Presented at the 2024 CiRCE National Conference: A Contemplation of Prudence.

Prudence is an intellectual virtue, that is, a virtue of the reason, but as it concerns right reason regarding things to be done, and as it is ordered to knowledge of the future from knowledge of the present or past, it requires both moral virtue and experience. It takes both time and the right habits to become prudent. Before we have the virtue itself, however, we can participate in it through counsel and obedience. Eventually, though, we want to be prudent ourselves, especially as prudence is required to have any of the moral virtues. How do we do that? We need the right education. Classical Education is that education. It provides universal principles needed for the virtue of prudence, as well as proper objects for imitation, the natural learning mode of the young, and further, intentional opportunities for the practice of virtue. It is an education ordered to the highest goods, an antidote to what ails us in our culture specifically, and it is ordered to excellence in every order, both theoretical and practical. Thus, classical education is the education of the free man, and a prudent choice for all.