Prudence is the Queen of Virtues

Prudence is a virtue. It is a moral virtue. Stoic moral virtues of prudence and justice are virtues of the mind. Passion virtues of courage and temperance are virtues of the heart. I discuss moral and passion virtues elsewhere in Wyaathi newsletter.

Prudence helps us to distinguish those things of value against those things of no value. We use the faculty of reason, or rationality, to make this determination. The process of making this determination is known as thinking. In this way, reason is the faculty, while thinking is the process.???The purpose of prudence is to conserve life by discovering the good that will come out of a situation.?What conserves life is of value to life. It is a gain to life. Value is what one does to gain or keep in order to advance his life.?Virtue is the act that one does to gain value. Reason ??provides framework for purpose ??to work to achieve the good in the situation. self-esteem is the result.

correspondingly, rationality, productiveness, and self-actualization are the fundamental outcomes of prudence. Productive work is the center-piece of a rational person’s life, because it sits between rationality and self-actualization. Productive work is the central value that determines the hierarchy of all other values.?Reason is the source, or precondition of productive work.

Reason

Reason is the ability to judge what is good in a situation, and pursue the good that will come out of ??it. The good that comes out of a situation is what we call value.???Reason, therefore is itself central to virtue of prudence. In this framework, prudence has three steps. Step 1 involves evaluating a situation. Step two involves using reason to judge a situation to discover the good, or value that would come out of the situation. Step three is to pursue the good that will come out of the situation.

Productive work

To pursue the good that will come out of a situation is productive work. ???

Self-Actualization

Self-esteem is the satisfaction one gets for accomplishing productive work. It builds self-actualization.

Unengaged Mind

The basal vice, the source of all problems, is ??lack of engagement of reason from use. ???the unengaged mind is the suspended consciousness, with refusal to evaluate and see the good in a situation, so as to act on it. This great vice is the absence of will. ?It is not ignorance but refusal to know.?Irrationality is the rejection of means of survival, therefore a commitment to a course OF self-destruction.

The virtue of rationality is the recognition of reason as the only source of knowledge one needs to evaluate value. It is the primary guide to action. It means commitment to one’s full awareness full mental focus in all issues, in al waking hours.?It means the fullest perception of reality. Reason has to be moderated by justice and temperance, and fortified by courage, or fortitude to take action.

In summary, selecting the good that will come out of a situation is Rationality. This means that rationality is the basal ??puzzle piece of the virtue of prudence. ?This is why prudence has been referred to as the queen of virtues. Yet, even as the queen of the virtues, prudence requires the other virtues of justice, courage, and temperance to become whole.