Temperance: The difficult art of loving

Temperance is the fourth of the cardinal virtues. It is listed last not because it is least important, but because it touches the intimate dimension of the human being, unlike the other virtues, which concern the common good. Precisely for this reason it is indispensable for virtuous action, which has as its condition the integrity of the person: “Prudence looks at the concrete reality of all beings; justice regulates relations with others; with fortitude the human person, forgetting the self, sacrifices goods and life. Temperance, on the other hand, focuses on the individual […]. Temperance means looking at oneself and one’s own condition, directing one’s focus and will on oneself.”[1] Temperance has a reflexive character; it returns to the subject and shapes him or her, bringing inner harmony between sensitivity, intellect and will, allowing the individual to express all his or her potential.

This virtue was highly valued in the ancient world, as can be seen from even a simple glance at the terms employed. The Greek word enkrateia comes from the root krat (power, dominion, government, authority) combined with en (self). Temperance is the ability to govern oneself, to master feelings and thoughts. It is the point of arrival of a path of knowledge and self-modeling, the ideal par excellence of ancient philosophy, as recently rediscovered especially by Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot, an ideal later lost in the course of time.[2]

The specific domain of enkrateia is sensitivity (the faculty concerned with desire, epithym?tikon), everything that has to do with the care of the body (sexuality, eating, drinking, activity, rest) allowing its integration with the rational part of the soul. As self-mastery, temperance also helps in mastering aggression, the faculty called “irascible.” It is, therefore, indispensable for action and for reasoning lucidly, unclouded by the passions (cf. Pseudo-Plat, Definitions, 412 b; Xenophon, Memorabilia, II, 1, 1). 

With Socrates enkrateia becomes a central virtue for ethics and virtuous behavior, making the person trustworthy and capable of assuming responsibility (cf. Republic, III, 390 b). The incontinent person (akrat?s) on the other hand, being unrestrained, is unreliable and dangerous, unable to complete a task (cf. Xenophon, Symposium, 8, 27; Flavius Josephus, De Bello Iudaico, 1, 34).

The latter part of the Platonic dialogue Gorgias (492c-500c), involving a discussion between Socrates and the “libertine” Callicles, is dedicated to temperance. According to the sophist, people express their power by imposing themselves on the weak and giving free rein to their senses. In this way they prove themselves capable of imposing their will and therefore of governing. Tempering desire is for him something laughable, something that marks out a weak person. Socrates thinks otherwise. It is precisely the intemperate person who is weak, incapable of control. But above all intemperate people are unhappy because they never attain the pleasure they desperately seek. They are like a barrel with a hole in it, impossible to fill. Moreover, pleasure is not always a worthwhile goal. It requires a discipline of the soul, an asceticism that makes you free from passions and able to achieve the good in its many aspects. Only then can one experience genuine pleasure.

Aristotle discusses temperance in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics. The continent person obeys the directions of reason and thus masters their own desires. The ability to govern oneself is what distinguishes humans from other animals. We do not speak of the continence or incontinence of animals. Instead, humans can make judgments about real situations where they make good or bad choices (cf. Nicomachean Ethics, 1147b 1-6).

For Aristotle, this is the problem of someone who does not recognize intemperance as an evil. Their evaluation is fixated on the situation of the moment, absolutizing it (the so-called “minor premise” of the syllogism) without comparing it with what is really good (the “major premise”). In practice, the intemperate person follows their passions and disregards reason. This in some way confirms what Socrates noted, that evil is done because of a defect of evaluation.

However, there is also the case of the incontinent, who, unlike the intemperate, recognize their acts as evil, but do not have the strength to abstain from them. The intemperate person who pursues evil is like a city governed by evil laws; the incontinent person is a city with laws that are good, but which cannot be enforced. What is lacking in the latter case is not knowledge, but prudence, the ability to weigh carefully what to do without haste. One who lacks temperance is still a child, incapable of listening to reason and controlling  the self.[3]

For Aristotle, only the wise person knows genuine pleasure, the result of the inner harmony between reason and desire, and pleasure makes a person’s action more incisive (cf. Magna Moralia, 1206a 13).

