🎧 Intro
Welcome to VirTrue where we work together to turn away from vice, and adopt the virtuous life we are all called to.
I’m your host, Jethro Higgins.
Today on VirTrue we’re going to talk about Intelligence or Understanding, which is a sub-virtue of Prudence. This is our second episode in the Prudence season, following last week’s episode on Memory.
Quick reminder, we are building the VirTrue app to help you grow in virtue. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll be among the first to get access to the BETA. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, visit socialcatholic.substack.com and join us. Your support keeps this work going.
📖 Virtue Description
Last week, we talked about Memory, the faculty that stores our experiences so that prudence has raw material to work with. But having a warehouse full of material means nothing if you can’t read what’s written on the boxes.
That’s what Intelligence does.
Intelligence, or Intelligentia, is the capacity of the intellect to penetrate to the heart of a matter, to see through the surface of a situation and grasp its essence, its first principles, and its true meaning.
It is what the tradition calls practical intelligence, the ability to read reality rightly and act on it.
This is not about being smart. This is not about IQ scores or academic degrees. IQ measures your capacity, but intelligence is about what you do with the capacity you have. Individuals with low IQ through humility and diligence can possess the virtue of intelligence.
Intelligence as a sub-virtue of prudence is about perception. It is the ability to look at a situation and understand what is actually happening. Not what appears to be happening. Not what you wish were happening. What is actually, truly going on.
Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues.
It is often translated as practical wisdom, the habit of discerning the right course of action in the concrete circumstances of life.
It is not merely a practical skill.
It is a moral virtue that shapes the whole character of a virtuous person.
Aristotle recognized this in the Nicomachean Ethics, where he distinguished five intellectual virtues: art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and understanding.
Intelligence, understanding, is one of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues.
It serves as the perceptive foundation that practical wisdom depends on.
No account of virtue is complete without it, because virtue involves not just good habits but the capacity to see clearly what the good requires.
St. Thomas Aquinas places Intelligence as the second integral part of prudence, immediately after Memory:
“By intellectus is meant not the intellect itself, but a right estimate of some first principle that is taken for granted: thus we say that someone ‘understands’ the first principles of demonstrations. Now in matters of action, the first principles are those things that are taken as certain.” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q.49, A.2)
Memory gives you the data. Intelligence gives you the ability to read the data correctly.
Without intelligence, you’re like a man holding a map upside down. He’s got the map. He’s got eyes. But he can’t read what’s in front of him.
This matters enormously in the moral life.
You can have all the facts and still misread the situation entirely.
A father sees his son struggling but misses the cause. A friend hears your problem but solves the wrong issue. A leader sees agreement when the room is actually filled with fear.
These are failures of intelligence, not failures of knowledge.
You can memorize everything and still miss the meaning.
Intelligence is what allows you to move from information to insight.
This is why Christ taught in parables. Understanding requires penetration beneath the surface.
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
The Pharisees had memory. They lacked intelligence.
They knew the law, but did not understand it.
Memory tells you what has happened. Intelligence tells you what is happening now.
Together, they prepare prudence.
Intelligence is not cleverness. It is ordered toward truth.
It requires intellectual humility.
You must be willing to let go of your assumptions and receive reality as it is.
⚠️ Vice of Deficiency: Dullness
Definition
Dullness is the failure of the intellect to penetrate beyond the surface of things. It is not ignorance. It is the inability or unwillingness to grasp the deeper meaning of what is already in front of you.
Why it fits
Intelligence reads meaning beneath the data. Dullness leaves the data unread.
A person can have facts, experiences, and information, but fail to extract meaning.
This makes prudence impossible at the point of perception.
What it looks like
Taking everything at face value
Hearing a parable as just a story
Repeating relational failures without seeing patterns
Reading Scripture as history but not instruction
Sitting through a homily and gaining nothing
Confusing being informed with being wise
Asking what happened but not what it means
Dullness is not stupidity.
A person may be brilliant in worldly matters and still be dull in moral understanding.
🔥 Vice of Excess: Cunning
Definition
Cunning is the disordered use of keen understanding to achieve one’s ends through manipulation, deception, or devious means rather than through truth and honest action.
Why it fits
Intelligence serves truth. Cunning serves self.
