Chapter 5: Temperance
5
Temperance
(ST II-II, qq. 141–70)
Balance, moderation, and inner harmony: these are words that we all wish would describe our daily lives. But in today’s busy world, for many of us, they often do not. Life around us can be hectic and demanding. We can find ourselves pulled in many different directions at once, trying to juggle a variety of balls at one time—job, family, elderly parents, volunteer responsibilities, adequate rest, healthy eating, regular exercise, and prayer.
Sometimes the external chaos matches an internal sense of disorder. Various good things and desires tug at our attention and energy at the same time. We love our families and want to spend time with them. We feel responsibility for our elderly parents. We are ambitious in our work, perhaps in good and bad ways. We like the finer things that more income could provide for ourselves and others, even at the cost of more hours of work. We know we should eat better, but the fast food is convenient and oh-so-tasty. More regular exercise would probably benefit us in many ways, but it’s hard to make it—or prayer and good reading—a priority.
Imbalance, immoderation, and the lack of harmony can be both external and internal. Exterior things can create a sense of chaos around us, even while our interior desires and sense of responsibility can swirl around within us. Even more deeply, there are appetites that can seem to get the best of us, sometimes drawing close to the level of addictions: our appetites for food, drink, and sexual pleasure. An abiding anger can take hold within us, leading us to say and do things that we know are not helpful to anyone, including ourselves. A desire to “get ahead,” the need to be held in high regard and even envied by others, and the appetite for more of life’s glitter and glitz can come to consume us.
If we are lucky, there are times when it seems that “the stars have aligned,” and the external disorder clears for a time. But the truth is, as experience has probably taught us all, whatever the situation around us, a real sense of harmony must come from within. Usually an external balance and order must flow from an internal balancing and ordering. This is more than just a matter of good time management (though it is not unrelated to it). Guided by the virtue of prudence, we must learn to order our priorities at this moment in our lives with the resources that are reasonably available to us: job, family, volunteer efforts, and healthy self-care. More deeply, we must order and balance our inner desires in keeping with what is really healthy and good for ourselves and those for whom we are responsible. This is the concern of the virtue of temperance.
Disordered Selves in a Disordered World
At various times in its history, Christianity might justly have been accused of being suspicious of human desire itself, especially our inclination to satisfy our bodily wants: food, drink, and sex. And if our yearnings were seen as suspect, so too the pleasure that would accompany the satisfying of our desires. There was a time in the church, at least among some prominent teachers, when sex and its accompanying pleasure was suspect even in marriage. In such a context, the virtue of temperance might take on the appearance of the ability to suppress, deny, or overcome one’s natural desires. But this is not the vision of Saint Thomas Aquinas about human desires, nor about the virtue of temperance.
For Aquinas, our basic human desires are good. God created us with desires for food, for drink, and for sex because these things are necessary for our personal survival and for the continuance of the human race. The things that we naturally desire—and our desires for them—are good in themselves. Furthermore, the pleasure in attaining them is good, encouraging us to seek what we, in fact, need for ourselves and for the human race. For Aquinas, pleasure in itself is not suspect. Our desires were given to us to help us to seek and attain what is truly good for and worthy of human persons.
But, of course, things are not exactly as God created them to be. Sin is a reality in the world around and within each of us. And sin has distorted our desiring so that we desire things in inappropriate measure, in unsuitable ways or circumstances, or in conflict with higher or more urgent goods to be sought. In this context, pleasure comes to be, not the accompaniment and reward of attaining a good in appropriate measure and circumstances, but an end in itself. Or pleasure becomes the reward of some action that itself is not appropriate to the time, place, or person. In the end, we can easily experience ourselves as disordered in our desires—a lack of proper order to which we can be blind or which, once seen, can be very difficult to make right.
Added to our inner lack of moderation and balance—and contributing to it—are the enticements of a world of sin. There are certainly examples and messages in the world that encourage us toward the good, but there is no lack of negative messages and lures as well. Advertising—reflecting the values prevailing in society—entices us to eat foods that are unhealthy. Super-sized meals and all-you-can-eat buffets encourage us to eat far more than we need. Heavy consumption of alcohol is a problem on college campuses, and many people find that they can hardly attend a social function in which alcohol is not a prominent feature. Our society and its entertainment media is saturated with enticements to free sexual satisfaction. Certainly, there is actual pornography, cheap and readily available via the Internet, but even prime time television in its programming and commercials has no lack of strong sexual messages and enticements.
What the Virtue of Temperance Is
For Thomas Aquinas, temperance is the virtue that disposes us to proper balance, moderation, and due measure in realizing our desires, especially our bodily desires for food, drink, and sex (i.e., related especially, he says, to the sense of touch). He tells us that, because these goods are so fundamental and necessary for human existence, we can experience our desire for them even more intensely than our desire for higher goods like truth and beauty. Like all of the virtues, temperance directs us to a life worthy of a mature human person, pursuing what is authentically good for us in properly human ways. Temperance is not directed to denying, suppressing, or repressing our desires, but to moderating them so that they truly lead us to what is good for us and for others in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Temperance is not the enemy of pleasure, but rather the disposition to find pleasure in the right action at the right time in pursuit of the truly good.