In Stoic thought enkrateia is the virtue that allows reason to master pleasure by abstaining from it, becoming free from all conditioning.[4] Cicero translates enkrateia by temperantia, which he defines as “the firm and moderate mastery of reason over desires and passions and its other unbridled emotions of the mind” (De inventione, II, 164). This is a definition that, as we will see, captures the central aspect of the problem: the evaluation of reason and its ability to intervene in a moderate manner in mastering the passions.

The term rarely appears in the Bible. It is found in the wisdom books as the power to put a stop to indulgence, especially sexual indulgence (cf. Sir 18:30) but it cannot be achieved by human effort, because it is a gift from God (cf. Wis 8:21.)

In the New Testament, enkrateia is not found in the he Gospels. It appears in Saint Paul’s letters in the context of sporting competition.  Just as the athlete, if he wishes to win a race, must behave like an ascetic, making sacrifices in order to concentrate on the task at hand, so too must the disciple in order to attain the prize (cf. 1 Cor 9:25); abstinence is also presented as an ideal (cf. 1 Cor 7:9). Enkrateia also appears in the list of virtues, contrasted with lack of restraint regard to food, drink and sexuality (cf. Gal 5:23). Finally, it has the meaning of patience and self-mastery, an indispensable virtue for the apostolic leader who is called to govern the community (cf. Titus 1:8; 2 Pet 1:6).

On the whole, it is striking how little this term, so relevant to Greek philosophy, appears in the New Testament. In fact, the perspective is very different: not self-mastery, but the acceptance of God’s salvific will, freely given, is the central focus for the believer. Ethical behavior is the response to this gift, which precedes every human initiative and makes them possible.[5]

The multiple meanings of the term

The range of meanings encompassed by the term “temperance” is also interesting. They show an extremely rich spectrum of possible applications to ordinary life. “Tempering” refers to the act of moderating, giving the right amount of space, just as the moderator at a roundtable has the task of giving the floor to each of the participants, encouraging those who are reluctant and restraining those who tend to overstep the bounds. In this way everyone can bring their own contribution.[6]

“Temperance” also refers to time, temperature and temperament, terms used to indicate measure and mood, which are indispensable for living well. It can also refer to the correct intervention to be made in processing a raw product: wine may be tempered by mixing it with the right amount of water to make it drinkable, a metal (so that it has the right consistency), and a pencil (so that it can be sharp and incisive, enabling a clear script). These are the conditions required to be effective, balanced, deep, able to act well. They are actions that refer to an “ascesis,” something that must be taken away in order for the product to be effective, reaching the purpose for which it is made. As to the possible applications in the field of ethics,  temperance requires he training of the self, tiring but necessary for the correct integration of the various aspects of the personality, proper to a stable character especially in the field of affections.

Temperance, it should be noted, also involves the ability to restrain oneself, which is essential for self-reflection and self-governance, to avoid succumbing to the impulse of the moment.

The contribution of St. Thomas

For Thomas, temperance has the task of regulating the passions linked to touch – thanks to the contribution of wisdom and the governance of the will – ordering them to the good that belongs to the person: the ability to love, what he calls, taking up Augustine’s ordo amoris, ordered love, essential for virtue and its root.[7] Among the passions that are the object of temperance he mentions in particular those that aim at the preservation of the individual (eating, drinking, dressing, self-care, money) and that of the species, the union between man and woman, achieving the pleasure of the good achieved.[8]

The treatise on temperance once again highlights Thomas’ unitary anthropology: sensibility and intellect work closely together on a cognitive and practical level. Touch, for Thomas, is indispensable for intelligence, indeed it is the most appropriate sense for intellectual activity.[9] On the other hand, it obviously has a significant influence on the body, in the dimensions of pleasure and suffering. For this reason, temperance allows one to experience the former to the fullest and to master the latter, conferring peace on the soul and self-mastery.[10]

Thomas, in his treatise, takes up many aspects from the thinking of the past. First of all, the analyses made by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics regarding the value of sobriety, chastity and continence, decisive for self-mastery and inner freedom. Aquinas will make them the speculative basis for speaking of love as agap?, as self-giving and participation in the love of God. He cites pagan authors, including Seneca (especially De ira and De clementia) Cicero and Macrobius, and adds Christian thought, in particular Biblical – especially in clarifying the meaning of individual issues – and Christian authors, above all, Augustine. The bishop of Hippo is continually cited in these pages.

