On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

by Karen Swallow Prior

Rules rule. We do like our rules. Some rules are strict, some unspoken; some apply to everyone, some to only a few. Some of us like rigid moral rules. Some of us like unwritten rules of political correctness. No matter what, adhering to rules is much easier than exercising wisdom. A society couldn’t exist without the rule of law, of course. And a civilization wouldn’t be civil without its informal expectations. The Christian faith is built on laws that Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill. Yet, because no number of rules or laws could cover every moral or ethical choice we face, virtue picks up where rules leave off. And where rules abound, virtue, like an underused muscle, atrophies. Virtue requires judgment, and judgment requires prudence. Prudence is wisdom in practice. It is the habit of discerning the “true good in every circumstance” and “the right means of achieving it.”1 In other words, it is “applied morality.”2 A person possesses the virtue of prudence when “the disposition to reason well about what courses of action and emotion will best bring about our own and others’ well-being” becomes an acquired habit.3 Perhaps Cicero puts it most clearly and succinctly in saying, “Prudence is the knowledge of things to be sought, and those to be shunned.”4 Prudence is considered the mother of the other three cardinal virtues.5 While temperance, fortitude, and justice are moral virtues, virtues related to doing, prudence is an intellectual virtue, a virtue related to kn...