ABSTRACT
From Aristotle theory, one has been taught to think of prudence as an attribute either of the character or of the mind, but consistently as a virtue of the intellect. Although in all understandings it is concerned with deliberate human action and practice, the tradition has always insisted that it is not just a skill. Prudence may be a mental state or a concatenation of mental states, an assemblage of mental operations, a form of knowledge or of reason, but it is always about actions and human practices. Habitus has an historical dimension inasmuch as human conduct tends to be significantly determined by previous experiences and through socialization and imitation. Prudence may be difficult to explain; why a particular course of action is chosen or determined to be the prudent course may be difficult to explain. However, for present purposes, international relations (IR)'s dominant account goes too far in stripping reflection from practice altogether.
