Tea at Trianon: Why Apps Cannot Replace Temperance

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Why Apps Cannot Replace Temperance

From Return to Order:

Temperance is the virtue whereby individuals govern their natural appetites and passions in accordance with the norms prescribed by reason and Faith. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that temperance “withdraws man from things which seduce the appetite from obeying reason” (II-II, q. 141, a. 2).

Modern society is full of opportunities for intemperance. It facilitates people seeking out the extremes of their impulses and unbridled desires. This supreme intemperance manifests itself in those intense pleasures associated with sexuality, extreme excitement, social acceptance, or the abuse of alcohol, opioids, or drugs. Intemperance tends to intensify and consume individuals as it progresses. Thus, intemperance brings on periods of high nervousness, irregularity, and weakness. People make this intemperance the center of their affections. The intense nervous vibration of these illegitimate pleasures leads to disinterest in the legitimate pleasures of life. (Read more.)