Firefighting, Temperance, and Hermeneutical Virtue

Traditional understandings of temperance do not adequately address the ethical alienation and displacement firefighters experience because these definitions do not account for the constant and often extreme transitions firefighters make in their work. I argue that firefighters would be better served by a novel, hermeneutically-conceived approach to temperance. Moreover, temperance is not only or even primarily about self-control. Rather, temperance is best understood on the basis of Gadamer’s conception of the “fusion of horizons” as a kind of ethical agility to move between difficult and disparate situations. This, I suggest, is an essential aspect of philosophical hermeneutics because the fusion of horizons is the means by which we experience the transitions, oscillations, and amalgamations of the world. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics provides a vital way, therefore, in which firefighters can cultivate the virtue of temperance as they transition and move between difficult and disparate circumstances.