DEFINITION:
The term “temperance”—sometimes referred to as “moderation”—refers to the virtue, or character trait, consisting of the ability to exercise self-restraint.
ETYMOLOGY:
“Temperance” is one of the four Classical “cardinal virtues.”
The English word “temperance” is attested from the fourteenth century. It derives, via Middle English, from the Classical Latin noun temperantia, meaning “moderation” or “self-control.”
Temperantia is connected to the present participle temperans, temperantis, of the verb tempero, temperare, meaning “to set limits,” “to keep within bounds,” or “to moderate.”
Temperantia corresponds to the Greek word sōphrosunē, meaning “soundness of mind,” “moderation,” “discretion,” or “self-control.”
Sōphronsunē is connect to the adjective sōphrōn, meaning “of sound mind.” Sōphrōn, in turn, is composed of the roots sōs, meaning “safe and sound,” and phrēn, meaning “heart,” “breast,” or, metaphorically, “mind.”
DISCUSSSION:
According to ancient Greek virtue ethics, (notably, in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book II), the virtues represent a mean between two extremes. In the case of “temperance,” the extreme of deficiency is extravagance, while the extreme of excess is self-abnegation.
While the scope of “temperance” was originally intended to be quite general, in modern times there has been a tendency to interpret it in a narrower sense as discretion in indulging one’s bodily appetites. An example would be the “temperance movement” in the US during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The idea of “temperance,” in the context of the Classical virtues, is related to the notion of “moderation,” in the sense of seeking a middle point or “mean” (Greek: mesotēs) in all of one’s actions.
This is the same principle that is applied in ancient Greek ethics to each of the virtues individually, as a “mean” between two extremes of deficiency and excess.
This means that each of the other three Classical virtues—“prudence,” “justice,” and “courage”—might be described as itself a kind of “temperance,” insofar as it is a “mean.”
It also means that, like those virtues, “temperance” is itself “temperate.” Thus, “temperance” may be viewed as a sort of “meta-virtue.”