Courage and Temperance
Giles Pearson
In Polansky, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Cambridge, 2014

"[W]e should not get the idea that [temperance] is a trivial or unimportant virtue. For Aristotle, at least, it is very important indeed. In NE VI.5 he connects temperance (sophrosune) with the saving or preserving of one's practical wisdom (sozein ten phronesin). On his view, pleasure and pain have the power to destroy our perception of the starting-points (archai) of action: 'If a person has been ruined by pleasure or pain, it follows that the starting point will [not?] [CHECKTHIS] be evident to him, nor the fact that this ought to be the goal and cause of everything he chooses and does; for vice tends to destroy the starting point.' (NE VI.5 1140b17-20) Temperance, then, appears to be necessary for our practical wisdom to function properly. In another passage, Aristotle explains *how* pleasure can distort an agent's perspective: 'Each state [of character] has its own conception of what is noble and pleasant, and one might say that the good person stands out a long way by seeing the truth in each case, being a sort of standard and measure of what is noble and pleasant. In the case of the masses, however, pleasure seems to deceive them, because it looks like a good when it is not; people therefore choose what is pleasant, thinking it to be a good, and avoid pain, thinking it to be an evil.' (NE III.4 1113a31-b2) Pleasure can appear as a good thing even when it is not; so being properly orientated with respect to it is crucial for us to be corrected orientated with regard to what is really good." (PEARSON, pp. 132-133)

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