A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart by Josef Pieper

Author:Josef Pieper [Pieper, Josef]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Christian Life, Catholicism, Religion, Ethics, Philosophy, Christian Theology, St
ISBN: 9780898703030
Google: xLUTyWhy4cUC
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 1991-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

The customary notion of "moderation" dwells in fatal proximity to the fear of any exuberance. Everybody knows what the saying "everything with moderation" (which surely can have a lofty meaning) means in everyday speech, and that the phrase "prudent moderation" especially applies when the love of truth or some other noble virtue of the heart is ready and eager to dare the utmost.

Discipline, states Ernst Jünger in his noteworthy essay "Über den Schmerz" (On pain), has no other meaning than this: to keep life in uninterrupted contact with pain and thus to remain prepared to be "put into service at any time for the purposes of a higher order". To be sure, Jünger's rigid masklike concept of "discipline" is thoroughly distinct from the Christian notion of discipline and moderation; Jünger could never ratify the opinion of Thomas Aquinas that "the goal and norm of discipline is bliss". Nevertheless it appears that when one regards the Christian concept of discipline from the perspective of the fact of pain, behind its foreground of gladness over creation there lies a harder countenance, shaped by the decision to relinquish creation for the sake of its Creator — although even this harder countenance shines with an affirming cheerfulness that is infinitely superior to any naive gladness over creation.

Temperance is not, in the strict and final sense, the "realization" of the good. Discipline and moderation and chastity are not in themselves the fulfillment of man. Temperance, insofar as it keeps the person himself in order by vigilance and restraint, provides for both the realization of one's own good and the authentic progress of a man toward his goal, the unalterable requirement. Without it the stream of the innermost essential human will could overflow its banks, lose its direction, and never reach the sea of fulfillment. Yet temperance is not itself the stream. Still, it is the bank and rampart, and through its firmness the stream is endowed with an unhindered course, momentum, slope, and velocity.

The common Christian thinking, whenever there is a question of anger, seeks only to point out the unruly, the unspiritual, and the negative in anger. Still, just like "sensuality" and "desire", the power of becoming angry belongs to the basic powers of man. In this power of becoming angry the energy of human nature speaks most clearly. This power is aimed at what is hard to achieve, at that which eludes easy grasp; it is always readily available where a bonum arduum, a difficult good, waits to be won.

Anyone, then, who disparages this power of anger, as if it were in itself something unspiritual and therefore "to be mortified", acts the same as one who says the equivalent about "sensuality", "passion", and "desire" – both belittle the basic powers of our nature, both insult the Creator who, as the liturgy of the Church has said, "marvelously established the dignity of human nature.

Precisely with regard to overcoming licentiousness in pleasure, the power of growing angry assumes particular gravity.

Thomas is of the opinion that affirmation must be stronger than negation.

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