Questions to Guide Your Reading

Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

Preface

1. "With a doctrine of the commandments or duties," says Pieper, there is always a danger.  What is it?

2. What, on the other hand, is the benefit of the doctrine of virtue?

PRUDENCE

3. The epigraph for this section of the book is the following verse from the Gospel of Matthew: "If thy eye is single, the whole of thy body will be lit up."  What does that mean?

1. The First of the Cardinal Virtues

1. What does Pieper mean when he says that "none but the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate, and the good man is good in so far as he is prudent."  (This will be the subject of the whole first chapter, so you will have to finish the chapter before you answer this question.)

2. According to Pieper, "Being precedes Truth," and "Truth precedes the Good."  What does that mean?  (Again, you will probably have to finish this section to have a sense of this.)

3. Why, to the contemporary mind, does prudence seem less like a prerequisite of goodness than an evasion of it?  What sorts of connotations does prudence carry with it?

4. What does Pieper mean when he says of people in our culture that they "sneer at the noble daring of a celibate life..."?  Do we?

5. On pp. 6-7, Pieper makes a number of important statements:
(a) "Prudence is the cause of the other virtues' being virtues at all."
(b) "Prudence is the measure of justice, fortitude, and temperance."
(c) Prudence "informs" the other virtues; it confers upon them the form of their inner essence."
Explain what each of these statements means.

6. To what, according to Pieper, do all the commandments of God pertain?

7. Why is every sin opposed to prudence?

8. According to Pieper, for Thomas Aquinas, "reason" means nothing other than what?  "Truth" to Aquinas is nothing other than what?

9. What, according to Pieper, is the "standard of prudence"?


2. Knowledge of Reality and the Realization of the Good

1. At the beginning of this chapter, Pieper talks about "the pre-eminence of prudence."  What does he mean?  (This, by the way, is his summary of the thesis of the previous chapter.)  He also says that the pre-eminence of prudence means that so-called "good intention" and so-called "meaning well" by no means suffice.  What does he mean?

2. According to Pieper, "the prudent decisions, which, when realized, shape our free action, are fed from two sources."  What are they?

3. Prudence, says Pieper, is not concerned with the ultimate – natural and supernatural – ends of human life.  If not, what is it concerned with?

4. How does Pieper define "conscience"?   How is this different from the usual way people think about conscience?

5. Prudence involves the skill by which we transform our knowledge of reality into the prudent decision "which takes effect directly in its execution."  The various modes of imperfection in that transformation of true cognitions into prudent decisions represent various types of imprudence.  Pieper lists two in particular.  What are they?

6. What according to Pieper is the "double set of prerequisites to which the perfection of prudence is bound?

7. Pieper gives us an important warning.  He talks about the patient effort of experience, "which cannot be evaded or replaced by any arbitrary, short-circuiting resort to "faith" – let alone by the "philosophical" point of view which confines itself to seeing the general rather than the particular.  What does he mean?

8. Note the structure Pieper has laid out so far.  Prudence involves two things: (1) a clear cognition of reality as it really is, and (2) execution in action.  With regard to the first of these – prudence as cognition – this requires, as we have seen, the ability to be still in order to attain an objective perception of reality.  (He will discuss the virtues that help with the second of these – execution in action – later.)  This attitude of "silent" contemplation, in turn, involves three elements, namely: memoria, docilitas, and solertia.  Discuss the importance of each and give an example showing why it is important to prudence.

9. Why does Pieper say that prudence is a bonum arduum, a "steep good" (perhaps a better translation would be a "difficult" or "arduous" good?  Explain.

10. Having discussed the virtues that help us with proper cognition (what Aristotle would call "right reason"), we must now discuss the virtues that help us with regard to the realization of prudence in action.  In this regard, Pieper mentions the following: providentia.  What is it and why is it important?

11. What does Thomas Aquinas mean when he says: "the certitude of prudence cannot be so great as completely to remove all anxiety"?  In a related vein (not covered by Pieper), why is it always easy to "second guess" the prudential decisions of a political leader?  (Why, in other words, is "Monday-morning quarterbacking" so common?)

12. Pieper discusses a number of ways in which we can "fail to meet the demands included in the virtue of prudence."  He mentions thoughtlessness and indecisivenss (which we have already discussed above), but also negligence and blindness to the concrete realities which surround our actions; likewise remissness in decision.  Interestingly, Pieper (following Thomas Aquinas) traces all of these to a common root, which you might not have expected.  What is it?  Explain why that particular "defect" is so problematic.


3. Delimitations and Contrasts

13.  In this chapter, Pieper is at pains to contrast prudence with mere rule-following and what is called "casuistry."  At the end of the chapter, he makes the following comment: "A moral theology which relies too much upon casuistry necessarily becomes a "science of sins" instead of a doctrine of virtues, or a theory of the Christian idea of man.  It soon becomes reduced to an endless determining of the boundary beyond which sins are "mortal" and this side of which sins are "venial."  If such a casuistic doctrine of sin is combined with the moralism of isolated "observances" and "abstentions" – and it is indeed akin to this moralism – there arises that phenomenon ... of a rather vindictive and insubstantial nay-saying which serves at best to prey upon the consciences of the immature, but is of no use as a standard for real life."  He continues: "A merely casuistic moral theology assumes the immaturity of human beings.  Moreover, it intensifies and perpetuates this immaturity.  ‘Once we have arrived at casuistry, the next consequence is that decisions in questions of conscience are lifted from the conscience of the individual and transferred to the authority of the experts.'" And finally this: "The first of the cardinal virtues [prudence] is not only the quintessence of ethical maturity, but ... also the quintessence of moral freedom."  Explain.
 
4. Prudence and Charity

14. As Pieper points out, according to Thomas Aquinas, "No moral virtue is possible without prudence."  But it is also true that "Without the moral virtues there is no prudence."  Thus, only the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate; yet he who is not already just, brave, and temperate cannot be prudent.  How would Aristotle reconcile this seeming contradiction?  Now how does Pieper reconcile the contradiction?

15. What does Pieper mean when he claims that "all contempt for the world which springs from man's own judgment and opinions, not from the supernatural love of God, is simple arrogance, hostile to the nature of being"?  Explain.