THE AGE OF CRISES AND THE DOCTRINE OF FIVE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES

Summary: The paper presents the doctrine of five intellectual virtues: science, understanding, wisdom, art, and prudence, as presented in the works of Aristotle and later in the works of Thomas Aquinas. By analyzing each individual intellectual virtue, we consider their role and importance in times of crises that are an integral part of human life, as shown by the current coronavirus crisis. By explaining the essence and scope of each virtue, it is shown that according to each of them, reason achieves correspondence with a particular aspect of reality and gains the ability to direct action in a way that transforms evil into good. Resolving the crisis requires that the intellect acquires excellence in all five areas, especially in the one that is the least present in current public discourse: the virtue of wisdom. © 2022 Strossmayer University of Osijek, Catholic Faculty of Theology in Djakovo. All rights reserved.

THE AGE OF CRISES AND THE DOCTRINE OF FIVE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES

Summary: The paper presents the doctrine of five intellectual virtues: science, understanding, wisdom, art, and prudence, as presented in the works of Aristotle and later in the works of Thomas Aquinas. By analyzing each individual intellectual virtue, we consider their role and importance in times of crises that are an integral part of human life, as shown by the current coronavirus crisis. By explaining the essence and scope of each virtue, it is shown that according to each of them, reason achieves correspondence with a particular aspect of reality and gains the ability to direct action in a way that transforms evil into good. Resolving the crisis requires that the intellect acquires excellence in all five areas, especially in the one that is the least present in current public discourse: the virtue of wisdom. © 2022 Strossmayer University of Osijek, Catholic Faculty of Theology in Djakovo. All rights reserved.

PRUDENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN LEGAL EDUCATION IN TIMES OF COMPLEXITY

Society is experiencing an unprecedented health crisis, with COVID-19, in the 21st century. In parallel, the environment remains distant from the care reflected in the Brazilian legal system. In this context, it is estimated that environmental education is capable of favoring the social and political transformation necessary for a social change in the man-nature relationship. To this end, we propose an analysis of the interaction between environmental education in higher education, the virtue of prudence, and the ethics of understanding in legal education. From this perspective, the question is: how can prudence act in environmental education in legal education in order to favor the formation of legal professionals committed to the construction of fair and sustainable societies? This is a descriptive, exploratory, bibliographic, and documentary research, based on the hypothetical-deductive method. The conclusion is that prudence in environmental education in legal education is capable of contributing to the formation of social actors who are aware, motivated and capable of promoting effective changes in favor of building fairer and more sustainable societies.

Higher order risk attitudes in the time of COVID-19: an experimental study

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) represents a large increase in background risk for individuals. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme events (e.g. financial downturns, natural disasters, and war) have been shown to change attitudes towards risk. Using a risk apportionment approach, we examine whether risk aversion as well as higher order risk attitudes (HORAs) (prudence and temperance) have changed during COVID-19. This methodology allows us to measure model-free HORAs. We include prudence and temperance as higher order measures, as these two have been largely understudied under extreme events but are determinants of decisions related to the health and financial domains. Once we account for socio-demographic characteristics, we find an overall increase in risk aversion during COVID-19. We also find similar results using a hypothetical survey question which measures willingness to take risks. We do not find changes in prudence and temperance using the risk apportionment methodology.

Insurance decisions under nonperformance risk and ambiguity.

An important societal problem is that people underinsure against risks that are unlikely or occur in the far future, such as natural disasters and long-term care needs. One explanation is that uncertainty about the risk of non-reimbursement induces ambiguity averse and risk prudent decision makers to take out less insurance. We set up an insurance experiment to test this explanation. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that the demand for insurance is lower when the nonperformance risk is ambiguous than when it is known and when decision makers are risk prudent. We cannot attribute the lower take-up of insurance to our measure of ambiguity aversion, probably because ambiguity attitudes are richer than aversion alone. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11166-021-09364-7.

Leadership as Stewardship: What Does the Story of the Unjust Steward Have to Say?

With the various high-profile global debates and protests about the urgent need to address climate change, the environment and sustainability, as well as the outbreak and pandemic spread of COVID-19, the focus turns once more to the concept of stewardship as a form of leadership. This chapter outlines the key features of stewardship theory, the etymology of stewardship as a concept and some of its biblical and theological aspects. The chapter then turns its focus to the story of the unjust steward as found in the New Testament. Although his dishonesty is not commended, the steward’s prudence is. It is contended that this constructive lesson about the affirmation of the normative quality of prudence with resources in a time of crisis – despite the unethical context of dishonesty – offers an interesting position for the continuing reflection on leadership and business ethics. Using the categories of prudence to refer to ‘responsible’ and honesty to refer to ‘good’ – it is argued that with the present demand to address climate change, the environment and sustainability, prudent (responsible) rather than honest (good) leadership may become the prime focus for reflection on ethics in business and leadership as a form of stewardship. © 2022, Springer Nature B.V.

The position of financial prudence, social influence, and environmental satisfaction in the sustainable consumption behavioural model: Cross-market intergenerational investigation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The main purpose of this study is to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of financial prudence (FIN) on social influence and environmental satisfaction in the sustainable consumption (SC) behavioural model from a cross-market intergenerational perspective in the context of COVID-19. Surprisingly, we discovered that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, significant differences emerge between the Chinese and European markets in the four factors (social influence, SC behaviour, environmental satisfaction, and FIN). Unpredictably, Generation X in the European market and Generation Y in the Chinese market had the highest FIN during the pandemic. Another substantial contribution is that, during the epidemic, the influence of social interaction promotes SC behaviour and social influence motivates users to implement SC behaviours by enhancing environmental satisfaction. However, differences arise in the moderating effect of FIN. In China, the moderating effect occurs in the relationship between social influence and SC behaviour, whereas, in Europe, it reflects in the relationship between social influence and environmental satisfaction.

Prudential Use of the Morally Controversial COVID-19 Vaccines.

In recent months, there has been a lot of debate surrounding the use of those COVID-19 vaccines that have been either tested or manufactured with cell lines that were isolated from the remains of an aborted fetal child. Most faithful and orthodox Catholic moral theologians, among whom I count myself, have concluded that their use is not intrinsically evil. Therefore, like every other decision that falls into the category of actions that are not intrinsically evil, the decision to be vaccinated with these morally controversial vaccines has to be governed by the virtue of prudence. It is a decision that calls for a wisdom that properly sees this action within the constellation of actions that propels the human agent to the heights of holiness. This is why prayer is so essential for authentic moral judgment. With prayer, we ask the Holy Spirit who is the all-prudent one to guide our actions so that we can choose and act well not only for our only well-being but for the well-being of all. Acts that are not themselves intrinsically evil are deemed virtuous or not within the narrative of the individual person's life.