Section 8: Prudence compared with political wisdom

Political wisdom (politikê) and prudence (phronêsis) are the same disposition, but their essence is not the same. Of the prudence concerned with the city, the prudence that is authoritative is “legislative wisdom,” while the prudence that _[25] is related to this as particulars to their universal is known by the general name “political wisdom.” Political wisdom has to do with action and deliberation, for a decree is a thing to be carried out in the form of an individual action. This is why the exponents of political wisdom are alone said to “take part in politics,” because these alone “do things” as manual laborers “do things.”

Prudence also is identified especially with that form of it that is concerned with an individual person. And _[30] this is known by the general name “prudence.” There are other kinds of “prudence” too, such as “household management,” “legislative wisdom,” and “political wisdom.” Of political wisdom, 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 someone who knows and concerns himself with his own affairs is thought to have prudence, _[1142a1] while politicians are thought to be busybodies. Hence the word of Euripides:

But how could I be prudent, who might have minded my own business,
And numbered among the army’s multitude,
Have had an equal share? _[5]
For those who aim too high and do too much…

Those who think this way seek their own good and consider that one should do so. From this opinion, then, has come the view that such people have prudence. Yet perhaps one’s own good cannot exist without household management, nor can it exist without a form of government. Further, how one should order one’s own affairs _[10] is unclear and needs inquiry.

What has been said is confirmed by the fact that while young people become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a prudent youth cannot be found. The reason is that prudence is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young person has no experience, since it is length _[15] of time that gives experience.

(Indeed one might ask this question too: why a child may become a mathematician, but not a philosopher or a physicist. It is because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the principles of disciplines like philosophical wisdom and physics come from experience, and because young people have no conviction about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the essence of mathematical objects is clear enough to them?)

Further, _[20] error in deliberation may be either about the universal or about the particular. We may fail to know either that all water that weighs heavy is bad, or that this particular water weighs heavy.

That prudence is not systematic knowledge is evident. For it is, as has been said, concerned with the ultimate particular, since the thing to be done is such a particular thing. It is opposed, then, to intellectual insight or understanding. _[25] For insight or understanding is of the limiting premeses of an inquiry, for which no argument can be given, while prudence is concerned with the ultimate particular, which is the object not of systematic 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, although it is another kind of perception than that of the qualities peculiar to each sense. _[30]