These multiple strands of thought are reworked by Thomas in a completely original way, offering significant insights that will be taken up in developmental psychology. Consider, for example, the main reason that is invoked to show the seriousness of incontinence. Thomas stresses the importance that the mother and father, at different times and in different and complementary ways, play in the development of the child.[11]

The role of pleasure

Unlike Stoicism, Puritan ethics and rationalism, for Thomas pleasure has an important value for the goodness of the act. Its absence is not considered positive for the morality of the action; those without affection, the phlegmatic, the lukewarm, the insensitive cannot be considered virtuous people, because they lack the energy to do good, which is indispensable for temperance. In fact, temperance is not a spontaneous inclination, but a deliberate act that requires self-governance.[12]

The ethical importance of pleasure is linked to the fact that for Thomas it is proper to the soul, which knows when it has achieved an objective good. Pleasure is, in fact, elusive, free and paradoxical, an indirect consequence of the value achieved, never an end in itself. Its character, irreducible to sensitivity, is shown by the fact that, whenever it is sought as the goal of an action, it is not reached. Freud will reach the same conclusion in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: when it becomes an end in itself, pleasure dies. This is a conclusion shared by subsequent psychological research.[13]

Pleasure, being proper to the soul, has an intellectual dimension. This is why virtuous pleasure is superior to that of vice, because in vice the good sought was apparent. The right ordering of actions always has a pleasurable dimension, whether it be manual labor, study, sports, a relationship, or service to others.

Thomas also distinguishes pleasure from joy. The first is proper to the external senses, while joy (like memory and imagination) is linked to the internal senses and the will guided, by right reason. This is a valuable warning, capable of explaining situations in life that are certainly not pleasant, but which, mysteriously, are a source of joy, as in the case of the martyrs.[14]

Intemperance and its remedies

If temperance is a virtue of the soul, its corruption also finds its roots there: imagination is the true incitement to lust, which leads reason to enslave itself to the passions. As we have seen in the course of discussing this vice and from studies of online sexual addiction, lust is a disorder of the mind, a sick quest for the Absolute. Its chief faculty is the imagination, not sensitivity, which rather puts up resistance to its perverse fantasies. And since the imagination is potentially infinite, it never finds satisfaction. Thus, the vice-ridden pursuit of pleasure is also the way to punish the self to the point of self-destruction.[15]

Lust is not the most serious vice, but it is the one that most degrades a person, making them ugly, stripping them of their dignity, because it infects a person’s highest faculty, intelligence. Weakening the inhibitory controls, which are indispensable for reflection, evaluation and decision-making and require calm and thoughtfulness, the person becomes a slave to the whim of the moment: “In the pleasures that are the object of Intemperance, the light of reason, on which all the splendor and beauty of virtue depends, is utterly  obscured. Thus these pleasures are said to be supremely slave-like.”[16] This ugliness of the soul was expressed in a powerfully dramatic form in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Thomas, in accord with Aristotle, notes that intemperance is proper to those who have remained at the infantile stage, focused on pleasure and unable to face the harshness of life. The resulting anger and frustration prevent them from enjoying life and open the door of the soul to further vices: anger, pride, gluttony, drunkenness, sexual violence.

Chastity, that is, the ability to live relationships based on respect, self-giving and non-possession, corrects this tendency, moderates it, and allows one to experience authentic and integrated pleasure.[17] Chastity and temperance are powerful allies for living affectivity as a gift, and are the basis of every possible life project, just as their loss precludes such a life. It is not by chance that the crisis of celibacy and the crisis of marriage arrived at the same time, because they have at their root this common loss.[18] Henri Nouwen points out that the secret of the beauty of a relationship consists precisely in the exercise of chastity as a mutual renunciation of possession, which allows for the emergence of a common space that no one can fill – the space proper to spiritual life – and that gives meaning to the relationship. Similarly, green spaces in a city offer refreshment and “recreate” those who frequent them; they are seemingly useless spaces, of no financial significance, but precisely for this reason essential for the quality of life.

