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Normative Prudence as a Tradition of Statecraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Alberto R. Coll
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Abstract

Ethical dilemmas of international relations have led to two distinct principles of thought, as presented in this article. The Western tradition has generally advocated the distinct differences between politics and morality, though asserting that the former is grounded on the latter. The “normative prudence” school of Aristotle, Aquinas, Burke, and Niebuhr interlink a nation's morality and politics in an ethical and pragmatic statecraft of nations. Realists such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, on the other hand, divorce the two, maintaining that “prudence” is the most vital element in the political realm. Realists argue that politics supersedes morality and is upheld through self-interest as the pure search for the truly good. Both views spotlight the individual citizen as the center of moral society yet differ on the importance of the means and ends of statecraft and political adroitness of leaders. Adhering to Aristotelian views, Coll clearly advocates the notion that “moral principles are ultimately realized only in specific acts which human beings choose to carry out.” The author cites Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill as examples of leaders whose moral wisdom in political reasoning led to remarkable statecraft explicitly derived from prudence.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 5 , March 1991 , pp. 33 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1991

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References

1 Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. 21.

2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a2ae., 57,4.

3 Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 25.

4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), VI, 1140a, 26–32.

5 Ibid., VI, 1140b, 6–11.

6 Ibid., VI, 1142b, 32–35.

7 Ibid., VI, 1140b, 11–20.

8 Ibid., VI, 1143a, 17–33.

9 Ibid., VI, 1137b–1138a.

10 Francois de Callieres, Dela Maniere de Negocier avec les Souverains (Paris, 1716; rpr. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1963); Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Oxford University Press, 1939); Adam Watson, Diplomacy: The Dialogue Between States (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983).

11 Aristotle, Ethics, VI, 1141b, 15.

12 Ibid., VI, 1144a, 35–37.

13 Ibid., 1144a, 6–31.

14 Ibid., 1144b, 30–33.

15 Ibid., 1145a, 6–ll.

16 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a2ae, 49, 7.

17 Ibid., 49, 1.

18 Ibid., 49, 2. As he explained: “the reasoning involved in prudence draws on a double understanding. One, the understanding of general principles, which is for that understanding classed as an intellectual virtue; it is a habit of mind whereby by nature we see general principles, not only of theory but of practice as well, such as, ‘Do evil to nobody’. The other understanding is seeing the ultimate particular or factual principle.This individual principle.is about an individual end. And so the understanding which is taken as part of prudence is a certain correct appreciation of some particular end.”

19 lbid., 49, 3.

20 Ibid., 49,4.

21 Ibid., 49,5.

22 See the discussion in Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, pp. 14–18.

23 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a2ae, 49, 6.

24 Ibid., 7.

25 Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 25.

26 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a2ae, 49, 8.

27 Ibid., Ia2ae, 57, 4; 2a2ae, 50, 1.

28 Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).

29 Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1958); Eugene Garver, Machiavelli and the History of Prudence (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

30 Edmund Burke, Speech, May 11, 1792. For the intellectual context of Burke's thought see J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Francis Canavan, The Political Reason of Edmund Burke (Durham: Duke University Press, 1960).

31 Edmund Burke, second letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, IV, p. 57.

32 For an excellent discussion of the problematic nature of this effort, see Harvey Mansfield, “Edmund Burke,” in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 692–95.

33 Harvey Mansfield, “Edmund Burke,” p. 693.

34 Burke's first letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, III, p. 304. Cited in Gerald W. Chapman, Edmund Burke: The Practical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 138. Deeply aware of the fiercely competitive relationship among the numerous moral claims on the statesman's resources and commitments, Burke counseled: “He forms the best judgement in all moral disquisitions, who has the greatest number and variety of considerations in one view before him, and can take them in with the best possible consideration of the middle results of all.”

35 See, for example, Kenneth W. Thompson's discussions of prudence in Morality and Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980). In this and other works Thompson also has emphasized the centrality to prudence and to sound statecraft of moral reasoning, which he defines in categories not foreign to Aquinas's own definition.

36 See the discussion in Clark E. Cochran, “The Radical Gospel and Christian Prudence,” Francis Canavan, ed., The Ethical Dimension of Political Life: Essays in Honor of John H. Hallowell (Durham: Duke University Press, 1983), pp. 188–99.

37 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1960), pp. 83–112.

38 New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), 11:928, col. 2, cited in Cochran, “The Radical Gospel and Christian Prudence,” p. 196.

39 See Niebuhr's closing words in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1944).

40 Cited in Thompson, Morality and Foreign Policy, p. 143.