This is exactly what I needed to read today! I’m currently reading The Screwtape Letters, and in the latest episode of our podcast, Shari and I were discussing the theme of love in the story. I have this theory about a nontraditional love triangle, which led me to wonder: if love is a virtue, what would its vice be in the context of The Screwtape Letters?
I kept coming back to knowledge—not because I think it’s a vice in the traditional sense, but because of its role in the story. After reading your essay, I’m even more convinced that, in The Screwtape Letters, knowledge stands as the opposite of love. Screwtape and Wormwood are fixated on the patient gaining knowledge—not to seek wisdom or develop prudence, but simply for the sake of pride and self-importance. Their goal is for the patient to show off how "smart" he is, rather than growing spiritually.
Thank you, Jacob, for your insight and clarity on the relationship between knowledge, wisdom, and prudence. It’s helped me organize my thoughts.
I argue, or indeed I agree with Aristotle, that virtue is a mean between two corresponding vices of excess and deficiency. I think the deficient of love is indifference, the excess I think is obsession. I could see how the desire to gain mere knowledge could be a kind of indifference.
This is exactly what I needed to read today! I’m currently reading The Screwtape Letters, and in the latest episode of our podcast, Shari and I were discussing the theme of love in the story. I have this theory about a nontraditional love triangle, which led me to wonder: if love is a virtue, what would its vice be in the context of The Screwtape Letters?
I kept coming back to knowledge—not because I think it’s a vice in the traditional sense, but because of its role in the story. After reading your essay, I’m even more convinced that, in The Screwtape Letters, knowledge stands as the opposite of love. Screwtape and Wormwood are fixated on the patient gaining knowledge—not to seek wisdom or develop prudence, but simply for the sake of pride and self-importance. Their goal is for the patient to show off how "smart" he is, rather than growing spiritually.
Thank you, Jacob, for your insight and clarity on the relationship between knowledge, wisdom, and prudence. It’s helped me organize my thoughts.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I need to read that book again, it’s been too long! You might also enjoy this: https://stgb.substack.com/p/a-virtue-catechism?utm_source=publication-search
I argue, or indeed I agree with Aristotle, that virtue is a mean between two corresponding vices of excess and deficiency. I think the deficient of love is indifference, the excess I think is obsession. I could see how the desire to gain mere knowledge could be a kind of indifference.
Where does this come from. I thought wisdom was knowledge of the eternal and prudence was of a more temporal nature.