On the Intellectual Virtues
Unlike the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues are hierarchical: wisdom depends on knowledge and understanding. I won’t go into any deep analysis of these, simply because I haven’t done any as yet, but rather give an example found in one of my previous posts: (1) “I am late for work.” → “The boss is going to yell at me.” Knowledge means knowing the antecedent as true or false. Understanding means seeing or apprehending the nature of the connection between the terms of the implication: “the antecedent is interpreted as implying the consequent; the consequent is part of what the antecedent means. The reason for my being in trouble with the boss is that I am late for work.” Wisdom is making value judgments, ranking things, evaluating them. As wisdom is quadriform, here we need to consider its aspect of truth. It is through wisdom that we assign a value to the consequent of (1), either true or false. Once we’ve done that the truth or falsity of (1) becomes knowledge. And this cycle repeats indefinitely.
Thus,
(a) I know the truth value of “I am late for work.”
(b) I understand that the reason for why the boss yells at me is being late for work, because he wants me to justify my salary, that is, contribute to his production process more than I am paid, not miss an important meeting, etc.
(c) I judge that “The boss is going to yell at me” is true.
While any idea that conforms to the Divine reality is called “true,” some truths are ordered to and serve others. “Thus, the art of medicine rules and orders the art of the chemist because health, with which medicine is concerned, is the end of all the medications prepared by the art of the chemist. … The arts that rule other arts are called architectonic, as being the ruling arts. That is why the artisans devoted to these arts, who are called master artisans, appropriate to themselves the name of wise men. But, since these artisans are concerned, in each case, with the ends of certain particular things, they do not reach to the universal end of all things. They are therefore said to be wise with respect to this or that thing… The name of the absolutely wise man, however, is reserved for him whose consideration is directed to the end of the universe, which is also the origin of the universe.” (SCG, I, 1, [1]) Thus, the truths about making medicine in their capacity as technologies are less general or more specific and serve the truths about healing diseases. Since “it belongs to the wise man to order,” wisdom arranges truths in a hierarchy.