Combination.

Lorraine Dastonis, director emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, on discretion, the essential virtue ...

What makes these distinctions meaningful is a combination of experience, which positions discretion in the neighbourhood of prudence and other forms of practical wisdom, and certain guiding values. In the case of the Benedictine monastery, these are the Christian values of compassion and charity; in the case of legal decisions, these may be values of fairness or social justice or mercy. Discretion combines intellectual and moral cognition.

But discretion goes beyond cognition. The abbot’s discernment would count for naught if he could not act upon those meaningful distinctions. The executive side of discretion, already present in the Rule of St Benedict, implies the freedom and power to enforce the insights of the cognitive side of discretion. Discretion is a matter of the will as well as the mind. By the late 17th century, in the work of liberal political theorists such as John Locke, executive discretion would come to be tarred with the same brush as arbitrary caprice, a sign that the cognitive and executive sides of discretion had begun to split apart. The practical wisdom of those exercising power no longer commanded trust and therefore undermined the legitimacy of their prerogatives. Without its cognitive side, the executive powers of discretion became suspect.

The history of the English word "discretion" roughly parallels this evolution. Originally imported from the Latin via French (discrecion) in the 12th century, the meanings of "discretion" relating to cognitive discernment and to executive freedom co-exist peacefully from at least the late 14th century. However, while the cognitive meanings are now listed as obsolete, the executive meanings endured, becoming increasingly controversial – as every contemporary argument about the abuse of the discretionary powers of the courts, the schools, the police or any other authority testifies.

Cognitive discretion without executive discretion is impotent; executive discretion without cognitive discretion is arbitrary.