“Prudentia” and the practical use of reason by Schopenhauer

This article aims to analyze the specific status that the notion of prudentia receives by Schopenhauer, especially if analyzed within Aphorisms on the wisdom of life. It is the understanding about the practical use of reason in the strict sense of a wisdom of life or prudentia, that we define as differentiation of differentiation. Beside this main hypothesis, the article also contains other interpretative horizons regarding the Aphorisms, such as his literary strategy marked by plausibility, the term 'great pessimism' as well as the displacement from the stoic wisdom to some uses of the Aristotelian maxims