Without the principle of moderation the possibility of true asceticism gets lost, and strangely enough this unfortunate state of affairs can often be found in those groups who claim to advocate moderation. Moderation does not have anything in common with prohibitionism as many seem to believe--from the point of view which advocates moderation, prohibitionism is an extreme to be avoided just as one ought to avoid excess.
I do not mean by "prohibitionism" specifically the historical movement which set out to ban alcohol, nor the continued theological position that one must avoid alcohol (though in these cases one sees in an obvious and concentrated form the attitude at which I take aim), but the disposition that if something should not be used in excess one ought -- in order to be on the safe side -- not to use it at all. In the case of alcohol, this attitude does not manifest in those who declare alcohol to be evil in principle; this is a different, and rather silly, intellectual disorder. To the Christian mind, this absolute prohibition of alcohol appears suspiciously close either to gnosticism (in its distrust of the goodness of creation), or to Islamic teaching. Even setting aside the historical attitude and traditional position of the Church towards alcohol, the Bible simply lauds wine -- and particularly in regard to its psychoactive effects which promote revelry and fraternity -- too loudly and too repeatedly for the intellectually honest fundamentalist to ignore. If one considers the Bible to be in any sense authoritative in the way a Christian ought to live his or her life, one simply cannot regard that which in the Psalms is declared to be made by God for the purpose of "[making] glad the heart of man" as evil without very obviously impugning God in the process. And those few who attempt through absurd etymological strategies to deny that the Hebrew word for "wine" means "wine" make Bishop Spong's Biblical criticism look like the work of a hermeneutical genius.
One finds a better example of the prohibitionist temperament I have in mind in those who accept the obvious historical reality concerning the Judeo-Christian use of wine and who -- while not maintaining an absolute prohibition against alcohol consumption -- hold that it might be better to abstain from alcohol altogether lest one drift into excess. Though this position has the benefit of at least being intellectually honest, it either misapprehends the nature of moderation or does not consider moderation virtuous in itself. Moderation does not simply mean avoiding excess, one must avoid deficiency as well; to paraphrase Aristotle, moderation stands in the mean between two extremes. The motivation of the prohibitionist just mentioned can be considered good, but incomplete: for by avoiding all alcohol (in this example) one does not violate the moral rule against drunkenness, but neither does one fully assert the goodness of the gift of wine. In Aristotelian terminology, one unintentionally falls into the extreme of deficiency while trying to avoid the opposite extreme of excess. Here one can see a fundamental problem that cannot simply be restricted to issues such as alcohol; that is, that creation is a good gift from God and must be received as such.
In asserting that one does best to not only avoid extremes but to avoid moderation as well, one must implicitly claim not only that whatever a person takes in moderation is not a good but that moderation itself is not good. In the case of alcohol the abstainer avoids drunkenness in a way which ends up expressing (quite unintentionally) disdain for God's creativity. The prohibitionist gets so wrapped up in avoiding doing wrong that he fails to do right, or else he conceives of moral law in a fundamentally negative way wherein one stays on the right side of the law simply by not violating it. In either case, we see that without a practiced moderation one cannot live fully, and that the state of one's soul gets inhibited in a way which makes it difficult -- though not entirely impossible -- to affirm the goodness of creation.
Moderation must not be interpreted in solely a legal way; though it is a mean it is not a mathematical mean. To eat moderately does not really entail eating a precise amount of food; moderation cannot be placed on a coordinate system. For this reason Aristotle asserts that while moderation requires a mean between extremes, moderation is itself an extreme; in other words, in order to be moderate one must avoid excess and deficiency, but this alone does not constitute moderation--it merely makes it possible. Once a person frees himself from extremes he creates the calm space in which he can enact virtue. In the case of food, moderation becomes possible when one neither eats too much or too little, but moderation is achieved when one relates to food as one ought to. It is quite possible that one avoids excesses but still is not moderate. Similarly, in the case of alcohol one cannot be called moderate simply by avoiding drunkenness or excessive sobriety; one is moderate when, neither given to drunkenness nor sobriety, one relates to alcohol as a good to which one is not enslaved but which one may enjoy as one should. Moderation is a state of the soul, and moderation with regard to alcohol is simply a particular way in which this moderation may express itself.
