Principle and Prudence in Western Political Thought

Reflections on principle and prudence in the thoughts and actions of great thinkers and statesmen.

Discussions of the place of moral principle in political practice are haunted by the abstract and misleading distinction between realism and its various principled or "idealist" alternatives. This volume argues that such discussions must be recast in terms of the relationship between principle and prudence: as Nathan Tarcov maintains, that relationship is "not dichotomous but complementary." In...