In which, your hosts take aim at Frederick II (the other Frederick II), and discuss Prudence as truth and the distinction between false and true Prudence. Along the way they also touch on: Prudence as the Queen of the virtues; why Arnold Schoenberg (!) was a good artist; legalistic American bureaucrats in post-war Germany; and why man is not the measure of all things. They also get around to MacIntyre on managers (boo!) and Pieper on Prudence (hooray!). But they never do get around to that old radio standby, an exhaustive scholastic division of the virtue of prudence (listeners dying to hear a long disquisition on the ways in which “part” and “whole” are said will have to console themselves with the long digression on the transcendentals that did make it into the episode).
Bibliography and Links:
- Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Reasoning is worse than scolding,” Sancrucensis (blog), Nov. 8, 2015;
- Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (1954);
- Charles De Koninck, “General Standards and Particular Situations in Relation to the Natural Law,” Laval théologique et philosophique (1950);
- James Gaines, “The Art of the Feud,” The Guardian;
- James Gaines, Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (2006).
Header image: William Russel Flint, Penelope Bringing out the Bow and Quiver (detail).
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