“Self-mastery” is a term that is often used to define temperance. Temperate persons are the “masters” of themselves in the sense of being able to order or even control their desires. Perhaps words like “mastery” and “control” might continue to imply a level of suspicion about desire in itself; but, at the same time, anyone who has tried to order an unbalanced desire for food, drink, or sexual satisfaction knows that the effort can very much feel like trying to master or control that desire. Virtues, as we have seen, lend “ease, smoothness, and promptitude” in seeking the good. The truly temperate person, for example, does not experience a constant struggle in resisting the urge to eat in an unhealthy manner or amount. But, short of its attainment, growth in this virtue is not really inaccurately described by such words, as our own experience would undoubtedly attest.
The virtue of temperance is based on a vision, or at least a sense of what it means to be authentically human, with one’s desires and choices in line with what we know to be truly good for us. It includes the desire and self-possession to live in accord with what is truly worthy of a good human life. In this sense, temperance is a kind of moral integrity, a convergence of our wants and choices with our true good, together with the ability to live consistently in this integrity.
Without temperance, we cannot fully accomplish other goods by making appropriate responses. The intemperate person, ruled by disordered wants, can be hindered from seeing and choosing rightly. An immoderate desire for food, drink, or sexual satisfaction can cloud one’s sense of how to prudently act in regard to the priorities that guide one’s decisions, how to justly relate and interact with other persons, and one’s ability to rise to face the obstacles that stand in the way of realizing the good.
Like all of the virtues, temperance is guided by prudence. It is not possible to have an absolute rule for what or how much people should eat or drink. People’s caloric needs vary according to gender, body size, levels of physical activity, and the like. While restraint may be the temperate response in one situation, special celebrations may call for a different but still temperate balance. What constitutes temperate and chaste sexual desire and activity varies according to one’s state in life and to the immediate circumstances and people involved. The balance and moderation that temperance brings is not a one-size-fits-all measure. Truly temperate people are also necessarily prudent people who can discern the appropriate responses at different times and in a variety of situations.
Interestingly, Aquinas reminds us that we have not only positive desires that move us to seek pleasant things, but also desires to avoid what is disagreeable to us. But sometimes unpleasant things cannot or should not be avoided. The temperate person can eat something simply because it is healthy, even if it is not as desirable as something less healthy—choose the healthy options on a salad bar rather than the unhealthy but desirable. He or she can drink the medicine that carries a horrible aftertaste, because it is important. The person who possesses temperance is ruled neither by desires to obtain the pleasant, nor by desires always to shun the unpleasant.
In a similar way, Aquinas tells us that temperance not only moderates our desires. It also orders our disappointment or sorrow when we are denied what we want. Young children want what they want, when they want it. When they fail to get the food that they want or are presented with what they do not want, they cannot control their disappointment. Often enough, they simply start to cry, or even throw a tantrum. No normal adult would do the same, but the same feeling can easily arise. The decision to eat healthier or to fast—and thus to deny oneself the food that one wants—can be difficult; but we can react to this denial in a variety of ways. Dieting can put some people out of sorts, just as fasting can make others look glum, somber, or sad (Matt 6:16). Temperance moderates both our desiring and our disappointment in not possessing.
Elements of Temperance
Aquinas identifies two elements or components of temperance which are not virtues in themselves. They are difficult to understand and to translate into contemporary English. In Latin, they are verecundia (q. 144), which is traditionally translated as shame or shamefacedness, and honestas (q. 145), which is translated as honesty, or perhaps more loosely as a sense of honor.
Saint Thomas speaks of verecundia as the desire not to appear “base.” He tells us that, like other animals, we naturally desire food, drink, and sex. But we are not just any kind of animal. We are human persons, created in the image of God, with the ability to moderate our desire in light of what is good and appropriate to us and our circumstances. To be controlled by our appetites, then, he tells us, makes us like simple animals—that is, “base.” In more contemporary terms, we could say that verecundia is the disposition not to be—nor appear to be—immoderate, unbalanced, or driven by our appetites. In other words, it keeps us from offering a bad example of the authentic integrity proper to human beings that comes with moderation and balance.
The traditional English translation of verecundia is the word “shame,” which has virtually no positive connotations in contemporary usage. “Being shamed” or “shaming others” for their appearance, for example, is rightly seen as seriously wrong. We see that it is unhealthy for people to carry a sense of shame for events or situations from the past. But, for Aquinas, verecundia is not about shame in this contemporary sense. It is quite the opposite, in fact. He is suggesting that the virtue of temperance rests on a sense of self-respect and pride in oneself so that one would not want to be ruled by one’s desires—or be perceived by others in that way. Aquinas is conscious of the fact that we live in community, in relation with others. Our individual virtues are not only our personal excellences, but fit into and promote a virtuous society. Verecundia is the healthy sense of one’s own true worth as a human person and the desire not to act in such a way as to mar that authentic vision of a well-ordered life for self or others.
