel or history book, we drain the life out of it through a host of analytical exercises and comprehension questions, thus literally trivializing the counsels of the wise. (I have discussed this problem before in The Flow of Thought, Part 8: Restoring the School of Philosophers.) In this mini-series on educating for prudence through the counsels of the wise, I hope to lay out a rationale and method for instructing the consciences of our students through the subjects that we teach. In addition to training our students’ hands, we must educate their hearts.

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With this groundwork laid in Aristotle and modern research, we proceeded to articulate an understanding of the arts as situated in history and culture, as familial and traditional in nature. The upshot of this view is that we must apprentice students into specific traditions of artistry. We are not training abstract intellectual skills that can be transferred to new contexts, as Bloom’s taxonomy and the faculty theory of education supposed. When we train students in arithmetic or grammar, just like painting or gymnastics, we are inducting them into something both old and new. The ancient insights, styles and methods in these domains have been continuously adjusted and updated since their inception. This does not mean we must accept modern methods or assumptions in various arts (see A Pedagogy of Craft), but it does entail that some traditional artistic abilities and practices have little relevance in our contemporary context. Few schools teach horseback riding or ancient sailing and navigation techniques, and for good reason.

The Limitations of Artistic Divisions

In a similar way, there is no sacrosanct set of divisions between the arts handed down as if from on high. What we see in the classical tradition is a variety of distinctions between the branches of various artistic traditions as they developed over time. Many of the things that we regard as grammar (e.g., distinctions between singular and plural, parts of speech, types of sentences) are discussed by Augustine of Hippo in his treatise On Dialectic (de Dialectica). We should not be surprised at this fact. Since the arts are living traditions, human descriptions of their boundaries and nature are like mapping a flood plain. So, as much as we may nerd out about the Seven Liberal Arts (I am speaking to myself as much as to others…) we should not be disturbed when Hugh of St Victor, for instance, refuses to follow the early medieval divisions. 

(In the Didascalicon Hugh advocates for four branches of knowledge or wisdom: the theoretical [disciplines like mathematics, physics and theology], the practical [ethics and politics], the mechanical [architecture, medicine, agriculture, etc.], and logic, or the science which ensures proper reasoning and clarity in the other sciences.)

While we are, in this series, developing Aristotle’s divisions of the intellectual virtues, therefore, we should not prejudge the idea that his is the best or the only proper mapping of the intellectual virtues, the educational project or the distinctions between categories of knowledge. This series should be viewed as the opening of a conversation about rethinking our educational goals within Aristotelian terms, as more philosophically sound and helpful than Bloom’s Taxonomy. In the same way, though I have often referred to the classical distinction between the arts and sciences, it would be more accurate to reference the Aristotelian distinction between artistry (techne) and scientific knowledge (episteme), which had the effect in the tradition at varying times and places of issuing in a similar distinction between the branches of knowledge and of arts. 

Likewise, with arts in particular, I have proposed a fivefold division of the arts as in my view the most helpful for gesturing toward wholeness in our current renewal movement, and not because I dismiss the elegance of the threefold vision of common, liberal and fine arts, endorsed by Chris Hall, Ravi Jain and Kevin Clark. 

Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship

1. Athletics, games and sports
2. Common and domestic arts
3. Professions and trades
4. Fine and performing arts
5. The liberal arts of language and number

The main reason to do so lies in the realization that athletics, games and sports are indeed forms of techne, but they are not easily captured under the headings of common, liberal or fine. This is a problem if, as I contend, athletics, games and sports rightly play an important role within education. Separating out professions and trades from the common and domestic arts, secondarily, gestures towards modern cultural realities post-industrialization. Tending a garden in your backyard represents a different stream of craftsmanship than managing a commercial greenhouse. We risk a high degree of unhelpful equivocation by attempting to use medieval categories in the modern world. 

