We have come full circle in this series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom. Prudence is one of those forgotten gems of the classical educational tradition. Its proper flowering is the result of early instruction, long reflection and the blooming of rationality in man. Discipline, early training in habits, examples and good instruction about the real differences between things—all play a role in the acquisition of prudence. But prudence itself comes through a pedagogy of dialectic, rhetoric, and ethics, since it is concerned primarily with a person’s ability to deliberate correctly and act with regard to human
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