The virtue that gives politicians purpose

The most important virtue that a statesman can possess is prudence, combined with magnanimity. The word itself, however, has come to mean overly cautious, unwillingness to try something new.

But in its classical sense, prudence meant the ability to see workable alternatives that still kept on track for achieving human well-being from which prudence takes its initial direction.

Prudence is the intellectual virtue of the moral virtues—courage, temperance, justice, and prudence. It deals principally with means to ends.

{mosads}If I am the head of the Mafia, for instance, I must judge the means that enable me to control all the illegal dealings in Chicago. The “prudent” Capo can best figure out how it all works by keeping the law at bay while collecting protection monies. This example emphasizes that “prudence” does not itself choose the end of our lives. It deliberates and decides the means whereby the purpose we have selected, good or bad, may “reasonably” be achieved.

Prudence is an acquired habit. We are not born with it, just as we are not born with courage or temperance. We have to acquire prudence by practice, that is, by making particular prudent decisions. Prudence is not a “theoretic” virtue, not a virtue only concerned with the truth of something. Prudence is concerned with the truth as it appears in things being put into effect for a right (or wrong) reason.

One does not have to know the definition of prudence to be prudent in action. The famous Latin definition of prudence is: Recta ratio agibilium—right reasoning in things to be done or put into effect. Prudence means, in other words, that what we do in our relations with ourselves and others, including our political relations, is to put order into our actions, institutions, and laws. These are the things for which we are praised or blamed. The only way things are going to be ordered is if we deliberately put order there. The primary object of prudence is our own good order. We are the beings in the universe whose own personal well-being is up to them. We can thus choose to be or not to be prudent.

Why think about these things? Prudence is different from but akin to art or craft. In art, the object of our rule is not ourselves but the thing to be made or crafted. Art is the skill whereby we manage to put into some external object, a piece of wood or stone, the configuration we want. Art does not look to the goodness or badness of the artist but to the object to be made. A good artist, Aristotle said, can show someone what it means to make something badly. In doing so, he does not become a bad man.

But if a politician thinks he is primarily a man of art not prudence, he will assume that he can use evil means to reach a good end. Substantially, this latter position was that of Machiavelli and of Callicles in Plato. The confusion of art and politics has serious political consequences.

What is the goal of a “prudent” politician? It is not simply “success” in achieving what he wants, whatever it is. The prudent politician is concerned with a “common good.” That does not mean some grandiose idea that he seeks to impose on his polity to make it holy or perfect. Rather it means guiding actions, institutions, and laws in such a fashion that the particular good of each citizen can be attained by his own, not the politician’s actions. This is why a politician’s life, like that of a parent, is sacrificial. That is, it looks not to his glory but to the good of others.

Many writers have remarked that the one person whom we least want as a political official is the one who desires the job. If someone “wants” the office too much, he is probably not looking to the good of others. In most polities, politicians manage to be pretty well compensated compared to the normal run of men. The contrast between their interest and the interest of the public is a well-known theme in political life.

Prudence is the virtue of the statesman who is properly ordered to what is good in human life and in his polity. It means, however, the ability to see, in the myriad of practical alternatives available to him, what avenue really does reach that common good whereby individual citizens in their own lives can, in their own prudence, reach the given purpose for which they exist.

The Rev. James Schall, S.J., author of “A Line Through the Human Heart: On Sinning & Being Forgiven,” is professor emeritus at Georgetown University.

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