Most probably, in light of contemporary usage, it would be impossible to use the word “shame” as an adequate translation for Aquinas’s verecundia. At the same time, it can be noted that we can speak of healthy guilt and unhealthy guilt, authentic guilt and inauthentic guilt. While it is true that we don’t want to feel or encourage guilt where there is no wrong or no responsibility, we can speak of a good guilt that we should feel when we have done wrong. Authentic guilt is a result of a healthy moral sense of right and wrong. It moves us to change and move forward. In the same way, without trying to argue for the reclamation of the word “shame” as such, I think Aquinas’s teaching here distinguishes an unhealthy sense of shame from the disquiet that we should feel within ourselves when our disordered desires have gotten the better of us. Perhaps the prudish-sounding question “Have you no shame?” might be better stated as “Have you no sense of pride or respect in yourself as a person of moral integrity?”
I recall, many decades ago, reading a text on Catholic sexual ethics that included a section on a “healthy sense of shame.” Even then, it seemed to me an unfortunate phrase, although I understood that the author was suggesting that couples should have enough respect for their bodies and sexuality, and especially for the intimacy of their physical sharing, not to parade it around in public in crass ways. Now, what constitutes inappropriate or immodest behavior varies in cultures and situations, but I came to a better understanding of the concept while a passenger on a plane. Dressed in priestly attire, I was seated next to young couple who could hardly keep their hands off each other for the entirety of the flight (to the point that their behavior would have made for a PG rating if it were on the big screen). It made for an awkward flight. But it made me recall the need for that (unfortunately titled) “healthy sense of shame”—not that what the couple was doing was necessarily morally wrong in itself, but it seemed to me that they were cheapening what should have been an intimate physical expression of their love for one another by putting it on display for those around them. They should have had a better sense of themselves as persons and of the intimate beauty of their sexual sharing.
The other element of temperance, according to Aquinas, is what he calls honestas. It appears to be the equivalent of the English word “honesty.” But for Aquinas, in this context, it is not about truth-telling. If one looks up the etymology of the English word “honesty,” one finds that its original meaning, now obsolete, is honor, decency, or uprightness. An “honest” person in that older sense is an upright person, and this is closer to the meaning of Aquinas’s honestas.
As an essential component of temperance, honestas is the ability to appreciate moral beauty, and especially the beauty of the person whose desires are well-ordered to goodness and to what is truly worthy of the person. It is therefore the ability to desire it and appreciate it within oneself. When we admire physical beauty, we are appreciating the ordered features and proportion of a person or thing. When we admire moral beauty, we are appreciating good order and proportion in judging reality and its demands, ordered desires that lead to good action, and actions that are in proportion to the real demands of the situation. If we hope to be physically healthy and fit, we must value and desire the beauty of health and fitness. If we hope to be morally good and, in this case, temperate, we must appreciate the beauty and dignity of a well-ordered interior life.
By speaking of verecundia and honestas as the necessary elements of the virtue of temperance. Aquinas is telling us that the ability to moderate and order our desires to what is really good depends on a sense of oneself in relation to others. To arrive at being temperate, we must be able to see ourselves as possessing a dignity, as authentic human persons, that is worthy of pursuing and maintaining. Temperance is not simply a narrow focus on right desires but, more broadly, on how our desires and the choices that follow from them impact who we are in the context of community. The moral disorder of others impacts us constantly—as our disorder would impact others. How can the people around us grow in a sense of what it means to be authentically human and to act in authentically human ways if we do not have an appreciation of or give witness to such authenticity in our own living?
Vices Opposed to Temperance
If temperance is moderation and balance in desiring, its opposing vices involve immoderation and imbalance. This can take two forms: an excessive control of desire or, more commonly, a lack of rational control over our appetites for our authentic good.
Intemperance as Insensitivity to Desire and Pleasure
We might immediately think of anything that goes by the name of intemperance as a kind of excess of desire, but Aquinas introduces his discussion of intemperance by reflecting on a type of exaggerated ordering of desire and a refusal of ordinary and appropriate human pleasure which is called insensitivity. As we have seen, Aquinas has a positive view of human desire in itself and of the pleasure that accompanies the enjoyment of the good. And it is precisely because desire and pleasure are essentially human that their inordinate repression is wrong.
In our day, in which inordinate desire is more probably the far greater reality, it may be hard to imagine a vice, for example, of too little desire for or pleasure in sex in marriage or too little eating. In fact, when such things are the reality today, we rightly think immediately of some emotional, relational, or psychological foundation rather than about immorality or vice. Aquinas recognizes that insensitivity to desire and pleasure, in moral terms, is not the more usual form of intemperance. And, in this context, he is not speaking about a kind of emotional or psychological incapacity to feel, but an excess of control or active repression of what is authentically human. Perhaps today, in the form of the vice of intemperance, it would take the form, for example, not of anorexia or bulimia, but of the person who goes overboard in dieting or other forms of unhealthy eating. In our day, even short of real psychological issues, there are people who are so obsessed with their health that they become virtually unable to have a good meal or a drink, even in special circumstances with special people.