Of course, the fact that these are arts does not entail that we are obliged to train students in all of them—an impossibility in any case! What I have said is that we should structure the academy optimally to cultivate the arts and that we should aim at a universality, not a comprehensiveness, of artistic training in our K-12 educational programs. It is possible to train students in representatives from each of the five categories, with the liberal arts occupying a central role for the production of the other intellectual virtues (see later section in this article). As I discussed in an earlier article, the choice of which arts to cultivate constitutes a cultural judgment based on the calling and opportunities of a particular school. 

If all this talk of the culturally situated nature of the arts lands me in controversy, at least I can claim that I am not anti-tradition, but I am in fact restoring a proper understanding of artistic traditions against the modernist pretensions about objectivity. As Aristotle articulated so clearly, techne concerns itself with the ultimate particular facts, with what may or may not be, with contingent things and not with necessary being. Knowledge of how to make something does not constitute knowledge of the essences of things or philosophic wisdom. These truths are part and parcel of the natural limitations of artistry. 

The Transcendence of Artistry into Morality

However, it is also worth recognizing how artistry can in fact transcend itself. If craftsmanship can be figuratively represented by skillful hands, then as we already explained those same hands are hardwired to the heart and head, and even the spirit. In a way we have already noted this fact at length in the prelude to Apprenticeship in the Arts. Aristotle himself recognized the similarities between morality and artistry. But we have not as yet duly noted the extent to which the training of the hands also conditions the heart. As Comenius recognized, the arts require their own sort of prudence, by which the artisan foresees what will turn out for the best with his artistic production. 

Likewise, a hard and painful practice regimen enables the production of good and beautiful things. In this way, apprenticeship in the arts participates in the nature of the moral training that enables a person to delay instant gratification for the sake of a greater reward later. By thus disciplining the desires, artistic training acts as a natural prelude and arena for the development of self-control and this not only in athletics and sports, but in all the various arts. In both artistry and morality, one must aim at a target and pursue it through reasoned use of contingent means. Techne transcends itself through its natural participation in all the moral virtues and in the intellectual virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom. 

After all, the sphere of human production has a natural affinity with the sphere of human action and goods. Producing something beautiful and valuable is itself a prudent action for a human being. Even more, developing some form of artistry is necessary for living a good life and enjoying the good things of life. Adopting a craftsman mindset in one’s work and getting into the flow of deliberate or purposeful practice constitutes a chief element of a prudent, and therefore happy, life. One must at times display the moral virtues of courage, temperance and justice in the serious work of artistic excellence. Jordan Peterson, for one, has discussed the importance of fair play and reciprocity in games as an emergent ethic. 

Artistry’s Moral and Spiritual Limitations

All this said, we can note again the limits of this blending of artistry into prudence. After all, the super star performer and artistic genius are also liable to moral dissolution and depravity, as we have daily witness in the tabloids. As in the case of the traditions of artistry themselves, it seems that self-control and moral foresight are not necessarily transferred from one sphere of life to another. The devoted Olympic athlete has his impeccable diet and training regimen, but he might be notoriously licentious or proud.

This limitation even shows itself in the spiritual sphere where transformations of artistry can mask, for a time, the impurities of the heart. As Jesus stated explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matt 7:21-23 ESV)

Spiritual gifts, or what we might call spiritual forms of artistry (since they are productive acts in the world), do not ensure that such artisans are morally sound. They might outwardly perform spiritual works, but in the eyes of God they remain still “workers of lawlessness.” In the same way, our liberal arts educated students may become nothing more than “clever devils,” to borrow C.S. Lewis’ phrase from The Abolition of Man. 

Among other things, this is why we must go on from artistry, which, for all its possibilities for transcendence, is properly basic and preparatory to the other intellectual virtues, rather than constituting them in itself. As Saint Paul claims, “I will show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31b ESV), while he transitions from the gifts of spiritual artistry to the transcendent value of love, over and above all the intellectual and moral virtues on display in their full extravagance and grandiosity. Not just tongues of men, but of angels—what a statement to put the trivium arts to shame! “Prophetic powers” and understanding “all mysteries and all knowledge”—what phrases to humble the prophet, scholar and philosopher alike! 

