The prudence to dare – by Lorenzo Bugli
There is an ancient word that politics seems to have lost along the way, and one that might be worth rediscovering.
It is a Greek word, phrónesis, which we tend to translate as “prudence.” An honest translation, but a somewhat stingy one.
Because in everyday language, prudence has come to resemble waiting, postponement, a caution that prefers not to choose rather than risk being wrong. Aristotle, however, meant something more alive: the wisdom of one who knows how to read circumstances, who pauses to think not in order to stay still, but to understand which way to take the next step.
It is a subtle distinction, and yet I believe it concerns our Republic closely.
San Marino sometimes experiences a curious form of immobility.
Not the immobility of one who stops too much, but that of one who struggles to truly stop: to take the time to reflect, to study, to look a little further than the day after tomorrow. We often find ourselves suspended between two opposite and, at bottom, similar temptations: that of not moving at all, and that of quickly offering the most pleasing answer, following the mood of the moment rather than trying to guide it. Both are understandable.
Neither, however, is truly political.
The Association Agreement with the European Union confronts us with this reflection, delicately but also firmly. It is not merely a goal achieved; rather, it is an invitation to grow.
In the years ahead, it will demand of us a new quality of political and administrative work, and the ability to handle every passage with care, like a navigator who knows the sea before crossing it. It brings to mind Ulysses, who was never reckless nor hesitant, and who precisely for this reason managed to return home.
In my last address to the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale), I tried to say that perhaps the time has come to change our method.
I think, for example, of those procedures that still bear the mark of another era, where decisions remain entrusted more to individual discretion than to the clarity of shared rules.
I think of the way our Council works, which the Commission for Institutional Reforms could help us rethink: not to work more, but to work better. And I think of the dialogue with social partners, which deserves to become a constant exchange, because the opportunities Europe offers us do not arrive on their own: they must be recognized, understood, and then patiently adapted to who we are.
This, after all, is the very spirit of the Agreement: to safeguard our identity and, in safeguarding it, to improve it. To carry the value of being Sammarinese into a broader horizon, without losing it and without locking it away in a display case.
I often find myself returning to the lesson of De Gasperi.
He was a prudent man, certainly; but his prudence lay in the measured pace of his steps, never in timidity over fundamental choices. On those, he knew how to be bold, because he understood that certain moments in history do not return, and that courage, when guided by judgment, ceases to be recklessness and becomes a form of responsibility.
I would like to entrust this thought to the colleagues with whom I share the work in the Chamber, whatever their political affiliation. And I would also like to entrust it to those, especially among the young, who look at politics and wonder whether it is worth taking part in.
To them I would simply say that between standing still and running without direction there is a third path, quieter and more demanding: that of one who studies, reflects, listens, and then chooses.
Perhaps true prudence is nothing other than this. Not the art of standing still, but the art of moving well.
And perhaps, facing the open sea that awaits us, this is precisely the question worth asking ourselves, each for our own part: what kind of navigators do we want to be.
Lorenzo Bugli
