Thomas Aquinas and Modesty 3 in the re-post series
As I noted in one of the recent posts on modesty, this virtue is connected to the virtue of temperance.
Our society has completely lost reverence for temperance, which is the virtue of restraint.
Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia on Temperance, followed by a short section of Thomas. One can clearly see that the CE article is based on Thomistic Philosophy
Temperance is here considered as one of the four cardinal virtues. It may be defined as the righteous habit which makes a man govern his natural appetite for pleasures of the senses in accordance with the norm prescribed by reason. In one sense temperance may be regarded as a characteristic of all the moral virtues; the moderation it enjoins is central to each of them. It is also according to St. Thomas (II-II:141:2) a special virtue. Thus, it is the virtue which bridles concupiscence or which controls the yearning for pleasures and delights which most powerfully attract the human heart. These fall mainly into three classes: some are associated with the preservation of the human individual; others with the perpetuation of the race, and others still with the well-being and comfort of human life. Under this aspect temperance has for subordinate virtues, abstinence, chastity, and modesty.Abstinence prescribes the restraint to be employed in the partaking of food and drink. Obviously the measure of this self-restraint is not constant and invariable. It is different for different persons as well as for different ends in view. The diet of an anchorite would not do for a farm labourer. Abstinence is opposed to the vices of gluttony and drunkenness. The disorder of these is that food and drink are made use of in such wise as to damage instead of benefit the bodily health. Hence gluttony and drunkenness are said to be intrinsically wrong. That does not mean, however, that they are always grievous sins. Gluttony is seldom such; drunkenness is so when it is complete, that is when it destroys the use of reason for the time being. Chastity as a part of temperance regulates the sensual satisfactions connected with the propagation of the human species. The contrary vice is lust. As these pleasures appeal with the special vehemence to human nature, it is the function of chastity to impose the norm of reason. Thus it will decide that they are altogether to be refrained from in obedience to a higher vocation or at any rate only availed of with reference to the purposes of marriage. Chastity is not fanaticism; much less is it insensibility. It is the carrying out of the mandate of temperance in a particular department where such a steadying power is acutely needed.
The virtue of modesty, as ranged under temperance, has as its task the holding in reasonable leash of the less violent human passions. It brings into service humility to set in order a man's interior. By transfusing his estimates with truth, and increasing his self-knowledge it guards him against the radical malice of pride. It is averse to pusillanimity, the product of low views and a mean-spirited will. In the government of the exterior of a man modesty aims to make it conform to the demands of decency and decorousness (honestas). In this way his whole outward tenor of conduct and method of life fall under its sway. Such things as his attire, manner of speech, habitual bearing, style of living, have to be made to square with its injunctions. To be sure the cannot always be settled by hard and fast rules. Convention will often have a good deal to say in the case, but in turn will have its propriety determined by modesty. Other virtues are enumerated by St. Thomas as subordinate to temperance inasmuch as they imply moderation in the management of some passion. It ought to be noted, however, that in its primary and generally understood sense temperance is concerned with what is difficult for a man, not in so far as he is a rational being precisely, but rather in so far as he is an animal. The hardest duties for flesh and blood are self-restraint in the use of food and drink and of the venereal pleasures that go with the propagation of the race. That is why abstinence and chastity may be reckoned the chief and ordinary phases of this virtue. All that has been said receives additional force of we suppose that the self-control commanded by temperance is measured not only by the rule of reason but by the revealed law of God as well. It is called a cardinal virtue because the moderation required for every righteous habit has in the practice of temperance a specially trying arena. The satisfactions upon which it imposes a check are at once supremely natural and necessary in the present order of human existence. It is not, however, the greatest of moral virtues. That rank is held by prudence; then come justice, fortitude, and finally temperance.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14481a.htm
Origen says (Hom. viii super Luc.): "If thou wilt hear the name of this virtue, and what it was called by the philosophers, know that humility which God regards is the same as what they called metriotes, i.e. measure or moderation." Now this evidently pertains to modesty or temperance. Therefore humility is a part of modesty or temperance.