Nor, by speaking of intemperance in the form of insensitivity, is Aquinas denying the positive value of fasting, abstinence, or other forms of asceticism in the spiritual life. In fact, he addresses these practices even before he begins to speak of insensitivity. But such traditional spiritual means are guided by the infused virtue of temperance, which sees the authentic good of the human person in the broader perspective, not only of physical health, but also in relation to one’s transcendent end in union with God.
The Vice of Intemperance
More typical are forms of intemperance by excess involving a failure to properly order desire according to what is truly right and good for the person. Again, to speak of intemperance in our contemporary world requires us to distinguish between a real moral vice, which is a matter of our bad choices over time and emotional or psychological compulsions. More specifically, we must distinguish between the vice of intemperance and various forms of addictions—of which Thomas Aquinas could not have been aware in his day. It is true that the vice of intemperance can easily become a matter of addiction. And while addiction may not remove all moral responsibility, it moves the matter of desire and choice beyond primarily moral categories. In the same way, what constitutes intemperate behaviors can vary according to times, cultures, persons, and circumstances—for example, what constitutes drinking to excess—but neither the recognition of the reality of addiction nor the acceptance of relevant cultural differences negates Aquinas’s valuable insights into desires that are not ordered to what is authentically human and good for self and others.
The vice of intemperance, simply put, is the opposite of temperance. It involves the habitual disposition to disordered desire, to the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake apart from any other good, to immoderate choices and to imbalance in choosing. Just as a virtue brings “ease, smoothness, and promptness” in doing the good, intemperance brings ease in falling prey to one’s desires, even when the result will not be good for self or others. Intemperate people are “slaves” of their own desiring and cravings. Again, the problem is neither desire nor pleasure in themselves. But desire should direct us to what is truly good for us and for others, and authentic pleasure is meant to be the reward of the good attained. For the intemperate person, desire is out of whack, and inner imbalance and lack of harmony is easily reflected in an outer imbalance and disharmony.
Aquinas follows Aristotle in calling intemperance a “childish” vice, because it is like an unruly and out of control child: unreasonable, undisciplined, willful, wants its own way, unable to stop, and grows more unruly when it is indulged. And, like a child, it can only be set on the right path by curbing and restraining its desires. But Aquinas has even stronger words about intemperance. He says that it lowers human beings to the level of animals who are not guided by reason and conscious direction to the good, but by bodily instinct. In doing so, he is not denigrating the fact that human beings are, in fact, animals; but intemperance goes contrary to what is truly and distinctively human, which is our ability to choose what is good for us. For good or for ill, other animals most generally simply follow their instincts. There is no true moral praise or blame in that case. But human beings can decide to act for or against their inclinations to what is good, and to decide wrongly over time leaves us with an acquired tendency to act in a disordered way.
Intemperance is a vice that impacts our deciding and acting more generally. In fact, it can impact even our view of the world around us. When our desires betray us—when they pull us to what is not truly good for us and for others—it impacts our decision-making more generally. In life, there are many circumstances in which we must decide what is truly good over and above what might be the most desirable and pleasurable at this moment. Intemperance disrupts our ability to choose rightly, even when we can see the greater or immediate good at stake. But more, inordinate desire can skew our vision, focusing our attention on what we desire and making us blind to what is truly good. In more traditional terms, intemperance dims the intellect and weakens the will.
Kinds of Temperance
Aquinas identifies virtues that are really forms of temperance in the different realms of our desiring: temperance in eating, in drinking, and in sex.
Temperance in Eating
Aquinas notes, without much comment, that it is possible to be intemperate in eating by eating too little—that is, by suppressing or ignoring the desire to eat and to enjoy the pleasure of eating in moderation when it is appropriate and healthy. The natural desire to eat is meant to lead us to do what is essential for our life and health. One is intemperate in eating, then, when one follows faddish diets that are overly restrictive of food in a way that is not healthy (for example, in trying to lose weight too quickly). Again, we are not talking about actual eating disorders.
Aquinas calls the virtue of temperance in eating—the habitual disposition to eat the right foods, at the appropriate time, in the right amount—abstinence. He notes that the word can also be used in other contexts to refer to moderation in drinking, or really the sustained ability to refrain from anything. We might also think of the religious practice of not eating meat on Fridays in Lent. But Aquinas believes that the word “abstinence” remains appropriate for this virtue because it represents the ability to abstain from excessive, inappropriate, or unhealthy eating. What the term probably doesn’t capture for us today is the virtue’s positive direction to prudent eating and to the real enjoyment of a good meal.
It is in this context that Aquinas speaks of the religious practice of fasting as an expression of the virtue of abstinence. Someone who is not more generally abstinent will find it difficult to fast. At the same time, the effort to fast (during Lent, for example) can help to build up the virtue of abstinence. Of course, even the praiseworthy spiritual practice of fasting must be guided by prudence.
The vice of gluttony is the acquired tendency to eat to excess, to eat unhealthy things, or to eat at inappropriate times and places. It also includes excessive pleasure in eating, or at least a disposition to choose foods solely for the pleasures they give without consideration of their healthiness. In our day, we know that there are many complex reasons that people might overeat—many of them not properly moral. Our culture gives us powerful but essentially mixed messages. On the one hand, there is a cult of physical fitness, beauty, and youth—and thus the constant marketing of foods, supplements, programs, devices, and the like, which purport to promote these benefits. On the other hand, there is the constant bombardment of advertising for fast food and other unhealthy choices, as well as “super-sized” meals. While today we should acknowledge the multilayered factors that impact our food choices, there remains for most of us the element of choice. One choice to eat poorly, one time after another, leads to the virtual inability to choose rightly, even when our health is at stake. In a similar way, we must not “shame” others or ourselves about our bodies or our eating; but at the same time, we must take responsibility for the choices we can and do make.
Aquinas reminds his readers that gluttony is traditionally considered a “capital” sin—that is, other sins flow from it. It weakens us in our ability to act properly and moderately in respect to our desires more generally. It is no coincidence that an ancient remedy for unchastity is fasting. When one desire is out of control, others are easily impacted. On the other hand, to be able to moderate our desires in one area (eating) can help us to order our desires in another (sex). At the same time, as we all know from the “overstuffed” feeling that can follow a huge holiday meal, Aquinas says that gluttony dulls our minds. Focusing our attention inordinately to food and its pleasures, gluttony also can easily dull our desire for God and for the practice of prayer. Who wants to pray when they are stuffed? And who can pray when their desires are actively pulling them in other directions?
Temperance in Drinking
Following the words of the Book of Sirach, Aquinas believes that moderate consumption of alcohol is a good thing: “Wine is very life to human beings if taken in moderation. What is life to one who is without wine? It has been created to make people happy. Wine drunk at the proper time and in moderation is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul” (Sir 31:27–28). Alcoholic beverages, in proper measure, can bring relaxation to individuals and enhance friendly social interaction. The First Letter to Timothy advocates a little wine as good for the stomach and other ailments (1 Tim 5:23). Aquinas calls the acquired tendency to moderation in drinking “sobriety,” telling us that the word comes from a root that means “measure.” It involves the ability to drink in moderation in the right circumstances and to refrain when appropriate.
The opposite of moderation in drinking is the vice of drunkenness. Again, just as Aquinas would have been unaware of the reality of eating disorders, so too he would not have been aware of the disease of alcoholism. He is addressing, rather, the moral reality of people who can but do not moderate their drinking. There are people who are not alcoholics but who regularly drink to excess, despite the inappropriate results. We see this sad reality, for example, in binge drinking on college campuses by young people who are not addicted to alcohol but intemperate in its use. Such intemperance is also a form of imprudence, as the sad and sometimes tragic consequences of drinking beyond one’s capacity makes clear.
Temperance in Sex
The virtue of chastity is the habitual disposition to act moderately and appropriately in the use of our sexuality. The term, Aquinas notes, is related to the word “chastening” in the sense of rebuking our sinful tendencies, and indeed we can often experience the effort to grow in chastity in exactly that way. But Aquinas is not suggesting that chastity is essentially a negative or restraining virtue. Sexual desire in itself is good and natural; sexual activity in marriage is good; and the pleasure enjoyed during such sex is also good. Like all of the forms of temperance, it is a matter of moderation and balance—and ultimately what is truly good for the person and for other persons who are involved. Without the internal order and tranquility that chastity brings, we cannot truly recognize and value the true beauty of our own sexuality and the physical beauty of others. Without chastity, what is truly beautiful in itself is reduced by us in thought and action into a mere instrumental good for ourselves.
Aquinas makes a distinction between chastity and purity. Strictly speaking, chastity concerns good order in actual sex. Purity, on the other hand, concerns the thoughts and fantasies, conversations, and actions that lead up to and surround sexual union. But they are not separate virtues. Chastity is the virtue, and purity is its support or extension. While ultimately Aquinas himself does not really pursue the distinction, it does remind us of the broader range of chastity in its building up and manifestation.
Chastity, like all of the virtues, brings ease, smoothness, and promptitude in doing the good. The truly chaste person does not have to struggle to resist temptation and to do good. The ability to overcome temptation by strong effort is what Aquinas calls continence. It is a kind of imperfect or intermediate virtue at best, because it allows one to resist temptation, but without the tranquility and promptness of a true virtue. Continence can also be spoken of in regard to temperance in eating and drinking, as well as other virtues related to temperance, but perhaps its meaning is most obvious in regard to sex. Its opposite is incontinence. (In our contemporary usage, “incontinence” is more likely to refer to the inability to control one’s bladder or bowels. In any case, the broad meaning is the same: the ability—or lack of it—to keep some desire or perceived need under control, perhaps at the cost of some effort.)
