Prudence, Foresight, Providence1

Rmi Brague

Four virtues have traditionally been called cardinal prudence, justice,

fortitude, and temperance. Just as we speak of the cardinal points (north,
south, east, and west), cardinal virtues are, as the name suggests (Latin
cardo), like hinges or pivots on which the other, lesser virtues, turn. Of the
four we will speak here only of prudence, not merely because the tradition
has considered it to be first, but also and more importantly, because it is
the most basic.
1. Two Senses of Prudence
We begin with a distinction, for the word prudence has two senses, one
which is quotidian, and another, technical sense, which is peculiar to
philosophy. The ordinary sense is well known, we have heard it invoked
from earliest childhood: Watch where you are going, or Look both ways
before you cross the street. Later on, we learned to drive carefully, to plan
for the future, etc. Acting in this way has to do with avoiding dangers and
preserving our well-being. Indeed, in industrial societies, prudence has
This essay first appeared in French as Prudence, prvoyance, providence, in Communio
no XXII, 6, 1997, pp. 5-14. [Tr.]
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been institutionalized through instruments like insurance policies, social

security, not to mention police forces, caretakers, private security guards,
and surveillance.
In its philosophical sense, the virtue of prudence (Greek phronsis) is
traditionally classed among the four cardinal virtues, along with fortitude
(courage), temperance, and justice, a grouping which is already present in a
verse from Aeschylus (Seven against Thebes, v. 610). It is first given
conceptual articulation by Aristotle (EN, VI, 5), followed by St. Thomas
(ST, IIa, IIae, q. 47-56), though not without wholly reinterpreting the
Philosopher. We can say in a very schematic way that prudence is the virtue
that separates the theoretical from the practical. It is the virtue by which
the intellect (nos) is concerned, not with its proper objects things like
mathematical truths which are eternal and in whose contemplation it
marvels but with furnishing the proper course of action, that is, taking as
its object temporal matters. In this way, it is the virtue which gives all the
others the just measure of action, the virtue of virtues and this is why it is
first.
The ambiguous status of prudence between the eternal and the
temporal makes it the object of much controversy. It is not entirely clear
whether prudence gives us the intended end or only the means to attain a
pregiven end. Nor is it clear what its relation is to the rule: does it produce
the rule, does it make it known, or is it rather limited to searching for the
most efficient means to reach an end? Must we supplement it, as the
Scholastics did, with a faculty preloaded with the first principles of action
synderesis or conscience (German Gewissen)? On these difficulties, and
on the history of the philosophical concept of prudence, we have many

studies that can be cited, though these paradoxes are not within the
purview of this article.2

2. Prudence in its Christian Dimension

Prudence, as we have said, is very useful for everyday human affairs and
thus of great theoretical interest for the philosopher. On the other hand, we
might ask, why would Christians seek to investigate prudence? Do
Christians qua Christians have something to say about prudence,
something that is not better expressed in a language other than that of
faith? A first answer is found in the words of Christ himself. In Matthew
10:16,3 Jesus suggests that we be prudent like snakes. The Greek has
phronimos which is the precise term Aristotle uses to clarify his notion of
phronsis. The context is an intricate menagerie: going forth as sheep
among wolves, the disciples must be cunning (russ) (phronimos) like
serpents, but also pure (akeraios) like doves. Luke 10:3 repeats the first
formulation: I send you forth like sheep among wolves, but it does not
repeat the exhortation found in Matthew.
That Christ should recommend to his disciples that they imitate snakes is
not entirely unsurprising. For, to put it mildly, snakes are not very well
regarded in the Bible. Indeed, it is precisely the serpents cunning (sa ruse)
that leads Adam to sin in Genesis 3:1.4 The Greek translation of the
Septuagint renders the passage by a superlative form of the adjective
phronimos. To follow this out in the other direction, Franz Delitzsch, in his
2 Cf. P. Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote, P.U.F., 1963, 192p.; E. Martineau, Prudence
et considration. Un dessein philosophique de Bernard de Clairvaux, La provenance des
espces, P.U.F., 1982, pp. 207-267.
3 Matthew 10:16, Remember, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning
as serpents and yet as harmless as doves (Jerusalem Bible, hereafter JB). [Tr.]
4 The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh had made (JB). [Tr.]

translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, chose to render the

adjective in the passage from Matthew by the same word which describes
the snake in Genesis, that is, arum.
Prudence is thus a paradoxical reality: it is something like the virtue of the
vicious, even, that which Evil is good at, that which is, in both senses of the
word, clever (malin).5 This paradox is highlighted in the parable of the
devious manager in Luke which ends with the scene where the master lauds
the cunning (l'astuce) of the crook in acting prudently (phronims).6
The sentence comes in the context of an announcement of eschatological
time: the proclaimed Kingdom is close at hand. This unique situation
brings about extraordinary consequences. And the parable of the dishonest
manager must be understood in the same context: he acts as he does
because he knows he will soon have to settle accounts.
Alongside this praise, or, better, directly opposed to it, we find in the
Gospels a whole series of recommendations which seem to be in blatant
contradiction with those recommending prudence: the disciples are
encouraged not to concern themselves with the future (Matthew 10:16),
and not to amass for themselves a treasure (Matthew 6:19ff.7 All of these
rest on the perception of the imminent arrival of an event which empties all
of these precautions of their meaning (sens). The extreme urgency of the
situation created by the proximity of the Kingdom thus seems, at times as
5 Malin, like clever and the Greek deinos, has the double sense of smart/shrewd and
malign/malevolent. [Tr.]
6 Luke 16:8: The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness (to which the
editors of JB, concerned, no doubt, that the ambiguity might lead the reader astray, append
a note of clarification, and not for his dishonesty). [Tr.]
7 Matthew 6:34: So do not worry about tomorrow; 6:19ff.: Do not store up treasures for
yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in
and steal (JB). [Tr.]

an enjoinder to prudence, and, at others as a rejoinder against thinking

about what will come. The question thus emerges: is prudence a kind of
foresight (prvoyance)? Isn't it, in fact, nothing other than foresight? But
then, how can we reconcile prudence with the duty not to foresee (devoir
d'imprvoyance)8? Doesn't intellectual honesty require us to admit that
these two attitudes necessarily exclude one another?
We cannot avoid bumping into a two-century old suspicion: did
Christianity, after the first generation, remain faithful to the experience of
Christ, understood as, above all, waiting in joyful hope for the imminent
end of the world? An end so imminent that it must render impossible any
sense of the future, and, a fortiori, all foresight. Indeed, isn't the
introduction of the idea of divine providence itself not simply a matter of
borrowing the Stoic idea of pronoia and at the same time a betrayal of the
early Churchs anticipation of the glorious return of Christ even, an
avowal that this expectation was illusory.9
3. The Place of Prudence
We will therefore try to see how the Christian experience of time restores
a certain legitimacy to the Latin prudentia, and how, by parting company
with common usage, it attains a certain independence from Greek
phronsis, which has nothing, at least directly, to do with historical time. In
this way, the two senses of prudence that we began by dividing, will be
reconnected.
We spoke of prudence in Aristotle in terms of a cosmology of

Cf. I. Rivire, Sur le devoir d'imprvoyance, Corra, 1933.

Cf. for example H. Blumenberg, Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit, Suhrkamp, 1988 (2nd ed.), p.
41.
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prudence.10 Prudence is acting justly in the world. What is the cosmology

of Christian prudence? A first difficulty in answering stems from the way
the Christian notion of world differs from the Greek kosmos. For Aristotle,
prudence is the virtue which determines proper comportment in the
sublunary realm. This realm, sharply distinguished in his thought from the
beautiful, regular order of the celestial bodies, is disordered, uncertain,
unpredictable. We must act prudently because we do not know the future.
And it is thus because the future is actually undetermined. For Christianity
the world is that in which everything happens, what holds it together
(skhma) never ceases to be undone (1 Corinthians 7:31).11 The world is
what we are enjoined not to resemble (syskhmatizesthai) (Romans 12:2).12
There is a second reason why the question of prudence is more difficult
for the Christian than for Platonism or for the popular Stoicism which was
dominant at the time the Christian message spread throughout the Roman
world. For this latter, it was very easy, at least in principle, to subsume the
categories of worldly life to the eternity which transcends them: either as
Platonic ideas, as celestial movements in Aristotle, or as the cosmic law in
Stoicism. For its part, Christianity does not place time out of account but
proposes to redeem it (Ephesians 5:16).13
The Christian vision of the future does not bear on this world. Whatever is
expected, it is not of this world. He is thus not prudent in the sense of
calculating what the world holds in store for him. Christian prudence is
thus nowise a betrayal of eschatological expectation. The Christian waits for
something or Someone. But he also knows that everything has already
Aubenque, op. cit., ch. 2, pp. 64 - 105.
1 Corinthians 7:31: those who have to deal with the world should not become engrossed
in it. I say this because the world as we know it is passing away (JB). [Tr.]
12 Romans 12:2: Do not model yourselves on the behavior of the world around you (JB).
[Tr.]
13 Ephesians 5:16: This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it (JB). [Tr.]
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occurred, that God has given everything in giving his Word incarnate,14 and
that there is nothing more to wait for than the appearance in shining
brightness of a state of affairs which has already come once and for all. The
expectation of the Kingdom is not disappointed by the Passion, nor violated
by the coming of the Church. But the Church is not an idol which can be
substituted for the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom has indeed come though
it is not the Church but Christ himself, the Kingdom in person
(autobasileia) in Origens phrase. But surely, we might ask, what else is the
Church if it is not in fact Jesus Christ proclaimed and transmitted?
Looking toward the world is not counting down until Salvation comes; it
is rather considering that it is in him that action must be deployed, because
it is already in him that God has been given, once and for all. Looking
toward the future is thus for the Christian not looking outside of the world.
It is so unworldly that it is not at all a flight from the world a flight which,
as such, is still a way of defining oneself in relation to the world. On the
contrary, prudence is looking this world in the face: created by God, and
thus, in the end, very good, brought about by man through the wound of
sin; redeemed by the wages of the Cross.
4. Refusal of Foresight, Trust in Providence
To refuse or relativize foreseeability is not to throw oneself into wild
unpredictability; it is trusting in a higher foresight, that of God, which we
call Providence. To clarify this notion, we can find inspiration in the theory
of providence of St. Thomas Aquinas. This theory is almost a generalization
of Maimonides idea understood in its exoteric version according to
which providence varies depending on intelligence. This theory can be
14 Cf. St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 22 and my commentary: The
Impotence of the Word: The God Who Has Said It All, Diogenes, n 170, Summer 1995, 4367.

