The PATH: Courage, Temperance, and Justice
sent by J.W. Bertolotti | February 28, 2022
Welcome to The PATH — A weekly reflection with three timeless insights for daily life.
1. Courage
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observed, “Our aim is not to know what courage is but to be courageous; not to know what justice is but to be just.” When thinking of virtue, we must view virtue as action.
As Seneca stressed in a letter to Lucilius,
See your philosophy as action — it consists not in words, but action.
Similarly, in Courage is Calling Ryan Holiday writes, “Courage is an honest commitment to noble ideals.” The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?”
The Athenian historian Thucydides called self-control the chief element in self-respect and self-respect the principal element in courage. As we’ll see, the four virtues interconnect with one another.
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2. Temperance
One could think of temperance as moderation or simply self-control. The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus suggested, “If we were to measure what is good by how much pleasure it brings, nothing would be better than self-control.”
According to Aristotle,
Every ethical virtue is an intermediate between two other states. Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency. Therefore, courage lies between the coward, who flees every danger and experiences excessive fear, and the rash person, who judges every danger worth facing and experiences little or no fear.
An important point to highlight is that temperance maintains self-control even amid challenging situations. Epictetus taught, “If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.” For this reason, it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.
The virtue of temperance is a battle with ourselves. “The enemy is within the gates,” stressed Cicero, “it is with our own folly that we have to contend.” By doing so, we have the chance to choose the path of justice.
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3. Justice
The virtue of justice can be described as fairness and kindness. “The prudent person does themselves good; the virtuous person does good to others,” observed Voltaire.
In my interview with Donald Robertson (author of numerous books on Marcus Aurelius), he explained,
I find it mind-boggling that anyone could read Marcus Aurelius and not notice that on virtually every page of the Meditations, he goes on and on obsessively about natural affection, brotherly love, cosmopolitan ethics, social virtue…
The act of kindness is valued across cultures and traditions. The novelist Henry James put it this way, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind.”
Despite the universal agreement on the importance of kindness, it can be challenging to put it into practice consistently. However, it helps to adopt a perspective of interconnectedness. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “what is good for the bee is good for the hive.”
Musonius Rufus advised,
To honor equality, to want to do good, and for a person to not want to harm human beings — this is the most honorable lesson and it makes just people out of those who learn it.
The virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom are known as The Cardinal Virtues.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful. If so, please consider sharing it with others.
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Image credit: Path through the Forest, Snow Effect by Claude Monet (1870)
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