The cunning person sees clearly, but uses that clarity for advantage.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches:
“Astutia is a sin against prudence... the man of astutia uses means that are not true but only apparent, and feigned for the purpose of obtaining his end.” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q.55, A.3)
The cunning person reads people like a predator reads prey.
Scripture shows this in Genesis:
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made.”
Cunning sees truth, then twists it.
What it looks like
Reading a room and steering it for personal gain
Exploiting insecurities
Twisting arguments instead of answering honestly
Using theology to win arguments
Manipulating behavior patterns
Framing lies in partial truth
Strategic deception in politics or business
The world praises cunning.
But it is intelligence corrupted.
🧍 My Life
In grade school, I often did not complete reading assignments. Before class, I would gather just enough information from classmates to pass tests perfectly.
This likely falls into cunning.
It also reveals that intelligence and memory are distinct.
I lacked the memory of the material, but could read people and situations to succeed.
ADHD often leans toward this excess. The mind solves problems instead of storing information.
This can affect evangelization.
Winning arguments is not the goal.
Winning souls is.
If intelligence is used to dominate rather than guide, it pushes people away from truth.
🌍 The Secular Perspective
Our culture is drowning in information and starving for understanding.
We confuse access to facts with understanding.
Social media rewards speed, not depth.
We skim headlines and think we understand.
This produces dullness.
At the same time, those with real understanding are often rewarded for using it manipulatively.
Advertising, politics, and media systems are built on cunning.
We are outsourcing understanding to machines.
But understanding is a faculty of the human soul.
When we outsource it, we weaken it.
Our culture talks a great deal about emotional intelligence.
The ability to read and manage feelings.
But emotional intelligence without moral ordering is just another tool.
It can serve empathy or manipulation equally well.
What the tradition calls intelligentia goes deeper: perception ordered to truth, not merely to social effectiveness.
Modern educational systems measure students by information retention and test performance, not by whether they are becoming wise.
We are not cultivating good minds in the sense the tradition intended, minds that penetrate to the essence of things.
We produce graduates with character strengths on a résumé but no formation in the soul.
Virtue theories have experienced a revival in recent decades.
Julia Annas argues in Intelligent Virtue (Oxford University Press) that virtue is not rule-following but a deep, practiced understanding that shapes action.
Mortimer Adler spent a lifetime insisting that Aristotle’s virtue ethics, the connection between virtue and happiness, was not an academic curiosity but the most urgent question any person could ask.
These books and articles represent a growing secular recognition that something essential has been lost.
Our culture has also become morally dull.
We describe moral realities in shallow terms to avoid truth.
Intelligence refuses to stop at the surface.
That is why the world resists it.
🌟 Example Saint: St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
Lived: 1891–1942
From: Breslau, Germany
Mission: Philosopher, Carmelite nun, martyr
St. Edith Stein embodies true intelligence.
Why she fits
Penetration to essence She read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and immediately recognized truth
Understanding ordered to truth She pursued truth even when it cost her everything
Humility before truth She submitted her intellect to God in Carmel
Understanding in suffering She recognized the meaning of her suffering and embraced it
She said:
“Come, let us go for our people.”
Her intelligence led to surrender, not pride.
💬 Tell Me What You Think
Share your thoughts in the comments and continue the conversation.
Like, share, and subscribe.
Visit socialcatholic.substack.com to support this work.
🙏 Act of Intelligence
O my God, You have given me the gift of understanding not merely to accumulate knowledge, but to penetrate to the truth of things as they truly are. I will not settle for the surface. I will not accept appearances when You have called me to see with clarity. Grant me the humility to receive truth even when it challenges my assumptions, and the courage to act on what I understand even when it costs me. Guard me from the dullness that refuses to look deeper, and from the cunning that would use understanding for selfish gain. Let my intellect serve truth, and truth alone. Sharpen my mind, steady my judgment, and help me to see in every situation, every person, and every moment what You would have me see. With Your grace, let my understanding serve my prudence, and my prudence serve my salvation.
Amen.
🙏 Prayer
Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice that we may live as you intended man to live, in all virtue and righteousness. Help us to flee from sin, and avoid all temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Protect us with a spiritual hedge in front of us, behind us, above us, below us, to our right, and to our left, within us, and all around us, and seal it with the blood of your precious Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to keep you in everything that we think, say, and do.
Amen.
Go out and fill the world with virtue, Deus Vult!
Follow Us on Social Media and Popular Podcast Networks:
