Abstract
As opposed to the tendency of the broad conceptions to overstate and conflate temperance with virtue in general, narrow conceptions of temperance tend to restrict and collapse the role of temperance to restraining or controlling specific forms of human physical desires. Plato’s initial effort to define a certain number of virtues working in concert with each other opened the way for the historical trend toward a more narrowly conceived virtue. Aristotle continued this trend and put the work of temperance largely in the domain of the physical sense of touch.
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Notes
For the classification of temperance as a self-regarding virtue see, The Varieties of Goodness, pp. 152-153; The Four Cardinal Virtues, pp. 147-152; and Virtues and Vices, pp. 76-89.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “restrain.” The Latin origin of this word is “restringere” The definition goes on to state at 1.b “To keep (one) in check or under control,” and at 2. “To check, to put a check or stop upon, to repress, keep down (a desire, feeling, activity, etc.).”
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “control.” The definition states further at 3.a.: “A method or means of restraint; a check. Also, a means adopted, especially by government, for the regulation of prices, the consumption of goods, etc.”
See NE 2.7.3 and 3.10.1
See also EE3.2.9-14.
“Aristotle on Temperance,” p. 528. Young goes on to identify what he considers the “heart” of Aristotle’s account of temperance: the distinction between common and peculiar appetites for food. Aristotle does focus on profligacy in relation to these peculiar desires. But I do not agree that this is the “heart” of Aristotle’s work on temperance. It might be understood as the most crucial part of the narrowing process which Aristotle engages in, but this is to assume that his entire effort regarding the account of the virtues here is to circumscribe their individual realms. I prefer rather to see his specification of the individual virtues in the overall context of the eudaemonian life. In this respect the heart of the matter for Aristotle’s account of the virtue temperance is that it is the virtue most directly associated with human pleasures.
In Aristotle’s account, “if Self-restraint implies having strong and evil desires, the temperate man cannot be self-restrained, nor the self-restrained man temperate; for the temperate man does not have excessive or evil desires.” (NE 7.2.6).
When I quote other authors or translations of Aquinas, I will leave their use of “concupiscence” and “irascible” intact. However, these terms are difficult, dated and need interpretation. See chapter five for continued discussion of Aquinas’ psychology of desire.
See also Nancy Sherman, Fabric of Character, p. 167, where she responds to this problem: “Granted appropriately directed emotion may still lack the univocal and unconflicting voice that Aristotle requires of mature virtue....To the extent that 1 struggle against what I view to be recalcitrant desires, my virtue is still only a kind of control or continence (egkrateia) and falls short of the more thoroughgoing harmony that the sophron or truly temperate person exhibits. This is a reminder of what a tall order Aristotelian virtue may be.” See also von Wright, p. 148 where he highlights the contrast between continence and temperance.
Mele, Alfred. ‘Temperance,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, p. 1239.1 disagree with Mele when he posits that issues of desire in moral deliberation are best dealt with by placing them under the “mastery of self-control.” He retains the language that denotes competition through “mastery” of one over the other. His interpretation does not forward the effort to incorporate emotion in the moral life.
Porter, Jean. The Recovery of Virtue: The Relevance of Aquinas for Christian Ethics. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990, p. 115.
A large body of literature addresses Paul’s use of sarx and pneuma. The following sources provide a good overview and serve as the basis for my comments in this section: Betz, Hans Dieter. Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.; Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1982.; Cranfield, C. E. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Edinburgh: T & T Clark Limited, 1975.; Kittel, Gerhard and Gerhard Friedrich. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, reprint ed., 1992.
The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, p. 240, in reference to this passage and the use of flesh here, writes: “The ‘flesh’ (sarx) is used here not simply of weak human nature nor yet of life under bondage to the stoicheia [elemental spirits] as opposed to life in the Spirit; it denotes (as in vv. 16f., 19, 24; 6.8) that self-regarding element in human nature which has been corrupted at the source, with its appetites and propensities, and which if unchecked produces the ‘works of the flesh’ listed in vv. 19f.”
