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Full Idea
If someone looks at a beautiful statue, or horse, or human being, or listens to someone singing …just to look at or listen to beautiful things, he would not be thought to be intemperate, any more than those beguiled by the Sirens would.
Gist of Idea
If someone just looks at or listens to beautiful things, they would not be thought intemperate
Source
Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics [c.333 BCE], 1230b31)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Eudemian Ethics', ed/tr. Reeve, C.D.C. [Hackett 2021], p.42
A Reaction
He says that intemperance mainly concerns taste and touch, rather than mere looking or listening. I think obsessive collectors of beautiful objects might drift into intemperance.
| 131 | If absence of desire is happiness, then nothing is happier than a stone or a corpse [Plato] |
| 140 | Self-indulgent desire makes friendship impossible, because it makes a person incapable of co-operation [Plato] |
| 254 | Excessive laughter and tears must be avoided [Plato] |
| 23908 | If someone just looks at or listens to beautiful things, they would not be thought intemperate [Aristotle] |
| 2813 | It is quite possible to live a moderate life and yet be miserable [Aristotle] |
| 13312 | Excessive curiosity is a form of intemperance [Seneca] |
| 13308 | It's no good winning lots of fights, if you are then conquered by your own temper [Seneca] |
| 13552 | Anger is an extreme vice, threatening sanity, and gripping whole states [Seneca] |
| 13553 | Anger is a vice which afflicts good men as well as bad [Seneca] |
| 22399 | Temperance prevents our passions from acting against reason [Aquinas] |
| 22403 | Temperance is not a virtue if it results from timidity or excessive puritanism [Foot] |