Nazareth Coli.

of Rochester

Beauty and the Attainment of Temperance

John T. Edelman
I

between chastity and pleasure, I F IT WERE ASKED what connection there isrestrains one from pleasure, so if surely one answer might be "None." Chastity there is any relation between the two, it will pretty much be one of mutual exclusion. On the other hand, however common this view might be, it could not very well be Aristotle's view. If one is to make "Aristotelian" sense of chastity as a virtue, then surely the relation between chastity and pleasure will have to be at least roughly the same as the relation between pleasure and virtue in general. And about this Aristotle says the following:
Now things which give pleasure to most men are in conflict with each other because they are not by nature such. But things which give pleasure to those who like noble things are by nature pleasant; and such are the actions according to virtue, and these are both pleasant to such men and pleasant in virtue of their nature. Thus the life of these men has no further need of pleasure as a sort of charm, to be attached like an appendage, but has its pleasure in itself; for, besides what we have said, no man is good who does not enjoy noble actions, nor would anyone call a man 'just' who does not enjoy acting justly, or call a man 'generous' who does not enjoy generous actions, and similarly in all the other cases. l

So it seems that, insofar as I do not find pleasure in acting virtuously, to that extent I am not yet virtuous. Or to that extent I did not after all act virtuously, even if I did what a virtuous person would do. Of course, we may want to recognize varying degrees of "acting virtuously" and of "being virtuous." But again, no one is virtuous who does not enjoy virtuous action. And this suggests a further point. If we take a cue here from Augustine and understand enjoyment to be a consequence of love,2 then we shall have to say that, when I act in a virtuous way but do not enjoy doing so, to that extent I do not love virtue. Virtue, it would seem, belongs most perfectly to those who love virtue. Such lovers of virtue will enjoy acting virtuously because acting virtuously will be doing what they most love to do. This is why the virtuous person has no need of pleasure as a sort of appendage to the life of virtue. The pleasure of acting virtuously goes with virtue itself. Now, if something like this is correct, then it will be a misunderstanding to
'Nicomachean Ethics 1099a, trans. H. G. Apostle and Lloyd Gerson in Aristotle: Selected Works (Grinnell: Peripatetic Press, 1983). 2"Frui est amore inhaerere alicui rei propter seipsam." Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 1.4; quoted by Aquinas in Summa theologiae I-II.ll.1 (hereafter S1).
INTERNA nON AL PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Vol. XXXVII, No. 1 Issue No. 145 (March 1997)

EDELMAN

construe the relation between chastity and pleasure as one of mutual exclusion. And yet such a construal is, I think, a common one. It also appears to extend beyond chastity to the more general virtue of temperance. We might consider, for instance, the dictionary-definition of temperance as "habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites and passions. "3 There may be some pleasure associated with this sort of temperance, but it would seem to lie more in the occasionally permitted indulgence of appetites and passions than in the temperance itself. Indeed, because this definition says nothing about how this moderation of indulgence is achieved or what else surrounds it, it is hard to see how this sort of temperance differs from continence. The same dictionary defines "continence" as "selfrestraint" and "continent" as "exercising restraint as to the indulgence of desires and passions ... especially, chaste." Might the moderate indulgence of appetites and passions that is characteristic of temperance follow from or be simply identical with the self-restraint that is continence? But to Aristotle this is impossible; for the virtue of temperance is quite different from the quasi-virtue of continence. And part of the difference comes out in the pleasure that belongs to the exercise of temperance, a pleasure that is not to be found in the exercise of continence. Or so I should like to suggest. For I want to suggest that the pleasure proper to temperance-and so to chastity-remains hidden from us so long as we fall victim to the common construal of temperance as a kind of self-control. On the other hand, if we acknowledge that temperance is not to be identified with self-control, then we shall have to look for the source of temperance elsewhere than in the efforts at self-discipline or moral muscle-building frequently associated with its attainment. And on this score the suggestion I should like to make is that we would do well to follow a clue in Plato and look to beauty and to the experience of the beautiful. But here I get ahead of myself. For if I am correct, then the role of beauty in the attainment of temperance can be clear to us only if we are first clear about the contrast between temperance and continence.
II

