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greek-ethicsfeatured in 30 works

Temperance

Mastery over one's appetites and pleasures — the self-command Plato called a kind of inner order.

Temperance (sōphrosynē) is the virtue of moderation and self-control over bodily desires and pleasures. Plato (4th c. BCE) treated it as a harmony in which appetite willingly submits to reason, while Aristotle defined it as the mean concerning the pleasures of touch and taste — the balance between self-indulgence and insensibility. One of the four cardinal virtues, it passed through Stoic and Roman thought into the heart of Western and later Christian ethics.

How it traveled

  1. Charmides
    Athens · -399
    explains
  2. Protagoras
    Athens · -385
    explains
  3. Symposium
    Athens · -385
    explains
  4. Phaedo
    Athens · -380
    explains
  5. Republic
    Athens · -375
    explains
  6. Phaedrus
    Athens · -370
    explains
  7. Statesman
    Athens · -358
    explains
  8. Areopagiticus
    Athens · -355
    explains
  9. On the Peace
    Athens · -355
    explains
  10. Philebus
    Athens · -355
    explains
  11. Memorabilia
    Athens · -354
    explains
  12. Cyropaedia
    Athens · -354
    explains
  13. Agesilaus
    Athens · -354
    explains
  14. Constitution of the Lacedaimonians
    Athens · -354
    explains
  15. Symposium
    Athens · -354
    explains
  16. Economics
    Athens · -354
    explains
  17. Laws
    Athens · -348
    explains
  18. Gorgias
    Athens · -348
    explains
  19. Against Timarchus
    Athens · -346
    explains
  20. To Demonicus
    Athens · -338
    explains
  21. Nicocles or the Cyprians
    Athens · -338
    explains
  22. To Nicocles
    Athens · -338
    explains
  23. Rhetoric
    Chalcis · -335
    explains
  24. Nicomachean Ethics
    Chalcis · -322
    explains
  25. Eudemian Ethics
    Chalcis · -322
    explains
  26. Magna Moralia
    Chalcis · -322
    explains
  27. Politics
    Chalcis · -322
    explains
  28. Divisiones Aristoteleae
    Chalcis · -322
    explains
  29. Histories
    Megalopolis · -118
    explains
  30. In C. Verrem
    Formiae · -70
    explains

Key passages(20)

Eudemian Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

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Epistulae · Basil, Saint, Bishop of Caesarea

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Fragmenta Moralia · Chrysippus

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