The opposite of chastity is the vice of lust. The unchaste person is habitually unable to resist their sexual desires, and thus acts in unhealthy or inappropriate ways with their sexuality in thought, word, or action. Aquinas notes that, like gluttony, lust is a capital sin in that it can impact us more broadly. The inability to properly direct and order any of our desires toward authentic goods and actions can easily promote imbalance in other areas as well.
Like all virtues, chastity must be guided by prudence. In different ages and cultures, what might constitute unchaste thoughts or even actions can be judged differently in specific situations. Today we see human sexuality in a more positive light and have greater understanding of its psychological and relational depth. Thus, the shape of what is thought to constitute chastity might develop, but it is nonetheless abundantly clear that it remains a virtue that is essential to the authentically human life well-lived in relation with others. Aquinas believed, as the Catholic tradition continues to hold, that there are expressions of our sexuality that truly serve our humanity and our relationships with others—and others that do not. This runs contrary to the widespread sense in our contemporary culture that sex means whatever a person or persons want it to mean. This is not the place for a full treatment of the virtue of chastity for today. It can only be noted that the real meaning of chastity can only be rightly understood in the context of an authentic sense of what human sexuality is.
Other Moderating Virtues
In addition to abstinence, sobriety, and chastity, which are forms of temperance in relation to different realms of desire, Aquinas identifies other related virtues that also moderate our desires and our external behavior.
Mildness and Clemency in the Face of Anger
For Aquinas, anger is a natural human passion. It can be good or bad. In fact, there are situations of evil or injustice in which anger is the appropriate reaction. It then serves as the power behind the courage which moves and directs us to overcome difficulties to restore justice or accomplish some difficult good. It can actually be wrong not to become angry in some circumstances. But, of course, it must be moderated. It must be a temperate anger, suited and proportioned to the evil and the circumstances and in the measure and type of response. As the psalmist says: “When you are disturbed [angry], do not sin” (Ps 4:5).
The principal problem, as we know from our experience, is inordinate anger that is out of balance, disproportionate, or misdirected. It often moves us to some form of revenge. As a vice, anger is not just a matter of an occasional outburst of anger, but rather a habit of responding to situations with an anger that is out of proportion to the perceived evil or injustice. Aquinas notes that anger sometimes takes the form of a tendency to erupt with anger, but it can also take the form of bitterness or sullenness in which one nurses one’s anger. Or it can take the form of a general attitude of resentment or bad-temperedness.
Anger is traditionally considered a capital sin—that is, it is the headwaters of a river of other evil. It can lead, as Aquinas notes, to quarreling or physical altercations, hateful speech to or about others, or other acts of vengeance. But such anger is no less the source of suffering for the one who holds on to anger. The habit of harboring anger is usually more harmful to ourselves than the objects of our anger.
Aquinas uses the term “mildness” or “meekness” to describe the acquired tendency to moderate our anger. In our day, both terms seem to have more of connotation of being timid or submissive, and this is certainly not what Aquinas had in mind. Perhaps we might call the virtue “even-temperedness.” The even-tempered person is not unable or unwilling to get angry, but rather is not controlled by inordinate anger.
Clemency, Aquinas says, is the moderation of anger when seeking retribution and in punishing. Someone who has been treated unjustly has a right to restitution or recompense, and the unjust person has a duty to give it. But the restitution or recompense expected must not be out of proportion to the wrong committed. When it is a matter of punishing, clemency is not necessarily the refusal to punish appropriately, but it is the acquired disposition to act without allowing anger to lead to excess. Parents and judges, for example, must have the virtue of clemency so that justice can be restored without excess. The opposite of clemency is cruelty, which leads one to inflict excessive or injurious punishment. And beyond the pale of cruelty is brutality, or savagery, which is indifferent to innocence or guilt, and is willing to inflict harm indiscriminately. We can think of modern-day terrorists in this context.
Modesty
For Aquinas, modesty is a broad-ranging virtue that regulates other human desires, less urgent or less immediately physical than our desires for food, drink, and sex. In some of its forms, it moderates our internal attitudes, and in others our external behaviors. In its different species or contexts, it brings proper order to our desire and striving to excel, our desire to gain knowledge, our desire for play and diversion, and our desire for maintaining a good appearance. Thus, for Aquinas, modesty includes what we might think of today as prudence in the manner of dress, but its range is considerably more extensive.
Humility
At first glance, it might seem odd to consider humility as a form of modesty in its relation to temperance. Rather, it might seem more aptly related to the virtue of justice, giving to people (including ourselves) what is duly owed. In that light, the attempt to appear better than we are or to receive more praise than we are due would be a kind of injustice, a failure in truth-telling about ourselves. But Aquinas sees humility as a form of modesty, in that it is the virtue that regulates our desire to attain, achieve, and excel. There is nothing inherently wrong with such desires, but they must be regulated in relation to reality—to the truth of our capacities and what we have truly attained (or could reasonably hope to accomplish).
