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Why can some people enjoy the pleasures of life without being controlled by them?
Why can some people put down the phone, walk away from the food, control their anger, or get to work when they don't feel like it, while others seem powerless against their own impulses?
And perhaps the most important question of all:
What does it actually mean to become master of yourself?
The ancient philosophers believed the answer was found in one of the four cardinal virtues:
Temperance.
In this episode of The Examined Life, Dr. Scott M. Sullivan explores the ancient philosophy of self-mastery and the virtue the Greeks called sophrosyne.
Temperance is often misunderstood as deprivation: don't eat too much, don't drink too much, don't have too much fun.
But Aristotle, Epictetus, the Stoics, and Thomas Aquinas understood something much deeper.
Temperance is not fundamentally about saying no to pleasure.
It is about establishing who governs your life.
Reason or appetite.
You or whatever desire happens to be shouting the loudest.
The temperate person can enjoy food, drink, rest, comfort, entertainment, and the ordinary pleasures of human life. But there is one enormous difference:
He can take them, and he can leave them.
They do not command him.
He commands himself.
And that is freedom.
In this episode you'll discover:
• What Aristotle actually meant by temperance and why it is much more than willpower
• The crucial difference between self-control and genuine self-mastery
• Aristotle's four stages of character: self-indulgence, incontinence, self-restraint, and temperance
• Why self-control wins the battle, but temperance ends the civil war
• Why almost every worthwhile goal depends upon sacrificing a smaller good now for a greater good later
• Why freedom does not mean "I can do whatever I want," but "I do not have to do everything I want"
• How excessive pleasure can gradually destroy your ability to enjoy pleasure
• Why temperance can actually make life's ordinary pleasures better
• The two opposite failures of temperance: self-indulgence and insensibility
• How self-mastery applies to food, money, work, exercise, your phone, comfort, attention, anger, and everyday life
• Why controlling your diet while being unable to control your temper is not genuine self-mastery
• The 3×3 Method: Prepare, Practice, Examine, a simple daily discipline for developing self-mastery
One of Aristotle's deepest insights is that there is a difference between the person who desperately wants the wrong thing but forces himself to resist it, and the person whose desires themselves have gradually learned to follow reason.
One is fighting a civil war and winning.
The other has established peace.
That is the goal of temperance.
Not to spend your entire life desperately fighting yourself, but to gradually become the kind of person whose appetites have learned their proper place.
Self-control wins the battle.
Temperance ends the civil war.
And this matters because almost everything worthwhile in life eventually presents us with the same choice:
There is something you want right now.
And there is something greater that you want more.
Health.
Marriage.
Financial security.
Meaningful work.
Physical fitness.
Character.
Achievement.
A worthwhile life.
Temperance gives you the ability to choose the greater good.
The purpose of philosophy is not simply to fill your mind with interesting ideas.
It is to help you become the kind of person who lives better.
A wiser person.
A stronger person.
A freer person.
A person capable of enjoying the good things of life without becoming enslaved to them.
Because genuine freedom is not the ability to satisfy every desire.
It is the ability to experience a desire without having to obey it.
The food doesn't command you.
The phone doesn't command you.
Comfort doesn't command you.
Anger doesn't command you.
Appetite speaks.
But you decide.
That is self-mastery.
"No man is free who is not master of himself."
— Epictetus
Recommended Reading
• Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, Books III and VII
• Epictetus: Discourses and Enchiridion
• Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
• Seneca: Letters to Lucilius
• Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings
• Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, Treatise on Temperance
The Examined Life takes the timeless wisdom of the world's greatest philosophers and transforms it into practical tools for living a happier, stronger, wiser, and more flourishing life.
Vita Examinata.
#Temperance #SelfControl #SelfMastery #Discipline #Aristotle #Epictetus #Stoicism #Virtue #Character #Philosophy #SelfImprovement #TheExaminedLife
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