I am concerned with a disparity between what might be called the popular conceptions of temperance and chastity and the conceptions of these virtues presented in Aristotle and, I think, in Plato and Aquinas as well. In the popular mind-which on this point may also be the mind of a great many philosophers-chastity is a sort of arctic virtue, one whose exercise consists in a certain freezing of the passions, or a suppression of appetites, and a freezing or suppression often achieved only by significant effort, by regular and perhaps great "acts of the will." Consider, for example, A1cibiades marveling at the sophrosune of Socrates. He has taken his best shot at Socrates but has failed in his efforts to seduce him. At which point he has this to say: "You can guess what I felt like after that. I was tom between my natural humiliation and my admiration for his manliness and self-control; for his was strength of mind such as I had never hoped to meet. And so I couldn't take offense and cut myself off from his society, but neither was there any way I could think of to attract him. "4
'Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 5th ed. (Springfield, 1946). 'Symposium 219d, trans. Michael Joyce in Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961).

BEAUTY

"Self-control" here is Michael Joyce's translation of sophrosune. "Sobriety" is the translation in the Loeb edition.s But surely what is remarkable about Socrates's "self-control" and "strength of mind" is that they do not appear to be any great achievement on his part. That is, they are striking precisely because they are so effortless. Socrates's behavior, it would appear, is for him routine. It may be impressive behavior to Alcibiades, who has a hard time imagining anyone resisting his advances. But it is not impressive behavior to Socrates. And this, it seems to me, is precisely what makes Socrates an example of a human being who is temperate and chaste-as distinct from merely continent. The temperate human being does not overcome vehement passion with strength of mind, nor with rigorous selfcontrol, nor by great acts of "will-power." On the contrary, he is not disturbed by such passions to begin with. Aquinas addresses this point in his Quaestiones disputatae. He is discussing the question of whether temperance differs from continence in that the temperate man does not possess wrongful desire ("non habet concupiscentias pravas") but the continent man does, although he does not follow such desires. 6 Ultimately, Aquinas does not want to say that the temperate man is altogether without wrongful desires, but that he does not suffer vehement or powerful wrongful desire.? The point is connected with the fact that tranquillitas animae, while it is an attribute of every virtue, is an attribute of temperance in a quite special way.s The temperate man, it seems, is not troubled or shaken or disturbed by the powerful wrongful desires that the continent person must struggle against. And here it is interesting to note Aquinas observing that, while Christ was entirely without concupiscentias pravas, he was not without temperance:
For to the degree that a man lacks base desire, to that degree is he more perfect in temperance. Whence. according to the Philosopher, the temperate man differs from the continent man in this, that the temperate man does not have the base desires that the continent man suffers. Whence, taking continence as the Philosopher means it, from the fact that Christ possessed all the virtues, it follows that he did not possess continence, which is not a virtue, but something less than a virtue. 9

This, perhaps, brings out most clearly the divergence between what I am calling the "popular" or "dictionary" account of temperance and what I should call an Aristotelian account of the same virtue. While a dictionary may present temperance as a moderate indulgence of appetites and passions, what Plato shows in his Symposium and Aquinas argues in his Summa theologiae is that temperance lies not so much in a moderate indulgence or successful restraint of passions and desires but in the passions and desires one has to begin with. Tranquillitas animae follows as an attribute of temperance precisely because the temperate person does not experience inappropriate passions and desires that must then be controlled or restrained. That, on the contrary, is the fate of the continent person. The intemperate person, of course, is even more wretched in that he does not even see the inappropriateness of his own desires or passions.
'Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1925. The translation is by W. R. M. Lamb. 'Quaestiones disputatae, "De virtutibus cardinalibus," 1.1. 7Ibid., ad 6. 8ST II-II. 141.3 ad 2. 9ST III.7.2 ad 3. In the Blackfriars edition temperantia is here translated as "moderation," while continentia is rendered" self-control."

