The Person and Chastity

143-173

1
 Affected by resentment: opposes that which
requires discipline
 We minimize the achievements of those who
overcome obstacles
 Sloth
 Devalues that which deserves respect

2
 Harmful
 Needfor sexual relief
 Enemy of love
 These views are evidence of original sin
 Without chastity love may be squandered
(145)

3
 Chaste means liberation from
everything that “makes dirty.”
 Love must be pellucid

4
 Examines internal and external actions
 Adultery
 Lust
 Closely linked with sensuality
 Reaction to sexual values
 Impinge upon the agent
 Encouraged by the agent

5
 When desire achieves end it loses interest
until aroused again
 Oriented towards external values
 Usurps the personal value
 Non-integration
 Squandering raw material (151)
 Sentimentality is not solution: can idealize
and evade

6
 Subjectivism not the same as “subjectivity”
 Subjectivity involves two persons with
interior lives, two subjects
 Subjectivism distorts love: emotions divert
the gaze from truth
 Emotional reactions override the value of the
other
 Emotional values become criterion of
relationship

7
 Pleasure becomes standard of judgment
 Destroys of the essence of love
 Becomes hedonism
 Egoism grows: “all about me”
 No common “I”
 We want the pleasure of the other for our
own sake

8
 If it is pleasant it must be good
 Becomes a habit of thought
 Destroys love
 Avoidance of reflection: not just error in
thinking but distortion of direction of
action
 Parties must “correctly define what exists
between them.” (165)
 Fiction: “It doesn’t seem sinful.”
 Sin is denial of objective value
9
 The other becomes an object of pleasure
 Must distinguish between love of body and
carnal love
 Neither sensuality nor carnal desire is a
sin;
 Concupiscence (disordered desire) is the
germ of sin
 Result of original sin
 Sin requires consciousness and
voluntariness
10
 Must separate psychology of love from virtue
of love
 Love is only psychologically complete when it
possesses and ethical value, when it is a
virtue

11
 Chastity is a form of temperance
 Desire for physical goods must be governed by
reason
 Ethics of Aristotle and Aquinas is ethics of
perfectionism
 Chastity is efficiency in managing
concupiscent impulses – it keeps the
appetites in equilibrium

12
 Chastity frees love (as attraction) from the
utilitarian attitude
 Controls not only desires and emotions but
also “those centres deep within the human
being in which the utilitarian attitude is
hatched and grows.” (170)
 Must be transparent because utilitarian
attitude can be camouflaged

13
 If chastity is understood as repression,
explosions may results
 Chastity is not one long “no”
 Chastity is a yes to the value of the person;
it is creative; it brings reactions into
consciousness
 Only chaste individuals are capable of true
love
 It takes a long time and much effort to
become chaste; we need to mature
internally and externally
14
 The body must be humble before man’s
greatness
 It must be subordinate to love
 Must also be humble before human
happiness, true happiness: union with God

15