One of the basic issues that human beings
deal with on a daily basis is the issue of pleasure.
And here, I mean physical pleasure.
Human nature is inherently drawn to pleasurable things and repulsed by unpleasurable things.
The whiff of a soft, chewy brownie fresh out of the oven exercises immediate appeal, but
other foods either draws less or maybe even revolt us.
Children, for example, love candy and hate broccoli, even though the candy is not good
for them, but the broccoli is.
To learn to eat less candy and more broccoli,
and to do both in the right amounts and at the right times and in the right ways, is
one of the basic lessons we need to learn in life.
Speaking more generally, we can say that human beings need to develop the virtue of interacting
with pleasurable things in ways that are reasonable and lead to our full flourishing.
The ancient philosophers called this virtue temperance, for it is the virtue of tempering
or moderating one's use of pleasurable things.
Temperance is the virtue that forms or shapes
a person's character so that the person uses pleasurable things in the right amounts at
the right times, in the right way and for the right reasons.
But temperance is a general virtue and it includes other more specific ones.
How so?
Ancient philosophers classified three major sources of pleasure for human beings, food,
drink, and sex.
Each of these poses special issues and challenges for humans and so each requires a special
characteristic or virtue to deal with it well.
Abstinence is the virtue dealing with food.
Sobriety is the virtue dealing with alcohol and chastity is the virtue dealing with sex.
The question of food is one of the classic examples of virtue.
Human beings need to eat, but we also know it is possible to eat too much or too little,
or we can eat the wrong kinds of things like junk food, or we can eat in the wrong way
like barnyard animals at a trough.
Or we can eat for the wrong reasons.
Someone can consume large quantities of ice
cream more for comfort than for suitable nourishment.
All of these are examples of eating gone astray.
What is needed is some kind of rational harnessing and guidance of the drive for food.
Without any kind of guidance from reason, the drive for the pleasures of food can either
disturb or even ruin a human life.
Doctors will be the first to testify to that.
What we need is a gradual formation of our patterns of eating.
We need to learn to eat neither too much nor too little, and to eat good things that nourish
us even if they're not the most pleasant things to eat, and to display some basic possession
of the impulse to eat and our manner of eating, and to eat for nourishment more than for comfort.
Abstinence is the virtue that enables us to
do all that.
It is a kind of self-mastery in matters of food and drink.
This self-mastery brings real personal freedom around food.
All the same things can be said regarding alcohol as well.
Sobriety is a form of self-mastery around alcohol so that one can take or leave alcohol
in amounts and ways that are really life giving for us.
Chastity does something similar in matters
of human sexuality.
To make a long story short, reason tells us that the only appropriate use of human sexuality
is the marital act with one's lawfully wedded spouse in a manner totally open to life.
Whatever is contrary to that is unreasonable and bad for human beings, both individually
and as a society.
St. Thomas's study of chastity is also a good example of the sort of detail his moral analysis affords.
When it comes to sex, it is one thing to direct outward behavior in a reasonable way and another
thing to be inwardly free from domination by sexual impulse.
Chastity, more properly speaking, is self-mastery
regarding sexual behavior.
But another virtue is purity, and purity is about the interior side of human sexuality.
Thoughts, imagination, and the passions.
Purity, we can say, is a virtue that gives inner freedom of the heart in sexual matters.
Purity is highly valuable indeed, and St. Thomas discusses many beneficial effects of
purity, especially in one's cognitive and emotional life.
Purity is an inner freedom and joy all of its own.
Yet another related virtue is modesty.
St. Thomas was quite well aware that clothing and fashion can be more or less sexually provocative,
and how human beings dress is also a matter that requires direction from reason for the
sake of the common good.
The virtue here is called modesty.
Modesty covers what ought to be covered when it ought to be covered so that the drive for
sexual pleasure is not provoked at the wrong time or with the wrong people.
Now, everything we have said so far was well
known, even to pagan philosophers.
They realized that for human life and society to flourish, people need to control themselves
in matters of food, drink, and sex.
Today, we might call it moderation for the sake of personal and public health, but St.
Thomas went further than the pagan philosophers.
When St. Thomas is talking about temperance, he's not only talking about moderating our
eating, drinking, and mating in ways that serve personal and public health, he primarily
has in mind supernatural forms of these virtues.
He's talking about eating, drinking and mating
in ways that serve holiness, union with God, eternal life, and that changes the standard
of moderation no small bit.
The Holy Spirit leads people to do things like fast or give themselves to celibacy for
the sake of the Kingdom of God.
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