The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

318 chapter 27which Cicero translated as scientia and sapientia. Phronēsis/prudentia/prudence is a knowledge of means, not of ends, good judgment in practicalmatters, not a command of theories.The Dahlsgaard-drafted chapter quotes the Yale psychologist R. J. Sternberg(1998), another prominent psychologist on the board of the Values inAction Institute. Sternberg writes about one of his three sorts of intelligence:wisdom “is involved when practical intelligence is applied to ...a balanceof various self-interests . . . with the interests of others.” 11 Sternberg ishere precisely not speaking of scientia or sapientia but of prudentia mixedwith justitia. Note that he even uses the phrase which translates Aristotle’sphronēsis: “practical wisdom.”And so the Peterson-Seligman book later repeatedly elides theoretical wisdomand practical prudence. The Haslam-drafted chapter on Prudence doesa better job sometimes, because he has evidently troubled to read Aristotle, ifnot perhaps Aquinas. But even Haslam gets entangled in sophia, maybebecause he was saddled with the group’s too-wide definition of “Wisdom.” 12The group have also, on the other border of the word “prudence,” asI said, confused prudence with temperance. Haslam in particular seems tostruggle honorably with it. The confusion is important because most of thepsychological measures of prudence mix it with other virtues. Thus the fivefactormodel of personality traits developed by Costa and McCrae speaks of“conscientiousness” as a prime trait. It is said to be made up of classicallyprudential facets such as “competence, order, and deliberation,” but thenalso justice, in “dutifulness,” hope, in “achievement striving,” and temperance,in “self-discipline.” 13Haslam himself says that “Prudence therefore implies a balance and harmony. . . play[ing] a mediating role, ...ensuring that hope is tempered byrealism.” 14 This is temperance, not prudence. Or rather, as his unconscioususe of “tempered” suggests, it is an amalgam of the know-how to plan andthe willpower to carry out the plan. The one is prudence, the other temperance.Haslam speaks of “the components of prudence having to do withbalance,” but immediately admits that they “fall under Aristotle’s concept ofmoderation”—sophrosynē is the word Aristotle used for the virtue; and tometron, the [golden] mean, for the corresponding method.The ethical tradition of the West, in short, would shuffle some of thecharacter strengths the psychologists have examined under other headings.In particular it would place under a virtue of prudence some of the