Section 13: How prudence is related to natural virtue, moral virtue, and right reason

We must therefore consider virtue also once more. For virtue _[1144b1] is also similarly related as prudence is to cleverness. Just as virtue is not the same as prudence, but like it, so is natural virtue not the same as virtue in the strict sense, but rather like it. For everyone thinks that each type of character belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature, since from the very moment of birth we are just or fitted for self-control or brave or have the other moral qualities. _[5] Yet we seek something else as that which is good in the strict sense–we seek for the presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and wild animals have the natural dispositions to these qualities, but without reason these qualities are evidently hurtful. Anyway, we seem to see this much: one may be led astray by these qualities, just as a strong body that moves _[10] without sight may stumble badly because of its lack of sight.

Yet if someone acquires understanding, that makes a difference in his action. And his state, while still like what it was, will then be virtue in the strict sense. Therefore, just as in the part of us that forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and prudence, so too in the moral part there are two types, _[15] natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves prudence. This is why some say that all the virtues are forms of prudence, and why Socrates was in one sense right, while in another he was incorrect. In thinking that all the virtues were forms of prudence he was wrong, but in saying they implied prudence _[20] he was right.

This is confirmed by the fact that even now everyone, when they define virtue, after naming the state of character and its objects add “that state which is in accordance with right reason.” Now right reason is that which is in accordance with prudence. Everyone, then, seems somehow to have a hunch that this kind of state is virtue, namely, the one that is in accordance with prudence. _[25]

But we must go a little further. For it is not merely the state in accordance with right reason that is virtue, but the state that implies the presence of right reason. And prudence is right reason about such matters. Socrates, then, thought the virtues were reasonings, since he thought they were–all of them–forms of systematic knowledge, while we think they involve reason.

It is clear, then, from what has been said, _[30] that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without prudence, nor prudent without moral virtue. But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from each other. The same person, it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. _[35] This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those according to which someone is called good without qualification. _[1145a1] For with the presence of that one disposition–prudence–all the virtues will be present.

And it is plain that, even if it were of no practical value, we should have needed it because it is the virtue of the part of us in question. It is also clear that a choice will not be right without prudence any more than without virtue, since the one determines the goal and the other _[5] makes us do the things that lead to the goal.

But again, it is not supreme over philosophical wisdom or over the superior part of us, any more than the science of medicine is supreme over health. For prudence does not use philosophical wisdom but provides for its coming into being. Prudence issues orders, then, for the sake of philosophical wisdom, but not to philosophical wisdom. Further, to maintain its supremacy would be like saying that political wisdom rules the gods, _[10] because it issues orders about all the affairs of the state.