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Publish the Obsidian vault's Knowledge folder as /knowledge (881 notes, 67 folders), with a Knowledge item in the nav and footer. - scripts/import_knowledge.py regenerates data/knowledge from the vault: slugged paths, folder notes as index pages, wikilinks resolved to site links (or plain text), callouts, highlights, and Dataview tables rendered statically. Personal notes are withheld via an exclusion list plus a privacy guard. - tuftecms/core/knowledge.py builds a concept index from note titles and aliases. First mentions on ordinary pages link to their Knowledge note (capped, never in headings, code, links, or sidenotes); Knowledge pages list related notes and where they're mentioned across the site; other pages get a Related Knowledge block. - Knowledge URLs join sitemap.xml (so the sweep test covers them), never displace existing legacy slugs, list alphabetically, and mermaid diagrams render client-side only on pages that have them.
37 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
37 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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description: Prudence is not caution. It is seeing what is actually there, and acting
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like it.
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source: obsidian-knowledge
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---
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# Prudence
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> *Prudence is not caution. It is seeing what is actually there, and acting like it.*
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---
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## Where It Belongs
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Prudence is the first of the four cardinal virtues — the list Plato sketched in the *Republic*, the Stoics systematized, and Cicero, Ambrose, and Aquinas carried into the Christian centuries. See [Stoicism](/knowledge/philosophy/stoicism) for the philosophical home. The tradition did not merely list it first; it called prudence *auriga virtutum*, the charioteer of the virtues, because the other three depend on it. [Fortitude](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues/fortitude) without prudence is recklessness; [Justice](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues/justice-virtue) without prudence misjudges what is owed; [Temperance](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues/temperance-virtue) without prudence cannot find the measure it is supposed to keep.
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## What It Is
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The Greek is *phronesis* — practical wisdom, the virtue Aristotle spent a book of the *Ethics* on: the capacity to perceive a real situation accurately and discern the right action in *this* case, not in general. Modernity shrank the word to mean timidity, but classical prudence is closer to clear sight plus nerve. Aquinas divided its work into three motions — deliberate well, judge well, and *act*, decisively — and counted indecision among its failures. Its counterfeits are instructive: cowardice wearing prudence's name, and cunning, which is prudence's full skill set aimed at a bad end.
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## The Missing Card
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Prudence has no direct opposite among the seven deadly sins — its failure is not a passion but a blindness, and every sin employs it. It is also, famously, the missing cardinal virtue of the tarot: [Justice](/knowledge/tarot/major-arcana/justice), [Strength](/knowledge/tarot/major-arcana/strength), and [Temperance](/knowledge/tarot/major-arcana/temperance) all appear among the trumps, but no card bears Prudence's name. Tradition has hunted for her for centuries — some find her in the Hermit's lantern, some in the World. The better reading may be that she was never missing: prudence is the *reader* of the cards, the discernment the whole deck presupposes.
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---
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## Related
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- [Justice](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues/justice-virtue), [Fortitude](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues/fortitude), [Temperance](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues/temperance-virtue) — the other cardinal virtues
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- [Stoicism](/knowledge/philosophy/stoicism) — wisdom as the master virtue
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- [Virtues](/knowledge/virtues-and-vices/virtues) — the three lists
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- [Tarot](/knowledge/tarot) — the deck that keeps three of the four
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---
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*The charioteer holds no weapon. The horses are the weapon; she is the aim.*
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