It may be that we can ascribe the term ‘wisdom’ even to the greatest exponents of the arts, as Aristotle mentions in Book VI, ch. 4 of the Nicomachean Ethics. But by this we do not mean either that practical wisdom for life or philosophical wisdom of the highest mysteries.

Artistry as a Prelude to the Other Four Intellectual Virtues

And yet again, the arts can by their very nature transcend toward philosophical wisdom just like toward moral prudence. In the fine arts, for instance, it is not only their beauty that we prize but the messages that our great artists have embodied in shape and form. These insights into the nature of life and reality are valuable in so far as they are true. Or to put it another way, great artists rely on their intuition (nous) or understanding of reality (both in universals and in particulars) for the messages they have skillfully conveyed in artistic form. This intuition about life can, fortunately and unfortunately, coexist with poor habits and a personal lack of prudence. The artist may be our muse, whether or not she herself practices what she preaches!

Not all artistic productions convey a high degree of knowledge about the world, but the higher fine and performing arts, as well as the liberal arts do. In fact, it is these traditional productions of genius—paintings and sculptures, poems and novels, histories and plays, speeches and debates—that act as the forerunners of intuition and scientific knowledge in the student. It is through attention to these Great Works that defy easy categorization that the perceptive and reasoning abilities of the student are honed and developed. They provide a form of enriched second-hand experience enabling students’ thought to grow and mature. By imitating them throughout their training in the arts, students are given more than simply artistry itself. They are given the forerunners of the other intellectual virtues: the opinions of authorities, “the words of the wise and their riddles” (Prov 1:6b ESV).

While experiencing artistic productions can lead to artistry in the student when combined with imitation and coached practice, it is through reflection on the authorities, especially in the liberal arts, that prudence, intuition, scientific knowledge and ultimately philosophical wisdom are developed. In this way, while artistry is not enough, it is by nature a prelude to the other intellectual virtues. For this reason, the tradition recognized training in the liberal arts as preparatory to the sciences. In particular, the traditional productions of artistic wisdom are meant to provide fodder for reflection on the nature of human goods, thus developing prudence. From our Aristotelian vantage point, we can see the late medieval vision of moral philosophy as informing the individual’s development of phronesis. 

In a similar fashion, the arts help us see in a way that we would not on our own, forming our intuition or nous, those starting points for reasoning, whether in human, mathematical or natural spheres. At the same time, training in the liberal arts of language and number enable us to demonstrate propositions to be the case, establishing a statement as true or false. In this way, artistry with words and numbers constitutes the necessary prerequisite for scientific knowledge in what the later tradition would have called metaphysics and natural science. Both deliberation (for affairs of human choice regarding goods) and inquiry (for universal and particular truths regardless of human desire), then, require use, if not mastery, of the liberal arts for their practice. And so, these other intellectual virtues are dependent upon the liberal arts.

So, we are for this reason justified in seeing the liberal arts tradition as in a unique way indebted to the Aristotelian paradigm of intellectual virtues. Although not everyone in the tradition articulated this distinction between the liberal arts and sciences in the same way, the insight about the liberal arts’ central role as the pathways to moral virtue and wisdom owes a great deal to Aristotle. 

It is important to conclude by stating clearly that training in the liberal arts, like other forms of artistry, does not always and necessarily lead to the other intellectual virtues. As Clark and Jain have contended in The Liberal Arts Tradition, the liberal arts are not enough. We need only look to Plato’s Gorgias to see Socrates demolishing this supposition before Aristotle came along. Rhetoric could be a mere knack or craftiness that makes the worse appear to be the better cause. All the arts have their forms of trickery that are out of step with moral or spiritual reality. Artistry, particularly liberal artistry, can transcend itself as the doorway into deeper things, but it need not and therein lies the danger of relying or focusing on it alone. Which is why we must go on from artistry, entering the realms of prudence next….

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Scienc

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

9. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 1: Traditions and Divisions

10. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

11. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry

12. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World

13. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry

Next subseries in Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues:

The Counsels of the Wise, Part 1: Foundations of Christian Prudence

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