Two quotes, one from Greek philosophy and one from modern self-help—both about the same principle: a dichotomy between soul/divine/virtue and body/mortal/appetite.
Socrates in Phaedo:
“When the soul and the body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve … Temperance, which is being calm in the face of appetites, and keeping an orderly disposition that attaches little importance to them—isn’t this proper only to those who more than anyone else attach little importance to the body, and spend their lives in philosophy?”
Stephen Covey in 7 Habits:
“The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.”
The body is a good servant but a poor master. At the margins of survival, however, isn’t the body a better master? Because the soul cannot survive, at least not in this life, without the body. So survival is the prime good, insofar as it makes possible future good.
Survival is the biological law that underlies much of our morality. But even the appetite for life itself is foregone by martyrs, for virtues of freedom and religion.
Besides, the majority of our choices are not life or death, but day-to-day decisions about health, relationships, and work—what to eat for breakfast, what to read, when to set an alarm, how hard to work.
The answers are balanced between appetite and virtue: an appetite for entertainment, a virtue for education; an appetite for sleep, a virtue for work; an appetite for safety, a virtue for justice; an appetite for sex, a virtue for love; an appetite for money, a virtue for meaning.
How do we decide?
According to wisdom, says Socrates. But does not some wisdom say there is no such thing as virtue? Not that wisdom, Socrates might say. Then what wisdom?
The optimal opposition of your appetites is, I think, up to your own morals. But the important thing here is a paradigm of balance.
A morality somewhere between animal and divine. An animal’s morality is all appetite; survival is the prime good. God’s morality is all wisdom; surely He knows the Truth, which remains, tragically, beyond our reason. Hence, our uncertainty.
But we still have our principles, our balance.
Not like the young hedonist who appalls rules, ignorant that ethics might actually unfold a deeper pleasure. Nor like the old ascetic who opposes all appetites, yearning for the divine, forgetting that his nature is part animal, and having forfeited much joy.
A balance between two parts of our nature: body and soul, mortal and divine.
Man will be animal so long as he must survive. But we might reach nearer the divine, and in the process become more human, balancing appetite and virtue.