EDELMAN

At this point, then, one might see Alcibiades' s talk of sophrosune and andreia, if construed as talk of self-control and strength of mind, as, so to speak, the talk of an outsider. Therefore "self-control" and "strength of mind" will in a sense be correct translations of Alcibiades's words. They will be correct translations of a misunderstanding-a misconception of the reality of virtue. As translations they will represent a conception of virtue that belongs to an outsider, while the reality of virtue is known, one might say, only from within. The contrast is expressed in these remarks of Francis de Sales early in his Introduction to the Devout Life: "The world sees devout people as they pray, fast, endure injuries, take care of the sick, give alms to the poor, keep vigils, restrain anger, suppress their passions, give up sensual pleasures, and perform other actions painful and rigorous in themselves and by their very nature. But the world does not see the heartfelt inward devotion that renders all such actions pleasant, sweet and easy." 10 But here again is the difficulty. How can this restraint of anger or stifling of passions be agreeable, pleasant, or easy? Or perhaps it would be more helpful to ask what it is that so transforms our life of appetite and passion that, where the continent and the incontinent experience conflict and strain to control inappropriate passion and appetite-the one with success and the other without it-the temperate person experiences so little of inappropriate passion or inappropriate appetite that to turn from it and to act on appropriate passion and appetite is a graceful, almost effortless, habit. How does the continent become temperate, where "temperance" signifies a tranquil habit of appropriate desire that brings with itself its own pleasure and enjoyment?
III

To this last question I have no adequate answer. But there is at least a clue to an answer, I think, in Diotima's suggestion to Socrates in the Symposium that the key to true virtue is a knowledge of the Beautiful:
And remember, she said, that it is only when he discerns beauty itself through what makes it visible that a man will be quickened with the true, and not the seeming, virtuefor it is virtue's self that quickens him, not virtue's semblance. And when he has brought forth and reared this perfect virtue, he shall be called the friend of god, and if ever it is given to man to put on immortality, it shall be given to him.ll

It is Diotima's claim, then, that somehow in the discernment of beauty true virtue is quickened within us. These remarks come in the context of a discussion
IOPart I, chapter 2. For the most part I follow John K. Ryan's translation (New York: Image, 1950). I do not think that for present purposes a great deal turns on the fact that Aristotle describes virtuous actions as "both pleasant to such men and pleasant in their nature," while de Sales speaks of devout actions as "painful and rigorous in themselves and by their very nature." The point that I think needs noticing is that, however such actions may appear to others, they are experienced as "pleasant" or "sweet" and "easy" by the virtuous or the devout. It is a point also made in Robert Bellarmine's "The Art of Dying Well" in Robert Bellarmine: Spiritual Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) p. 244: "Thus our previous statement, that leaving the world and dying to the world is not a children's game but something very serious and difficult, most accurately applies to those who have not experienced the power of the grace of God and tasted the sweetness of love and who are natural men without the Spirit. For once one has tasted the Spirit, all flesh loses its flavor." llSymposium 2I2a.

BEAUTY

of love and desire, so it is not surprising to see some connection made between these remarks and the achievement of temperance, as does happen at 211 b-d where there are remarks about the love of beautiful bodies, beautiful institutions, beautiful learning, and finally love of the beautiful itself. But the connection between beauty and temperance is explicit in the Phaedrus, when the charioteer, struggling to direct the good and the evil steeds, and seeing the spectacle of the beloved, finds his memory going back to "the form of beauty enthroned by the side of temperance" :
At that sight (of the beloved) the driver's memory goes back to that form of beauty, and he sees her once again enthroned by the side of temperance upon her holy seat; then in awe and reverence he falls upon his back, and therewith is compelled to pull the reins so violently that he brings both steeds down on their haunches, the good one willing and unresistant, but the wanton one sore against his Will. 12

What are we to make of this? It is a help, I think, to borrow from the Sophist Plato's own metaphor of the blending or communion of the forms.13 Part of what this talk of the blending of the forms suggests is that one cannot see temperance itself without seeing also beauty itself, which would explain why Alcibiades can give expression to nothing more than a popular version of virtue. Never having recalled the beautiful itself, he can see temperance-and indeed all of virtueonly from the outside. He cannot grasp the true form of temperance. But how is it that the discernment of beauty quickens within us true virtue? Or how, to begin with, does one see things when one sees the beautiful in them? That way of putting the question was originally suggested to me by the following remark in Wittgenstein's Notebooks, 1914-1916: "The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. "14 This somewhat odd way of speaking is intimately connected with a variety of ideas found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But I think that Wittgenstein's point can be made apart from many or most of those ideas. It is a point put elsewhere in the Notebooks as well as in the Tractatus itself by saying that the world of the man possessing a good will is altogether different from the world of the man possessing an evil will. 15 I think we might put the same point this way: the world seen by the good man is altogether different from the world seen by the man of a wicked or evil will. Or better: to be of a wicked will is to see the world in a certain way. What the good man sees is not what the wicked man sees. Here we might think of what Alcibiades sees in the actions of Socrates. Or we might think of de Sales's remarks as to how the life of the devout soul appears to the world. Now, at this point someone might object: surely being a good or wicked human being is not just a matter of seeing the world in a certain way; it is not just a matter of seeing but a matter of doing. And that, I think, is surely correct, except that the doing that makes one virtuous does not exist apart from a certain "seeing." Again, one is not virtuous solely by doing "the virtuous thing," which might lead one to
12Ibid., 254b-c. This is R. Hackforth's translation in Hamilton and Cairns. 13See 253b ff. 14Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-1916, 2nd ed. (London: Blackwell, 1979) p. 83e. IS/bid., p. 73e, and Tractatus 6.43.