I answer that, As stated above (137, 2, ad 1; 157, 3, ad 2), in assigning parts to a virtue we consider chiefly the likeness that results from the mode of the virtue. Now the mode of temperance, whence it chiefly derives its praise, is the restraint or suppression of the impetuosity of a passion. Hence whatever virtues restrain or suppress, and the actions which moderate the impetuosity of the emotions, are reckoned parts of temperance. Now just as meekness suppresses the movement of anger, so does humility suppress the movement of hope, which is the movement of a spirit aiming at great things. Wherefore, like meekness, humility is accounted a part of temperance. For this reason the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 3) says that a man who aims at small things in proportion to his mode is not magnanimous but "temperate," and such a man we may call humble. Moreover, for the reason given above (Question 160, Article 2), among the various parts of temperance, the one under which humility is comprised is modesty as understood by Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii, 54), inasmuch as humility is nothing else than a moderation of spirit: wherefore it is written (1 Peter 3:4): "In the incorruptibility of a quiet and meek spirit."
Reply to Objection 1. The theological virtues, whose object is our last end, which is the first principle in matters of appetite, are the causes of all the other virtues. Hence the fact that humility is caused by reverence for God does not prevent it from being a part of modesty or temperance.
Reply to Objection 2. Parts are assigned to a principal virtue by reason of a sameness, not of subject or matter, but of formal mode, as stated above (137, 2, ad 1; 157, 3, ad 2). Consequently, although humility is in the irascible as its subject, it is assigned as a part of modesty or temperance by reason of its mode.
Reply to Objection 3. Although humility and magnanimity agree as to matter, they differ as to mode, by reason of which magnanimity is reckoned a part of fortitude, and humility a part of temperance.
Question 161 same part http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3161.htm
Why this is connected to modesty is the application of the virtue of temperance to meekness and quietness.
Modesty is meek and quiet. Loud talk, or raucous actions show the opposite spirit. Sometimes, we see older women being loud and over-exuberant, and we know that there is something not quite right with their spirits. The meek and humble woman speaks quietly and is not strident. This is the COMPETE opposite of the feminist mode.
Temperance and meekness indicate that a soul has found peace within herself. What has clothing to do with this, one may ask?
Modesty does not attract anyone. Modesty humbly causes a person to be overlooked. Can one imagine the difference between a modest woman and one who purposefully draws attention, even sexual attention to herself?
As I have warned women about the 3Ps, I warn men about the woman who has to be the center of attention in a room of men, the woman who flirts and entices. These characteristics are the opposite of modesty.
A little lesson from Jane Austen....on the lack of modesty in one case and the shock that immodesty should cause in a good, innocent soul.
You may wonder at a combination of Thomas Aquinas and Jane Austen. Austen understood, as did Thomas, and Aristotle, that the virtues of fortitude, justice, nnd temperance are the moral virtues, which are the natural virtues.
Natural virtues "preserve", protect and perfect human nature. The moral virtues perfect the appetites. Prudence, by the way, is an intellectual virtue.
Temperance it is which restrains the undue impulse of concupiscence for sensible pleasure, while fortitude causes man to be brave when he would otherwise shrink, contrary to reason, from dangers or difficulties. Temperance, then, to consider it more particularly, is that moral virtue which moderates in accordance with reason the desires and pleasures of the sensuous appetite attendant on those acts by which human nature is preserved in the individual or propagated in the species. The subordinate species of temperance are:
- abstinence, which disposes to moderation in the use of food;
- sobriety, which inclines to moderation in the use of spirituous liquors;
- chastity, which regulates the appetite in regard to sexual pleasures; to chastity may be reduced modesty, which is concerned withacts subordinate to the act of reproduction.
- continence, which according to the Scholastics, restrains the will from consenting to violent movements or concupiscence;
- humility, which restrains inordinate desires of one's own excellence;
- meekness, which checks inordinate movements of anger;
- modesty or decorum, which consists in duly ordering the external movements of anger; to the direction of reason.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15472a.htm
