Prudence is Our Greatest Virtue

Adam Gurri at The Umlaut tells us Prudence is a Virtue:

If you assume a notion of justice, or an extremely other-directed moral philosophy, in which the entire purpose of our lives is to provide for other people, prudence is still a crucial virtue. If you cannot provide for yourself, you cannot hope to provide for others. Au contraire; the selfless and imprudent saint becomes nothing more than a sinking ship, who is more likely to pull those he wishes to help to the bottom of the ocean with him, rather than improving their lot. If you cannot provide for yourself, how can you hope to provide for others?

In my foot-dragging path back to Catholicism, contemplating prudence was a major step. To hear progressive Christians and holier-than-thou leftists tell it, there is no martyrdom too stupid to avoid. Better to open one's borders to foreign cultures and endanger one's neighbors than to be intolerant. Better to allow all manner of sexual deviance at one's doorstep than to be judgmental. It's no virtue to allow one's children to be slaughtered because one is a pacifist. A pacifist is not what the children need.

As Gurri points out, prudence is the balance by which all moral judgments must be measured.

When thinking about human society, my starting point is the isolated village of the pre-modern age. The population and resources are small. Travel to the nearest city takes days. The monarch's army is nowhere close.

Assume you are the patriarch of that village and a stranger has come into town and murdered a resident. He is captured and brought to you for justice. He swears that, given a chance, he will kill again, and will do so as long as he is able.

What is the appropriate action? There is no prison in the village--the crimes committed there don't require major penalties. It's impossible to confine the man for the rest of his life--the necessary resources aren't there nor is there a way to keep him permanently locked away. The prudent action is to execute him.

But isn't taking a life a sin? Yes, but the patriarch has an obligation to his village, who look to him for protection and guidance. Is it better to let the man loose to wreak violence on them? Say he is escorted out of the village--is it moral to sentence a stranger to certain death?

No. The patriarch's obligations to the dependent and the innocent outweigh his obligations to the murderer as a fellow human. So he orders an execution and prays for forgiveness.

The progressive evolution described by Moldbug as an outgrowth of Quakerism and Unitarianism is really just Christianity stripped of prudence. There is no hierarchy of virtues or vices--every moral failing or achievement can be thrown into an enemy's face, like when Alec Baldwin discovered that his years of championing liberal poverty and environmental policies meant nothing because he was thought homophobic.

Prudence tells us how to make the best of the world as it is. That's why it's the highest of virtues man can achieve without God's intervention.