Can Morality Do Without Prudence?

Abstract

This paper argues that morality depends on prudence, or more specifically, that one cannot be a moral person without being prudent. Ethicists are unaware of this, ignore it, or imply it is wrong. Although this thesis is not obvious from the current perspective of ethics, I believe that its several implications for ethics make it worth examining. In this paper I argue for the prudence dependency thesis by isolating moral practice from all reliance on prudence. The result is that in the actual world in which we live one cannot be moral unless one is prudent. In order to show that morality depends on prudence for the entire range of moral situations, we put prudence to the test against the most extraordinary of moral situations: moral dilemmas. Doing so shows that for all practical purposes moral dilemmas are prudential problems for agents, giving further support to the prudence dependency thesis.

The Prudential Value of Forgiveness

“…This important aspect of the philosophical debate on forgiveness has been surprisingly neglected. Indeed, an article published recently in this journal (Kaspar 2011) indicates that suspicion or neglect of the role that prudence plays in ethics is a common feature of contemporary moral philosophy. According to Kaspar, the mainstream view among philosophers who discuss morality and prudence is that these things are opposed, with each being confined to an exclusive sphere of reason (ibid., 313n.5).…”