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

Prudence is now commonly assumed to mean the ability to choose actions in the interest of safety or caution. It is thought of as a utilitarian, calculative capacity, involving the selection of tactics that best avoid harm, suffering, or charges of liability. The prudent person — sometimes guided by legal counsel — is one who knows shrewdly what to avoid. But the premodern understanding of prudence was quite different, stressing confident nobility rather than timorous utility.. In Josef Pieper’s phrase, prudence involved the “knowledge of reality and the realization of the good.” In this talk, Ken Myers will summarize the classical understanding of prudence, how prudence is energized by grace, why the risk-oriented view of prudence came to dominate references to it, and why prudence should be a central concern for educators.