A Plea for Prudence

Abstract

Non-philosophers could be forgiven for thinking that philosophers are a cautious bunch. For philosophers are becoming increasingly preoccupied with prudence. Naturally, however, philosophers have something different in mind than the ordinary sense of ‘prudence’. Rather than denoting the quality of cautiousness, philosophers typically take ‘prudence’ to denote an evaluative or normative standpoint, one whose evaluations are in some sense determined by facts about what is good and bad for us; or, to use some more terminology that is apt to mislead the lay reader, facts about well-being, welfare or self-interest. Two recent examples of this trend are Guy Fletcher’s Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse and Dale Dorsey’s A Theory of Prudence. Each book covers a lot of ground, incorporating previously published work together with new material. Fletcher’s primary focus is the meta-prudential, the philosophy of well-being’s answer to meta-ethics. His book covers such topics as the nature of prudential judgment, the semantics of prudential language, the normativity of prudence, its implications for traditional meta-ethical views such as realism, anti-realism and error theory, and much else besides. While Fletcher defends various views in relation to these issues, the primary aim of the book is to argue that these debates, which he thinks have been largely neglected, deserve much more attention. To adapt a well-worn platitude from recent political discourse, the idea is that whatever you think about the issues, it would be good if we were having a robust debate about them.