Cultivating temperance

Thomas, taking up Augustine, notes that a great help for temperance is to educate the soul to the beauty of spiritual realities: “Augustine states that ‘when the soul rises and becomes fixed on spiritual things, the force of habit,’ that is, of carnal concupiscence, ‘breaks, and a little at a time it falters and withers. If we had indulged it, it would have become greater: by repressing it, it is not annihilated, but it has certainly become weaker’.”[19]

Among the aids to cultivating this beauty, surprisingly, Thomas mentions play. In games, in fact, the highest relationship, that between God and man, and the most intense pleasure, proper to Wisdom, capable of filling the heart, an essentially gratuitous pleasure, can find expression. Play and pleasure born of the contemplation of Wisdom, are capable of recreating a person in the most sublime way. Temperance flourishes  when one cultivates within oneself the desire for this beauty, the gateway to the truth of oneself, when one recognizes oneself as part of a greater plan.[20]

Just as pleasure is achieved in an indirect way, the same can be said for resisting temptations;  concentrating on what gives the spirit pleasure allows us to overcome them. As in the story of the taking of Jericho (cf. Josh 6:1-27), the people, instead of attacking the city, are invited to concentrate on other things. At a certain point, unexpectedly, the walls collapse on their own. This text has profound lessons for the emotional life: it is unwise to face head-on the obstacles to the exercise of chastity. Instead, it is much more important to cultivate “that which gives taste and satisfies the soul,” to borrow Ignatius’ famous expression in the Spiritual Exercises (No. 2.) When the heart is full, the will is strengthened and temptations lose their bite.[21]

The evangelist Matthew concludes the passage about the temptations of Jesus with this concluding note: “Then the devil left him” (Matt 4:11: tote aphi?sin auton), an expression that returns in this Gospel only once at the time of, the baptism of Jesus. The Baptist does not want to baptize Jesus; he objects, but, faced with his determination, he finally agrees: “Then he (John) consented” (Matt 3:15: tote aphi?sin auton). Here are two situations of resistance to the mission received that come from antithetical perspectives; but both, when they find a resolute will, aware of the importance of the mission received, give way and allow the path to unfold.

A devalued virtue

Modernity, under the influence of Puritanism and Victorian ethics, has deformed the meaning of temperance, reducing it to the regulation of sexual behavior through rules and prohibitions, in contrast to its original context of reference. Desire, affection, the good, happiness, are indeed considered with suspicion as dangerous enemies of virtue, if understood as mere duty. Morality is thus opposed to what gives taste and joy, proposing a model of a restricted life. Nietzsche would enjoy unmasking this approach, showing how the “virtuous” person is actually sour and resentful toward the world and looks with envy upon the dissolute who have rejected every norm.[22]

Hence also the unstoppable crisis of morality during the modern era, leading to its rejection. It is no coincidence that Puritanism opposed, in the same years, the libertine movement, of which de Sade is the most famous and controversial exponent. It invited the abandonment of every rule and prohibition, to give free rein to the most perverse fantasies, considered expressions of a life fully lived. This is a conception widely shared and diffused throughout today’s culture, where the terms have ended up being reversed: morality becomes synonymous with the condemnation of desire and a sad and dull life, and immorality instead becomes an expression of happiness, the result of unbridled pleasure. A more careful analysis, however, shows the disastrous consequences of this approach to life: “A well-known Italian singer-songwriter sang: ‘I want a reckless life, I want an exaggerated life… I want a life that cares for nothing, yes!’ Live dangerously! This was already a refrain at the beginning of the 20th century and many even then used to shout, ‘who cares?’ The story does not seem to have ended very well. In fact, today people are habitually overstimulated. Advertising and consumerism are the hallmarks of advanced industrial societies. It is for the same reason that people today often or sometimes feel disappointed or even frustrated.”[23]

For Aristotle and Thomas, passions and happiness constitute, on the contrary, the true pillars of the ethical edifice. Similarly to what has been noted with regard to justice, to consider one virtue uncoupled from the others leads to total incomprehension.

‘If love exists, God exists’

Temperance is also the virtue that, more than any other, allows us to experience God. The place par excellence of the sacred is precisely sexuality.  Think of the importance it has in the Bible and in mysticism when one speaks of  the relationship between God and humanity. Being “in the image and likeness of God” is the foundation of one’s dignity as a person, which places us on a qualitatively different plane from all other beings. This is a dignity that is achieved only in the sexual relationship, in being male and female (cf. Gen 1:27.)