Moderation with regard to alcohol cannot be considered as an ethical issue independently from wider ethical issues, and not only because -- in the Christian tradition especially -- immoderate alcohol intake gets categorized as a species of gluttony. Whether a person can drink moderately speaks to the state of their soul; an inability to drink a reasonable amount of alcohol is not so much bad in itself as it is an indication that one suffers from a disordered soul. Indeed, consuming alcohol in moderation offers good practice at being moderate generally, and only though practice and habituation can one become moderate. Thus when the prohibitionist abstains from something in order to avoid excess he not only engages in a sort of excess of his own (and this might indicate a wider disorder), but deprives himself of an opportunity to improve the state of his soul.
Some cases do exist where one simply ought not to partake in some good he or she finds simply too tempting; this, of course, indicates something analogous to an illness in which one forgoes the mean because of excessive personal weakness. In these cases, abstinence stands as the best choice, but it must be considered a diminished good arising from a particular pathology; or to put it another way, an unfortunate circumstance arising from a psychological disability. This ought be viewed not with disdain but with a compassionate awareness that recognizes the situation as not ideal but best given the circumstances. We might think of other cases in which a supervening reason, such as the wishes of one's friends or family, might cause someone to justifiably forgo the mean. In these cases one must again realize that the circumstances do not allow for what is ideal, that those who rule out moderate behavior are wrong, and one must take special care not to let the spirit of immoderation spread beyond its current site of infection. One must always remember that all goods take place in a mean, and that in order for them to be accepted as good one must have incorporated the principle of moderation into one's soul.
The practice of moderation -- whether in alcohol, food, entertainment, time management, and so on -- ought to be viewed as the practice of training one's soul in virtue and as part of the process of achieving moral maturity. One gains personal stability and good judgment in this way and only in this way. By denying the goodness of alcohol or food one implicitly impugns the wider goodness of creation, and by avoiding moderation in this instance one falls prey to an extreme which makes it more difficult to practice moderation generally. Fortunately, those who oppose the use of alcohol very often do not let this tendency infect too deeply the other aspects of their lives and so prevent the prohibitionist attitude from causing any wider damage. However one must keep in mind as a Christian that only when the soul stands well ordered in a state of moderation can one receive creation as a gift by enjoying it without being enslaved by it, and only in this way can one maintain a relation to things which both affirms their goodness and places God as the source of all good things; only in moderation can asceticism be a celebration, rather than a condemnation, of creation.
I do not mean by "prohibitionism" specifically the historical movement which set out to ban alcohol, nor the continued theological position that one must avoid alcohol (though in these cases one sees in an obvious and concentrated form the attitude at which I take aim), but the disposition that if something should not be used in excess one ought -- in order to be on the safe side -- not to use it at all. In the case of alcohol, this attitude does not manifest in those who declare alcohol to be evil in principle; this is a different, and rather silly, intellectual disorder. To the Christian mind, this absolute prohibition of alcohol appears suspiciously close either to gnosticism (in its distrust of the goodness of creation), or to Islamic teaching. Even setting aside the historical attitude and traditional position of the Church towards alcohol, the Bible simply lauds wine -- and particularly in regard to its psychoactive effects which promote revelry and fraternity -- too loudly and too repeatedly for the intellectually honest fundamentalist to ignore. If one considers the Bible to be in any sense authoritative in the way a Christian ought to live his or her life, one simply cannot regard that which in the Psalms is declared to be made by God for the purpose of "[making] glad the heart of man" as evil without very obviously impugning God in the process. And those few who attempt through absurd etymological strategies to deny that the Hebrew word for "wine" means "wine" make Bishop Spong's Biblical criticism look like the work of a hermeneutical genius.
One finds a better example of the prohibitionist temperament I have in mind in those who accept the obvious historical reality concerning the Judeo-Christian use of wine and who -- while not maintaining an absolute prohibition against alcohol consumption -- hold that it might be better to abstain from alcohol altogether lest one drift into excess. Though this position has the benefit of at least being intellectually honest, it either misapprehends the nature of moderation or does not consider moderation virtuous in itself. Moderation does not simply mean avoiding excess, one must avoid deficiency as well; to paraphrase Aristotle, moderation stands in the mean between two extremes. The motivation of the prohibitionist just mentioned can be considered good, but incomplete: for by avoiding all alcohol (in this example) one does not violate the moral rule against drunkenness, but neither does one fully assert the goodness of the gift of wine. In Aristotelian terminology, one unintentionally falls into the extreme of deficiency while trying to avoid the opposite extreme of excess. Here one can see a fundamental problem that cannot simply be restricted to issues such as alcohol; that is, that creation is a good gift from God and must be received as such.