10

EDELMAN

ask whether we do not sometimes over-emphasize the doing. Or perhaps we come to emphasize the doing in the wrong way. Again, if I do the virtuous thing and do not enjoy doing it, then I am not doing it virtuously, which takes one back to the love of virtue and to the idea that virtuous action is not just doing what the virtuous person does. Surely the key here is the will. After all, we are talking about moral virtue. But how do we conceive of the will here? In particular, what sort of relation might obtain between willing and the kind of "seeing" that I have been speaking of?
IV

Iris Murdoch has pointed out how there is in much of modern philosophy a conception of the will as "pure movement separated from reason. "16 This conception of the will, she suggests, is often accompanied by a conception of reason as something cold and impersonal:
Reason deals in neutral descriptions and aims at being the frequently mentioned ideal observer. Value terminology will be the prerogative of the will; but since will is pure choice, pure movement, and not thought or vision, will really requires only action words such as 'good' or 'right' .... Modern ethics analyses 'good,' the empty action word which is the correlate of the isolated will, and tends to ignore other value terms. Our hero aims at being a 'realist' and regards sincerity as the fundamental and perhaps the only virtueY

Now, if we admit the existence of other virtues such as temperance and chastity and approach traditional accounts of them with these or similar conceptions of the will and of reason, then what are we likely to get? Temperance surely will be the habitual conformity of the faculty of desire to the dictates of right reason. But such conformity cannot be effected by reason itself, which is a powerless, impersonal faculty. What will be required is "will-power." Desire must be compelled by will to follow the dictates of reason. Thus the moral life becomes fundamentally a life of coercion, of force, of efforts of the will, and even, perhaps, of a kind of violence. The cultivation of virtue is an exercise in moral muscle-building, an exercise in self-control. In the case of temperance and so of chastity, it is once again an exercise in freezing the passions. Now, with the alternative that I have been exploring there comes a very different conception of the will. Here the will is not separated from "reason" but is itself "rational appetite," that is, appetite informed by reason. And to construe the will as appetite informed by or shaped by reason is to see why it is a kind of "seeing" -and not power, effort, or even action-that is at the center of the moral life. Indeed, where the will is understood as rational appetite, it is evident that there can be no moral virtue (no excellence of will) apart from a certain intellectual virtue (excellence of thought and understanding). On this union of intellectual and moral virtue I think Murdoch is helpful, especially in her essay "The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts," where she writes:
16Iris Murdoch, "The Idea of Perfection" in The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken, 1970) p.41. 171bid., p. 8.

BEAUTY

11

Of course virtue is good habit and dutiful action. But the background condition of such habit and such action, in human beings, is a just mode of vision and a good quality of consciousness.... We act rightly 'when the time comes' not out of strength of will but out of the quality of our usual attachments and with the kind of energy and discernment which we have available. And to this the whole activity of our consciousness is relevant. 's

The point here is not to intellectualize the moral life. Rather, it is to see the moral life as the life of a rational agent. Or perhaps better, the point is just to see the will as rational appetite-as appetite infornled by reason. For on this view, a virtuous will-a will characterized by moral virtue-will be a rational appetite in conformity with right reason. But what, then, will "right reason" signify here? The possibility I should like to suggest is this: that the right reason of the temperate will is a reason that apprehends the particulars of the world sub specie aeternitatis. Wittgenstein connects this with the work of art. My point is that our grasp of the beautiful depends upon or perhaps consists in our seeing things from the vantagepoint of eternity. And what does that amount to? It seems to amount to seeing things apart from my own contingent interests. In the case of another human being it seems to amount to seeing the other apart from any particular desires of mine that might be satisfied by that other. So a connection is made here between seeing things apart from my contingent interests or desires and seeing things "as they are." And both of these are in tum connected with seeing things as beautiful. Hence, the beautiful and the true are experienced as one. But to see someone as beautiful is to see someone as good independently of my own interests or desires. Hence, the true, the beautiful, and the good are experienced as one. Here, it seems to me, is the connection between temperance and beauty.

