Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 1963
GEORGIA BULLETIN
A Quickening Of The Thomistic Revival
JOSEF PIEPER, PRUDENCE
NEW YORK: PANTHEON, 1959,
96 pp. $2.75
Until relatively recently in
the history of Christian ethics,
the classic theory of four vir
tues, prudence, justice, for
titude and temperance, was the
standard point of departure in
the construction of a moral
philosophy and the applica
tion of such a philosophy to the
moral life. This method, based
upon the best in ancient pagan
thought, as well as incorpo
rating the teachings of the two
greatest of Christian theolo
gians, Paul and Augustine, was
synthesized in the incomparable
second part of Thomas Aqui
nas’s Summa Theologiae. Then,
beginning in the sixteenth cen
tury and reaching an apex in
the seventeenth and eighteenth,
this approach was replaced by
a more rationalistic and lega
listic method, based upon an
extremely technical and precise
theory of natural law. The re
discovery and re-emphasis of
Aquinas which came about with
Leo Kill's Aeterni Patris, could
only have the best effect upon
Catholic moral theology, but
its effect has unfortunately been
felt only gradually. The old,
rigid, rationalistic theology of
law and conscience was too
firmly rooted in our seminar
ies and universities.
A few men in the twentieth
century, however, have been
outstanding in quickening the
Thomistic revival, especially in
Europe. One of these is Josef
Pieper, professor at the Uni
versity of Munster. For thirty-
five years he has been explor
ing the territory of Aquinas's
ethics, and its relevance to
contemporary moral problems.
As a result we have several
short, brilliant works on jus
tice, fortitude and temperance,
a defense of leisure and its
necessity' for the speculative
life, and finally, the crowning
achievement of them all, his
most recent volume on moral
philosophy, Prudence.
The immense difficulty a spe
culative moralist faces today is
keynoted in the first words of
this tract;
No dictum in traditional
Christian doctrine strikes such
a note of strangeness to the
ears of contemporaries, even
contemporary Christians, as
this one: that the virtue of pru
dence is the mold and "mo
ther" of all the other cardinal
virtues, of justice, fortitude,
and temperance. In other words,
none but the prudent man can
be just, brave, and temperate,
and the good man is good in so
far as he is prudent.
These words shock only be
cause modem Christians have
lost their roots. Prudence is
proverbially the ‘virtue’ of the
serpent, a virtue of worldly wis
dom, of cunning (two vices ex-
plicitely opposed to it by Aqui
nas!). Indeed the virtue that
St. Bernard called auriga vir-
tutum, the ’charioteer virtue’,
has in common parlance come
to be equivalent to foxiness and
‘Jesuitry.’
What is the classic meaning
of prudence, the meaning so
forcefully explained and defend
ed in Pieper’s little book? Ba
sically it is the moral and in
tellectual virtue of determin
ing the means to arrive at the
ends of human life, namely
beatitude, or Christian per
fection. It is not merely the
intellectual ability to discern
general principles of conduct,
this being rather synderesis,
or 'conscience.* But it also
demands the perfected ability to
deal reasonably and virtuously
with the particulars of human
conduct. It therefore is the vir
tue which, in modern times,
has become the ‘science’ of
casuistry.
What is its relation to the
complete moral life? It is the
‘mold and mother of all the
virtues,’ in Claudel’s words,
the ‘intelligent prow’ of our
nature. It is presupposed in
the formation of the just, tem
perate and brave man. At the
same time, prudence presup
poses the other virtues, as ends
to be achieved. Prudence deals
with means, not with ends of
human activity. It has to do,
then, with that aspect in which
the Christian man is supreme
ly free, namely in the formation
of what kind of good life he is
to lead. No two men are ‘good’
in exactly the same way. It is
prudence which insures this
unique freedom, this highly in
dividual working out of one’s
destiny, the choosing of many
roads on the way home. An
ethics which denies the impor
tance of prudence, invariably
denies the importance of moral
freedom, and results in a stere
otyped morality, involving the
exhaustive legislation of every
particular in human conduct.
THOMAS Aquinas in his cen
tury, Paul in his, Pieper in
ours, has seen that a humane
Christian morality cannot be
constructed in this way. The de
cisions are always ours, and
may be delegated to no one.
The security of bourgeois mo
rality which we all deplore must
not be replaced by a more sin
ister security of the total for
mation of one's conscience by
another may, be the priest or
layman. Pieper says, ‘The im
mediate criterion for concrete
ethical action is solely the im
perative of prudence in the per
son who has the decision to
make. This standard cannot be
abstractly construed or even
calculated in advance.* And
again, *A moral theology which
relies too much upon casuis
try necessarily becomes a
"science of sins’* instead of
a doctrine of virtues.*
One could become exhausted
in praise of this profound and
yet so brief, volume. It deser
ves the most careful considera
tion by every more than mini
mally educated Catholic. It de
serves the attention of every
shepherd of souls. Freedom in
Christ presupposes maturity in
Christ. The virtue of prudence
insures both.
R. J. MULVANEY, Ph.D.
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