Saint Teresa of Avila spoke of humility as “walking in truth”—living in the truth of who we are. This is very much in keeping with Saint Thomas’s thought here. As human beings, we have a natural desire to achieve—each of us according to our gifts and opportunities. But that desire must be regulated by the constant recognition that every personal gift is really a gift of God. It must be moderated too by an honest appraisal of our real capacities, even as we might appropriately strive to push our limits. Our actual attainments and our ongoing desire to achieve must not lead us to overrate those prior achievements or lead others to do so. In our common way of saying things, we might say of a great athlete, artist, or scholar that she shows a great deal of humility or modesty in regard to what she has accomplished, not merely as an external pose, but as an abiding attitude with its accompanying comportment.
Pride is the vice that is opposed to humility. It is our desire to achieve being out of touch with reality and the truth of who and what we are. Pride is the disposition to think of ourselves as more than we are, to overestimate and overly esteem our capacities and accomplishments. It inclines us to think that we possess gifts that we do not have—or that we do not possess to the degree that we would like to think. It disposes us to think of ourselves as better than others, and sometimes to appear to others as better than we are or better than others (though Aquinas refers more specifically to the desire to appear more accomplished than we are as “vainglory”). With the eyes of faith, it is the tendency to be blind to the divine role in the gifts we have and our ability to develop them. Pride thereby leads to the illusion that we can be autonomous of or self-sufficient without God. It is in this context that Aquinas speaks of the pride and the sin of Adam and Eve.
In considering the virtue of fortitude, we saw that magnanimity is a virtue that “thinks big” about what can be accomplished and that acknowledges our real capacities to attain great things. As we saw, it is related to courage, in that the ability to aspire to great things in keeping with one’s abilities enables one to overcome obstacles to the attainment of great things. It is magnanimity’s ability to think big that empowers a magnanimous person to accomplish great and worthy ends. At the same time, it is precisely in magnanimity’s realistic acknowledgement of our actual capacities that allows it to coexist with the virtue of humility. Authentic humility is not opposed to magnanimity; but, with its eye on the truth of one’s capacities, it prevents magnanimity from becoming pride or vainglory. It is not authentically humble to underestimate one’s gifts any more than it is to overestimate them.
Studiousness and Idle Curiosity
The desire to seek knowledge is an important human trait. Without it, human beings could not have advanced as a species. Discoveries in science, medicine, and technology are rooted in the basic human desire to know. We naturally want to know about ourselves, about the world around us, what makes things work, and how to make things better.
Studiousness (studiositas) is the virtue that moderates our desire to know. It is virtuous to have a developed desire to seek knowledge that is good and true and that can benefit the self and others. As the English term suggests, it is not the mere acknowledgement that we must sometimes seek some immediate knowledge to solve a particular problem or do well on an exam. A studious person is disposed to seek out knowledge, not only for its immediate and practical value, but also for higher values to the self and others. At the same time, the virtue moderates such desire, since it is not always good and appropriate to seek knowledge. There are other, sometimes more important and urgent, goods to be sought.
Curiosity, in our contemporary way of speaking, can be a positive value—an important aspect of the desire to know. Aquinas speaks, however, of the vice that he calls curiositas. We might call it “idle” or “excessive” curiosity. We know that people can be excessively curious, interested in knowing things that are really none of their business and not their right to know. Some people are nosy—always interested in the business of others. Aquinas notes that people can have the bad tendency to seek a type of knowledge that it is bad in itself, for the purpose of seeking bad ends, or that is simply useless. We can seek knowledge that is not our business for the sake of passing on gossip, making ourselves feel superior to those about whom we have gained some knowledge, or simply to store it away for some future purpose. This is not a matter of legitimate personal interests and hobbies, but of the desire for knowledge that is excessive, bad, wasteful, or selfish. It can be the sign of a restless and unsettled mind and spirit.
Perhaps one of the contemporary forms of curiositas is found in the endless ability that we now have to waste time in gaining useless knowledge. Some people are addicted to the news and endless, repetitive commentaries by “talking heads” on CNN, FOX, or MSNBC. Others can idle away hours watching the Weather Channel to gain knowledge of storms and weather conditions that will not impact them, and about which they cannot do anything. It is easy enough to be caught up in one Google search after another or in the continuous move from one “interesting” web link to another. (Young people today speak of FOMO—fear of missing out.) With the sheer quantity of information now available to us through the Internet, we need the virtue of studiositas more than ever to moderate our desire to know and channel it in important and useful directions, in keeping with other legitimate demands on our time and attention.
Proper Order in Personal Comportment
For Aquinas, modesty is a virtue in itself that moderates our external behaviors and appearance, conforming them to what is appropriate and fitting to ourselves and our current circumstances. Modest behavior is prudent behavior. To some degree, it is about good manners and an easy sociability. As we saw in speaking of virtues related to justice, there are virtues that are focused on a life in community which is more convivial and thus more human. An external modesty in behavior is, of course, grounded in the proper order of our interior desires. It is the virtue of modesty that directs the inner movements that manifest themselves in action.