At the same time, its devaluation implies a serious inability on the part of today’s culture to speak of the mystical dimension of the human being. As Christiane Singer notes: “Sexuality is always a manifestation of the sacred, of this entrance of man and woman into the resonance of creation. When a society wants to separate humans from their transcendence, it does not need to attack the great edifices of churches or religions, it only needs to degrade the relationship between man and woman.”[24]

A sign of this crisis, at the ecclesial level, can be found in the progressive disappearance of nuptial symbols from religious profession, with the focus rather on more “functional” aspects, such as service, research, social commitment.

For Thomas, love bears within itself the sign of the divine in three different ways: 1) on a natural level, as the response of every creature to the voice of the Creator impressed with God’s laws in all things (“L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle,” says Dante in Paradiso, XXXIII, 145); 2) on a sensitive level, as a passion, the engine at the base of action (amor); 3) in intellectual life (dilectio) the fruit of evaluation and decision. Caritas is the dilectio that has God as its proper object, and is the perfection of love.[25]

At this point Thomas adds a decisive clarification: one cannot thereby sustain the superiority of dilectio over amor. The latter, in fact, precisely because it is passionate, presents a passivity that can become docility in allowing God to work in the self; in this way a person can be made a participant in the divine life in a way superior to what they could achieve with dilectio: “A person can reach out to God through love, letting the self be attracted passively by God, better than one can achieve under the guidance of one’s own intelligence, which belongs to the concept of dilectio, as we have seen. And for this reason amor is more divine than dilectio.”[26] In this annotation we can see not only the genius of Thomas, but also his great appreciation of human passions: one experiences God above all on a passionate level, every time one falls in love. This is an experience that one can only welcome and that transforms a person in their innermost being;  it divinizes them. No other experience could reach such an apex.

All love is religious, because it bears within itself the imprint of Love, and yearns for union (re-ligo) with what is perfect: it is tension and nostalgia for fullness and eternity. As Pascal affirmed, overturning St. John’s statement, “if love exists, God exists.”

DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 6, no.2 art. 13, 0222: 10.32009/22072446.0222.13

[1].      J. Pieper, La temperanza, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2001, 28 (italics ours); cf. Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 141, aa. 7-8.

[2].      “Ancient philosophy proposed to humanity an art of living. In contrast, modern philosophy appears first and foremost as a theoretical construct composed of propositions expressed in technical language and reserved for specialists only” (P. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, New York, Wiley & Blackwell, 1995, 272). Cf. M. Foucault, La cura di sé. Storia della sessualità, vol. 3, Milan, Feltrinelli, 2014. However, as emerges from Simone D’Agostino’s research (Esercizi spirituali e filosofia moderna, Pisa, Ets, 2017), this theme continued to be present in modern philosophy, at least until the middle of the 17th century.

[3].      Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1147a 25-1152a 25. Cf. G. Cucci, “Prudence. A forgotten virtue?”, in Civ. Catt. English Ed., August 2021, laciviltacattolica.com/prudence-a-forgotten-virtue/

[4].      “Enkrateia is the necessary disposition of what takes place according to right reason, that is, the supreme virtue that makes us capable of abstaining from what seems to be the most difficult thing to abstain from” (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, IX, 153).

[5].      Cf. W. Grundmann, “?γκρ?τεια”, in G. Kittel – G. Friedrich (eds), Grande Lessico del Nuovo Testamento, vol. III, Brescia, Paideia, 1967, 39-42; H. Goldstein, “?γκρ?τεια”, in H. Balz – G. Schneider, Dizionario esegetico del Nuovo Testamento, vol. 1, ibid. 1995, 1002f.

[6].      Cf. L. Galli, Dal corpo alla persona. Il sesso come lo spiegherei ai miei figli, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2009, 19f.

[7].      Cf. Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 55, a. 1, ad 4um; q. 62, a. 2, ad 3um.

[8].      Cf. Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 141, aa. 3-4; a. 4, ad 3um.

[9]  .    “Among humans, those have better intellectual faculties who are also endowed with a better sense of touch” (Sum. Theol. I, q. 76, a. 5; cf. De veritate, q. 2, a. 3, ob. 19; De anima, 2, 19).