In TDNT, vol. II, p. 342, Kittel notes that there are important differences in Paul’s notion of asceticism here: “Egkrateia here does not denote the asceticism of merit....He refrains from all the things which might offend or hamper. It is not for his own sake, or for the sake of any necessity to salvation, but for the sake of his brethren that he practices egkrateisthai. This is the fundamental difference from all Greek and Hellenistic conceptions....In general we are forced to say that restraint in the ascetic sense is ‘for him finally an alien concept.’”
Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, p. 272. Betz here notes the different foci in Paul’s use of sarx in Galatians. “In the sense of the ‘merely human’: (1.16; 2.16, 20; 4.13, 14), or as that which is opposite the Spirit (3.3; 4.23, 29).” For another analysis of sarx that includes extrabiblical material see E. Schweizer’s article in TDNT, vol. VII, pp. 119-151.
Some careful distinctions must be made in Paul’s use of pneuma with regard to whether his focus is on the Holy Spirit or the spiritual aspect of human life. See A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, pp. 390, 396 and TDNT: Abridged in one Volume, pp. 889-891 where in section four, “The Anthropological pneuma,” E. Schweizer writes: “The secret of Paul’s use lies in the priority of the work of the Holy Spirit and the determination of the believer’s existence thereby. The Spirit manifests Christ’s saving work and makes responsible acceptance of it possible. Hence pneuma denotes both God’s Spirit and the innermost being of those who no longer live by the self but by God’s being for them.”
Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, pp. 272-273. Betz argues that the “ethical task” of the Christian as portrayed in Galatians, is the preservation of this freedom: “The corruption and loss of that freedom is then identical with the return under the slavery to ‘the elements of the world.’”
In Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, pp. 272-273, Betz notes that even after the Spirit is accepted by a believer, “This flesh has not been altogether eliminated but continues to be a potential threat....Freedom can only mean what it says if the Christian has a choice; he can allow his existence to become a base of operations for the flesh or for the Spirit.”
In his article “Spirit, Holy Spirit,” New Bible Dictionary, 2d ed., p. 1140, J. D. G. Dunn writes of the tension that is the result of such a possibility: “At the same time, because the Spirit is only a beginning of final salvation in this life, there can be no final fulfillment of his work in the believer so long as this life lasts. The man of the Spirit is no longer dependent on this world and its standards for his meaning and satisfaction, but he is still a man of human appetites and frailty and part of human society. Consequently to have the Spirit is to experience tension and conflict between the old life and the new, between flesh and Spirit (Rom. 7.14-25; 8.10, 12f.; Gal. 5.16f.; cf. Heb. 10.29)” (emphasis original).
The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, p. 243. Here, Bruce uses the word “antithesis” to describe the relationship between spirit and flesh. He writes: “The antithesis between pneuma and sarx can be brought out in written English if both Spirit and Flesh are spelt (sic) with initial capitals: ‘the Flesh’ is ‘the power that opposes God’ (E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 553) and enslaves human beings (cf. Rom. 8.6ff., 12f.).”
In Paul’s thought, when one lives oriented to the flesh, one’s desires (epithumia) are not in harmony with God. Epithumia can be taken in any of three ways; as neutral, good, or bad. Paul’s use of epithumia usually falls in the third category; thus when one is living in the flesh, human desires are “senseless and hurtful,” plunging one into “ruin and destruction” (1 Tim. 6.9). But, importantly, when one dies to self and lives oriented to the Spirit (Ro. 8.5-8), having the mind of Christ, one’s moral deliberation will be assisted by the Spirit, resulting in choices that are in accord with God’s will (Ro. 8.1-3). Unlike Aristotelian conceptions of moral choice in which the mean of virtue serves as a guide, Paul sets out a different standard which he calls “the measure of faith (metron pisteos)” (Ro. 12.3). The comparison of the Aristotelian mean with the Pauline “measure of faith” is noted in an unpublished paper by Luke Timothy Johnson, “Transformation of the Mind and Moral Behavior in Paul,” San Francisco: American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature, 1997, photocopied.
