Thomas and Scotus on Prudence Without all the Major Virtues: Imperfect or Merely Partial?

The Thomist 74 (2010): 165-88 THOMAS AND SCOTUS ON PRUDENCE WITHOUT ALL THE MAJOR VIRTUES: IMPERFECT OR MERELY PARTIAL? THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR. University ofSt. Thomas Houston, Texas THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus on the connection of the acquired moral virtues is in large part a disagreement over the unity of prudence.1 Thomas thinks that the moral virtues are connected through one prudence which commands actions that belong to all of the virtues.2 A deficiency in moral virtue is always also a deficiency in prudence. Scotus rejects this position in two ways.3 First, he holds that there is a particular or partial prudence which 1 For the context and background, see especially Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux xii' et xiii' siecles, 6 vols., (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont Cesar; Gembloux: Duculot, 1942-60), 3.1:197-252; 4.2: 551-663. 2 See especially Lottin, Psychologie et morale, 3.1:247-51; Fridolino M. Utz, De connectione virtutum moralium inter se secundum doctrinam St. Thomae Aquinatis (Oldenberg: Albertus Magnus, 1937), 97-126; Renee Mirkes, "Aquinas on the Unity ofPerfect Moral Virtue," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1998): 589-605; Bonnie Kent, "Habits and Virtues," in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 122-24; James F. Keenan, "The Virtue of Prudence,"in Pope, ed., The Ethics ofAquinas, 265-67. 3 Lottin, Psychologie et morale, 4.2:655-60; Parthenius Minges, Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctrina philosphica et theologica, 2 vols (Rome: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1930), 2:46970 , 472-74; Marilyn McCord Adams, "Scotus and Ockham on the Connection of the Virtues," inJohn Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood, and Mechtild Dreyer (Leiden: Brill 1996), 505-9; Bonnie Kent, "Rethinking Moral Dispositions: Scotus on the Virtues," in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, ed. Thomas Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 369-74. 165 166 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR. belongs to each moral virtue.4 Consequently, the perfection of one part of prudence is independent from that of another. For instance, a defect in that part of prudence which is concerned with temperate actions does not entail a defect in that part of prudence which belongs to justice or courage. Second, he states that even this particular or partial prudence is to some extent independent of a particular moral virtue. Prudence issues judgments which the agent is free to accept or reject. The second claim has been discussed in recent scholarship and sheds light on the relationship between the intellect and the will. The first claim is about prudence's unity. I shall attempt to give a more precise description of this first issue by looking more carefully at the arguments which are given by Thomas and Scotus, and considering the ways in which their views were developed by their followers. A few introductory remarks need to be made about the difference between imperfect and partial prudence. Thomas, Scotus, and their contemporaries reject the Stoic understanding of the connection of the virtues, according to which someone either possesses all the acquired moral virtues in the highest degree or none of these virtues at all.5 Both Thomas and Scotus accept the Aristotelian view that a perfectly good person lacks vice, and that his virtues are connected through prudence. But they differ over whether this prudence is itself a lowest species or whether it is a genus which includes different species of prudence. This disagreement over prudence is connected to different accounts of how someone may have a true virtue even though he lacks one or more of the principal acquired virtues. 4 Lottin, Psychologie et morale, 4.2:643-55, argues that for Scotus particular prudence depends on virtue. It seems to me that this view is successfully challenged in Stephen D. Dumont, "The Necessary Connection of Moral Virtue to Prudence according to John Duns Scotus," Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 55 (1988): 184-206. See also Adams, "Scotus and Ockham," 507 n. 28; Mary Elizabeth Ingham, "Practical Wisdom: Scotus's Presentation of Prudence," in Honnefelder et al, eds., John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, 562-69. 5 For the earlier...