Note 20 — Chapter I · THE PHAEDRUS AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC

Cf. Maritain, op. cit., pp. 3-4: “The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet; further, the act of moral choice is so individualized, both by the singularity of the person from which it proceeds and the context of the contingent circumstances in which it takes place, that the practical judgment in which it is expressed and by which I declare to myself: this is what I must do, can be right only if, hic et nunc, the dynamism of my will is right, and tends towards the true goods of human life.

That is why practical wisdom, prudentia, is a virtue indivisibly moral and intellectual at the same time, and why, like the judgment of the conscience itself, it cannot be replaced by any sort of theoretical knowledge or science.”