Francisco de Vitoria on Prudence and the Nature of Practical Reasoning

Abstract

Abstract The history of prudence is often depicted as a history of loss. According to one version, the scientification of moral knowledge in medieval philosophy calls into question the role of prudence in moral action (Nussbaum 1978). And while Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) still tries to integrate prudence into a scientific framework of moral knowledge, the Salmantine theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) eventually abandons this approach and excludes prudence from moral knowledge altogether (Fidora 2013). I would like to argue, however, that Vitoria plays a different role in this development: He does not exclude prudence from scientific moral knowledge but gives an integrated account that Aquinas lacks. But this integration comes at a price because he is eventually unable to explain how prudence allows an agent to deal with the problem of contingency in action.