Introduction to Moral Theology (Catholic Moral Thought, Volume 1) by Cessario Romanus

Author:Cessario, Romanus [Cessario, Romanus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813220376
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press
Published: 2010-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

For we say that deliberating well is the function of the intelligent person more than anyone else; but no one deliberates about what cannot be otherwise, or about what lacks a goal that is a good achievable in action. The unconditionally good deliberator is the one whose aim expresses rational calculation in pursuit of the best good for a human being that is achievable in action.66

The Christian tradition recognizes that the philosopher's “best good” is revealed to us as the summum bonum, the highest Good in an unqualified sense. Only God matches that description.

Since prudence always remains interested in the agibile, the doable, its concern must extend to individual cases.67 Aristotle's realism remains coolly confident about the ability of prudence to form sound practical judgments, but the Christian thinker must also recall the Book of Wisdom when it warns that “our counsels are uncertain” (Wis 9:14).68 Christian practice then does not reproach the prudent man for failing in unforeseen and exceptional cases, but only when he fails in matters that fall under common experience. Still, prudence aims at regularity in sound moral judgment and practice.

It is on this basis, in fact, that prudence qualifies as a bona fide moral virtue, namely, that it charges a person's conduct with moral truth, so that the person actually embraces a concrete moral good.69 Having accepted Aristotle's definition, the Christian scholastics continued to speak about prudence as the right order of doing something—recta ratio agibilium.70 The rectitude or rightness of prudence rests on the authentic end of human existence.71 As a ratio, prudence constitutes a perfection of human intelligence; it consists in reasoning. Prudence possesses its own logical structure, which is ordered to consider proper relations among things involved in human conduct. At the same time, prudence develops a right order for doing; it is about practical intelligence in the order of action. Aquinas distinguishes prudence from art, but the metaphor of virtue as a craft helpfully expresses his notion of what prudence achieves.72 If we think of virtue as a craft, then prudence sees to it that the prudent person assembles a good life, in the same way that artistic talent ensures that an artisan crafts a worthy artifact.

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