In asserting that one does best to not only avoid extremes but to avoid moderation as well, one must implicitly claim not only that whatever a person takes in moderation is not a good but that moderation itself is not good. In the case of alcohol the abstainer avoids drunkenness in a way which ends up expressing (quite unintentionally) disdain for God's creativity. The prohibitionist gets so wrapped up in avoiding doing wrong that he fails to do right, or else he conceives of moral law in a fundamentally negative way wherein one stays on the right side of the law simply by not violating it. In either case, we see that without a practiced moderation one cannot live fully, and that the state of one's soul gets inhibited in a way which makes it difficult -- though not entirely impossible -- to affirm the goodness of creation.
Moderation must not be interpreted in solely a legal way; though it is a mean it is not a mathematical mean. To eat moderately does not really entail eating a precise amount of food; moderation cannot be placed on a coordinate system. For this reason Aristotle asserts that while moderation requires a mean between extremes, moderation is itself an extreme; in other words, in order to be moderate one must avoid excess and deficiency, but this alone does not constitute moderation--it merely makes it possible. Once a person frees himself from extremes he creates the calm space in which he can enact virtue. In the case of food, moderation becomes possible when one neither eats too much or too little, but moderation is achieved when one relates to food as one ought to. It is quite possible that one avoids excesses but still is not moderate. Similarly, in the case of alcohol one cannot be called moderate simply by avoiding drunkenness or excessive sobriety; one is moderate when, neither given to drunkenness nor sobriety, one relates to alcohol as a good to which one is not enslaved but which one may enjoy as one should. Moderation is a state of the soul, and moderation with regard to alcohol is simply a particular way in which this moderation may express itself.
Moderation with regard to alcohol cannot be considered as an ethical issue independently from wider ethical issues, and not only because -- in the Christian tradition especially -- immoderate alcohol intake gets categorized as a species of gluttony. Whether a person can drink moderately speaks to the state of their soul; an inability to drink a reasonable amount of alcohol is not so much bad in itself as it is an indication that one suffers from a disordered soul. Indeed, consuming alcohol in moderation offers good practice at being moderate generally, and only though practice and habituation can one become moderate. Thus when the prohibitionist abstains from something in order to avoid excess he not only engages in a sort of excess of his own (and this might indicate a wider disorder), but deprives himself of an opportunity to improve the state of his soul.
Some cases do exist where one simply ought not to partake in some good he or she finds simply too tempting; this, of course, indicates something analogous to an illness in which one forgoes the mean because of excessive personal weakness. In these cases, abstinence stands as the best choice, but it must be considered a diminished good arising from a particular pathology; or to put it another way, an unfortunate circumstance arising from a psychological disability. This ought be viewed not with disdain but with a compassionate awareness that recognizes the situation as not ideal but best given the circumstances. We might think of other cases in which a supervening reason, such as the wishes of one's friends or family, might cause someone to justifiably forgo the mean. In these cases one must again realize that the circumstances do not allow for what is ideal, that those who rule out moderate behavior are wrong, and one must take special care not to let the spirit of immoderation spread beyond its current site of infection. One must always remember that all goods take place in a mean, and that in order for them to be accepted as good one must have incorporated the principle of moderation into one's soul.
The practice of moderation -- whether in alcohol, food, entertainment, time management, and so on -- ought to be viewed as the practice of training one's soul in virtue and as part of the process of achieving moral maturity. One gains personal stability and good judgment in this way and only in this way. By denying the goodness of alcohol or food one implicitly impugns the wider goodness of creation, and by avoiding moderation in this instance one falls prey to an extreme which makes it more difficult to practice moderation generally. Fortunately, those who oppose the use of alcohol very often do not let this tendency infect too deeply the other aspects of their lives and so prevent the prohibitionist attitude from causing any wider damage. However one must keep in mind as a Christian that only when the soul stands well ordered in a state of moderation can one receive creation as a gift by enjoying it without being enslaved by it, and only in this way can one maintain a relation to things which both affirms their goodness and places God as the source of all good things; only in moderation can asceticism be a celebration, rather than a condemnation, of creation.
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