Selfless Self-Preservation
More Pieper on Temperance
If you are like me, you struggle with the concept of “self-care.” I struggle with the popular concept and I struggle to care for myself.
In the abstract I’m not opposed to caring for yourself. But the way “self-care” is used in the popular vernacular rubs me the wrong way. It seems to have more to do with “treat yo self” than, say, exercise or diet. It suggests a fragile self that needs pampering to survive.
It’s not unrelated that I struggle to allow myself to do fun things. I’m much more comfortable working myself to exhaustion than doing something nice, calming, and relaxing. This is a defect in my character which I am actively working on.
In Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues, he gives a definition of “temperance” that I think is a fruitful alternative to the popularized concept of “self-care”:
For man there are two modes of . . . turning toward the self: a selfless and a selfish one. Only the former makes for self-preservation; the latter is destructive. In modern psychology we find this thought: genuine self-preservation is the turning of man toward himself, with the essential stipulation, however, that in this movement he does not become fixed upon himself. . . Temperance is selfless self-preservation. Intemperance is self-destruction through the selfish degradation of the powers which aim at self-preservation. (148)
This contrast is illustrative, I think. Much of what is called “self-care” is self destructive because its a “degradation of the powers which aim at self-preservation.” Specifically, it involves a self-fixation. The movement toward yourself is not destructive in itself. But if your attention, investment, and desire become fixated on yourself and your wants, then you’ve crossed into intemperance, and inevitably you will harm yourself. Imagine, for example, someone who spends beyond their means as a way of “relieving stress” at work. This is a turning towards the self and his or her desires, but it involves a practice that is unsustainable and harmful.
In contrast we have “selfless self-preservation.” What I love about this phrase is the emphasis upon the selflessness of self-preservation. My habit is to think of self-preservation as inherently selfish, which is why I’m so bad at allowing myself to do fun activities. But for Pieper, the virtue of temperance is self-preservation.
Understood properly, caring for yourself (self-preservation) is a selfless act of love.