The Virtue of Temperance for Health

Virtue is not something abstract, detached from life, but, on the contrary, it has deep "roots” in life itself, it springs from the latter forms it. Virtue has an impact on man’s life itself, on his actions and behavior. It follows that in all these reflections of ours, we are speaking not so much of the virtue of man as a living and acting “virtuously”; we are speaking of the prudent, just and courageous man, and finally, precisely today, we are speaking of the "temperate” (or "sober”) man.

The term “temperance” itself seems in a certain way to refer to what is “outside man”. We say, in fact, that a temperate man is one who does not abuse food, drinks, pleasures, who does not drink alcohol to excess, who does not deprive himself of consciousness by the use of drugs, etc. This reference to elements external to man has its basis, however, within man. It is as if there existed in each of us a “higher self” and a lower self”.

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In our “lower self”, our “body” and everything that belongs to it is expressed: its needs, its desires, its passions of a sensual nature particularly.

The virtue of temperance guarantees every man mastery of the “lower self” by the “higher self”. Is this humiliation of our body? Or a disability? On the contrary, this mastery gives higher value to the body. As a result of the virtue of temperance, the body and our senses find the right place which pertains to them in our human condition.

A temperate man is one who is master of himself. One in whom passions do not prevail over reason, will and even the “heart”. A man who can control himself. If this is so, we can easily realize what a fundamental and radical value the virtue of temperance has. It is even indispensable, in order that man may be fully man. It is enough to look at someone who, carried away by his passions, becomes a “victim” of them-renouncing of his own accord the use of reason (such as, for example, an alcoholic, a drug addict) – to see, clearly that: to be a man “means respecting one’s own dignity, and therefore, among others things, letting oneself be guided by the virtue of temperance.