Description
The virtue of prudence is often claimed by, and attributed to, both classical and structural realists. But what does it actually mean to be ‘prudent’? In modern English ‘prudence’ is associated with caution, even with passivity, and when realists invoke the notion it is often in order to stress the importance of not acting forcefully in a given situation. On the other hand, the classical Greek conception of phronesis, which can claim to be the origin point of prudence as a virtue, is about the exercise of judgment to produce right action which may or may not involve caution. Sometimes the right thing to do will be to throw caution to the wind and this is difficult to reconcile with the ordinary language meaning of the term ‘prudence’. Moreover, the notion of phronesis involves more than a cost-benefit analysis of action – a much more demanding account of the virtues is necessarily involved in assessing what is prudent from this perspective. These issues will be explored by investigating the role of phronesis in classical thought and the role of prudence in modern realism. Proponents of the latter sometimes claim to be inheritors of the former, but it will be argued that this is often not the case.