summed up in the formula: to each according to his needs. Before

entering into the details of each, I will give a summary of the whole: every
creature receives from God what it needs to attain its own good according
to its level of reality; the higher it is on this scale, the more God delegates to
it its freedom; divine providence thus entrusts more and more of the
conditions of flourishing to the creature charged with taking care of itself.
This begins (according to a physics which, though obsolete for us, accords
well with our everyday experience) from the tendency metaphorically
dubbed, desire of what is heavy toward its natural place, which is down
and of what is light toward its natural place, which is up; since it is proper
for a stone to be in its natural place, it receives what is suitable to its own
being. This is carried further in the growth of the plant toward the light and
by its effort to extend roots into the earth. This is carried even further by
the instincts through which the animal knows how to preserve its own
individual existence and to propagate its species, sometimes by
extraordinarily subtle detours. This is completed, in the case of human
beings, by prudence. In this way, the dyad providence/prudence, which
exists already in Latin (providentia/prudentia), receives a deeper
justification.
The higher we ascend the scale of being, the more complex the activities
which tend toward the good: accordingly, the stone can go in no direction
but one; the plant, though it is earthy, and thus heavy, can also go against
this tendency, toward then sun; the animal, as an individual, must adapt its
niche to its food supply, and, as a species, must deeply more and more
complex strategies to reproduce.
At the same time, the activities in question are more and more left up to
the discretion of the one who performs them; the stone does not have any

choice and goes directly in a straight line toward the ground; the plant can
overcome obstacles placed over it and push up to the surface; the animal
can learn to be more and more vigilant, etc.
At the very top of the scale of creatures we find the being who lives a
historical life, that is, the human being. He must therefore receive the
means to achieve his goal in a historical manner. Man is capable of fixing
upon decisions which are retained in the memory and can reflect on and
alter himself. As a result, divine Providence, insofar as it treats man qua
man, must culminate in a salvation history. Our good is indeed that which
we cannot attain without willing it. And only in truly willing, that is to say,
not in an inconstant, pious vow, but in also willing the means. Now, it is in
this that we have been rendered incapable through original sin. It is not a
matter of knowing whether God forgives, for He cannot not be merciful.
The problem is more profound: how can God create in such a way that we
accept his mercy which makes us live, despite the fact that our practices
situate us in a logic of mortality. Our freedom must be made free. Salvation
history is in this way the measure by which God restores human freedom
and enables it to act towards its own good. It is God's Providence which
makes human prudence possible.
5. Divine and Human Prudence
The conduct of God thus founds the renowned principle of subsidiarity at
the highest level, long before it is translated into a principle of civil
organization.15 Politically speaking, we know this principle requires that
every jurisdiction acts freely in its own order and is not simply the relay for
the decisions made at higher levels. In this way, it guards itself the against
Cf. C. Millon-Delsol, Le principe de subsidiarit, "Que sais-je?" n 2793, P.U.F., Paris,
1993.
15

an overhasty interventionism which bypasses its own functioning.

