Aristotle, Temperance, Pleasure, and Pain :: Philosophy Research Papers

Aristotle, Temperance, Pleasure, and Pain(1)ABSTRACT Aristotle argues that temperance is the mean concerned with recreation and pain (NE 1107b5-9 and 1117b25-27). Most commentators localise on the moderation of pleasures and hardly hold forth how this virtue relates to pain. In what follows, I consider the place of pain in Aristotles discussion of temperance and resolve contradictory interpretations by bit to the following question is temperance ever properly painful? In part one, I examine the textual evidence and conclude that Aristotle would solving no to our question. The temperate person does non feel pain at the absence of appropriately desired objects. In parts two and three, I reconstruct near reasons why Aristotle would hold such a imbibe based. My discussion here is based upon Aristotles discussion of continence and the atomic number 53 of the virtues.While the measures of temperance in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nichomachean Ethics share some similarities, the t reatment of the topic in the latter is much more developed.(2) As Charles Young argues, Aristotle draws a distinction between common dispositions and peculiar relishs. The appetite for food when one hasnt eaten for several hours is a common, natural appetite. The appetite for a particular food or a particular fare is peculiar. Temperance most properly concerns the peculiar appetites, because, Aristotle says, people dont tend to go wrong about common appetites since the appetite disappears with surrogate (NE 1118b15-19).(3) A further refinement in the Nicomachean account comes at 1119a16-20. present Aristotle distinguishes between pleasures conducive to health (called healthful foods by Young) and pleasures that do not interfere with health (called treats by Young). On this more positive account of temperance, one has temperance just in case ones peculiar appetites for food, sex, and drink are determined by judgments about the theatrical role to or compatibility with healthfuln ess.(4) One nice result of this account is that temperance loses each connotations of austerity that it might have had. For a temperate person, on Aristotles account, enjoys treats to the extent that they are compatible with health.This quick summary of the Nicomachean and Eudemian treatments of temperance, while wake some of the subtlety of Aristotles position, has selectively omitted a range of issues. The focus has been on pleasure rather than pain. Clearly the intemperate person enjoys consume foods to an excess. However, it also surely is true that the intemperate person is pained by the absence of those peculiar things he desires.