v
On this account, then, the right desire that is temperance will flow from a vision of the beautiful that makes possible a "seeing things as they are." Seeing the beauty of things will consist in seeing things sub specie aeternitatis. And to see things sub specie aeternitatis will be to see things "as they are." Plainly, "seeing things as they are" is here a morally "loaded" expression. And that means that the conception of beauty at work here is itself a morally "loaded" conception, so that someone might want to ask just what it is that one sees when one sees things "as they are." But I do not want to try to answer this question. In fact, I do not think any real answer can be given, except perhaps to say that one sees the beauty of things. On the other hand, one need not just leave it at that. Instead, one might ask what it is that could lead anyone to talk this way about "beauty" and about "seeing things as they are" in the first place. Here I think that Simone Weil can be a help. There is a conception of beauty that plays a large role in her thought. And she has a good deal to say about it in La Pesanteur et La Grace. 19 For instance: "Beauty is what one can contemplate.
I"Ibid., p. 93. 19Simone Wei!, La Pesanteur et La Grace (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) p. 150; my translations. This work has been translated by Arthur Wills as Gravity and Grace (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1952). I have learned a good deal from Peter Winch's discussion of the role of beauty in the thought of Simone Wei! in his Simone Wei/: "The Just Balance" (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989); see ch. 13.

12

EDELMAN

A statue, a painting that one can view for hours .... Beauty is the thing to which one can give one's attention." The concept of attention here is crucial: "To look and to attend, this is the attitude that corresponds to beauty." And on the same page: "Beauty is a carnal attraction that holds one at a distance and demands a renunciation. It entails the most intimate renunciation, that of the imagination. One wants to consume (manger) all the other objects of desire. Beauty is that which one desires without wanting to consume it. We desire simply that it be." And again: "Beauty: a fruit that one regards without reaching to take it." What is astonishing here is that human beings can react in this way. to things and to other human beings in the world. This is evident in the fact that some people can learn this language of beauty. It therefore makes sense to them to say that things "as they are" are "beautiful." Now, it seems to me that it would be completely misguided to ask whether there is any "justification" for talking this way. At least it would be if the question were meant as a request for some demonstration of the legitimacy or some verification of the descriptive accuracy of such talk. 20 What is crucial, it seems to me, is that people can come to speak this way. Or again, what is astonishing is that human beings can react in this way to things and to other human beings in the world. Indeed, the coming to speak in this way and the reacting in this way cannot be separated. For the "reacting" I have in mind here is the sort of "reacting" Wittgenstein has in mind when he remarks that, "If language is to be a means of communication, then there must be agreement not only in definitions, but also (queer as this may seem) in judgements. "21 This language of beauty turns on an agreement in judgment that consists in a certain reaction to the beautiful. It is this reaction, I am suggesting, rather than any sort of moral callisthenics, that is the source of the temperance that is a virtue, and a virtue very different from the quasivirtue of continence. Again, I cannot see what might count as a justification of such a reaction or of such a way of speaking, except perhaps the tranquillitas animae of the temperate human being, which, after all, seems to be what led erito to describe Socrates's life as "happy. "22 But that is "justification" of a very different sort. 23

21 cannot here do justice to the sort of problems that surround any such request for a justification or demonstration of the value or legitimacy or truth of this sort of talk of beauty and of "seeing things as they are." 1 have tried to deal with some of these problems in my An Audience for Moral Philosophy? (London: Macmillan, 1991), where such problems arise in connection with the "justification" of certain uses of ethical language. See especially pp. 95-102. 21Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953) #242. 22Crito 43b. 231 am grateful to the anonymous reader for the International Philosophical Quarterly whose criticisms of an earlier version of this essay were quite useful to me. A version was also read in the Fall of 1994 at the Western New York Regional Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association at Niagara University and to a group of my colleagues at a faculty colloquium at Nazareth College of Rochester. 1 am grateful to those who made helpful comments on those two occasions as well.