Our external behaviors have direct impact on others; and so, modesty—as the virtue that moderates our behaviors—is related to friendliness or affability, which are in turn related to justice. In this regard, the modest person is disposed to act in a way that is appropriate and, where possible, pleasing to others. Obviously, this is not a way that we would speak about modesty today. But Aquinas is telling us that we need a virtue that will guide and order our social interactions, not only in matters that concern justice itself, but that insure that our conversation, our comportment, and our manner of relating are fitting. Perhaps this point becomes clearer when we think of people who don’t seem to pick up on social cues, who are boorish, who don’t have a good sense of what is appropriate to say or do in different situations when relating with different people.
Modesty is a virtue that moderates our external behavior, but it also directs the person to an accurate consistency or authenticity between our outward actions and words and the truth of our inner attitudes. Our actions and behaviors must not only be appropriate but authentic. It is not virtuous to know how to charm people by deceiving them or merely appearing as one thinks they want. It is immodest, in that sense, to make a pretense of feelings or attitudes that one does not in fact experience. In this regard, modesty is related to truthfulness and opposed to dissimulation.
Good Balance in Play and Diversion
The human body, Aquinas prudently observes, needs adequate rest. In the same way, the human soul needs rest, and this takes the form of play or other forms of diversion and fun. Saint Thomas is no dour ascetic or overly cerebral academic. Relaxation and play are good. Seeking out some healthy fun and diversion is good for the person and for his or her social relations. Of course, the virtue disposes the person to moderation: not too little play, not too much nor the wrong kind.
Perhaps it is clearer in our age that someone can lack virtue in this area by being disposed to too little play. Some people are workaholics, driven beyond real necessity to earn, accomplish, and do. But play is part of a fully human life and part of healthy relationships and families. It is a vice not to find balance where it can be found. A life without appropriate play easily becomes mirthless and bland. Such a life would lack, as Aquinas reminds us, what Aristotle called eutrapelia, the virtue of wittiness or cheerfulness. In fact, Saint Thomas points to lack of mirth as a vice that hinders the joy of others and makes one’s presence burdensome to them rather than enjoyable.
Probably more obvious is the possibility of too much play or the wrong kind of diversion. Good play cannot be injurious to others, immoral or indecent in itself. We ought not to engage in good diversions if we give them more time than is appropriate to our lives and other responsibilities. There is nothing inherently wrong in playing video games (at least if they aren’t too violent or indecent), watching TV or YouTube videos, or surfing the Internet. But it is a matter of time and energy devoted to such pastimes in relationship to our life circumstances and the proper demands of our important relationships. Moreover, Aquinas cautions that the good of humor and jesting among friends can be marred by failing to take into proper account the feelings of the people involved and the circumstances. This is another way of saying, again, that healthy play must be guided by prudence and by justice in relation to others.
Modesty in Dress
When we think of modesty in dress, we probably immediately think of the need to dress in a manner that is not too revealing, overtly sexual, or directed to incite lust in others. And Saint Thomas does include this sense of the word in speaking of the virtue of modesty. But the need to moderate our external appearance—and the inner desires that direct our choices—is much broader. Appropriate dress must also not be extravagant, merely showy, or designed to promote vanity. On the other hand, the virtue of modesty in dress demands that our attire not be slovenly or dirty. The point here is not merely about fashion or fussiness in dress but rather an external demeanor that reflects a balanced and mature person who is able to intuit what is appropriate to different contexts. Aquinas is explicitly aware that questions of dress vary according to circumstances and customs. His concern is our ability to exercise prudent good order in our external as well as our internal lives.
Conclusion
In our day, the word “temperance” can conjure up images of puritanical people seeking to ban drinking or people who are prudish, straight-laced, or scrupulous. The idea of “mastering” or even “controlling” desire can seem, to contemporary sensibilities, necessarily suspicious of desire or pleasure. Temperance might seem to suggest repression. But, as we have seen in these pages, Saint Thomas Aquinas holds no such view of the virtue of temperance nor, by extension, of desire and pleasure. Desires are part of being human. They direct us to things that are good for us, and the pleasure in attaining such goods is also good.
Desire is part of being human, but it is not the whole picture. We also have our intellect’s ability to see what is truly good for self and others, not merely pleasurable for me, here and now. And we have the ability of the will to decide rightly how we will act on what we desire and what we perceive to be the true good in any particular situation. But also part of every human life is the reality of sin. “Disordered concupiscence” is a result of original sin that involves an inherent tendency within us to disordered desire. It is not yet sin, but a tendency to it. Our own history of personal sin—our history of disordered choices and our actual vices—can then pull us further in directions that will not serve out authentic development and living. Social sin, as it has become embedded in the world around us, provides a constant temptation to choices that are neither appropriate nor ultimately healthy for ourselves and those around us.
The virtue of temperance, for Aquinas, directs us to the proper coming together of desiring, the use of our intellect, and right choosing. Fundamentally, it moves us to a proper balancing within ourselves so that we can be and function as human persons ought, precisely and distinctively as our authentically-lived human nature directs. Temperance orders us from within so that we can act rightly outside ourselves. It is the habitual tendency to seek the balance and inner tranquility which is central to living consistently in a manner truly worthy of the human person.