Similarly, local authorities do not in their turn attempt to regulate families
but must help them; the State must not intervene in the organization of
civil society except where leaving it to its own immanent laws endangers
some of its members, etc.
Divine providence does not intervene except in providing creatures the
means to attain their own good. The first good that it bestows is simply to
give them their being in the act of creation. Thus, to be prudent means to
comply with divine providence. This is, in the first place, to know that we
are in a created world, a world created by a benevolent God, and not, as the
Gnostics imagined, a world bungled by an incompetent or cruel artisan. We
needn't introduce the Good by way of a radically exterior principle. This
world has its laws which must be respected not only because by following
them we can master them, but also because they are the laws of a world
upon which the bounty of the Creator has rained down, and which are thus
respectable. Prudence would thus be knowing that our action is inserted in
a world which has its own proper density, not in an indifferent clay that we
can reshape at will.
For man, Providence is salvific in giving him the means to be prudent. It
does not intervene form outside whether such intervention is understood
as punishment or as wiping the slate clean makes little difference but
enables man to redress from inside that which man has perverted.
Christian prudence thus implies an original relation to the Law. This
relation is not the simple reception and application of the Law in a juridical
system; neither is it the reception of this gift in psychological and spiritual
joy. It is an appropriation of the law in such a way that the one who applies
it becomes the subject of it. We therefore no longer oppose, from the
beginning, conscience and the law and order of this world. Instead,

conscience seeks to inscribe its own injunctions in the order of the world, it
order that it is these which serve as ballast for its regularity, and orient its
meaning.
To think this more profoundly, what is required is nothing less than a
certain conception of Revelation: it must be thought on the same model as
providence. We might say that God applies the principle of subsidiarity in
the precise manner of his revelation. Revelation must give that which its
receiver requires and which he cannot give to himself. It must be, so to
speak, useful, and must not intervene except where it cannot be done
without, as an ultima ratio. It must bestow what nothing else can bestow.
In this way, one of the arguments used by St. Thomas Aquinas against
Islam is that it bestows truths which all creatures, however minimally
endowed with mind, must find on their own.16 It is not necessary for God to
intervene in human history in order to prove that He is one, just, etc. The
wisdom of Philosophers is amply sufficient for this. On the other hand, that
salvation can be achieved only through the Incarnation and the Passion,
this is what cannot reach the heart of any man.17
We must therefore return to the highest level if we want to integrate the
virtue of prudence into Christianity. And give its proper honor to even the
16 Summa contra gentiles, I, 6, ed. Leonina manualis, p. 6 ab: [Muhammad] seduced the
people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His
teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with these promises, and he gave
free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men.
As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped
by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom (Anton C. Pegis translation,
modified). [Tr.]
17 1 Corinthians 2:9: the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond
the heart of man (JB, modified). Cf. Isaiah 64:3. In Super I Epistolam B. Pauli ad
Corinthios lectura, ch. 2, St. Thomas comments: The meaning, therefore, is that such glory
is not only not known by the senses, but not even by the heart, of a carnal man (Fabian
Larcher, O.P. translation). [Tr.]

most ordinary sense of the word. The end is behind us, planted in the soil of
history. It is therefore not a question of waiting for a historical event,
whatever that my be, but of giving what one can, of believing that it has
arrived and being carried away by it. On the other hand, the Christian
knows that it is in historical time that everything has been given, and that it
is there also that his eternal destiny is played out. He must therefore bring
to fruition all that he can without demanding that the solutions come from
elsewhere nor escaping into dreams or utopia.
Alternately, the Christian must avoid short-circuiting what is given by
God in demanding divine intervention there where what He has given can
suffice. Such an attitude is well known as when we ask God for proof of his
power or test God. On the contrary, the Christian is prudent in the same
way as all reasonable beings, neither more nor less: frugal with his time and
resources. He is patient in the face of real obstacles but also inventive in
finding the means to overcome them. He does not hesitate to calculate, in
the most rational way, what is the best way to achieve his goals. Though not
without this qualification: his ends are not always, even rarely, of this
world...
Prudence is the virtue of the one who knows how to be like a sheep among
wolves (Matthew 10:16).18 It is thus not at all a question of ignoring that
there are wolves, or of seeing wolves as really just sheep unaware of the
fact. We must avoid the temptation of moral sublimity.19 Prudence implies
that we take the onerous presence of evil seriously. It implies that we know
that the good is not always easy to see: when He came in whom alone
Goodness can be seen, He ended up on the cross... But this nowise means
that we should act like wolves. To be prudent is to choose the Good and it
18
19

Cf. n. 2 above. [Tr.]

I have borrowed this expression from A. Besanon.

implies that we absolutely refuse to ally with Evil. Finally, it is not at all a
question of acting as though we too were not also wolves, more or less
reformed, and always in danger of relapse...
Translated by Drew Desai