Amundsen, Darrel W. and Gary B. Ferngren, “Virtue and Medicine From Early Christianity Through the Sixteenth Century,” in Virtue and Medicine: Explorations in the Character of Medicine, ed. Earl E. Shelp, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985, p. 31, write that the “theme of conflict is exceedingly important in Christian conceptions of virtue.” This conflict is not with our basic human existence, as much as it is with anything that would oppose God’s Spirit in this human existence. D. L. Okholm writes in his article “Flesh,” New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1995, p. 382: “The word ‘flesh’...is often misunderstood as referring to something inherently evil or as a part of the human being which contains, and is at odds with, the soul (ideas influenced by Hellenistic thought). On the contrary it stands for the whole person from the perspective of his or her external and physical existence, in contrast to the internal and spiritual (Jn. 3.6; Rom. 2.28-29; 2 Cor. 4.11). It denotes the earthly life in its totality in a nondisparaging manner (Gal. 2.20; Phil. 1.22, 24); as such it is that aspect of humans which binds them to the whole created order (see Rom. 8.23) and it distinguishes the creature from God (who is spirit and not flesh), emphasizing the frailty, limitations and mortality of human existence (Mk. 14.38; Rom. 6.19; 1 Cor. 15.50; cf. 1 Cor. 1.26 and 2.5, 13).
Meilaender, Gilbert. The Theory and Practice of Virtue. South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, p. 14. Meilaender’s view is more characteristic of a Reformationist view of the virtues. While the conception of temperance in Reformation and later Protestant thought is not altogether different from that of the pre-Reformation church, there remains one crucial difference with temperance (as with every other virtue) in that its reality as a dispositional stance toward the passions is entirely dependent upon the gift of God’s grace. Nigel Biggar, in The Hastening that Waits, New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 131-132, summarizes through Karl Barth’s position a Reformationist stance toward virtues: “The causation of good human conduct is not to be conceived in mechanical terms: for it is not the case that, once set in motion, human virtue thereafter proceeds under its own momentum. The gift here is not detachable from the Giver. Human virtue should not be thought of as possessed in any simple or absolute fashion. Rather, it is best understood as the symptom of a dynamic relationship with God. Only strictly in the context of the divine-human relationship was Barth willing to countenance talk of human ‘virtue.’” For an analysis of temperance in the thought of John Calvin see Ronald Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1961. Richard Steele describes John Wesley’s notion of a virtuous response to passion as a “voluntarist” position. He analyzes and compares this voluntarism to the “intellectualist” position that rests upon Platonic rationalism. In chapter two, “Reason, Virtue, and Affectivity in the Voluntarist Tradition,” of “Gracious Affection” and “True Virtue” According to Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994, p. 63, Steele summarizes the Reformationist view of virtue that insists that if a person is to “attain virtue at all, if he is to possess ‘good will,’ he must receive it from above.”
The Theory and Practice of Virtue, p. 15.
The Theory and Practice of Virtue, p. 17.
The Theory and Practice of Virtue, p. x.
Pellegrino, Edmund and David Thomasma. The Christian Virtues in Medical Practice. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996, p. 6.
The Christian Virtues in Medical Practice, pp. 21-22.
Pellegrino, Edmund and David Thomasma. The Virtues in Medical Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 118.
The Moral Psychology of the Virtues, p. 41.
The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, p. 65.
The Virtues, p. 131.
Virtues and Vices, p. 60.
Virtues and Vices, p. 89. See his entire discussion of “self-indulgence” for an explanation of what “the opposite of self-indulgence” is. Wallace defines the self-indulgent person as one who “is excessively fond of easy pleasures, and it is the propinquity as much as the pleasantness that excessively influences him....This attitude gives the self-indulgent person’s activity the dimension of planlessness and incapacitates him for a life that is characteristically one of planned activity” (p. 89).
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Carr, M.F. (2001). The Narrow Conception of Temperance. In: Passionate Deliberation. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0591-3_3
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