On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

by Karen Swallow Prior

Temperance is unique among the virtues. Unlike other virtues that are revealed under pressure, temperance is “an ordinary, humble virtue, to be practiced on a regular rather than an exceptional basis.” It “is a virtue for all times but is all the more necessary when times are good.”1 It is also unlike the other virtues in centering not on actions but on desires. Since we desire what is pleasurable, temperance is “the virtue that inclines us to desire and enjoy pleasures well.”2 It helps us to desire pleasures in a reasonable manner,3 desiring them neither too much nor too little, the virtuous mean between the vices of self-indulgence and insensibility.4 For Aristotle temperance concerned the physical appetites we share with animals: the desires for food, drink, and sex.5 For both humans and animals, these appetites are necessary to perpetuate life (whether individually or as a species), but they are also the source of pleasure. The Catholic Church, following Aristotle’s understanding, teaches that temperance “ensures the will’s mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable,” but expands the role of temperance as governing “the use of created goods.”6 Temperance is not simply resisting temptation. It is more than merely restraint. Aquinas uses the example of a miser who eschews extravagance because of its expense: such a man is not temperate,7 for the temperate man would not desire extravagance. One attains the virtue of temperance when one...