[10].    Cf. Sum. Theol. III, q. 15, a. 6; II-II, q. 141, a. 2 ad 2um; a. 3.

[11].    “To educate a person requires not only the care of the mother, who must nurse the child, but still more that of the father, who must instruct, defend and provide the child with both internal and external goods. For this reason, occasional sexual union is contrary to human nature, and instead it is necessary for a man to be united with a specific woman, with whom he must live not for a certain time, but for a long time, or even for the whole of his life […]. Now, this choice of a given woman takes the name of marriage. And it is for this reason that it is said to be of natural origin[…]. Since, therefore, fornication is an occasional sexual union, taking place outside of marriage, it is contrary to the good of the offspring” (Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 154, a. 2; Summa contra Gentiles III, 122). On the importance of parents in the psychology of development, see G. Cucci, “Il padre è chiamato a svolgere un ruolo decisivo nella vita di fede”, in Civ. Catt. 2009 III 118-127; Id., “Il ruolo della madre nello sviluppo del bambino”, ibid. 2019 IV 334-347.

[12].    “Nature has tied pleasure to the functions necessary for human life. Therefore the natural order requires that human use of these pleasures, whatever is necessary for human welfare, both for the preservation of the individual and for the preservation of the species. Therefore, if one were to abstain from these pleasures to the point of neglecting what is necessary for the preservation of nature, he would be committing sin, thus violating the natural order” (Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 142, a. 1; cf. q. 153, a. 2, ad 2um).

[13].    Cf. Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 2, a. 6; q. 4, a. 2. Viktor Frankl speaks of “addiction to pleasure” and “fall of desire,” when they are considered the exclusive reason for action (V. Frankl, Psychotherapy and Existentialism, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1967, 5). The same author shows, in a more detailed study, that those who seek pleasure as an end in itself never find it (Id., The Will to Meaning, New York, Penguin Books, 1970, 31-49). Mihály Csíkszentmihályi connects pleasure to an experience of an engagement, where the passage of time is not felt (so-called “Flow Theory”): cf. M. Csíkszentmihályi, “Play and Intrinsic Rewards”, in Journal of Humanistic Psychology 15 (1975/3) 41-63.

[14].    Cf. Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 31, aa. 3-4; II-II, q. 141, a. 4, ad 3um; R. Cessario, Le virtù, Milan, Jaca Book, 1994, 194f.

[15].    Cfr G. Cucci, “La lussuria, una ricerca malata dell’Assoluto”, in Id., Il fascino del male. I vizi capitali, Rome, AdP, 2011, 280-313; Id., Dipendenza sessuale online, Milan, Àncora – La Civiltà Cattolica, 2015; Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 142, a. 2, ad 2um; q. 156, a. 1.

[16].    Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 142, a. 4; cf. qq. 148-158.

[17].    Cf. ibid, II-II, q. 151, a. 2, ad 2um; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1119b 1-15.

[18].    “At the same time that many priests and religious persons are abandoning the celibate life, we see many couples questioning the value of their commitment to each other […]. In fact, marriage and celibacy are two ways of living in the Christian community that support each other” (H. J. M. Nouwen, I clown di Dio, Brescia, Queriniana, 2002, 77f).

[19].    Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 142, a. 2.

[20].    Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio libri Boethii De hebdomadibus, I, 268a; Sum. Theol. II-II, q. 168, aa. 2-4.

[21].    For further study, see G. Cucci, Il fascino del male… , op. cit., 300-313; Id., “Cybersex: an insidious addiction”, in Civ. Catt. English Ed. August 2019; laciviltacattolica.com/cybersex-an-insidious-addiction/

[22].    Cf. J. Pieper, La luce delle virtù, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 1999, 33; F. Nietzsche, Al di là del bene e del male, Milan, Adelphi, 1977, Nos. 29-30.

[23].    S. Natoli, Dizionario dei vizi e delle virtù, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1999, 122 f.

[24].    Ch. Singer, Del buon uso delle crisi, Sotto il Monte (Bg), Servitium, 2006, 47.

[25].    Cf. Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 26, aa. 1-3.

[26].    Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 26, a. 3, ad 4um; cf. R. Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae 22-48, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 121.