Section 8: Prudence compared with political wisdom

Political wisdom and prudence are the same habit, but their essence is not the same. Of the wisdom concerned with the city, the prudence which plays a controlling part is legislative wisdom, while that which is related to this as particulars to their universal is known by the general name “political wisdom”; this has to do with action and deliberation, for a decree is a thing to be carried out in the form of an individual act. This is why the exponents of political wisdom are alone said to “take part in politics”; for these alone “do things” as manual laborers “do things.”

Prudence also is identified especially with that form of it which is concerned with a man himself–with the individual; and this is known by the general name “prudence”; of the other kinds one is called household management, another legislation, the third politics, and of the latter one part is called deliberative and the other judicial. Now knowing what is good for oneself will be one kind of knowledge, but it is very different from the other kinds; and the man who knows and concerns himself with his own interests is thought to have prudence, while politicians are thought to be busybodies; hence the word of Euripides,

But how could I be wise, who might at ease,
Numbered among the army’s multitude,
Have had an equal share?
For those who aim too high and do too much.

Those who think thus seek their own good, and consider that one ought to do so. From this opinion, then, has come the view that such men have prudence; yet perhaps one’s own good cannot exist without household management, nor without a form of government. Further, how one should order one’s own affairs is not clear and needs inquiry.

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 prudence 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 philosopher or a physicist. It is 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?

Further, error in deliberation may be either about the universal or about the particular; we may fall to know either that all water that weighs heavy is bad, or that this particular water weighs heavy.

That prudence is not expert knowledge is evident; for it is, as has been said, concerned with the ultimate particular fact, since the thing to be done is of this nature. It is opposed, then, to intellectual insight or understanding; for insight or understanding is of the limiting premises, for which no reason can be given, while prudence is concerned with the ultimate particular, which is the object not of expert knowledge but of perception–not the perception of qualities peculiar to one sense but a perception akin to that by which we perceive that the particular figure before us is a triangle; for in that direction as well as in that of the major premise there will be a limit. But this is rather perception than prudence, though it is another kind of perception than that of the qualities peculiar to each sense.