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Thomistic Institute.org. I first came across the virtue of prudence, where did I first

come across it? In reading St. Thomas Aquinas, and I was surprised because I think often enough

in our conversations about practical reason, we think largely in terms of conscience. And maybe you debate as to,

you know, conscience, whether it ought to be formed or followed or, you know, thus and such and yada,

but we don't often talk about prudence in those conversations. And I suspect it's largely because

prudence sounds stuffy. It sounds like one of those virtues that has gone the way of all flesh. So like charity,

for instance, probably, you know, in yesterday year, it meant something far more robust than the

way in which it's often used in contemporary discourse. Like when people talk about charity,

it's just giving material goods to those who don't have them at present. But it's not something that we

necessarily like enjoy receiving. Like none of us want to be made a charity case. So in some way,

shape, or form, we think about the giving of charity as condescending and the receiving of charity

as, I don't know, the humanizing. That's a shame, right? Because that's not the case.

Or like temperance is another virtue where you use it and you imagine abstinence, complete

abstinence from drink or sobriety of a cold turkey sort.

When truth be told, temperance means the moderation of sense pleasures.

It doesn't mean eradication of sense pleasures. Like there's a vice

insensibility, which covers that phenomenon. Nor does it mean the crass indulgence in sense

pleasures, right? That would be intemperance. It means the moderate enjoyment of sense

pleasures, like the way in which St. Thomas would talk about drinking to the point of hilarity,

which came up earlier today. So, not, not for me personally, existentially,

but for someone else. Okay, so, um, yeah, it's, it's a shame that often enough Christian

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