Description
IR theory acknowledges several logics of action: consequentialism, appropriateness, practicality, and habit. These logics combine both the cognitive and the evaluative bases of action, i.e. whether actors think about what to do and the criteria they use for determining the value of alternatives. The reflective practical ethics of prudence, however, goes beyond the instrumental ethics of consequentialism, normative ethics of appropriateness, inarticulate know-how of practices, and routinized taken-for-grantedness of habits. I explore the logic of prudence and its consequences for political action, especially under uncertainty, drawing on Aristotle, Morgenthau, and Aron. I claim that the logic of prudence involves finding a balance between practical and representational knowledge by engaging reflective reasoning. Prudence is fed by habits and practices, considers the relative consequences of alternatives, and takes into account standards of appropriateness. Yet, as a cognitive process for informing successful action, prudence involves a distinctly situation-specific reflective logic of action. Conceived as a normative theory of how to think, the logic of prudence also offers a perspective on the cognitive basis upon which agents draw and identify the objects of their reasoning, and addresses remaining gaps in mainstream practice theory by returning reflective reasoning and action to the center of analysis.
