Temperance in its modern use is defined as moderation or voluntary self-restraint. It is typically described in terms of what a person voluntarily refrains from doing. This includes restraint from revenge by practicing mercy and forgiveness, restraint from arrogance by practicing humility and modesty, restraint from excesses such as extravagant luxury or splurging, restraint from overindulgence in food and drink, and restraint from rage or craving by practicing calmness and equanimity. The distinction between temperance and self-control is subtle. A person who exhibits self-control wisely refrains from giving in to unwise desires. A person who exhibits temperance does not have unwise desires in the first place because they have wisely shaped their character in such a way that their desires are proper ones. Aristotle suggested this analogy: An intemperate person is like a city with bad laws; a person who lacks self control is like a city that has good laws on the books but doesn’t enforce them.
Temperance has been described as a virtue by religious thinkers, philosophers, and more recently, psychologists, particularly in the positive psychology movement. It has a long history in philosophical and religious thought. It is generally characterized as the control over excess, and expressed through characteristics such as chastity, modesty, humility, self-regulation, hospitality, decorum, abstinence, and forgiveness; each of these involves restraining an excess of some impulse, such as sexual desire, vanity, or anger. In classical iconography, the virtue is often depicted as a woman holding two vessels transferring water from one to another. It is one of the cardinal virtues in western thought, and is found in Greek philosophy and Christianity, as well as in Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
Temperance is one of the six virtues in the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths, along with wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, and transcendence. The term "temperance" can also refer to the abstention from alcohol (teetotalism), especially with reference to the temperance movement. It can also refer to alcohol moderation.
Philosophical perspectives Greek civilization
Two ancient Greek words are commonly translated as "temperance": largely meant "self-restraint", while , coined in the time of Aristotle, was "control over oneself", or "self-discipline". appears three times in the Bible, translated as "temperance" in the King James translation.
The meaning of temperance has evolved since. In Latin, means restraint (from force or anger), but also more broadly proper balancing or mixing (particularly, of temperature, or compounds). Hence "tempering a sword" is the heating and cooling process of forging. The Latin word also referred to governing and control, likely in a moderate way (i.e. not with the use of excessive force).
Temperance is a major Athenian virtue, as advocated by Plato; self-restraint () is one of his four core virtues of the ideal city. In "Charmides", one of Plato's early dialogues, an attempt is made to describe temperance, but it fails to reach an adequate definition.
Aristotle Aristotle included discussions of both temperance and self-control in his pioneering system of virtue ethics.
Aristotle restricts the sphere of temperance to bodily pleasures, and defines temperance as "a mean with regard to pleasures," distinct from self-indulgence. Like courage, temperance is a virtue concerning our discipline of "the irrational parts of our nature" (fear, in the case of courage; desire, in the case of temperance).
His discussion is found in the Nicomachean Ethics Book III, chapters 10–12, and concludes in this way: And so the appetites of the temperate man should be in harmony with his reason; for the aim of both is that which is noble: the temperate man desires what he ought, and as he ought, and when he ought; and this again is what reason prescribes. This, then, may be taken as an account of temperance. As with virtue generally, temperance is a sort of habit, acquired by practice. It is a state of character, not a passion or a faculty, specifically a disposition to choose the mean between excess and deficit. The mean is hard to attain, and is grasped by perception, not by reasoning.
Pleasure in doing virtuous acts is a sign that one has attained a virtuous disposition. Temperance is the alignment of our desires with our enlightened self-interest, such that we desire to do what is best for our own flourishing.
The word Aristotle used for "intemperate" () was the Greek word for "unchastened" — the implication being that the intemperate person is immature and undisciplined and has not yet learned how to live well.
Marcus Aurelius In his Meditations, the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius defines temperance as "a virtue opposed to love of pleasure". He argues that temperance separates humans from animals, writing that: [I]t is the peculiar office of the rational and intelligent motion to circumscribe itself, and never to be overpowered either by the motion of the senses or the appetites, for both are animal; but the intelligent motion claims superiority and does not permit itself to be overpowered by the others. For Marcus, this rational faculty exists to understand the appetites, rather than be used by them. In the ninth book of the Meditations, he gives this advice: "Wipe out imagination: check desire: extinguish appetite: keep the ruling faculty in its own power."
Marcus takes inspiration from his father, someone Marcus remembers as "satisfied on all occasions", who "showed sobriety in all things" and "did not take the bath at unseasonable hours; he was not fond of building houses, nor curious about what he ate, nor about the texture and colour of his clothes, nor about the beauty of his slaves." Marcus writes that temperance is both difficult and yet important. He favourably likens his father to Socrates, in that "he was able both to abstain from, and to enjoy, those things which many are too weak to abstain from, and cannot enjoy without excess. But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul".
Thomas Aquinas In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas defines the scope of temperance: "Temperance... considered as a human virtue, deals with the desires of sensible pleasures". He refines 'sensible pleasure' by stating, "the object of temperance is a good in respect of the pleasures connected with the concupiscence of touch." He further defines temperance by associating it with the forbearing of sensible pleasures, as opposed to the mere toleration of sensible pain, a distinction he highlights when he claims that "the temperate man is praised for refraining from pleasures of touch, more than for not shunning the pains which are contrary to them".
For Aquinas, temperance need never contradict pleasure in itself: "The temperate man does not shun all pleasures, but those that are immoderate, and contrary to reason." For example, he discusses food and sex, which, when approached with temperance, fulfill human requirements for survival without contradicting the virtue of moderation:Accordingly, if we take a good, and it be something discerned by the sense of touch, and something pertaining to the upkeep of human life either in the individual or in the species, such as the pleasures of the table or of sexual intercourse, it will belong to the virtue of temperance.
Michel de Montaigne Similarly to Marcus Aurelius, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne writes in his essay 'Of Experience' that temperance enhances the soul:Greatness of soul consists not so much in mounting and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself; it takes everything for great, that is enough, and demonstrates itself in preferring moderate to eminent things." Montaigne differs from Marcus in that Montaigne believes temperance enhances pleasure, rather than opposing the love of it: "Intemperance is the pest of pleasure; and temperance is not its scourge, but rather its seasoning." Like Aquinas, Montaigne sees no contradiction between temperance and pleasure in the right moral context. Rather, he believes that "there is no pleasure so just and lawful, where intemperance and excess are not to be condemned." For example, he commends a temperate approach to the pleasures of sex within marriage: "Marriage is a solemn and religious tie, and therefore the pleasure we extract from it should be a sober and serious delight, and mixed with a certain kind of gravity; it should be a sort of discreet and conscientious pleasure."
Montaigne also discusses the difficulty of temperance. He muses on whether pleasure's tempering creates unhappiness: But, to speak the truth, is not man a most miserable creature the while? It is scarce, by his natural condition, in his power to taste one pleasure pure and entire; and yet must he be contriving doctrines and precepts to curtail that little he has; he is not yet wretched enough, unless by art and study he augment his own misery[.]
In his essay 'Of Drunkenness', Montaigne accepts that temperance neither can nor should completely exclude the possibility of desire: "’Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for totally to suppress them is not in him to do." But in 'Of Managing the Will', Montaigne warns against failing to curb inclinations: "The more we amplify our need and our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows and adversities of Fortune."
Francis Bacon In his Advancement of Learning, the English philosopher Francis Bacon, like Marcus and Montaigne, recognizes the difficulty of adhering to temperance in the face of sensations and desires. He writes "that the mind in the nature thereof would be temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds, did not put it into tumult and perturbation." He believes this problem applies especially to those fortunate enough to enjoy the security of material comfort. Of these, he says, "great and sudden fortune for the most part defeateth men" and quotes 's advice that the wealthy ought to emotionally detach from their wealth.
John Milton In Paradise Lost, the English poet and revolutionary republican John Milton has the Archangel Michael expound on the value of temperance, or what he calls "the rule of not too much", a virtue he states has the benefit of conferring long life on the temperate person:
However, like Marcus, Montaigne, and Bacon before him, Milton well-estimated the difficulty of attaining temperance. In his essay Areopagitica, he writes that temperance requires prudence in differentiating good desires from evil passions, but also that this prudence comes only from an understanding of temptation, a familiarity which could bring an intemperate person under the sway of evil appetites: "He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian."
Blaise Pascal For the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, temperance respects the balance between the two extremities of insatiable desire and total lack thereof. Like Montaigne, Pascal believes it impossible to completely extinguish desire, as advocated by Marcus Aurelius, yet Pascal calls for a curbing of desire. As he writes in his Pensées, "Nature has set us so well in the centre, that if we change one side of the balance, we change the other also." For example, he calls for a balancing temperance in the acts of reading and of drinking wine: "When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing"; "Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same."
Immanuel Kant